Chapter Text
2025
(
HOB
)
This is how they meet: in a boarded-up inn at the renaissance fair, Hob Gadling falls asleep.
Gwen is off with her new lad at the mead booth; she won’t be looking for him until a couple of hours at least.
The alcohol has made Hob sleepy, over-tired in the artificial way that it has, and it’s nothing at all for him to rest his head on his folded arms and sleep.
When he opens his eyes, he’s at the Tavern of the White Horse.
He doesn’t know the year; the people are garbed in a mix of fashions from over the centuries, there are both incandescent bulbs and a roaring fireplace, and the dull noise of conversation fills his ears.
The beer in his hand is cold; Hob makes a face and pushes it away.
He doesn’t want to be here; he doesn’t want to remember this.
His friend’s funeral had been hard on him, but in his waking hours he’d managed to push it away just enough to function, moving it to a corner of his brain that kept his most precious memories of Eleanor and Robyn.
Dream had given up, but Hob’s still here.
The thought is nearly unfathomable.
He tries not to think about the last time he’d seen his friend. Hob had been sick with grief from Audrey’s death, stupid and selfish, begging for revenge on the drunk driver that had taken her life. Dream had granted his wish, of a sort, but it had displeased him to do so.
Hob could tell.
He wishes he could go back to that day, take back his stupid wish, ask the right questions. Could he have helped Dream? Could he have prevented what had befallen him?
He’d smelled of death and Hob had told him so. He’d told him to take care of himself.
I worry about you.
He’d said the words but did he truly?
Hob hadn’t even offered to help.
He gets to his feet. The tavern is oppressively hot, the patrons loud. Despite the anonymity of the year, everything here still feels just the same as it once was, too much like his oldest friend.
“Hob?”
The voice is nearly the same, rich and dark and deep, but with an air of hesitance that should be alien to it. Hob can scarcely believe his ears, and when he turns, his eyes widen.
Dream is standing before him, strangely dressed in an ornate white robe, a gleaming emerald hanging low around his neck.
His hair is as white as the driven snow.
“...Dream?” Hob asks, uncertain.
There’s a beat before he answers. “Yes,” he says. “I am Dream.”
“But... You died,” Hob says. “I was at your wake. I watched your body on that boat. You died.”
“Yes.” Dream makes his way slowly around the table, until he stands opposite Hob. “May I sit?”
Hob opens his mouth and then closes it. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”
He waits for Dream to sit down, then gingerly follows suit. He wants to reach out, to touch him to make sure he’s real, but he knows he’s dreaming, and he doesn’t.
“Is this real?” Hob asks, instead.
“It is,” Dream says.
“Then you know you’re about sixty years early, don’t you?” Hob tries for a smile, but it comes out more like a grimace. “Not that I’m complaining, but...” He inclines his head towards Dream’s fair hair. “That’s an interesting look, by the way.”
“Early,” Dream echoes. “Yes, I-- I suppose that I am.” He raises a hand to his forehead, a crease appearing between his brows. “Last night, I sat at my family’s table for the first time. There were... intricacies and intimacies between us that I knew of, in the truest of ways, but at the same time, they were strangers to me.”
“My raven, Matthew, accompanied me.” Dream pauses. Then, softly: “I was afraid.”
He reaches up to touch his own hair; a self-conscious gesture. “Some of me is new,” he admits. “Much of I am the same.” He looks at Hob, a naked hopefulness in his eyes.
“When last we met at the New Inn, I called you a friend. Would that still hold true, even as I am?”
In all the centuries of their friendship, Dream had never shown so much of himself. Despite the power he so obviously still wields, he seems... smaller, somehow. Fragile.
Hob swallows hard. “Of course,” he says. What else could he possibly say? “Of course we’re still friends, Dream.”
Hob leans forward, fingers making an aborted twitch towards him. He restrains himself, barely. “But I still don’t understand what happened,” he says. “I mourned you. I stood at your wake, I said goodbye at your funeral. How can you be here, after all of that?”
Dream bows his head. “I... am Dream,” he says. “For as long as any being exists to slumber, I will be here. You cannot kill an idea, Hob.”
