Chapter Text
He’d thought he knew the taste of insomnia.
Nocturn is old, by every definition of the word and several that were never transcribed. He is an Ancient, a concept, a deity to many. He feeds on the dreams of the slumbering living, and, not as readily known, the taste of those who fight their sleep. They call him the Ghost of Dreams, but he is the Ancient of Slumber, of the recharge of sleep that keeps the mortals ticking throughout the full breadth of Life’s gift.
He was much more peaceable once, and is learning to be again. Whether his current placement is a gift or a punishment he is still not entirely certain, but the one thing he will stake his very existence on is that his king did not send him here for cruelty. Pariah Dark’s very being poured a miasma of rage and wish for destruction across the Infinite Realms, and he was no more able to escape it than any other. Phantom has been kind, more so than Nocturn fears many deserved, but the king’s mercy has helped to purge them of Pariah’s influence and nothing has actually imploded.
Nocturn surveys his new domain, unbothered by the smog, and tracks the bitter tang of a human who hasn’t slept in literal days. He’d come to Gotham to feed passively upon their dreams, to occasionally eat en masse nightmares after a select few of the most violent of the mortals attacked. He’d made his deals with the Spirit of Gotham readily. She struggled to withstand the curses and corruption that run rampant through her streets and thus through her veins, so she offers to house him in exchange for a portion of his well-powered ectoplasm to keep her city.
He’s happy to help when he’s not fueled by a king’s rage, especially when he very much benefits from it himself. His only concern now is for the odd little promise she’d insisted upon: Never interfere in any way with her Knights. He hadn’t thought much of it, and in truth was ready to agree if only to not end up wrapped up in anyone else with Phantom’s penchant for heroics. He’s calm enough that he’d much rather stay out of it, floating all night in loops around the city to breathe in their dreams. A destroyed world does not dream, after all.
But now there’s a little red Knight leaping across the rooftops trailing the stench of too many nights awake the way he’s seen humans dream of the possessed trailing sulfur. He’s been in Gotham for nearly a year, and knows each and every one of them, their routes, their names, their true names, and their stories. He sees their dreams, sometimes. He cannot simply ignore them, but he takes care to stay away from their nightly abodes. Most of them are quite death-touched, and Gotham herself doesn’t want to know what regular proximity to him will cause in them.
He’d ignored the faint miasma of sleeplessness, the first time. Humans occasionally stay up a few days at a time, especially at the apparent age this one seems to be. But it is constant with this little Knight, trailing that stench until either collapsing entirely or, he has discovered, another Knight drugging the human and forcing the sleep. There’s no way this is healthy, and Nocturn, for all he is not human and never was, is growing increasingly concerned. Life would not be pleased to see what this one is doing with Her gift.
Now, he finds himself slipping through shadows grown increasingly dark. He’d requested a meeting with Gotham to discuss this little Knight and whether he may be permitted to intervene. Why she chose the old theater had confused him at first, but knowing what had happened here, and how deeply it cut the first of her Knights, he sees and does not ask. When her city cries, she bleeds, and this one did a great deal of damage to her, after all.
“Good evening, Ancient One,” comes a deceptively velvet rasp. Nocturn turns to watch Lady Gotham herself coalesce out of the shadows. He suspects she had been immeasurably stunning once, but the city’s filth has taken its toll. She still looks vaguely human-shaped when she chooses to manifest, but where skin should be only shadows remain, dripping like warm tar off of her frame. Where once fingers were, only oddly bony chunks of tar sharpened to points deadlier than a mob boss’s knife shine through. The dress upon her frame is colorless and tattered, dripping in tar and blood and possibly something further. There are only shadows where her eyes likely once sat, but there is no mistaking where her gaze is aimed.
Nocturn bows. “Good evening, Lady Gotham. Thank you for your time,” he says easily. City Spirits are notoriously powerful, and one who has survived so much noxiousness as long as Gotham has is even more so.
Gotham, despite not having defined facial features, scowls. “I do trust you’re not attempting to renege on our deal?” Nocturn doesn’t flinch against her tone, but it is a near thing.
He lowers his head briefly, hoping the deference will earn him a moment to explain. “No, Lady Gotham. I merely have a concern, but I will honor our deal if that is what you wish.” The tar dripping down what was once a face seems to furrow briefly, but she doesn’t smite him or shun him from her city.
He counts it as a win. “Red Robin is the one I have concerns for,” he begins. “The little human does not sleep, and it is not an occasional thing. To run himself so ragged with such regularity goes against everything I am, the near constant violation of rejuvenation entrusted to me over Life’s favored creation. I do not wish to meddle with his life, and I do not ask for nightly permissions. Only for occasional intervention when the soured stench of insomnia curdles too far.”
Gotham is silent for tense minutes. Nocturn does not waver, and he means his words. If she still does not wish his intervention, then he will lock away his drive to bring sleep to the little Knight and speak of it no more. But he would be doing his Obsession, his Purpose, a disservice to not at least try.
Eventually, she lets loose a sound that almost comes across as a sigh, for all that it sounds like twisted metal and screeching tires. “I have worried over that one myself,” she finally murmurs. “A trial, then. One visit no sooner than every five days over the course of a living month. If I do not think it helps, then it will continue no more.”
