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All stories end with Death.
That's the kind of thing Hob's heard said before. It's the kind of thing people have been saying tonight. They keep talking about stories, and it probably shouldn't be surprising here at the funeral of the Prince of Stories. The King of Dreams. A being with all kinds of other names and titles that Hob has never heard before.
It probably means Hob's got all the short-sighted selfishness of a human amongst beings greater than gods, but he can't help thinking that the title that matters most is that Dream was his friend.
And now he's gone.
He feels like he should have known, even though he knows that's not how it works. But in all his years of life, Dream has been the one constant that his own life revolved around. It's like finding that someone removed gravity from the universe without telling him, or oxygen, and learning that he somehow went on living a day or two without noticing.
His story is over now. But all stories come to an end.
So if you miss my brother, if you don't want to forget him, tell his story.
It doesn't feel like a story. It feels like something went horribly wrong, and Hob didn't try to stop it. Didn't even know there was anything to be stopped.
But whether all stories end with Death or not, Hob stands beside her on the bridge that leads to the castle. The palace of the Lord of the Dreaming, a realm that Hob now stands in for the first time in his long life - at least the first time he's aware of doing so.
It is a beautiful castle in a beautiful land. He wishes he could have come here before. On any day but today.
(He thinks, perhaps, there will always be before and after now. He has known such sunderings before, the chasms in his life that split the past away from the future, roads that can never be retrod. But never like this. This is the shifting of continents. The world rearranged into something smaller than it was before.)
He doesn't know how long Death has before she needs to go and meet her new brother. Their arrangement renewed and Hob's immortality his for as long as he wants it, she seems content enough to stand with him, leaning on the parapet and looking out over the water. Time, perhaps, moves differently here in Dreaming, and certainly for the Endless.
But they aren't endless, are they?
"Where do you go when you die?"
He's not aware of the question until after he's already said it. Death turns her head, her eyebrows raised.
"I told you, you'd have to find out for yourself," she says gently. Gentle is the word for her. There is such kindness about her. Hob thinks of all those he's lost, and finds this an aching sort of comfort. "It's the one thing you'll never learn, unless you change your mind."
That's a curious thought. But curiosity won't be enough to lead him to make that choice. Hob shakes his head. "Not - I don't mean people in general this time. I mean you. The Endless. What happens to you?"
"Ah."
Gentle, and yet so sad. In that instant, Hob catches a glimpse of something he can't quite grasp long enough to understand, but the snatched heartbeat of it is almost enough to overwhelm him. Her grief is not continents cracked open but galaxies. In her eyes, for an instant, he falls through universes gone dark, an abyss of space where all the stars have winked out.
Dream's eyes were like stars. Velvet darkness, but glimmering with light.
"He's not really gone," Death says slowly. "Not entirely."
"Don't," Hob says, and he might be worried about how she'd take it because only a fucking fool would try to command Death, but his voice cracks and his eyes prick with heat. It's not an order, it's a plea. "Don't do that. He's passed something of himself over to Daniel, fine, but don't - that's not him. I'm sure he's a great kid, but..."
"He's not a kid. He's Dream of the Endless now."
"Not my Dream."
It's not the first time he's said those words. He's not sure he has any right to, but he's claiming it anyway. What right has he ever had to anything in his life? He's taken more than he ever should have done, and he's been given gifts beyond comprehension. Unearned. Unfair, really, because he was never worthy (whatever worthy means), but he's not a good enough man by half to give them back.
Immortality is one such gift. Dream's friendship was the other.
Arguing with the woman who caused him to have both is probably an unwise move, but she's already told him he can keep his life, and he thinks that was the answer she wanted - not really because it won her a bet against someone no longer around to lord it over, but because it comforts her to value that which was valued by someone she loved. To see someone survive who cared about her brother too.
Too few seem to have cared like Hob does.
Is that unfair? Almost everyone at that funeral was something other than human. He doesn't know what it's like to be them; he can't fathom what it is to be one of the Endless. Even if he lives forever, he knows he never will. He's still only human, not the, what, the anthropological personification of concepts at the heart of what it is to be alive. Maybe what seems like callousness to him conceals greater care within. Perhaps they don't express things the same way Hob does. Or maybe it's possible that they don't feel in quite the same way as he does.
But he thinks about Dream, about how deeply he cared, how desperately, and all the heartbreak and sorrow in his friend's heart, and wonders.
Most of Dream's siblings spoke about him with affection that sharpened Hob's own grief and made him think, through the vast ocean of time, of his own siblings. He had a brother once, though he remembers him more as fact than true recollection of what he looked like or who he was. And he thinks he had a sister, too, but that she died very young. Despite the forgotten depth of time, he remembers that particular love that comes with siblings, unassailable affection twined inexplicably with small-scale warfare. Death, Delirium, Despair, even Desire - they loved Dream, each in their own way, and Hob is more glad of it than he has words to define.
But the way Destiny spoke about him broke Hob's heart.
My brother performed his tasks to the best of his ability. Fulfilled his obligations as well as he was able.
We are gathered here to mourn him, to pay our respects, and then, ultimately, to forget him.
Is that grief expressed by someone who cannot bear grief, or is it as cruel as it sounds?
"No," Death says. In her, without doubt, care and love are boundless. She shines with it, how much she loved him, how much she misses him already. "I know. And yet my little brother is gone, and another stands in his place."
My little brother. The words are steeped in loss. And yet she has another brother now. Hob can't imagine how that would feel, to balance the need to welcome the new only hours after losing the old.
Perhaps a better man would leave it be, but Hob didn't get this far by failing to push his luck. "Then - where..."
"There are questions even I can't answer, Hob."
"Because you don't know, or because you won't tell me?"
Death's only answer is to smile even as her eyes brighten with tears, and this unspoken refusal reminds him so much of her brother that he feels it like a knife to the heart, like white-hot lightning carving him open. The sensation is so vivid that he half-thinks it actually happened; they are in dreams, after all, so it hardly seems impossible.
"Were you with him?" he asks instead, and his voice is raw. He hasn't cried yet, but he can feel the grief in his throat, can taste it like ash. "Is that much the same for the Endless, at least? He was with you when he died?"
"Yes," she says, and her voice falls like water on a burn. Numbing the pain, but not healing the wound. "That's true even for us. I offered him my hand."
"And he took it."
Hob does feel numb. Maybe that's why the tears are yet to come. This doesn't feel real, and it's not because it's a dream. It's because loss never feels real at first, even to someone as well-practised in it as him.
"Do you know why we made the bet, Hob?"
The non-sequitur has him blinking. It takes a minute to shift his thoughts. "You just said - it was about proving whether I'd really want to keep living."
"It was, but it wasn't. It was never really about you."
"Ouch."
She smiles again, rather knowingly. Which is fair, since she can probably tell he's not really hurt. There's probably not much she doesn't know. "Sorry. But you were so sure. So determined. You wanted to live so badly."
"Not the only human who's ever felt that way. Not remotely."
"No. But you were the one who was there in that moment, and I was worried about my brother. Even then. I'd been worried about him for thousands of years. Ever since Orpheus."
"Orpheus?" Hob's been around the block enough times to have read all the classics, but apparently not long enough to know which of the stories are true. "The guy who went to the Underworld to try and get his wife back? What's he got to do with Dream?"
Death's face turns incredulous, then vaguely inclined to strangle someone. No prizes for guessing who.
"Seriously? I know he trusted you. It wouldn't have killed him to talk to you about his life," she says - and she's certainly the ultimate authority on the subject. "But I'm not surprised he didn't."
Hob tucks I know he trusted you inside his chest like a photograph pressed between sheets of tissue paper for safekeeping. He's going to need to sit with that later but if he thinks about it right now he won't be able to keep going.
"It took him about six hundred and thirty years to tell me his name."
"Yeah, that figures." Death sighs. "Orpheus was his son."
This conversation is the verbal equivalent of getting rocks thrown at your head periodically. Hob feels himself shatter again. He thinks: Robin. Mary. Alfie. Three children in six centuries, three losses that brought him closer to taking Death's hand than anything else ever has.
"I didn't know he had a child," he manages to say. He knew. He understood. He knew my pain, and I know his.
So much they'd never spoken of.
And so because she is kind, Death tells him a story.
Because she is terrible, Death tells him a story.
She tells him about Orpheus and Eurydice, immortality and the walk out of the Underworld. Orpheus' mutilation and the unyielding centuries that followed. About the laws that govern the Endless, and the one that Dream broke. The Kindly Ones and the damage to the Dreaming, Dream's fight to survive and how that fight was lost.
The law is the law.
But not all laws are just.
Not all judgements are fair.
"Did Orpheus know?" Hob asks a lifetime later. It is still night, and might remain night until the end of time, or for another blink. "Did he know the price for what he asked from his father?"