“Then who did I mourn?” Frustration now creeps into his voice.
“Your friend,” Dream says. His hands shake, minutely, before he takes them off the table and folds them into his lap. “A point of view. The one who was known as Morpheus is no more; I have no right to that name. I am only Dream, now. Is that not enough?”
Tears prick at Hob’s eyes. “That’s--” That’s fucked up, is what it is. “You’re wearing his face, walking around like you own the place. But you’re not him, are you.”
It’s not a question.
Dream does not answer, but he turns away from Hob, looking down at his folded hands.
“Will you rescind your friendship, then?” His tone is meek, and it takes all of Hob to stop himself from reaching over and shaking him.
“No!” Hob bites out. “I didn’t say that, did I? I just--” He rakes a hand through his hair.
“I just don’t fucking recognize you,” he says. “It’s like staring at a fun house mirror version of you. The way you talk, the way you hold yourself...”
“Would it please you if I carried myself otherwise?”
“See!” Hob cries. “The Dream I knew wouldn’t have given a damn about what I thought. Or maybe he would’ve, but he would’ve broken an arm before he ever admitted it.”
A thin smile. “I cannot break an arm.”
Hob pauses. That sort of sounds like him.
“Do you understand how bizarre this is?” he asks, finally. “When Eleanor died, I mourned her. When Robyn died, I grieved. But you... You’re like a walking reminder of what I lost. Just enough like him to hurt, but not nearly enough like him to forget that he died.”
“I wish-- I wanted a lot of things, back in the old days,” Hob continues. “I wanted you-- him-- to be more open with me. I wanted him to tell me everything about himself. He didn’t-- he didn’t even tell me his name, I had to figure it out. The only time I knew for sure was at his funeral.”
“I sat next to a centaur and a woman with a cat’s head. And they knew your name. They knew you had family.” Hob laughs, a short, ugly sound. “Dream of the Endless.”
“Was I ever really your friend?”
He doesn’t know what he expects of Dream after his tirade, but it is certainly not for him to rise from his seat and move closer. Hob looks up in confusion, half-wondering if he’s pushed too far at last, but Dream simply takes a knee beside him.
For all his seeming fragility, there is nothing weak about Dream’s lowered position. His eyes shine like twin stars, and for a brief moment, Hob recognizes a wisp of his friend in them.
It’s comforting, familiar.
And then it’s gone.
“I apologize, Hob Gadling,” Dream says. “For any hurt that my past failings have caused you. It was not my intent.”
He stands, but does not move away. “I carry all the memories of my former self, though the weight of it is sometimes overwhelming. There are some memories that shine brighter than others. Some people…” His expression turns contemplative, and the set of his jaw is achingly familiar.
“No matter,” he says. “I had hoped we could start anew, but I would not impose my will upon you.”
Dream withdraws, inclining his head. “I will see you again, Hob Gadling, in the year of our next appointment.”
“Now, hold on,” Hob says, rising. “We can’t leave it like this—”
But something is tugging at his shoulder now, an insistent shaking.
Instead of disappearing as he had in the past, Dream simply stands there, waiting. It’s Hob who feels himself fading, the edges of the tavern melting away into a comforting darkness.
“Dream, I—” A last plea, and then Hob succumbs to the waking world.
“Finally!” Gwen steps back with a huff of annoyance, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I thought you were dead, you were sleeping so deeply.”
Hob coughs, straightening from his slumped position. He’s going to have a hell of a crick in his neck.
“No,” he says. “Not dead.”
He brushes the last of the sleep from his eyes, completely unsurprised to find that tears have cooled on his cheeks.
“Just dreaming.”
2026
(
HOB
)
The next time Hob sees Dream, it’s six months later.
He’d be lying if he says he hasn’t been thinking about him, hating how they’d ended it the last time they’d spoken. Hob has been stewing in his own grief since then, the worst of it clearing long enough for him to admit that he’d behaved deplorably.
Dream may not be exactly the same as the friend he’d known, but he had not deserved Hob’s anger for simply existing.
After all, is he not the only thing that remains of Hob’s cherished friend?