Nocturn bows again, giving her his solemn promise to do only as she bids and no more. She leaves first, and he lets her go before flying back up into the city’s skies to resume taking in the ambient dream energy flowing freely. He’ll give it a few days before he does anything, preferring to get a much more comprehensive handle on where the little Knight lives and what his existing schedule tends to be so that he can approach as safely and secretly as possible.
Nocturn curls in the shadows of the rather large and oddly empty building that houses the little red Knight. He’d learned the boy’s story easily enough, and cannot understand why he’d chosen to live alone in this giant place instead of staying with the rest of the Lady’s Knights just across the lawn. He’s admittedly a tad concerned, but it would explain why he gets away with so little sleep.
The revving of an engine echoing through a hidden tunnel that burrows between the houses draws Nocturn’s attention, and he watches the exhausted human drive out of a rising shelf in the floor and come to a precarious stop far too close to the wall for Nocturn’s comfort. The ghost watches the human stumble off the bike, shoulder clipping the walls, and the way the boy glares at the wall with such distant malice that he very nearly sighs aloud.
He’d fully intended to wait until the boy was at least in the house. Whether he’ll actually make it that far is now fully in question. Invisible, Nocturn reaches down, pushing power into the boy with a whispered “Sleep,” and scooping the human up the moment unfocused blue eyes close. He phases them up into the room he knows now the human sleeps in, settling him into the bed and phasing the shoes off. He considers the rest, but it would be far less believable, and he does not wish to upset the human.
He makes to leave, pauses, and lets a second wash of power flow over the boy, guaranteeing he won’t wake until at least mid-day, and takes his leave. Lingering risks upsetting Lady Gotham, and he does not wish to harm the human if her fears are founded, only to make him sleep. Five days is still too many to be awake, and Nocturn itches to check on him sooner, but he is old enough to know what happens to those that anger City Spirits within their own. He has at least one more circuit around the city to make before it begins to rouse for the day, besides.
The city rustles with restless energy. Sleep is broken, many awake in their terror. Nocturn has left those he can to sleep, but the nightmares of some are powerful enough that he cannot help them unless he reveals himself, and this he will not do. He is again in the giant empty house, and has poured a great deal of energy into getting the little bird to sleep. This is the last visit of his allotted month. He has helped some, but his intervention has still been regularly necessary. He does not intend to push or pry or beg, but he is thankful for the month he’s been permitted to tend the human.
The little Knight doesn’t eat much more often than he sleeps, Nocturn has found. This one is tormented by things inside his head that Nocturn has not attempted to put to words, to voice. It is not his place to display the things he sees, only to hold them. He is once again phasing off shoes and settling the little Knight into his bed when the shadows writhe and coalesce into Lady Gotham’s form.
“Good evening, my Lady,” Nocturn greets quietly, as always.
Lady Gotham hums briefly in siren screams, watching him position the human to be as comfortable as Nocturn can make him with all the armor still upon his form. “I have watched and I have weighed,” she finally says. Nocturn gives her his full attention the moment the human is comfortable. “While he rarely sleeps without your visits, the lengths you have made him sleep have had a profound difference in him. And it seems you are growing fond of him.”
While it wasn’t really a question, Nocturn bows his head in confirmation anyway. “I may be,” he admits. “It has been so very long since I have felt so…..necessary.” He doesn’t understand the feeling that has suffused his core recently, this weight that pulls him back the moment his agreement’s constraints allowed. Sleep is natural to most, and he is not required to actually cause it, he simply feeds from it. To have found a human who needs his gift, who needs him, has been a boon Nocturn never knew he needed. He is loathe to bid such a feeling farewell.
Lady Gotham studies him for several silent moments before what should be a face shifts in a parody of a grin and flashes far too many teeth not set in place but somehow holding fast. “Then I leave him to your care. Our previous arrangement concerning the others remains.” Nocturn’s eyes widen, but by the time he can twist his form around, she is already gone.
He is shocked at the understanding that she entrusted the human to him. He grins, moonlight flashing off of his fangs as he looks down at the human again. He can give in to this unforgiving urge to see the human change into more comfortable restwear, to make him sleep more than once a week. Nocturn feels a joy he has not known in millennia as he stares down at his slumbering little human. He doesn’t intend to reveal himself, not really, but now he can do more than simply force deep sleep.
He stays put for the night and well into morning, simply watching the human rest. This time, however, he can flick away the shadows of his mind, and make his rest much more peaceful. After the attack from the man in the burlap mask, peaceful sleep is a battle. Nocturn sees so many more of the human’s fears now, watching his trials turn.
He will never speak upon them. Not the cries of a boy begging retreating figures to stay, to not leave him alone. Not the shudder of terror as heroes fall and darken. Not even of the attack in yet another dwelling where the human had once thought himself safe. It it not Nocturn’s place to speak these things. He can only hold them, see the truths and hold them close so they cannot torment mortal minds. He pulls each remembrance gently, letting them fade into happier dreams. He cannot touch the melancholy, not in a single visit, but the sleep will most assuredly help his little human to solve whatever struggle lingers.
He does not leave until dawn’s like peeks through, his power guaranteeing the human will sleep on. Nocturn cannot yet force the fragile mortal to eat when he wakes in a few more hours, but one day. Perhaps. For now he is sated in the knowledge that he can tend this human as his core demands. He will stay close, and is already mapping out where the most likely places are to curl for the day that will keep him within easy reach. He looks forward to being able to help.