behold. me coping with session 9 SL!shinyduo
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The crackle of a lightning strike hits at the exact same moment Pearl hears a resounding crack from her neck. After she had been shot by Scar, the impact of the arrow led her to stumble down the ravine beside Scar’s base, leaving her at the bottom of the pit.
Well, at least it was quick.
She finds herself lying on the stone ground, a view of a clear blue sky above her.
The only thing she could do was let herself breathe. (Do ghosts even need to breathe? Eh, who knows.)
Her eyes close as she builds a steady rhythm with the rise and fall of her chest, willing for the aching and exhaustion riddled all throughout her body to somehow dissipate.
Aside from the sound of her breaths, she can pick up Scar’s voice off in the distance. It doesn’t sound much like a cheer, or a cry, or anything— but then again, Pearl’s not in a fit state to focus on whatever he’s saying.
Instead, she tries to think back on everything that just unfolded, all the deaths, the hunts…the duel. The zombie that had been creeping towards Scar before Pearl warned him.
She sighs, “I swear, if he dies to a zombie, after all that…”
Now, she wasn’t really expecting a reply.
Especially not a reply from a voice that’s so familiar.
“I know, right? It’d be embarrassing for both of us.”
Pearl’s eyes snap open in an instant, as though the answer gave her a surge of energy, overpowering the waves of numbing pain.
“…Gem?”
She looks…just like she used to, when they were red…together.
Pearl blinks, trying to focus on the figure looming over her. It’s only then, that she notices Gem’s body is slightly translucent, allowing rays of sunlight to pass through.
“Hey, Pearl.” Gem extends a greeting they both know far too well. She crouches down, tilting her head. “Are you going to keep lying on the ground, or…?”
“I might.” Pearl chuckles. “It’s pretty comfy down here, actually.”
“I can imagine.” Gem shifts to sitting cross-legged next to Pearl, which prompts her to try and actually sit upright as well.
Pearl grunts when she finally manages to move, scooting over to Gem. Sitting underneath the shades of a bit of overhang of the earth above, they find themselves situated in a corner of the ravine, now further ruined with scorch marks and splatters of blood on the walls.
Despite the destruction, sunlight casts shadows of sunflowers into the chasm. It must be the ones Scar has around his base.
Silence follows. Pearl tries her best to stare only at the walls around, but she ends up glancing at Gem a few too many times. She hopes Gem is too preoccupied to notice. (Pretty slim chance of that happening, considering the fact that there’s nothing of interest nearby but them.)
Eventually, though, something in Pearl pushes her to speak.
“So,” Pearl starts, “what’s got you wanting to give me a visit? I thought you’d be with Scott and Impulse.”
Gem jerks up at the sudden question, then turns away from Pearl. “I— I dunno, I just… We died pretty close to each other, you’re the first one I saw.”
If Pearl’s head had been a bit more clearer, maybe she would’ve questioned why Gem was so insistent on not facing Pearl when she answered. Instead, she accepts the answer with a nonchalant “Ah, I see.”
“Well, I appreciate the company. And…” Pearl adds, pausing as the following words get caught in her throat for a brief second:
“I’m sorry.”
That seemingly got Gem’s attention, causing her to look at Pearl once again.
Just today, Pearl was met with those same pair of eyes on multiple occasions. For some, they sparkled with a sense of joy. For others, they held a flurry of panic behind them.
At this moment, they were glazed with a whirlwind of emotions Pearl couldn’t even begin to decipher.
Pearl can see Gem obviously struggling to find something to say, or to piece together the thoughts in her head. Either way, Pearl waits.
“When you— when Scar was coming for me, you asked me if I wanted to duel it out with you, with swords.”
Pearl nods.
“Why?”
It’s such a simple question, really. Pearl knows exactly why she did it. Just as she knows why she went into the End earlier in the game to fight the dragon, why she rode a camel with the same person who’s killed her twice, why she couldn’t get a successful ambush when she’d been in the siege against Gem and the Scotts.
What leaves her lips is not the answer. Not a clear one, at least.
(It’s never easy, is it? When Scar and Gem had begun fighting, all Pearl wanted was a moment to think. She didn’t know what to do, she didn’t know why she began shooting, she just didn’t know. She couldn’t decide.)
