#or hob managed to defeat the corinthian and death ended up giving him immortality anyway

[wyvernquill]

I only know about Anastasia through the wiki plot summary, but the parts you've posted so far of the Sandman Anastasia AU makes me excited to read more.

Read the part with the Hob and Dream interaction on the staircase and. The Angst. The potential future angst when Dream finds out what reward Hob actually asked for (assuming that's in line with the movie?) and he runs through this exact conversation in his head again! With those last words he spoke to Hob playing on repeat.

An evil part of me wants Hob to die in his efforts tying up loose ends (but succeeding) and for Dream to find out everything when it's too late to change anything. Maybe shortly after Hob's death. Or perhaps he isolates himself from the world and shows up at the inn 100 years later only to then find out the truth. Dream can never make amends and never gets closure. He settles further inside himself, putting up more walls between himself and the world. Or this is his tipping point.

Maybe Hob leaves behind a letter for him, apologizing to Dream asking not for his forgiveness but wishing him well and hoping that everything is good now that he's back to who he was. That he's happy.

Or, Hob does succeed and survive, and lives out his full life. But still dies before the 100th year meeting, that Dream shows up to.

Don't know the extent of Dream's power in the AU, if there's the Dreaming, if he can feel when a dreamer dies or not enter the Dreaming anymore. Bc in either scenario, what if he decides to never contact Hob again, but he feels Hob's death (bc he can't help but to keep tabs on Hob, despite everything), when, since Hob got his reward, !shouldn't! happen? And that's how he finds out.

BUT while that sounds tempting I'd really rather have the Angst train and the Happy Ending.

Thanks for reading my ramblings!

(Anastasia AU masterpost here!)

Thank YOU for sharing them, I enjoyed them very much! :3c

I'm very dedicated to happy endings, so don't worry, there'll be no great final tragedy... HOWEVER, I did feel tempted to write a sad little something, so I'll juuuuuust put that under the cut here....

(This is NOT CANON to the Anastasia AU - think of it as a hypothetical Bad Ending nightmare at most! Also, warning for major character death, of course.)

(I guess I'll still tag @10moonymhrivertam @martybaker @globglobglobglobob @anonymoustitans and @sunshines-fabulous-legs even though it's not technically canon to the AU...)

A hundred years pass in a blink.

Dream is busy, oh yes, very busy indeed, gathering his surviving dreams and nightmares together, carving out a tiny, miserable approximation of what was once his realm to house them. The New Dreaming is not what it once was, but it is enough - and where it is not, he works harder.

(If he is busy, then there is no opportunity to think of a time where he was once humans, with human needs and wants and loves. He can banish those memories from his mind, push them under layers and layers of plans and tasks, and feel his heart grow only ever so slightly heavier with it.)

His siblings are as busy as him, all trying desperately to recover scraps of their former strength. Sometimes, he helps them if he can, other times he is simply there to lean on and to hold them if he can't.

In those hundred years, Destiny wept - once, only once, but that was already more than Dream should ever have thought possible - in front of him, Desire screamed and howled and heaped verbal abuse on him in their frustration far more frequently, and Delirium clung to him as her physical form wavered and scattered like iridescent oil on a puddle. She slipped through his arms whenever he tried to hold her in return, and that was, perhaps, the worst of it.

No word of Destruction, Despair quiet and reclusive... and Death oh so tired. The humans now walk to The Sunless Lands without her, often refuse her hand if she tries. Dream can tell how it breaks her heart, and how carefully she hides it for her siblings' comfort.

It's a difficult century for them all.

But some things get better.

They heal. They grow. They recover. Humanity loses grip of their hatred, forgets about what they once did to the Endless, or why. It will take many more centuries, perhaps millenia, to undo all the harm that has been done - but be undone it will, that much is clear even after just one hundred years.

They have hope, still and always; and they have each other, and the truly endless love they each feel for their siblings. Dream is no longer lost and alone in the cold and the snow, as he once was as Murphy. He belongs now, something he has always yearned for, and it is a precious thing indeed.

