Chapter Text
Artwork by the incomparable Torte
Time, a neglectful father at best, and at worst a sanctimonious bastard. His unyielding hands rained down without mercy upon his wayward children, showing no respect for the sanctity of a shattered heart. And shattered Hob was, broken and bleeding on the shores. Discarded by all that was joyous and good in this cold world, he could not escape. His spark for life, the zeal that carried him through the darkness, had been extinguished by the monsoon.
Hundreds of years of living had not prepared him for the depth of grief that came from the sharp knife of lives cut too short, not when those lives were so precious to him. His beloved Elenore, the first woman he took as his, to have and to hold. He loved her, for all that she was and the gifts she gave him in the form of their son. And he loved her still, even as she was lost to him forever due to his own selfishness.
The doctors warned him that she may not be strong enough for a second child, the first pregnancy having taken so much out of her. But it had been years; surely, a second child to love and hold could only improve her constitution. Beautiful woman that she was, she wanted to give Hob his greatest desire, and within months, she was pregnant again.
There was nothing that could be done, they told him; she simply wasn't strong enough. So, his Elenore and his child were taken from him. A gift that was not meant for his hands or the world he was bound to, and it was all his fault.
Robyn, his boy, his eldest, was the next to follow. He had not known he could love anything as much as he loved the pink, wriggling babe placed in his arms until his heart was stolen. It was one of the singular pleasures in his life to watch his child grow from a helpless infant into a strong, bull-headed man. The same traits that earned Hob immortality had cost his son his life. The senselessness of it all was his undoing. He could not reason the loss as he had so many others in his existence; there was no peace to be made, only hopelessness.
He should have seen it coming. He did, in the vague way everyone knew that all things must end. He allowed the illusion of forever to veil his eyes, blinding him to the slowing of time as he lived for the moment, not the future. He forgot for a second that this was the only fate afforded to one who would live on while those he loved were not gifted with the same longevity.
Time should stop. Death should be imminent after such a loss, but it wasn't. Not when Hob had thought to cheat death, and in turn, time. There was no crueler truth than that life will always march on. The heart will continue to beat despite the hemorrhage, and the body will continue to function long after the soul has deserted the shell.
This was the truth of Hob’s existence, the lesson he was meant to learn. The one he learned too late and one he was ready to see at an end.
“Let me go! I'm meeting someone!” The doorman didn’t listen, only seeing his emaciated frame, dirt-encrusted clothes, and stinking of piss and alcohol. Clothes that hung off a body that should have long since been nothing but decaying flesh in a shallow grave.
Did this man not see his desperation, the torment of a life prolonged far after its expiration? Salvation rested within the familiar walls of the White Horse in the form of his stranger. Of Death, and he had a date to keep.
“Let him be! He is my guest.” The voice that haunted his dreams, taunted him in his nightmares, and would be his salvation this night came to his aid. The doorman relented, glancing with distaste between Hob’s person and the fine trappings of his stranger before doing as he was bidden.
Falling into his awaiting chair was a sweet respite from his weary existence. Like a beast, he tucked into the feast before him, barely sparing his companion a glance. Decades of gnawing hunger demanded he sate his stomach over observing social niceties. What use had Hob for such things when his years were spent in a hellish existence of misery and the deepest wells of despair?
Like an overflowing river after a storm, the dam broke, spilling his tale bare before his stranger. Tears he believed long since dried up flowed down his cheeks, salting the buttered bread he tore into between breaths.
It was too heavy, he confessed, this burden bearing down on him. Guilt and loss were his only companions in a world that sought to break him. Trying him for witchcraft, and drowning him in waters shallower than the oceans of his sorrow.
“Are you ready for death then?” His stranger asked with something akin to resignation, clipping the end of each lilting word.
It was then he looked up, taking in the last face he would behold in this life.
His world had been a monochrome canvas for far too long—nothing but greys and black, no white. There was nothing pure left untouched by his sins to shine white. White was reserved for his family, who lived on, pure and untouchable in his memory.
Colors seemed so long ago, too long ago to remember clearly, but here they were, sitting before him. His stranger, Death, sat glowing in the firelight like a burning sun. Black and grey, and heavens above, with brilliant white pure skin. A ruby of blood blazing at his breast, and eyes that gleamed like living sapphires, so vibrant that Hob could barely maintain eye contact as he nodded an affirmative.
“I am ready to go. Please end my suffering.” Hob found comfort in knowing the face of Death was more beautiful than the life he left behind.
