The days following Lord Morpheus's return were spent in a whirlwind of motion as the King of Dreams, symbols of office returned to him, set to rebuild his fallen kingdom. The palace knit itself back together in stone and glass until it again stood gleaming at the heart of the Dreaming. The halls echoed with the voices of returning palace staff instead of wind blowing through crumbled walls. His homecoming was a frenzy of creation, of restoration, of tearful reunions that lasted only moments before he was off again to fix something else.
He found moments for his librarian, somehow, in the midst of the chaos. That first day after his powers were fully restored, he sought her out. Lucienne's coat retailored itself, and she snidely asked her king if he did not appreciate her handiwork, and he laughed, and he took her by the arm to see him rebuild the library. He watched her as he did it, as he returned her world to her, somehow more beautiful than before, and he had the audacity to look concerned when she wept.
Lucienne wanted to embrace her lord, then. She wanted to tell him about the long years spent here, alone in a crumbling castle, waiting for him. She wanted him to know she'd do it again. She wanted him to know he wasn't allowed to leave her sight for the next week, at least. Instead she thanked him, and he would not accept it. He said to consider it a reward for her loyalty. That made her want to smack him, and he knew it did, and he grinned, and he said this was a gift, and would she please just let him be nice to her. She said she would allow it.
For several days after that, she didn't see much of Lord Morpheus—through no fault of his own, as she was quite busy catching up on decades worth of reading material, though when he popped in to visit he was quick to leave. Lucienne understood. The day of his return, he told her where he'd been, what happened to Jessamy. Jessamy had been so fond of the library. To be there without her must be jarring—it was for Lucienne, certainly. She grieved the raven alongside her king.
In her time sequestered away amongst her tomes, Lucienne heard whispers. Visitors to the palace from across the realm spoke of Lord Morpheus's feats in rebuilding their homes, healing their damages, soothing their worries, all while still being the strange and aloof being they remembered. They also spoke of how tired he looked, how thin, how haunted.
The next time he visited her in the library, Lucienne saw what they meant. The burst of energy that accompanied his return to power appeared to have waned. He was morose and short with his words, which wasn't so strange at all, but he seemed distracted, and that was strange indeed. That was when the first inkling of worry began to seed itself in Lucienne's mind.
Lucienne had been Lord Morpheus's confidant (and friend, though he would never admit to such a thing) for a very long time. She knew the shape of his pain and his greatest fear, and she had glimpsed it before, and it was as frightening then as the prospect of it was now. So she asked him to talk to her, that day in the library.
"You were alone," he said without looking at her. "All those years, here in an abandoned palace."
And it was over, it was over and done with and most everyone was back, but still Lucienne's breath caught in her chest. Alone without so much as her books for company, there at the end. Alone day after day which never became night which bled into day. "Yes," she said, and, "so were you."
His strange little mouth twisted at that, and she could only assume she'd cut straight to the heart of the matter. "Do you ever—" he cut himself off, and this was strange indeed, to see him search for words he no doubt had, that he simply didn't want to say. "Do you ever feel you are alone, still? Even though you are not?"
Lucienne knew the bare bones of his imprisonment, suspended in an orb of glass, robbed of his tools and his dignity. She saw the aftershocks in him, but to hear them stated plainly, out loud and to her face, in a voice that was so wounded—her heart went out to him, to this shared burden between them. "Yes," she answered honestly, "I feel that way often. Like no one will be able to get close enough to heal what has been hurt."
He gazed at her, brows drawn together, like he'd gotten to this point and didn't know what to do with what he found. "Lucienne," he mouthed her name silently, and his hands twitched where they hung still at his sides, like he wanted to reach for her, but he didn't. "You can speak with me whenever you need to. You know that."
She was so unbearably fond of him at that moment, and so very exasperated. "Yes, my lord, I know. I've always been quick to confide in you." She stepped closer to him and his body went tense and she pretended not to notice. "You are my dearest friend, and I do not expect you to return the sentiment, but—"
"I do." Lord Morpheus interrupted her, which he did very rarely because it had the potential to make her incandescently angry, but it was like the words were yanked out of him alongside his expression of utter disbelief. "You are my friend. Of course you are. Lucienne, have I truly been so cruel—"
"I know I am," she interrupted him now, "I just don't expect you to admit it, sire."
