Eight
1st November 1981
‘Could he be a vortex?’ Lucienne asks, her brows furrowing behind the round rims of her glasses.
‘No, I do not think that is the case.’ Morpheus responds.
They stand at the edge of the grass, looking out on a vast desolate landscape, but the King of this land can sense that this is not a permanent damage. It is merely a dream. Or, to be more accurate, the worst nightmare he has ever seen.
‘You should wait here.’ He tells Lucienne, before stepping forward.
His boots crunch on the parched, blackened earth, and his long coat ripples out behind him in a wind which is hot and dry, and feels like sandpaper to breathe. He is heading towards a small shape in the middle of this terrible landscape, which is more akin to hell than any other place he has seen. The small hunched figure in the centre of this empty place is trembling and shaking, almost completely curled in on himself. He is completely naked, and the vertebrae of his spine stick out like some ancient Jurassic creature.
‘Severus.’ Morpheus says, crouching down next to the near skeletal form.
The young man doesn’t respond, but continues to shake, and rock himself back and forth slightly. Morpheus senses that simply magicking this all away would not help Severus right now. There is a reason why Severus always has nightmares – though he is yet to discover what that is. However watching him like this is… uncomfortable. He takes off his coat and lays it over Severus’ angular shoulders.
‘They were right about me, I’m everything they always said I was.’ The wizard’s voice is barely more than a rasping whisper, but Morpheus hears every word like a sharp knife in his flesh. ‘She’s dead. It’s my fault. I killed her.’
Dream of the Endless does not often feel sorry for mortal creatures. But neither does he often follow an individual’s life as he has done with this young man. All he knows is that a few conjured pleasant dreams will not be enough this time, and that he cannot simply stand by and watch Severus suffer.
He kneels on the cracked earth and scoops Severus into his arms, then stands and carries him to a bell shaped tent next to a dried up old water hole. A gnarled old tree twists up out of the rocky ground, it too is dry and cracked, and looks to be dead, save for a single green leaf on it’s outermost branch which flutters in the hot breeze.
The tent is old, tattered, the once white fabric greyed, and one side weighed down by a drift of dusty charcoal coloured sand. Inside, though the carpets are dirty and the roof sagging, they are at least out of that moisture sucking wind. In the centre is a small bed, which Morpheus lays Severus down upon, removing his coat, and covering his bony, trembling body instead with a cool sheet.
Suddenly he becomes aware of another presence. A woman, who had been sitting completely still at the edge of the space now stands and approaches the bed. Morpheus steps back and watches as she summons a bowl and a cloth, then proceeds to mop the young man’s brow.
‘Mother.’ Severus rasps.
‘Shh. It’s alright my little Prince. It’s going to be alright. Stay strong.’
‘It’s all my fault.’ Severus murmurs. ‘I failed mother, I failed. I messed everything up. Everyone was right about me. He was right. There’s something wrong with me. I’m rotten…’ His words collapse into wracking sobs, and Eileen holds her son in her arms.
‘Shh. No little Prince.’ She murmurs. ‘No, it’s not your fault, it’s mine. I tried to protect you…’
Morpheus steps out of the tent and gazes around the desolate landscape. It wasn’t a good dream exactly, but it wasn’t a nightmare either. Neither had Severus conjured it on his own exactly; he is not entirely sure what would have happened if he had left Severus trembling and naked in the middle of this desert. But Eileen had not been Dream’s doing. It was almost as though she had been there all along in the recesses of his mind, waiting.
Gradually the desolation shrinks, and softens somewhat. Dry grasses begin to sprout up between the cracks, and the old tree pushes out a few more leaves. Inside the tent Severus continues to be tended to by his mother, still mostly shaking, crying, or simply lying there staring into space.
Morpheus visits him every night, and eventually Severus begins to respond, and sits up in bed. Dream makes mint tea and Severus allows him to make the furnishings a little more comfortable. They talk, and play chess, and outside the desert turns from black to yellow, water returns to the oasis, and reeds grow up along the edge of the pool.
‘I have been offered a job.’ Severus states one night. ‘At the school, teaching potions.’
Morpheus says nothing. Severus will say what he really wants to say eventually.
‘I don’t want to take it.’ The young man looks down at his hands.
‘Why not Severus, it sounds like that would suit you?’ Morpheus asks then.
‘The first time you came to me.’ Severus begins slowly. ‘You said that when I died I would come and live here with you…’ His voice trails off in a whisper. ‘I don’t want to go back there.’ He rasps. ‘There is nothing for me…’ His eyes glance up.
Sometimes looking at Severus was like looking in a mirror. His eyes are almost as dark as Morpheus’ own eyes. The depths of his emotion almost as fathomless, though they both keep those feelings hidden well beneath the surface.
‘Let me stay.’ Severus’ voice cracks. ‘Please.’
Severus had always been a proud person, even as a frightened young child, a disquieted teenager, and into an at times disturbed young man, he never asked, and rarely expected anything. Now here he is begging for something which Dream could not grant him even if he wanted to.
‘It is not your time Severus.’ He says, and he cannot help but reach out a hand to stroke that tense jawline. ‘And that is not within my power to decide.’
‘I can’t…’ Severus curls back in on himself a little, looking away from the unfathomable depths of the Sandman’s formidable black eyes.
‘You are stronger than you know and better than you believe, Prince of Cokeworth.’ Morpheus murmurs, lifting his jaw to align their gazes once more.
Severus sees then that Dream’s eyes are not black, but full of colour and light, like a galaxy of stars floating in the endless reaches of space.
~~*~*~~