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Nightmares don’t dream. Or they shouldn’t. One of the things that’s different now.
Lots of things are different since Destruction took the Corinthian out of the Dreaming to run as a rampage. Made him into one of his dogs of war instead of what Dream made him to be. It was fun, for a while, that’s the hard part of it. He can never exactly pin the moment it soured for him, the way that Destruction took hold of what he was, converted the Corinthian’s scalpel-precise seduction into a the indifferent nuclear fallout of collateral damage.
When Destruction asked Dream if he could borrow Corinthian for a bit, it had been exciting. Destruction had never asked Corinthian to work with him before. Sure, attend an inter-realm party or two as an adjunct or whatever, but not work proper.
This work is real. Happens in the Waking, is permanent in a way Corinthian’s work is not. But adjacent to his work in the Dreaming in a way that was thrilling, but big. The scale of it, the immediacy, the beauty in the glow of tracer rounds fired blindly into civilian homes. The shimmer of the fire that consumed an entire countryside and every dreamer the Corinthian might have ever chased through their subconscious. Ashes. It’s all ashes now.
“How’s it feel, lad?” A big hand on his shoulder, that laugh rumbling in his bones. “Having a real impact?”
A dangerous part of the Corinthian had wondered if he wasn’t better suited for service with Dream’s younger brother. Wilder and so easy to his role. He egged the Corinthian to his work in a way Dream never did. He appreciated the blood-soaked aftermath as Corinthian rose up from the mass graves across the globe. For a while, in the momentum, he loved being the instigating event. The first bullet fired, the atom that clicks into place and sparks the chain reaction, the cold front that turns a summer storm into a F8 tornado.
He loved it.
He loved it until the exact moment that he didn’t, and all of a sudden, he found himself knee-deep in a bloody trench of dead children and – compelled by forces he could never hope to understand – the Corinthian bent down and took a little boy’s eyeball (already burst from his head when her killer dashed her skull against a rock) and he put it inside his right eye-mouth.
He swallowed the genocide whole.
Destruction found him vomiting motor oil and blood beneath the shade of the trees.
“Ah,” he’d said, “bad idea to see it from the other side, master nightmare. Why did you do that?”
“That’s… what I do,” Corinthian rasped, retching.
“Not for me.”
“Great lord, I… I think you need another nightmare. The Culling or… Act of God.” He could feel the Endless moving to stand over him, the shadow casting the heat of white phosphorous across his back. “I think they would be better suited—"
“No.” A giant hand fell companionably on his shoulder. “You’re just perfect for this. And we’re hitting a stride, Corinthian. No stopping now. So, c’mon, lad.”
And was hauled to his feet and taken to the bottom of the sea, where the beginnings of a tsunami was building, gathering itself to hit the coast of Japan. Destruction held him still for it, did that thing he does, where he makes something a catalyst for the daisy-chain of destruction and, in this case, he did it to the Corinthian. Shunted that change-making power through him like a struck tuning fork and it fucking hurt so much his dream-stuff bones fractured along a thousand lines, and at the same moment the fault line he was standing on… grated itself against its sister.
“Wait,” the Corinthian remembers saying, remembers struggling in his grip, “Wait, please—”
And then they were standing in the bunker of a plane, its belly holding the payload of atomic death intended for the city of thousands below. (A human city? He couldn’t be sure.) Destruction’s grip on his arm, broke it. His grip on the Corinthian’s hair, separated his scalp form his skull. He used Corinthian again as the conduit and the payload drops, igniting the city below in a blinding fire and –
He remembers Destruction, murmuring in his bleeding ear, “Nobody’s broken you proper before, have they?”
And he said it with the exact, personal, precise kind of violence that the Corinthian was built to understand.
The Corinthian can’t remember all of it after that.
He remembers pain mostly. Panic. Clawing at his master’s brother like an animal until his fucking arm came off entirely. He’s a nightmare, so the dismemberment didn’t stick, but he remembers it like it was real. The Corinthian remembers crawling in the mud, the churning blood and gasoline and earth and shredded flesh of a war zone as Destruction grabbed him by the back of the neck, shoved his face down until he went berserk.
He remembers transforming, over and over, into a wolf, a dragon, a hydra, a hawk, a snake, a thousand different monsters from so many stories. He remembers attacking an Endless. Becoming animal enough to defend himself and he remembers Destruction grabbing each form like a layer of clothing and ripping it off. Over and over. Every torn aspect more intimate and agonizing until the Corinthian was a flayed and screaming instance of himself, shaved down to the core – a human figure with teeth instead of eyes, wearing a simple white shirt and pants.
“Lord Destruction, please don’t—”
“Hush. You’re a nightmare. This is the sort of thing you live for, isn’t it?”
“What? No. This isn’t my—”
The Corinthian remembers his clothes being torn open like butcher paper, then being taken in the mud. Screaming until his lungs stopped working. Hands pulling him apart. Being mounted and excruciatingly worked open, forced to take what he wasn’t built to endure, but he’s made to do it anyway. Breath on his neck, a broad, rough tongue drawing blood like barbed wire from his body until he’s howling and clawing at the mud trying to get away.
