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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Roper awakens from the successful War Against The Nightmare, and does what he can to get Syarra back on her feet again after weeks spent dreaming of being the Lich King's puppet once more. 5300-ish words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
At a yurt in Kaskala, Aszera Sunstrike guards two bound and sleeping death knights, Syarra and Roper. Syarra is bound carefully, to prevent her from harming herself. Roper's bonds are much more utilitarian, if no less effective, and his hands are kept separate.
There's weariness evident in Aze's form, the way she's curled up against the cold, knees pulled into her chest. Even without the promise of vivid, horrific nightmares, the continuing struggle of Syarra against the ropes makes sleep an uninviting prospect. So she sits, and she waits, and it is with something almost like patience.
When rain suddenly starts pouring down outside, she just huddles tighter. More cold. And still no one to talk to. Fantastic.
Don't worry, Aze. Conversation is coming soon.
Roper's eyes open in flutters. Despite it having been more of a supernatural sleep, it still seems to have been sleep, enough for the death knight to raise his head up, and then mumble, "Mn mnot innamud." He tries to move — fails — and his eyes go wider, more alert, and he struggles against the ropes.
Oh, no. Is he a sleeper zombie as well now?
Aze quickly rushes over to comfort him - or no, wait, it's Roper, that would be weird.
"Nope, not in mud. You asked me to tie you up, genius," Aze says, glancing at the still-sleeping Syarra. "What happened? Is she coming back?"
"'S rainin'," Roper mumbles, trying to free himself from both the remnants of sleep, and also his bonds. He looks down at his hands, twisting them around at the wrists, as he sets his thumbs in odd positions under his fingers, almost like he's making a fist. Uh-oh, what is he up to now.
"Yeah, great day to stay inside and have a bondage party," Aze says with a brief smile. "But what happened? Is she safe? Tell me and I'll untie you."
That was so many words. Roper has had zero coffee. He breaks his thumbs in a quick jerk of a movement, and then he breaks his wrists deliberately, as he pulls his hands free of the ropes. Ah, there he goes.
"It's fucking raining," he says, like this is an explanation. "From the Dream. It's…all of her liars melted." That probably makes sense to Roper.
"What the fuck, Roper," Aze says, springing to her feet and reaching for a weapon. She seems to be registering his actions more than his words. "Am I asleep again?"
"The Nightmare's gone," Roper says, as he sets his hands back into place, starting to heal, looking at the next few places of his ropes for how to get out. "We just — "
Boom.
There is thunder, and then there is thunder, and this sound that crashes through the world is not just thunder. It shakes through a person in an intense wave of sound.
Roper gasps, holds it and doesn't let go, as ice coats him, spreads through the yurt, turning the floor into a spontaneous ice rink.
Between the sudden thunder and the sudden ice, Aze doesn't have a chance. She slips and falls, hitting the cold ground with a bruising heaviness and a string of curses. At least she hasn't got her sword out yet.
Then, there's the faintest intake of breath, mostly inaudible under the rumbling thunder. The other bound person in the room opens her eyes.
Roper exhales so he can inhale. Ah, there's the morning coffee. Wait, no, that's his sister-in-law. Fuck.
Roper sets his head back against the yurt, and something happens, as he goes somehow more dead, his skin pulling in tighter against his skull until he's skeletal, and fear leaves him. The ice recedes, as Roper starts calmly pulling his bonds off. It takes him a moment to look over at Syarra, but it's obvious when he does because he inhales sharply again, reaching out a still healing broken hand to her hair, the deathmask of the lichborne evaporating.
"Hey. Hey, baby. Syarra. Hey." There's genuine emotion in his voice, something human and alive. It won't last, but there it is, for a few seconds.
For the first time since she became a sleepwalking menace, Syarra isn't trying to struggle out of her bonds. If anything, she looks more dead than she did a few minutes ago, staring forward vacantly like a discarded doll. At Roper's voice, she turns her head towards him, so at least there's one sign of unlife. The emptiness in her gaze is probably not terribly reassuring.
"Yara," Aze says in relief, getting back to her feet and rolling one shoulder. She steps closer, smiling. "We've been worried. Are you alright now?"
"Aszera," Syarra says without looking at her, and her voice sounds a little creaky from disuse. "You should go."
Roper immediately scolds Syarra for not considering Aze's feelings — ahahaha. Anyway.
Roper starts untying Syarra, his thumbs sending shooting pains through him, but ask him if he cares (he does not). He pets along Syarra's hair and body as he does, not entirely like how someone would a loved one so much as a prized possession, but here we are. He doesn't even glance at Aze. "Yeah, Aze, you smell like breakfast. Which — hey, hey baby, you good?" He looks at Syarra's eyes, his own bright and alert, a touch of a crooked smile to his lips. "You wouldn't eat when you were out, but it doesn't look like it was eating at you. We can go get something. Anything you fucking want." His treat, he's buying. He'll pull strings, get them reservations wherever.
