Chapter Text
Morpheus leans wearily into the hard planes of his throne with a soft sigh. Hob’s words still ring in his memory, and every echo of them pierces him to his core.
You have blood on your hands, Dream.
He slowly turns his head to stare down at his hands, blinking a few times.
You have not erased the bloodguilt you claim they’ve told you I have on my hands.
He lets his eyes drift closed, sagging into the seat, and searches his vast memory for anything to help him make sense of these words.
Bloodguilt. Father and son. Hob had mentioned something about the crimes punishable by the Three.
Fear twines its cold tendrils around his heart, strangling it in a hopeless vice. Morpheus opens his eyes as though shifting his gaze would do something to relieve him of the images haunting his memory.
It does not.
He can still see his son’s disembodied head on the sand where he had left him.
He remembers with cruel clarity the anguish on his child’s face moments before he’d turned his back and left.
Bloodguilt.
An emotion too dark, too raw to name coils in the core of his being, spreading its darkness through the entirety of him until it threatens to swallow him whole. He shifts, lifting a hand to his face, and rubs at his eyes. A weary sigh escapes him.
“Dream?” His eyes fly open when he hears his sister’s voice.
Displaced water sloshes underfoot, the noise of it echoing in the cavernous dark surrounding him as she moves. Morpheus shifts into an upright position on his throne, his brows furrowing as he turns his head to rest his gaze on his younger sister.
“Forgive me, my sister,” he whispers, tilting his head in quiet confusion. “I did not intend…”
“I don’t believe anyone intends to find themselves in my realm, brother,” Despair answers softly, pausing when she comes to stand by his side. She reaches a hand up to clasp a curved edge of his throne and leans against it. “But I do find myself wondering how it is you’ve arrived here. Of course, I know…but well, it wouldn’t do if I told you that, would it?”
Grief tightens its grip on Morpheus’ heart, deepens the crease of his brows. A muscle in his jaw twitches.
“It is a strange matter, my sister,” he remarks. “I believe it is something that has not yet come to pass, and yet…my heart already holds its sorrow.”
“He told you, then,” Despair says, nodding slowly. “That friend of yours. He seems like a nice one. I don't think he’s come to see me just yet. Came very close one time, very close. But it was right about the time you showed up….one of those days once every–”
“Once every hundred years, yes,” Morpheus mumbles. “I cannot understand it. What he implied. It should be easier to bear if I knew it to be false, and yet. It is not in him to say such things, not to me.”
Despair listens attentively, watching quietly. His gaze flits briefly up to meet hers before dropping to the murky waters at their feet. He continues.
“However, if he speaks truth, then the reality is one far too bleak, abysmal, even for me, sister.”
Despair hums, deep in thought. “You’re welcome here. I mean, I suppose you don’t want to be here. As I said before, no one really does, but then…no one visits me much. No reason to, I suppose. I meant to say that your company is a welcome one. I do get so lonely here.”
The corner of Morpheus’ lips twitches in what, in a happier moment, might have been a smile. The expression is too doleful to be called such now.
“Perhaps that is why we find ourselves here.” He pauses, turning his head to gaze at the mirrors suspended in the space around the two of them and draws in a breath. “He mentioned Destruction. I remember that now. Johanna Constantine was with him when they broke into the Fates’ dwelling, and as he recounts, she opened a book, the book the Fates keep wherein is recorded all that has happened, all that is and all that shall come to pass. I believe he saw Delirium there, as well.”
Despair tilts her head, arching a brow. “Delirium? Haven’t seen her in a long while. But she has been looking for Destruction, hasn’t she? I miss him. I think I’ve missed him the most of all of us. Delirium’s been wanting to find him, she has.”
“Indeed.” Morpheus turns to look at her, his dark brows furrowing. “Hob also told me he did not know what it was that drove me to commit the act which has yet to come to pass. That is,” he pauses, his jaw working, and swallows thickly. “The death of my son.”
Despair stills, her hands flying to her mouth and watches Dream wide-eyed. “Very few people in this world still living know of Destruction’s whereabouts, brother mine,” she answers him. “Your son is among them.”
Morpheus stiffens, the line of his shoulders taught; his eyes narrow just a fraction. “How do you know this? You’ve spoken to him of it?”
Despair nods once. “I visit him, now and then. No one else does. He asks about you, you know. We’ve talked about him–Destruction, I mean.”
Morpheus sits in silence, contemplating her words behind closed eyes. When he speaks after a time, his voice carries an edge Despair has only ever heard when his temper walks the thin line between calm and rage. “Do you think that I would take the life of the being most dear to me in exchange for something as paltry as the location of my estranged brother who explicitly expressed no wish to be sought after?”
Despair pales and rocks back a step. She has seen his fury before and has no wish to meet with it again.
“I can honestly say I don’t know, my brother,” she answers him. “And it seems, neither do you. Given that you have no knowledge of such events as have not happened yet, save what little tidbits that Hob of yours has given you. It appears that your choice is either to take him for his word or not.”
He draws in a sharp, shaking breath, as though her words have struck him a blow.
“I–I know not,” Morpheus answers her, stricken. “If it is true, then the reality is greater than I can bear. I fear that–perhaps…” He leans forward on his throne, resting his elbows on his knees and studies her. “Is there truly no other way? Must it be the death of my son that leads us to our brother?”
Despair regards him with sadness in her gaze, her heart aching at the vulnerable strain of her brother’s words, and she’s about to speak when a memory presents itself in her mind. Half-remembered and fleeting, already fading even as she focuses on it.
Destruction. Speaking to her. Flashing that smile she’d loved so much. A hand squeezing hers. A promise made.
Despair takes a step closer to her brother’s throne and reaches out to lay her cold hand on his. “There is, my brother. One and only one. He swore to me never to speak of it, but…” she glances away, blinking a few times. “I think this is an exception.”
Morpheus tilts his head up to look at her, all of his attention on her every word. “Go on.”
She releases a weary sigh. “Centuries ago, long after he left us but not so long that I’ve forgotten–I met him. I asked him why he wouldn’t come back; he evaded, shook it off, smiled that damned smile of his. Stared off into the horizon like some hero of old,” she rambles, shaking her head. “But I persisted. I needed something to hold on to, because even despair needs the slightest sliver of hope to exist. Without that, even I should fade away, and so I asked him. He gave in, eventually. He told me, but he swore me to silence Morpheus. He made me swear never to speak of it to any of you, you know.”
Morpheus’ eyes flash; there’s darkness in his gaze, but she continues, undaunted.
“I figured now that if your only other option was to ask Orpheus for it…and presuming he’d ask a boon of you, one I think both you and I would already know…if it were me, I’d do anything I could to avoid that. I’d run the whole face of the world before daring to face that choice.”
“I cannot refute the sentiment,” Morpheus answers quietly.
“And so, as I’m telling you now. I know where you can find him, and you don’t need to bring any more grief on your head by it. Needless to say, the wrath of the Kindly Ones.”
The Kindly Ones.
Bloodguilt.
The words resonate in Morpheus’ mind, and the old sorrow stirs once more in his heart, twining skeletal fingers around it.
“I shall not speak a word of this to another, save Delirium, my sister, I give you my solemn word,” he answers her.
Despair regards him with the faintest shadow of a smile.
“Well, then. Listen closely, and remember.”
She leans in then, and in hushed tones, divulges a secret she has long kept buried in the folds of her heart.