He's seized by the hips and yanked back, split deeper and he blacks out just long enough to wake up with his mouth blocked by liquid clay, his half-severed spine trying to tell the other parts of his body to move. He can’t move. He’s moved, by only by the body on top of him as it rolls indifferently inside him, hollowing and filling and gutting him all at once. He thinks of a dog he found walking through a massacre site in a village, its belly shot out, but still alive, dragging parts of its lower intestine on the dirt.
He thinks that’s what he is right now, to Destruction.
“First time, lad?”
The Corinthian recalls moaning, insane and agonized. Trying to find breath through a shattered jaw to protest that he doesn’t understand. Why is Destruction doing this? What did he do wrong? He’s one of Dream’s Major Arcana. Why is he hurting him? Of course, it’s not his first time, but please fucking stop. Please fucking stop, please, please—
“That’s it. You’re being very good for me now, aren’t you?”
The Corinthian has vague memories of tearing and coming simultaneously, his cock spasming in the mud, spending into the oil and gore-churned earth while blood flooded down his thighs.
Laughter. “You’re getting wet for me, pretty thing?”
Teeth on his neck. His ribs and femur snapping. Parts of his fucking skull caving.
“How sweet.”
Corinthian remembers the agony breaching into some new, terrible plane of existence where it did not hurt anymore and he wanted more, faster, and harder because then he would finally come undone and be utterly destroyed. Be unmade completely. Oh please, please. He remembers praying for it, praying to the god on top of him to destroy him. To have fucking mercy.
And then it stopped. And unlike a human, he doesn’t die of it.
That’s usually when Corinthian wakes up, screaming, on Lady Death’s couch.
That doesn’t make it better, really, waking up in a soft and protective space. If anything, the dissonance leaves him dissociating for hours. Death can’t be everywhere. She’s fucking busy. Sometimes she has enough attention to parcel a part of herself to him and she appears, bursting through the door to her flat which is not a flat and rushing to catch his hands and reassure him they’re whole and his and no one can come here to take him away unless she allows it. She promises she’d never allow it. She promises he’s safe.
He'll never have the heart to tell her it’s not true.
He’s in the home of another Endless so, of course, he’s not safe.
He’s just safe from the one that tore him limb from limb and left him to reconstitute himself, fractured and screaming, in the mud. He’s just safe from being dragged by the hair, like a sack of rotten apples, to the doors of Dream’s palace where the three guardians could only greet their master’s brother politely and try, ineffectually, to ask why their fellow dreamkin was mutilated so.
Corinthian has vague memories of being hauled through the halls like that. Of others seeing.
He remembers Destruction stopping to chat with Lady Lunarbell, a dream of moonlight that comes through the windows of romantic trysts, and the way she tried (with tears in her voice) to maintain a polite conversation while Destruction laughed genially with her about some function or another that they’d last attended. He complimented her dress and Lady, sobbing, said the great lord’s hat was very fetching and perhaps, could she speak with the Corinthian? Just for a moment?
Destruction said they were late for an audience, then dragged him away again.
Three times. Three times on the way to the throne room, he stopped to talk to other dreamkin who all tried, horrified, to maintain decorum. By then, the pain was distant enough he could almost find it funny if it wasn’t so fucking humiliating – his raped and ravaged fucking corpse getting hauled through the hallways like some kind of fucked up bridal train. He’s got a lot of forms. The Corpse is a new one. He’s never had a form forced on him before.
Dream was angry.
The Corinthian can’t remember the conversation because he was crumpled at the foot of the throne steps and left there while the argument played out. He drifted in and out of consciousness. He remembers the firmament of the Dreaming murmuring to him in that way it does when you’re so near dissolution that rejoining the foundations of the realm seems possible. A language you forget when Dream forges your form and one you remember as you start to lose it.
He’s been here before.
He says ‘hi’.
He remembers, most primarily, the moment some days later, after Destruction had gone, where Dream finished his work repairing him on the Shores of Night. He remembers waking up to absolutely certainty that whatever Dream had tried to do… it hadn’t worked.
Or, well, it kind of worked, but no matter what Dream did, he could not cut away that new form. The Corpse added to the Corinthian’s repertoire of faces and sitting like a knife in his back while all the other aspects were knives to be pulled from their holsters as he saw fit. He kept asking for Dream to take it out and for a while it seemed like Dream simply needed time to fix it. Then, once a while had passed, Dream didn’t admit exactly that he couldn’t undo what his brother did but asked if Corinthian thought he could function with it as addition.
“I can, but I don’t want to,” he’d said, too horrified by the possibility to be diplomatic. “I want it out.”
And that’s when Dream said, “I apologize, Corinthian. But you must keep it. It’s part of you now.”
I apologize.