But still he-

Sometimes, he-

(Hob Gadling and his smiles, Hob Gadling and the warmth of his hands, Hob Gadling and his ever-laughing mouth.

Hob Gadling asking 'would you come' in a voice too small and afraid for him, and the tears in his eyes at Dream's response.

He remembers these, sometimes, and wishes he didn't.)

A hundred years have passed by, and something in Dream has... it has softened. Gentled. Murphy, that frightened, furious, heartbroken man, or what remains of him in Dream of the Endless - he has healed, too.

He is beginning to regret his harsh refusal, now.

Is beginning to miss Hob.

Is considering, perhaps, to forgive him, even.

(The Corinthian has never bothered Dream again, has never wreaked havoc among the humans. Hob has succeeded admirably in his task, it seems... and perhaps this is something Dream should have recalled, in his aching fury: people are almost always better than one thinks they are.)

The hundredth anniversary of their final meeting on the stairs draws near...

And on an impulse, on the centennial of that fateful day, Dream calls Matthew to him, and slips out of their safe haven in silence, telling none of his siblings where he is bound - though he suspects, from Destiny quietly watching him leave, that one at least knows.

He treads carefully in the Waking, in the human world, but few care to notice him. The Endless are a fairytale, a horror story. A hundred years have washed the truth out of the tale, and there is none of that sharp suspicion in the humans' eyes he recalls from his journey as Murphy.

He is in London in an instant, at the park where he used to feed the birds and steal purses from passersby. Down the street then, to the White Horse inn, and-

And-

The White Horse is gone.

A ruin stands in its place, closed down. The merciless grind of the gears of time have not spared it, clearly.

Dream is, briefly, at a loss. They have not specified another meeting place, and with his diminished powers it is... difficult, even for one such as him, to find a singular human - only more so if that human is immortal, and surely working hard to remain undetected. How will he-

"So you have come," says a voice behind him, and for a moment Dream's not-heart is beating in his throat, and he turns, relief sparking in his chest, the name Hob on his lips like a sigh...

"...sir," Gilbert finishes, standing there alone, and Dream's heart plummets again.

(Gilbert had taken his leave, after the whole affair, had begged permission to remain in the Waking - and Dream had granted it. Gilbert had been such a painful reminder of a time when he's been both at his most miserable and at his happiest, and sending him away had been... easier, then.)

"Fiddler's Green." Dream inclines his head. "My greetings."

"Gilbert. If it please your majesty." Gilbert corrects quietly. He looks sombre, and tired, a far cry from the curiosity and easy cheer of their journey oh-so-long ago. "May I beg a moment of your time?"

"...I was intending to meet..." Dream gestures vaguely to the White Horse, unable to say the words. Say the name. "Do you, perhaps, know..."

"Yes. Yes, sir. I know who you have come to meet." Gilbert blinks a few times, very quickly. Looks down at his hands followed over the tip of his cane. "Please, follow me. I know a place where we can sit and talk."

Dream hesitates, glancing back at the ruins of the inn - what if Hob should arrive in the meantime? - but then reminds himself how close Hob and Gilbert were, once upon a time. Gilbert would not lead him away if not for good reasons.

Quietly, nervously, he follows.

Gilbert brings him to another pub a few streets down, named The New Inn. A sweet, pleasant place, gentle and warm the way Fiddler's Green once used to be - he spends much time here, Dream can instantly tell.

(His eyes search each table for a familiar face. But he finds none.)

They sit, and Gilbert folds his hands, wrings them nervously, before finally pulling a well-aged envelope from his coat.

"This was given to me many years ago by... our mutual friend." He begins, haltingly. There is something achingly sad, something hushed, in the exhausted slump of his shoulders. "He begged a promise from me, that I would be here, on this day, every hundred years, and give it to you, my Lord, if you ever... he instructed me, in confidence, not to suspect you 'ere half a millennium has passed - you have rather defied his pessimistic expectations."

A smile, then... but tears, the dewdrops on flowers in the morning, gathering in the corners of Gilbert's eyes. Fear gripped Dream's heart, and would not release it.

