Chapter Text
The Shores of Creation stretch ageless beneath cliffs of sharp stone, glittering black sand and writhing black sea and the black silhouette of Lord Morpheus, limned silver in moonlight and magic.
He has been here for days now. A gleaming little shape at his feet shifts and morphs, visible from far away, like light rushing out from behind a rise. It has been a week since their tryst, and Lucienne has begun to worry that her lord is avoiding her. It is apparent, though, when she calls “my lord?” and he turns to face her, a tiny pleased smile on his face, that he had been doing no such thing.
“Yes, my Lucienne?” he teases as she approaches. It is a familiar joke and one she is relieved to hear, and so she graces it with a fond smile. The little shape at his feet, up close vaguely humanoid, dims to a faint gleam without its creator’s attention.
He looks well. Not quite so reedy as he has been following his captivity, some color to his wind-scoured cheeks. “How goes the work, your majesty?” Lucienne asks, peering past his shoulder at the other half-formed shapes in the sand in varying stages of creation.
Lord Morpheus inclines his head in thought. “It…goes.” he hedges, the corners of his eyes crinkling with her answering laugh. “Admittedly I’ve not made much headway in the past…how long have I been here?”
Lucienne hisses in a sympathetic breath through her teeth. “Four days, my lord,” she tells him. It has never been uncommon for him to lose himself in his work. “Nothing is the matter, but I thought I would check in nonetheless.”
“Ah.” Lord Morpheus looks troubled, and his eyes flicker away from her. “My apologies. I had no intention of concerning you.”
She hadn’t been concerned. This is something he has always done. So strange, the things which he allows to wring guilt from him these days. “I have everything handled,” she tells him, stern but not unkind. “Your work is important.”
Lucienne can tell right away that he will not be dissuaded. “Regardless, it will not do for me to shirk my responsibilities elsewhere.” He inclines his head to her again, this time in thanks. “I shall return at once. Thank you, Lucienne.”
A long moment of silence, in which Lucienne makes it clear she has no intention of leaving, and her lord watches her expectantly, until at last he sighs like a particularly headstrong child anticipating a scolding. Or an unfathomably immense and all-powerful creature anticipating being asked to stand still a moment. These two categories of being have significant overlap. “Walk with me, my lord. On the Shores.”
Lord Morpheus considers refusing, but only briefly. Lucienne can tell because his shoulders steel straighter, and then relax altogether. He says nothing, but he doesn’t disappear and he doesn’t shut himself off from her. Not quite the aspect of a damaged and kiss-drunk young man who shared her bed, but she would not ask that of him now, and he would not let himself be coaxed into that state so easily.
She holds her hand out to him, and his expression changes, a twitch of yearning flitting across his brow. He does not move so Lucienne steps closer, her hand still outstretched in offering, like he is some wild thing. Is that how he feels, even now? Her fingers touch his and his lips part on a breathy little sigh, his lashes brush his cheeks when she slips her hand into his. Someday she’ll convince him to ask for this when he needs it. “Walk with me,” she repeats, and she tugs him along with her.
Reluctantly he falls into step beside her, answers the squeeze of her hand with one of his own. Glittering black sand shifts with the wind, gives way beneath their feet as they walk, and Lucienne does not ask her lord to speak. The Shores of Creation are not a peaceful place, energy crackling and waves crashing, but at the moment it feels quiet.
“I truly did not intend to be gone for so long,” Lord Morpheus murmurs. Lucienne looks up at him and he stares straight ahead. “I was not avoiding you.”
Lucienne smiles, and her lord looks down at her, puzzled. “The possibility did cross my mind,” she tells him, “but I wasn’t especially worried.”
“No?” he smiles, his tension melting away.
“I know you,” she tells him simply, earnestly. “I need you to trust that.”
Her lord stares at her a moment longer and is silent. Eventually, she gets a slow nod, and he looks back out ahead of them, a misty sheen in his eyes. Lucienne drops her cheek to his shoulder and leans into him. His hand is starting to warm in her own and trembles only sporadically. “I do have an idea I’d like to ask you about.”
Without looking at him, she can hear his amusement. “I thought we weren’t working right now?”
“You’re not, I am.” He hums his indulgent understanding. “I think it’s time the ballroom saw use again.”
