FIC POST: Padfoot's Delirium
Jan. 18th, 2006 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
momebieTitle: Padfoot's Delirium
Rating: PG-13?
Word count: 3,428
Warnings: Em..none that I can think of. There will be a sequel. Beware the sequel. Oooohhh...*draco fingers*
Disclaimer: I do not own the Potterverse, I do not own the Endless. I own nothing, not even my bank account apparently. Irg.
Summary: HP/Sandman Crossover. (Does anyone know where I can post Sandman crossovers?) Sirius causes trouble from inside Azkaban in new and unique ways.
Matthew the raven flew over The Dreaming to leave notice that Morpheus had returned to any of the subjects who still remained. Large gaps covered the terrain. From the air it resembled fungus, mottled areas of grays and greens that stretched for days in either direction. It would not take him long though, that was the nature of The Dreaming.
One small area in the outermost corner was not mottled at all, it was very black. Around it multi-colored smoke swirled and seeped across the land, changing trees and boulders alike, leaving a wake of desolate color. There was a problem then, one that needed more tending than the repairs to the palace.
He veered through the air and turned back towards the palace. He now had another message to deliver, and he hoped that he didn’t find more patches along the way.
October 31, 1982
Sirius opened his eyes slowly. It was not unusual to be hearing voices in Azkaban, and it was not unusual to feel the presence of something not quite human hovering about his cell. What was unusual was that the two things were intertwined this time. Dementors don’t have much to say, he’d tried, in the early days.
Through long and matted black hair he saw the beings, skin glowing coolly in the moonlight filtering through the bars of his cell. They were having a conversation about him, and seemed quite unaware that he could hear them. It was comforting in a few ways though, as he hadn’t heard a normal, calm conversation in what felt like years now. Though, it could have been days.
“I don’t know, I think he should be mine,” the short one said. Her hair hung, lank in areas and spiky in others, in colors that Sirius only remembered from Muggle clubs in his punk days. If there had been punk days. If there were such things as Muggles. He constructed worlds and lives sometimes, to keep his mind awake. Some days he wasn’t sure which the real memories were. And there was something in a dream about a dog.
She brushed some wild fringe from her eyes, one blue, one green, and stared at him. “He thinks things. Dog things. I like dogs, I had one one time. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” said the tall one. His arms were crossed, and his black hair hung around his face. Not much of a face, a white field which may have only had the purpose of holding the black pits where his eyes should be. Maybe it was only shadow. Sirius was used to those. He played with the shadows sometimes, making them move and bend at his whim. He liked controlling things, but he couldn’t remember why.
“He should be yours, I agree. I’m not entirely familiar with this prison, but none of the other wards are still sane at all. Their dreams have long since moved away from my realm. Some may still be on the border, but his are the only ones I can reach entirely from my hold. It’s…troubling.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t be here. Maybe we should set him free. Oh! Do you think I could keep him? The other doggy ran away, or maybe he’s lost. I don’t know. I can make butterflies.”
And she touched her finger to the wall. Sirius watched as pieces of light flowed from the dark stone. They swirled in the air momentarily and then disappeared. Some of them made it up to the little window and faded into the moonlight.
“Yes, wonderful.” The tall one placed his hand to his chin. “It is not our place to be concerned with what he did or if he gets out. We’re here to categorize him only, and decide where he belongs.”
“Ooh, we could ask older brother. He has a statue of me, as I used to be.” She lowered her eyes and seemed saddened, a look that was familiar to Sirius. But then it flew across and she was smiling again, and clapping. “Maybe he has one of him too!”
The man nodded. “Perhaps. And perhaps it’s time we paid brother a visit. I doubt we’d have time to get this figured out on our own, without spending some time in The Waking. And I am very busy right now, trying to put things in order, if you will remember.” He tapped his foot, absently and impatiently.
“Yay! Brother! I’ll show him the elephants I can do. On little clouds they go walking. Harumph!” And she clapped her hands together one last time.
’No,’ Sirius wanted to say. ’Please stay. I’ll be whoever’s. I’ll be whatever. I can be a dog.’
“Bye, doggy!” the girl waved and was gone. The man followed soon after and Sirius felt the cell around him go empty. It was abrupt and the vacuum created by the exit had sucked a little more of his soul from him. Why could he remember souls and not real things? Not faces? Why did she think he was a dog, and why did he think so sometimes too?