Syarra breathes in softly at the pain in his hands, closing her eyes again for a moment. She should probably not do that, they've been closed for far too long already. Speaking of which…
"How long was it?" She asks as she opens her eyes and looks back up at him, flexing her muscles slightly as the ropes come off, though she still doesn't move much. She doesn't seem to be wild with hunger, but there's still that cold bleakness in her gaze. "It felt like it's been years… but also maybe only a day."
Aze takes a step back, another flicker of pain across her face. "Fine. I guess… you're done with me. I'll just go."
"Ten days," Roper answers Syarra. "I can explain everything. It's…it wasn't just you, baby. The Emerald Dream got fucked with, and then fucked with everyone. We fixed it." That's the short version anyway. To Aze he adds, barely turning his head a little over his shoulder, in a faint drawl, "You really wanna stick around and watch her while she eats? Come on, Aze, let a girl eat a meal without worrying if she's using the right fucking fork or her napkin enough for table manners." He brushes his fingers along the bottom of Syarra's mouth, his expression a little too soft. He is almost entirely focused on Syarra again, but — "We'll come get you after." His voice drops into a deeper drawl. "We'll buy you dinner. And I'll tell you about how now I know a way to a goddess of the ocean, too."
Is he joking? Man, it is really hard to tell with that guy sometimes.
Syarra reaches for Roper's shoulders and struggles to rise to her feet. Her legs might still be a little bit asleep. She looks straight at Aze for the first time, and there's no mistaking the yearning hunger in her gaze.
"I'm not… done with you," Syarra says to her little sister, an unusual, dark echo in the last few words. "But I've always said you're safe with me. I don't think that's true today. If you believed me then, believe me now. Please, leave."
Aze takes another step back. "Sure. I've got better things to do anyway. You know where to find me after, if you really want to." She turns and heads out of the yurt.
Syarra reflexively starts to move after her, and then clenches her jaw and tightens her hands on Roper's shoulders. With some effort, she returns her attention fully to him. "A goddess of the ocean? In a dream?"
Roper's smile twitches up, as he leans forward. "It's kind of a long story. Ended up making contact with that druid of Celaven's in the Emerald Dream." Like you do. He brushes closer, inhaling as if he can smell a compelling hint of a perfume to her. "Come on. Eat something, you'll feel better, and I'll tell you everything. It wasn't the fucking Lich King," he adds, a little footnote. "Just druid shit that spilled over on us." That's an image, Roper.
"You went into the Emerald Dream," Syarra says slowly, a confirmation rather than a question. She presses on his shoulders, getting to her feet in jerky movements, as if her joints have gone rusty during the long period of no motion. "I wish I had been able to join you there. But I-I think I'm fine. The hunger doesn't hurt any more than if it had been yesterday, but… ten days? I should be ravening. I shouldn't even have the presence of mind to speak."
"It was what happened with everyone, some kinda…stasis thing. None of the living died from it either. You wouldn't eat. I tried." Roper shrugs, looking up at her from his knees for the moment, that strange sense of a knight before his queen in his posture, the tilt of his head. "You're probably still where you were ten days ago. But you'll feel more like yourself with something."
"Stasis. Some kind of… druid shit… stasis," Syarra repeats, and a shadow crosses her expression. She looks down at Roper, her gaze suddenly intense. "Let's kill Scourge. I know it won't last as long, but… I think it will be more satisfying. I'll feel more like myself."
"Anything you want," Roper says, a smile on his face, his eyes a bright burning blue, his hands closing around her wrists with a grip just barely not tight enough to not hurt either of them. "There's some desperate stragglers north and east of here from where that necropolis fell, fucking pathetic things crawling around." His voice drops to a croon. "You could put them out of their misery." The smile widens to a dark grin. "Eventually."
There's just the faintest twitch in the muscles of her wrists at that last word, but her intent expression doesn't change.
"Yes, because I want to," she says in a low voice. "Because I choose."
Roper studies her for a few beats, and she can feel a gentle, slow tap on her right wrist, but he still asks, "What were you seeing in there, baby? Where were you?"
Syarra lifts her eyes to look at the exit to the yurt, and says simply, "I killed her. Eventually. They made her one of us, after. There was… time for a lot to happen in ten days."
Tap. Tap. "And you couldn't stop yourself." It's not really a question. He sounds sure of it, a puzzle piece fit into place. "The Hunger?" His head tilts a little, his eyes unblinking as he stares up at her, watching every twitch of her expression, as if nothing else in the world exists but her standing there. "Or Him?"
