Log: Complete

[1st-dream-king.livejournal.com]

When; October 2nd, during th Festival of Atonement

Rating; PG for language

Characters; 1st_dream_king Morpheus, bitingnightmare The Corinthian

Summary; Painful truths.....and understanding?

Log;



The nightmare arrived in black leathers over blood red. The gear didn't look quite as casual as his usual jeans and t-shirt affairs, but neither was it the fussy frilly prissy pratly garb John trashed oh so blatantly. He wore a mask as well, the hammered pale gold visage of a skull helm, covering all but his chin and most of his white hair with black mesh on the back. It was a different kind of event, this one, not like that year in which he danced with the lady Pestilence. This was a different time, and a different Corinthian.

He'd arrived with the magus, but upon setting foot on the estate he'd insisted he move about the crowd alone, only to find someone, a man (more than a man) he could recognize across a crowded room, small red stars in his eyes hidden or not.

Morpheus had suggested this outing as a means of enticing Thessaly into accompanying him, and had stayed on to move amongst the myriad mortals, demons, and angels alike.
It was refreshing to be seen as another anonymous mask within a crowd, and throughout the evening he had been asked quite a few times to dance, to drink, and very much celebrate.

After the small theatrical production performed by The Hatter, however, Morpheus had been doused in a scented aphrodisiac, and the evening had become more about fending off amourous advances from strangers than anything else.
Now, quite put out that the spicy scented powder was coating his hair and mask, he was making a hasty exit into the hedge maze adjacent to the ballroom, when a presence more than a figure caught his attention.

He needn't see the figure's physical features to know who it was, the once king of dreams would have known The Corinthian anywhere, no matter how disguised.
A small gesture of a black ( or was it blue?) gloved hand indicated to the nightmare to follow him, then Morpheus passed behind a thick curtain to step onto a shadowed terrace.

The scent of aphrodisiac had made its way out even to the garden where the nightmare had relegated himself. He didn't feel like enjoying the festivities or partaking in John's tricks with the angels. The man had more luck than he, perhaps. Surely he couldn't have expected to find the former Dream King out here, though knowing Morpheus' old habits.... Well, it wasn't his original intention, but as fate would have it, as Destiny's book would write it, he spotted a helm with no spine attached to the front, close and ever familiar. Teetheyes hidden behind the black mesh eyes of his own helm looked the other's way, the colors suited him well.

"I didn't think you could ignore an invitation either," said The Corinthian as he followed Morpheus behind the curtain and into the shadows of a terrace. Instantly he felt the need to light a cigarette, which he kept in his pocket at all times, but he waited.

Morpheus, now out of eyesight of the assembled guests, removed his mask and frowned while regarding the shimmering dust that caught tiny moonlit refractions.

" It seemed a nice enough diversion." he said in that voice that was both a whisper and an echo.
Eyes that had no real color, but rather a dark and liquid depth regarded the nightmare solemnly.

"How do you feel? No lingering ill effects?"
It was concern that prompted the question, but concern with the Corinthian's construction, or how he may *feel* after enduring such a trial was questionable in of itself.
It would not do to return the nightmare to Dream flawed and unusable.

"I guess," said the nightmare, his voice unchanged by the events.

One needn't fix a pitch to sound like a different person all together, though in front of Morpheus he felt at ease, choosing to ditch the sophisticated linguistics used during the Endless' own festivities. Hrm, without any other guests nearby The Corinthian felt comfortable enough to push the skull face up and over his head, exposing teeth eyes and a bit of white-blonde hair. Ex-boss, former lord, or not, Morpheus was not one who could succumb to his gaze, he knew this. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tucked one into his mouth, sparking the tip and taking a drag before he even replied to the... not quite man, not quite perspective.

"Better, a little sore," he said while gesturing to the fading red marks on his wrists. The cuffs had dug deeply into his skin. ".... Thanks," he offered while averting his gaze to exhale.

Miniature starfields danced in those pools of deep memory, but Morpheus did not look politely away as well.
Instead he studied The Corinthian for a few long moments...seeming to measure the truth of the statement agianst whatever portion of the nightmare, be it soul or body, that he saw.

