The Children of Hypnos

|_|(sandman)|_|

The Sandman is no longer sure of the time of day.

Or the day.

Or the year, to be honest, though he's sure they wouldn't have kept him down here longer than one or two.

The pressure of the Dream bears down on him, and windows flit in and out of his vision. He must be hallucinating; the Dream doesn't merge with the waking world this way. Perhaps it's one of the side effects of the withdrawal. Temporary white sight; the ability to see the veil of the Dream laid over the waking world.

Maybe it's not.

It's not real.

It's not real.

The lights turn on.

He's in a chair. There's a table before him. His hands are cuffed to the table. All his fingers are fastened down, too.

Is this real?

He blinks and opens his eyes wide. It doesn't help.

There is a man on the other side of the table. He is very large and has a shaved head and his face is familiar but not friendly. The tattoos on his arms wink in the stark overhead light.

The man asks questions the Sandman can't quite hear. They get picked up and whisked away by the tornado.

The man presses down on the Sandman's right index finger. There is a flash in his other palm, and with one smooth movement, he shoves something up under the Sandman's fingernail.

The pain ratchets through his body, ripping through the tornado, and the Sandman gasps and blinks as the haze clears.

"Better," says Marcia's father.

"No," says the Sandman.

"You're going to tell me what you've been doing here in the Sleeping City for the past three years," Ares says, "Or I'm going to root around in your head until I figure it out myself."

"No," the Sandman says.

He doesn't mean it as a refusal. He means it as a denial that Ares is here, that so soon after he returns home he is subjected to this, that of course the Ward sent Marcia's father, because who else wouldn't mind tearing up his subconscious a bit to get the information the Ward needed?

He says it because withdrawal has taken all other words from him.

He shakes in pain and fear and need. His restraints have no give.

"Look at you," Ares says, no pity on his face. "She defends you. You. You could help her by doing this. You'd be keeping her safe, telling us what you know."

Yes. He wants Marcia to be safe. But Marcia can keep herself safe. Marcia doesn't need him. She has never needed him.

"No." He says it as the haze folds over his mind again, his vision split, his nerves chattering. "No, no, no."

"You won't even do it for Marcia? You won't save yourself pain to save her?"

He wants to scream so badly. It's not about Marcia. It's not about himself. It's not about Ares, or Emery Ashworth, or the dean of Fenhallow.

It's about what's right.

It's about truth.

"No," the Sandman says.

Ares stands. He blots out the light above.

"This was your decision," he says.

He turns and opens a dream gateway in the middle of this interrogation room. The opening is gaping and dark; flanking it are two large tan stones, worn from the wind. The gateway stands open for a moment, then snaps closed.

A moment later, a chill creeps up the Sandman's neck and over his skull. He empties his mind of everything and prays to Hypnos for the barest bit of strength he needs to hold on. He doesn't need to catch the tornado. He just needs to redirect it onto Ares, to keep him occupied, to put him off the trail.

Ares is inside his dream already, and he can feel the little prickles in his skull, in the back of his mind, the little jabs that get sharper and sharper with each passing moment, the cuts of Ares's axes.

The Sandman closes his eyes, breathes deep, and thinks of poison.