“Aroo,” he yelped pitifully into the silence. The other things around him in the darkness joined in and soon the empty cell was filled with the sounds of a thousand dogs and wolves. This comforted him. Sirius closed his eyes again, and tried to remember the dream about the dog.
~o~
That night Remus Lupin lay in his bed and whimpered. No matter how hard he tried to forget his friends and his lover they always seemed to haunt him when he was asleep. He thrust his foot out of the tangle of sheets trying to find some cool air. He was so hot. In his dreams, the fire flared.
Remus walked out of the darkness toward the man who was stirring the flames. His black hair hung in his face and Remus’ heart jumped. Sirius? There was another man to the stirrer’s right, carrying a large tome that was shackled to his wrist. Remus remembered having that dream before, but it had only happened during History of Magic NEWTS.
“This is an odd place, Morpheus.” The man with the tome spoke, the words floating from under his hood and into the night. “Do you dislike my garden now?”
“Not at all,” he reached again with the poker and studied the sparks as they flew lightly into the air and flared. Some of them drifted towards Remus’ face and he closed his eyes, feeling them start to water. “I like your garden very much my brother, but our guest could not have met us there without some inconvenience to him.” The man grinned slightly and turned toward Remus. The man with the tome, the brother, did the same, though Remus saw only darkness where his face should be.
“Come Remus, join me at the fire. I have much to talk to you about and only until sunrise to do it.” He patted the log next to him. Remus walked to the fire, but settled on the other side of it and not next to the man. He didn’t feel safe without his wand. Although, something about the dream convinced him that it wouldn’t have made a difference.
“Tell me Remus, do you know a man? A Sirius?” The brother nodded and the man, Morpheus, stared at Remus. He felt that he should be angry. So often he knew he was angry when Sirius came up, but now he felt…empty, like he was missing something. He let it gnaw at the edges of his gut for some time before answering.
“Yes,” he said slowly. He stared into the fire and tried to remember Sirius’ face which, though it nagged him constantly when he was awake, didn’t even coalesce in the dream. “I did. Why? Are you the devil? Wizards don’t put much stock in you, you know.”
There was a chuckle, a low rumble that started in the hood and came over Morpheus. “You have amused Destiny, Remus, and that is difficult at best. There may be some good in this for you yet. But no, I am not the Devil. I don’t put much stock in them either, by the by, though they take themselves horribly seriously.” He stirred the fire some more, the grin permanently fixed on his white face.
Figures formed in the embers, canine figures and other animals, as well as people, and creatures that he wasn’t sure existed at all. One of the canines broke from the flames and sped off into the darkness, stopping only to throw its head back in a silent howl. Remus watched it go. “Tell me about the dog, Remus,” Morpheus said gently.
And Remus talked. He babbled about transformations and dreams and philosophy and magic, and love. Morpheus sat opposite him and stirred the flames, occasionally looking back at the other man, who would nod and flip pages in his book. It felt amazing to say things he’d wanted to say for a year now. Remus was lighter, easier at the joints to bend, younger behind his eyes. All of this made sense because he knew it didn’t make any sense at all. And as he talked the dream blurred.
The man with the book went first. Then the fire began to evaporate from the top down, and the stick that was being used to stir the embers started to bend at the tip. “Wait,” he said, his head feeling empty, numb. “Why did you make me say all of this? What do you want with him? He’s a traitor you know.”
Morpheus nodded. “I know everything, when I want to, but it is not for you to know at all. Remus Lupin, you will remember your friend as you want to and I cannot help that. I am concerned only with the order of my realm. And you have helped me. I owe you. Don’t forget that. Though I’m sure you will. Good day, Remus.” And with one final nod he was gone.
Remus found himself alone in bed suddenly. He sat up panting in the cool morning light, and as he reached back to find the book he had fallen asleep on, his hand landed on something warm and soft and like silk rope to touch. Sirius opened his eyes at the disturbance and smiled up at him from the other side of the bed, an eternity away.
It was seconds before they were one. Hands on waists and tongues nipples and thighs, passion and desire that could not be sated as they tore at each other, wanting to be inside the flesh and feel the foreign blood run through their veins.