It’s possible he lost it a little. Corinthian doesn’t remember much of that time. He didn’t attack Dream, of course, he wasn’t so far gone as that, but he did run the fuck away from the Dreaming, following the old roads out so he could sit on un-populated island still being volcanically forged and scream on the edge of the molten beach until the screaming brought him no relief.
He sat there and was left the fuck alone by literally everyone which was both a relief and an agony, and every once and a while, he would try on that new form – like tonguing an aching tooth – then shed the blood, the wounds, and the gored-out core himself for the fur and fang of the Many-Toothed Wolf. His favorite non-human face. He curled there, whining, on the shell of the cooling lava flow until Jessamy came to find him days later.
“Cor?”
“Leave me alone.”
“I would, but Morpheus wants you back home.”
“I don’t want to go back home.”
“And I want free candy and crackers nonstop for the rest of my life. He’s not asking. He’s telling. There’s shit is going down between the Forge and the Dreaming over… over what happened.”
“What happened,” he laughed, baring the long, dripping rows of his fangs. He kept laughing, hackles coming up, massive predator’s body shaking with the very un-wolf-like sound. “Why? Who fucking cares? He tore me up. He didn’t destroy me. So why does it matter?”
“You know why it matters.” A pause. “Please. Please, he’s gonna be a such a cunt to me if I don’t bring you back and you know I can’t make you, you big fucking louse.”
“I don’t want to.” He sounded petulant even to himself. Better petulant than hysterical though. “Just tell him you couldn’t find me. Just convince him to leave me alone.”
Jessamy hopped close enough to kill and part of him contemplated it, but wolves have a symbiotic relationship with ravens and the part of him that was the wolf simply turned its head to eyeball her as she, with the audacity of a carrion bird, pecked him right on the nose. He growled at her immediately so she flapped back, landing by his tail… where she promptly, never breaking eye-contact, leaned down to peck at his tail.
“For fuck’s sake,” Corinthian snapped, heaving himself to his feet. “Fine.”
By the time he was on his feet, he was back in the Dreaming in time to hear Dream say, “—have any idea what you’ve done? You tortured one of the Major Arcana and dragged them through the halls of my palace. What message did you imagine you were sending to my subjects and to me? Explain yourself to me. Now.”
“You’re so serious,” Destruction laughed. Because, of course, Destruction was standing right there in the room, having been summoned through his sigil in the gallery to stand before the Dreamlord. “It was a lark. Not so terrible as you’re making it out. He’s no worse for wear.”
“You did him damage that cannot be undone by my hand—"
“You’re over-reacting, Dream,” came the interruption, jovial as it’s ever been. “Why, what is this fuss? Over a nightmare you yourself built as a rake and reckless thing. How’s it my error that he asked for more than he could take, and I obliged him?” His amusement takes a curious tone. “Why are you getting so damned upset, big brother? I know he’s a favorite, but you built him tough, did you not?”
“I am not upset.”
“Well, then accept my apology!” A guffaw, playful, friendly even. Then with a magnanimous sigh, he went on, “If it will settle things in your realm, then here it is: I am sorry I roughed up your nightmare. It wasn’t an accident, I admit, but I didn’t mean any harm by it.” A laugh. “Or rather, I suppose, I didn’t mean any harm but the harm I intended! How’s that?”
Dream stared at his brother.
The Corinthian did too, too dumfounded to be terrified of the Endless that ripped him open like an envelope with prizes inside, because it sounded an awful lot like Destruction was word-smithing his away around an implication. The implication that he absolutely meant to do what he did when he dragged Corinthian like a carcass through the halls of the Dreaming.
“You assaulted one of my subjects,” Dream said, with a plain-spoken-ness that made Jessamy shift nervously on Corinthian’s head.
Destruction, began, with a smile, “That is dramatic—"And then his bright green eyes fell on the Corinthian, still wrapped in his lupine form. “Ah, there’s the subject of discussion. Look, Dream, if I broke him, I am sorry, but—” a laugh— “Corinthian, did you not ask, in the midst of the thing, for me to keep at it?”
The Corinthian, stunned at that, said nothing for a moment and Destruction seized his silence with a hearty roar, “It’s alright, lad. If I rendered ya senseless in the course of our activities. An honest mistake.”
Dream regarded the wolf-self with something like hope. “Did you ask him to do that to you?”
“I—” the Corinthian started to say.
“Don’t lie,” commanded Dream, sensing somehow Corinthian’s desperation to deny some part of this narrative Destruction’s forced into him. “It won’t make it better to lie. Not about this.”
Bullshit. Destruction was lying. Why couldn’t he? It wasn’t fucking fair. Destruction’s lie had a tang to it, to his wolf-self, smelled like blood and arousal – smelled like being held down and split open, feeling his spine fracturing vertebrae by vertebrae in a row, that fucking wet crunching noise and his own insane, broken-jawed moaning. Did he ask? He prayed, he remembered that. The feverish, childish wishing for it to stop. For it to go faster, to be over with. His own fingers sawed down to bone and full of glass.
But that was his other self. His wolf-self can examine the carnage more pragmatically.
