Disclaimer:  The Sandman and associated characters belong to Neil Gaiman/Vertigo/DC Comics.  "somewhere i have never traveled" was written by e.e.cummings.  This is the last chapter of this fanfiction and probably the most difficult to write – a great deal of inspiration came from Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathon Safran Foer, which is a damn good (if utterly heartbreaking) book and worthy of considerable praise. 

We are not immune to what we entail, he thought.

We are subject to our functions.

Whatever lives, dies; whatever dies becomes immortal.  Is that true?  Does it even make sense?

I am Destiny.  I was Destiny.  I am subject to my role.

I have a destiny.  What could it be?

Do I really want to know?

Denial... disinterest... distraction...

Words shifted in his mind, mere husks of sounds and feelings bereft of meaning.  He could not take it in.  He could not understand.

Did he have to?

I can die.  My brother died.  Or will die.  If I know that he dies later now... how does that change things?  I am dead already, just as Trivia is dead, and the universe is dead...

A shiver of Determination and surrender flickered through him.

I am myself.  And I am alive.

He opened his eyes.

She was lying next to him, her eyelashes dark against her pale face, her eyes closed.  He kissed her forehead gently and sat up, stretching.

I made a Decision, he thought, faintly pleased.  I made my choice.

"Hello," she said, rolling up to sit beside him.  Bright flecks of grass were caught in her dark hair, echoing the color of her eyes.  She shook her head slightly, dislodging a few, and smiled at him sleepily. 

She was very beautiful, almost painfully so, and he wondered why he hadn't gone blind for looking at her radiance. 

"Hello," he said quietly, smiling faintly at her.  She tipped her head to one side, looking at him, her hair following her movement.

"Did you know," he said, "that you are the only person in this entire world who has seen my eyes?"  She shook her head again in mock gravity, like a fascinated child.

"It's true.  Even my sister, who has seen all things and will see all things, even she will never be able to tell their color."  He felt like talking, unexpectedly, of simply babbling on about things inconsequential and fleeting and beautiful.  

"You've changed," she said, matter-of-fact.

"Yes," he said.  "I have."

And she smiled.

*

Three voices:

It will not last.

No.

No. 

But...

But?

He knows it, too.  And he continues, disregarding this fact.

True. 

Why?

(A pause.)

He lives, now.

A complication.

The third:

But it is one that makes no difference.

*

It would not last.  He knew that.  She probably knew it as well.

But there was no point in acknowledging it. 

"Why are we doing this?" he asked her once, when they were making love, or walking, or staring at the stars, or performing any other of the tiny insignificant actions that lovers do.

"There are always two answers to 'why,'" she told him, eyes bright.  "There is 'why not?'"

"And?" he pressed, his eyes on hers, his lips on hers, his hands on hers.

She smiled.  "And there is 'because.'  Choose whichever you like best."

He kissed her, deeply, repeatedly, laughing.

There would be those times of mindless Delight, of the sheer and simple joy of being alive and together and in love, and there would be little instances of brief and stabbing eternity when the consequences of what they had done hung heavy over them.

"It won't last," she said in one of these times, her head on his chest, solemn and quiet.

"No," he agreed, very softly, their hushed words and breath and the rising and falling of their chests mingling in the dusk. 

All that lives, dies, he thought.  And all that dies becomes immortal.

He wondered if Death knew that. 

*

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skillfully,musteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

*

Time had never been an issue for him before.  Duration, perhaps, but never with the slight edge of desperation that time brings as seconds vanish into the dark to be forever lost. 

Previously aeons had flickered by; now each moment was something impressed with both love and grief almost beyond bearing, to be savored and let go only reluctantly. 

"Why is it," he asked her once, rhetorically, "that love and grief are twins?"

She put her chin on her hands, staring up at him.  "Because," she said at last.

He smiled faintly, ruefully, and stroked her dark hair.

There existed within him some strange, detached part of himself that could not believe this was happening to him; that he had fallen in love, that he had thrown the Book away, that he was improvising his own spontaneous, serendipitous life.  This Doubt followed him, even when he was speaking to her, or making love, or listening to her speak to him, or telling her he loved her.

"Distraction," she murmured thoughtfully, watching him, running a finger along his face as she traced his profile.

"No names," he said gently, and covered her mouth with his.  "No names."

And somehow that tiny insatiable splinter of curiosity still burned in him, wondering relentlessly what hers was.

*

"Tell me about the beginning," she said.

"What do you mean?"

She smiled, one of her grand slow marvelous smiles that caused him to wonder if he'd go blind by looking at her for too long, like looking at the sun.

Love is blind, someone had said, or would say.

Destiny is blind...

He shivered faintly and pushed the shadow-whisper from the future away.

"I mean in the very beginning," she explained, earnestly.  "In the beginning was the word, and all that."

"In the beginning was the Word," he repeated slowly.  "Yes.  That's right."

"So?  What was it?  What did it say?"

"I don't know.  I don't think I ever knew."

"What?"

He turned to look at her.  "The Word wasn't important for what it said.  It just was.  I don't know was it said, or in what context, or who wrote it.  I may have my suspicions, but I don't know."

