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Hope stared at the sword hovering upright in the middle of his gallery, where it had been, for the past four days.
Four days and four nights it had stood there, shining.
A talisman that he knew without knowing.
A sword that did not, and could not belong to him.
Yet it was here, and it had yet to move, or speak, or offer any guidance as to what he was supposed to do. It had appeared the day after the eruption of his power that Dream had protected him from, and it had not disappeared.
A single being held what was (perhaps) the answer to its presence. The question was whether or not he was ready to face what it meant, and to approach him about it. But the longer he delayed, the more he risked Dream finding it before he had anything resembling answers. Which meant he needed to pay another visit to someone who did not wish to be found.
Squaring his shoulders, Hope nodded to himself and stepped out of his gallery, locking it behind him, before he stepped out of the Dreaming and into the Waking world. Stopping in a nearby town gave him enough time to rent a motorcycle, eat at one of the lovely open-air restaurants, and purchase some fresh bread to bring with him. Prepared as he was, Hob made his way to the creature who did not wish to be found, hoping the whole way that he was wrong about what he wanted to ask about.
~!~
Hob took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders before lifting his hand to knock on the door, three hard times before he settled back to wait. Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait long, and it swung open to reveal a displeased face.
“Another family dinner already?” Destruction asked, raising his eyebrows.
Hob shook his head. “No, as much as I wish that were the case, but I brought fresh bread as a peace offering.” He held it out, watching as he was eyed warily before it was accepted and the door was held open for him and subsequently shut behind him. “Your secret remains safe, and I am not here to bring you back.”
Hob paused, sighed, and followed Destruction into a room with a table, sinking into a seat willingly as it was gestured at. “At least not as your role. Your siblings would love to see their brother.”
“Then why are you here?” Destruction asked, returning with a bread knife and crock of butter. “If it is not to attempt to convince me to come back.”
Hob watched as he cut them each a generous slice of bread and spread butter on it, smiling as he took the offering. A large bite had him relaxing and he breathed in deeply as he considered precisely how he wanted to answer that. He looked down at the bread, but it, of course, offered no further answers.
“Four days ago,” Hob started. “Your sigil appeared in my gallery. Not in your window, for that is where mine now resides for the others, but in the center of it. It is waiting. I don’t know what it is waiting for, outside of the obvious.”
Destruction said nothing, only continued to watch him as he ate through the rest of his slice of bread and cut himself a second. Hob gathered himself to keep speaking, to ask some sort of question because that was what he needed to ask, when the kettle went off. He blinked in surprise as Destruction stood and brought them both mugs of tea, with cream and sugar on a small tray. Hob made himself a cup and took a sip, letting the familiarity soothe the tension in his shoulders.
“Five days ago,” Hob tried, feeling out the bones of a situation that he still did not fully understand. “A headache that had been building and lasted for a week, suddenly erupted into an explosion of my power. Dream was barely able to contain it, and needed Desire’s help to be able to contain me, after he brought me to the Dreaming.” He paused. “They’re both all right, and I am now as well. But I don’t believe in coincidence, not when it’s this obvious.”
Destruction hummed. “You haven’t answered my question.”
Hob managed a small laugh and took another sip of his tea. “I’m afraid to ask the question that I’m building to, if I’m honest. I don’t know how to feel about what it has the potential to mean, and what it means for your siblings. They have been hurt enough and I would not hurt them further.”
“You blame me for their hurt.”
Hob barked out a laugh and took a big bite of the fresh bread. “Hell no. You kidding? Far as I’m concerned, you’re the most stable of the bunch for getting the hell away from that dynamic, because you put up with it for the ten billion years or however old you all are.” He shrugged. “Between Dream and Desire’s fighting, Death’s peacekeeping, Destiny’s hands-off approach, Despair helping her twin, and Delirium left on her own, it’s a nightmare to navigate on a good day.”