In the shadows of the room two figures stood.
“This is superfluous Dream. Why am I still here?” Destiny was unphased by the human emotion. You can’t surprise Destiny, but he was still ill at ease in his brother’s realm, where anything happened, even if it wasn’t foretold.
“I am giving him one last bout at happiness. Call it a boon,” said Dream, fingers on his chin. “He will not dream again until the other is released from that place. I can’t afford to have the sickness leak into the rest of my realm and remarkably he is the only one connected to it.”
The two men moved together on the bed, sweat pooling on their chests and in the sheets around them.
Remus stretched, his toes were cold and he pulled them back under the sheet, close to his body. He shook his head and watched the sun creep across the ceiling, thinking of nothing except how beautiful the pale white looked as it spilled across the cracks.
He felt odd, like he was missing something. He didn’t remember dreaming, but a feeling stuck to him in the morning light, adhering to just a tip of him, like Peter Pan in the books of his childhood had stuck to his shadow. The feeling would be gone by the time he got out of the shower; it always was.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before rolling onto his side and placing his feet against the cold wood of the floor. Nothing could wake a person up faster. As he brushed his teeth he stared himself in the eyes and tried not to think of Sirius and how his eyes always looked in the morning. He bent to spit into the basin and out of the corner of his field of vision something which he could have sworn was a small, pink elephant galumphed across the floor of his bedroom. When he turned it was gone, and so was any feeling he’d had upon waking.
~o~
Dream stood in Destiny’s garden and watched Delirium dance about her statue. “I used to be so pretty,” she sighed. Lady bugs buzzed around her head in a red wreath, but they were breaking their ranks to dodge her hands as they flitted through the air. “Red as roses, pink as poses, mermaids in the downtown droses. I like mermaids. I wonder if I can swim.”
Destiny appeared beside Dream, not taking his eyes off his book. “You meddle, Dream. You cannot change my affairs. I do not want to say that yours do not matter, but-“
“No, I understand. But I also know that if this man’s dreams disappear with our sister then there will be a place in my realm where there is nothing. This has happened before, and we both know that the emptiness will only grow until I must destroy it. The human race, such as they are, is interconnected. You cannot alter one life without altering many.”
“Yes,” said Destiny, flipping between two pages alternately.
“Then, they are lost?”
“They are yours to do with as you wish, Dream, even though you choose to believe it is the other way around. What will be will be. If it was a game you wanted you should have tried Desire, it is always up to something.”
“Desire has its hands deep these days. I doubt there could have been much of a conversation.”
“Death, perhaps.”
“Death is not something even I need bid. She will come when time bids her, not before. Though after seeing him I am tempted, but that would not solve the problem of the growing nothingness in my land.”
“Morpheus, you do not need me. I heard the young man’s tale, but it was nothing I did not know. Do as you will. You would anyway, with my permission or without.” And Destiny was gone.
Delirium had stopped dancing and was staring over Dream’s left shoulder. “Men have eyes that do not see, and with them they know everything. I have eyes that see, and with them…there are birds!”
Dream walked toward his sister and took her gently by the elbow. He reached into the foliage of the nearest shrub and parted it to the side, pushing Delirium through it. Once she had gone and the shrub was back to its normal state, he disappeared as well, to The Dreaming, to check up on the repairs to his palace.
November 1, 1982
When Sirius opened his eyes again he was facing the wall. It was time for light now. He knew so because he could see the cracks and scratches in the stone that rose in front of him, though he couldn’t remember what light meant. A dementor hovered just at the door to his cell, but didn’t come in. He remembered why he stopped remembering. They fed off of the memories, stole them. It was why he was always inventing new ones. Once he had one, it was gone. That thought was gone then. Best to focus on the scratches in the wall. One, red, Syria, fourteen…
“Serious? What’s serious?” A female voice snaked through the air around him. He tried not to think about it. “I think it’s when the ocean rumbles to the shore. Is there a word for that? Do you know?” There was a sharp poke to his back.
Sirius rolled over and looked up at her, a small figure in a large black, leather jacket. There had been another leather jacket, he thought. It might have been that one. “I asked you a question. Do you think telephone ice cream would be good? I’ve only ever tried the blue llama.” She made a face and Sirius laughed. It was dry and cracked, and the air moved through his chest like wind around a pillar, pulling sand and pain with it.