She looks away from his gaze on the last question, her mouth setting in an angry line. "I didn't even object. There were reminders around, little things, but I didn't think… I couldn't think…"
"Hey. Hey." There's no dark command in his voice, just Roper's own, as he pulls a little on her wrists, to try to force her to look back at him. "I remember what it was like. But it wasn't you. It wasn't real. It was just a fucking nightmare, a lie. It tried the same thing against us, in the Emerald Dream. Sent fucking lies at us." There's anger in his voice, something midnight dark in his expression. "You don't listen to them. It's just something that happened to another Syarra, and you just watched it. It wasn't you."
Syarra turns back to him, nods once."I just watched it. Still… I remember how she screamed. And I wonder, when I look at her, is that what it would be like? I should have been more careful of my words, but…" Syarra leans towards him. "You weren't there. I think… even the nightmare knew you would break us free, if you were."
Roper mirrors her lean with a stretching towards her, not yet rising. For a moment, something softer crosses his features, before it's lost to an intensity of something else, squeezing her wrists again. "I would've. It tried to use a shadow of you against me, told me lies that I'd lost you. But I know a lie when I hear one. I saw Celaven in there, and he said that if we failed there, we'd be just as fucking trapped for eternity with you caught in there somewhere. And it wouldn't have mattered. I would still get to you, and we'd have been there together."
Syarra draws in a low breath, and digs her fingers deeper into his shoulders. "You will never lose me. I would recognize you, whatever the dreams did to my mind. I would always recognize you."
Roper grins at her, a flash of teeth, a bit of a sharpness to his eyes. "That's right." He tilts his head up, swaying a little in her grip. "Your body though…it took control of you, made you come at us, Aze and me. It wasn't you either. She was clumsy. Stupid. She bit me though. If you have the taste of blood in your mouth still, don't worry. It's just mine."
Syarra softens a little at that, some of the darkness receding from her expression. She licks a tooth, and then says, "Maybe I don't mind the taste of your blood in my mouth, as long as you can heal. And… that's almost insulting. I am a weapon of war - to think of being wielded as a clumsy puppet - I will try to be satisfied that at least it means my body was not used to harm my sister, even if my spirit was."
Roper laughs, as dark as midnight, but he watches her mouth with interest — not for the same reasons a lover might, unfortunately, but here we are — and he shrugs, releasing her wrists at last, and finally rising up to a stand. "You didn't hurt her. And you know I don't mind a love bite." In their case, more literal than the common use of the term.
"And we didn't hurt you. I wasn't sure if it'd be permanent, with the weird fucking stasis. Hence the ropes. You are a weapon," he purrs at her, hand going out to her hair — neatly braided, not at all how she left it when she slept. "But it wasn't you. You don't choose it, to hurt just anyone. You control yourself, and you're fucking good at it. Come on." His head moves in a lazy roll to indicate the door. Eat something, baby, you'll feel better.
Syarra releases his shoulders and moves towards the door, a faint, predatory smile on her face. "I choose Scourge. And if that means I have to try especially hard to inflict the kind of agony I want, well… that can be satisfying, too."
Roper watches her, his eyes bright and dangerous, his own crooked smile cruel edged, but something oddly devoted beneath it all. "That's my girl."
Time Passes In A Satisfyingly Violent Manner
When Syarra walks back down into the yurt, the evidence of that violence is clear from the black blood spattering her face, hands and clothes. It's a temporary problem, nothing a little water and laundry can't fix easily. Or a fire for the clothes, maybe. On the other hand, the interlude seems to have at least partially mended some things that are more difficult to fix - there's a stronger presence in her fire-bright blue gaze, and she moves again with her usual smooth grace. She turns back towards the entrance, reaching down absently to check if the blood on her shirt is still wet.
Roper is a silent shadow behind her, his runeblades still out because he doesn't have his scabbards, but he doesn't seem to care much. He locks the door behind him, continuing his path down into the darkness. He has a still lingering smile at the corners of his mouth, watching Syarra as he slinks along after her, setting his runeblades down by his armor stand, before he raises a hand to rake back his hair from his forehead. He's changing for sure. Gotta get clean.
Syarra moves to set her runeblade, which she was carrying in one hand, near his.
"Do you think they're salvageable?" She asks, gesturing to the spattered clothes. "I know it will cost to replace them, but I just… didn't want saronite today."
Roper spreads his arms out in an open gesture. "C'mon, you think I don't know how to get Scourge blood out of clothes? I'm not a fucking amateur." Yeah, he's a Pro at… checks notes …laundry. Well, we all need hobbies, I guess. He makes an impatient flick of his fingers in a gimme. "Give them here, and I'll handle it. Black's not just for aesthetic."
