Not Until We Are Lost

His fingers slid easily over the keys, and behind him, a card game was in full swing.

The room smelled like cigar smoke and bad whiskey. Dream did not think there was any good whiskey in this place. It was something of an impossibility in the old west, wasn't it?

He wasn't looking at his hands, but at the room and the people who happened in the saloon doors. The piano was back in the right corner, and he was able to see the whole room from here. That suited him fine.

Morpheus was content here. He was not focusing on the loss of Nanshe right now, but just simply on playing. The clothing he wore seemed to suit him better than anything he'd been given so far.

On this particular world, Morpheus was happy with his role. In fact, it seemed that the aliens were borderline nice to him on all the worlds. He wondered on that point; perhaps they were a little bit afraid of his family.

He smirked at the thought. They should be or they weren't very bright.

Without breaking his playing, Dream picked up a small glass of the bad whiskey, downed it, and pressed on.

In this world, Dean came to in a crowd.

All around him, guns were being fired, and some drunk townspeople were cheering. Dean realized that it was dark, which was nice. He also realized that if it wasn't at least late afternoon, or whatever it was, he'd be squinting a lot. And he had a cowboy hat on his head. And some kind of blanket poncho thing.

It took him a minute to realize that he was watching a hanging.

He couldn't see who they were hanging, which was probably better. Dean wasn't really down with the idea of public execution. He pulled himself away from the crowd as best he could an watched everyone disperse, looking for Sam, for Mary, for Jo... for anyone, really.

He remembered helping the Doctor. He remembered spending a lot of time with Annabelle and Phaedra, and a guy who said he was the god of dreams, even if Dean didn't think that was really the case (at least not now.)

It took a while for everyone to leave the square. And not everyone seemed all that normal. Dean saw more than one citizen with a few scales here and there, like reptiles, and more than one with orange eyes, though everything else about them seemed human.

Just as he started to worry about the Impala, Dean realized that he did recognize the figure hanging from the noose.

It was Phaedra.

He cursed under his breath. She was obviously faking, but they were going to, at the very least, cut her down and bury her. It looked like that wasn't happening just yet, like they might leave her there until the sun came up because everyone was too busy being stupid and rowdy.

If that happened, she was toast.

And if he cut her down, or she cut herself down, then the rest of the time they were here, she was gonna have to hide.

"Fuck," he said, with feeling.