Lord Morpheus hums again, now a curious sound. “And what is the occasion?”
“The restoration of the realm, of course. Belated, I know—but perhaps it’s better to have waited, what with all the excitement surrounding Rose Walker. Everyone should feel settled by now. I feel we’re due a celebration.” When Lord Morpheus doesn’t answer, Lucienne looks up at him from his shoulder. He stares down at her thoughtfully. “Unless that sounds like too much fun for you.”
He grins, and he gives her hand an affectionate squeeze, and he—daringly, so bravely—leans over to kiss the top of her head. Lucienne keeps her expression as well as she can, but even so he seems embarrassed by the spontaneity, and he looks out across the shore again. “I think it’s a good idea,” he says, a bit hoarse. “I cede control to you, of course. Permanently, if you’d like.”
Lucienne stares at him. Celebrations at the palace were once common, when Lady Calliope’s grace and light sang through the halls. The ballroom answered to her, shaping itself to suit the floods of dreamfolk it hosted. After Lady Calliope and Lord Morpheus parted, the ballroom sat empty for centuries. Eventually Lord Morpheus began to allow the palace staff to host small parties, then larger gatherings, but no one else did he allow to control the room. “You—you do not have to do that.”
“You are better at these things than I am,” he says. These things means friendliness and hospitality and general positivity. “And besides, you have always enjoyed hosting festivities. If you would like to do so more frequently it is no bother to me.”
She does not know what to say. Her chest feels tight and it’s suddenly hard to keep her feet moving at a steady pace on the shifting black sand. “You do not owe me anything.”
“This isn’t—” he looks down at her, at her forcibly blank expression and fogging glasses. “Lucienne. You misunderstand.”
“Do I, though?” she stops in her tracks, drops his hand, though she regrets it when she sees how reluctantly it returns to his side. “Tell me why now. What is this, my lord?”
His jaw shifts, he looks helpless, he looks confused. “It is trust,” he says, his voice very small. “It is part of me.”
She wants to tell him, I know you. Like I know the walls of my home, I know you. She says nothing.
Lord Morpheus swallows hard. “I must admit,” he murmurs, hoarse again, “I do not know what I’m doing wrong here.”
“You’re not—” Lucienne breathes out, stares up at the sky, counts to ten. “I need to know you are not willing to give yourself away to me just because we have been intimate, my lord.”
He glares, lifts his chin defiantly, looks ready to speak, and says nothing.
“Because this is something you do,” she says, softly now. “When you are lonely. When you are in pain.”
“What exactly is it that you think I’m doing?”
“You are—you’re bartering yourself,” Lucienne should be quiet now, she knows she should, but the swell of grief in her demands to be given form. “You’re treating this like a transaction.”
“Are relationships not built on reciprocity?”
“What happens when I cannot reciprocate, my lord?” Lucienne draws in a shuddering breath. “What happens when I disappoint you?”
Dawning realization in his eyes, shock and fury close behind, shuttered and silenced by old bitterness. He says nothing. Lucienne thinks of Nada often. Until now, she wasn’t sure Lord Morpheus did at all. “I love you,” she tells him, and he looks away, and he is confused, and she thought he understood. “I am asking you not to make more of it than that.”
“You love me.” Abrupt, flat, snapping. “You tell me you love me. What am I feeling, then?”
“I imagine it’s much the same, my lord.”
For the space of a blink his expression is anguished, then the coldness slips back in, brittle. “And it is not enough.”
“It is too much.”
“Because you are afraid of me.” It’s probably supposed to be reproachful, or mocking, or dripping with disbelief, but it comes out all wrong, all stricken and unmoored. Lord Morpheus turns away from her, not quickly enough to hide the tears in his eyes.
Lucienne wants to reach for him, to hold him and reassure him, but there is a part of her that is very small and very cold and it is irritated, and it will not be made to feel bad for this. “You asked in the beginning if I was entertaining ideas of a romance. The answer was ‘no’ then, and it is ‘no’ now.” A strike of anger then, thorn-sharp, slick on her tongue. “Why would you hold me to a standard you cannot hold yourself to?”