For a long moment he stared at her before he ducked his head, almost shy, the sharp edges of him bowed. "So long as you know," he said, hoarse.
"I do." Lovely, stubborn, prideful being, all coiled around his pain, defensive even to those who knew him best, trying to reach out. "You do not have to be alone. Not in this." There were things he would always be alone in until Lady Death came to collect him at the end of all that was. "You can speak with me, too. I beg that you do."
Lord Morpheus gave the slightest nod, the bob of his throat and the red around his eyes all Lucienne needed to see to know she had found the right thing to say. He left then, the thick robe he sometimes wore these days billowing out behind him, and Lucienne watched him, and she felt sick with worry.
Several more days passed with few words between them. Time slipped between pages of books and whispers of visitors. The King of Dreams looked so ancient, they said, so haggard and dull-eyed. Matthew took to visiting Lucienne when his master was otherwise preoccupied, which at first made her ache for Jessamy, but soon gave way to fondness for her lord's outspoken new companion. Matthew said Lord Morpheus appeared to be suffering from migraines, and that was when Lucienne's worry crescendoed.
She was his raven once, very long ago now. He had been alien even to her back then, not something which could be mistaken for human in any regard, a horror and a god. She loved him just the same, as he had given her the world as she knew it. It was in those early years that she first saw him struggle under the weight of all he was. She learned that he could be swept away by the unconscious consciousness if he did not anchor himself against it, if he did not fight back the tide, if he was not untouchable.
The rules he had in place—stricter for himself than for any of his creations—were meant to keep him from crumbling in agony and bringing the universe with him. It took Lucienne some time to understand that, but once she did, she found it difficult to resent his pride and his solitude.
Any judgment she could have felt was long gone now, because he had let her see him, once. She was his librarian by then and she stumbled upon him in some blank room she has not seen since. He had been in such terrible pain. And he'd been alone, he'd begged to be alone, it was easier to do it alone, he'd always done it alone, leave me alone, please leave me be, and he had cried. His eyes had been blown all black and they'd spun with galaxies that spilled silver down his face and he had reached for her, for her hand to hold, even as he begged her to leave.
The experience was terrifying. The whole time she had no way of knowing if it was the end of him, of her, of their realm and the universe as well—and what an ending, the two of them in a room of light, his hand clutched to her chest while Everything hurt him and he screamed with it. Hours passed before he was able to wrestle it back to manageability, to fold it up inside of him.
She knows now that this was more common than one should hope, when the King of Dreams was knocked low and his defenses chipped until they shattered altogether. When the sky above the castle became tumultuous and the floor under her feet shuddered, it was often because Lord Morpheus had holed himself away somewhere to ride out that which threatened to unmake him. He had not let her find him since that first time, but he allowed her to speak of it, to ask him questions.
The "migraines" Matthew spoke of were themselves brief lapses in control, sudden blows to the core of Dream that sent him reeling. They were results of far flung tragedies in the universe that Lord Morpheus, at some point in his eons of existence, had learned to suppress his reactions to. He still felt them, he'd been very vehement about this, he still felt them, and if he could not steel himself against gaping wounds in the Hope of existence, he would react. On the rare occasions Lucienne saw these reactions, they were subtle, a sudden misstep that brought him to lean against a wall, a choked-off gasp and a faraway look.
"Yeah, not this time," Matthew interrupted her explanation. "He's like, crying."
"He cries easily," Lucienne retorted, defensive on her king's behalf.
"Right, I noticed that—but this is out of nowhere, not when someone, like, asks if he wants a blanket or something. He'll be working or reading or whatever and then he'll be staring at nothing and just…" a shrug of little raven wings, and a sad huff, "I mean, it's bumming me out, Luc."
The nickname was presumptuous and Lucienne did not correct him. "I will talk to him."
