Being Endless meant that time had no hold of them. A decade could pass in the blink of an eye, a century in the haze of decent conversation. But disconnected from his realm, forced into human form, and confined by yellow paint Dream could feel each second pass as he stared through the glass, unseeing what was beyond it. He had retreated inside of himself only days after his capture, what magic he could muster had thrashed uselessly against his bonds and so he’d retreated until he could think of a better escape plan than brute force.
He’d only been shaken out of it when Jessamy had appeared, hope flaring in his chest bright and hot and he should have known the second it did that it could only end in tragedy, and end in tragedy it did.
They left the blood for days.
Days turned into weeks, into months, into years. Dream was so far inside himself that he didn’t notice when the guards changed, or when Burgess came in to make his demands. The thing that jolted him out of his haze next was not hope, but fear striking through him, deep and cold. Next to his cage, two feet from the edge of the glass, a new circle had been painted, identical to the one surrounding Dream. Then the glass arrived, and the cage sat finished, waiting like a predator's mouth, open and ready to snatch up one of his siblings.
For weeks Dream, silent as ever, lashed out against his bonds but he was weak and the circle around him never broke, not for a moment. The dread built in him, all-consuming and painful. Not only was he failing his realm, but also his siblings. It would be his fault for not escaping and ending Burgess before he could hunt them down.
The thought that his siblings could have prevented their own capture by rescuing him years ago occurred for a fleeting moment before he brushed it off.
Dream didn’t know what time it was or what day, though he was fairly certain it had been a little over a decade since his capture when two burley men came in with a man between them, a bag over his head. Burgess followed and looked to Dream with smug satisfaction. “If you will not give me what I want maybe another of your kind shall.” Dream did not outwardly react, did not drag his eyes away from Burgess. He knew that his quiet hatred did more to unsettle the man than any reaction and Burgess broke the stare first. By then the man had been stripped, and thrown into the cage. The last thing they removed was the bag and as they did Dream felt a rush of relief run through him, it was not his sibling. And it would spell the end for Burgess.
What they had brought was not patient, was not careful, was heartbreakingly human in his emotions and how he let them drive him. The man they had captured would not wait for the right time to escape, he would create it through sheer force of will.
Hob Gadling was unconscious at the bottom of his glass cage, but that would not last long.
Hob woke slowly, cold and uncomfortable with the worst hangover he’d had in nearly a century. Whatever he was laying on was hard and small, and he couldn’t stretch out. He was also naked.
When that realization finally washed over him his eyes snapped open. The first thing he saw was the ground, a good foot below where his face was pressed up against transparent glass. He scrambled up, putting his back against the curved wall, fists raised, and legs bent under him ready to spring into a fight. Unfortunately, there was no point because the other side was just more glass walls, with a man in a suit staring at him.
With the practiced skill of a man who’d been in far too many dangerous situations, he took in the whole room with just one glance. He didn’t allow himself to look twice, to confirm the thing in the room that worried him the most, but he still felt a shiver of fear run through him at the thought that this man in front of him and not only captured him but had his Stranger in an identical prison next to him.
The man in the suit stared at him for a long time in silence until Hob broke it. “Are you going to tell me why I’m here or are you just enjoying the view?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I was allowing the seriousness of the situation to sink in. I have you captured, just as I have had your brethren captured for this last decade, and will only release you if you agree to bring back my son.”
Hob looked over at his Stranger, feeling a hot blaze of rage replace his fear. Sure, they’d parted on bad terms but he was still Hob’s friend whether he liked it or not. And Hob was not the kind of man who allowed bad things to happen to his friend. Still, he pushed it down and focused. He allowed himself to surrender to the yawn that he had felt in his jaw since he’d woken up as it made him seem more casual. “Okay. Where is he?”
Something dangerous flashed in the man’s eyes. “He’s dead.”
Hob barked a laugh. “And you think I can bring him back?”
“You yourself have dodged death’s grasp.”
“Oh, you’ve fully lost the plot. You think I’m, what, immortal?” he asked.
A stack of papers was thrown on the ground, some skittering under the glass. Hob looked down at a vague trace of his life, including a few photographic portraits. Well, looks like he needed to start being more careful. The wonders of indoor plumbing and electricity certainly made up for the new inconveniences of needing to have a paper trail for one’s life, but he clearly needed to start taking better precautions.
