The Children of Hypnos

(sandman)

It has been so long since the Sandman has been in a Fenhallow classroom, he spends the better part of half an hour after the students leave standing in front of the whiteboard and staring. Lenton has left—he was angry that another teacher was taking over his class, anyway—and Klaus's dreamhunter guard had agreed to wait just outside the door and give him a moment alone.

It is strange to sit so still in a room full of sunlight and not have his head whirl with thoughts. Not be worried whether he'll be discovered. Not be itching constantly for his waking water, though even the thought of it sends an unpleasant chill through his arms.

Footsteps clack on the doorframe. "Sorry, I thought someone else would be—"

He turns. Marcia stands in the door, in her usual shirt and track shorts, scowling. As soon as she recognizes him, her expression opens up.

"Oh," she says. "Oh—you—you shaved—"

He smiles. "You didn't expect me to teach looking like a scrub, did you?"

"No. Of course not."

"Is everything okay?"

"I came to see how you were doing. How was the class?"

"Good. Lenton still doesn't like me, but that wasn't a surprise. People really weren't kidding about the curriculum being hamstrung. These are eighteen year olds who didn't know the basics of dreamforming. They should've learned that at the same time they made their weapons. It's bad enough that the State doesn't give them any help to defeat their doppelgängers, but they're taking away their own abilities now, too?"

"It's not great." Marcia looks around the empty room. "And how are you?"

"A little tired, but otherwise okay." He's starting to get the itch behind his eyes, and prays it stays small enough that he can ignore it. "Lana wants to try putting me on a light sleep schedule where she can watch me. She thinks it might help repair some of the—ah—cracks." He taps on his temple with one finger as he says it, then turns the motion into scratching his head. What Lana hopes is that she can save him from spiraling into his Insanity Prime in the absence of his waking water. He can feel, even now, the hole in his dreamspace shaped like himself, and he has the creeping suspicion that there isn't much anyone can do to stop what's already been started.

Marcia stares at him for a long time. She knows it, too, but she won't bring it up again. She deals in concrete facts, in the world as it appears to her now, not how it might be in the future. She takes punches as they're thrown.

So she doesn't bring up his doppelgänger again. Instead, she says, "Temper gave me my letter."

He knows which letter she means, and for all the times in the past few weeks where he faced certain death, for the first time the Sandman's stomach drops to his feet. He feels the blood drain from his face. "And?" he says. "Who is it?"

"A dreamhunter named Henry Shearing. He's currently posted in London. Apparently he's good with dreamforms."

I'm good with dreamforms, is the Sandman's immediate thought, and he has to catch himself before he says it aloud. The heat returns to his face in a flood, then leaves it again, then returns when Marcia glances at him. He crosses his arms so he doesn't have to figure out what to do with his hands, and a little bit because he's scared he's going to try to grab her and run away from this place.

"What's he look like?" the Sandman asks, though it's a completely irrelevant question, and he doesn't really care.

"Average," Marcia says. "Brown hair, normal nose...average."

She looks so sad he wants to break something, and he never wants to break things. He takes a step toward her and then remembers himself and stops. Marcia looks at his feet, then up at his face.