Destruction settled back in his chair and watched him, the new Endless who sat across from him, remarkably still human to his very core in the way he savored the fresh butter he licked off his fingers. He smiled faintly and acknowledged the point with a nod. “It’s getting better, with your help, I suspect.”
“Yeah, that’s because I’m a human who can’t die, thanks to your eldest sister, who then got turned into the personification of Hope by pulling bullshit like returning singing to hell,” Hob shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, I think I’m where you were at, at the start of it all.” He looked down at his mug of tea and picked it up to take another big gulp. “Difference with me is you are all bound by rules. I’m an Endless but not a sibling, and Desire understands one thing very clearly. They hurt Dream again, they’ll be dead before the others hear of it.”
Destruction picked up his mug and felt it crack under his fingertips, resisting the urge to sigh. “That is why.”
Hob blinked and frowned at the non-sequitur, even as the other endless drained his mug of tea. “Why what?”
“Why my sigil has appeared to you. Why it would be wielded by you. You promise the hope of a future in one palm, and death in the other.” He poured himself another mug of tea. “Simple, really.”
Hob resisted the urge to grit his teeth. “It’s hardly simple if it’s causing power fluctuations so powerful that my husband has to have a part of him nearly destroyed by the force!”
“But now, knowing what was destroyed, wouldn’t you agree that that part of Dream needed to be destroyed so he could return to what he was?” Destruction asked. “Have you had any of those same fluctuations since?”
“No, but who knows what could happen when I take your Sigil. I cannot be two Endless. I will not be,” Hob felt like he was begging, now. He couldn’t step into another pair of shoes, his current ones were already far too big. “I don’t know what to do. I want to help, I want to protect, I want to keep them safe, but if this hurts them, I won’t do it.”
Destruction smiled faintly. “You love them.”
Hob swallowed and looked down at the table, reaching out to cut himself another slice of bread for sake of something to do with his hands. “It has been a very long time since I had a family. I will stop at almost nothing to keep this one, and to keep it from tearing itself apart.”
“A broken bone that has been healed wrong must be rebroken to be set properly. A form of destroying the healing already having taken place,” Destruction answered. “A wound that has festered must be opened anew. Rotted wood on an old building must be cut away and replaced.” He paused, pointedly. “If you wish to rebuild, it cannot be on a rotted foundation. You must destroy pieces to build again. Is this not true of your relationship with Dream?”
A shiver ran up his spine at the knowing look in Destruction’s eyes. “How did you…”
“Before you were Endless, Hob Gadling, you belonged to each of us in turn. I may no longer be what I am, but that does not mean I do not and cannot feel those who are mine.” Destruction nodded to him with a faint smile. “I felt your destruction of a great many avenues in the shipping business not long after your annual meeting with my brother.”
Hob sucked in a breath and turned to look out the nearby window, letting it out in a shudder a moment later. “What will happen to me if I take it? I cannot be both.”
“Nor will you ever be,” Destruction answered. He looked at the table and tapped at it, idly. “It is unlikely that Dream is able to articulate this to you, and perhaps even Desire does not truly understand.”
“Know what?” Hob asked, wary. “They’ve been magnificent teachers.”
Destruction smiled faintly. “They both are, I have no doubt. You chose well. But you are unique among the Endless in a way that you understand but cannot articulate. You touch them all.”
Hob frowned. “We’re all intertwined, I don’t know what you-”
“Think,” Destruction ordered. “Think about what I have said, what you know of them, and what you know of yourself. The role you have cast yourself into. This manifestation is a result of your own Hope, take the time to understand it.”
The order rankled, no matter how right it was. Hob took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and attempted to do as Destruction had asked. Thought about the peace he’d brokered between Dream and Desire, the time he’d spent with Despair and Delirium, the pie he’d baked for Death, telling Destiny he was making food for the family dinner. Tearing down old norms to start anew, forcing them to talk to and see each other differently, forcing them to play nice by fighting back, by destroying their old habits one after another.