“I do not know.” There was a man’s voice. He didn’t remember having a voice. Maybe it was one of the voices from the dark, one of the ones that cried out in the time of no light. Day, came the word. Day? The girl smiled and her colorful hair grew out in some places and fell off in others. Fall leaves, he thought, as the hair settled on the floor. Somehow, her madness made him feel sane. He remembered sane at the very least, which was a start.
“Oh!” She squealed. She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue, as she did the whole cell changed color for a moment. Sirius felt the shimmer as it changed back. It reminded him of cheering charms and spells being ended.
Sirius tried to sit up but he had been lying down so long that his thighs and arms felt glued to the floor. Probably stuck in pools of his own waste. Sirius felt that there were some things he was better off not remembering. “Good doggy,” she cooed, and scratched behind his ears.
“Ah,” he sighed. His feet flexed and his upper thigh shook, he hadn’t remembered they moved.
She cocked her head suddenly and smiled so big he could see all of her teeth, even the ones in the back of her mouth. “You talk just like my doggy did. But he belonged to my brother. Do you?”
“I, I don’t think so.” He stretched his arms out and brushed her knee with one of them. There was a streak of black here his fingernail had crossed but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh,” she said again, looking disappointed. “I miss him. He left. When people leave the wolves come, and they’re not very pretty. I like pretty things. Are snapdragons available?”
“What?” Sirius asked. She said something more about snapdragons and toadstools, but Sirius wanted to hear the word ‘wolves’ again. It was one he had forgotten existed. It made him feel calm. “Wolves?”
“Oh yes, when they come, it’s all over. Everybody knows that. How come you don’t look like a doggy, doggy?”
Sirius shook his head and felt the hair move around it for the first time in ages. “Don’t I?”
“No, you are covered in hair, but not enough. It makes petting you all funny. I have hair, see?” And she made it grow again. “You’re turn! Trick doggy!”
Sirius thought about being a dog, about what a dog was and how it might see things. The cell shifted, became larger, the girls face loomed over him, now in black and white. He missed the colors.
‘I don’t think I’m a dog at all,’ he said in his head. “Yap!” he said out loud. And then he panted some, heavily.
“Oh! Great! I knew it! I’ll call you Doggy 2. Want to come see the cockerels bloom?” She cocked her head again, but her face fell immediately. “No, you wouldn’t. Dream said I couldn’t take you. I don’t like him when he teases me. I don’t think he likes me.”
Sirius pulled himself toward her with his paws, which he now realized was just as natural as when he’d had hands. His muscles still weren’t up for the challenge. Everything was simpler as a dog though. His thoughts didn’t disappear as he thought them. He nuzzled her stomach and licked her hand when she pushed his nose away.
“No, I don’t suppose it matters. Eldest brother says you have other things to do. I have things to do too! I’m going to learn to fly an aeroplane. Have you ever been in the clouds? I like sleeping in them best.” She stood and leaned over Sirius, running her fingers through his coat. “I’ll miss you doggy, but I’ll see you again.” And then she was gone.
Sirius looked around him, the white sun creeping across the charcoal grey walls. He felt the room shift and shrink again. He was still looking at white light on grey walls, but he also saw the bits of hair resting on the floor in all their multi-colored glory. He’d keep them to remind him what color was. It would be incentive, because he had to find a way out. The wolf would miss him.
Remus, he thought. Then he felt the dementor hovering outside the door, his thoughts beginning to seep away around the edges. The cell shimmered one last time as it grew again. He carefully picked the hairs up in his muzzle and moved them to the corner of the cell where they wouldn’t be seen. He lay down next to them, head on his paw, and fell asleep. He dreamed doggie dreams.
~o~
Matthew surveyed the repairs to The Dreaming to bring the report back to his master. The grey patches were smaller now, and surrounded by colors other than green. The black patch had completely covered over with a desert that displayed magnificent red rocks and paw prints in the sands. He was pleased because he knew Lord Morpheus would be as well. He turned and headed back toward the palace again, this time to settle back into his cave and enjoy his companion and his home, just as it had been before. If he’d said it once he’d said it a million times, things always ended how they were destined to.
