Passing through [open to anyone who dreams]

[Dream]

Morpheus, lord of The Dreaming, rode upon a ship built out of human flesh.

The freighter, a massive ship reminiscent of those belonging to pirates, sifted silently through the black waves below which lapped peacefully at the hull. Blood still drenched the skin, and from around the jagged edges of skin where bone protrusions were visible underneath dripped fresh red blood. The morbid trail followed where the ship had sailed, a line of shifting red in the otherwise perfect blackness.

[glow=black,2,300]"I leave you here."[/glow] Dream declared, the twin stars of his eyes gazing ahead at the horizon.
"Oh... alright." Came the uncertain reply from the captain of this grotesque vessel - a man who stood beside Dream, hunching timidly and clothed in the garbs of an office worker.

[glow=black,2,300]"Thank you for assisting my travels."[/glow] Dream added, turning to the man, who nodded quickly.
"Alright." He replied again. "But, ah,"
[glow=black,2,300]"If there is a question to be asked, ask it."[/glow] Dream prompted.
"It's just, about what I said earlier..."
The sentence trailed off.
[glow=black,2,300]"You are not insane, Mark Wheeler."[/glow] The tall white man stated, knowing full well what his concerns were.
"But the boat-"
[glow=black,2,300]"Dreaming allows each of you to be quietly and safely insane every night of your lives."[/glow]

There was a pause, in which Mark Wheeler mulled over this advice, and then nodded. Without so much as another word, Dream let the wind that billowed through the sails whip him from the deck and carry him over the edge of the ship.

He flew for a moment, and fell for two. And then he was in the dark waters of the sea, and he kept falling.
Falling,
falling,
falling.

And then his feet touched solid ground, and the water was gone. Dry as ever, Dream wrapped his cloak of the night tighter around his spindly form and looked around the new vision he had arrived in.

His sparkling eyes traveled around the scene, searching for the dreamer who dwelt within, but he could see no sign of them. Hearing a noise behind him, he turned his head to look.

((Whoever replies can define the environment. Since this is another character's dream he's inhabiting , I've left it open for description since the place depends on the person.))

[Batman]

The dream is always the same. Details change, but its always the same dark alley. The same boy crying over two bodies. My parents, dead in a pool of blood. A man, always in shadow, standing before them, old revolver in hand, twitching with his movements, his body broadcasting fear. I know what to call him now, I've met Joe Chill, but now, in this time, this place, he remains unseen. In times past I've seen a multitude of faces in his place. Marone, Joker, even myself.

For me, every moment of my life can be encapsulated perfectly, recalled with exacting detail, but this is a dream. I can feel it in the imperceptible way that the world shifts. Absently I reach out touching the brickwork of the alley, running a gloved hand across it. Even in dreams I'm still Batman. Sepperate from the boy on the ground, as I will always be.

In many ways, there are three dead on the ground. Bruce Wayne, child of Martha and Thomas Wayne is gone. Dead with them in an alley. What rose in his place was something primal, something dark. I am the product of this violence, the spawn of that childs anger and fear.

I am Batman.

...And I am not alone in this place.

I turn from the scene, seeing the figure that waits patiently there. Even in this world, I can still sense as I'm observed, my senses allowing me to feel his eyes upon me.

He looks familar.

[shadow=black,left,300]"You are Dream," [/shadow]It is not a question, but a statement. Reaffirming what I know. I have heard of him, read accounts of him...

[shadow=black,left,300]"Why are you here?"[/shadow]

[Dream]

Dream watched the other dark figure in the alleyway as he turned to realize he was being watched.

As he was recognized, Dream also recognized this man. He was Bruce Wayne when he was born, but in the place that spawned this mirror-image-alleyway, he became 'Batman'. Dream knew every sleeping fantasy, every midnight vision, and the Dark Knight's dreams were always the same. Locked in time.

Morpheus's face betrayed no surprise about being recognized. Instead he looked about the alleyway silently.

[glow=black,2,300]"The question is not why I am here."[/glow] He said, observing the bodies on the ground. Wayne's father, his mother, torn from him at the early age which knelt crying in the gravel.
Morpheus looked back up to the costumed version of the man.
[glow=black,2,300]"It is why are you?"[/glow]
His form drifted freely across the cold surface of the ground, approaching Batman. He gestured to the three people below.
[glow=black,2,300]"In these moments where your consciousness wanders free, you may be where you wish."[/glow]

His eyes twinkled curiously, like two tiny dancing white flames.
[glow=black,2,300]"So why do you remain here, avenger of the night?"[/glow]

[Batman]

I actually smile at the question Dream asks, though I doubt one could confuse it with one of joy or mirth. Its a bitter smile, fitting for the consideration I give his question. I've asked myself the same question a thousand times in my life.