Death does not answer this question either, not with words. And yet this time the look she gives him tells him everything, because it is a look that says the thing you fear to hear is true.
He is so angry. Angry like he thinks Dream never was on his own behalf, not in this.
It is not that he imagines Dream to be perfect. Nothing and no one is. Even the little Hob already knows is enough to make him sure that in all those millennia of existence, Dream will have made mistakes. Terrible ones, maybe, because he knows how prone his friend is - was - had once been to acting with arrogant, prideful surety. No dream is perfect because a perfect dream could not come true, and whatever else he was, Dream was real.
But the deed that broke the laws was one of mercy. One that must have destroyed Dream to commit.
Hob has never been anything close to perfect himself, as a man or as a parent. His mistakes hurt his children sometimes. He was certainly hurt by them in turn. But would any of them ever have been able to ask something so terrible of him as Orpheus had asked of Dream? Could Hob ever have found the strength to do for them what Dream had done, even if they wanted it, even to ease their pain?
And what makes this punishment a match for the deed? Why does ending a life of agony merit death? Hadn't enough blood already been spilled? Had Dream not suffered enough in the eyes of whatever bastards made those laws? What good was the theft of a second life to follow the first? What did it say about the world that the answer to such terrible pain and grief was not healing, but death?
No. There's life. There's always life. If there's guilt, then life is the way to try to rebalance the scales. If there's grief, life is how you start to heal from it. If there's despair then - like Despair herself said - there is hope. Hope, Hob has found, is the crux of it all. The centre of the record. The light in the middle of life itself.
To take that from someone isn't law, it's tyranny.
"I didn't know how it would go when I granted Orpheus' wish," Death said quietly. "But I knew it was dangerous. To be honest, looking back I kind of wish I'd done the same thing as Dream and refused to help him. He was headed for tragedy either way, and Dream would have known that grief, but at least it wouldn't have cost my brother's life too.
"I've been worried about him ever since, and that's why I made you immortal, Hob. I won't apologise, because I don't think you're at all unhappy it happened. But when I say it wasn't about you, what I mean is that I saw how much you wanted to live, and I hoped Dream would find that in himself too. He was at such risk of falling into despair without ever rising again. He was losing hope, and I think you gave it back to him."
Fuck, it hurts to hear. Sort of sweetly, sort of terribly. To think he might have mattered, that he might have helped, and yet...
"Not enough, in the end," he says. "He was... Last time I saw him, he was so low. But I didn't understand how bad it was. I didn't do enough."
"Oh, Hob." Death reaches out and touches the back of his hand. Hob almost flinches, but manages to hold himself still. Nothing happens but that he feels the press of warm fingers, a brief comforting squeeze. "He couldn't see another way out, at the end, but not for want of hope. He died to save the people and the realm that he loved. Not because he wanted to go."
Hob feels like he's been punched. His lungs spasm as he tries to breathe; he rocks in place from the impact.
Is it better or worse to learn that Dream hadn't wanted to die? He doesn't know. Both are their own quiet agonies. But the idea of Dream out there with his sister and three vengeful creatures of fate crying out for his death, taking Death's hand only because he could find no other way to save his entire realm - the loneliness of it almost brings him to his knees.
"I miss him," Hob says abruptly. "It's stupid to say. I barely ever even saw him. Once a century - until lately, that was all we had. I'm far more used to living without him. But I think. I think that just means I'm used to missing him, you know? And it was alright because I always knew I'd see him again. It was the one certainty I had. But now..."
Hob takes a breath that trembles in his chest. Lets it out slowly, looking out at the water. Thinks of the funeral boat on its one way journey.
"It just doesn't feel right. I never thought it would go this way."
"Yeah." Death shifts a little closer until their arms are pressed together, shoulder to elbow, where they lean side by side on the parapet. "Me neither."
It doesn't solve anything. It doesn't make him feel better. He still just feels lost.
But it's nice, all the same, not to be alone. To share his grief with someone who understands.
They return to the palace together eventually. Death needs to find her siblings and prepare to meet their new brother. She leaves Hob in the entrance hall with a hug, and the strange-but-oddly-comforting experience of hugging Death is enough to occupy Hob's mind as he wanders up the stairs alone.
Most of the guests must have left by now. The palace feels silent and still in a way that doesn't seem right. Maybe he should go too but he can't quite bring himself to leave. He has no idea if he's got control over when he wakes up, but if he does, he won't do it yet. It is odd, though, to move through the corridors alone, just wandering. He doesn't know where he's going, nor does he particularly care. He might find out when he gets there.
As it turns out, what he finds is a person, or rather she finds him. Hob's just peering down a corridor that looks bigger and grander than some of the others but also possibly like it might never actually end when a door opens just beside him and Lucienne emerges. She's in such a hurry that she almost walks into him, and Hob almost trips over his own feet getting out of the way.
"Oh!" she gasps. "Hob, I'm so sorry."
"My fault. I'm just standing here gawking. And almost certainly in places I shouldn't be." He offers a smile, but it's fleeting. He can't seem to get it to stick to his face. "Is there a problem?"
"Yes. No. Oh, I'm not really sure."
"I know the feeling."
"I'm looking for Lyta Hall. You haven't seen her, have you?"
"No. At least, I don't think so. I'm not sure who that is."
Lucienne opens her mouth, then hesitates. "She's... she's Daniel's mother."
There's something else there, something she's not telling him. Hob considers asking, but to be honest, for all that everyone's been prepared to tell him tonight, if there's something Lucienne doesn't want to say, he might be better off not hearing it.
"Well, that's. Honestly not what I thought you were going to say."
Lucienne smiles, relieved or genuinely amused, he's not sure. "Every day's a bit strange if you stay around here long enough," she says, and sounds fond; like maybe she likes him, and he finds himself heartened by that. "I think she might have gone to the throne room. You could come with me, if you're not busy?"
"I'm only busy getting lost. Please, lead on."
They walk, for a while, without speaking. It doesn't feel awkward. Rather it feels familiar, like being in the company of a very old friend. Hob has no sense of where they are or how long they've been walking when he catches Lucienne glancing over at him.
When their eyes meet, she says, "How are you holding up?"
Not are you alright. It would be a stupid question; they can both see that in each other. Hob's not sure he'll ever be entirely alright again.
"I still can't believe it's real. I know it is, I just - I can't believe it."
"Yes. I know what you mean."
As much as it hurts for him, it must be worse for her. She knew Dream longer. Their lives were so intertwined.
And he has regrets enough.
"Last time I saw him, I - I wish I'd done things differently, I suppose."
"In what way?"
What does he mean? It's hard to define, to give shape to the longing. "I don't know. Might not have had the courage even if I did. I just wish I could've helped him more."
She understands. For as different as their lives are, he feels a sudden certainty that they are kindred spirits in this, bound by the same regret.
"What did you talk about?" she asks, and somehow it doesn't feel too personal, not when she's the one asking. She just wants to hear about him. Stories told by others who knew him are all they can have of him now.
"Fixing mistakes," Hob says. He remembers all the conversations he's had with Dream, but if he'd known that was the last - among other things, he might have tried to hold it all in his memory that much more clearly, keep the edges from blurring over time. "Stupid, really. Not sure what I could offer someone like him, but I just... I only ever wanted to..."
"To be his friend." Lucienne stops walking. Hob mirrors her automatically and Lucienne lays a gentle hand on his forearm. "Hob, in that I think you offered him what he wanted more than anything else."
He can't do this. He can't. For a moment he wants to wake up but only because he wants this to be a dream the way he'd always used to think of dreams - as things that weren't real. What she's saying means the entire world to him but fuck, at this cost, he'd rather Dream hated him.
"He didn't have enough friends," Lucienne adds, blinking hard.
"He had you." He says it without needing to think at all, but he knows down to his bones that it's true.
Lucienne looks, for a minute, like she might cry, but then she smiles at him instead. Funny how smiles can look so much like devastation.
"He did. I only wish the same as you, that there was more I could have done. I suppose we all do when we lose someone." Her face darkens. "Almost all of us, anyway."
"What do you mean?"
Lucienne considers him, then glances around at the empty corridor, and sighs. "Has anyone told you why he died? About the Kindly Ones?"
"Death explained about his son. About there being laws about them spilling... family blood, I think she said?"
"Yes. Those laws were written by his parents, so he went to ask them for help."
What the fuck.
"Hob?"
"Yeah," he says, faintly hysterical. "Sorry. Just trying to ask myself why I find the giant gryphon guarding the door easier to process than the idea that Dream has parents."
Lucienne's grimace is ominous. "It gets worse. His father is Time, and his mother is Night."
Hob considers this. Breathes very deeply. And decides that he is absolutely not going to keep thinking about it.
