Chapter Text
Martin Tenbones is dead. Dream has felt it happen, now, though with all sensation so heavily obscured, the loss of a part of himself is less an indicator than the loud sob torn from Barbara’s throat. “Barbie, honey,” a new voice- Wanda, the name filters to him from the thoughts and memories of Barbara and Wanda’s own dreams- pleads, finally darting from around the cop and placating him with assurances that she’s only trying to get her friend away from the ‘thing.’ “What’ve you got in your hand? Never mind, we’ll talk about it at home. C’mon, bubby-“
“What the fuck,” Hob says in an undertone beside him. Dream struggles to comprehend the scene, mind still addled by liquor and wholly unused to fighting it, though the stronger his will to and the longer he does, the easier it is to think.
“Fuck,” Rose Walker curses again, watching them with something close to outright fear. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Lyta, just go, we’ve got her, get Daniel out of here-“
Hob, to Dream’s distant but rapidly solidifying dismay, has not looked away from young Daniel Hall, nor Hippolyta or Rose, and Dream can sense, knowing him well, that despite more than an hour of difficult conversation already this evening, the time for it has only just begun. It isn’t until the group of young women- Daniel with them, Barbara despondent but once again upright- fully retreat into the crowd that he is seemingly spurred into action, stalking forward with wings tightly folded and barking some command Dream does not catch at an officer who had inched forward to nudge at Martin Tenbones with his boot.
The officers closest to Martin seem to wander off in a daze from there, urging the crowd back or holstering their firearms and looking unsure as to where they are as their memories are obfuscated in favor of whatever hopes Hob has encouraged them to pursue. Dream, clearer of mind, approaches Hob’s side where he kneels, stroking Martin’s fur, the Dreamstone back in the form of the ring on his little finger as he coaxes the essence of Martin back to the Dreaming with an ease Dream is uncertain when he’d learned. Perhaps the knowledge is as intrinsic as the ways in which they seem to be tied. Yet another difficult conversation to be had.
Once Martin’s body is gone, Hob slowly stands, searching the crowd, undoubtedly for any sign of Rose, Lyta and Daniel. When he eventually gives up and rounds on him, eyes ablaze with frustration and hurt, Dream is at once flooded by both a sharp anxiety and a righteous reticence. Perhaps Hob has shown him that he can be trusted, perhaps this would be information commonly shared between two as close as they have become, and perhaps Hob has indeed readily divulged the most difficult, damning details of his life, but Dream, for much longer, by both necessity and nature, has been an entity unknowable and incomprehensible in its multitudes. His past is pocked and scarred in shame and burden he is uncertain he is even strong enough to share with Hob, with still so much unsaid. And yet…
Has Hob not faithfully weathered each revelation with, if not immediate grace, stern, stubborn, endless patience? Has he not paid the ultimate price for his loyalty? And has Dream not, in return, continued his pattern of venomous self-preservation when Hob’s only request, year after year, has been friendship and communication? To allow him the privilege of assisting Dream? Dream’s past seems insistent on exposing itself to him at every turn and in the ugliest manner possible. Would it not be easier, safer, kinder to share it willingly? He feels so suddenly exhausted, so utterly unable to face him and his undeserved, unending gentleness that he flinches away as though physically struck, and can then only feel guilt, dark and ravenous, when Hob immediately deflates in his concern.
Be angry, Dream thinks viciously. Feel what I feel endlessly. See me for all that I am.
But he does not.
“Would you like to do something different, today?” Hob asks.
Dream looks back to him from where he’d been observing the Common from the window of Hob’s living room beside the speaker system, currently crooning softly a soul ballad from the 1960’s that Hob has informed him is on a ‘playlist’ he’s made. Dream, unfamiliar with much of the technology of the age and no keener to partake of it than he ever has been, allows Hob to show him what he wishes while he is here; it would, of course, be possible to educate himself as he always has, through the minds of dreamers, but there is something distinctly satisfying to witnessing it at Hob’s discretion. There is a story, whether personal or historical, to accompany each song, album, book, or movie that Hob selects, and which is at least half of Dream’s enjoyment of them. In his function, he can feel the care Hob has taken in his choices, and the countless souls that have loved each one in some form.
