Sandman: Corinthian (Lucid Dreaming Mix)
Title: Corinthian (Lucid Dreaming Mix)
Author: rokeon
Rating: PG
Summary: After the dreams, the waking world held nothing to fear.
Notes: Remix of Corinthian, by Koanju, for remixredux. Beta by phoebesmum.


He envies the ones with the sleeping sickness, the not-coma patients who never wake up. They don't dream. Years since they closed their eyes and went to sleep, years in which the doctors have never been able to understand their condition, and they've never once shown any sign that their rest was ever being disturbed.

He has dreams, rarely. Wakes up remembering scattered images of aeroplanes, pin-up girls, open fields. He has the occasional nightmare, wakes with distant memories of public embarrassment or falling from a great height, but in the light of day they're almost laughable.

What he has most often is worse than nightmares. Dreams, even bad ones, end with the waking; terrors follow him through into the real world and haunt him there. He can never remember anything, the uncertainty making the fear that much worse, and sometimes he thinks the absolute certainty of danger is all there really is. But other times he could swear that his senses had been alerting him to something real: bright teeth in too many mouths, an overlapping echo of laughter, a skimming touch of claws or fingers too faint to distinguish.

The doctors told him he'd probably grow out of them. He didn't. They told him to sleep on a regular schedule and avoid heavy meals before bed, neither of which helped. In desperation he went to the other ones, prepared to accept being diagnosed as insane if it just meant that they could treat him, and they told him that being chased in his sleep meant he was running from something in his life. You're trying to escape something your conscious mind can't deal with, they said, you have to fight the monster on your own terms. You have to face your fear.

They never understood that the only thing he feared in the waking world was the thought of going to sleep.

But, of late, his sleep has been easy. His phantom pursuer has vanished as if it never existed, and he reminds himself that he was never entirely sure that it did. Anyway, he's not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and the last two weeks of uninterrupted rest have been more precious than gold. He never realized how much of his energy the terrors sapped, never realized how much brighter the world was when it wasn't being seen through half-closed eyes. He never realized there was more to wish for than a single peaceful night.

The night terrors are gone. They've faded away, vanished like nothing more than a figment of his imagination, and they've taken his fear with them. Nothing in the world could compare to the terrors and the terrors are gone: nothing can harm him, he knows it with the absolute certainty he used to have about being in danger. He's invincible. Nothing can scare him any more.

He's certainly not afraid of picking up the blond man hitchhiking by the side of the road. The dark sunglasses remind him, just for a moment, of inhuman eyes-that-aren't, but he banishes the thought quickly. The terrors are gone, and this is the real world.

There's nothing that can harm him here.