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This brief transit where the dreams cross	By : roguebitch Category: Comics > The Sandman (Vertigo Comics) > The Sandman (Vertigo Comics) Views: 1154 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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Chapter List
- 1-This rought transit where the dreams cross
- 1
I do not own The Sandman and make no money from posting this story. I likewise do not own Supernatural and make no money from posting this story.
***
A/N: The title is from "Ash-Wednesday" by T.S. Eliot
*****
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.
Morpheus liked to wander down to the library when he was between tasks and browse the stacks. If Lucien approached to offer him assistance, he waved him off and wandered the shelves reading the spines of all the books ever dreamed.
When Merv Pumpkinhead found him that day, he was contemplating a book entitled “Domesticity and Domestic Labour in 20th Century Ireland” by someone called Marian Keyes. He looked up, bottomless black eyes sparking coldly as he regarded the handyman, who was wringing his hat in two spindly, sticklike hands.
“Er, your honna, sir, Lord Dream,” Merv started, then burst out, “You gotta do somethin’! They’re messin’ up everything. Fiddler’s Green is tired a bein’ walked on, Eve won’t come out of her cave, and Cain is so freaked out he won’t stop killin’ Abel!”
Dream held up a paper-white hand, stopping Merv mid-diatribe.
“Perhaps you could calm down and tell me exactly what is going on that has everyone so upset?”
“Angels, lord. Angels are travelling through the Dreaming for some reason. What are we s’posed to do?”
To that, Morpheus had no immediate reply, but he thanked Merv Pumpkinhead gravely and dismissed him, promising to look into it. Once back in his throne room, Dream summoned Matthew. The raven flew in shortly and alighted on the arm of the throne.
“Matthew, is what Merv Pumpkinhead told me true? Have angels been traversing the Dreaming?”
Matthew bobbed his head once.
“Which ones?”
“Castiel, Zachariah, Lucifer and Sahiviel, who is manifesting herself as some red-headed chick,” croaked Matthew.
Dream’s eyebrows rose in surprise. The last he’d heard, Lucifer was running a piano bar in Los Angeles with Mazikeen, the demon that loved him, after he’d tired of Australian sunsets.
“Why did no one tell me of this?” Morpheus demanded.
“Well, boss, we thought you knew. Angels wouldn’t use the Dreaming without your say-so, would they?” Matthew cocked his head, one beady eye fixed on his master.
“One would not think so,” Morpheus murmured, stroking a bone-white finger down Matthew’s black-feathered skull. “Thank you, Matthew. I will think about how best to deal with this.”
“Sure thing, boss,” cawed Matthew, as he flew back to Eve’s cave.
Dream sat on the throne room steps deep in thought, chin propped on his hand. After a while, he got up and walked to the gallery, stopping in front of a picture frame holding an ankh. He took the ankh off the wall, and holding it in both hands, said, “Sister, I stand in my gallery, holding your sigil. Will you speak with me?”
Fog briefly filled the picture frame, and then Dream’s sister, Death, stepped out. She was dressed for a fight in head-to-toe black leather and heavy boots. She looked, in fact, a bit aggravated.
“Not that I’m not happy to talk to you, brother, but make it quick. I’m busy.”
Dream wasted no time in asking his question.
“Do you know why angels would be traversing my realm without permission?”
Death squinted at her brother, disbelief written all over her face.
“You mean you don’t know? The Apocalypse, brother. Lucifer is at war.”
Dream regarded his sister thoughtfully. Now that he was focused on the problem, he had noticed a change in the tenor of dreams recently. They were more anxious and frantic, less fantastic.
“With whom is he at war? And why must he and his ilk involve the Dreaming?”
“He’s at war with the Winchesters, along with most of the other angels. They seem to think those boys should just stand still and accept their destinies as angelic vessels,” Death smirked. Dream had heard his sister’s stories of her encounters with the Winchester boys. Death was fond of their brashness.
“They’re not stupid,” Death continued. “Great destinies usually mean great funerals.”
“And my realm?” Dream prodded.
“One of the Winchesters’ allies enscribed Enochian symbols onto their ribs. It hides them from angel and demon alike, except in your realm, brother.”
“You mean these angels are trespassing on my lands just to harass the Winchesters in their dreams?” Dream’s tone was still dry as paper, but the flames flickering at the bottom of his long dark coat flared higher and brighter.
“That pretty much sums it up, yeah.” Death glanced over her shoulder. “I’ve got to go. It’s hell living parallel storylines.”
She leapt back into the picture frame and disappeared. Dream turned and walked from the gallery back to his throne room, deep in troubled thought.
It was presumptuous in the extreme of the angels to use his realm as a highway to stalk dreamers, regardless of who they were. The disposition and treatment of dreamers was his bailiwick, no one else’s.
He paced up and down the throne room, bootheels thunking on the obsidian floor, the echoes fading into the vaulted, stained-glass-windowed ceilings.
Dream summoned Matthew again. When the raven swooped in, he landed on Dream’s upraised forearm.
“Matthew, I require a service of you and your kin.”
“Sure thing, boss, what is it?”
Dream bent his head and spoke softly to the bird. When he finished, Matthew bobbed his head in assent and flew away.
The next angel that trespassed in Dream’s demesne was going to discover just how harsh an unkindness of ravens could be.