“If I asked,” the Corinthian continued, keeping his tone controlled as Kentucky courtesy, “it wasn’t aloud. My jaw had been ripped off in the ‘midst of the thing’ as you mentioned. And the relevant parts of my core-self’s skull were fractured. I might have asked, my lord, it sounds like me, but up until the parts I don’t remember, I didn’t.”
And Destruction stared at him. Surprised, then irritated.
Then he says, “Your rake is a little shy—"
“He is not,” Dream said, staring at his brother. “You defiled and shattered the Corinthian, then paraded the result though my castle before my subjects who now believe that such a thing is permitted by the ruler of the Forge. Is that the message you intended, little brother? Is that the slight you meant to levy?” Dream’s eyes were so strange as he said it, wide, almost… frightened. “Because, if so, you must understand that I am compelled to respond.”
And there was a pause.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” Jessamy whispered into Corinthian’s lupine ear.
Luckily (or rather, perhaps, in response to this) that was when Dream and Destruction’s sigils upon the wall began to glow and a voice, curt and self-assured came through.
“Little brothers, I hold your sigils and I stand in my gallery and we all really need to talk. Right now. So, my realm or one of yours? Pick. Now.”
It was a little gratifying to see two of the Endless flinch like spooked kids.
“Come through to me,” said Dream finally, not looking away from Destruction who finally had the right amount of ‘oh shit’ on his face. “We are both here.”
“Peachy,” said Death. And suddenly she appeared directly next to the Corinthian, hands on her hips, glaring at her siblings. “Okay, hi. Destiny phoned me. He says you’re both entertaining a really fun causality in time and space that I feel compelled to step in and referee before we REALLY win the Idiot Olympics for anthropomorphic universal entities.”
“I—” began Dream, then just kind of trailed off because that’s really hard to have a pithy comeback for.
“We were just talking,” Destruction said, trying for levity.
Death leveled a look at him that chilled the room. “No, you fucking weren’t,” she said. Then, when Destruction seemed fully paralyzed by the force of her dead-eyed rage, she looked at Dream. “And you, you know fucking better.”
The silence that followed afterward was like nothing the Corinthian had ever known.
“Here is what’s going to happen: Destruction, you’re gonna get the fuck out here and you’re gonna go back to doing your job until I come find you because you fucked up. You fucked up so hard I’m gonna be up your ass until you taste my fucking boot. You hear me? I know, I know what you’ve got going on but this this aint it. This is not how you figure your shit out.”
“Sister,” he began to say.
She slapped him. Corinthian didn’t see her move, but she was suddenly there and the blow snapped Destruction’s head aside. Not a battle blow, but an open-handed palm-to-cheek strike that stings. He reeled back a bit, more shocked than hurt, but his cheek where she struck him flushed red.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered. “Don’t you fucking say it.”
Corinthian cannot fathom what on earth that might have been.
Then Death turned to Dream.
“I’m taking the Corinthian.” Oh fuck. Oh shit. “I need to talk to him, and I’ll give him back to you when I’m done talking to him.”
“And what do I tell my subjects?”
“The truth. That you’d never fucking allow something like this to happen to one of them without recourse and there’s recourse being taken among the Endless. They don’t need to know anything else. It’s a family fucking matter now.” And she held out her hand to the Corinthian. “Cor?” She’s not speaking nicely. Not harshly, but not nicely either. “I need you to come with me. I promise, I swear on my heart itself, I am not gonna hurt you but so much depends upon red wheelbarrows and such. So, we’re gonna go. Okay?”
The Corinthian, now and then, has no idea what the fuck she was on about.
But he stood up from his wolf self to his true self, glaring as Jessamy flaps away.
“If Lord Morpheus insists. Then I’ll go.”
“Sure,” she said. Then looked at Dream. “Dream, you gonna let him go?”
The Corinthian replays the way Dream looked at him in the moment sometimes. That pause where he could visibly see the Dreamlord struggle to decide, where it’s obvious the answer is no. Of course not. Of course, he will not let the Corinthian go, again, unsupervised with another of his siblings. Certainly not the goddess of all death herself. Surely.
Then: “Go with my sister, Corinthian.”
It’s been an eternity couch-surfing in Death’s strange realm, and even now, thinking about it – the grief racks through his entire fucking body like horror wracks a nervous system. He relives that moment more frequently than that night keel-hauled across a battlefield, fucked hollow, skinned alive, and shrieking. In the moment though, he’d started to fall to his knees by instinct before catching himself and kneeling in front of her, head bowed, too stunned to do anything else.
To her credit, she didn’t say sorry. She just reached for his hand and he let her pull him up.
“I know.” Death wrapped her arm around his waist, pulling him against her. “We’re gonna talk.”
And she took him home with her.
So that’s where he’s at now. Sat cross-legged on her couch, his clothes shifting to match Death’s aesthetics in a way he doesn’t quite understand, but he thinks he likes. Time works differently in the Dreaming. There are fashions he likes that he’s pretty sure don’t exist yet or it did exist once and no longer do so the vestigial memory of that time lives on in his goddamn wardrobe. He thinks time works weird in the Sunless Lands too, but in what way he can’t ID.