Rating: PG-13?
Word count: 3,428
Warnings: Em..none that I can think of. There will be a sequel. Beware the sequel. Oooohhh...*draco fingers*
Disclaimer: I do not own the Potterverse, I do not own the Endless. I own nothing, not even my bank account apparently. Irg.
Summary: HP/Sandman Crossover. (Does anyone know where I can post Sandman crossovers?) Sirius causes trouble from inside Azkaban in new and unique ways.
Matthew the raven flew over The Dreaming to leave notice that Morpheus had returned to any of the subjects who still remained. Large gaps covered the terrain. From the air it resembled fungus, mottled areas of grays and greens that stretched for days in either direction. It would not take him long though, that was the nature of The Dreaming.
One small area in the outermost corner was not mottled at all, it was very black. Around it multi-colored smoke swirled and seeped across the land, changing trees and boulders alike, leaving a wake of desolate color. There was a problem then, one that needed more tending than the repairs to the palace.
He veered through the air and turned back towards the palace. He now had another message to deliver, and he hoped that he didn’t find more patches along the way.
October 31, 1982
Sirius opened his eyes slowly. It was not unusual to be hearing voices in Azkaban, and it was not unusual to feel the presence of something not quite human hovering about his cell. What was unusual was that the two things were intertwined this time. Dementors don’t have much to say, he’d tried, in the early days.
Through long and matted black hair he saw the beings, skin glowing coolly in the moonlight filtering through the bars of his cell. They were having a conversation about him, and seemed quite unaware that he could hear them. It was comforting in a few ways though, as he hadn’t heard a normal, calm conversation in what felt like years now. Though, it could have been days.
“I don’t know, I think he should be mine,” the short one said. Her hair hung, lank in areas and spiky in others, in colors that Sirius only remembered from Muggle clubs in his punk days. If there had been punk days. If there were such things as Muggles. He constructed worlds and lives sometimes, to keep his mind awake. Some days he wasn’t sure which the real memories were. And there was something in a dream about a dog.
She brushed some wild fringe from her eyes, one blue, one green, and stared at him. “He thinks things. Dog things. I like dogs, I had one one time. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” said the tall one. His arms were crossed, and his black hair hung around his face. Not much of a face, a white field which may have only had the purpose of holding the black pits where his eyes should be. Maybe it was only shadow. Sirius was used to those. He played with the shadows sometimes, making them move and bend at his whim. He liked controlling things, but he couldn’t remember why.
“He should be yours, I agree. I’m not entirely familiar with this prison, but none of the other wards are still sane at all. Their dreams have long since moved away from my realm. Some may still be on the border, but his are the only ones I can reach entirely from my hold. It’s…troubling.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t be here. Maybe we should set him free. Oh! Do you think I could keep him? The other doggy ran away, or maybe he’s lost. I don’t know. I can make butterflies.”
And she touched her finger to the wall. Sirius watched as pieces of light flowed from the dark stone. They swirled in the air momentarily and then disappeared. Some of them made it up to the little window and faded into the moonlight.
“Yes, wonderful.” The tall one placed his hand to his chin. “It is not our place to be concerned with what he did or if he gets out. We’re here to categorize him only, and decide where he belongs.”
“Ooh, we could ask older brother. He has a statue of me, as I used to be.” She lowered her eyes and seemed saddened, a look that was familiar to Sirius. But then it flew across and she was smiling again, and clapping. “Maybe he has one of him too!”
The man nodded. “Perhaps. And perhaps it’s time we paid brother a visit. I doubt we’d have time to get this figured out on our own, without spending some time in The Waking. And I am very busy right now, trying to put things in order, if you will remember.” He tapped his foot, absently and impatiently.
“Yay! Brother! I’ll show him the elephants I can do. On little clouds they go walking. Harumph!” And she clapped her hands together one last time.
’No,’ Sirius wanted to say. ’Please stay. I’ll be whoever’s. I’ll be whatever. I can be a dog.’
“Bye, doggy!” the girl waved and was gone. The man followed soon after and Sirius felt the cell around him go empty. It was abrupt and the vacuum created by the exit had sucked a little more of his soul from him. Why could he remember souls and not real things? Not faces? Why did she think he was a dog, and why did he think so sometimes too?