Now, several days later and standing in front of a heavy set of wooden doors, Lucienne is starting to regret every decision that led her to this moment.
It isn't that she doesn't want to speak with her king. She has never been afraid of him the way she perhaps should be. She is, nonetheless, nervous, because these incongruous doors have appeared down the hall from her own private quarters. The last time they appeared was when Lucienne came to understand Lord Morpheus's burden.
If it is time for her to see him that way again then it is far too soon. Not vulnerable—she wants that, she wants to be allowed to see him, the way he is allowed to see her. To see him in this room was to see him out of control, overwrought, desperate for someone to cling to, terrified of the reality of such a thing. She knocks on the door just as she did all those years ago.
The doors open, a silent glide that allows brilliant light to pour into the hallway. Lucienne blinks, allowing her eyes a moment to adjust, and perhaps allowing herself a moment of hesitation. What greets her is not a room of white light. It is a reading room, far from her lord's usual style. While spacious and grand, it has none of those old European flourishes he was so fond of and which Lucienne finds ostentatious, and the palette is all wrong. No dark wood and stone, instead white-painted walls and pale furnishings. So bright and high-ceilinged, the space feels airy despite its stifling heat.
A plush cream-colored and gold-embroidered couch sits in the middle of the room, facing away from Lucienne and towards the great floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the far wall. The view is of some rosy-dawned meadow, gleaming and verdant, its far reaches obscured by soft rolls of fog. The dusty-pale light of the sun illuminates the room, washes the white in pinked gold, brings attention to the flowers and vines that grow freely, pouring in cascades from the bookshelves dominating the wall to Lucienne's left. The vines weave and blossom and drop dangling strings of flowers, some of which nearly touch the floor, until they eventually reach the twinned bookshelves opposite their source. The air smells of the flowers, sweet and fresh.
Lucienne steps forward, mindful of the cracks in white marble underfoot where tiny succulents and blossoms have lain claim. To her right, a record player croons some contemporary love song. It seems Lord Morpheus has been catching up on the art of the past century as well. As Lucienne watches, huge canvases on the wall seem to shift and pulse in vibrant color along with the music. Ivy begins to creep between the canvases, tangled and flowered, and it is beautiful. Lucienne turns her attention back to that single couch, noticing now the black-socked feet perched on the near armrest. "I quite like what you've done with the place, my lord."
A soft hum is all she gets in response, though a moment later a matching armchair materializes to the right of the couch, tilted to face both the couch's occupant and the lovely view outside. Lucienne takes the invitation for what it is. She walks around the couch until Lord Morpheus is fully in view, as starkly black-and-white as ever against the spectrum of his surroundings. He is as at ease as she's ever seen him, stretched luxuriantly on the couch, his feet propped up with his boots sitting neatly on the ground. Both his arms reach up over his head, one flung carelessly over the arm of the couch, the other bent to cover his face. As she approaches, that arm moves the slightest bit to allow him to peak at her with drowsy eyes.
Lucienne is reluctant to interrupt him now, so relieved is she to see him relaxing. He must notice her hesitation, because his arm moves more and she sees his brows scrunching. "Is something wrong?"
"No," Lucienne is quick to reassure him. She sits in the armchair, legs crossed and chin resting on one hand, obviously mimicking his own reclined posture, which makes the corners of his lips twitch up in amusement. "Are you quite comfortable, my lord?"
He gives her the largest smile he has since his return, delighted with her teasing, and Lucienne thinks her heart may yet burst with fondness. Oh, but she had missed him. "I am now," his voice is tinged with his smile. The hand which dangles off the couch lifts, and after a moment of stillness he reaches out to her, palm up.
Lucienne blinks at his hand and tries not to let her expression change, though it is remarkably difficult. There were only a handful of times in all their long history that Lord Morpheus had reached for her, had asked for her touch in any capacity, and most were his psychically needing her help to stand—except for that time in the room of light, when he was hurting, and he let her see him.