He turns his back to her completely, faces the roiling black waves and unforgiving wind. No further movement from him, no sound. “I cannot be yours any more than I already am,” she tells him. “I can be your friend and your lover but I cannot be yours.” She stares at his back through her fogged-up glasses and her next breath shudders out of her. “You have done terrible things, my lord. I will not be the reason for more.”
Lord Morpheus stills impossibly, an absence of movement that takes the place of a flinch. Lucienne aches for him, for herself, for Lady Calliope, for dear Nada. Her lord bows his head. He has changed so much in the time she’s known him. He is still so dangerous, and so fragile. “No, you will not.” He sounds awful, hurt and choked and nearly swept away by the wind. “I should not have…I apologize, Lucienne. You’re right. Of course you are.”
She would prefer his rage over his contrition. Her understanding and her love of him run deep in her being, and with that understanding and that love is the certainty that he has never been of sound mind. How could he be with his own consciousness under constant attack from the screaming collective? His effort to mitigate damage done by his madness is all she could ask for. She does not want his apologies. “It’s not your fault,” is what she tells him.
Lord Morpheus turns back to her now, his aspect all tattered seams, red-lined eyes and hunched shoulders and quiet, wounded dignity. “You are kind to me, even now,” he says, and he smiles, tiny and rueful. “I can hardly be blamed for misreading certain things.”
It’s a joke, and it startles Lucienne to laugh, even though she wants to cry, because he is implying that her being kind to him was enough to cause such a dramatic lapse in judgment. Her poor mad king, her dear broken friend. “We did sleep together,” she teases, “I should think that would be more misleading than anything.”
“No, you were clear in your intentions,” he looks back out at the roiling sea. It is more turbulent than when Lucienne first arrived. “And I was, too.” Lord Morpheus is quiet for a moment, and when he looks back at her his expression is unreadable. “I do not know why I…” he trails off, and his brows furrow, and he looks lost.
Lucienne does not know why, either. “Will you tell me? If you get confused again?”
“You should not have to…” Lord Morpheus swallows, appears briefly overcome by humiliation. Lucienne is suddenly, forcefully, astounded that he hasn’t decided to hate her for this. “Yes. I will.”
“My lord—”
He shakes his head, gives her another tiny smile. “I would be alone now, my friend,” he murmurs. Moonlight frames him, his hair whips with the wind, his galaxy-lined coat flashes its stars. He is always so beautiful.
Lucienne finds she can’t quite muster a verbal response, so she just nods.
Lord Morpheus inclines his head once and turns back to the sea. Lucienne takes the dismissal for what it is and makes her way back up the sparkling black beach.
Several days pass. He is avoiding her this time, hasn’t so much as glanced her way since that conversation on the Shores. She is resolved to give him his space, and then it begins raining. Lucienne does not let herself feel bad about it. Then it begins to storm, and the ground shifts with gentle tremors, and she is too busy with damage control to feel much of anything but worry. The timing is not lost on her. She tries not to think about it.
An event like this hasn’t occurred since the King of Dreams’ return. Different from the frisson that young Rose Walker sent rippling through the fabric of reality, this is entirely self-contained, and the epicenter is the palace. Lord Morpheus has locked himself away to ride out a loss of control over the collective unconscious. All things considered, this has been months in the making. She would be surprised it’s taken so long for current events to take their toll if she didn’t have an inkling of exactly why it’s happening now.
Hours are spent reassuring visiting dreamers, taking census of the palace staff, assisting Mervyn in locating damages. The damages are minor, everyone in the vicinity is healthy and accounted for, but for one exception—no one can locate Matthew. Jessamy’s memory is still too raw for Lucienne to feel anything but panicked as she sends search parties through the palace and retires to the library on her own.
She makes her way down the aisles, replacing fallen volumes as she goes, and she thinks.
Thankfully she is not alone with her thoughts for long, because a shadow glides fitfully overhead and alights on a shelf several meters away whose rightful contents lie scattered on the floor. Lucienne blinks and approaches the shelf, sure enough finding it occupied by Matthew, who begins speaking before she can chastise him for worrying everyone. “It’s not your fault.”
Lucienne’s hands tighten into fists where they hang at her sides. “I am well aware of that.”
