Dream
Al converses with the King of Dreams
Al found it funny that he could still sleep. Even funnier was that he chose to although it was not at all necessary.
Funniest of all was that he dreamed.
Most nights he dreamt of his body: being in it, using it, feeling it climb, fall, break, run, trip, swim. There was nothing he hadn't done, no hardship he hadn't endured, no adventure left incomplete. He knew that his lungs should burn when he ran, that he would sweat in the sun and grow thirsty in the heat. He knew the ache of his ankles when he jumped out of trees, and the burn of his knees when he fell on the steps of his house.
Once he dreamt about kissing Winry. Even without a face of flesh, he could not keep the blush away upon waking. Ed saw (because Ed saw everything), and when he found out the reason he hadn't let it go for days.
Al never dreamt about the stone, or the transmutation, or chimeras. He had never dreamt about the terrible things in the world: the ones they'd seen and the ones Mustang liked to fling at them when he'd been drinking too much and they were annoying him.
That night, the dream was strange. It wasn't normal. It was a real dream. It was a dream Ed would have (flying hippos, tutus with legs in red pumps that danced the can-can on the sun). Al dreamt of the mundane things, and of things lost. He dreamt of his home, and his mother. He dreamt of being normal, and of Ed being whole.
Not tonight.
Tonight he sprouted wings and went flying around the world, faster than light could travel across space, faster than the sun's rising, until he was far out in the darkness and there was nothing but the light from the stars to keep him company.
There was a man there, sitting on a small moon (so small it was no bigger than an office desk). He wore black like the sky wore the night, and his dark eyes glittered like precious stones left laying in the moonlight. He was slender and handsome, and though he sat cross-legged on the surface of the moon, he had a regal bearing.
"You do not visit me often, little soul," the man said, his tone somewhere between congenial and indifferent.
Al nodded, suddenly feeling very young, and more than a bit bashful. It was true that he dreamt whenever he slept, but he did not sleep all that often.
The wings began to recede into his back, and he landed himself beside the man on the moon before he fell out of the sky. His legs dangled off the edge, out into the nothingness of the space around them.
"It's so pretty out here," Al said into the silence. "You can't see this many stars even in the desert."
"You can't see this many stars anywhere on Earth," the man murmured, eyes never leaving the twinkling lights that surrounded them.
"I'm Alphonse," the boy offered, looking toward the quiet man, legs drumming against the sides of the small moon as he kicked his bare feet.
"Morpheus," the quiet man responded, taking a quick, almost appraising glance at the child who now sat beside him.
Al smiled.
Morpheus did not smile back, but returned his gaze to the burning pinpoints of light.
"I like it here," Al observed casually, as most ten year-olds were wont to do when a silence stretched on too long (and never minding that he was actually 14, though he felt even older).
The King of Dreams made no reply.
"It's nice," the child continued simply. "Peaceful. Sort of like all your problems were too heavy to fly away with you, and they're all stuck to the ground somewhere down there."
"You don't find the darkness unsettling?" Morpheus asked, because most children, human or not, were terrified of the vast black expanse.
"I'm not afraid of the dark," Al said, and it was true. There were far too many terrifying things out there to be afraid of something so trivial as a dark night. "I kind of like it," he continued. "It's easier to hide in, if you know how."
"It is," Morpheus conceded with a small nod.
A little way out to their right a comet trudged past, it's voyage slow, as if floating through molasses.
"My brother would like it here," Al said, and then asked blithely, "Do you have any brothers?"
"Three," the quiet man responded. "And four sisters."
Al let out a low whistle. "The dinner table must have been crowded at your house."
The dinner table was never crowded at Dream's house. While Dream did tolerate his siblings, and could even admit to enjoying the company of a select few, he could not stand to have all of them in the same realm. The bickering of the younger Endless did nothing but irritate him, and Death's mothering (how odd, to say that Death was motherly) and Destiny's quiet presence only served to agitate the tension between each of them.
"Bad memories of home?" Al asked as Morpheus' face became, if it were possible, even more calm and withdrawn.
"No," Dream answered, because the memories held no emotion to him. They were simply memories. He was irked that arguments seemed to crop up whenever they had a family reunion, but that was simply the nature of the existence of the Endless. They were foils for each other; stark black backdrops on which they could each perform their uniquely colored tasks.
"I don't remember my home," Al said sadly, looking down at his hands, clasped together in his lap. "Well, sometimes I do, but the memories are fuzzy… like I'm watching a play through foggy glass, and even though I've seen it before I don't remember the faces of the players, or the lines, or how the story ends, or anything."
"You remember," Morpheus insisted, though it seemed more of a casual observance. "Your dreams remember."
Al screwed up his face as of his solving of a complex mathematical equation had suddenly been rudely interrupted by something as unclear and blasé as philosophy.
"How does that make sense?" the child queried in a tone that Dream new all too well: the tone of the rational, logical world, the Scientist. It was the tone of one who did not answer to any god because he did not believe in any god.
Almost as an afterthought, Al added, "They're just dreams," forgetting that he was dreaming.
Those distant, burning eyes that had been so intent on the surrounding stars now swung around to lock on the boy sitting nearby. Al felt, very keenly, the anger and indignity in that stare, even as Morpheus' face stayed blank. The child knew immediately that not only had he strayed onto holy ground; he had desecrated it in one of the worst ways possible. He shrank under the stare, eyes falling again to his lap, shoulders hunching in as his knees drew together and his legs crossed at the ankle.
"All things have power," Morpheus growled in a voice as smooth as glass.
"Even dreams?" Al asked, steeling his fear to look up into the eyes now bearing down heavily upon him.
"Especially dreams," the regal man intoned, as if speaking from experience.
Al looked away again, knowing the doubt he still felt was pouring out through his pupils.
Morpheus seemed to sigh, an exhale that caused the little moon to tremble and moved the stars gently in its wake like tiny flowers floating in a rippling pool. Then he reached out and put a cool, whit hand on Al's shoulder, as if to console him.
Al turned to stare the strange man, and then cried out – soundlessly, wordlessly – as Morpheus pushed him backwards, off the moon, out into the dark, empty space. There were no wings this time, and the stars had all disappeared, and Al knew that he would fall forever.
Then he woke up.
AN: Wow, so I'm not completely dead. I would have had this done ages ago, but Dream wouldn't start talking in the story, and he wouldn't shut up in my head. This one is a little more random and a little less sensible than the others, but I like it - so there! And yes, I realize that three sisters and four brothers means Dream has 7 siblings... but I counted Desire twice. Cause I felt like it.