Dreams are malleable as one wishes. I could be dancing with Selina on the Rivera, teaching Damien to play chess, eating a quiet dinner with Whitney. Any of those would give me infinite pleasure...but I know the realities too well.

I respond to his question almost absently, as I turn back to the wall again, rubbing a hand against it, watching as the soot falls in a light dust from the dark red brick, reminding me of blood and ash.

[shadow=black,left,300]"I suppose I could go somewhere else in my dreams...I could even stop this if I really wanted to. I have done it before. Disarmed Joe Cool, jumped in front of the gun as it fired, swooped down into the alleyway like thunder. Beaten him to a puple, killed him sometimes even...but then I wake up, and come back to the real world. Alone in a dark house. Most use dreams to escape from reality, to make the pain go away, even if for just a short time..."[/shadow]

At this I give a thought, and the world itself shifts around us, the dream moving about us, until somehow we're standing in the sky far above the alleyway, looking down into a maze of alleyways. Each with a crying boy, each with two dead bodies, each with a killer. An infinity of tragedy.

I turn to Dream and shake my head as I continue speaking, gesturing below us.

[shadow=black,left,300]"The truth is I always return to this place, not because I'm trapped, not because I can't summon more pleasent memories, more pleasent surroundings, but because this place, this moment in time, is trapped inside of me. I carry it with me every moment of my life, from the first moment of wakefulness, until the last. Its weight bears down upon me without end, pushing me to do something, anything , to stop it from happening to anyone else. The only time the weight lifts at all, if when I become who I'm supposed to be. When I take off the disguise of Bruce Wayne, and unmask the Batman. He is my reality."[/shadow]

The smile fades as I consider Dream a moment longer, and the reality of the dream reasserts itself. Bringing the allley back to us so I can consider it once more.

[shadow=black,left,300]"Dreams are not an escape for me, they're a reminder of why I'm here."[/shadow]

[Dream]

Morpheus listened patiently to Batman's confessions, and his explanation of why he insisted on remaining in the past.

This, he mused, was a man who had experienced something at the start of his life and it had changed him for the rest of it thus far. It wasn't something that Morpheus could relate to. The life of any human man or woman was a comparative second or two in the timeline of his own existence.

No, he could not relate to the things Batman said, but he could understand them. Fundamentally, what he was saying was that he needed this dream as much as he needed the memory of the event, to keep him doing what he knew he must. Batman was using the dream every night, and Morpheus, like all of The Endless, only lived to serve the universe.

[glow=black,2,300]"I do not pity you." [/glow]Dream said suddenly, his face gaunt and as white as ever. [glow=black,2,300]"Perhaps once I would have. But my time in this reality has shown me a great deal of things, and one thing I have discovered rings truer than many others."[/glow]

As he spoke he dipped to lay a hand in the blood of the Wayne parents, before righting himself and observing the thick red liquid on the skin of his hand.

[glow=black,2,300]"Every world and every galaxy, real or pretend, needs its heroes. It is as necessary as the blood to a human, or as the destruction that burns in the heart of a star."[/glow]

The blood now turned to sand and drifted away from his palm, floating on the air and disappearing into the night.

Morpheus looked to the criminal, Joe Chill.
[glow=black,2,300]"It needs villains also. Without these vital components there would be no life worth living."[/glow]

Now he turned once more to Batman.
[glow=black,2,300]"I do not pity you."[/glow] He repeated. [glow=black,2,300]"But I thank you. Your heart is in turmoil so that you may play the role of the saviour. You may change your dream as well as I can, but you do not. Accept my gratitude instead, Dark Knight of Gotham."[/glow]

[Batman]

Dream tells me he does not pity me, a strange comment to make towards me, but one I take no offense at. I've had more than a few that have. I know even Clark has had moments of that...Dream at least seems to understand why it all comes back to this. Why my soul is shadowed in darkness.