“You said you didn’t want a bow fight.”
“But a sword fight, Pearl?” Gem pushes on in an instant. “I know you, Pearl, I know you prefer using an axe.”
“I do, yeah.” Pearl doesn’t give away any more than that, choosing to give Gem a noncommittal response.
“So— If Scar hadn’t— If I agreed, you—”
“You probably would’ve kicked my butt.” Pearl admits with a smile.
Gem takes a deep breath. Then, in the quietest voice Pearl has heard all day, Gem asks, “And you would’ve been fine with that?”
(I would’ve been more than fine with it.)
“You would’ve beat me fair and square, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
“But you—” Gem cuts herself off with a groan, growing more and more frustrated with Pearl’s vague replies. It’s no use when they’re both dancing around the topic, even though all Gem wants is to ask: would you have let me kill you? Could we have stayed friends? What went wrong?
Gem recalls Pearl backing away after one swing of her sword, when she was fighting Scar, she caught a glimpse of Pearl leaving the fight to them. She remembers how Pearl could’ve pulled out her bow, could’ve ended her right there.
(Do I forgive you?)
A breeze blows past the Sunflower Valley, leading the flowers above, along with their shadows, into a gentle dance.
Nearly every question Gem has dies on the tip of her tongue, leaving only one:
“What now?”
Pearl gives it some quick pondering, before stretching her legs out and bracing herself to stand. “I wanna check on Mailbox and Matchbox.”
“Then,” She helps herself up by leaning on a wall. “I wanna see if I can find my Mounders anywhere.”
Lastly, she extends a hand out to Gem. “After that… I think I remember Scott saying something about a spare camel around Etho’s?”
Gem returns the smirk on Pearl’s face with one of her own. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“The Murder Camel rides once more!” Pearl cheers as she pulls Gem up with her.
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Joy
Dreamling | T rating | Retired Dream | on emotional repression
I was thinking about a post, which I cannot find alas, about retired Morpheus struggling to deal with the fact that his actions and emotions don't have universe-wide consequences anymore. Like, he's allowed to just feel things now? And as someone who's also been extremely checked out of their own emotions at various points I can tell you the transition is… not easy. Anyways.
--
Morpheus is out when Hob gets home, or so he assumes. When he steps into the hall, the flat has the utterly still quality of total vacancy, no noise or distant movement. For all that Morpheus is a relatively quiet person, generally speaking, Hob has still become attuned to what his presence feels like, or the lack thereof.
Or so he thought.
For when he reaches the kitchen, Morpheus is there, sitting at the kitchen table, completely still. Hob almost doesn't see him, that's how still he is. Back straight, hands folded on the table, looking down at them as if he's meditating, or working out some complicated problem in his head.
Hob quietly sets down his bag and sits across from him. “Hey... love? You okay?”
He almost whispers it so as not to break the silence. Normally Hob would leave him to his devices if he was in the middle of something, but despite the fact that Morpheus is not given to unnecessary movement, the complete stillness sends something uncomfortable creeping up Hob’s spine. Morpheus hadn't even seemed to hear him come in.
With glacial slowness, Morpheus nods.
“It’s just…” Hob continues, biting his lip. “You’re not moving. At all. I almost didn’t think you were breathing.”
“That is the idea,” Morpheus agrees, still looking at his hands.
"Not breathing?"
"Not moving."
"Can I ask why?"
"I am. Preoccupied. With." His fingers flex against each other on the table as if forcing stillness. "Movement within."
Hob doesn't know what that means. "Can you elaborate?"
"I must make it still," Morpheus says. "I have before. I will."
Which clears up nothing. And Hob is getting the increasing sense that something is wrong but he's floundering as to what.
"Will you come sit on the couch with me?" he finally asks. "You look like you're about to snap in half."
"If it will please you," Morpheus says. Like his own pleasure-or-not in this matter is something he'd prefer not to touch.
"It will," Hob says. Morpheus follows him to the couch, moving like– like he did before. That ethereal creature that considered every step like he was crossing a thinly frozen lake.
So that's what it is.
Morpheus sits down beside him, drawing his knees up to his chest in a movement that, Hob is almost relieved to observe, is very much not like before.
Hob drapes the blanket from the back of the couch over his shoulders. Morpheus flinches, but doesn't push it off. "What's going on, hon?"