Hob, now, sits upon the armrest of the leather chair Dream favors, half a still-warm cup of tea cradled in his hands as he watches Dream expectantly. “‘S a nice day out, I’m almost out of term, you’re gazing longingly out the window like a cooped-up cat… we could go for a walk. Celebrate a year of you being back.” He smiles brightly, if sheepishly, and Dream aches.
A year. It feels on the surface neither shorter nor longer than any of the years he spent in captivity, and yet he had barely realized the time had passed until Hob’s mention of it. So focused has he been on restoring the Dreaming, handling the dream vortex, determining Desire’s motives and preventing further harm, receiving delegations, and everything else his return has entailed that he hadn’t even thought to keep track of human time so precisely. Indeed, when he grounds himself to the Earth now, he feels that Hob is correct; it has been one year since he had first entered the New Inn, nearly to the hour.
“Doesn’t have to be a walk. Just thought I’d ask. ‘S a bit early for dinner,” Hob backtracks, looking more sheepish still. “Could also just show you another movie. We could stay in this room for the next hundred years and still not get through them all, I don’t think. Unless I don’t sleep, which I know you don’t approve of.”
It is a joke, and so Dream tries not to think on how tempting it is, the prospect of foregoing his function and his responsibilities for such a time in favor of allowing his friend to dominate his every moment and thought with his best-loved narratives. The satisfying symmetry of time spent in the four closed walls of this flat- warm, soft, inviting, private, his function and all that he is an afterthought to his presence here- against his century spent laid bare before strangers who sought only to use him beyond his means.
“Might we… feed the pigeons?” he asks instead, if only to veer as sharply as possible from saying yes. At any rate, mention of the day they had reunited has caused him to think of his sister and their time together then, too.
Hob blinks, his lips parting as though stunned, and for a strange, infuriating moment Dream feels a full-body foolishness. But before the feeling can progress, Hob speaks. “Yeah, yes, it’s- Let me just- get my coat, think I have some- oats or something in one of these bloody- shit,” he says as he trips stepping into his own shoe and makes for the kitchen and coat closet, which are in two different directions, simultaneously. “Maybe we can feed the ducks, too. There’s a bench by the pond and I know I had some peas in the freezer-“
Dream does not respond, content to watch Hob, baffling as ever, trip over himself in his excitement over what Dream had thought would be a mundane afternoon for him. He allows his own coat to reform upon his body, placing his hands in his pockets as he approaches the front door while Hob moves to the kitchen to root through the pantry.
“I am perfectly capable of procuring a loaf of bread,” he says with a frown, averting his gaze as Hob stretches, shirt riding up from his midriff to reveal the briefest sliver of skin and hair, before giving up and clambering onto the countertop to reach the highest shelves in a way that will undoubtedly aggravate the old injury in his knee for several days.
“’S not good for them,” Hob grunts, sliding down and already favoring his sore leg, though he has, to his credit, found a container of rolled oats. “Fills them up too quick but doesn’t give them any nutrients. So, oats. And frozen peas for ducks,” he says with a bright smile, meeting him at the door after collecting the bag of them.
“I assure you, they much prefer the bread.”
Hob opens the door and allows Dream out, closing it behind them. “Sometimes the things we like best aren’t always good for us.” He pauses, looking thoughtful then privately amused as he locks the door. “’S never stopped me, though.” Then, “Hang on, can you talk to regular birds too?” Then, “Stupid question. Don’t answer that.”
The pond and Hob’s fabled bench are not a far walk from the Inn, though by the time they reach it, Hob is very visibly in pain and relieved that the seat is unoccupied. He sighs contentedly as he sits, right leg outstretched, handing Dream the container of oats and tearing the bag of peas open with his teeth.
