Not Until We Are Lost

Morpheus 'woke' in a cabin just like everybody else did. Aside from resenting the upheaval, he had no feelings on the place. At all.

When he checked outside, though, Morpheus groaned.

He saw a little bit of the drama going on... saw Mary and Logan coming back in from outside the gate, saw Dean and Jo going off to check things out... and he wished he was able to sleep.

For Morpheus, a planet full of dinosaurs was really fucking boring.

For one, dinosaurs don't really dream. And for another thing, now everyone was going to be full of adrenaline and not sleep. Or have nightmares. No one was going to dream like normal fucking people.

He groaned.

He even through himself down on the bed in a tantrum-like fashion. He was interested in seeing the dinosaurs, but that was as far as it went. If he got too close, he was going to be without a body until the next world, and he knew it.

It was only a human body, after all. He could easily become just an idea. It wasn't like a fucking T-Rex was gonna care that he was a Greek God of Dreams.

He'd stop sulking eventually. But then again, 'eventually' for an immortal could be a very long time.

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.

If he closed his eyes, he could feel the air blowing the white curtains into his legs in the doorway to the balcony of his apartment on Royal. That was the problem with being Morpheus; any time, anywhere, the best imagination in the world and, snap, the best form of torture. That's where he wanted to be, if he couldn't be with Nanshe.

Not here.

He wanted to go wander around the streets with the tourists, people watch, and forget his name.

He was divorcing himself from the people here more and more, aside from Mary. He believed they'd been placed together for a reason and he quite liked her. But the dreams of the others... he was leaving them alone. If he didn't, he was afraid he might twist them or lose himself in them. And both would be very dangerous things right now.

He made his way to the hotel lounge, aimlessly. There wasn't a lot of planning here, just leaving the room, staying away from actively weaving dreams for anyone that might be sleeping. He had a book with him, and he thought about maybe having a bite to eat...

The lounge wasn't totally empty as he'd hoped. A woman sat there, a woman with dark hair. At first he took little note of her, simply gave her a slight, charming smile, and then entered the room.

So he was trapped here, at least on this planet, for now, with no hope of getting back and helping out with the remainder of the war. Severus had to admit that he'd found himself in far better situations over the years, but he'd been in far worse ones, as well. At least the food was free. And with room service, he didn't have to go out if he didn't feel like it. He honestly hadn't felt like it much, since coming here, but when he had left the room, it was only in search of something to read. To take his mind off all the things he couldn't do to help.

Assuming Potter wasn't dead already, and the odds were in favor of that outcome, unfortunately. Of course, had he still been there, Severus was reasonably certain that he too would be dead now, and he most certainly couldn't help if that were the case. And here he was, dwelling on things he couldn't help, after he'd even gotten a book to distract him. A good book, too, from what little he'd read of it -- when he could concentrate on more than two sentences at a time, that was.

He took another sip of his wine, and looked back down at the page, determined to try again. Though he frowned, looking up once more, when he heard water running in the loo. He didn't think that he shared this suite with anyone, and he didn't remember leaving the taps on. After marking his place, Severus set down his wineglass on the table next to his chair and got to his feet, immediately heading toward the loo to investigate. When he reached it, however, the door was locked. Now that was odd.

Because while he might have accidentally left the water running in the lavatory or tub -- and it sounded like the tub -- he didn't think he would lock the loo from the inside and Apparate out without remembering.

Frowning even more deeply, he raised his hand to knock on the door. "Hello?" he asked, a little more loudly than he would normally have spoken, to carry through the door and over the running water. "Is someone in there?" A daft question, granted, but he didn't think taking the accusatory route of 'Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my lavatory?' was necessarily fair, considering that he might now have a roommate whom he hadn't yet met.

Dream sat up.

He was acutely aware that he had again been lying in bed, and this time he seemed to be doing so in boxers and no shirt. That wasn't strange, in and of itself--he often padded around his apartment in the French Quarter like that. But the sheets felt wrong, and this wasn't his bed there.

The threadcount wasn't quite absurdly high enough.

He put his feet on the floor, stood, and walked to the window, watching the light reflect into the room and onto the carpet, and noting the extremely high height the room he was in seemed to be at. His eyebrows narrowed, considering the world he could see below. It was not where he had been, not that town square where he'd broken a window and told stories, and it wasn't anything that looked familiar, though it was modern and pretty, aesthetically.