“Aroo,” he yelped pitifully into the silence. The other things around him in the darkness joined in and soon the empty cell was filled with the sounds of a thousand dogs and wolves. This comforted him. Sirius closed his eyes again, and tried to remember the dream about the dog.
That night Remus Lupin lay in his bed and whimpered. No matter how hard he tried to forget his friends and his lover they always seemed to haunt him when he was asleep. He thrust his foot out of the tangle of sheets trying to find some cool air. He was so hot. In his dreams, the fire flared.
Remus walked out of the darkness toward the man who was stirring the flames. His black hair hung in his face and Remus’ heart jumped. Sirius? There was another man to the stirrer’s right, carrying a large tome that was shackled to his wrist. Remus remembered having that dream before, but it had only happened during History of Magic NEWTS.
“This is an odd place, Morpheus.” The man with the tome spoke, the words floating from under his hood and into the night. “Do you dislike my garden now?”
“Not at all,” he reached again with the poker and studied the sparks as they flew lightly into the air and flared. Some of them drifted towards Remus’ face and he closed his eyes, feeling them start to water. “I like your garden very much my brother, but our guest could not have met us there without some inconvenience to him.” The man grinned slightly and turned toward Remus. The man with the tome, the brother, did the same, though Remus saw only darkness where his face should be.
“Come Remus, join me at the fire. I have much to talk to you about and only until sunrise to do it.” He patted the log next to him. Remus walked to the fire, but settled on the other side of it and not next to the man. He didn’t feel safe without his wand. Although, something about the dream convinced him that it wouldn’t have made a difference.
“Tell me Remus, do you know a man? A Sirius?” The brother nodded and the man, Morpheus, stared at Remus. He felt that he should be angry. So often he knew he was angry when Sirius came up, but now he felt…empty, like he was missing something. He let it gnaw at the edges of his gut for some time before answering.
“Yes,” he said slowly. He stared into the fire and tried to remember Sirius’ face which, though it nagged him constantly when he was awake, didn’t even coalesce in the dream. “I did. Why? Are you the devil? Wizards don’t put much stock in you, you know.”
There was a chuckle, a low rumble that started in the hood and came over Morpheus. “You have amused Destiny, Remus, and that is difficult at best. There may be some good in this for you yet. But no, I am not the Devil. I don’t put much stock in them either, by the by, though they take themselves horribly seriously.” He stirred the fire some more, the grin permanently fixed on his white face.
Figures formed in the embers, canine figures and other animals, as well as people, and creatures that he wasn’t sure existed at all. One of the canines broke from the flames and sped off into the darkness, stopping only to throw its head back in a silent howl. Remus watched it go. “Tell me about the dog, Remus,” Morpheus said gently.
And Remus talked. He babbled about transformations and dreams and philosophy and magic, and love. Morpheus sat opposite him and stirred the flames, occasionally looking back at the other man, who would nod and flip pages in his book. It felt amazing to say things he’d wanted to say for a year now. Remus was lighter, easier at the joints to bend, younger behind his eyes. All of this made sense because he knew it didn’t make any sense at all. And as he talked the dream blurred.
The man with the book went first. Then the fire began to evaporate from the top down, and the stick that was being used to stir the embers started to bend at the tip. “Wait,” he said, his head feeling empty, numb. “Why did you make me say all of this? What do you want with him? He’s a traitor you know.”
Morpheus nodded. “I know everything, when I want to, but it is not for you to know at all. Remus Lupin, you will remember your friend as you want to and I cannot help that. I am concerned only with the order of my realm. And you have helped me. I owe you. Don’t forget that. Though I’m sure you will. Good day, Remus.” And with one final nod he was gone.
Remus found himself alone in bed suddenly. He sat up panting in the cool morning light, and as he reached back to find the book he had fallen asleep on, his hand landed on something warm and soft and like silk rope to touch. Sirius opened his eyes at the disturbance and smiled up at him from the other side of the bed, an eternity away.
It was seconds before they were one. Hands on waists and tongues nipples and thighs, passion and desire that could not be sated as they tore at each other, wanting to be inside the flesh and feel the foreign blood run through their veins.