"But the Book..."

"The Book tends to be rather secretive about itself," he said flatly.  "Unfortunately."

There was a pause.

"What happened next?" she asked, hesitantly.

He shrugged against the grass.  "A lot of things.  A lot of things that really aren't translatable.  There was the Silver City and that entire ill-fated fiasco with Lucifer, and later Hell, and later still, Earth.  And there I was, and Death, and Dream, and Destruction."  He frowned slightly, puzzled, then looked at her. 

"Where were you?" he asked, curiously.  "When did you turn up?"

She didn't meet his gaze.  Her lips twitched, then formed soundless shapes until she said, finally, "About the same time as you.  I think.  I don't... I can't keep track of time very well.  And..."

"And?" he asked with strange urgency.

"And we're compliments.  Sort of.  Opposites.  After all."  Her face was pale and unreadable.  Then she looked at him, her green eyes dark.  "I don't think I should talk about it."

"Please," he said.  "I need to know.  What... what are you like?  What part did you play, before this?"  He was sitting up now, staring at her intently.

"I'm erratic," she said, agitation flickering across her face.  "In the eyes of Fate... I'm an aberration, part of story, but not of sequence.  A random occurrence."  She shook her head.  "Please.  Don't ask me anymore."

"What do you mean?" he demanded, his voice loud.  "What are you saying?" 

She cringed, shrinking away from him.  "It's not important," she said desperately.  "Truly.  Please..."

He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her skin.  "Tell me!"

"DON'T."

He snatched his hand away as though it had been burned, staring at her face in shock.  The fury slipped from her expression, then, and she was crying in huge stabbing sobs.  "Please, please, please don't," she choked out.  "Don't.  Don't.  Please."  She hid her face in her hands, her thin body shaking.

His mouth was open, his hands trembling.  "Please," he said, weakly.  "I'm sorry.  I'm sorry."  He reached for her and she flinched.  "I'm sorry," he repeated, helpless and horrified.  "I'm so sorry."

*

Three voices:

Now.

Now.

Now.

*

It was a long time before she pushed her dark hair from her face and took a deep, shuddering sigh, and longer still before he could bear to look at her.

She forced a weak smile.  "Well," she managed.

He stared at her worriedly.  'This won't last," he said rapidly.  "I... I can't stay like this much longer.  I know your name, now.  I realized that.  And it's only a matter if time before I say it."

–No longer.

He recognized the voice now, the cold, impersonal statement of fact – not even a voice, really, just a word meant to be seen, not heard. 

"Who is that?" he asked the girl who had called herself Trivia.

"They're coming," she whispered.  She was very pale now, white as salt, her eyes huge with dread.  Her mouth barely moved, as though only a little of her attention could be spared for words.  She got to her feet rapidly and awkwardly.

"What?  Who?" he demanded, panic rising within him.  He could taste fear in his mouth, bitter and dry. 

"The Kindly Ones," she said faintly.  "The Fates.  The Moria.  The Norns.  The Three.  You know who they are."  She staggered over to him blindly, her gaze blank and distracted, and her hands clawed desperately at his sleeve.  "They're coming," she repeated, her desperate grip tightening with each word.  "They're coming they're coming oh God they're coming..."

The air cringed and there was a stench of ash and lightning.

Destiny felt the blood thudding in his hands, a driving tattoo of fear that was loud in the electric silence.

Then he realized, the knowledge congealing into a frozen knot in his gut, that he wasn't hearing a heartbeat at all, only the ponderous, whispering throb and hum of a spinning wheel.  He turned around slowly, reluctantly, his hand falling from Trivia's grasp.

And he saw them.

They had brought gloom with them – the sky was flat and leaden now, the entire landscape cold and still.  He didn't know how long they had been standing there, watching the two of them, though he suspected it had been for a long while.

How could he not have known?  How could he not have seen them?

Destiny is blind...

The Fates stood there like mannequins, the only movement being the steady revolution of the wheel and the occasional flutter of hair or cloth in the uneasy wind.  One was seated at the wheel, methodically sustaining its movement, while the other two flanked her.

–Lord, said one, her pale and perfect lips parting to form the word precisely.  She was the youngest (as far as appearances could be trusted), every sweet curve of her body edged with youth and a strange, scornful, untouchable perfection.  Her eyes were the bitter grey of the cold sea, and her ivory hair floated around the expressionless oval of her face.

–Eldest, said another, the seated one.  She was middle-aged and comfortably plump, her lips pressed in a thin, practical line.  Her eyes were hazel and steady, her browned hands moving with practiced ease as she fed the wool into the wheel.  Her gaze, cool and politely inquisitive, never left his face.

–Destiny, said the last, and, uniquely, there was something in her voice, be it harsh satisfaction or some strange and twisted tenderness he could not tell. 

The crone.

She was very tall, almost as tall as he was, a sharp face with eyes darker than the void between stars staring at him inscrutably, at once distant and mocking. 

Clenched in her bony fist was a pair of scissors.

There was a long pause.