"Right, fine. Okay. That makes sense." At her raised eyebrow, he adds, "Well, no, obviously it doesn't, but we should probably move on before I have a breakdown."
"I can see why he liked you," she says, and Hob's poor bruised heart flops over in his chest. "They wouldn't help him. Wouldn't even consider it. They have everything, that's what he told me, and yet they wouldn't help. They didn't love him."
"But..."
"Not all parents love their children."
Hob knows that. He's seen it far too many times. It's not that concept he can't wrap his head around, it's the idea of anyone not loving Dream.
Flawed he might have been - prideful, vengeful, intractable - but Dream cared enough to dream on behalf of every living thing since the first one first closed its eyes. He has built them worlds and guarded them, guided them, given them things to live for over millennia.
And he went to his parents to ask for help. He must have known, as every child of an unloving parent did, that he wouldn't get what he sought. But some kind of hope must have driven him, some kind of love, the plaintive wish that if his parents would not protect him they would at least intercede on behalf of that which Dream himself loved, the kingdom he valued so much higher than himself.
It is not only tears that burn unshed now; there is a scream caged behind Hob's teeth.
Can Lucienne see it? She is, after all, of the Dreaming, and Hob finds himself dreaming of tearing time and night apart.
"It's not fair," he says, tight and grinding like his lungs are full of poison, his throat a maze of glass. "None of this is fair. I didn't even..."
Didn't what?
Didn't say goodbye. Like goodbye would've made this any better.
Didn't do enough. He doesn't know what would've been enough, but he has to live now with knowing anything would've been better.
Didn't tell him.
Didn't tell him I think...
I think I've loved him for centuries. Distantly at first, sure. Remote and awed. Maybe even a little afraid, right at the start. But now I know him. Not just the idea of him. And I think I love him, and I'd only grow to love him more. I think I could spend a lifetime falling in love with him. And for me, that's a fucking long time.
Lucienne waits, patient as the earth, but Hob can't say it. Can't manage any of it. And she doesn't press, but - clearly already knowing the answer - says, "You won't forget him either, will you?"
"No. Not as long as I live."
It's a vow, or it would be if he needed to make one. There is no promise required to remember Dream. Forgetting him would not be possible.
"Good. I hope I'll see you again, Hob. I would like that very much."
"So would I. Will you be here?"
She hesitates. "I don't know. I don't know if I can bear it." She sniffs, hard, and he senses that this particular avenue of conversation is not one he should pursue. "Will you visit this place, either way? I think you'd be welcome."
"Would I? I mean, it's surely up to the new guy. I haven't even met him."
"Would you like to?"
Lucienne, like Death, is kind. Quiet and understanding. If Hob says no, he doesn't think she'd press. Her grief feels a lot more real to him than most people's here. A lot more true. Maybe that just means it's more human, but he thinks again about Destiny and wonders how remote grief can be before it's not really grief at all.
None of them saved Dream when he was captured by Roderick Burgess. None of them saved him from the fates. Were they really incapable of it, or did they choose not to act?
Maybe the problem he's having is that he just doesn't believe in destiny. Which is maybe a bit stupid - under the circumstances it's like saying he doesn't believe in death, or dreams. They're clearly real. More real than most humans ever know.
But he can't make himself believe this was the only outcome that was ever open to them. That any story has to end as a tragedy.
Perhaps Daniel's presence means he shouldn't see the whole thing as a tragedy but as rebirth. New beginnings. For the Dreaming, maybe that's what this will be.
But for Dream, it just seems sad. For Hob too, selfish bastard that he is.
He's lost something he's not sure he ever really had. Lost the chance at something, maybe, even if it was no chance at all.
But Lucienne is waiting for his answer. Here and now, he has to make another choice.
Daniel is, perhaps, the only surviving part of the Dream that Hob knew. And he is also a person in his own right, one who must be having the most confusing day any person or being has ever had.
That's a lonely image, now that he thinks of it. Daniel has lost so much and gained incomprehensible things at the same time, but who's with him right now to help him through it? Hob's not sure what he can offer, but hell - better to try than not.
"Yeah. I think I would."
"This way, then. I think Lyta Hall has gone to find him too. Let me go in first, and if there's no trouble, I'll make the introduction when she's done."
And so Hob meets the new king of Dreams, and finds to his surprise that the kid already knows him. And look, he knows he shouldn't be calling him a kid, but it's hard to reconcile the adult before him with the baby he's been told Daniel was so recently, and there really is something painfully young in Daniel's manner. He's so nervous and open and so warm - he's pleased to meet Hob, like they are old friends who have never met before.
It makes as much sense as anything else here. Hob can kind of see it, too - the ghost of an echo of Dream within Daniel. It's enough to make him step in to reassure the kid when Lucienne says the family is ready to meet him, and more than enough to make him suggest they meet in a hundred years. Sooner, though, perhaps he should've said. He wants Daniel to have friends.
But it's also enough to make Hob think of something else he wants to ask. Before Daniel takes his leave to join his family, Hob draws a deep breath.
"Look, before you go, could we - just have another quick word? I won't keep you, but..."
Keeping that family waiting is probably unwise, but there is something still pounding against Hob's ribs, sharp and painful. His conversations with Death and Lucienne sit like lead weights in his gut.
And Daniel, as gentle as his new sister, studies Hob and nods. "Lucienne, I wonder if you might wait another moment? Perhaps you could send word that I'll be there very soon."
Lucienne looks between them, and her eyes linger on Hob. Whatever she's thinking, she doesn't give it away. "Of course, my lord. I'll wait outside."
When her footsteps fade away, Daniel smiles at him. "What is it?"
Hob shifts. Stuffs his hands into his pockets. "Look, you can tell me to shove off if you want, but... The way I hear it, you'd know better than anyone. Is there anything we can do?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"They called Dream the Prince of Stories. I don't know how literal that is, but stories are kind of real here, aren't they? Is there any way you can... I don't know, give him another one?"
"Another story? You mean another life?"
"Is that a thing you can do?" Hob grimaces, scrapes his knuckles over his forehead. He feels so tired, suddenly, for someone who's already asleep. "I guess it's a stupid question, someone would've done it if they could. I know he's not a dream like the others. Sorry. I don't really know what I'm asking. I was just so used to the idea that he'd never die."
"It's not a stupid question. I asked the same thing."
Hob feels his jaw go slack. "You did?"
"Yes. I brought Mervin back, you see, and then Fiddler's Green. For a time, at least. And I asked him about doing the same for Lord Morpheus."
His voice is low, meant only for Hob's ears. But it might as well have been a deafening, earth-shattering roar. The words embed themselves in every part of Hob's consciousness like shrapnel. "What?" he croaks.
"I was resurrecting the fallen dreams," the king says. "Fiddler's Green didn't - he chose not to stay. He said he was dead, and that... that bringing him back, or Lord Morpheus, would mean that their deaths and their lives had no meaning. Morpheus sacrificed himself for love for his son and his realm, for me to be a new kind of Dream. And that I had to honour that story or it would mean nothing."
For a long moment, time seems to stop altogether.
Hob breathes air that trembles through his lungs. He grows suddenly certain that his body here must be real after all, because it feels like fury is going to rip it apart.
"Daniel," he says, then wrenches himself to a halt. "Look, do you mind - is it alright if I call you Daniel?"
The new King of Dreams considers him for a moment. There is something ancient in him that threatens to protest out of pride, but something desperately fragile sheltering behind it.
"You are not my subject," Daniel says at length. "You are - you were his friend. Yes, you can call me Daniel."
It's good, because he couldn't call him Dream if he was ordered to, but that's not something he wants to admit to the poor kid.
"Daniel," he says again. "I've heard some real bullshit lately, but that's the worst of it all."
It's Daniel's turn to blink and stare like Hob has just said something impossible. Kind of nice to be on the receiving not the giving end of that for once around here, except that the fact that it's an eight month old baby in an ancient concept's form rather takes the fun out of it.
And Hob's so angry. He's so angry he's actually shaking, but he's trying to hard not to let it out, because for everyone who's at all to blame for this, it's not Daniel's fault at all.
"You. What," Daniel says flatly.
"From what I understand, he died to save the Dreaming. And because he felt like he deserved to be punished."
Fuck, Dream, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you talk to me? I asked if you were in trouble, and you barely told me anything. I didn't understand. I didn't know how bad it was. I didn't know how much pain you were in.
"He didn't die because he wanted to. Fuck, how can anyone say... Look, Fiddler's Green was a dream. Correct me if I'm wrong, but dreams are a part of - well, of you, now, but they were a part of him. He made them, he dictated their form, they all... contain some part of him."
"That's... more or less correct, yes." Daniel is watching him as though Hob is the only thing in the universe. Talking to Dream used to feel like that. Only more, somehow.