A tear ran down his cheek, and Hob swallowed, looking away from Destruction and out the window once more. He took a shaky breath and nodded once, breathing out slowly.
“You are good for them, in a way I could not be,” Destruction said, his voice soft. “You care and love for each of them as they are, not as they have been, with billions of years of history behind them clouding your vision.”
“They still need you!” Hob protested and then held up his hand. “No, no, I don’t, I don’t mean as your, as you. I mean they still need their brother.” He gave Destruction a watery smile. “Bet you give awesome hugs.”
Destruction blinked and let out a quiet huff. “Hugs?”
Hob nodded. “I am a firm believer in the healing power of a damn good hug.”
Destruction’s lips twitched. “Here, in your realm. In your Inn. Pick a date. Perhaps then, we will see how foolish you are.”
“I,” Hob swallowed. “You know that I love Dream, right? That I won’t do anything to hurt him intentionally and will keep him safe, and the Dreaming? I’d, I’d fight the fates for him, without hesitation.”
“The crown on your head is a testament to his trust and love for you,” Destruction said. “It is a crown no other, not even Calliope, has worn. He has allowed the very essence of who you are to permeate the Dreaming. He has chosen well.”
Hob managed a grin across the table, some of the tension fading out of his shoulders. “So, uh. What’d you think of your chocolate mousse, huh?” Destruction’s answering laugh, loud and joyous, shouldn’t have felt like an old wound healing, but it did, and Hob couldn’t help laughing in return.
~!~
They were a handful of hours away from meeting in the New Inn. He’d convinced (or more like, he’d said Destiny would be there, and so everyone else had agreed surprisingly easily) the rest of the Endless to join him, promising food and alcohol. Everything was ready and waiting, and now the only thing remaining was this.
Hob stared at the sword in the middle of his gallery.
Two weeks, and he still hadn’t been able to make himself pick it up. To accept what Destruction had told him, to accept the role he’d cast himself into willingly. He stopped in front of it and stared at it for several long moments, before he reached out to Dream through their bond, beckoning him to join him.
“Hob.”
Dream’s voice echoed behind him, and Hob knew he wasn’t imagining the undercurrent of fear there, which meant that Dream had seen the sword. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at him. “Hey love. Just needed to handle something real quick.”
Dream took a step forward. “Hob, what are you-”
“It’s all right,” Hob said with a deep breath, facing the sword once more. Even now, looking for it, he could feel the threads that were pulling on him, tugging him forward, to make a decision, to either accept or reject it.
“Hob!” Dream’s voice thundered. “You cannot, it belongs to-”
“Destruction, I know,” Hob said, staring at it. “I can feel it. Think it appeared now when I’m almost fully merged with Hope, like it was waiting for it to be safe.” He smiled faintly, even as shadows reached out for him, Dream trying to pull him back. “The staff never felt entirely right, you know, and now I know why.”
Behind him, Hob heard the shouted protest of Dream once more as he wrapped his hand around the hilt. The sword began to burn, but then it cooled, and music swelled around him, ringing in the room, growing, the same song that they had built his castle to. Hob tilted his head back and felt the power wrap around the sword, tighter and tighter, louder and louder until it was deafening, echoing in the room.
How long it lasted, the driving surge of music eventually faded and Hob was left holding a glowing sword. He grinned at it, flexing the sword in his hand, watching as it slowly shifted form until it was one that he was familiar with. He spun to face Dream and blew him a kiss before turning once more to face the sigils of the other Endless. In the center, his own, the one that had once been empty, but was no longer.
With a grunt, Hob shifted his grip and threw the sword, as hard as he could, a thunder cracking through the room at the force, straight into the musical note of his own sigil. There was another thunder crack, but this one was louder, and deeper, echoing across realms, and, he knew, across the other galleries. He watched the sigil shine, bright white, until it settled, the sword with musical notes now twinned around it in the center of the frame. Hob grinned and slowly stood upright, his chest heaving with the effort. He nodded once and turned to look at Dream, holding out his hands.