Death has a television. He loves it. It feels like one of those things that doesn’t or shouldn’t exist, but does anyway so he doesn’t worry about it too much. He just sits and watches shows about incomprehensible inter-personal bullshit between office workers from Mars or whatever. Watching TV is great and lots easier than thinking thoughts in a row. Thoughts suck. He’d rather not deal with them.
Death said they would talk, but they haven’t yet.
Upon arrival, she made herself tea and angrily toasted some bread and angrily ate that while Corinthian stood uncomfortably in her slightly cramped living room, a basket of laundry on her coffee table and take-out boxes stacked on the end tables bookending her couch.
Eventually, she brought him a mug of tea and bade him take it and sit down.
“Look,” she said after a moment, “I didn’t bring you here for any real reason. I brought you here because I was moving fast, and I can only focus on so many problems at once.” A pause. “Well I can focus on a lot of problems at once, but when two of them are by brothers, I can’t make room for much else. I thought it would simplify things if I took you off the board.”
“Okay.”
“That’s jasmine. You should drink it.”
He did and it was fragrant and nice. Old in a way that meant it wasn’t from the current times.
“Hey, do you want to talk to me? Or do you want to help me out around here? Both would be super useful for me.”
It was a dick move, given that Death and he were acquainted enough at this point that she’d long since asked him to be less formal with her, but he said, “Whichever you prefer, Lady Death. I’m here at your command.”
She winced. It didn’t make him feel better exactly, but something winched tight in his chest relieved just slightly.
“Don’t be a dick,” she said, smiling, olive branch extended.
“Okay. How would you like me to do that, my lady?”
She looked genuinely sad then.
“Alright. Point taken.” She handed him a flip-phone. Again, one of those things that stop making sense outside of the dream logic. “You stay here. Feed my fish, clean up around the apartment, help yourself to the fridge, and answer the door for the pizza guy.” She leans in close. “Do not let the pizza guy into my apartment. He’s just a regular pizza guy with whom I have a special bond and agreement with. Do not ruin it for me.”
Which was just wild enough that he said, reflexively, “I promise not to accidentally kill your pizza guy.”
She smiled, crookedly, then got up and left.
He did not kill her pizza guy, Yan, who is a very nice man that delivers pizza on roller skates. He totally could have too, because pizza guy hit on him a little bit when he answered the door. He fed the fish, put wrappers in the trash and put her laundry hamper in the armchair. (He drew the line at folding panties for Death of the Endless unless she commanded him explicitly to handle her metaphysical underthings. They weren’t that comfortable.)
Then he sat and watched television until he noticed that Death was back.
“Hey,” she said, sorting through her mail. “Ugh.” She showed him a red envelope. “Fucking credit card offers.” She tossed it in the bin. “Anything good on?”
“There’s a story about this cop chick who’s trying to catch a thief chick who’s stealing paintings and stuff. I think they’re secretly long-lost half-sisters or something.” Corinthian delivered this news without once looking away from the screen. “Either that, or the show-writers want them to bang, but they fucked up the on-screen chemistry. I’m betting on long-lost half-sisters though.”
He felt Death come stand behind him.
“You shouldn’t sit that close to the screen. It’s bad for your eyes.”
“Bullshit.”
He felt her reflexively reach down to ruffle his hair, then stop, her fingers brushing the cowlick at the top his head just barely before she turned on her heel toward the kitchen. “You want some ramen? I have the good stuff.”
“Sure.”
She made him budge up a bit so she could sit beside him uncomfortably close to the TV. So they say there, eating soup while the on-screen narrative revealed the protagonists were indeed long-long half-sisters. By the end of a first season, something tight in his chest loosened up enough to bear it when Death took his ramen bowl from him and insisted she – the multi-verse’s personification of Death – will do the dishes while he relaxes.
The kindness feels less like a fucking knife this time.
So, he kept watching TV until he felt tired.
And now, falling for the first time since he can remember, into something like sleep… the Corinthian encounters what it’s like to be a nightmare having a nightmare.
Namely, it lacks all of the hazy un-reality that dreamers are afforded. Shitty, honestly, that employees of the Dreaming get the laziest form of a dream – the cold, indifferent, eidetic recall of memory yanked up where you can react to it differently, but the narrative drags you down its tracks like a doll.
The dream ends as the Destruction in his memory – towering and beautiful and smiling – takes his head in his hands and kisses him. Takes his tongue as he does it, then splits his ribs open like a birdcage, and rips his beating heart out like a root from its bed. Corinthian wakes up retching. He screams, frantic, grabbing at his totally unharmed body as the ghosts of touch and traumatic injuries long since healed echo in his bones. Then he’s lying paralyzed on the floor. Shuddering and moaning, waiting for the pain to run out of him.
By then, Death has her hand his forehead, her other hand on his shoulder as he curls in on himself defensively and rips her carpet up as he claws the floor, snarling with anguish because he can’t do anything else.