At length the entity once called Dream let out a very human sounding sigh and dropped his gaze.
" I am sorry."
The apology held a deep note of remorse, and of quiet admission.

" I know you remember parts of what happened.....I am sorry I could not fully excise what you were never meant to have...."
Keeping his gaze foreward and away from The Corinthian's sharp eyes, nevertheless the black brush strokes of his brow furrowed in a genuine look of pain that he often wore in the presence of those who knew him, and thus that particular look, very well.

The once mighty Dream King was, for perhaps the first time, sorry he had abdicated the throne....not for a lack of responsibility as the Corinthian claimed, but for the lack of ability to assist ( or was the correct term 'care for'?) others he considered his responsibility in some form or fashion.

He spoke the truth. Although it had once been in his nature to lie with teeth, to ruin, this was not that Corinthian and never would be.... He was thankful for what Morpheus had done, to keep the nightmare from consuming himself. There once was a time when they might have handled the situation differently, with an insolent challenge only to conclude with the removal of his heart, the tiny skull that made him, created by the gloved hands of the man standing before him, remorse in his voice.

"Why are you sorry," The Corinthian asked, thoroughly taken off guard, "I made a choice, a bad one." He puffed on his cigarette thoughtfully, unable to meet Morpheus' gaze when he looked like that, the one who couldn't come out of the rain. "You helped me more than necessary..." said the nightmare in a quiet tone.

Was it the responsibility of an Endless that had taken its toll on the former king? The weight of so many decisions, so many choices, good and bad.

Alabaster lips quirked in a tiny hint of a rueful smile, and the entity looked back to regard his creation.
Though no longer Dream, no longer his lord, Morpheus would always be this nightmare's creator, and that was a bond unbreakable even by the deep mysteries that governed the passage of the Endless through time and the myriad different realities.

" Yes, you did...." he confirmed, and wiped at the offensive scented powder that obscured the Sapphire that hung seemingly freely suspended on the backdrop of light-eating black cloth.
Even drawing attention to it, as he was now, very few other beings within the city of the Ticking Clock would be able to see the smoothed gem at all, though The Corinthian would with little effort.

" I am apologizing because I am unable to return you to your former state."
The tone in Morpheus' voice-yet-not held a note of something deeper than a simple remorse for the pain endured.
Simply put; there was more to this pained apology the entity was not sharing.....

He saw the gem and did not make mention of it, it wasn't his right to, knowing the power it contained and what it meant to hold one. Long ago it had been his duty to see to it that one of the gems remained buried under Hephaistion's grave, or was that a fantasy conjured by his former self, a desire to be useful and needed?

The Corinthian glanced aside to Morpheus, this time to meet his deep oblivion gaze. He exhaled gray smoke aside then upnodded to his former lord.

"You mean this place, you can't take me back to The Dreaming," he concluded, trying to finish the thought that alabaster man would not allow himself to complete. "Why don't you tell me what you mean, m--.... Morpheus," the nightmare had almost referred to him by title, old habit.

His countenence darkened, though it only made manifest in the receeding glint of stars within his eyes.
A stillness that marked him all the more as inhuman, otherwordly, cloaked him as surely as a mantle, and in this fashion did the entity once known as Dream gather himself to relate a bit of bad news that he had been dreading in the telling.
It did seem unfair to spoil an evening meant for the putting aside of unpleasant truths.

" Tell me, Corinthian, can you hear it? Can you hear the call of the waking world beyond this nexus in the myriad different realities it intersects?"
The stillness was broken by a gesture with a blue-black gloved hand displaying a single digit to show Morpheus was not finished speaking.

"I can...but it is growing feinter.....And if it is diminishing for me, I fear that your desire to remain here is tightening the noose of the Ticking Clocks' hold over you."
Another sigh warmed the chilled stillness, and what might have been a miniscule slump of resignation on any other being settled across him.

" Corinthian...The longer you stay, the longer I stay here, the more hold this place gains over us."
Void-darkened eyes filled with an emotion too raw for remorse...rather a hint of anger over his own diminished power looked away from the nightmare, out into the twilit grounds.

" I...I am no longer certain I may return you to the dreaming."