“You should not have strained your knee,” Dream says with a frown, watching as he tosses a handful of peas into the water in a scatter of ripples that draw the assorted waterfowl in a flurry of quacks and honks that seems to delight him. Hob waves him off, not even looking up at him where he still stands.
“Won’t kill me.”
“That hardly makes it an exception.”
Hob laughs, startled, and a deep-rooted satisfaction warms something at Dream’s core. “Worry about your flock.” He is only silent for a moment, as usual. “Why pigeons?”
“One year ago, before I first spoke with my sister upon my return and the recovery of my tools, I found myself drawn to them. They are simple creatures with simple dreams. It is easy enough to satisfy their wants.” He sprinkles a handful of the oats Hob has given him at his feet, not so close that they will be spooked, but far enough from the water’s edge that the activity of the ducks and geese won’t frighten them. A small group flutters from the nearby litter bin in favor of the easier food source. “They are largely misunderstood. Their desire for purpose is so deeply rooted in their genetics they cannot help but remain close to those who propagated it. They are viewed as vermin by the very same creatures that domesticated them. Thousands of years spent in service of man, then discarded for outliving their efficiency, for their inability to provide beyond their means. Just as all the old gods.” He sprinkles another handful, watches as more gather, the occasional variant standing out amongst the flock of them. “And yet, over one hundred years since they were forsaken, they still dream of human companionship.”
Hob is quiet for a long while- long enough that Dream feels the need to look, if only to ensure he hasn’t offended him in some way- but his friend is only watching him, mouth poised as if to speak. There is some deep anguish in his eyes, though whether it is for the pigeons, Dream cannot say, and he cannot bring himself to ask. Bewilderingly, as they regard one another, he feels his eyes begin to burn, his control over his body’s faculties suddenly wavering under an onslaught of emotion he cannot accurately source, until he is forced to look away.
“Worry about your flock,” he all but whispers, tossing out another handful to fill the silence with the birds’ gentle song.
Hob, for once lacking a single thing to say, complies.
“Right,” Hob says, taking Dream’s wrist, and for a brief, warm moment this facet of him is a feather falling from his wing, a mote of dust drifting in the sunrise through a window, the sunlight itself as it shines golden through the clouds even as it still rains. When he returns to himself in Hob’s flat, he is so jolted by the feeling off Hob’s power so thoroughly suffusing him that the tumult of his thoughts has quieted. Hob, already settled in the kitchen’s corner, arms folded and kettle turned on, speaks. “You can start with Rose.”
Dream opens his mouth, attempting to find the words, until with a readiness that surprises them both, he says, “Desire’s great-granddaughter. My great-grandniece. And yours.”
“Pardon?” Hob asks, apparently unable to help the face he makes, slowly yet clearly remembering through the relics of the wanton haze Desire had afflicted him with the mention of Rose at his own dinner table. “What happened to not loving mortals?”
“There was no love on their part,” Dream says with a scowl, “No more than there ever is in their function. The woman they… related with-“ Hob snorts in disbelief and anger, “-Unity Kinkaid. She was to be the Dream Vortex of her generation, the one I told you of, but when I was captured, she fell victim to the Sleeping Sickness. As she grew in the waking, though at a slower rate, she grew in her dreams, and in her subconscious, while I was unable to protect her, Desire seduced her with words and acts of love. They sired a child in her own realm of dreams, but due to both her nature and Desire’s, the child was true. That child had her own, and so did the next, each of them passing down the powers of the vortex onto Rose.”
The kitchen is quiet but for the quiet roar of heating water. “She didn’t seem to be a fan of yours,” Hob says mildly, at length. “None of them did.”
“Rose was searching for her brother Jed when first she entered the heart of the Dreaming. He was the child Gault felt such fierce protection over, and because of Gault, had been shielded from what remained of my realm for several years. Because of Rose’s power, awakened by my return to my own, she was able to draw herself there. I knew what she was, though not entirely who, and I wished to help her find her brother and take the opportunity to study her. Vortexes are largely unknown. There was danger in allowing her to grow into her power, but I wished to know more, though Lucienne urged me to take action, and she of course was wise for it. Rose grew volatile, and without her great-grandmother’s intervention and the offer to take back her mantle as the Vortex, I would have had to kill her. I was seconds from doing so.”