**
Dream was always very busy in his realm, and the angel issue faded from his attention, replaced with other pressing matters. Eve emerged from her cave, Cain killed Abel only as often as he usually did, and Fiddler’s Green went back to being his old jovial self. Even Merv was back to normal, only complaining in his backstairs, proletarian fashion.
Morpheus was in someone’s dream of a tropical vacation, replenishing his pouch of dream-sand, when the air thrummed like a plucked harpstring. As he looked up, Matthew flew at top-speed towards him, landing in an ungraceful spray of sand.
“We got one, boss. He’s in the Garden of Iden.”
“Does he know he is watched?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come with me,” Dream swept open dreamstuff and emerged in Iden’s mechanical garden, behind the angel. Matthew flew into a copper-pipe tree hung with clockwork oranges and apples, anonymous amongst his brethren.
“Michael,” Morpheus said.
The angel turned towards Morpheus, appearing in the aspect of an average man in blue-collar clothes.
“Morpheus.”
“Is it not customary for sovereign beings to announce themselves when they enter another kingdom?” Dream’s voice, bland as ever, held an edge.
Michael looked back at Morpheus, his expression haughty and contemptuous.
“My errand is pressing, otherwise I would have done so. I thought this once...”
Dream interrupted the angel. “Five of you have infringed upon my realm with the sole purpose of locating specific dreamers to pursue your own private agenda. You are the fifth. Tell me why I should not consider these constant invasions an act of war?”
Michael strode menacingly over to Dream.
“We are at war,” he hissed. “We will use every means at our disposal to create an advantage.”
“Perhaps.” Morpheus did not flinch at Michael’s approach, although stars went nova in the wells of his eyes. “And yet I do not recall putting myself or my territory at your disposal.”
“It matters not,” Michael waved a hand dismissively. “All realms are one under my Father. In His service, all ways are open.”
“Indeed,” Dream said drily. “But even gods must dream. Then they are in my kingdom and under my protection.”
“My Father is in your realm?” Michael whispered, childish hope lighting up his face.
“He sleeps. He dreams. Although He has been restless of late.”
“You must tell me where he is! He could put an end to all this!” Michael seized Morpheus by the lapels, nearly shaking him.
“No.”
Dream’s voice cut across Michael’s desperate babbling and forced him away.
“No? But why? We need him, we’ve needed him for so long,” Michael pleaded, arrogance faded.
“Had you or your siblings observed the correct protocol in traversing my lands, I might have been inclined to consider it.” Morpheus regarded the angel. “But the importuning of dreamers I cannot, and never will, allow. Your battle with these Winchesters is not mine, and in your thoughtless use of my demesne, you have presumed me to be your ally. I did not consent to this.”
“I don’t need your consent. I am an angel of the Lord and above such niceties!” Michael thundered, haughty manner back in place.
Dream sighed.
“Such arrogance. No wonder your Father takes refuge in dreams, if all his children are like you.”
“You must wake him.” Michael demanded.
“Your Father will wake in His own time. It is not for you to determine when.”
“But it is for you?”
“I control the dreams, not the dreamers. As long as He sleeps, He will dream. When He awakens, He will cease to dream.”
“Then you won’t help us.”
“I will not. Nor will I assist your other brethren any further. Unless you have legitimate business here as dreamers, you are barred eternally from my realm.”
“You can’t do that! I am an Angel of the Lord!” Michael said, outraged and helpless.
“Here I am Lord and God, Creator and Destroyer. All beings dream. Even angels. You would do well to remember that.”
Dream poured fine sand into his palm.
“Do not involve me further in your war with the Winchesters,” he tossed the sand over Michael, who dissolved and blew away on the wind.
“Nicely handled, boss,” Matthew observed from the tree. Morpheus waved his hand.
“They should not have been allowed here in the first place. I was remiss in my stewardship.” Dream replied. “But I do not remember such presumption from Remiel or Duma.”
“Well, you had the Key to Hell then, boss. They had a vested interest in being nice so you would give it to them,” Matthew pointed out.
“True,” Morpheus inclined his head in agreement. “And now they have it, for all the good it does anyone. Walk with me, Matthew. I would see what these Winchesters are like for myself.”
Matthew alighted on Dream’s shoulder and they left the clockwork garden, passing through mist and rain and deserts and over mountains, across ship decks and through castles, until they stepped into a baroque nightmare of blood and chains and screaming and defeat.
“Matthew, remind me not to permit The Corinthian to create anymore nightmares for Dean Winchester.”
“You betcha, boss.”
Morpheus blew sand off his palms. “Sleep, Dean Winchester. Rest peacefully.”
The nightmare faded and Morpheus stepped across a broken bridge into another dream. This one was leaden with guilt and self-loathing. Hope beat, trapped songbirds in bamboo cages, while remorse chuckled as flames rose higher. Morpheus shook sand off his fingers and the dream faded into misty blandness.
“These boys are complicated,” Dream murmured. “They have been warped and manipulated their whole lives by these angels.”
“Angels are dicks,” Matthew stated, and Dream was surprised into a sharp bark of laughter.
“Indeed,” Morpheus observed, turning on his heel. He strode back through his realm, Matthew riding his shoulder. “I find myself glad that I have prevented them from tormenting the Winchesters further. At least they will find refuge in dreams once again.”
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This brief transit where the dreams cross