“Is any of this supposed to mean something to me?” Hob asked. He was a good liar, had had lots of practice, but he could feel himself becoming a little fuzzier on the edges. He wondered if the drugs they’d knocked him out with were still in his system.
“You cannot fool me, these are you. You are immune to Death's pull, you have conquered it and you will use your skill to bring back my son.”
Hob yawned again. His fatigue was getting worse, and his throat was starting to burn in a way that harkened back to the time he’d been buried alive, dirt piled on top of his coffin, forcing him to dig his way out. It’d taken weeks to grow his nails back. “You fucking idiot.”
“You dare mock me?”
“I’ve dared against things scarier than you,” Hob said, sparing a glance to his Stranger who was watching Burgess, impassive as he’d ever been.
“I hold your freedom in my hands, your power is mine.”
“And yet you’ve wasted it all by being stupid.”
The man turned an alarming shade of red and Hob didn’t bother suppressing his laugh. His vision was going a little blurry at the edges and he knew that shortly he’d make his point beautifully.
“This is an airtight container isn’t it?”
“It’s not as if you need to breathe,” the man said.
“Well, we’re certainly going to find out aren’t we?” he said, and then promptly passed out.
Dream watched Hob go down and had to fight off a smile. He’d been fighting that smile since Hob had woken, defiant, angry, and lashing out with a sense of humor that Dream had always appreciated. There was something very satisfying about watching Hob rile Burgess up and then win the argument, even if he won it by passing out. It wasn’t like the man was in danger.
Burgess stared, slack-jawed for a moment before barking at the guards to remove the man and add just enough air holes that he wouldn’t pass out again before he swept out of the room to lick his wounds.
They dragged Hob out by his ankles, his body scraping against the stone floor in a way that made Dream decide that the guards would also only be receiving night terrors for the rest of their lives.
It seemed he wouldn’t get the chance to enact such punishment though, as Hobb snapped awake just outside of the cell, grabbed one of their guns from their belt, and shot both of them dead in the matter of a heartbeat.
He turned to Dream, eyes sharp and focused. “Stand back,” he said, taking aim at the glass.
“ No ,” Dream said, it wouldn’t matter if the glass was broken unless he could break the circle. He nodded down to it. “ The binding circle.”
“This is so less exciting,” Hob grumbled as he used his foot to smear the binding circle.
As he did the magic came flooding back to Dream, the darkness and the light, the power and the pain, the feeling of every living being who dreamed came flooding back to him. With one thought he sent everyone in the building except Hob to sleep. Then he stepped forward, through the glass, and into the basement, clothing himself immediately, feeling more secure in his coat than he would have thought possible.
“ Thank you for the assistance. You may leave now,” Dream said, already going towards the door. He really should go to the Dreaming, check the extent of the damage before he stooped to such petty things as revenge, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed to ensure that Brugess could do this to none of his siblings.
Hob looked up with a glare from where he was taking the other guard's gun and the spare ammunition off the bodies. “I get that I’m not your friend, but you are my friend and people don’t get to lock my friends up in cages for a decade without me having something to say about it. So, I’m going upstairs to kill that fucking guy and anyone who tries to stop me,” Hob said, turning away and marching toward the door.
“ You intend to wreak vengeance upon them in my honor whilst nude? ” Dream asked, trying not to laugh at this breathtakingly human man and his bone-deep need to defend those he cared for even if he knew they could care for themselves.
“Just because I have stripped corpses to take their clothes for my own doesn’t mean I enjoy doing it. I’m sure this rich fuck has plenty of clothes in a nice closet upstairs I can help myself to, once he’s dead,” Hob said without turning around.
Dream followed him and just resisted wrapping the man in clothes in an attempt to save himself from the distraction that was watching this man who cared only for doing vengeance in Dream’s name walk around on display for all to see. The sight of his friend wrapped in clothes made of the Dreaming would only be more of a distraction to Dream.
They walked up into the house and found a dozen staff members asleep at their various jobs, a woman on the couch asleep with a book in her hand, and a record player finishing a song before going into static. The younger Burgess, who had shot Jessamy, was laying in the hall and Dream spared a thought to make sure that his nightmares all revolved around ravens. He would release the boy from his wrath in a few years, but for now, the pain still ran white hot through him.