“Okay.” Matthew bobs his head with uncharacteristically easy agreement. Lucienne takes a moment to really look at him. Birds are not expressive by form, but there’s no mistaking the distress that seems to cling to the raven, even looking past the out-of-sorts feathers and drooping head. “He wanted to make sure you know.”
“And he couldn’t tell me himself?”
“Can’t move yet,” Matthew says very quietly. “It was the first thing he’s said in hours. Seemed pretty important.”
Lucienne stares at Matthew. There’s a rising swell of horror in her, thick in her chest and throat. “Matthew,” she murmurs, “what happened?”
He swallows audibly, a strange sound, and his voice wobbles. “He, ah—it was one of those. Episodes. Losses of control, or whatever. A big one.” Matthew is shivering, shaggy black feathers near rattling, and he fluffs up as though to warm himself.
“Oh, Matthew,” Lucienne breathes. “You saw?”
Matthew bobs his head rapidly, a close approximation of an emphatic nod. “Yeah, I saw.” His next breath rushes like a terrified sob, and Lucienne raises one hand, and he ducks underneath it so she can stroke slowly down his back. “What was—I mean—was that him? And if that’s him, what—what are we even looking at when we talk to him—”
“Forget these questions.” Lucienne says, and she sounds more like Lord Morpheus than she’s entirely comfortable with. “He is as we see him. You could drive yourself mad trying to figure out the truth.” She is speaking from experience. This is not something she dwells on. She pets Matthew’s feathers, scritches behind his head. Grief and anger compete in her. “He should not have shown you. You are much too young to reckon with this.”
“He didn’t mean to,” Matthew says, still shaky. “He was trying to get me to leave and I wouldn’t, and he tried to make me leave but I guess he couldn’t? And then the door disappeared. I think he was pretty gone after that.” Matthew leans into her hand, closes his bead-bright eyes as though to calm himself. “That’s not good, right? That means something’s really wrong?”
“Don’t worry about this more than you’ve already been made to,” Lucienne murmurs. She can worry plenty for both of them. “Try to let it go, Matthew. Try to forget.” The raw terror and discomfort would linger, but the image of an Endless even partially unveiled is a difficult memory to cling to. It should gradually sieve away if he lets it. “Tell me what happened beforehand.”
“Uh, well, it was raining, and he had me out doing this survey, but I got kind of worried? With how he’s been lately? So I flew back, and it was worse around the castle than out in the countryside, like you said it would be if he—if it was. Bad.” Matthew gives a convulsive shiver, and Lucienne urges him up onto her arm and into the crook of her elbow where he can nestle against her as she pets him. He sighs and seems to deflate, feathers beginning to lie flat. “He wasn’t in the throne room, but I could feel him nearby, and I was flying through your suite, and there were these huge doors.”
Lucienne’s blood runs cold, and her fingers stop moving, twined in soft feathers.
“They opened up, and there was this room, it looked like it was made of white light. No shadows or anything. He was sitting there. Like he collapsed and couldn’t get back up.” Matthew nestles in closer with a sound like a sniffle. “I don’t really remember, then? He was yelling at me to leave, and I was like, no way. For some reason he couldn’t make me leave, either.”
“No,” Lucienne answers, her voice hollow and far-away in her own ears. “The loss of control makes his power diffuse, almost impossible to wield for something as delicate as removing you without harm. Removing the door was to prevent anyone else from coming in. He did not intend to trap you.” She resumes petting down Matthew’s back, avoiding the keen black stare now resting on her. She swallows hard, feels the bird trembling at her side. “I’m sorry, Matthew. I think I may be to blame for this.”
Matthew makes a wordless sound of protest. “What? No, Loosh, look—he made it really clear it’s not your fault. Like, when I say it’s the first thing he said in hours, I mean he was trying to say it for hours. Don’t ask what that sounded like. Fucking hell, poor guy.”
Lucienne does not ask what it sounded like when her dearest friend, at the mercy of his own composition, could not form a sentence for his agony.
“I think that’s the worst part of it, actually,” Matthew muses, and it’s so uncharacteristic of him to muse, like the experience has shaken him into thoughtfulness. “He can be such a prick, but what I just saw is inside of him all the time, and it hurts him. Or is that oversimplifying things?”
“No, that’s the essence of it.” She thinks for a moment. “And don’t call him a prick, Matthew, my goodness.”