Hob frowns deeply, though he seems to know fundamentally, by nature of what he is, that Dream is not exaggerating the stakes. “Right,” he says slowly. “And Lyta?”
“Rose’s friend. A widow. Her husband, instead of passing to the Sunless Lands took refuge in the Dreaming while I was imprisoned. He attempted to convince her that they could be together and live the life they had wanted in the Waking. But his prolonged presence was causing destructive disturbances in the realm. Before I was able to rectify the issue, they had conceived a child here.”
“Daniel.”
“Yes.”
“So… Not. Yours, then.”
Dream blinks in disbelief in the dawn of new comprehension. “No,” he says slowly. “Did you think that he was?”
“What was I supposed to think?” Hob bursts, his irritation finally flaring to life as Dream had wanted, though he feels no better for it. He purses his lips, inhales deeply through his nose, evidently attempting to suppress it. “He- he looks like you. I mean not- like you, but…” Dream watches in a turbulent mix of horror, confusion, and distant amusement as Hob works through his irritation and apparent jealousy, the latter of which twists in vicious satisfaction in Dream’s core. “He has your bloody eyes.”
“Is that what you would think of me? That I would roam the Earth for want of siring a child?” Dream asks, half outraged. “To lure Dreamers to my realm, to satisfy my own purposes?”
“Fuck off,” Hob says, still half outraged himself. “I don’t know where you look to sire a child.” Dream can’t help but recoil, and Hob immediately softens. “I didn’t mean… Just, forget it.”
“I…” Dream says, wishing suddenly and uncommonly to speak of Orpheus, but his voice fails, and it’s several long moments before he can try again. “I have only had one child. His mother was a Muse, no mortal woman. Not after Nada.” His vision blurs traitorously, but he continues. “This child contains an aspect of myself by merit of his conception, but he is not my blood. Not in the way of my son.”
Hob nods his understanding, blessedly unwilling to push the subject of his child any further. “Dream, love, I’m not going to… I’m not going to look for all these things about you. Do you understand?” Dream looks up at him, furrows his brow even as he feels flayed open with surgical precision. “I can, now, because of… everything, just like you looked at me and Lady Johanna and Lushing Lou, but I’m not going to. I would rather you just tell me. I actually like hearing about your life,” he says with a teasing smile. “I don’t like finding out because it’s blown up in our faces.”
“I have wanted-“ Dream does not know how to defend himself. “I did not intend-“
“I know, dove,” Hob sighs. “But now we’ve got a dead escaped Dream that went looking for our great-grandniece’s friend. A great-grandniece who sent the mother of your sort-of-kid running screaming when we should be helping them. All of them.” His hands are restless as he unfolds his arms, twisting the ring on his finger mindlessly. “What’s a Porpentine?”
Dream flinches again. Hob pinches the bridge of his nose. The kettle turns off.
Dream of the Endless wants.
He is a creature of feeling and fantasy. This is an unavoidable, essential aspect of his function, his purpose, his identity. It has driven him to madness, to cruelty, to lust and love time after time, the collective subconscious on occasion so muddled and feral it crosses into the realms of Destruction and Delirium. He feels so deeply he oft cannot differentiate between his own mind and those of the Universe. It is not, at its core, his job to. Therefore, in his desires, it has ever been difficult to discern if they are genuine, if they are a product of his sibling’s meddling, or if they are the ramifications of all that he is.
His feelings for Hob are decidedly singular.
He had thought at one point, many months ago, that it had been the influence of Desire; that his sibling had been tricking him into yet another ill-fated, turbulent relationship with yet another mortal (nuances of Hob’s condition aside) he would doom- in fact, he is still doubtful whether Desire has no hold over Hob, is blinding him to Dream’s faults and compelling him in his unconditional, unwavering softness. But Desire has sworn believably enough that Dream’s feelings, in this case, are wholly his own, that they only wished they could claim responsibility, because whatever grows between he and Hob is a ‘work of art.’
