Chapter Text
You killed my sheep. My favorite sheep.
Jessamy is dead. She was there, Dream saw her for the first time in ten years. His dearest friend, his beautiful raven, dead on the ground. Tears fill his eyes. She was right there and she cannot be gone, not when she had been flying towards him, breaking the glass with the strength of a dream. Jessamy cannot have been removed from this realm with a single gunshot. Shock and horror spread through him.
Denial is the first stage of grief.
What gives you the right to deal a pain so deep?
Anger comes next, warring with depression to find a space in this pathetic mortal frame. Alexander Burgess murdered his raven. He will never forgive this child. Tears and hatred pool in eyes that are windows into the vastness of Night.
He felt it when she died, the tether binding the two of them so closely breaking off into nothing as she fell.
Dream hurts.
His heart, for he has a heart in this form, tries to beat, tries to spread oxygenated blood throughout his system. It is the natural response of the sympathetic nervous system that this body has. But there is no oxygen, so no color fills Dream’s face as he weeps.
Don’t you know that pain you sow is pain you reap?
He is going to hurt Alexander Burgess. He is going to poison his mind with darkness, never let him even think of light ever again. The boy is going to scream, and no one will hear. No one will save him from the horrors the Nightmare Lord will inflict.
Morpheus will force Alex into a cage, trap him within his own mind and parade around him all the things and people he loves. Then he will destroy them, one by one as Alex stands paralyzed, unable to act. The Nightmare will continue with Randel coming home and his father ignoring Alex even when he stands directly before him, even as he kills for him, bleeds for him, even as Randel does nothing but exist and yet gets heaped with exorbitant praise and Alex gets nothing, no matter what.
Before I’m done, you will learn that it’s not so fun to take! You came to my home to steal, but now you’ll become my meal. A trade, you see? Take from you like you took from me
The nightmare will consume Alexander. He will die after decades of torment, after the darkness eventually bores of hearing his screams. When there no longer comes any satisfaction from torturing the murderer, he will be dumped into the tender care of Lucifer Morningstar and imprisoned in Hell.
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There’s been a misunderstanding, we never came here to steal. But now that I see we’ve done some damage, maybe you and I can make a deal
Alex is lying. He would extract this promise not to harm him or Paul and bind Dream to it, leaving the Endless to rot. No, Dream cannot trust Alex, not after everything.
For your gift I’ve one to reply…you shall be the final man to die.
"Your punishment then, shall be a gift. The gift...of eternal...sleep."