AN: Oh, god, the internet has made me so paranoid about my vocabulary. Everyone here knows the dictionary definition of "cum", right? I had to use it, but I do not mean the sexual slang thing, okay?

Also, I swear on all that's holy that I went through and did the manga chapters/original Sandman chapters math on this. I can no longer find my work, but I trust the notes I still have, which amount to, "Morpheus is still a royal jerk. Way pre-Daniel."

With no further ado…

Chapter Three

Never let it be said that Botan, ferry girl of the Spirit World, was anything less than brilliant at disguising herself. But if Kurama said one word about her being in schoolgirl's outfit she was going to smack him so hard… On the other hand, he wasn't Yusuke. He could at least pretend to think with his head.

"K - Shuuchi!" He was coming out of a classroom, flanked by one or two young men and women vying for his attention, and managing to distribute it evenly without actually welcoming theirs. When he heard her, he looked up fast enough to get whiplash, did a bit of a double take, and cleared his throat behind his hand. She might have called it an attempt to cover a chuckle if he hadn't wiped it off his face so quickly.

"Botan, good." Breaking free of his groupies, he walked over to her quickly, indicating a nearby stairwell. "What did you find?"

He already knew, she could hear it. A sort of empty note behind his calm.

Making sure the door was closed behind them, and looking up and down the stairs quickly, she said, "Karasu's soul isn't quite as imprisoned as we might have hoped. I'm sorry, but he wasn't mine to cover, and I suppose he just got lost in the mix up…"

"It's hardly your fault."

"Well! That's the bad news. The other bad news is that we don't actually know where he is. We can't get a reading on him anywhere. The good news is that Koenma is going to dedicate his finest resources to finding the scumbag, his very topmost team -"

"And," Kurama interrupted, "might this top team - out of Koenma's plethora of options - be that which was recently titled Team Uremeshi?"

Botan winced. "Well, if you want to be technical…"

"No need. I believe I've found him."

"Really? Where?! You promised you weren't being haunted!"

"Yes, I told the truth." He sounded mildly offended. "I do that now. I am not being haunted as such. I'd call it possession, only -"

"Kyaaa! Back off, perverted maniac!" Botan materialized her oar and swept it down towards his head as hard as she could.

Kurama caught it, raising an eyebrow. "- I am in complete control of my faculties. He's just in my head."

"Oh." Chagrined, Botan rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, dismissing her oar. "Sorry."

"That's fine. Or it will be when I can feel my fingers again."

"Wait, how do I know you're not lying?" She poked his chest suspiciously. "You could be Karasu in Kurama's body pretending to be Kurama talking about Karasu."

"If that were the case, I would have killed you by now. At the very least I would be dressed in black."

Mollified, Botan nodded. "I suppose you were telling the truth."

"I do that quite a lot, actually." Kurama smiled. "Yet people are always surprised."

"Well, yes." Botan tsked under her breath. "You were the Legendary Youko Kurama for a very long time, you know."

Don't you believe in mercy?

No.

"Sometimes," she added without thinking, her eyebrows drawing together, "you're just the same."

To make a long story short, Koenma couldn't help. I went to see him after school, telling Mother I was going to Kuwabara's. Thankfully, she had not seen either Yusuke's or Kuwabara's houses. Nor had she asked to meet their parents.

It felt rather strange not having told her about Hiei, but I hardly thought the two of them meeting would go over well. I'd have to explain away his height, red eyes, and manners, for one thing; for another, he hated her (if in an impersonal, perfunctory sort of way by now). At any rate, keeping a multitude of secrets from her was something I was becoming increasingly adept at.

So I went to see Koenma, and listened to him hem and haw and try to make it plain that none of this was, in any way shape or form, his fault. He could send souls into dreams, yes, but to send anyone else in with Karasu already in residence would be murder. First come, first served - as Yusuke could make Kuwabara and Keiko dream of kissing him (something I would have killed to see, personally - Botan's account was highly amusing, but not nearly as deadly when used as blackmail as having born witness would be) Karasu was in charge now. No one else would stand a chance.

At least I knew that.

However, that was all beside the point - I had enough people in my head. I could rid myself of this one. I just had to play along for long enough. I'd reacted poorly to being unable to fend him off physically, but it only meant I'd have to be nastier than I'd wanted to be, and that… was doable.

"Forget you once had sweethearts
They've forgotten you
Think you not on parents
They've forgotten too…"

I picked up the bag of marbles he'd left lying in the dust and mold of the floor, forget-me-nots creeping over them. All of them were tiger's eyes.

"As lullabies go," I noted, "that is not incredibly comforting."