And even after the havoc his sibling had caused between them, there is some small aspect of Dream that had wanted to believe them. He does not want his want to be a symptom. He wants Hob viciously, voraciously- this tapestry of history and adventure and progress who has, it seems at times, dedicated his life solely to building stories for Dream alone to hear; this perhaps can be blamed on the fact that it would be patently dangerous for him to share the full extent of his life with most anyone he would find on the planet, but this fact does not stop Dream from coveting it all the same. He wants Hob in his sharp wisdom, his humour and joy, his endless hope and patience, his mundane frustrations and battered rushes of violence. He wants Hob’s body, scarred and weathered and the same as it’s ever been, softened in this age’s domesticity yet just as strong as the soldier’s when he wills it.
He wants Hob. But he cannot have Hob like this. There are too many festering, open sores in his past that, as they are, will infect anything more than what they have now. Hob has shown his willingness time and again to forgive him this, has taken what Dream thinks no other man could fathom in stride. But Dream’s past devours him; he thinks of Killala’s betrayal and Desire’s hand in it, the ways he failed Alianora and Calliope in his sporadic shifts between intensity and indifference when his work consumed him, the ways he spurned Orpheus and Nada. And he refuses force Hob to accept these wrongs as they are despite knowing that he would.
Alianora and Killala are long dead, and perhaps in a sense, Dream has made peace with his memory of them. As with all of his lovers, the part of him that loved them will do so forever, but their memory is distant now, and even if he wished, he could not speak with them again. Further, he cannot bring himself to even think of speaking to Orpheus, not yet, and the wound of Calliope and her own captivity is too fresh. Perhaps the larger issue is that he feels the shifting of his heart in thinking of her and he cannot bear it. He is not ready to face her again so soon, his pride still wounded even as he swallowed it to save her. But Nada…
A year ago, perhaps, he hadn’t forgiven her, and hadn’t been inclined to, hardened by his one hundred years confined by the cruelty of her kind. But his family has made their thoughts on the matter (and on all his relationships, his one with Hob no exception) clear enough at their most recent dinner, and throughout their beratement his thoughts repeatedly returned to Hob, to the shame of facing him should he ever find out after all he’d done knowingly or otherwise to help Dream recover after his own captivity. Nada deserves her freedom in whatever capacity he can grant it, and though there is significant danger in returning to Hell, they are insignificant in the face of the torture she has endured all these millennia.
Yes. Hob has told him time and again that he can do better. Can be better. Dream does not know how to be more than he is: cruel, selfish, prideful, angry, and domineering. Yet has he not also been joyful? Been passionate and loving and good? Has he not been it all, however extreme, since the very beginning? The darker tendencies are as consuming in him as they are in humans, it seems, yet there is lightness in him. Lightness that he had lost sight of but will do everything to earn back so that he might one day be worthy.
He will go to Nada, and he will free her, will give her whatever she desires to whatever end it heralds. He will make his amends with Calliope when he finds the strength, will discuss with her their son as she wishes. Perhaps then he will be strong enough too to visit Orpheus, to hear at last what he was not ready to so many years ago. And then, as so many times before, he will return to Hob, and bare it all before him, all that he is. Hob for so long has given himself to Dream in this way, his triumphs and tragedies, each shortcoming no matter how humorous or devastating. Perhaps this way he will be worthy of Hob.
He will be worthy.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Rose Walker shouts, scrambling away from her seat at the kitchen table before them. Dream frowns down at her, keeping his hands in his pockets and apparently attempting to appear nonthreatening, though she doesn’t seem inclined to pay attention to the language of his body. Hob stifles a laugh. “Lyta!” Rose is backed into the corner of the kitchen counter watching them with wide eyes.
“Hang on, we’re not-“ Hob tries, taking a step forward with his hands raised toward her, but before he can say anything else, Lyta Hall comes running from the short hallway to the left of the kitchen.