"Don't you think, then, that maybe Fiddler's Green at that moment was the part of Dream that thought he deserved to die? That he was telling you a story that made this the right ending?"
He rakes a hand through his hair. Tries to find the words.
It occurs to him, in a strange and distant way, that what he says now might be the most important thing he ever says in his life.
And it's hard because he's just human, and not a terribly remarkable one at that - just a man who got cocky at the right time in the right place, and now he's part of something unfathomably huge, surrounded by gods and far stranger creatures.
But then, at the same time, it's the easiest thing in the world. Because none of that is what matters.
He thinks, instead, about the aching sorrow he saw in Dream, and also about the tender, fledgling joy he's witnessed in him too. Those moments when his lips would quirk, just a fraction, but the real smile was in his eyes - how those depthless voids, the unfathomable oceans of space, would lighten in something fragile, something pure, and precious. Like happiness had been far too rare for him, but every second of it had lit up the world.
"Life doesn't only matter because it ends," Hob says. "It's the living it that matters. Part of why we care about stories, I think, is that they're easier to process than life is. Stories make the world orderly, right? Beginning, middle, end, there's an arc that carries us through, and things tie off nicely when they're done. Maybe not happy, but satisfying, and they end. Life's not like that. How often are endings actually good, or righteous? A lot of the time there's not a point to things, they're not fair. Death - and I mean the thing itself, not your sister - death's not always fair. Never is, actually. Too many people die too fucking soon, and there's no justice to it, nothing earned. If there was, if it was about meaning, then people wouldn't suffer without cause, would they, they'd get peace afterwards. Healing. Something to balance out all the pain.
"Dream - Morpheus - would everything he did in his life not have mattered if he never died? Does nothing I do matter, since I don't intend to die? If, I dunno, if I save a kid's life tomorrow, pull them out of the way of a speeding car, does that only matter if I was able to die instead? The child would still be alive! If that had cost me my life, I'm not saying it's not worth it, but the deed doesn't matter less if I live too. Morpheus saved the Dreaming. If he gets to live, does the Dreaming become unsaved? Like fuck it does! All this is still here because of him. And what meaning is there in being fucking forgotten?"
Should he be talking like this? Daniel's not Death, but he could probably end Hob all the same if he wanted to. Dream had been able to do that to Orpheus. Ranting at someone this powerful might be dumb as fuck especially when he starts talking shit about his brother's eulogy but there's nothing short of death that could stop him. Grief and fury have cut him open; this, now, is what's spilling out.
"If you can't bring him back, that's one thing. I'm not trying to put this weight on you. But to say he shouldn't come back if he can, like meaning means more than living - that's bollocks. Life hurts. It really fucking hurts, and that's just for a human, I can't imagine how things might hurt for you. But life is also the only way to ever know anything but pain. Morpheus could've healed. I believe that. Enough to be happy again. I don't think he wanted to go. I think he had a hell of a lot of reasons to be miserable, but I also think he wanted to live. He had hope. That's enough. That's all you ever need. And if he's got even a shred of the wish to live, I'll be the rest of his hope until he's got enough for himself.
"Please. If you can do it. Can't he just have a chance? Not to do anything in particular, not to be anything, just to live. Let that be what it all means. That things aren't fixed in place. That no matter what shit happens, whatever gets thrown at you, whether you handle it perfectly or not, whether you're perfect or not, you get to fucking live."
He falls silent, and it's a silence that lands like a shroud. He feels raw, in his aching throat and in his chest, like he's been breathing in the sand of the Dreaming itself. Maybe he is, maybe that's what happens when you cheek the king of Dreams, but he doesn't look away.
The silence stretches for seconds and for years. Where Dream only ever seemed to reveal his thoughts in his eyes, Daniel's whole face seems to tell a story, and Hob can only hope he's reading it right - because there seems to be a kind of wonder in it.
"I think," Daniel says at last, thoughtful and slow, "I understand this better than any conversation I've had since I awoke."
Hope burns so bright it hurts, great wings of flame that sear him from the inside out. Now he does feel afraid, but only because of how much worse the pain will be if that hope dies.
"But if I can bring him back," Daniel says, almost to himself more than Hob, "what would become of me?"
"Couldn't - maybe you would stay as you are," Hob says. Strains to understand things much larger than himself. Wonders if what he's thinking is horribly, desperately selfish. "You are a part of him, this part." He gestures around the hall. At the Dreaming. "Maybe Fiddler's Green was right that Morpheus wanted a new Dream. Death said he was tired." Something clogs his throat. It's hard to talk through it. "But I've been tired before. Tired is - it can mean a lot of things that aren't easy to put words to. It doesn't mean I wanted to die, just that I needed something to change. What if you ruled this place, and he could be..."
Into the silence, Daniel whispers, "He could be what?"
Hob is a piece of shit. He doesn't know if this is what Dream wants. Is it just what Hob wants? Is he so desperate for this that he'd ask for it whatever the cost?
"He could be a bit more like me." The words come out anyway. An awful confession into the echoing emptiness of this temple. "I mean, maybe he could still have some of his..." He wiggles his hands helplessly. "Powers. Don't know if he'd be happy without them. But what if he could just - retire."
Now that he's said it, the word feels ridiculous. So human.
But isn't that the point?
Isn't that why Daniel's the new king of Dreams, what the Dreaming needs now, precisely because he's human?
Isn't all this about being human, isn't that where all the signs point? The duke who left his island, the man who turned his back on magic.
"Couldn't we at least give him the choice?" Hob says, and it's the last of what he's got. His voice gives out. There's nothing left in him. He's been hollowed out right down to his bones.
Grief is like this. The kind of grief that comes from love. He's known it before. It's like when he lost his children. His wives, his partners.
It will not kill him. It will not erode his capacity for hope. But it will not leave him either. Not unless - not unless just this once, against all the powers of fate and the fucking inertia of divine powers who think the ending is already written, he can unmake it. Grow something, not just watch it wither. See something created, not destroyed.
A breath. Two. Three.
Then Daniel says, "I think, of all things, Lord Morpheus was very fortunate in his friends."
He sounds wistful. Longing. Lonely.
Hob swallows down the pain inside him. "Count me as one of yours too, Daniel. If you want."
Daniel smiles, and it's reminiscent of seeing a baby smile - it inspires that same burst of answering joy inside Hob's chest, the kind you can't really help, in spite of everything.
"Thank you, Hob Gadling."
Daniel lifts a hand to the crystal that hangs around his neck. His eyes go distant for a moment, then refocus. He sounds eager when he speaks again, his voice flowing faster. "I'm not entirely sure how I'd do it. With the others, I had... conduits, of a sort. Pumpkin seeds for Mervin, and Gilbert's glasses. Such objects had been left for me to find."
He's considering it. He's actually considering it.
He thinks it's possible.
Hob's heart pounds like it means to break right through his ribs.
"What did they do?" he says hoarsely. "These objects?"
"They acted as memory, I suppose. An echo of the people they were that I could restore."
"Do you have anything like that of Dream's?"
"I don't know if that would work. Merv and Gilbert were both dreams. Morpheus was... all of this."
Okay, that sounds less hopeful, but Daniel still looks thoughtful.
"And yet we aren't trying to restore the Dreaming," he muses aloud, looking up towards the distant, starry ceiling. "Not the entity, but the person. I wonder..."
The full force of his attention lands on Hob. It's only then that he realises that even when Daniel was looking at him before, he wasn't looking. Not like this. This is like being in a spotlight with a thousand eyes on him; he can't see them, but he can feel them. It's like even the walls are watching him. The whole Dreaming, perhaps, has narrowed its focus onto Hob. It never felt like this with Dream, but then he never met Dream here.
"You were his friend," Daniel says, deep and certain. "You love him."
And that - that steals the breath out of Hob.
What kind of love does Daniel mean?
He says it like he's sure of it, like he knows. Is that something he's deduced, or something Dream...
No, says a little aching voice. No, Dream didn't know. If he had - not that it would have changed anything, in itself, probably, but if Dream had been able to see how he was loved by Hob and by others, maybe he would've...
If nothing else, maybe it would've brought him comfort along the way.
He really doesn't know if Daniel means that Hob loves Dream as a friend, or as - well. As something else.
But it doesn't matter. For some time now, the answer has been the same no matter what.
"Yes." It's awful saying it to someone who is and yet so very much is not Dream. It hurts. "I love him."
"I think that might be enough."
Hob is really not keeping up with this conversation. "Enough for what?"
One thing Daniel does have going for him, beyond apparently every other Endless in existence, is that he does answer the questions put to him, and he mostly does it in words Hob can understand. His eyes stare at Hob as if looking into him, and he's playing with the crystal again.
"I might be able to use your memory of him as the conduit."