But she wasn't here. Nanshe. He still did not feel her.

It was then that he heard a door open somewhere behind him, and Morpheus realized he was in part of a suite.

He turned his head over his shoulder but did not move, waiting to hear who his neighbor was.

Waiting to see who he needed to be, how he needed to act, as he tried to put the pieces of his insides back together.

For thousands of years, Morpheus had been able to feel minds, especially when they were sleeping, and especially when they belonged to people--and deities--he cared about. He knew the boundaries of their dreams like they were well-traveled roads, knew their sleep cycles like they were his own breath patterns, knew the forms they wanted to see when they shut their eyes...

So when one of those minds he so loved vanished, Morpheus not only felt it, but he took it personally. One moment, Nanshe had been sleeping, in his rooms, with him. His back had been turned--he was, as usually, not sleeping and working on some stories to use the following day as the town storyteller. Her chest rose and fell, and Morpheus worked contentedly, very focused, weaving dreams for Nanshe and others as he did so.

Then, as if she'd never been there, Nanshe was gone.

He felt it first, before he could bring himself to turn around and check if she was still there. He felt her mind cut off from him, felt the Dream Plane close in on itself and go dark, like a candle being snuffed out.

Everything inside of him went still, and he felt for her, felt for their bond, and their sameness. He closed his eyes to shut everything else out and reached for her. He could feel his brothers distantly, but not Nanshe.

Not his mirror.

Slowly, Morpheus turned from the desk he sat at to the bed behind him. He was not surprised to learn she was not there, but he was surprised to see that the bed didn't even look like she'd ever been in it.

He began to scowl. His mind reached more and more feverishly for her, and the pieces of him immersed in the Dream Plane became more and more frantic as they searched the minds of others for her.

There was no trace among anyone here. Or among his brothers.

Morpheus didn't realize it, but he'd fallen to his knees at some point during this, and was surprised now to see that he was mostly on the floor. The look in his eyes grew darker and darker until there was very little humor left in his expression, and as he got to his feet, Morpheus pulled all versions of himself from dreams back into him.

And then he went a little further, and pulled on his brothers.

Even Phoebetor, who he could not feel entirely, only distantly. He pulled until it hurt, until it felt like something inside him was sick and bleeding.

And when he got to his feet, Morpheus was surprised to see that he had put his hand through his front window.

He didn't feel it. Or much of anything.

The doors of the palace were thrown open. The grand ballroom was decked out with silver and blue decorations, crystal snowflakes hung from the ceiling and the palace entertainers played merry tunes to greet the guests. The aromas of the feast wafted out the door and down the street. The Queen herself sat at the head table with the princess at her side. The princess didn't look entirely happy at the moment, though there was speculation that she wasn't the sort to settle down and the Queen had been the one to decide that now was the time for the princess to narrow her sights to one single suitor.

Most of the kingdom turned up in their finery. From lords and ladies to peasants, all could be seen dining and drinking and after dinner, dancing.

Those that were the abductees had been invited as well. The Queen had even arranged with the aliens to keep one, should the princess decide that she fancied one of the group that had come to temporary fill the open job positions. Oh, it had taken some diplomatic posturing, but it was her hope that those from other worlds might hold her princess' attention more than those native to this one.

After dinner, the princess stood at the edge of the dance floor as a line of gentlemen were introduced to her. Those who attended had more than the princess to focus on, however. The minstrel strolled through the crowd as he played, and various other entertainers were stationed throughout the ballroom. Wine flowed generously, which resulted in some of the guests sliding towards entertainment themselves.

Eleni didn't have the suit that she'd been working on back home. What she did have, however, was a whole shop filled with silver. Actual, old-fashioned silver, tools and all. She was frustrated at the idea of starting over again, though she couldn't help tinkering a bit with a few potential attachments to her suit. By now, she was beginning to take it for granted that the things she created would end up either back in her room on the spaceship or would be with her whenever they landed on a planet with compatible technology. It seemed to her as though the aliens didn't want to dilute time streams by bringing technology that was ahead of its time into planets that might not have it.

As irritated as that might have made her, she could respect the logic. She wasn't sure what to make of the fact that some things that aliens did made sense to her, but she wrote it off as a byproduct of growing up in a household filled with science enthusiasts. She just couldn't help but wonder what they were testing everyone for. If she had to wager a guess, she would guess that at least some of the tests were psychological. Though that could be her own bias in relation to her field of study showing. Possibly.