The second she catches sight of them, she reaches over the counter and grabs a pan from the stove- something black and heavy, cast iron as though they are fae that could be harmed by it- and holds it over her shoulder as though prepared to strike. “You’re not taking him,” she snaps at Dream.
“W- Jesus,” Hob says as she steps forward, feinting a swing at them. He slides between her and Dream, feeling a bit like he’s trying to calm a spooked horse. “Taking who?”
“My baby. You’re not taking him. Tell that to your fucking friend,” she says with her teeth bared in a snarl. Hob turns to Dream with raised brows. Dream frowns and looks away from him, his gaze flitting around the apartment.
“We are not here for Daniel,” he says at length.
“Yet,” she scoffs.
“Look, I don’t fully know what’s going on with- all that,” Hob says, closing his eyes briefly, attempting to stem the oncoming headache. “And we will be having more words about it later,” he continues pointedly to Dream, who scowls, before turning back to Lyta, “But we’re here for your friend.”
“You’re not taking her either,” Rose says fiercely.
“N- we don’t want to take her. We want to know why a Dream was trying so hard to find her that he died for it.”
“What do you care about dead dreams?” Lyta asks with a bitter laugh.
“Well, typically, they’re not a great omen,” Hob says, irritated now too. “But if you’re asking specifically, this one gave Barbie something dangerous.”
“More dangerous than you?” Rose asks disbelievingly. “What are you, anyway? I know what he is. Are you a dream?”
“No, I’m-“ Hob pauses, turning the rolodex of the multitudes of his existence in his mind. “Your uncle? Half-uncle? Step-uncle? Uncle-in-law? Not that we’re married, but-“ he closes his eyes again, shaking his head and clamping down on daydreams of marriage and fantasies of togetherness like he hasn’t already taken enough. “Doesn’t matter. I’m- Hope,” he says in resignation. “Of the Endless.”
“Kind of… self-absorbed,” she says cautiously. “Especially ‘cause you’re not doing a very good job at it. No offense.”
“If it helps, you can call me Hob,” he offers. “Please call me Hob, actually. And I’m sort of new to the job.”
“Enough,” Dream says, apparently weary of uncooperative humans and low on patience. Perhaps, Hob thinks in delight, a little hungover, too. “Where is Barbara now?”
“Wanda took her back to her place, downstairs. Hal went to check on them,” Rose says quickly, “But-“
Dream disappears. Hob rubs his eyes and slides his hands down his face in exasperation, resisting the urge to disappear himself and see how Dream likes it when he comes back. Rose doesn’t look surprised by Dream’s theatrics, but she is giving Hob a funny look, and Lyta is still holding her skillet uncertainly, though it has lowered some in Dream’s absence. He wonders if they’d let him make them some tea.
“Sorry,” he sighs. “He sort of- does that.”
“You’re really not like him,” Rose says, like she knows the word ‘sorry’ is proof enough. “What’s your deal?”
“I wasn’t like him, for most of my life. Like I said,” Hob gives her a smile. “Step-uncle. And, er,” he looks to Lyta. “I really don’t know what’s going on with Daniel, but… I promise I won’t let him take him. Not without reason, anyway. There’s… things we have to do, ‘s part of what we are, and he doesn’t mean to be rude necessarily, or scary, he just… he’s forced to play bad cop with the Universe. But he listens to me. Sometimes.”
Lyta eyes him warily but nods, finally setting the pan back down on the stove and leaning to the side where, as he tracks her movements, Hob realizes Daniel has come to cling to the leg of her loose linen pants, half hiding himself in the folds of the fabric. Lyta’s hand comes to rest protectively on his head, nesting into the coils of his hair, and-
He’s not Dream’s child, but it’s very hard not to see him as such, when his eyes (or the one visible to Hob, anyway) are distant supernovas, unblinking as they gaze up at him. Hob feels his own heart melt, unable to help the daydream of a family for a moment. It’s nothing new, the fantasy of loving Dream- he’s pictured it all before, the convincing him to stay, the passion and the softer things, the fanciful idea of marriage and family- and he must delicately remind himself that the foundation of their friendship, let alone anything more, is practically built on sand at the moment, and not the kind that Dream is made of. Or, perhaps, exactly that kind.