In the shadows of the room two figures stood.
“This is superfluous Dream. Why am I still here?” Destiny was unphased by the human emotion. You can’t surprise Destiny, but he was still ill at ease in his brother’s realm, where anything happened, even if it wasn’t foretold.
“I am giving him one last bout at happiness. Call it a boon,” said Dream, fingers on his chin. “He will not dream again until the other is released from that place. I can’t afford to have the sickness leak into the rest of my realm and remarkably he is the only one connected to it.”
The two men moved together on the bed, sweat pooling on their chests and in the sheets around them.
Remus stretched, his toes were cold and he pulled them back under the sheet, close to his body. He shook his head and watched the sun creep across the ceiling, thinking of nothing except how beautiful the pale white looked as it spilled across the cracks.
He felt odd, like he was missing something. He didn’t remember dreaming, but a feeling stuck to him in the morning light, adhering to just a tip of him, like Peter Pan in the books of his childhood had stuck to his shadow. The feeling would be gone by the time he got out of the shower; it always was.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before rolling onto his side and placing his feet against the cold wood of the floor. Nothing could wake a person up faster. As he brushed his teeth he stared himself in the eyes and tried not to think of Sirius and how his eyes always looked in the morning. He bent to spit into the basin and out of the corner of his field of vision something which he could have sworn was a small, pink elephant galumphed across the floor of his bedroom. When he turned it was gone, and so was any feeling he’d had upon waking.
Dream stood in Destiny’s garden and watched Delirium dance about her statue. “I used to be so pretty,” she sighed. Lady bugs buzzed around her head in a red wreath, but they were breaking their ranks to dodge her hands as they flitted through the air. “Red as roses, pink as poses, mermaids in the downtown droses. I like mermaids. I wonder if I can swim.”
Destiny appeared beside Dream, not taking his eyes off his book. “You meddle, Dream. You cannot change my affairs. I do not want to say that yours do not matter, but-“
“No, I understand. But I also know that if this man’s dreams disappear with our sister then there will be a place in my realm where there is nothing. This has happened before, and we both know that the emptiness will only grow until I must destroy it. The human race, such as they are, is interconnected. You cannot alter one life without altering many.”
“Yes,” said Destiny, flipping between two pages alternately.
“Then, they are lost?”
“They are yours to do with as you wish, Dream, even though you choose to believe it is the other way around. What will be will be. If it was a game you wanted you should have tried Desire, it is always up to something.”
“Desire has its hands deep these days. I doubt there could have been much of a conversation.”
“Death, perhaps.”
“Death is not something even I need bid. She will come when time bids her, not before. Though after seeing him I am tempted, but that would not solve the problem of the growing nothingness in my land.”
“Morpheus, you do not need me. I heard the young man’s tale, but it was nothing I did not know. Do as you will. You would anyway, with my permission or without.” And Destiny was gone.
Delirium had stopped dancing and was staring over Dream’s left shoulder. “Men have eyes that do not see, and with them they know everything. I have eyes that see, and with them…there are birds!”
Dream walked toward his sister and took her gently by the elbow. He reached into the foliage of the nearest shrub and parted it to the side, pushing Delirium through it. Once she had gone and the shrub was back to its normal state, he disappeared as well, to The Dreaming, to check up on the repairs to his palace.
November 1, 1982
When Sirius opened his eyes again he was facing the wall. It was time for light now. He knew so because he could see the cracks and scratches in the stone that rose in front of him, though he couldn’t remember what light meant. A dementor hovered just at the door to his cell, but didn’t come in. He remembered why he stopped remembering. They fed off of the memories, stole them. It was why he was always inventing new ones. Once he had one, it was gone. That thought was gone then. Best to focus on the scratches in the wall. One, red, Syria, fourteen…
“Serious? What’s serious?” A female voice snaked through the air around him. He tried not to think about it. “I think it’s when the ocean rumbles to the shore. Is there a word for that? Do you know?” There was a sharp poke to his back.
Sirius rolled over and looked up at her, a small figure in a large black, leather jacket. There had been another leather jacket, he thought. It might have been that one. “I asked you a question. Do you think telephone ice cream would be good? I’ve only ever tried the blue llama.” She made a face and Sirius laughed. It was dry and cracked, and the air moved through his chest like wind around a pillar, pulling sand and pain with it.