"What business do you have with me?" he asked at last, guardedly, his gaze shifting rapidly from one figure to another.

–Small things, the maiden said, each word flawless and stabbing as diamonds and ice.

–Fate.

–Your future, the matron continued, more gently, picking up the thread of the conversation without pause. 

–Balance, spoke the crone, voice low.

Her, they said together with dark emphasis.

He glanced over at Trivia, startled.  She was biting her lip and staring at the Fates, her face pale.

"What business has she with you?" he demanded.

The young woman answered him, cold and gleeful and merciless.  –In a way she is part of us, both as a female and as her role, like it or not.  And your current affair is causing the world grief.

"What aspect do you come as?" Destiny asked quietly.  "The Eumenides?" 

The crone stared at him somberly.  –We are Fate's handmaiden's.  We come not with punishment.  Only consequence.

–This... diversion, eldest, the mother said, –is disrupting the balance defined by the Book.

"So why are you here?" he snapped bitterly.  "As a slap on the wrist?  A threat?"

–You heard the first time, the maiden insisted coldly.  –No threats.  No punishments.  Only promises, and consequences.

–There are roles, the mother intoned.  –There are roles that must be preserved as counterweights for the rest of the universe.  You are Destiny.

The crone said nothing now, only held out her hands, and he saw the heavy shape of the Book.

"No," he said weakly, desperately.  "No."

She simply shook her head and held it out to him.  His face twisted.

"NO!" he screamed.

There was a dispassionate silence.

"Denial."

He whipped around to stare at Trivia in shock.  "What?"

"Doom," she continued, her voice thin and very quiet.  She didn't meet his gaze.  "Dilemma.  Drama.  Decision.  Discard.  Deviant."

She stepped closer to him with every word, and finally raised her head to look directly in his eyes.  Her face was like marble, silent tears running from her eyes that were almost unnoticeable in the solemnity of her gaze.

"No," he said involuntarily, for he knew what would come next, but there was no force behind his words.

"Destiny."

He was frozen, gaping at her face, and he felt the entire earth falling away from him.  He could not take his eyes from her, from the quivering tautness of her body, from her set jaw and those eyes that made the entire world irrelevant.

"I name you," she said steadily.  "I name you as you are.  You are Destiny."

He had lost.

The Fates had waited quietly, without movement, but he was now aware of their gaze.

"All right," he said, the word creaking from him.  "All right."  He turned to them, slowly.  "But I have a question."

The maiden turned her back to him, pointedly.  The matron stared down at the wheel turning beneath her hands.

–Ask, the crone said.

"Why... why me?  Why do I have to do this?"  He sighed, deeply and wearily.  "Why can't I have my own life?  Why do I have to know exactly what will happen to me?

"Why?"

There was a silence.

–You define freedom and ignorance by your lack of both.  You are the counterbalance.  And to every why there is a because or a why not.

"That's no answer," he murmured.

–There are no answers. 

"I know."

He watched the mother draw the thread she had been spinning from the wheel, and he saw it was a chain.

He watched the chain attached to the Book with surgical exactitude, the three Fates working with the detached efficiency of nurses or midwives, and he knew that the other end would be chained to him, to never be cast off again.

The maiden looked at him then, and he could not read her eyes.  –You know what you must do, she said.

"...Yes."

And Trivia was in his arms and she was clinging to him so tightly he thought he ribs would crack and he felt the silent heat of their tears and he breathed in the smell of her and thought his heart would break.

She pulled away after awhile, staring up at him unreadably, her green eyes steady and quiet.

"I have to name you now," he said softly, every word stabbing.  "I'm sorry."

"I know."

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him fiercely, holding his head in her hands, in something like defiance and in something like pain.

He savored it for one moment and pulled back, holding her gaze with his.  He did not look away.

"Luck."

She stared at him for one clear moment, silent and calm, and then she was gone. 

*

He barely felt the chain being set around his wrist, or the familiar weight of the Book placed in his arms (where she had been, only a moment ago), or the silent, tactful retreat of the Fates into whatever world they came from, their work completed.  He felt only the pain of a hook in his heart.

He held the Book in his hands and allowed it to fall open, not looking at it, not looking at any place but where her eyes had been. 

Destiny is blind.

Yes.  He was.  His eyes were hers, forever hers.

He turned his head down, almost mechanically, and blinked at the words.

*

In the end there is little to tell.

Destiny retreated into his realm and into his role, forsaking all the earth for his garden of certainty.

Not that he had a choice.

He walks now, wandering the paths, never looking up from the words, never forgetting what they chose not to say. 

He is chained to his position as much as he is chained to a world that is perfectly predictable, without hope or choice.

Or Luck.

In the end, when the universe dissolves and Death comes to turn off the lights for the final time, his chain will be released and his burden set down gratefully.

He knows that every step he takes will bring him infinitesimally closer to this moment.

Destiny does not hope.

Destiny waits.

*

Well.  Um.  Please review.  I'm not sure if it makes sense at the end, or if it gets sappy or anything, so any and all comments are welcome.  Just don't be too cruel.