He speaks with an interesting, resonant quality, almost as if he were musing to himself at times. Overly simplifying the nature of heroes and villains. In truth, I know better than most that its only rarely that clean cut. Even the Joker has done good when it served his purposes, and I certainly know a few heroes, myself included, who did wrong because it was what was needed.

Sometimes compromise is nessecery to doing what is just, even when that is not always whats right. There are few absolutes in life.

Still the thanks he gives a welcome...if slightly awkward attribution to my efforts. Honestly, I've never been good at taking thanks for what I do. Its something I do out of a need within myself, not out of any wish to be appreciated for it. I would have been happy with Gotham treating me as an urban legend forever, if that'd been possible.

Still, I understand what he's trying to say, and I give suitable response to it, even if I can't resist a question of my own in the mix.

[shadow=black,left,300]"You are welcome Dream, I suppose I owe you much the same for what you do in this place....I know I do what I can out of a desire, perhaps unattainable, to keep what happened from me from happening to any other, but why do you do it? What motivates you to study humanity in this state, so far from our reality?"[/shadow]

In some respects, I'm not sure why I pose the question, it has a personal element I try to keep from myself in waking times, but i sense that here, in this place, I can be honest in my curiosity, and perhaps learn something in the bargain.

[Dream]

Dream nodded when Batman chose to thank him in turn, and listened intently to the question he asked. When he finished, Dream looked up toward the sky, as if he himself had no answer and wondered what it was.

For a moment it seemed he wasn't going to reply, but then he spoke.
[glow=black,2,300]"Every dream of every living creature in this universe is just a patchwork segment of my realm, and yet all of it at once. My realm is an aspect of myself and I am my realm, and so I drift in between the waking moments of the universe. When the last story is ended, I shall no longer be needed but until then..."[/glow]

He paused, as if reconsidering the question from a different viewpoint, before continuing.
[glow=black,2,300]"I do not study humanity; I am fueled by it as it is fueled by me, and I am part of it as it is part of me. Hopefully that is a more understandable answer to your query."[/glow]

Dream sensed that in Gotham on another plane, a sun was now peaking over a horizon and their time was nearing its end. However he was keen to point out a final object in Batman's question.

[glow=black,2,300]"And as for being so far from your reality,"[/glow] He said [glow=black,2,300]"That is not so. This is merely a different reality, closer at times than it may seem."[/glow]

[Batman]

Once more Dream waxes philisophical in response to my question, though I can hardly fault him for what he says. To be the personification of the dream itself must be avast, probably incomprehensible experience, and explaining to anyone, even me, would require more time than I have to live, to say nothing of the short span of dreaming I typically enjoy. Abstracts have their point in such a discussion, and what he tells me explains much, showing that we are perhaps more alike than different. We're both empowered by men, though mine is far more symbolic than his. I still understand the weight that such a feeling carries with it, and it just gives me more respect for who he is.

Its not easy to be a symbol, even when it is nessecery, many things must be given up to accept that role, and compromise is nto generally an option, though I do think its interesting that Dream has Always existed in this place. Unlike myself, he has never had a choice in who and what he would become.

That said, with my question answered, I can feel the dream itself starting to fall away, as my body starts to wake up, responding to my own self programmed wakeup call.

I spent one last moment in concentration before I go though, turning to him, and inclining my head.

[shadow=blac,left,300]"You are welcome in my dreams any time Morpheus, it has been an interesting and informative evening for me."[/shadow]

OOC: And thats my role in this thread

[Dream]

Watching Batman slip away, descending into the world of physicalities, of life and death, Morpheus bowed his head respectfully.

[glow=black,2,300]"Farewell, Dark Knight."[/glow] He said, but had no other parting words to give, as was the way sometimes.

He waited until the man was completely vanished. The alleyway world still lingered for a moment, but then it too began to disappear.

It began with the bricks of the walls. They became transparent, fading into darkness. Then the darkness crept over the ground too, so that he was standing on nothing but void. In a second the sky seemed to swallow itself, and then all that remained were the four of them. Two dead parents, a crying child and the Lord of Dreams. The corpses went next, leaving only the young Bruce Wayne crying in the midst of nothingness.

[glow=black,2,300]"Cease to mourn now."[/glow] Morpheus said to the fragment of a dying dream.
[glow=black,2,300]"And perhaps someday you will live again."[/glow]

With that he turned,

and he continued to fall.

((OOC: Thanks for the thread, it's been fun! =]))