"What, and... remake him from my memories?" Hope and panic battle in his gut. "I don't know how well I really knew him. I definitely don't know everything he was, not all the... all of what you are. I don't want to get him wrong."
"That might be what makes you perfect for this," Daniel says, already shaking his head before Hob has even finished talking. "We aren't trying to bring back the king of Dreams, we're trying to bring back Morpheus. I won't be recreating him from your memories, they're just my way in. I'm still new to this. But I think perhaps a human's vision of him might be the perfect way to do it. And I think... I think then the Kindly Ones will still find satisfaction. He did die. Like you said, if he comes back, it does not change that he did pay the price, and if he comes back more human - yes!"
"Yes?"
"If he comes back mostly human, then either he has already paid the price, or the price is not his to pay. If he is not Endless, then he did not spill family blood. The person who did has died, and the one who returns is not bound by the laws that sent the Kindly Ones after him, so there is no remaining debt to pay. Oh! I like that. Why do I like that so much? Why did none of the others think of this?"
"It's called a loophole," Hob says brightly. He finds he's smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, and he feels so light he could fly. He grips Daniel's shoulder without thinking, but far from looking offended or in a smiting mood, Daniel beams right back at him. "A bit of humanity in the Endless clearly does you well, my friend. Humans are very good at loopholes."
Daniel, experimentally, reaches out and rests a hand on Hob's shoulder in turn. He looks so pleased, but his brows crease in worry with a new thought. "It could be dangerous," he cautions. "For you, I mean. I must confess I don't really know what I'm doing."
"I still can't die," Hob says. There is nothing that could bring down his cheer right now. "Just squared it with your sister."
"There are other prices that can be paid than death, Hob. I wouldn't have you pay them, and I don't think he would have either."
You can be hurt, or captured.
"Yeah," Hob says, and he knows the warning's fair but he also knows it doesn't really matter in the end. "But if he wants to stop me, he shouldn't have gone off and died on me. I'm game if you are."
That piercing attention stays on him for another long moment until, eventually, Daniel nods. "Very well. But not here, I think. Will you walk with me?"
"Wherever you want to go."
Hob, in truth, is feeling quite fond of Daniel by the time they reach their destination. Such as it is, anyway. He's not actually sure they were going anywhere in particular, just that Daniel wanted to be somewhere else.
And the place they've ended up is beautiful. They're standing atop a low, gently sloping hill, beneath the spreading branches of a single tree. The tree is old, and impossibly tall; it seems to Hob that its branches reach to the height of a mountain, and spread far, far out over the hilltop. There is a sweet wind that carries a smell Hob can almost but not quite place; it reminds him of his mother, and he finds he can picture her face for the first time in centuries. It's night, still, but galaxies swirl overhead, the castle glows gently in the distance, and the rivers and valleys and hills of the Dreaming stretch out around them.
Daniel reminds him of Dream in little, painful ways, but in other respects they are not all that alike. Daniel is far more inclined to talk, and everything is both familiar and unfamiliar to him; he can explain the sights they pass to Hob, knows their history and their purpose, and yet he is also delighted by them because he has never seen them before and he finds them wondrous. And yet he's frightened, too, and Hob is beginning to think Delirium was right that Dream was quite often afraid, but Daniel wears his fear more openly. It's a gesture of trust, but he knows Dream trusted him too; Daniel is, perhaps, keen for someone to share the burden, where Dream had tried so hard to keep that weight upon himself.
It is not a disservice to like Daniel despite how desperately he wants Dream back. He decides this for himself on their journey. He doesn't think Dream would've wanted Daniel to be alone anyway.
"You're sure about this?" Daniel says when they stand beneath the tree. Hob is catching his breath, though he doesn't really need to, not here. It just feels like he should, and so he does. "You remember what I told you?"
They'd planned it out while they walked - as best they could, anyway, when neither of them had a clue what they were doing.
"Think about Dream, and be prepared for anything."
Daniel hesitates, then nods. "Yes, I suppose that is what it boils down to. It's not terribly good advice."
"It's all I need." It's how I normally live, he doesn't say, because if Daniel doesn't already know how much time Hob spends thinking about Dream in an average day then Hob is not particularly inclined to tell him. There's some things you don't really want to talk about with a stranger, even if he has downloaded your friend's memories.
Some things are between him and Dream. Or just for Hob, depending on what happens now, and whether he's feeling brave or like an absolute fucking chicken if it works out the way he desperately hopes it will.
Daniel takes a deep breath, which he probably needs to do even less than Hob does here, but then it's not a habit he thinks he'd ever break either, even in Daniel's circumstances.
"Alright. I'll do my best. Are you ready?"
Hob closes his eyes. It's so easy to conjure an image of Dream. Perhaps it's a sort of daydream; perhaps that's easier out here, with the Dreaming laid out around him. Maybe the Dreaming wants to help him.
The image he conjures is Dream as he last saw him: slim black trousers, the sleek, well-fitted coat; his hair far shorter than he used to wear it in the old days, choppy and unruly and kind of fluffy. More: the paleness of his cheeks but for the colour high on those sharp cheekbones; the unhappy shape of his mouth, pinched in a grief he hadn't given voice to; always, always, those eyes, a heartbeat away from tears, shining with something otherworldly, and fuck anyone who ever thought Dream didn't care, or that he hadn't changed, because that man - being - who had stood before Hob in the graveyard, and come for one last drink in the New Inn, had cared so much it was tearing him apart.
"Yeah. I'm ready."
A warm hand lands on Hob's forehead, and then - quite suddenly - everything else disappears.
There is darkness. The absolute darkness of a starless night. It lasts for a stretch of time beyond Hob's awareness. It is - endless. Endless and endless and endless and he cannot see the shape of it but he can feel it in his mind, stretching beyond comprehension and endurance. He doesn't know where he is, if he's anywhere at all, but he can sense in a way he can't define that he is trying to process something that no human mind is meant for.
It does not hurt, exactly, because he's not entirely sure there is a him to be hurt, but there is a sort of pressure. A weight bearing down on him. The force of something eternal that is heavier than universes. Like he's looking into the face of existence itself.
There is the smallest chance, Hob muses in the portion of his brain still prepared to engage in coherent thought, that Daniel might have made a mistake.
He isn't sure he has a body. Any level of uncertainty on that point is more disturbing than he wants to analyse, but he is aware that he isn't here - wherever here is - on any kind of physical level. Maybe it's just the power of the human mind to rationalise its way through the incomprehensible, but he decides that he ought to still have one anyway. He concentrates on that determined thought so hard that when he lifts the arm he's decided is there up in front of his face, he can actually see it - though he couldn't have said where the light was coming from to allow him to do so.
This is.
This is probably not good, on the whole.
But hey. He's here now.
"Uh. Hello?" he says. Or thinks, maybe. Hard to tell.
"Dream? Are you there?"
Nothing.
Please. Please, just hear me. Please.
"Dream?"
And then, quite suddenly, he is not alone.
"Hob Gadling."
He really, truly doesn't know if he hears the words or not. He thinks maybe they just appear inside his mind, which feels a little bit like getting stabbed in a very specific part of his brain with a skewer.
But whatever the hell is going on, he knows he didn't just think the words himself. Because the voice he heard them in is familiar. So familiar that he finds himself crumbling. If he truly had a body, and there was gravity out here to influence it, he thinks he would have crumpled at the knees.
"Dream," he breathes, and wants to - cry or laugh or sing. All of them at once. "You're here."
"I... am," Dream replies, like he's only realising it in the same moment. He sounds confused. "And yet I should not be."
"You shouldn't? Isn't this... I don't know what this is. I figured you could see more than I do. Isn't this your afterlife, or something?"
"I was beyond. Beyond everything. Hob, what have you done?"
"Honestly, that's a really good question. At this point I'm not actually sure."
"You should not be here."
"Wow. Rude."
He's only kidding. It takes a lot more than that to offend Hob at the best of times, and you need quite a lot of resilience to be friends with Dream, after all. But Dream's non-explanation is baffling enough to make Hob concentrate again, straining to figure out where they are, what's going on. He tries to see, maybe with his mind more than his vision - but ow. Fucking shit on a stick. Pain sears through his mind, trembling down to the core of him, and he feels like the edges of his awareness - of himself - waver.
"Hob!"
The cry is urgent. Alarmed. Pressure settles somewhere on Hob, anchoring him, drawing him back to himself, and the closest analogue he can think of is that it feels like someone holding his arm. So that is what it resolves into - and if there is a hand holding him then there must be a person attached to it, and in the next moment he can sort of see Dream standing right in front of him.
It has a kind of dream logic to it. They cannot be standing together because there is nowhere to stand. He can't see Dream because there is no light. And yet whatever is really happening, this is how his mind perceives and translates it.