“I do not know.” There was a man’s voice. He didn’t remember having a voice. Maybe it was one of the voices from the dark, one of the ones that cried out in the time of no light. Day, came the word. Day? The girl smiled and her colorful hair grew out in some places and fell off in others. Fall leaves, he thought, as the hair settled on the floor. Somehow, her madness made him feel sane. He remembered sane at the very least, which was a start.
“Oh!” She squealed. She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue, as she did the whole cell changed color for a moment. Sirius felt the shimmer as it changed back. It reminded him of cheering charms and spells being ended.
Sirius tried to sit up but he had been lying down so long that his thighs and arms felt glued to the floor. Probably stuck in pools of his own waste. Sirius felt that there were some things he was better off not remembering. “Good doggy,” she cooed, and scratched behind his ears.
“Ah,” he sighed. His feet flexed and his upper thigh shook, he hadn’t remembered they moved.
She cocked her head suddenly and smiled so big he could see all of her teeth, even the ones in the back of her mouth. “You talk just like my doggy did. But he belonged to my brother. Do you?”
“I, I don’t think so.” He stretched his arms out and brushed her knee with one of them. There was a streak of black here his fingernail had crossed but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh,” she said again, looking disappointed. “I miss him. He left. When people leave the wolves come, and they’re not very pretty. I like pretty things. Are snapdragons available?”
“What?” Sirius asked. She said something more about snapdragons and toadstools, but Sirius wanted to hear the word ‘wolves’ again. It was one he had forgotten existed. It made him feel calm. “Wolves?”
“Oh yes, when they come, it’s all over. Everybody knows that. How come you don’t look like a doggy, doggy?”
Sirius shook his head and felt the hair move around it for the first time in ages. “Don’t I?”
“No, you are covered in hair, but not enough. It makes petting you all funny. I have hair, see?” And she made it grow again. “You’re turn! Trick doggy!”
Sirius thought about being a dog, about what a dog was and how it might see things. The cell shifted, became larger, the girls face loomed over him, now in black and white. He missed the colors.
‘I don’t think I’m a dog at all,’ he said in his head. “Yap!” he said out loud. And then he panted some, heavily.
“Oh! Great! I knew it! I’ll call you Doggy 2. Want to come see the cockerels bloom?” She cocked her head again, but her face fell immediately. “No, you wouldn’t. Dream said I couldn’t take you. I don’t like him when he teases me. I don’t think he likes me.”
Sirius pulled himself toward her with his paws, which he now realized was just as natural as when he’d had hands. His muscles still weren’t up for the challenge. Everything was simpler as a dog though. His thoughts didn’t disappear as he thought them. He nuzzled her stomach and licked her hand when she pushed his nose away.
“No, I don’t suppose it matters. Eldest brother says you have other things to do. I have things to do too! I’m going to learn to fly an aeroplane. Have you ever been in the clouds? I like sleeping in them best.” She stood and leaned over Sirius, running her fingers through his coat. “I’ll miss you doggy, but I’ll see you again.” And then she was gone.
Sirius looked around him, the white sun creeping across the charcoal grey walls. He felt the room shift and shrink again. He was still looking at white light on grey walls, but he also saw the bits of hair resting on the floor in all their multi-colored glory. He’d keep them to remind him what color was. It would be incentive, because he had to find a way out. The wolf would miss him.
Remus, he thought. Then he felt the dementor hovering outside the door, his thoughts beginning to seep away around the edges. The cell shimmered one last time as it grew again. He carefully picked the hairs up in his muzzle and moved them to the corner of the cell where they wouldn’t be seen. He lay down next to them, head on his paw, and fell asleep. He dreamed doggie dreams.
Matthew surveyed the repairs to The Dreaming to bring the report back to his master. The grey patches were smaller now, and surrounded by colors other than green. The black patch had completely covered over with a desert that displayed magnificent red rocks and paw prints in the sands. He was pleased because he knew Lord Morpheus would be as well. He turned and headed back toward the palace again, this time to settle back into his cave and enjoy his companion and his home, just as it had been before. If he’d said it once he’d said it a million times, things always ended how they were destined to.