“He started doing that one day,” Rose says, finally brave enough to come back around the table. She stops beside Hob and smiles down at Daniel, who toddles steadily over to her and reaches to be picked up. She indulges, hoisting him up with a groan. “His eyes, I mean. Dream told us his name and all of a sudden they were just like that sometimes. Lyta freaked out, but I think it’s just ‘cause he has some of the Dreaming in him. Huh, Danny?” she coos, bouncing him a couple times before being reminded that he is heavier now than an infant.
“He visits?” Hob asks distantly, tugging on his ear as he watches Daniel, who watches him, eyes wide and unblinking. The stars track instantly to his hand, following it until Hob realizes that it bears the Dreamstone and offers his pinky to Daniel to play with. Daniel latches onto it immediately and Hob is-
Done for.
“Nah,” Rose says, oblivious to his melting into a lovestruck puddle at her feet. “And we like it that way. But he said that Daniel was annoyed that we hadn’t named him yet, so he told us the name he used in the Dreaming, and it stuck. The only other time he visited was a couple months ago. He said he was going on a journey…?” she trails off, and Hob belatedly realizes that she is expecting an answer, and that he must, eventually, take his eyes off of the babe.
“Hell,” he says, curling his knuckle so that Daniel can’t take the ring and choke on it while he isn’t looking. Rose and Lyta stare at him, the latter looking a bit smug about his answer. “Er, literally. I was there, too.”
“He said he might be gone for a while,” Rose prompts.
“He also took the opportunity to remind us that he’ll eventually come back to take my baby,” Lyta says, folding her arms. “So I was kind of hoping he would be.”
Hob winces. “Well, he was captured, but I sort of freed him, so. Sorry about that. He’s a dickhead, but he’s also my friend. My oldest friend.”
Dream chooses then to reappear on Hob’s other side in a swirl of sand- feeling petty, apparently, as he allows the grains to scatter across the floor of the apartment when Hob knows damn well he can reabsorb them with a thought, the bastard. Rose takes a startled step backward, twisting to protect Daniel from him, and Hob is tugged with them by Daniel’s stubborn grip on his finger.
Dream’s gaze lands on their hands, his face twitching, but whatever news he has troubles him too deeply to comment. “Something is wrong,” he says with a deep frown, echoing his words from earlier that evening. “I have not governed the Land with the consideration it has clearly required out of respect for Alianora’s privacy.”
“Is Barbie okay? Where’s Wanda?” Rose asks urgently.
“She is safe,” Dream replies, voice soft, turning his gaze to the ceiling and striding slowly into the living area. “For now.” He stops seemingly at random, never looking down from the fine orange-peel drywall. “Who else lives in this building?”
“Well- besides us, Hal, Wanda, and Barbie, there’s just… George,” Rose says with a shudder. “And he’s weird. Like, actually weird. Not just the freaky dream shit-“
“Oi,” Hob gripes like there isn’t a dream baby with space eyes trying to pry his ring off.
“Like, I think he’s a creep, only I’ve never actually seen him do anything wrong.”
Dream’s head tips toward the night-dark window over the sink as she speaks, eyeing it with a strange gleam. “Is your brother here?” he asks in that same soft tone. She shakes her head.
“He’s spending the night at a friend’s house. Why?”
He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t need to; as if on cue, three murky birds, vaguely cuckoo-patterned, fly in through the closed window, unaffected by the physics of the thing.
“Eugh,” Rose yelps as the flap past her, landing on Dream’s shoulders and the mess of his hair like it’s an actual bird’s nest.
“Nightmares,” he murmurs, eyeing Daniel with something not unlike disdain as he abandons Hob’s ring to reach for them. “Of the Land. And not made by my hand.” He looks to Rose and Lyta, banishing the birds with a flick of his wrist. “Your friend is in danger. If the cuckoos are here, they have already reached her and Wanda. I could destroy them, but doing so places their minds in peril. The Nightmares are not mine, and it is not my magic.”