They found Burgess just outside of his office door.
In the Dreaming, he was trapped in an airless glass sphere, on display for all the world to see. His dead son looked at him, angry and disappointed before turning away and disappearing into the crowd, abandoning his father. In the Waking World, he looked almost peaceful, oblivious to Hob standing over him, gun pointed down.
“ You do not need to do this if you do not wish to ,” Dream assured him when Hob hesitated.
“I’m just trying to decide if I’m going to kill a sleeping man, or wait for him to wake up,” Hob said quietly, distractedly. Like he really was weighing the pros and cons.
“ You wish for him to be awake? ”
“I want him to know why and by who. I want him to regret what he did to you, I want to make him be sorry.”
Dream smiled from behind Hob, safe in his knowledge that the man couldn’t see how pleased he was. “ The punishment I will give him is beyond that which you are capable of inflicting. ”
“I know.”
“ He will regret his decisions ,” Dream continued.
“Maybe. But what if he gets out?” Hob turned back to Dream, the gun still trained on Burgess. “What if he regrets what he did but he now knows what you can do and comes for you again? I won’t let him hurt you. I didn’t even know you were gone, that he’d had you for a decade. Getting rid of him is how I keep you safe.”
“I do not need you to defend me,” Dream argued.
“Yeah, yeah! You’re so great! You don’t need anyone! But he made it through your defenses once. Once is all he gets,” Hob said, turning back to Burgess.
Dream woke Burgess from his nightmare of watching his son decay inside of the glass prison, unable to get him out as his son begged him to save him. His eyes opened just as Hob took the shot and then he was dead. He saw his sister for only a moment, she looked to Hob and then Dream before winking and disappearing with Burgess.
“Did the rest of them know?” Hob asked as he turned around to look at Dream again.
“ Some. But they are mine to deal with. ” Dream could allow Hob his revenge on Burgess since he had also been taken, and maybe Dream did feel better knowing that there was no way the man would escape his sister’s realm and so he and his siblings would be safe, but the rest of them he could not allow Hob to wreak vengeance upon. Dream had his own anger to get out after all.
Hob stared at him for a long moment before he shrugged, a frown etched deep into his face. For a moment he seemed to look exactly his age. “I need to find some clothes.” He turned away from Dream to go looking for Burgess’s closet.
“ I expect to see you in 63 years' time, Hob Gadling.”
Hob turned around, a smile so bright he looked almost to be a different man than a few moments before. “I’ll be there.”
The thing about being immortal was that time only passed quickly in hindsight. Did Hob struggle to remember what happened in entire decades because it all seemed to pass so quickly? Yes. Did Hob still feel every grueling second as he waited in the White Horse for his dashing stranger to arrive? Also yes.
He’d arrived early, at least by the usual standards. His Stranger didn’t tend to arrive until after nightfall but Hob had been too excited to wait. He’d spent the past few decades researching Burgess since he was Hob’s only connection to what his Stranger was. At first, he’d felt guilty, trying to reconstruct the research of a man who had caused his friend such pain. He’d assuaged that guilt by becoming well known in occult circles himself and convincing everyone he ever spoke to that Burgess had been a crackpot and the good fortune he’d attributed to “the devil locked in the basement" was really that he’d had an uncle get rich in America who was sending him stipends to avoid the ancestral home falling into disrepair.
The only thing that Hob had learned that hadn’t been absolute nonsense, disproven by Hob’s years of experience was that there were forces that were immutable and that they might have personifications. Hob wondered if his Stranger was the personification of death, and intended to ask his friend that tonight. He could see his friend being perfectly capable of bringing Brugess’s son back and simply refusing even to his own detriment.
Though there was something to be said about the fact that the sleeping sickness started as soon as his Stranger had been taken, and suddenly disappeared the same day that Hob had broken them out.
The minutes continued to tick down, and even the bartender was giving him sympathetic looks. Hob had really thought, maybe foolishly, that his Stranger would be there. As it turned out his statement of expecting Hob to be there hadn’t been a confirmation of their appointment but instead a jab that Hob would be kept waiting.
“Last call, mate. One more before you go?” the bartender asked.
Hob shook his head and pulled out his wallet. “No. If he’s not here by now then he’s not coming.”
The bartender hummed and took the bills from Hob with a sympathetic nod. With one last look around the tavern Hob walked out the door and straight into someone.