“Sorry,” Matthew says, perfunctory.
“I need to go to him,” Lucienne murmurs with an apologetic scritch behind his cheek. “Will you be alright?”
Matthew leans into her hand. “Yeah. Make sure he’s okay.”
Matthew takes to the air again, off to assure everyone of his safety, hopefully. For a moment Lucienne wishes for wings again, for the strange uncertainty of her youth in the Dreaming which was impossibly easier to navigate than this bizarre wisdom.
Lucienne hastily makes her way through the palace corridors, along the way ducking out of sight of friends and acquaintances and people she, just months ago now, would have given anything to speak to again. They are obstacles to her now as she finally reaches the hall that houses her private chambers, tucked away and comfortable and a new source of trepidation.
She looks to her left and sees the elaborate wood paneling of the other walls, unmarred by the silhouette of a grand pair of doors. Lucienne approaches the wall, the wall that should be a door that should hide her lord, if any logic at all could be applied in this realm.
She puts her hand to the wall, then her ear, and she feels nothing, hears nothing. The castle’s architecture has settled after the quakes and everything is calm. There is a tide rising in Lucienne’s chest, guilt which wants to be set free in tears or in rage. She presses her forehead to the wall hard enough she imagines she can feel the grain of the wood, feel his lifeforce in inanimate matter. “I’m here,” she says to nothing and no one and her god, “I’m here.”
The door does not appear. Lucienne turns, leans her back against the wall. The pristine corridor—whole, not decaying, not unalive—stretches out in front of her and blurs in her vision. She slides to the ground, pulls her knees to her chest.
Has she helped him at all? Has she only made things worse? Was this selfish, hedonistic, gluttonous of her, to feast of her god and revel in his reappearance and forget, fatally, that which he is? Is she no better than the dreamfolk who fled? Worse, perhaps, for having the audacity to think herself uniquely capable of putting him back together.
Lucienne sits for hours. She has waited for him for a hundred years.
Then he appears before her, standing like nothing at all has happened in the middle of the corridor. It takes her weary mind far too long to understand that she is seeing him, that he has returned to her again, but when she understands she scrambles to her feet, and he stumbles. Lucienne moves to steady him and he flinches away from her. For a long moment they stand there, Lucienne with her arms lowering to her sides, Lord Morpheus looking at her without a trace of recognition. “My lord,” Lucienne murmurs, and he flinches again as though she had shouted.
He should not be up and about yet, and that’s becoming obvious. His face is deathly pale and streaked with the powdery remnants of tears, his clothes rumpled and askew, his hair lank with the lingering dampness of sweat. There are two spots of bright color high on his cheeks and his eyes are glassy, unfocused. He looks ill. He looks confused. Lucienne takes a tiny step closer, tries to discern if the tears in his eyes are from pain or exhaustion or everything else inside of him. “Lord Morpheus,” she tries again, “do you know where you are?”
Another moment of labored silence, and then something changes in her lord’s expression, some modicum of lucidity returns to him. “Lucienne,” he mouths silently, and Lucienne doesn’t think she imagines the way his shoulders slump with relief. His voice is halting, hoarse and strained when he manages, “I have something to tell you.”
“Matthew already told me,” Lucienne says. Speech sounds painful for him. He has been screaming for hours.
Lord Morpheus shakes his head. “I want you to have your celebration,” he says, and Lucienne fails to rein in her confounded noise. He must take it as a protest because he continues, “And you will have full control of the ballroom, and that is not negotiable, and it is not because I want anything in return, it is because I want you to be happy.” He blinks hard and he sways in place. “I apologize if that did not make sense. I will make a greater effort. Later.”
Lucienne lurches forward just in time to steady him with a hand on his elbow that makes him gasp, and she wraps that arm and then the other around his back, pulls him to her and buries her face in his shoulder. Her lord sways, from the touch or from exhaustion, and his own arms are tentative as they embrace her, and still he trembles, and the exhale in her ear is high and breathless.
Lucienne blinks with desperate tears, whispers, “I’ve got you,” and her lord collapses. His knees buckle, and she lowers them both to the ground, and he clings to her, and his strangled sob is torn from him. Lucienne twines a hand in his hair, kisses the side of his neck, whispers, “you idiot,” and she hopes that no one stumbles upon them for their own sake.