If Hob could have taken back everything he’d said in upset, he would have. But he’d had no opportunity to mend things.
Not until now.
In his dream, the pumpkin patch is full and ripe, with great orange spheres littering the ground. Dream is kneeling next to one, knife in hand, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“Dream?” Hob calls out. He hesitates at the edge of the patch, wondering at his welcome.
He needn’t have.
“Hob?” There’s a look of wonder on Dream’s face that Hob’s never seen before, followed by a very small, very real smile.
Dream gets to his feet, dusting off his hands. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
Hob steps forward, careful not to disturb the pumpkins, and Dream meets him halfway.
“I am… pleased to see you,” he says.
He looks about as nervous as Hob feels, which makes Hob feel like even more of a cretin. “I’m not sure I deserve that,” he says. “But thank you for saying it.”
He rubs the back of his neck. There’s so much he wants to say, so much he needs to apologize for. “What’ve you got there?” he asks, instead.
Dream gives him a small half-smile. “I’m considering making Mervyn a friend,” he says. “He has been lonely as of late, and I would not see him so. He was… loyal to me. And to the Dreaming, at a difficult time. I wished to reward him.”
“That’s nice of you,” Hob says. Then, a stab of uncertainty: “I shouldn’t interrupt.”
“No, please stay,” Dream says. “I-- I’m glad of your company.”
A brief silence hangs, then Hob blurts out: “I’m sorry.”
Dream blinks. Before he can reply, however, Hob barrels forward with all the grace of a rabid dog in a sheep pen.
“For last time, I mean,” he says. “I was angry, and upset, and grieving. I took it out on you and I shouldn’t have. I mean, I should have been glad that some part of my friend lives on in you. Instead, I said-- I said horrible things that I didn’t mean, and I…”
He sucks in a breath. “I regretted it as soon as I woke up,” Hob continues. “I behaved so poorly, my friend. You needed me and I only cared about myself. Can you ever forgive me?”
Dream’s soft smile is answer enough, but he is gracious enough to accept it aloud. “Of course, Hob,” he says. “I understand that it was a shock. I should have eased you into the news of my being, but I… I must confess that I, too, was in an emotional state.”
He clears his throat, looking at some interesting mounds of dirt on the ground. “I wanted to see you,” he says. “I sensed that you were in the Dreaming and it was as if you were my lode star, shining so brightly that I just… went to you.”
Dream clears his throat. “I have more control now,” he says. “I have not further interfered with your dreams.”
“Until now?” Hob asks.
“Ah, no.” Dream smiles then, as if sharing a secret. “It is your mind that brings you to me here, in this place. You desire to see me, perhaps?”
Oh. Well. “I’ve been wanting to apologize since I left you six months ago,” Hob admits. “Took me long enough to run into you, though.”
Dream shrugs. “Perhaps you were not ready.”
“But I am, now?” Hob presses.
“Perhaps.”
Dream turns back to the pumpkin he’d been tending, withdrawing a sharp knife from thin air. Hob watches as he carves it, his long fingers carefully making each cut in what would become its face. Two merry eyes and a sloping mouth; Hob grins.
Satisfied, Dream steps back. He touches the emerald at his neck and it glows, a brief flash of brilliant green, and Hob watches in astonishment as vines sprout from beneath the pumpkin. They twine and grow into a torso, arms, and legs, finishing off in delicate tendrils of tiny leaves instead of fingernails.
“Dandelion,” Dream whispers, and the pumpkin curtsies on wobbly limbs.
“Boss!” From across the field, an obnoxiously loud voice rings out. Hob turns, and realizes with a start that he recognizes the pumpkin ambling over to them.
“You!” he cries. “You threw up on me at the wake!”
Mervyn scoffs. “And you pissed in my corn field,” he says. “So we’re even.”
Hob doesn’t think that makes them even at all, but the pumpkin shoulders past him to get to Dream, clasping his leafy hands together in glee.
“Boss, did you make me a girlfriend?”
Dream’s mouth quirks. “Perhaps you’d best let her decide that,” he says. “Mervyn, meet Dandelion. Dandelion, this is Mervyn.”