So Lucienne hesitates, and she studies him, the careful openness of his expression in rosy light, eyes ice-blue and not swirling with blackness and stars. He is calm, he is in control. Eventually she is still long enough that her lord begins to draw his hand away. She takes it quickly, and she brings it down to her knee to rest in both her own hands. "I'm glad," she says.
He stares at their joined hands, and she squeezes, feeling him smooth and cold and trembling. His eyelashes flutter for a moment before he casts his gaze back up to meet hers. "Have I frightened you?" he asks, as though she can not feel him.
Lucienne smiles. "You couldn't if you tried," she tells him. "Not in the way you think."
He doesn't ask, but he lifts his brows in the way which means he'd need that explained to him.
"I worry about you," she says. "You know that, don't you?"
It hardly ever feels fair to use words against him this way. She knows how deeply, how easily he can be moved if he has his guard down. She knows it would bring the bright sheen of tears to his eyes, like it does now, the stilted shiver of his breath. He doesn't let go of her hand. Eventually, her lord sighs and his eyes slip closed. "You sound like my sister," he accuses, as though this isn't a lovely thing to say.
"Yes, well, Lady Death is very wise," Lucienne retorts.
Her lord sighs again, though this one is decidedly more of a petulant huff. He is silent for a long moment after that and the arm not in her hold slips back into place to cover his eyes. The song playing on the record machine changed some time ago. The canvases on the wall no longer shift to the music, but instead ripple with discordant spikes of color. The hand in Lucienne's hold won't stop shaking, and the tender brush of her thumb on his knuckles makes the pale line of his throat bob. "I can perform my function," he says, "and my realm is being rebuilt. That is all I care about right now."
"I'm not doubting your abilities, my lord," old annoyance tinges her voice. Prickly sod, even holding her hand and looking like some overworked young scholar. "I'm doubting your wellbeing." He throws his arm back to glare at her, all bundled in his heavy robe and eyes red-rimmed and whole body faintly shivering. "Sire. Please talk to me."
He could leave, now. There is every chance that he will. Lucienne would not mention it the next time they spoke. Eventually he would try everything but apologizing, and she would demand his cooperation, and he would fold, and his words would be reluctant and dry, and they would have gotten nowhere. One hundred and six years ago, that was exactly what would have happened. Now, though, Dream of the Endless looks away and up at the ceiling, and he visibly shudders with what is choking him. "I do not know where to begin."
Lucienne breathes out, shifts her weight in such a way that makes him tense before he realizes she's leaning towards him, not leaving. "That's alright." She can guide him in this, can bring him back safely from this precipice, can ease the barbed thing out of him and lay it down at his feet. "We'll start with the most pressing issue: why am I holding your hand, my lord?"
This has the desired effect of relaxing the tension in his shoulders, the ghost of a chagrined smile on his red mouth. It fades quickly, the reality of having to answer the question sobering indeed. It takes him longer than usual to formulate a response. "I do not remember the last time someone touched me without intention to harm. It is most uncomfortable."
Lord Morpheus's propensity to stripping his words of unnecessary emotion often had the effect of making Lucienne very, very sad, as it does then. He feels it, of course, rippling in the cosmos between them, and his brows draw together with concern. Lucienne holds one hand up, stilling him into dropping it and allowing her a moment to regain herself. "What's uncomfortable?" she asks. "Am I hurting you right now?"
His expression pinches again. "No, of course not. I only mean the shaking. I cannot control it." Then, to demonstrate, he draws his hand along her own from heel of palm to tip of finger, letting her feel the way he trembles, before he laces his fingers with hers. His breath comes quicker and his eyes swim. "Perhaps it does hurt. Do not let go, please," he tacks on quickly when she begins to draw away. "That is not the right word for it. The feeling is not wholly unpleasant, and I want—" here, a rare break in his voice, something like profound embarrassment, and like animal desperation, "—to be touched."
Lucienne swallows hard and privately hates everything that made him the way he was since the start of forever. "A century is a long time to go without anything, sire, let alone a hand to hold." That wrenches a dry sob from him, jagged and surprised, and it rips at her. She feels she is drawing poison-tipped arrows from his flesh, and he is letting her, and it is holy. "I know it's overwhelming, but you can let me help. You can let me do this for you." She lifts his hand to her mouth and she presses her lips to his knuckles.
