Chapter Text
Dream studies the half-finished creation laid out before him with narrowed eyes. At the moment, it’s little more than a mass of impenetrable darkness, which expands and contracts in time with the beating of an invisible heart. The darkness is meant to be soothing. Instead, it creates an awful sense of foreboding, like the creation is some awful, shadowy beast raring to swallow you whole.
He thinks about unmaking it for the dozenth time and beginning again… but something bids him pause.
He’s distracted. Dream is a perfectionist by nature, yes, but once he has a vision in mind it’s never this difficult for him to execute it. If this were a sculpture, there would be no marble left for him to work with. If this were a painting, the canvas would be in ruin. To make matters worse, each time that he unmakes the creature before him, he remakes it in exactly the same way. Eleven times, there’s been a pulsing mass of darkness laid out before him. Eleven times, he’s unmade it, determined to make something more like a blanket and less like a… well, nightmare. But the being he sees so clearly in his mind’s eye simply refuses to take shape, determined to remain everything he doesn’t wish it to be.
He's distracted, and it’s a horrible, horrible thing. For the first time in over a century, all is right in the Dreaming. Fiddler’s Green has returned. Gault has been remade into the dream she always wished to be. And The Corinthian… his masterpiece has been mended, those parts of him that’d broken as a result of Dream’s neglect repaired. He is as he always should have been—a mirror, to show mortals the very worst parts of themselves, to encourage them to be better—and Dream is glad for it, truly. And yet… The Corinthian has begun avoiding him. One moment, The Corinthian is reveling in Dream’s affections, so very close to him it’s as though The Corinthian is a part of him again, and the next… nothing.
The Corinthian has squirreled himself away in some dark, distant corner of the Dreaming, as far away from Dream as possible without traveling back to the waking world. And Dream doesn’t know why. Worse, he doesn’t know why it bothers him so much not to know. It should please him, to know where The Corinthian is at any given moment, to know that he’s doing his job properly—and that he’s doing it well.
It’s not enough. He needs to see him, to hear his nightmare tell him why it is that he is hiding from his creator—
The Corinthian has never been one to hold his tongue before—which makes this new behavior especially concerning.
“Boss?” The feather-soft flutter of wings heralds Matthew’s arrival. He lands at Dream’s side, his beady eyes taking in the pulsing mass of darkness that is Dream’s half-formed creation uncertainly. “You… wanted me to check on The Corinthian.” It’s not a question.
“I take it you were able to find him, then.” With a wave of his hand, the half-formed dream falls away—
“I found him, yeah.” He says, uncertain. “I don’t think he noticed me… At least, he didn’t threaten to break my wings and drink my blood—or whatever it is that The Corinthian does when he’s not popping eyeballs like candy—for trailing him.” Is it possible for ravens to shudder? Because he’s definitely shuddering. “But there were a couple of uncomfortably close calls. For a creature with teeth for eyes, he can certainly see a whole hell of a lot.”
Dream arches a brow, but doesn’t comment. Instead, he presses, “What did you see, Matthew?”
“Ah, yes. Right.” He shifts a little, uncomfortable. “I found The Corinthian. He… I didn’t realize that nightmares could cry.” That catches Dream off-guard. “Which… just a little FYI, the whole ‘tears of blood’ thing looks particularly horrific when the thing crying has mouths for eyes.”
“He was crying.” Dream repeats, like he doesn’t quite believe it. “The Corinthian does not cry.” He says, as if this is undisputed fact.
“Look, man—boss, I mean boss—I’m telling you, I saw blood streaming from his mouth-eyes. Eye-mouths? It doesn’t matter. He was crying.”
Dream doesn’t understand. He supposes that his dreams and nightmares are capable of crying—they could feel (The Corinthian was nothing if not an absolute mess of feelings—anger, angst, despair… Dream isn’t sure why, but he has an image of that diner after John Burgess used the ruby to reveal what he believed to be their true desires, but what was really what would become of them if they no longer had hopes and dreams), to cry is not so big of a stretch. But what in the world—or, rather, what in the Dreaming—was capable of making The Corinthian cry? There are few things in the Dreaming bigger and badder than his masterpiece, and, well—
Dream never doubted that his little nightmare was more than capable of taking care of himself.
Matthew is still talking—Dream catches bits and pieces of what he’s saying, too absorbed in his own thoughts to fully focus on their conversation. From what he’s able to glean from the bits and pieces that do manage to pierce the metaphorical veil, it would seem that several of his Major Arcana had gotten into a… fight. No blood had been shed, but… it went without saying that words could cut deeper than any knife.
The Corinthian has always oozed charisma, able to win over even the most stubborn of souls with a few honeyed words and a winning smile. But all of that charm hides a certain… fragility. From the very beginning, all it’s taken is a couple of cruel words for The Corinthian to crumple underneath his own weight. And while he’s never known his little nightmare to cry over something someone has said to him before, it certainly doesn’t surprise him—
It would also explain why The Corinthian is hiding from him. If someone said something to make his little nightmare doubt himself…
“Thank you, Matthew.” Dream says. Suddenly, the recalcitrant dream that utterly refused to take proper shape is the furthest thing from his mind. He has a nightmare to tend to. “I will handle it.”