“It’s fine,” she tells him as shapeshifts under her hand, becomes a gray and tan wolf beneath her fingers so she can stroke his back without his core-self wanting to scream. She bends down and lays her curl-fluffy head against the ruff of the wolf-self’s neck, dragging her fingers through the thick pelt of his spine. “You’re fine, Cor. I’ve got you. You’re fine.”
He stays that way longer than he would want to admit.
Death turns into a wolf and curls up with him sometimes, nosing hopefully at him. It’s a dick wolf-move, but he doesn’t respond and becomes a lump on her living room floor for a while. The wolf-self hears her talking on the phone sometimes, saying things like, “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses, but that’s nice for you specifically and no one else.” Or, “Stop asking me. The answer is no. I’ll come your way.” And, “Dream, stop being a bastard for five minutes and listen to what I’m trying to—”
He tunes it out.
Eventually, he lets himself be his core-self again and watches television some more.
Eventually, he asks Death if he should refill the bread box for her with it runs out and she says she’d love that and ‘thank you’. He slips on this story where they are roommates sharing a dorky little flat and Death tells him to text her whenever he slips into the Waking World to pick up eggs or whatever.
Sometimes Death cooks elaborate meals that catch her eye while on the job and she asks him to pick up the groceries necessary. It’s always a different down-town place near to a market when he opens the door to her flat, and not always the same time period or planet, but he makes due.
Death is alright, at best, with cooking. Corinthian is more than alright at it, actually, being a human Nightmare made for humans, the minutia of a recipe card is easier for him and not all of his nightmares start with the hunting. Sometimes, there’s a protracted domestication sequences where he’s invited into places, shares a meal, whatever the dreamer imagines before he turns on them.
Death is easy to please in a way that’s soothing. He shows her how to shell garlic and dice an onion properly and she beams with genuine pleasure. He remakes the dish she fucked up, but properly and she groans with delight at every bite and it would be annoying if, again, she didn’t really genuinely mean it. She tells him plainly if something is too salty or tough or the texture is weird.
One night, having perfected some kind of curry dish Death is in love it, he tells her, “I should probably go home, huh?”
“If you’d like to, you can,” she says mildly, picking up her water glass and sipping. “But you don’t have to.”
And for the first time, Corinthian asks, “What did I do wrong?”
And she pauses, then puts her fork down. “Sometimes you don’t do anything wrong and something bad happens. I think you know that, hon, but if it helps to hear it: You didn’t do anything wrong. Wrong place, wrong time.”
Corinthian taps his spoon on the plate. “Destruction wants to talk to me,” he hazards.
“He does, but he’s not allowed to. He fucked up bad and he’s in the doghouse.”
“He’s not allowed?”
“I told him not to,” Death amends. “He’s… going through some stuff, Corinthian. It’s pretty serious and we’re talking but, yeah. No excuse for what he did, but that’s why it happened. Nothing you did.”
Corinthian nods, the curry sour suddenly on his tongue.
“I hope Lord Destruction figures it out,” he says mildly. “With your help, I’m sure he will.”
Death looks at him, sadly again, but it is what it is.
Corinthian doesn’t leave right away, but he can feel that he’s working up to it. He’s not sleeping anymore. Not dreaming. The Corpse is still there, part of him, but less of a wound now than it’s starting to be a scar. A keloid knot that bothers him less and less as he starts to accommodate it. The Waking World feels less hostile, the presence of cracked windows, flaking paint, and eroding curb concrete less upsetting to him. The skein of destruction layered into every moment of reality becoming background noise again.
He's on his way back to Death’s apartment with a brown paper bag of ingredients from the International District’s Sunday market. It’s a gray day, but not raining yet. Just threatening enough that the vendors are selling hot cider. The Corinthian jogs up the short concrete steps to the neat black door to a brownstone that is one of many short-cuts to the Sunless Lands if you’ve got the right invite.
He is pulling the housekeys from his pocket when someone steps onto the walkup behind him.
“Corinthian.”
It’s fucking stupid, but he drops the goddamn groceries. He hears the carton of eggs split open on the pavement and the canned goods inside clatter as the bag rips and they start rolling down the porch steps. Corinthian doesn’t care. He doesn’t even turn around. He tries to get the fucking door to Death’s apartment open before— A giant hand closes on his upper arm, torquing exactly hard enough to rip his fingers off the door handle and spin him around.
“Whoa! Settle down, lad. I just want to talk.”
“How the fuck did you find me?” Panic makes him indecorous. Is this because he didn’t text Death. She must have been masking him in the Waking somehow but even so— “You’re not my maker. You can’t just find me like this.”
“The scar, master nightmare, the one I left inside of ya.” He seems almost apologetic as he moves to stand over the Corinthian, body blocking him in like a battlement. “I can find it anywhere if you don’t take care to mask it and you didn’t.” A shrug. “And now I told ya, so you can avoid this happening again.”
“Thanks,” Corinthian grits.