"Dear Robert. And yet, he never doubted that you would, one day, appear. Such faith he had in you."

"Had?" Dream chokes around the word. On his shoulder, Matthew grows uneasy.

"Read the letter, my Lord." Gilbert's smile is gentle as well as sad, as he pushes the letter across the table. "And you shall know all he wanted you to know."

There is a name on the envelope, Dream of the Endless written in Hob's scrawl, still familiar after so many years - and then, (Murphy) underneath it.

Dream dreads what he will find in this letter - but he opens it with shaking fingers, and begins to read, nonetheless.

My Honoured Lord, Dream of the Endless etc. etc. (My dearest Murphy)

It is my fond and foolish hope that this letter finds you well, and that you have since grown to forgive poor, lowly Hob Gadling - who was ever your friend, if you can bring yourself to believe it. (Perhaps you cannot. I wouldn't blame you. But know that, from the moment I first saw you, I cared for you, and never wished you harm. Hate me for the deception, hate me for my greed - but do not think I did not truly love you. Because I did, Murphy, Dream, whichever name you now prefer. I did.) I've asked Gil to hand you this letter if you ever come to the White Horse. Please don't be cross with him, he fought me on this every step of the way, and even now I am not sure if I have sworn him to secrecy firmly enough. If he's blabbed to you, be happy, his loyalty to you has won out over my pleas, which I do not blame him for at all - and if he hasn't. Well. Thank him for me, will you? He's been a true friend to me, always, and I... appreciate his fealty. Now, the most important thing I have to tell you: I refused your sister's reward. Yes, I know. I'm a fool. After all I did for it, too. But you were right. I didn't deserve it, I was a greedy, manipulative bastard... ...and I was in love with you, of course, and couldn't bear the thought of spending an immortal life being hated by you. (Forgive her, too, for not telling you, please. All on my request, not her fault.) I don't know why exactly I refused, in the end. I was trying to prove something, maybe. To me, to you - it hardly matters. Not anymore, at least. I'm going to see if I can't give our pursuer hell, and that'll likely... not end well for me. But even if I am fortunate enough to survive that encounter, I doubt I'll live to the ripe old age of 130-something, so... I'm sorry I couldn't make our appointment, my friend, my love - and after I was the one to suggest it, too. Unfair of me, perhaps... but at least you'll have this letter, and all I wanted still to tell you. If I died, if I am dead now, you must know that I died happy. You are with your family again, you've returned to your true self, and I could help you achieve that. This time, I could help, and I'm so glad. I love you. Foolish, of a mortal, to love an Endless, but there it is. I loved you as Murphy, and I love you still as Dream, and I am happy to know the one I love safe and free and - I hope, I pray - content and living a life of joy. Be well, Dream of the Endless. Think of me, now and then, if you can bear it - and recall, perhaps, that even low and greedy humans may show themselves to be better than you'd think at first. I love you. Forgive me. And farewell forever. Yours, always, always yours, Hob Gadling

A wet splash as a tear drops onto the letter, old ink running slightly under it; and then another, before Gilbert's gentle hands pull the paper to safety.

Dream sits there for hours, crying like a child, like a human, mourning, regretting...

...and admitting, at last, that he loved Hob, and loves Hob still, even now, when it is far too late for love to change any of it.

He would turn back time if he could, beg his father on his knees for the chance to undo this - but he does not have power enough to even ask, and knows he will be denied either way. He has lost Hob; has lost him to anger and jilted feelings, to secrets and unspoken words. To the Corinthian's dagger, or the tooth of time.

He has lost Hob, and his heart with him.

Gilbert and Matthew bring him home, eventually. His siblings comfort him silently, aching in empathy of his grief.

A century has passed, and soon another will start, and pass, and be gone, over and over and over. Life is rich, and goes on forevermore... only without one never-truly-immortal in it.

And Dream will forever remember Hob Gadling, will think of him at every judgement he passes over a mortal life, at every burst of fury in his chest. Will think of kindness, of forgiveness, of friendship.

And, forever and always, of love.