The sound he makes is hurt—kindness can undo him so thoroughly, her god-who-is-her-friend, her lord-who-is-her-home. She breathes warmth onto his hand as though she can chase the shakes away, and he raises one finger enough to brush her cheek. "I missed you," he whispers, an overwhelmed benediction. "I imagined you."
"Did it help?"
He shakes his head. The smooth white skin of the underside of his wrist trembles where her fingertips stroke it. "I stopped being able to imagine much of anything warm. It did not matter if I imagined my hand in yours, even if I imagined being held—I could not feel it."
Lucienne manages to keep her breath steady through the ache of sorrow, his and her own. In the final years of her solitude, when everyone else had fled the palace, she felt the chill that permeated the Dreaming within her bones. "It was very cold there?" Had her home been reflecting the state of its king?
Her lord does not answer. His free arm moves to rest against his chest, to pull his robe tighter around him. Yes, it had been very cold. No, he can still not imagine being warm. If the Lord of Dreams could have allowed it, if there was no risk of scaring him away, Lucienne would have pulled him into her arms. She tucks his hand up underneath her chin, held between her own, and wishes it was enough. "You've been distracted, my lord," she says. "Your subjects have begun to notice. And I am worried about you. "
Another long moment of silence, in which her lord appeared ready to say something but couldn't bring himself to. Unable to answer the wrong questions, perhaps. "Are you hurting, my friend?"
And that hurts him on its own, strikes through that part of him that's always been weak because it crumbles at the faintest sign of compassion. His eyelids flutter and Lucienne wishes he could be allowed to feel it in its entirety, that if he had to hurt he could at least hurt loudly. "The collective consciousness was all I had to focus on. It was easier to manage." His gaze flickers back to her. "I am sorry to hear that anyone has taken notice. I will amend this."
"They do not need a show of strength from you," Lucienne reminds him, and, "what they would like is some openness, some understanding. Some kindness."
"Kindness," Lord Morpheus mutters, suddenly spiteful. "They have no need of kindness from me. Every being must accept their function and purpose on their own. I cannot help. I am not their father."
Here Lucienne stills, because it is a strangely specific denial—and Lord Morpheus had a child once, and that child was loved, and that child is dead. "I did not mean to imply otherwise," she murmurs, "only that they care for you, sire. And that you were gone for a very long time."
The twitch of betrayal on his brow, that same one she saw when he first stumbled back into his kingdom to find that his creations had fled. Whatever he wants to say would be unbecomingly petulant, so he says nothing. A battle for another day, then. "It's not that the weight of the collective unconsciousness has increased, then," Lucienne steers the conversation back.
"No," her lord agrees, "I have simply grown unused to life outside of a cage."
Lucienne can think of nothing to say to that. His hand on his chest fists into his robe, holds it tight to him. "Roderick Burgess was an amateur magician," the King of Dreams tells her. "When he bound me, he did not do so with finesse. It was brutal. Painful." The hand in Lucienne's hold trembles with memory, and she dares not breathe. "It was like—like he'd knapped a flake of me. Pared me from my core, sieved me into that circle. I was not whole. I felt static all about the edges, raw and stinging. I still feel that way, though my power has returned." He stops, breathes in harshly, sounds wrecked when he says, "so I suppose that is why."
"You don't feel like yourself, then. Not completely."
"No. No, they took something from me." Oh, but her lord sounds confused, he sounds young, and if Lucienne's emotions could bring about the end of the universe the whole thing would be long gone by now. "They did things I do not understand. My tools brought them youth and extended life. I understand the motivations there, but my cloak—they stripped me, like less than a beast, like an unliving thing. To them I was undeserving of freedom or air or clothing. I was nothing."