“I need to explain myself.”
“Okay.”
Destruction glances down, seemingly only just realizing he’s got his hand wrapped around the Corinthian’s upper arm. He lets go and Corinthian immediately turns his back on him and starts to unlock the door again. Grimly accepts it when that hand immediately closes on his arm and yanks him around again, this time taking both of his arms in hand and pinning him to the door.
“Corinthian.” Destruction is looking at him with kind of weary disappointment that makes the nightmare’s bones ache in anticipation of breaking. “You’re not a coward so listen to me for a moment.”
“Lady Death wants me back in her realm.” Corinthian says it stiffly, trying to hold incredibly still. Why does he feel dizzy? “I just stepped out for a minute—”
“I didn’t mean what I did to you,” Destruction says, talking over him. “I want you to know that that.”
“I understand.”
“I mean it.” The grip on his arms loosens a little, moves to his shoulders, gives them a more amiable squeeze. “Dream favors you, you know. I just wanted him to pay attention. It wasn’t about you.”
“No, I got that right off the bat,” says Corinthian, too frantic to keep his mouth shut.
Destruction’s bright green eyes scan the nightmare’s face.
“I’m not trying to hurt Dream. He’s taking it very seriously, but he and Death are older. They do that. You can see the forest through the trees though. It was just a momentary lapse in judgement.” His hands on Corinthian’s shoulders slip back around his biceps, thumbs stoking down the line of muscle in his arms, though his jacket. “I’d like us to be friendly, lad. No hard feelin—"
Corinthian kind of blacks out and turns into his dragon-self which immediately tries to rip Destruction’s face off. The Bloody-Mawed Drake is a guardian aspect, but it can’t thrash free with Destruction’s hands around his limbs, two super-position vices locking him inside his skin. He snarls, fire bursting from the back of his human teeth – and Destruction shakes him. Just once, but with such force the back of the Corinthian’s head cracks against the door. Not enough to break, but his sees stars and tastes blood as his right eye-mouth floods. Tongue bitten.
“Stop that.” He sounds annoyed. “I’m trying to speak with you.”
“Fuck.” Corinthian sees double, vision splitting. “Sorry. I’ll listen. Sorry.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you. It just happens sometimes, me being me.” A sigh. “I think you understand that.”
“Sure,” he says, rigid. “I get it.”
“C’mon.” Destruction lets go of one arm, but start to pull him down the short steps toward the sidewalk with his other arm. “Let’s talk somewhere. Properly.”
“No,” Corinthian says instinctively, grabbing the railing which groans, metal shrieking as it bends with Corinthian’s grip resisting Destruction’s pull. “We can talk right here. Lady Death asked me back to her.”
Destruction exhales and moves back around to grab his wrist, prying his fingers off the railing.
“We’re just going to talk,” he says with a controlled courtesy.
“Fuck you!” Corinthian snarls, his entire jawline deforming to make room for the Wolf’s lupine fangs. “Let me fucking go or just kill me here and now!”
Destruction grabs him, his enormous palm covering the lower half of the Corinthian’s face with absolutely no effort at all. It’s a decapitating grip, but Corinthian is past caring. He bites the hand muzzling him, hard enough that it draws blood. Endless blood floods his mouth and the Corinthian freezes in shock, Destruction also stares in surprise – then he throws the Corinthian’s head against the stairs.
The impact splits the skin down to his skull and probably cracks even the nightmare-tough cranium. The world rings. There’s white, then black, then white again as he swims back to consciousness.
He hears… yelling? He can’t see. His glasses are still miraculously on his head, but there’s blood pouring from the gash over his right ear as he dizzily tries to get one elbow under his body. Hears voices. What—?
“—I WILL CALL THE COPS! I AM DIALING NINE-ONE-ONE RIGHT NOW! YOU FUCKER!” There’s a sound of swatting, like someone hitting a dog with a newspaper. “DON’T YOU TOUCH HIM! GET AWAY! GET BACK!”
Corinthian levers himself onto one elbow, rolling himself onto his back, still dazed in time to see Destruction of the Endless being hit with a folded pink umbrella wielded by a gender-indeterminate person in mismatched rainboots and a pink plastic rain slicker. They are jabbing their umbrella with one hand, a little flip-phone held to their ear with the other. They are screaming and swinging away to absolutely zero effect on the giant of a man they are attempting to fend off. It’s so surreal, Corinthian waits for it to dissolve into a dream.
It doesn’t dissolve, but Destruction seems… shocked by this.
The person with the umbrella moves to stand between Destruction and the Corinthian where he’s lying, dumbfounded, on the townhouse steps. “Yes, police?” they say fiercely into the phone. “Yes, Lorrey Street and Ninth! There’s a man here attacking someone! He’s a big fucker with red hair! Come quickly!”
Corinthian blinks.
There is a little human person trying to defend him from the personification of Destruction. They are doing it with aplomb too. The absurdity of their determination is so complete Destruction appears to be frozen by it. Like a tank getting dressed down by a grasshopper.