The new pumpkin curtsies again, her head nearly toppling over her shoulders as she does so.
“Aww, sweetheart,” Mervyn says. He sounds half in love already. “Why don’t we get you some clothes, huh?”
He takes the pumpkin by the hand and leads her away, but not before shooting Dream a jaunty salute. “Thanks, boss. I owe you one!”
Hob watches them go, then nudges Dream with his elbow. “You romantic.”
Dream huffs, but does not move away. “I have rewarded others in the past, as well,” he says. “Is my generosity truly so unusual for you to behold?”
He’s nervous, and he doesn’t hide it well.
Hob thinks of Audrey again, and his ill-fated request. Dream had granted him his wish, though grudgingly, and he sobers. “No,” he says. “You were good to me, too. Even when I asked for things I shouldn’t have.”
The sky turns, and Hob catches an autumn leaf blowing past.
“May I see you again?” Dream asks. “Before our next appointment?” His face is a mix of hopefulness and affected stoicism, the latter of which he wears so poorly that Hob can’t help but feel sorry for him.
He’s lonely, Hob realizes, and this time he has a feeling that Dream would admit it, too.
“Yeah,” Hob says. “I think I’d like that.”
There’s that smile again, small but given so freely, and Hob finds that he has to turn away from it.
Morpheus, he thinks. Hopelessly, helplessly. He feels like it’s cheating somehow, to be friends with this Dream while still grieving his predecessor. But he cannot deny that his presence is like a balm, even though it hurts that the openness that Morpheus had struggled with so often, this new Dream offers so willingly.
“Hob?” A hand touches his elbow, and Hob twitches away. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s fine.” Hob forces a grin. “There’s a pub down the road from my new flat. I’m there some nights, mostly on the weekends. Maybe next time, you’ll join me there. Yeah?”
Dream inclines his head. “As you will.”
He withdraws then, displaying a startling amount of tact, and leaves Hob to the vagaries of the rest of his dream. It is peaceful, if a bit strange, and he dreams of two pumpkins dancing in the midst of autumn leaves.
2028
(
HOB
)
Two years pass before Hob sees him again.
In the interim, he changes identities, unwilling to keep in touch with his and Audrey’s old friends, filled with the urge to leave his old life behind.
He knows Dream will find him, whether in the waking world or otherwise, and busies himself with rebuilding a new life.
He spares a thought for Gwen, but he knows that she’ll be fine without him. They’d met through Audrey, after all, and their shared friendship and grief had easily excused the handful of times they’d fallen into bed together.
She and her new lad had gotten married, besides, and Hob had started feeling like a third wheel.
He loses himself in New York, this time, immersing himself in the sights and smells and sounds of a bustling city. He needn’t worry for a nearby pub; there are three bars on his block alone.
It’s a Friday night when Hob has a quiet drink alone, swirling amber liquid in a polished glass.
He’s in the corner booth, staring up at the night sky through the window. The stars are completely drowned out by ambient light, but still he tries to see.
Instead of constellations, however, he sees pinpricks of light reflected in the glass.
“Hob.”
To his credit, he doesn’t startle.
Hob turns around with a crooked smile, beholding the shock of white hair and a new ivory coat. If he’d thought the ornate robe in the Dreaming had looked strange, this is even more so.
“Still have to get used to that,” Hob says, shaking his head ruefully. “Join me, my friend.”
Dream does so, shifting self-consciously on the chair. His elbow brushes against the side of the table, his mouth twitching in a moue of distaste as a sticky substance adheres to his clothing.
“See, that wouldn’t happen if you wore black,” Hob points out. He hands over a tissue, grinning as Dream looks at it as if he’s never seen one before.
“You… do not like my clothing?” Dream asks. He drops the tissue on the table, then closes his eyes briefly. The stain disappears.
Hob blinks. “That’s a neat trick,” he says. “Doesn’t matter what I think. As long as you like it, it’s fine. I’ll get used to it.”
Dream touches a finger to his chin, pursing his lips. “I do,” he says. “My clothing is simply an extension of myself, and I admit that I have not given it much thought. It simply… is. When I am in the waking world, it behaves as mortal things do, unless I wish it otherwise.”