Stars burned then extinguished in those endless eyes. For a moment, he felt a wave of sadness, born of his stranger's presence, roll over him in a tidal wave of sensation that nearly knocked him from his chair. It was another brick in the walls of his mausoleum that he disappointed his companion. Another regret he could not dissuade.
He opened his mouth to express what he did not know. There should be words, but he knew not what they were. Instead, he followed Death when he stood and motioned for Hob to precede him. Each step was weighted and painful as he marched to his end, but there was also a sense of relief. A journey comes to its much-desired conclusion.
“If I may, I ask that it be quick.” His request was soft, voice nervous but sure. “And painless, if at all possible.”
“It is already done.” With a wave of an elegant, long fingered hand, Hob looked through the sooty windows of the White Horse to see his prone form hunched over their abandoned table like a common drunk.
That was it, he was dead. There would be no grand parade for him, no mourners to shed water at his grave, because all those he loved were already dead and buried.
Funnily, he didn’t feel different. Looking down at his hands, he didn’t look different either. For a moment, he closed his eyes, focusing on his senses, and found there was a lightness to him that wasn't there before. He was solid in form but felt stones lighter. As if the weight of living was no longer grounding him to the earth beneath his feet.
“What happens now?” He mused with trepidation. His scales were hopelessly tipped in the wrong direction, overflowing with multiple lifetimes of transgressions not yet atoned for. All he could do was await his judgment as it was no less than he deserved.
His companion considered him with azure eyes as one would a delicate puzzle. His fine features were sharp in the torchlight, reserved but not uncaring. “That is up to you, Robert Gadling. You may remain and follow my sister, Death, to the sunless lands, or you may enter my realm, the Dreaming.”
Hob was confused and intrigued by his stranger’s words. He was well-versed in the holy book and its teachings of heaven and hell. There was no mention of a choice to be made, or the dreaming, for that matter. Then again, there was no mention of beautiful beings offering immortality in exchange for an insight into the human condition, even once a century.
“Your sister is Death? But if you are not Death, then who are you?” So many questions swirled in his mind, but foremost was the need for a name to match the face he knew so well.
His stranger rose tall and imposing before him, shedding a fraction of his mortal guise to offer a glimpse of the divinity hiding beneath. “I have many names. I am Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Nightmares, Prince of Stories. You, Robert Gadling, may call me Morpheus.”
Morpheus was a familiar name in myths, passed down through the generations. The Sandman, a story he often used to lull Robyn to sleep when he was a boy. It suited him when nothing about any of this seemed to fit at all.
“Are you a god?” His question earned him a look of disdain that was oddly comforting, as it was a familiar expression from his companion, this Morpheus.
“I am no god.” He declared with an air of condescension. “I am one of the Endless. We are manifestations of different aspects of human existence. I came into being with the first flicker of life capable of dreaming and will exist until the last dreamer is extinguished. My sister, Death of the Endless, was the one to grant your immorality, but it was I who wished to learn of your experiences. So, I offer you this choice.”
Hob wanted to laugh, could feel it bubbling in his throat, a hysterical, clawing sensation. Was there a protocol for this, a formal meeting, not a god, but an Endless? Not that Hob knew what that meant. He had always known his stranger was other, suspecting him first of a devil and then as Death himself. To be faced with the truth of his stranger, Hob was left off kilter with no familiar path to follow.
“I still don’t understand, but then I don’t need to, I guess.” He shrugged, using levity to gain some sense of stability in the impossible situation he found himself.
Lovely lips pulled to the side in a wisp of a smile. Barley there at all. Enough to cling to, and that was all he needed. “You will come to understand in time. What say you, Hob Gadling?”
That smile served as a reminder that this was the same man, entity, he sat with once a century, enjoyed a meal, and regaled with boisterous stories. He was a stranger in name but not in company. Hob entertained queens, stood in the presence of masters, and witnessed legends being born. God or Endless, Morpheus was offering him a new adventure. For all the mistakes he made, how could he refuse?
Taking one last look at the cold, damp, grey streets of London. His place of birth and now death, Hob turned to his stranger, Morpheus, God of sleep and Dream of the Endless.
“Take me to the Dreaming.” A smile, a grin really, wider than any he managed in decades, dimpled his cheeks almost to the point of pain as he offered himself up with arms wide.
“Very well. Take my hand.”
Tapered fingers extended toward him. Pristine compared to his own muddied skin. Tentatively, he touched cool skin, and his spirit quickened at the contact.
It felt like hope.