And Dream seems to be able to see him in the same way. Most of him is blurry, like Hob isn't looking properly at him, but his face is sharp and close and awash with something awful. A sort of premature grief, like he is looking at someone on the verge of death.
The hand on Hob's arm spasms tighter, like he's keeping Hob from falling off a cliff.
"Hob, you cannot stay here. You must leave. I do not know if the bargain with my sister will help you here."
"I came to talk to you." Real or not, Hob drinks in the sight of him. It's really not been that long since he last saw Dream but his death has rendered it into a lifetime ago, because Hob was forced to face the idea of a lifetime without him. Every second with him now is a wonder, like every day he gets to live.
"Daniel sent me," he goes on. "This is kind of nuts, but I don't know how long I've got, so I'm just gonna say it - he thinks he might be able to bring you back." Now that he's started talking, he feels like he can't stop; a sudden desperation grips him to get the whole thing out before Dream can reply, because if he doesn't stop talking then Dream cannot say no. "I know he's King of Dreams now so we were figuring you could sort of retire, become - not necessarily human exactly, but not Endless any more. It'd be a loophole with the Kindly Ones, and you wouldn't be neglecting your responsibilities because Daniel would take them over. And you could just - build a new life, I guess. Get to build a new life instead of..."
Instead of... this? Instead of wherever Dream had been, in the darkness that is trying to weave tendrils of itself across the fabric of Hob's being.
There is quiet as Dream stares at him. Then, "You came to the edge of Time and Night, at the borders of oblivion, to offer me the chance to undo my death and return to life?"
"Before I answer that question, I want to know if you're about to call me an idiot."
"I cannot swear that I am not," Dream says, with the faintest hint of a smile. "Even for you, Hob, this is dangerous. More than you understand. And yet," he adds before Hob can formulate a defence, "I am. Honoured. You should not have come, but..."
"But you're kind of glad I did, aren't you?"
The silence is its own answer. Hob's friend has never liked to admit defeat.
"Well, what's a bit of crossing the borders between life and death among friends?"
"You speak so easily of friendship, and yet I think I could have searched the Waking and the Dreaming a thousand times over and never found another friend like you."
Oh. That's.
That's literally the nicest thing anyone's ever said to Hob. Perhaps the most valuable too.
"It is kind of you, Hob. But I fear you and Daniel are both wrong. It is already over. I am already gone."
"But you're not." Hob surges forwards. Dream's hand is still on his shoulder and he fists his own hands in Dream's shirt. It feels wet, which makes even less sense than anything else. Odd, too, that this vision of Dream he is perceiving isn't wearing a coat; Hob's not sure he's ever seen him without one before.
"You're here," he insists, shoving at him a little. "You can come back. You just have to choose it. I swear, my friend, I swear it can be that easy."
"Nothing is easy." A different sort of grief steals into Dream's voice. "You do not know what I have done. This is right. This is just. It is true settlement for my deeds."
"I do know, actually," Hob says. There is no impatience in him. Nothing but a gentle, aching sympathy, the grief in his heart the beating twin of Dream's. It wants nothing more than to offer companionship in that sorrow. "I spoke to your sister. She told me. Dream, I'm so sorry about Orpheus."
Dream's hand shakes. Falls away from Hob, who feels its absence like a missing limb.
"What is done is done," he says with finality. It's like he's building up a wall between them. Retreating back towards whatever it was that Hob's arrival pulled him from. "It cannot change. I cannot change. I cannot be anything other than I am."
Hob tightens his own grip, as if there's anything he could ever do to keep Dream where he doesn't want to be.
"I don't accept that," he says, his grief overrun by a snarl of anger. "Don't refuse this just because you don't think you deserve it. If you don't - if you don't want it, I won't try to force it on you. But there isn't a damn thing you could have done to change the fact that you deserve to live. Shakespeare - and fuck me, I can't believe you've put me in a position where I'm saying this, but Shakespeare was right."
Now this, more than anything else, halts Dream's retreat. His expression twitches. His eyes gleam. "Did that hurt you to say?"
He's such a dick. Hob has missed him so much.
"Yes, actually, you smug bastard," Hob says. "I feel a bit sick. The new kid brought him up the second we met, so thanks for that. But you had him write The Tempest because you wanted a story of a duke who broke his staff, drowned his books and rejected magic. That's what you said. A magician who left his island, his home, and became a man. And you said you wanted that story because you couldn't leave your island, because you were the island. And Shakespeare - ugh - he said you could change that. And he was right. You did change, you absolute fucking bastard, can't you see it? No one's talked about anything else the whole time I've been in that bloody palace of yours. Your sister said you wanted a purpose outside your function."
"How do you know this?"
"Because I've just sat through your funeral! And you know what, in a whole lifetime of funerals, I actually think that one hurt the most."
Now - fuck, why is it now that the tears come? The form he's conceived himself here isn't even real and yet it's now that he's with Dream that he feels the sting in his eyes spill over into heat. Loss rends him open all over again.
"Hob..."
"What if you can leave the island?"
"I'm dead, Hob. Daniel is the Prince of Stories now. There is no further need of me."
"Need?" Hob almost chokes on a thousand words at once. "It's not about need! It's about being. Humans aren't born with a purpose. We don't have a function. We just try and figure it out as we go along. And sometimes we suck at it. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we find things we're good at and we figure out a way to make the world a better place for us being there. Sometimes we don't quite ever figure it out, maybe things just don't work out that way, but we still live, and that's more than enough."
"But I am not human."
"No. No, you're not. But you could be."
The words fall like a hammer on an anvil, and the dull ring of them echoes into eternity. Dream looks at him like he's gone mad.
"Yeah, I know," Hob says, waving a dismissive hand. "But it's not so bad once you get used to it. And I think you'd keep some of the princely shit anyway."
He sees Dream's mouth silently form the words princely shit, and powers on before Dream remembers how to talk.
"You'd still have access to the Dreaming, but you could be in the waking world too. Live in it, really live in it, like the rest of us do. Figure out what you like, what you might want to do. Create things. Make your own story."
Every second that Dream doesn't leave feels like its own little victory. Another heartbeat of hope. He's not vanishing into the ether and he's not raging at Hob for his impudence - does Dream really need more proof that he's changed?
"Who would I be," Dream says slowly, distantly, "if I was not the King of Dreams?"
"I don't know. Wouldn't you like to find out?"
"I would lose my family. I would not be one of them any more."
"Horse shit."
Those deep eyes regain their focus and narrow in on him. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me. I heard them at your funeral. They love you. Okay, I'm not sure whether Destiny is emotionally detached or just a twat, but fuck, Dream, your siblings love you. Things might not be the same any more, I grant you that, but you won't lose them."
"You cannot know that," Dream says. His longing is almost palpable.
"I suppose not. But I have hope. And I think you do too."
Dream shifts closer. Hob feels the sensation of soft, cool fingertips on his cheek, brushing away the tears still slipping down his face.
"And you, Hob Gadling?" comes that deep whisper of a voice. "What of you?"
"I'd be there." Hoarse. Tender. True. "Of course I would. If you wanted me, I'd never leave."
The fingertips follow the curve of his cheek, the line of his jaw. They smooth along his forehead, trace the lines around his eyes. There is nothing delicate about Hob, nor anything cherished, and yet he feels in that moment that there is. That he is gossamer-thin, ethereal, only real where Dream is touching him, more exquisitely valued than anything anyone has ever held dear.
"I am tired, Hob," Dream says, so very quiet that Hob would not hear the words if they were anywhere else, if there was another sound in all of creation. But Hob does hear, and he hears what is not said.
I am tired means I am so sad I can hardly breathe. It means I don't know if I can do this. It means my son is dead and I killed him and I don't think I deserve to come back and I don't know if I could bear it if I did.
"I know," Hob says, and imagines he is a boat; a ship ready to set out from the docks, if only its passenger will step aboard. "So won't you rest with me?"
Because rest means there is still time to heal, and there is still a live to be lived despite pain, and above all it means you deserve to forgive yourself, my friend.
"I could not rest because my duties still needed to be done," Dream says. Slow and ponderous and heartbreaking. But then he goes on, "I could not have left. But... Daniel is tending to them now."
Hob hardly dares to breathe.
"Yes. He could maybe use a pointer or two, but I think he'll figure it out. He's got Lucienne and the others."
"Then he needs no more than he has." Dream smiles, and there - there is the love that fills him. It makes him seem younger. He is looking at Hob now as he did that day in the eighteenth century, the echo of 'you need not have come to my defence', with the unspoken 'but I am very pleased that you did'. "I suppose, perhaps... You are sure that the debt is settled?"
"I mean, I'm not exactly an expert? But Daniel seems to think so. Something about - if you come back not as an Endless, then you didn't actually spill family blood."