"Would you prefer 'Shankill Butchers'? Or 'The Landlord's Daughter,' perhaps?" He'd managed to open that chest. It was filled with crowns, made of everything from solid gold to tinfoil.

"What are they about?"

"Murderers cum bogeymen and rape, respectively."

I snort disdainfully. "What kind of parents did you have?"

"The kind," he announced, sitting back, holding a tinfoil tiara stuck over with construction-paper gems and tissue for a veil, "who did not sing lullabies." His head tilted like a bird's, eyes sweeping over me. "Are we having a conversation?"

"No. We're just… having this." I gestured meaninglessly.

We walked down the linoleum-lined halls of my school, lockers lining the walls. They were all opened; clothes, books, and keepsakes trailed out. We reached the stairs up to the library, divided by a railing, and when he took the left, I kept to the right side of it.

Only then he was at the top, glancing back in amusement, and somehow I didn't seem to be getting any farther.

"Those are for going down," he explained, shaking his head. His hair twisted and coiled as if underwater.

I switched sides. The cheap double doors swung open at a touch.

If he can work the damn stairs better, this is going to be tricky.

The library stretched forever. The shelves disappeared towards a ceiling I wouldn't wager much on existing, and in every direction the stacks went on and on. Stairways spiraled up, supported by nothing, into the maze of whispering paper above us.

"You do not belong here."

At the voice, which came from everywhere at once, my gaze snapped back to the roaring fire and the armchair in front of it for no good reason. A man sat in its red embrace, brooding. He resembled his older sister - paler than Karasu, dressed all in black, and with a mop of unruly black hair. When he stood, he was between his brother's and sister's heights, and I would have to tilt my head back to look him in the face if he were closer.

"There was no one to ask for directions." He looked at me, and my stomach twisted - he had no eyes, only holes into forever with stars in, and they pulled. I stepped back involuntarily and Karasu put a hand on my shoulder as if to comfort me. Between that and the stairs, I acted unwisely. I said snidely with a gesture to their matching skin, clothes, and hair, "Honestly, why don't you want to say with them? You fit right in."

Karasu met my eyes and I realized I'd made a mistake as he leaned back against a Corinthian pillar, folding his arms too casually. "I have places to be."

I frowned at the pillar. "That doesn't belong there..."

"Why not find another?" He was frowning at Karasu, but it wasn't the freezing look I had just garnered, or the complete dismissal I was receiving now. More as if he were puzzled.

"He killed me."

"Then this is vengeance."

"No. This is love. He is next, and last, and always."

"And uninterested." Fact, not disapproval.

Karasu smiled. It was not his smile. I'd never seen his, true. There was the mask, and then that maniacal laughter. Then there had been this, the strange unanimatedness of his lower face. But I knew how he would smile, and this toothy, wholesome, all-American grin was not it.

"So would you help me interest him, my Lord?"

I wrapped my fingers around the cross. "Not even dreams could do that," I said, perhaps a bit spitefully and certainly not prudently, though I did not imagine it could damage my case much further. His judgments are quick.

His eyelids narrowed over those holes into watching-nothing, but his gaze caught on the glint of silver in my hand and he only said, "I believe you, too, have a request?"

"Lord Shifter… he is a dream. I don't want him. Take him with you."

"He lives in them, true, but he is not one." He certainly didn't smile, but there was something vindictive about the turn of his lips. "He is not mine. He will stay another night." He looked at Karasu, and opened his hand. Karasu closed his own.

Then the man waved his arm and we were back in the attic.

Karasu fit a black ring shaped like a crown onto one of his fingers, and reached out to stroke my cheek. I moved back half as far as I'd meant to, and found I can't move any longer.

"That was… educational." Karasu reached out again, tracing my face slowly, expression close to frank wonder. It was something like the face of a lover who can't believe he's been so very lucky, something like worship, and it would be nice (useful) if it didn't make my eyes burn and teeth grind when his hand dipped to my throat.

He leant in, pulling a lock of hair over my shoulder. "I believe," he whispered, "things have just gotten more interesting."

And then I woke up shivering.

AN: Okay, if that whole Dream-Karasu thing made no sense whatsoever: Karasu was playing into Morpheus's memories of/regrets for the Corinthian. Dream does seem to really care about the Corinthian, inasmuch as he's capable of it (which does not preclude unmaking, obviously), so I figured it could color his actions to a have psychopath with a thing for pretty boys and a big grin hanging around. Because otherwise, he would have toasted Karasu's ass for being in his realm, and then we should have no story.

And on hands and knees, I beg reviews, kind people…