The Empty World | The Empty World Sequence [complete | rewriting]

"Twenty-Eight" (Draft 2)

"I noticed the choker."

"Yes, he's mine. Don't ask me to tell you the story."

"Julien, I really need to know how I got here. Do you remember anything else?"

"About finding you?" Julien sat up. "I was asleep, you had left a couple days ago for London. I had one of my nightmares, they're always worse when you're not around. I must have realized I was dreaming, I half remember calling you. And then I woke and you were on the bed, unconscious, covered with scratches and slime, like we said."

"If you called to me as you were waking I must have somehow hitched a ride here with you. Can you imagine the odds of that? Julien, you didn't notice anything strange when you woke...like things biting you, or pinching, or sitting on your chest?"

"Incubi? No. Just you."

Morpheus sank down to the concrete and nodded. "That's good. I wish I knew what happened to Opium."

"I don't understand," Julien said. "Was there something happening that was really bad?"

"I can't really say. There was a storm; I guess I can tell you that. A sort of storm that could interfere with anyone trying to cross time or travel between worlds." Morpheus sighed. "It's going to be hard. I've got to travel backward now over three hundred years, I've done millennia before but only under very good conditions. I'm scared. I don't want to get lost again."

"Oh."

"I wish that I could tell you. Do you remember when Faye brought other Vampyres to the palace and you fought?"

"Oh, that, yeah. You couldn't fight; they'd told you not to."

"This is worse. If I don't get back and find Opium, if we don't get where we're supposed to, then really bad things could happen."

"Bad? How bad?"

"You know; bad, wrath and destruction type things."

Julien brought Morpheus into his arms and held him. "You're strong, Morpheus, and you're good. You're so good. You'll get through. I know you will. I know sometimes you think they give you too much to do, that you'll never meet their expectations, but they depend on you because they know you can do it."

"Why do I have to do this?"

"I don't know, Morpheus. Someone's got to save us all from wrath and destruction. You may as well have something to do with it."

"Why?" Morpheus asked, sitting back.

Julien shrugged. "Well, think of yourself as an example to all manner of Halfangels everywhere. If you show Angels how valuable you are then all your kind will be more appreciated. Equal rights and all. Besides, if you turn out to be any kind of hero I'm sure I'll think it terribly sexy."

Morpheus laughed. "I had this dream once," he said, "That you were at one of those cheesy clubs on Long Island, and I met you there, and we snuck back to your house and were making out by the backyard pool."

"And then I snuck you up into my room and fucked you, yeah I've had that dream before."

Morpheus giggled, "Oh. I must have done that."

"Sometimes I have weird dreams about the sun."

"The sun?"

"It gets big and red and flares. And the dolphins say they are going to buy a space ship from the Americans and just leave."