That sorrowful mouth parts into wonderment. "Oh. I suppose... I suppose that would be true." Hope rises. Falls. "But he was still my son."
And he doomed you, Hob does not say, because he knows that's not the point. He knows that Orpheus was suffering, and he knows that Dream knew the cost, and that... well, Dream was his parent. There are few things more simple and more complicated, more wonderful and more terrible.
"Then let me mourn him with you. But don't punish yourself. It's been long enough, my friend. Too long. Come back. Let yourself come back."
And, with nothing but hope, Hob holds out his hand.
Dream stares at him. For time beyond measure, a glimmer of light in the dark, Hob offers his hand to his oldest and dearest friend. To one he loves.
The weight of the darkness presses in. Hob feels strange, too light and too heavy, real and immaterial. He thinks he might have been here too long, but he would wait forever if he needed to.
It is Dream's decision to make.
And Dream...
Dream chooses.
He looks at Hob's hand, steady and unyielding.
Looks up again, and sees something in Hob's face that makes him smile.
Dream reaches out.
Their fingertips touch.
It is the most real sensation Hob has ever known.
Hob has never been this happy in his life. He's blazing with it. With happiness too big for his body to hold.
Something begins to change. The darkness shifts. Rips. Begins to pull apart, light burning in through the seams.
Their hands grasp tightly. Fingers interlock. It's not enough. Hob tugs and Dream comes closer, and Hob flings his free hand around his friend, pulling him into a hug. The first they've ever had, and he's not even entirely got a body to have it in, but fuck it. He thinks Dream needs this even more than he does. And besides, now that Dream's chosen - he's chosen - Hob does not intend to lose him again.
And Dream holds him back. Fingers clench in the back of Hob's jacket, an arm wrapped around him like an iron bar. Resolute. Decided.
Then there is light everywhere, in every fragment of Hob's being, and he screws his eyes closed and hides his face in Dream's shoulder. But it's not enough, the light is still there, behind his eyelids, washed across everything. It hurts, suddenly concrete where the pain of the darkness was so insubstantial, and Hob cannot keep from crying out.
He falls silent only when he finds he cannot draw another breath because his lungs feel like they're being crushed; like shock is stealing all his strength. It feels like he's been turned inside out. He's hurting in parts of himself he only knows exist again because they're screaming. He's been wounded plenty of times before, shot and stabbed and all kinds of shit, but this is like every part of him is experiencing all those wounds at once. Maybe even including his soul, which is funny because until now he's not sure he could've sworn he believed he has one.
When his eyeballs remember how to send signals to his brain again, what he processes is that he's under the branches of a vast tree beneath a blissfully starry sky, and he definitely has a body. Well. A dream body, anyway, which puts him at least one layer closer to what he thinks of as reality, and that's kind of comforting. Or would be if not for the blinding pain.
What is comforting is that he's still being hugged. Half-hugged, anyway. One arm is round his back and there's breathtaking solidity to it which is good because Hob's fairly sure it's all that's keeping him on his feet. The other half of the contact is a pressure on his hand so tight it feels like it's going to crack through bone. No mortal man has strength like that.
"It worked," a voice says, full of laughing, incredulous wonder. "It actually worked. Lord Morpheus, you're back."
It's true. It's worked.
As tight as Hob is being held, he's holding back - well, not as tightly, but as tight as he is able... and what he's holding is exactly what he went to find.
Dream is here. They're back in the Dreaming and he's here and he's looking at Hob. And his expression is... complicated. A maelstrom. Maybe pain, maybe grief, maybe uncertainty. Maybe more than Hob can unpick right now, which is fair on two counts, both because Dream is a kind of complicated guy and because Hob thinks his brain may be boiling inside his skull.
Hob might never have written plays to inspire the dreams of men, but he just brought back the most important Dream in the universe from the dead. (Okay, so maybe Daniel did a lot of the heavy lifting, but Hob definitely helped.)
"Fucking beat that, Shaxberd," Hob says.
Judging by the look on Dream's face, that sentence maybe made more sense inside his head.
Hob tries another approach.
"I love you," he announces with a broad smile.
This doesn't quite get him any of the responses he'd considered possible either. Dream's eyes widen, but then what passes over his face is neither disgust nor - dare Hob hope for it - any kind of delight. It is, instead, a sudden panic, like a jolt of desperate fear.
That's kind of hard to wrap his tired mind around, so Hob doesn't try. He settles for passing out instead.
"- a terrible risk. To both him and the Dreaming."
"The Dreaming is unharmed, and he knew the danger."
"You should not have permitted it."
"It was his choice."
"He is hurt. That was not a deed meant for any human."
"He did it to ensure you had a choice, and he was right to. Would you deny him his own in turn?"
"At this price? Yes."
"Then it is well you were not here."
"Do not presume to-"
"Peace. Do not be angry with him, Lord Morpheus. All will be well now, I think. Can't you see? He's waking."
"Hob?"
Oh.
Huh.
It is possible, in fact, that the person waking up is Hob.
He's not entirely sure it's a good idea. Hob feels unpleasantly like he did that time he got a bit too morbidly curious about what it would be like to get the level of drunk that no human could survive. (That was back in the early 1600s, not long after he lost his family, and directly before the very sharp downward turn that cost him everything else he had left.) Actually, he feels even worse than he did back then, which is something he didn't think was possible even four centuries of living later.
And, he realises slowly, he really is waking up. There is a level of precision to what he can feel that was absent in the Dreaming, and certainly from wherever else he was. He can feel the smooth threads of the bedsheet under his hand. The slightly stale smell of bedding he's left unwashed a little too long, because maybe he's been looking after things less well than he should since he lost Audrey. The cool air on his bare chest, because he'd not been wearing a shirt when he went to bed last night, so it's bloody lucky he apparently dreamed one up when he arrived at -
At the funeral.
In the Dreaming.
For Dream.
Who died. He'd died. Been gone, lost, taken from Hob. From the world.
Except then Hob and Daniel -
Hob heaves in a breath that threatens to collapse his lungs in situ, and opens his eyes.
(How do even his eyeballs ache? That doesn't seem remotely fair.)
But it's worth it.
Because the first thing he sees is Dream.
Who is, Hob realises as he belatedly registers the most important sensation of all, still holding Hob's hand.
"I told you," Hob says. His voice sounds awful. He feels deliriously happy.
Dream's eyebrows creep upward. "What?"
"This is what you do."
You always come back.
He sees the moment Dream understands. Or at least, he sort of sees it, because things have gone kind of hazy. Hob's crying, hot tears that spill uncontrollably down his cheeks.
But dawn light is pouring in through the half-pulled curtains. It's morning. The funeral, the conversations with Death and Lucienne and Daniel, finding Dream - it all happened in one night, and now the night is over.
He's awake, and Dream is with him. Back in his long dark coat, his hair wild, his eyes wide. Sitting on the edge of Hob's bed. Holding Hob's hand.
And Dream, when he understands, rolls his eyes. Because he's a goddamn fucking bastard. But he also smiles, and compared to the last time Hob saw him, grieving and burdened in the New Inn, the difference is day after night - he looks lighter. Truly, genuinely happy.
And it doesn't mean he isn't still weighed down by sorrow and grief and guilt. It doesn't mean those things are gone.
But nor do those things mean that there cannot be joy, nor that the joy cannot be like this: bright and blazing and infinite.
"Perhaps it is what I do," Dream concedes, and he reaches out his free hand. The light touch of his fingers trails across Hob's cheek, along his jaw, leaving a sensation like fizzing stardust in its wake - the echo of how he touched Hob in that indescribable place, only so much sharper, so much more real. "Perhaps because I have so much worth coming back to."
And there's a lot of things he probably means. He's got the Dreaming, he's got Lucienne and Matthew and all the rest, he's got his siblings. And a whole life to live. Rich and varied and full, and whatever he wants it to be.
But it is Hob that he is looking at when he says it. And the thing is that Hob has been around for a while, right? Not as long as Dream, but a good long while. He's fallen in love more than once. He's made the kind of friendships that last as long as lives do, and are never forgotten even after.
He knows what it is to be looked at by someone who loves you.
"I think perhaps I will take my leave," another voice chimes in - a very amused voice, come to that.
Hob startles probably more than he ought to, considering that he belatedly remembers being woken up by the sound of Dream talking to someone else. They're not alone. Daniel is standing at the foot of his bed and he's watching them with a smile - he's beaming, really, and brimming over with pride.
As he should be, to be fair. He's just done the impossible.
Hob sits up. Or. Well. If he sets aside his dignity, the honest description of what happens is that he levers himself two feet upwards on the bed, makes a noise better suited to a dying animal, and falls vaguely sideways. Luckily Dream is there and very convenient for propping himself up on, not least because those long, deft fingers bury themselves immediately in Hob's hair.