Lucienne frees one hand from his grasp so she can remove her glasses and dab at her eyes with her sleeve. His gaze is on her face, gleaming with the tears that somehow haven't fallen yet, and she hopes he is feeling all that she is—all the devotion and gratitude and love between them that they cannot give voice to. "They killed Jessamy. In front of me." This is the last thing he can say, then, because his next breath twists up into a sob, and his face crumbles, and the hand on his chest comes up to cover his mouth as tears spill down his face.
Lucienne wishes he would scream, wishes that the agony in him could be drained like infection. She wishes she could do more than weep beside him, pressing kisses to his hand, murmuring things that are drowned out by the sharp choked sobs that he fails to muffle. This could kill her—this helplessness—this understanding of him—this being allowed to see. She is reeling with it, feels almost drunk on the pain. "My king," she whispers, and she reaches for him, and she touches his face, and he flinches but does not move and does not stop her. "My lord, my friend, my love," and he gasps with what that does to him.
It shakes him so completely, tears open the softness of him. It is too much, Lucienne can see that, and she wants more—she wants him to have the thing which hurts him in abundance. She wants him to have it until it no longer hurts. "Please," he whispers, and he shakes, and she doesn't know what he's asking for exactly and she doubts he knows either, "Please, please—"
"I have you," she promises, her fingers brushing away his tears only for more to take their place, "I have you, easy, easy now, let it hurt, just let it hurt." She touches his jaw, his neck, the hand which covers his mouth, feels him cold and trembling and overcome. "You are home, my lord, you are safe, you are whole." Around them the Dreaming rumbles with every heaved breath from Lord Morpheus, like he is spiraling near that precipice of lost control, but they are alone in this little room full of flowers and light and music, and she is not afraid this time.
She wants to kiss him, to swallow up his sounds, to warm him from the inside. She wants his smooth white skin to pink and bruise and feel until he isn't shaking with this terrible almost-pain. She wants to soothe the wounded animal he's always been.
His hand moves from his mouth to cradle her own hand to his face, and yes, this will kill her, surely, this trust. Her thumb traces the underside of his jaw up to his trembling lips so she can feel every shuddered exhale. Lucienne remembers little of her time as a human, so brief and so long ago, but something about this feels heartbreakingly familiar.
His tears have slowed, his sobs reduced to hiccuped breaths that don't shake the world around them. The music drifting from the record player hasn't stopped, still soft and calming, and the pale yellow light that gleams over everything tells Lucienne that the sky outside the window hasn't shifted dark. Lord Morpheus turns his face into her hand like he is trying to sink into her. His skin is marble-white against the warm brown of her own. His hand slips down to brush his fingertips across her wrist in much the same way she was doing earlier.
It feels lovely. She has been alone for so long. She has missed him. "You are my home," she tells him.
He opens his eyes, still human-blue, or perhaps already reverted from cosmos-black. "Why do you—" he swallows, his throat must be dry, "why do you do this for me?"
Lucienne frowns but tries not to show any other sign of her confusion. "What do you mean?"
"You do not have to assist me when I am compromised. I have never shared this burden with anyone, not in this way. I only hope you do not feel obligated."
"Did it ever occur to you that I am simply curious about strange doors?" Lucienne teases.
Lord Morpheus smiles at that and lets his eyes slip shut again, sending another pair of tears down his face. "Yes, I knew you would be," he says. "You are dependably curious."
He sounds fond. Lucienne rewards him with another brush of her lips across his knuckles. "I would assist you with this whenever possible," she says. "And I would listen whenever you need to speak." A comfortable pause, and then, "You should speak to me more often. You should let me be kind to you."
His jaw clenches. When Lucienne first knew him, he was strange. Far stranger and wilder and angrier than he is now. His apparent humanity is something he has strived for, something she has watched him learn. He did terrible things before she knew him. She knows some of them, not all, and if what she knows is haunting for her, she imagines it must weigh on him. He does not believe that the beast he was deserves kindness. He may be right about that. Regardless, that cold and eldritch god is not the god she knows.
Lord Morpheus sighs. "You could demand many things from me, you know," he says. "I owe you much."
"You can give me this." The privilege to see you, the ability to hurt you, the trust to put you back together.
"Yes, I suppose I can."