“Sorry,” he mumbled before he looked up and saw who it was. “You’re late,” he said, letting his hurt and anger color his voice.
“I believe I still have a few more minutes before I’m late as no time was set for our meeting, just a date,” his Stranger said with his insufferable smirk.
“Are you trying to prove the point that we’re not friends while still coming by to ask me if I wanna die?” Hob asked, starting his walk home. He had every faith that the man would follow, if only because he’d clearly come with a point to prove and he hadn’t made it yet.
“Well I do have to ask if you would like to keep living, though I will admit to being more invested in the answer than in previous years,” he said. Hob looked over at him, and the shadows of the night seemed to swarm around him, his shadow from the street lamps deeper than Hob’s own.
“Really?”
“Yes. It would be a shame to lose such a friend to my sister’s gift,” his Stranger said with a smile.
Hob smiled at him so wide his cheeks hurt. “You have a sister?”
“That’s what you choose to focus on?” he said with an unimpressed arched eyebrow.
“I think it might be the first thing you’ve ever told me about yourself,” Hob said.
“You choose to be friends with one so withholding? You are a baffling man, Hob Gadling,” he said with a small smile, not unlike the one he gave Hob in 1789, the smile that Hob had held close to his chest for two centuries now.
“Yes well feel free to tell me more things about yourself to even it up a bit,” Hob said with a laugh. He hadn’t realized how close they were to Hob’s hotel until they got to the front entrance. “Come up for a drink and I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to.”
The Stranger nodded and followed Hob in. He was in from out of town, thinking of relocating back to London. He’d been in Canada for the past twenty years and it was time for an identity change so he’d taken a vacation for his meeting and had been looking at flats. And a new career.
“‘Sister’s gift?’ So your sister is the personification of death, then?” Hob asked as they rode up in the lift.
“Yes.”
“Which makes you…sleep?” Hob asked, a part of him hoping he was right just to prove how clever he was to his friend. There was a part of him that would never stop wanting to impress him, not that he had ever tried.
“Dreams,” his Stranger said.
“Dreams, huh?” Hob said quietly, desperately trying to remember any of the gods of dreams from any culture. “So that makes you Hypnos?”
“I prefer Morpheus. Or Dream to my friends,” he said with a smile.
“Dream,” Hob said, barely louder than a breath just to feel the name on his tongue as the lift doors opened to his floor. “I suppose it’s fitting. You haunt my dreams an awful lot.”
Dream fell silent beside him as he unlocked the door and when Hob looked back at him he seemed more still than usual like he was hesitating. “I apologize for that. After our capture, I became concerned with anyone who showed an interest in his… ’works’ and -”
“Wait. That was actually you? In my dreams? All of them?” Hob asked, feeling himself go bright red. Huh, that hadn’t happened in a while. He dug around in the minibar to hide his blush and poured them each a drink of gin.
“I am all dreams,” he said, face completely neutral.
“Fantastic. Good,” Hob said, taking a long drink of the gin. He swore he’d had better stuff out of a barrel in the back of a barn in the 1600s.
“You are embarrassed by your dreams?”
“Call me old fashioned, I try not to tell the people I’m interested in that I have sex dreams about them.”
“Why would you not want them to know you are interested?”
“There’s a line between them knowing you want them and then having witnessed your most depraved fantasies about them.”
Dream just raised an eyebrow and took a sip of his gin.
“Okay, maybe not for you since you have a direct line into my subconscious but for the rest of us, there’s a line.”
They were quiet for a while and Hob hoped they were done with this conversation and he could get into what he had been up to the last century. And add in some details he hadn’t gotten a chance to share during their last meeting that had been cut so short. Just as he opened his mouth to speak Dream spoke.
“Would you rather I pretend I did not witness your dreams?”
Hob grinned wide and lascivious, smarmy enough that it would sound like a joke when he said “That depends: did you like what you saw?”
He didn’t expect an answer, this was Dream after all. It had taken 600 years and a kidnapping to pry his name out of him. He half expected Dream to get up and walk out.
“Yes.”
Oh. Okay. Well, then.
Dream continued to watch him, impassive as always.
“Care to show me your favorites?” Hob asked. Or tried to ask, the last word was captured in a kiss as he suddenly had a lap full of his Stranger. His Dream.