“So what do we do?” Rose asks urgently.
“When Alianora passed, she must have conceded her mantle to Barbara. Whatever nightmare the cuckoos present to her, I can feel that it is causing the Land to become turbulent, as though they have reached the deepest parts of her psyche and are threatening tear them from their roots. The Porpentine protects her, so long as she does not relinquish it, though I fear whoever formed the cuckoos is attempting to take it and thus its power. With it, they could destroy the Dreaming from the inside out.”
“Okay, asshole, but what do we do?” Lyta hisses, and Hob, despite the flare of indignation on Dream’s behalf, is kind of impressed by her bravery.
“I can take your sleeping minds to the Land,” Dream says, gaze drifting back to Daniel, who stares up at him, his eyes no longer star fields but instead a clear, human green. “You can speak with her, urge her to remember herself. Wanda endures her own nightmares, though without the effects of the Porpentine they are drawing to their natural conclusion. The three of you may be able to help her recognize that she is being deceived.”
“What about Daniel?” Rose asks, gently taking his hand where it still reaches for Dream.
“I’ll watch him,” Hob says immediately.
“Hob,” Dream says almost warningly. Hob glares at him.
“What, so you can fuck off to wherever you came from while our backs are turned?” Lyta scoffs. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“I wouldn’t,” Hob says, still utterly bewildered by the thought that Dream would, seeing as he is visibly uncomfortable just being in the same room as Daniel. “I-“ he sighs in frustration before, quicker than she can snatch it away, he takes her arm. He doesn’t like using his powers in this way, but with Barbie’s life at stake and fate of the Dreaming resting on it, he sees little other choice. “I won’t.” And he wills her to believe it, pours his sincerity, his care for his own son and for Dream (and thus Daniel) into her via the same almost-telepathy he uses in his function.
Oddly, she still doesn’t seem entirely convinced, caught somewhere between the instinct to protect her son, her unwillingness to trust anyone in Dream’s sphere, and what she must know intrinsically is genuine honesty from him. Thankfully, he doesn’t need to try again.
“I think he means it Lyta. He’s different. I can just feel it.”
Daniel, to drive the point home, is already leaning out of Rose’s arms to reach for him, his uncanny, unblinking gaze fixating on him. Lyta, mouth still twisted unhappily but apparently convinced, relents. “Fine. But if anything happens to him, if I come back and find out you’ve taken him anyway, there is nothing. That can stop me from hunting you down.”
Hob nods, having a funny feeling she means it and not wishing to press his luck by responding. Without Rose actively holding him back, Daniel immediately latches onto Hob’s neck, and Hob, centuries out of practice holding any child older than an infant, his caught off-guard by the weight of him. By the time he balances Daniel in his arms and looks back up, Dream, Rose, and Lyta are gone.
For a moment, he and Daniel only stare at one another, the latter reaching up to touch his hair with an air of mild interest. “Would you like some dinner?”
Daniel perks up. “Yeah.”
“Alright,” Hob replies, hoisting him up a little further and giving him a smile, heart clenching a little when he gets a small one back, shy and reserved and achingly like Dream’s. It’s not Dream’s kid, he tells himself sternly, even though it is as much as it isn’t. Don’t get attached, Gadling. They don’t even like you. You’ll give him back and that’ll be the end of it. “Let’s raid your pantry then, eh?”
“I want Cheerios,” Daniel says, zeroing in on a cabinet door with an intensity that can only mean the Cheerios are behind it.
“I want Cheerios please,” Hob corrects mindlessly.
“…Please,” Daniel repeats, sounding moody about it. Not Dream’s son, Hob reminds himself.
Yet no matter how many warnings and reminders he gives himself, when Dream and the others return two hours later to find him sitting on the couch and scrolling through his email, Daniel hugging a stuffed lamb and pressed fast asleep to his chest, he is no more convinced and no less attached.