It is a long time before Lord Morpheus can speak. He doesn’t raise his head . “It wasn’t you,” he murmurs. “You don’t believe me but it wasn’t because of our conversation.”
She is, in fact, more inclined to believe him when he collapses in her arms and every word sounds like labor. “What was it, then?”
“Everything,” he says, and that doesn’t mean their argument wasn’t the last straw, but his voice is tiny when he confesses, “I was cold. I was cold and I forgot to breathe, for a moment.” The King of Dreams should never want for air, though he may prefer to breathe, and he certainly should not feel cold in a realm that is himself, and he is so shaken that these are frequent occurrences, and he is so hurt that they can be incapacitating, overwhelming, catastrophic. Lucienne holds him and feels him shiver and gasp.
“You could have asked for me,” Lucienne grits, all bitterness and rage and exasperation, “I would have come to you, you know I would have, and instead you terrified Matthew—”
“I know,” Lord Morpheus nods, clutches her, “I know. I know.”
“Why, then?” she snaps, her nails scraping his scalp.
“A moment, please,” he gasps, and Lucienne realizes again how difficult every word seems to be, how tense he is in her arms, “just a moment, I’ll answer you.”
Lucienne relaxes her hold immediately, feels the frame of him shudder with relief, and she feels wretched. She pets the back of his head, nuzzles behind his ear, reminds herself that she trusts him and loves him more than anything, that she waited for him for more than a hundred years and he came back to her, that he has confessed to loving her in all but his own words. “Forgive me.”
“It’s alright,” her lord whispers, and, after long moments of just their breathing, “I did not want to be manipulative. I did not want to call upon you so soon after you had set a clear boundary.” These are very obviously new words for him and it really would be funny if Lucienne didn’t feel so proud that he obviously understood what he was saying, and if he didn’t sound so shaken, so remorseful. “I should not have left the door.”
“Then why did you?”
He sighs, and it rattles, and he says, “It was not on purpose. I did not want to ask for you but I wanted you to find me, subconsciously, I suppose.” A moment to catch his breath before he says, devastatingly, “I wanted you to hold my hand. I’m sorry.”
She is going to rend and tear and kill and destroy everything around her that isn’t him, which is nothing, and which is unduly frustrating. “I would never deny you that for any reason, no matter how we disagree. Do you understand that?”
Lord Morpheus swallows hard. “I don’t think so.”
“I am your friend,” Lucienne tells him, feels him shake, holds him close. “Be still. I am your friend.”
He doesn’t understand, he sobs like he doesn’t, like he still thinks this is something he cannot ask for, “I do not want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t.” This need not be painful, and she can prove that to him. “Let me be your friend. Ask for what you need. I won’t let you take more. Trust that.” Lucienne says the words and then finds herself marveling at the simplicity of it. What she has is abundant trust in her own wisdom and lived experience, trust in him when he has none in himself. She knows him, she knows him, she knows him. “I am not leaving you alone.”
Her lord says nothing more after that. Her words have felled him as deftly as his exhaustion, and he succumbs to sentiment, he lets it overtake him. He buries his head in her shoulder and he accepts what he needs, which is the arms around him, the lips pressed to his hair, the softness of her voice in his ear. If he cries he does so silently. She will allow him that dignity.
“I need to speak to Matthew,” Lord Morpheus says after many long minutes, hoarse and muffled.
“You do,” Lucienne agrees. “Not right now. Right now you need to stay with me.”
“I am alright,” her lord says, gently now.
Lucienne sighs. “You were avoiding me. Before this.”
“I was. I was trying to do that, still, actually.”
Lucienne actually manages to laugh even though she still kind of wants to smack him. “I don’t think that will ever work out well.”
“I’m realizing that,” he turns his face into the crook of her neck, brushes his lips against the sensitive skin there. “I am so sorry. For all of this.”
“I know.” Her fingers card through his hair, untangle the sweat-matted strands, and she thinks about what she wants to say for a precarious moment. “You have changed so much.”
“I hope so.” Oh, but he surprises her, even now. “I want to do this right.”
Lucienne swallows convulsively, wonders for the first time in a long time if it could be possible, if this part of him isn’t salvageable after all. “I know.”