"It is..." Morpheus admits, slowly, "loud."
Hob frowns. "In your head? I thought you said it's been quieter since–"
"No." Morpheus presses a hand to his sternum. "Here."
Hob touches his chest, carefully, hand resting beside Morpheus's. All he can hear, or rather feel, is Morpheus's heartbeat, still a new and learning thing. "Your heart?"
"Everything. It... resounds. And drives off reason."
"Okay." Hob rubs his hand up and down over his chest, as if that might soothe him. Hob is aware enough of the feeling of overwhelm, and of Morpheus's particular brand of it, now that he has so little to distract him. "Just give it time and it'll pass, love."
Morpheus shakes his head. "That is not–" his lips press into a distressed line. "Duration is. Not the issue. It is. What will be left. After. Detritus."
Hob's own heart clenches. "Your feelings aren't a storm, love."
"Are they not?"
"You aren't going to make storms in the Dreaming, now," Hob says, though he knows Morpheus knows this.
"I speak not of weather, Hob Gadling," Morpheus growls. "I can– raze minds, I can spin balanced consciousness into euphoria, I can twist it all on its head with no effort and I will–" his fingertips dig into his chest, and Hob thinks that if he were still capable of manifesting claws he'd be drawing blood even through his shirt– "I will make it stop. It will be quiet again, I swear it."
"Only thing you're spinning is yourself," Hob says, gently.
And the thing is, he knows Morpheus knows this. Knowledge isn't the issue. It's sort of like how he never quite believes that Hob will never want to die, no matter how many times Hob tells him. I know that, Hob Gadling, he will say, but Hob can never quite get him to feel it.
"I know that, Hob Gadling," he says, again, now. That same tone. How dare you not believe it. How dare.
"Give me your hand," Hob says.
"Hob–"
Hob takes his hand and pulls it to himself, pressing Morpheus's palm flat to his own chest. Morpheus makes as if to pull away, then surrenders.
"Look," Hob says. "It's not hurting me, is it?"
"No," Morpheus admits, reluctantly, still with that tension through his shoulders.
"What about the room? Is everything shaking into pieces? Is it all going haywire? People rioting in the streets?"
Morpheus shakes his head no.
"See?" Hob says, squeezing his hand. "It's alright."
"I want it quiet," Morpheus says. He no longer sounds frustrated. More defeated. "It should not be... here." He touches his breastbone. "Here." His throat. "Here." His head.
"Where's it supposed to be, then?"
"Gone."
Hob sighs. This will not be an easy fix, not at all. He leans in, awkward though the angle is, and kisses Morpheus's chest, his neck, his temple, then stays, leaning against his shoulder. "I'm sorry, love. I know it's not easy. I happen to like you not gone, though, for what it's worth."
"Me?"
"Uh-huh. You. That's you in there, you know, not some brain-eating amoeba."
He gets a tiny huff of an almost-laugh from Morpheus. "Is it?"
"Yup. The part you weren't allowed to see because everything else was so loud." He rubs Morpheus's chest again, where he keeps saying it's hurting.
Morpheus's mouth opens as if to protest, and Hob adds–
"I'm not going to criticize you for it, okay? I promise I'm not."
Hob gets it. Well. He can't get it, actually, he's never been in charge of the entire dreaming world, but he tries.
"I thought you were supposed to go out today?" he says. "Weren't you getting tea with Rose? What happened with that? You were looking forward to it, I thought."
"I was, yes." He says it as if this is bad somehow. "Looking forward to it, that is. Her company is... enjoyable.”
“Okay? That's good, right?"
But Morpheus shakes his head. "It is too much."
"Too much?" Hob asks. "Were you nervous about it?"
Again, Morpheus shakes his head. “Joyful.”
Hob's heart is actually going to break. He knows this is part of why Morpheus left in the first place. And yet it's still tormenting him, which feels criminally unfair. And the worst part is there's no one to really blame, he knows why Morpheus did it, he can't and won't fault him for it when he was put in such a position.
He asks quietly, “So that joy didn't feel good to you?”
Morpheus shakes his head, biting down hard on his lip, and then, to Hob's horror, bursts into tears.