Today, she had a rare day with no work to be done and an entire town to explore. She still hadn't found Isaac or Max, though she was relatively sure that they were here as well. Mostly, she was curious about the buildings. It wasn't every day that one saw a medieval village that hadn't been ravaged by the passage of time.

She could be found on the outskirts of the city, wandering along the wall and looking up at the buildings as she did so. Every so often, she'd stop to just absorb the details. She couldn't be the only one curious about the places they were dropped in, could she?

The not sleeping was more difficult now that he was in a confined space.

Whether it was New Orleans or London, or even the Underworld, Morpheus was used to a whopping amount of freedom while the world slept. He'd either go out on the town and weave dreams by remote control or he'd sit in one of his apartments and throw himself into his work for hours. But either way, he wasn't the kind to be very still.

In New Orleans, he could often be found wandering the Garden District and the French Quarter, if he wasn't in his apartment. In London, it was a walk along the Thames that he preferred. Back and forth until he decided to let go of the details himself and either entrust them to his brothers or put it all on autopilot.

The ship made him keenly aware of how not-human he was, when his humanity was something Morpheus was usually most proud of.

So tonight, when the rest of the captives on the ship slept, Dream was awake. He was in their dreams if they were interesting or he felt he wouldn't anger them (he didn't know them well enough yet to ignore protests and just have fun at their expense), but it was just so goddamn quiet.

And he paced the halls.

There was still the little matter of having been kidnapped, ostensibly by aliens. Once she'd climbed back out of the languor Morpheus spun on her behalf, her mind returned back to that issue. With a more positive perspective, this time, she decided that perhaps Morpheus was right. Perhaps they really should see what these creatures were all about before charging in and demanding to be returned again.

This was certainly nothing that happened every day. Even to a deity.

Especially to deities.

In the common room, Nanshe had been watching the aliens for at least a good hour. There were some that grouped together, some that were gray, some that seemed like they might actually be walking metal, some that she caught mimicking other people in the room with them -- there were quite a few different types. None of them approached her. It was fair; she hadn't approached any of them, either.

Jo didn't have any luck finding Dean or Cas or anyone besides Phaedra and Mary. It wasn't for lack of trying either. She'd combed over the ship thoroughly before she decided to turn in for the night. As much as she resented the aliens and the pretty trappings they'd used to disguise the fact that they were all prisoners, she couldn't help the little feeling of joy at the prospect of having a hot shower and sleeping in an actual bed.

She didn't always have nightmares. Even with the life she'd had, sometimes there were good dreams. They just... didn't always look like other people's good dreams.

Tonight's feature was a replay of an old hunt in a way. Some of the details were off in that surreal way that dreams usually were. But what mattered was that it was Jo and her mom, side by side as they fought off a pack of werewolves. They would eventually outsmart the pack and manage to take each one of them out, but for now they were up a tree and discussing their course of action in rushed, worried tones while the wolves paced down below.

Morpheus did not turn in, so to speak, the way other people, or even other gods, did for the evening. He'd be up all night, either pacing or motionless in a red arm chair, the French doors of his apartment in New Orleans thrown open. He'd only half-occupy the Waking World, if half. Most of him was thrown into weaving dreams for and about the sleeping portion of the planet.

He did not wake up in a spaceship, therefore. Dream rarely slept, and tonight was no such occasion. No. Rather, when he realized his body was arranged differently in the red arm chair, that there was no breeze from the open doors... he came back to Waking Life entirely, leaving dreams in the hands of the myriad Oneiroi.

As someone who routinely altered reality based on very specific parameters, Dream was not an easy being to fool. That he had, apparently, been taken from his home and placed somewhere else--somewhere he'd never seen before, though it had a familiar red chair and some poppies in vases--simply flabbergasted him.

He got to his feet, putting on his shoes, which he found next to the chair, and explored the room. Down to the last detail, every item was his. Loki perhaps was involved in this, or...

Well, who hadn't Morpheus annoyed in the last century?

He sighed, very deeply.

Running his tongue over his teeth, annoyed, Morpheus opened the door to his room and ventured out into the hallway.

"Okay," he called down it, voice very melodic, almost sing-song, "Good trick. Now, let's be a nice asshole and put me back in my flat, hmm, before I allow Phoebetor access to your head forever and sit and watch with popcorn."

The last word was drawn out, almost comically. Popcooooooorrrrnnnnnn.