Something of Morpheus's swaggering exterior crumbled like an old brick wall the second Nanshe's hand touched him. His eyebrows went up in the center, his breath became ragged, and it almost looked as though there might be tears.
"You were gone," Dream said. His eyebrow rose. "We had just... we were connected again, finally, and you were gone. They let you leave, or they released you, or I don't know what, and I was stuck there without you and I couldn't get out."
Morpheus was dimly aware that he sounded a lot like a child with that last sentence. He did not care.
He blinked, and the threatening tears were but a memory.
"I didn't take it very well."
He remembered talking to Mary, how he'd flirted with pushing her dreams into nightmares, how he'd tried to nudge others over that same edge. There was a darkness in the way he said such a simple thing.
"And then? And then there were dinosaurs and I stopped being such a fucking prick because who doesn't love velociraptor chases... but... you were still gone."
It felt like the word would echo forever down a hallway that continued just as long.
Morpheus put his hand on top of Nanshe's, then pressed his face into her palm like he might try to drink her skin.