That's nice. That's extremely nice, actually. It is extremely tempting to stay right there forever and never move again.
But Hob is a man on a mission. He pats Dream on the leg and then tries the concept of movement again, and achieves a vaguely upright sensibility. He can feel Dream radiating disapproval, but by the time Hob actually tries to stand up, Daniel has come closer.
"Hob," Daniel says, almost as reproving as his predecessor. "You should rest. You, ah." He shoots a slightly nervous glance at Dream. "You took a certain amount of mental strain, and I believe it may have manifested as both mental and physical weakness."
"Yeah," Hob pants. It's a slight understatement. He feels like he's just had the shit beaten out of him by an angry god. Which, in fairness, is actually a step up from the dying-from-alcohol-poisoning sensation. "But. Before you go. C'mere."
He half-falls, half-steps towards Daniel. Luckily, Daniel understands what he's intending before he does it, and even more luckily, he's clearly on board.
Hob wraps the kid in a hug, and Daniel's arms close around his back only half a second later. Hob squeezes him as tight as he can, this young King of Dreams, and in return he feels Daniel hold him back both tightly and carefully, cautious with his own strength and yet desperate, all the same, for what Hob is giving him.
"Thank you," Hob whispers, half-muffled in Daniel's shoulder. "Thank you."
"I am glad to have been able to do it," Daniel murmurs back. "I truly am."
They part, and Hob squeezes Daniel's shoulder. He can feel a presence hovering just behind him.
"This doesn't change what I said before, by the way," he says. "You ever want that drink, or just a chat, you come and find me, alright? You're always welcome."
"As you are in the Dreaming," Daniel says warmly. His eyes dart behind Hob. "I hope you will return too, Lord Morpheus. There is much I would speak to you about."
"I will come, and gladly. Yet..."
He pauses, and Hob turns round. Dream's face looks so bright that it almost hurts to look at, but it's a good kind of pain.
"I think I will spend much of my time here," Dream says decisively.
"What will you do?" Daniel asks.
Dream smiles. "I do not know. I have drowned my books. I suppose I will have to find some new ones."
This is the best day of Hob's entire six and a half century life.
"Speaking of books," Daniel says, "I am overdue to get back to Lucienne. And I have some news for her that she will not be expecting. I imagine you will have some visitors who wish to see you. Should I send them here?"
"Yes," Dream says, without even a pause for thought. It's only afterwards that he darts a look at Hob in a question that is underscored by doubt. Perhaps even a trace of fear. Alarmed, maybe, at the idea that he might have misunderstood. That he might be more alone in beginning this human life than he thought.
It's because of how much he clearly wants to stay that Hob says, "I can and will sit on you to stop you leaving."
Fascinatingly, that makes the very faintest pink tinge of a blush stir across Dream's cheekbones. Now that, Hob muses, is lovely.
Daniel looks like he might be biting his cheek to keep from laughing. "Very well. And... Shall I bring the news to - to our siblings?"
Dream's eyes slip out of focus. He is reaching for something that Hob cannot see, and there is a startling comfort in it - that Dream is not entirely human. Not that Hob would care for his own part what powers Dream did or didn't have, but he thinks there is much of himself that Dream would miss too much if it was gone, that he would always ache to have lost.
"They may already know," Dream says at length. His voice is very soft. "Yes, I think they might."
"Do you want to come with me?"
"No. This time is for you and them. I will see them soon enough. And I have other appointments to keep."
His hand, warm and strong, finds its way back to Hob's.
Hob, whose company he has just chosen over a reunion with his siblings.
It's just as well Hob is immortal, or he'd be about to find out whether a heart can actually burst from happiness.
"Then I will see you both in time," Daniel says, and inclines his head. "Farewell."
And then, in a swirl of sand, he is gone.
Hob sinks down onto the bed. His legs are shaking, their borrowed strength entirely spent.
Dream sits down with him rather than relinquish his hand. His hand is so warm. Hob's barely ever even touched the guy before tonight, and now they're practically latched together. Not that he's anything close to complaining. Warm is alive, wonderfully gloriously alive.
"So," Hob says. "Human, then. More or less."
"It would seem so."
"You are immortal, though, right? Even though you're not Endless any more?"
"Yes. I am not all that I was. I am... diminished." Dream frowns, the corners of his lips turning down. "I cannot see the shape of all that is gone. I do not know what I have lost. But I can see that it is missing."
"I'm - I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I will adjust. And there is much I have retained - those aspects that were most myself, rather than of the Dreaming. I can still feel that realm, though I am no longer its lord. But I am still myself."
So it's as Daniel intended - Daniel has taken on the parts of Dream that were his function, but they are now bound into who Daniel is as a person. While Dream remains Dream.
"And I am free," Dream says, with a kind of breathless awe. "I had not known what it was to be bound to my function until it was gone. I am more confined than I have ever been, and yet I am limitless. And, yes, I am what you would call immortal, though Endless no longer."
"I happen to have a fair bit of experience of being immortal around these parts," Hob says. Considering that Dream doesn't seem at all interested in letting him go, maybe he doesn't need to feel nervous about this, but his mouth is dry all the same. "I'd be happy to show you the ropes. You could stick around here. For now. Or, you know. Forever."
He grins, a flash of humour, like it might only be a joke, but fuck if he doesn't mean it more than he's ever meant anything.
"An eternity of human life," Dream says, and he's quoting himself that day in the bar, but where there was regret now there is humour in his voice, in his eyes. "I never imagined I would make the same choice."
"And yet here we are."
"Here we are. And I find, my friend, that I would like to remain."
It doesn't answer all of Hob's unspoken questions - and yet, in a way, it does. Dream wants to stay. And he not only wants to, he has the ability to. There are no duties to pull him away. No realm to which he must tend, no work that must be done. He has the choice to go anywhere in the world, to do and to become anything he pleases, and he wants to stay here. In Hob's flat. For now, at least. Just because Hob is here.
It's enough. It's everything. And for the rest - for the hope pounding away inside Hob's chest, for the words he thinks he remembers speaking right before he passed out in the Dreaming, for the significance of the way Dream is looking at him and not letting him go - for all of this, there is time. Immeasurable time.
Hob smiles, and lets himself lean against Dream's side, head resting on Dream's shoulder. He should probably lie back down, but he is reluctant to let any part of this proximity go. And he has no wish to sleep again, not yet. All the wonders of the Dreaming cannot compare to what he currently has here and now.
"I would like your promise that you will never do anything like that again," Dream says. He must be looking down at Hob; his breath lands in warm puffs against Hob's hair. "You almost unmade yourself. Your pain was... an agony to witness. I feared you might not return. You need to be more careful."
It warms him from the inside out. That feeling of being loved returns again; treasured, held, safe. And yet it is not a promise he can make, not if the stakes were the same.
"Story of my life, my friend. Never been half as careful as I should be, and I don't see any reason to regret that."
"Hob. Your obliteration is not a risk worth taking on my behalf. Not for any cause at all."
"You saying my name like that isn't going to discourage me, you know."
Dream makes a noise that might be a huff of laughter or a growl. It says something about him that there isn't more of a distinction between the two. "You are an impossible man."
"Yeah. And so are you." Hob lifts his weary head to look at his companion. "And I'm really, really happy you came back, Dream. I'm so glad you came back."
Dream's eyes go soft again. Hob loves that softness, but he also hopes one day it won't be such a wonder to Dream that Hob is glad of his company - hopes that Dream will learn to know it, to count on it, to make it one of the foundations of his world.
"So am I," Dream says. Then, wonderingly, brushing the soft pad of his thumb through the last of the tear tracks on Hob's face, echoes again, "So am I."
And then, quite bafflingly, there is a tap on Hob's bedroom window.
Not just a tap. A whole series of sharp bangs, like someone's trying to smash their way through the glass.
There is a large black bird perched on the windowsill, flapping its wings a little to stay in place, while it hammers its beak over and over again on the window.
Hob didn't speak to him at the funeral, but he did see him, and knows him from Dream's stories. Matthew. Dream's raven.
Dream releases Hob's hand to move to the window. With careful, precise movements, like he must focus on everything differently now, he undoes the latch and pushes the window open.
"You absolute raging bastard," Matthew cries, his voice choked and not half as angry as he's trying to sound, and in the next instant he's flinging himself into the room. Dream has to throw his hands out to catch him and then he has an armful of squirming, scolding raven, wings flapping everywhere, the room suddenly full of feathers and noise.
Hob laughs, and - miraculously - so does Dream. He laughs, bright and happy and free, and Hob realises that this - this is how it should be.
This is meaning.
This is life.
This is their life, together, for as long as they wish to have it.
No, stories do not all end in death. Some of them end in hope.
Some of them don't have to end at all.