Dream stepped forward, his eyes on the sigil behind hope, the one that was glowing with power and promise, before turning his attention to his husband, to his King Consort. “What have you done? How did you come to have that sword?”
Hob took a deep breath and took Dream’s hands, squeezing them and bringing them up to kiss the backs. “The sword has been here, in my gallery, since the day after the power explosion that you protected me from.” When Dream’s eyes widened, Hob offered him a small smile. “You and Desire have taught me much, Dream. More than I ever could have imagined, but this was one piece that I knew neither of you could teach me. There was someone else who could.”
“Hob you cannot hold the power of two Endless,” Dream said, shaking his head. “You are going to bring the wrath of the Furies down upon you.”
Hob tilted his head a fraction and looked back at the pulsing signal. “I don’t think I am,” he corrected. “In fact, I think this is how bringing me in was supposed to end. I am a replacement but not - I am the seventh you need, I am simply taking on the full aspect that I have not known up until now.” A shimmer, at the back of his mind, a stepping-forward-that-was-not and he breathed in deep, his eyes glowing faintly.
“Hope has equal power to give life and destruction, Dream,” Hob said, his voice ringing with a hint of power. “Too much in the wrong way and it will destroy, without hesitation. Too much in the right way and it is life for those who harness it.” He released one of Dream’s hands and reached out to cup his face in a palm. “I must be able to do both, my Dream. And this is one piece you cannot teach me. You are not Dreams alone, you are Nightmares. Did you not think I would have more than one aspect?”
Dream shuddered and reached out to wrap an arm around Hob’s waist, pulling him in closer. “Of course you should. But this aspect…”
“Comes with a lot of pain for all of you,” Hob answered, softly, bringing their foreheads together. “That’s why we’re all meeting at the New Inn tonight. I want to try to get rid of some of that pain. Now, are you ready?”
Dream pulled Hob in closer, reassuring himself with a touch that his husband was not injured in any way. “This was the power that overwhelmed you.”
“Yes,” Hob breathed, kissing Dream’s neck. “That’s why it was strong enough to undo what you had done to yourself. I’m… I’m not far from being Hope all the time now. I got far enough that it was time for me to take on that aspect, and I didn’t know it was coming.” He reached up and combed his fingers through Dream’s hair, holding onto him tight. “But I’m all right. I’m well. Nothing is wrong. In fact, for the first time, something is going to be very, very right. For all of us.”
When Dream pulled back to frown at him in confusion, Hob kissed him and tugged them both toward the New Inn. It was closed for the evening, and the other Endless were all waiting for him inside. He took a deep breath and urged Dream inside, holding the door open for him. “Go, I’ll be right there.”
Dream turned and frowned at Hob. “You are not joining us?”
“Oh no, I am,” Hob said, grinning at him. “I just have one more guest to pick up. Now, in, go see how your siblings are keeping!” He gave Dream a gentle shove and blew a kiss to Death when she immediately latched onto Dream. Walking around the corner of the building, he leaned against the alley wall and looked into the small grassy area behind the New Inn. “You ready?”
Destruction looked up with a frown, stepping away from one of the rose bushes. “Perhaps.”
Hob reached out and took his hand. “No time like the present, now come on.” He tugged, bringing him around the side of the building.
Dream frowned at his sister, about to ask her just what she and Hob were planning with all of them when Destiny stiffened, all of his attention flying to the door. “Destiny? What is-”
“BrOtHeR!” Delirium shouted, shoving past Dream and Death, and racing for the door.
Dream watched Hob open the door and step out of the way just in time for Delirium to throw herself into the arms of Destruction, who was standing in the doorway, hugging her tight. He stared, his entire being aching as Hob ushered them both inside and closed the door behind them, a quick flash of power ensuring their privacy. He tugged his eyes away and back to his younger brother, taking a hesitant step forward.