The Corinthian knew that look well, Morpheus glowering in disappointment, something all too familiar.... It sparked an old sentiment in him, and it grew worse when the man held a gloved finger up, to silence the barking dog. He was a lowly servant to this master again, bad dog, but it worked for the moment as the nightmare finished his cigarette. He flicked the butt on the terrace floor and crushed the embers with his boot, imagining those embers to be Morpheus' eyes.

"The waking world can't get rid of me, you made me that way, indestructible by everything but a word from your mouth," he said under controlled anger while pointing at Morpheus' face. This was not Dream, not his Master, but it was Dream's past, and everything the former lord had done during his reign rang true to this day, until the next Dream felt incapable of carrying on his duties.

"Don't put this on me," he waved a hand and shook his head, "don't look at me like I'm what anchors you here. You talk to me like I am my job, like all I am is function." Bad dog.

"I'll find my own way," said The Corinthian, calmer slightly, his gaze averted, "you'll leave this place before me."

The embers of fire were as nothing to those flashes within Morpheus' eyes.
Like the glint of honed blades in the dark, like the distant flare of stars gone supernova a galaxy away.
Drawing himself up, the entity, the very memory of something older then gods, older than worlds was more than enough to stand agianst either, and prevail.

" You are blinded, little nightmare, and your words ring terribly familiar."

Taking a single step foreward, Morpheus used the lessened distance to literally look down at the white-blond.
It had not been dissapointment that moved behind the veil of his night-eyes, now though...now they were as hard and cold as polished pieces of obsiddian as they regarded the Corinthian.

" Foolish, child, I can not leave while you linger here, and while you wish to deny it, the simple truth of the matter is I came at your call, at the request of your Lord, but more than either of these reasons, I came because I was concerned.

I was, and remain concerned for your well-being."

Morpheus, once the master of nightmares, of the dreamlands, shook his head in exasperation with this particular nightmares' stubborn refusal to realize the truth.

" I know why you remain, and you do as well, though you seek to bury this truth beneath your anger."
He left it at that; choosing, for now, to leave the obvious unspoken, and give the Corinthian the chance to admit this truth, rather than force it into his creation's face.

Ring terribly familiar, and familiar to whom he wanted to know, but shuddered to hear the truth. He left that alone, aware of what made him besides the sand and the skull. He could not deny the similarities, but neither would he allow himself to become a subservient slave, nothing more than a machine without will. The Corinthian was loyal to Dream, the one he called his Master, his Lord, but he had enough of the old one in him to believe he could control. Everyone broke the rules once in a while, dreams and nightmares were no exception.

Teeth eyes looked straight into Morpheus' obsidian depths, unafraid, The Rebel One. Blind was a funny word to use between them.

"Yes, that was clear enough. Days ago, that was the first time you've ever touched me, held me like I was your own flesh and blood. That was clear to me." Although his tone raised again it was with a need to expose the truth. He shook his head. "What you won't tell me is why you're so bent on having me leave. I'm a child, but I'm not an idiot," the nightmare said coolly.

Well well, wasn't that something *they both* were expecting to come up: the reason for The Corinthian's stay, the reason that indirectly warranted Morpheus' extended visit. And what a strange one it was, an English Magician conundrum. He looked at the taller man with a flash of laughter, the laughter of a cynic.

"That's what you want to talk about, who I'm fucking these days, that's rich," he said as he placed a hand over his face, as if to contain his laughter, but one could tell in his posture, the way his shoulders stiffened, that he was hiding his eyes, the pained expression of the truth.

The irritation in his demeanor increased, though he leaned away somewhat, possibly to further the impression of looking down on the Corinthian....or perhaps because the remark concerning his paternal tendancies stung.

Morpheus' gem-stone eyes now became the only expressive part of a face that could easily have been carved of the white marble his skin resembled for all the emotion it displayed.

" I have told you, several times , why I am intent on your departure from this place."
A brief flash of cold light from the depths of his eyes punctuated his dark reverberating, yet whisper-soft voice.

" Dream sought me out, and requested that I locate you in order to facillitate your return. As long as you are here, you can not return and fulfill your duties to him."
True enough...and perhaps it was a rebuke to the painful truth of Morpheus' past reactions to the nightmare that he did not add Daniel's equally genuine concern for the Corinthian's whereabouts.