For all that Morpheus is prone to drama and moping, Hob has never actually seen him cry. He hadn't cried when he’d told Hob of his imprisonment, offering only a hint of scorched anger to indicate how he felt about it, the words, I had not realized what it was to be isolated and embodied until then. It was agonizing, said with the even cadence of the moon in orbit instead of the rawness they deserved. Nor had he cried when he'd shown up on Hob's doorstep and, when greeted with a concerned Hey, Dream, are you okay? – because he certainly didn't look it, drenched to the bone and his cloak absent its swirling inner cosmos – answered merely, You should call me Morpheus, I am no longer Dream of the Endless. The closest Hob had ever seen was the glimmer in his eyes when he'd thought Hob no longer wished to live, all the way back in the 1600s, and even then, his tears had not fallen.
“Oh, darling.” Hob pulls him into his arms, rubbing his back. “It’s alright.”
“It does not feel,” Morpheus continues, voice remarkably steady given the tears streaming down his cheeks, “good. It feels loud. And I am not in control, I am subject to these whims and I am no subject, Hob.”
"Those feelings are part of you. Not subjecting.”
“I don’t want it,” Morpheus insists, with the bitter frustration of a former king, used to shaping the world around him as he wishes. “If they are free I do not know what might come out.”
What comes out are parts of you, Hob thinks, but doesn’t express it again. The raw parts that you think are so awful. “Well, if there’s any feeling to try it with, wouldn’t it be joy? Happiness?”
Morpheus huffs. "Do you think that sorrow and rage are the only feelings with the capacity to destroy? Joy can become hysteria, joy can ruin, I have seen it, I have done it, when I was much, much younger and did not understand my abilities. Strong feelings have power, the very Dreaming is crafted of them. It could not exist out of apathy.”
“Neither could you,” Hob points out, and Morpheus just huffs again, shaking his head.
“I thought that if I relinquished my responsibilities, I would no longer have to worry so about everything outside of myself,” Morpheus says. “And how it entangles with me. Only now. It is still there, but I can do nothing to stop it.”
“But listen, darling.” Hob squeezes his hand. “You’re allowed to be tangled up with everything, now. You’re supposed to be.” He twists their fingers together. “I want you tangled up.”
“I will— without access to my realm I will step wrong, and—”
“And you can fix it,” Hob says. “Promise. No rebuilding a whole universe required.”
Morpheus sniffles, and Hob wipes the tears from his cheeks. “You always kept yourself above it all, didn’t you?”
“It is my responsibility to keep the collective unconscious in balance,” Morpheus says. He hasn’t quite stopped talking about his responsibilities in the present tense — Hob thinks it will be a while before he fully internalizes the lack of that weight. “Not to sway it to my feelings. Historically, when I have involved myself, it has… not gone well.”
“It doesn’t always as a human, either,” Hob says, and Morpheus’s frown deepens. “I mean, we’re all just bumping up against each other, you know? But you’re allowed to have space there, even if it doesn’t always go right.”
“If you mean this to be very comforting, I will have to disappoint you,” says Morpheus, but there’s more humor in it now, and he’s stopped crying. He pushes his head into Hob’s shoulder, and Hob wraps his arms around him tighter, holds him close.
“I wish it could all be immediately easy for you,” Hob says. “I’d do anything to make it so.”
“I did not expect this to be easy,” Morpheus says, voice rumbling into Hob’s chest. “But the challenges have repeatedly come from unforeseen directions.”
Hob kisses the side of his head. “I’m glad you’ve stuck with me anyway.”
“You have been very patient with my… meandering attempts at basic humanity.”
“Always will. I love you.”
It’s another thing he’s struggled to get Morpheus to truly accept, that Hob’s care for him was never contingent on any of his abilities or powers. That Hob won’t be scared away no matter his mistakes, because Hob has faced a lot of terrifying things in his life and the worst is the prospect of losing Morpheus entirely.
This time, Morpheus doesn’t reject it. He just hums and lets Hob pet his hair, lets Hob keep him and quiet him towards ease, which Hob intends to do until Morpheus can find it himself, and then after, too.
And several weeks later, when Morpheus comes home from the park with a colored pencil drawing Jed made for him, smiling and holding it to his chest with real joy in his eyes, Hob shines with pride, and the part of his heart that might have broken just a bit listening to Morpheus cry that day heals over again.
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