“YoU’rE bAcK, yOu’Re BaCk, YoU’rE hOmE!” Delirium chanted, holding onto him tighter.
Hob gave Destruction a knowing look when wet eyes met his a moment later before he watched them move deeper into the room. “Not back in that way,” he explained to Delirium. “But back in the way he is comfortable with.”
“Back?” Dream croaked. When had he moved close enough to nearly be standing directly behind Delirium? His eyes darted between Destruction and Hob, waiting for an answer.
“Well,” Destruction started. “This one over here told me that I needed to stop missing his cooking at family dinners since he’s apparently taken that over.” He smiled faintly and held out his arm. “C’mere big brother.”
Dream’s eyes fluttered and he drifted forward into the strong embrace, wrapping an arm around Destruction’s waist, sagging against him. He clenched his eyes shut and forced himself to speak. “It is good to see you again, brother.”
“Scoot over, Dream, family hug!” Desire said, slamming happily into Dream’s side and into the hug that Dream and Delirium had been wrapped up in.
Hob watched as, one after another, all the Endless piled into the rather ridiculous group hug that was going on and grinned, tears in his eyes as they all whispered, each making comments, sparking laughter and tears in turn. He laughed when Desire reached out and yanked him up and against Dream, pulling him into the hug. This close, it was easy to feel the spark of hope that was growing in each of them the longer Destruction stayed, that he would return in some fashion, that he would not stay separate from them.
“All right,” Hob said, eventually, pulling back and forcing them to break the hug. “While I am all for family cuddle piles, I promised alcohol, and food. So we can either all pile into the kitchen in the back while I cook whatever you want, or we go up to my flat and figure out how eight of us fit on furniture meant to hold five on a good day.”
The unanimous shout of flat went up and Hob laughed at the procession of Endless that tromped up to his flat. By the time he arrived, two more couches and a chair that looked too comfy to be real had all been added to the room and Hob immediately claimed the comfy chair, tugging Dream into his lap for a hug and a kiss. “All right, all of you agree to a movie and I’ll get cooking.”
“I’ll make popcorn!” Death called, drifting into the kitchen.
“Upper left cabinet, should be a bunch of bags!” Hob called out and turned his attention to Dream, nuzzling into his neck. His husband hadn’t looked away from where Destruction was now pinned between Desire and Despair, Delirium excitedly telling him a story from the floor in front of him. “All right, love?”
“He came back,” Dream whispered.
A hard tremble went through Dream and Hob held onto him tighter. “He did,” he agreed, his voice soft. Hob glanced up at Destiny and caught the other endless looking in their direction.
“Is this because of what you did?” Dream asked, frowning, turning to look at Hob.
Hob shook his head. “No. That was simply my power manifesting as it was meant to do. This? This is because I told a big brother his family missed his hugs.”
“Damn right,” Death said, depositing a bowl of popcorn in Dream’s lap. “Hob, what movie are we watching?”
Hob laughed. “You’re going to make me pick? Oh, that’s not fair.” He shifted and met Destruction’s gaze again and winked at him. “You already know what I’m going to pick.”
“You are worryingly predictable in your movie selections,” Dream agreed.
“Oi! Don’t think I won’t throw you off my lap just because you’re holding the popcorn!” Hob said, giving Dream a pretend shove.
“What movie?” Destruction asked.
Hob grinned, even as Dream sighed, hiding his smile. “The Princess Bride. The truest classic of classics.” He lifted Dream up and off his lap so he could go to put it in, getting Del a few blankets and pillows at her request, letting her and Death make a blanket fort, and glanced at Destiny, sitting straight-backed on the other couch. Comfy as they were going to get.
“Quoting is encouraged,” he said, hitting play as he sank back into the comfy chair, Dream sliding willingly into his lap a moment later. When Destruction quoted the very first As You Wish, perfectly in time with Desire, Hob knew that they were going to be all right. Especially when Dream cuddled closer and whispered against his shoulder.
“Thank you.”