" Your personal life is not my affair"
Not at all....this would be why Morpheus' noted the Magus' actions with a watchfulness hawks would envy.
" But your personal life's interferance with your return, and my errand is"

Agian, he shook his head, but instead of a near-contemptous light swirling in his star-field eyes, a look of pity flashed for a moment, then gone.

" He shall forget you when you finally depart.....the longer you remain here, the more pain you will face later."

He was concerned for the nightmare, yet called his return an errand, a chore. They were both full of contradictions, quick to point out when the other made one, too stubborn to acknowledge how easily they piled them up on their own. Neither did he think Morpheus *didn't* consider his personal life his affair, else this wouldn't be a necessary conversation. How many knew of them? Surely the former dream lord after the event from only days ago, maybe even before that. The Corinthian didn't catch the look of pity, too busy steeling himself for the truth. Someone would say it eventually, point out the likelihood that this was only fleeting. Who else was better suited but the one who made him.

His fingers still covered his eyes, the easily readable expression in his brow, the faint grimace in his little mouths. For teeth they were just as expressive as any mortal's eyes at times, and he hid them from Morpheus, to shun his weakness.

"What would you have me do," The Corinthian asked, almost in a whisper. A temptation tugged at his tongue to mention the woman Morpheus had left to rot in hell, the elf girl who served him faithfully only to shoulder the blame for when THEY ripped the world. No, he couldn't do that to his maker, he couldn't do it because a part of him begged for his approval. "You knew what I've always wanted, to do what I'm made for, to live as though that's not all I am," he said as he drew his hand down, gaze drifting to the hedge maze, "I have a right to be more than just nightmare."

The anger seemed to seep from his eyes, instead to be replaced by the a growing warmth, an empathetic glint of shared knowledge that manifested as two tiny stars, forever visable; just out of reach.

As Dream, as a creature made of more purpose than person, he had been less able to differentiate between the desire to simply live, rather than exist.

....But Morpheus was Dream no longer, and the Corinthian's desire for a life that was his own rang all too true with the former Lord Shaper.
Very slightly, a black ( yes...true black.) gloved hand raised as though to alight on the white-blond's shoulder in a small gesture of comfort...but it hesitated, and with a near-torn expression Morpheus regarded his creation.

With an almost mercurial shift, the entity's features hardened and with an air of authorative command that evoked shades of the past, he spoke agian.

" Yes. You do have this right...."
Decidively, the gloved hand reached out to touch the nightmare's shoulder, and allowed his creation to raise teeth-eyes to meet obsiddian ones in his own time.

".......If it is in my power to grant or obtain, I will see you returned to the Dreaming...but in your own time."
A quirk of his lips betrayed the odd look in his fathomless eyes.....pride...... and a touch of regret.

" I have failed you once before, Corinthian. I shall not do so agian."

A life of his own, more than just touring the grounds of nightmare, plaguing people in their sleep, showing them fear to give some of them strength, though it meant contempt for the white haired demonthing. He didn't expect people, those of the waking world, the dream world, Heaven and Hell, to understand the importance of his function or his existance, but he wouldn't allow himself to be unmade by the very idea that his kind, the Endless themselves, had no use without the need of the waking world. If they did not need him any longer, all the better, he just as easily saw himself taking up the wrench to join their plane of existence, to enjoy what the waking often took for granted.

He sought to balance these two things; his function and his life. The Corinthian took some pride in what he was, for who else could do his job any better besides Dream? He also wanted to share an aspect of himself, with those who would not see him as a nightmare but as a man, someone with a name and not just a labeled thing.

When Morpheus laid his hand on his shoulder, The Corinthian neither flinched nor tensed. His gaze remained focused on the hedge maze, a puzzle in itself that kept secrets safe at the risk of becoming lost in its own darkness. He didn't raise his teetheyes to meet the other's gaze, but he did settle his own hand over his former lord's. "Before you came that night, I swore he looked into my eyes and didn't fear a thing," he shared quietly. "I always wanted to please you, even when I escaped, I wanted to show you I could become something," the nightmare admitted.

"You can't fail me," finally he looked to Morpheus, more confident and even with the slightest hint of something rarer than the dream gems; a nightmare's smile, "you're my maker."