“I don’t mean any harm—” Destruction starts to say.
“YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED!” screams the little human. They gesture wildly with the phone toward Corinthian collapsed on the steps, the carnage of groceries, the blood splattered on the walk-up. The smallest microcosm of violence possible. “LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE DONE!” they shout, tears in their voice.
Something in Destruction’s face downshifts when they say it. Something realizes. Resolves. Unreadable to Corinthian who is kind of seeing double, but the Endless backs away into the street, hands upheld.
“I apologize,” he says to the umbrella-wielding Good Samaritan. “You’re right. I… I’ve done enough. I’m going.” Something in his tone firms up strangely. “Yes. I’m going.”
“I’m still calling the cops on you!” howls Umbrella Vigilante, shaking their now broken pink umbrella wildly. They continue to do so until Destruction turns down an alley, not once looking back. They wait for five seconds, then drop their umbrella and turn to kneel next to Corinthian, their face frantic with worry.
“Oh, my dear! Oh no!” They set the flip-phone down and pull a scarf from their neck, pressing it to his bleeding temple. “Hold that there. Can you hold that? Oh goodness. Headwounds always bleed so badly, but they’re often worse than they look, I promise. Do you know where you are?”
“Yeah,” Corinthian says, baffled as the human fusses over him.
“Do you know the year?”
Okay, this is funny, but no he does not because he’s pretty sure he’s caught up in non-linear nonsense specific to Death and the Endless existing across space and time and fucking around with it from time to time.
“Um…”
“That’s alright. Can you tell me who the president is?”
“Look—” Corinthian starts to say.
“Nothing to worry about,” says his rescuer with the bright and totally fake reassurance of someone who is certain you have brain damage right now. “You’re just fine, dear. Do you want the police?”
“No. I’d rather not.”
Umbrella Vigilante picks up their phone and puts it to their ear. “Yes. Hello, miss. He’s gone. Uh-huh. Okay. Just a moment.” They cover the receiver. “Dear, they say there is a unit in the area. If you get his behavior on record then if he does it again, that will make a pattern they can point to and then you can file for a restraining order. But if you’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m not gonna file.”
Umbrella Person gets a really upset look on their face, but inti the phone she says, “You don’t need to send a unit. Yes. He’s gone, but I need to get some cuts cleaned up here. Could we file at the station later? Yes? Okay. Let me give you my number. I’m Lou Casey. Yes.”
Corinthian listens to Lou fretfully give their contact information while he soaks their scarf in blood. His wound is not closing nearly as fast as it usually would because it was Destruction who did it to him, but the blood is still slowing and the ache receding from his head. When Lou hangs up, they begin to gather up the dropped soup cans and other groceries, getting out a little re-usable back from their backpack.
They pick out the ruined eggs from the carton and close the little cardboard carrier around what remains. Then, they repack it all in cotton grocery bag and set it on the sidewalk by his boots.
As they do it, they say, “This is not my business, but I was lying about the head wound thing. That could have killed you, dear. He could have killed you. You should go to a clinic.”
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“That’s nice,” says Lou grimly. “Brain bleeds don’t really care about machismo though. Do you need lift to a clinic?”
Corinthian sits there a bit, then says, “I’ve got someone who can check me out. I’m staying with them while… the family works things out.”
“Yeah?” Umbrella sounds hopeful.
“Yeah.” He heaves himself to his feet. “Hmm. Can I keep the scarf? I think I ruined it.”
“Ha, yes. I wasn’t planning on getting it back. Need me to get your groceries?”
“Nah.” Corinthian grabs up the bag by its cotton handles hooking it into his elbow. “But, uh… thanks.”
That seems to please Lou greatly, though they look concerned nevertheless, like they still think he might fall over. “Everyone deserves to have a neighbor looking out for them at least once.” Then, when Corinthian doesn’t look apt to keep talking, they wave. “Take care, dear.”
Corinthian waves once, watching Lou take their fucked up umbrella with them up the street. He opens the door to Death’s flat one-handed, shutting the door behind him as he leaves the groceries by the door. Death finds him, hours later, lying on the couch with a bloody scarf in his jacket pocket, frowning at the ceiling.
“Your brother found me,” Corinthian says.
“What?” She says it sharply, with alarm. “How? What do you mean?”
“I went outside. Didn’t text you. Sorry.”
“Cor…” She sighs, skipping the scolding. “What happened?”
“He tried to apologize, then split my skull open when I tried to leave. Then a weird person attacked him with their umbrella until he left me alone.”
A pause.
“A person like a mortal? Like a human?”
“Yup.” He pops the last consonant.
“You’re alright though?”
“I’m going home,” he says, ignoring that last question. “If that’s alright? I want to go home.”
He very carefully does not look at Death, so he can avoid seeing her face knit with regret and understanding, the way he absolutely knows it will. He just keeps his eyes on the ceiling.
“Of course it’s alright. If you’re sure.”
He thinks of Destruction’s last words, resolute as he said them. “Yes. I’m going.”