“Speaking of which…” Dream’s brow furrows, and the table before him darkens, his shadow cast from the light behind the bar.
At Hob’s raised brow, he shrugs. “I forget, sometimes, to cast my shadow,” he says. “Matthew says I need to practice more.”
He says it with an air of long-suffering affection, and Hob can’t help but smile. “Are you well?” he asks. “You sound like you’re doing well.”
Dream nods slowly. “More of my memories have returned,” he says. “Much of the Dreaming was destroyed when the Kindly Ones hounded me, and many of my subjects were hurt or killed. I have since completed the last of the repairs, and likewise doled out rewards as I saw fit.”
He touches the emerald necklace around his neck. “Simply by the act of creating, I become more fully myself,” he says. “I remember, for instance, that I must not rely on this tool for long. Tools can be taken from me, used against me.”
He smiles thinly. “I will need to destroy it, eventually,” he says. “But not yet.”
It’s more information than Hob has ever gotten from him in all the past centuries combined. He doesn’t quite know what to make of it.
“And you?” Dream asks, leaning forward. “How do you fare, Hob?”
“I… I moved away,” Hob admits. “From the flat I had with Audrey. Changed my name. Cut ties with my old life. I felt like I needed a change, you know?”
A waitress comes by and Hob orders them a bottle of wine, not really expecting Dream to imbibe but wanting to maintain some semblance of normalcy.
She brings it by and pops the cork, leaving them to it.
“How much of us do you remember?” Hob asks, as he pours. “Do you remember all of our past meetings?”
Dream nods slowly. “All of it,” he says. “I knew it when I found you in the Dreaming, the first time.” He hesitates then, and Hob bites his lip.
“And when you… died?” Hob asks. Did it hurt? Is there anything I could have done to stop it? “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”
“No, I…” Dream pauses. “It’s all right. My death was… peaceful. In the end. I called my sister, and she came to me. She took my hand, and…”
The emerald shines, glinting in the darkness. “And then I woke up,” he says. “In my throne room, with the Corinthian watching over me. Satisfied with my death, the Kindly Ones retreated. After the funeral, I was left to rebuild my realm.”
One pale hand circles the rim of his wine glass, but he doesn’t drink. Perhaps some things never change.
“I restored most of it,” Dream continues. “But some of my most precious subjects… refused my call. Fiddler’s Green preferred to stay with my sister. I… allowed him to do so.”
He smiles then, suddenly and without guile. “Not everyone has your lust for living, my friend.”
Hob does not voice that that lust has been waning as of late. So many recent losses, so much pain.
Do you know how hungry can a man get, if he doesn’t eat, but he doesn’t die?
He clears his throat, his gaze fixed but unseeing at the whorls of wood in the table in front of him. “You know,” he says. “I used to think that death was a great, sudden thing. Like an owl that would come swooping out of the night and carry you off.’
“I don’t, anymore.” His eyes well, and Hob swipes the back of his hand against them, roughly. “I think it’s a slow thing. Like a thief who comes to your house, day after day, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, and one day you walk around and there’s nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay.’
“Lots of little deaths until the one big one.”
“Hob…” Dream’s face is a picture of dismay.
“You’re really gone,” Hob says. “But you’re still here all the same, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
The tears really do come, then, and Hob puts his hands over his face in an effort to hide them. He feels like a child again, uncaring of the other patrons-- let them stare at the sad old drunk-- and weeps for an unfathomable loss.
Damn him to hell, Dream can’t even die in an uncomplicated way.
He is shaken, unmoored , and he feels rather than sees Dream rise from the table. He moves to the chair beside Hob, winding a strong, slender arm around his shoulders.
Hob wants to laugh and cry and shout, all at the same time.
Dream is comforting him over the loss of… Dream.
Still, the weight of his friend’s arm around him is solid and real, and the lips that press against his brow are fervent.
“I am sorry, Hob,” Dream whispers. “I am so very sorry.”
Hob doesn’t reply; he can’t.
But he allows Dream to touch him, and himself to find comfort in this, and finally, after three long years, he mourns the passing of his oldest, truest friend.