Syarra peels off her shirt with much less self-consciousness than she once did, exposing pallid skin and a dark cloth bra. She tosses it to Roper, and then kneels to handle her boots.
"I guess I'll have to go talk to Aze at some point, too," she says absently, pulling one boot off and moving to the other. "Once I'm certain I can look at her without feeling an overwhelming desire to break her fingers and cut her…" Syarra snaps her mouth shut, pausing in silence as she tugs off the other boot. "I probably shouldn't be around the Argents, either, at least for a little while."
"Honestly, given how many nightmares the undead probably featured in their fucking nightmares, they shouldn't fucking be around us either," Roper drawls. There's no compassion to his tone, just self-preservation. "Likely to get flashes of living panic at us, those that were trapped, and fuck, maybe even from those that weren't, just fought in the War. Probably saw all sorts of shit when it started sending shadows at them."
"That might be true," Syarra says, finishing disrobing and tossing her pants in Roper's direction. "Let's give them a week, at least, to remember what the reality is. But… sending shadows? Is that what you were talking about before, it lying to you about me?"
Roper catches the pants as easily as the rest, transferring his little pile to one arm as he picks out a bag, and opens it, fishing out his laundry bucket to set it on the floor, and pulls out from the same bag an alarmingly large bottle of what might laundry soap and cold water, judging by the scent of it as he pours it into the bucket.
"Yeah." Roper goes through his soothing laundry motions as he talks, shoving Syarra's down to soak before he starts pulling off his own. "The shadows were part of the druid thing." He tosses his shirt down into the water. The bandages around his waist are stained with blood, and he makes a tsk sound at it, before he starts to unwind them. "You fell asleep weeks ago, right? Nothing happened for a bit, but it was widespread enough that I figured someone might know. Found one who did — Coriene Bloodsong. Kirin Tor had realized it was a druid thing, a corruption of the Emerald Dream that'd sucked people who slept into it.
"Something changed though, a day or whatever ago. It attacked us with you, probably all the sleepers." Roper shrugs dismissively. Other people problems. "And while we were wondering what the fuck to do, Malfurion Stormrage send out some kinda…psychic call to everyone. Hit both me and Aze at the same time, wide address, to go to sleep and go fight in the Emerald Dream itself. Aze stayed here, and I went under."
Syarra finds another water bucket and starts to clean the dead Scourge blood off her hands and face, watching Roper handle the laundry. Her expression is intent as she listens carefully to his description of what happened while she was asleep.
"Bloodsong. She does seem determined to make us into allies," Syarra observes. "I do wonder what use she hopes to make of the Ebon Blade. In any case, she has proven useful to us, now again. And then… a psychic call. Was it difficult to convince Aze to stay and guard us?"
Roper snorts. "No, she didn't want to go. Seemed freaked out that there'd been a voice in her head, and telling her to trust it." Roper shrugs, reaching into the bag to pull out a new roll of bandages and a shirt. "Told her to tie me up, and I went under. Thought it might be like a dream, but if not for how fucking weird some people looked, it felt like a real place. Lotta fucking trees." Poetic.
"It was an army. All sides, all races, that kind of thing. Fuck, there were even fucking kobolds." Not literally though. "The Nightmare, that's what they called it, sent shadow satyrs at us at first, but we routed them badly enough that it had to regroup. Saw Celaven there, and met his sister, the one he said to try to contact, Florande. She was like he said, weird and skittish, but didn't seem hostile. Might've been the context of the place and what I was doing there. She mentioned the tuskarr. It's a good in. And she casually dropped in that she'd met fucking Oacha'noa. In the flesh." He pauses, frowning. "She said in person. I'm guessing that means in the flesh." Druid things.
Syarra pauses, raising an eyebrow. "Weird and skittish and spends her time with tuskarr goddesses. An interesting asset to cultivate. It probably did help that she met you in the Dream, as an ally invited by one of her people's greatest leaders. I'd ask how the healing went, but I don't know if healing in dreams has any relation to what would happen in reality."
Roper looks over at her and flicks his own left eyebrow up. "I didn't have her try. Didn't need it, and still don't know if it'd even work on me at all. I'll follow up with it though." He pulls the shirt on, and then slips out of his pants, tossing them into the soaking laundry, before drawing on new ones. They're not under armor — this is his soft black turtleneck and soft slacks, his At Home wear. "Saw a lot of people for a bit. That paladin and his priest — Vond and Etone. So they were awake, but…" He runs a tongue over his teeth. "Couple others I recognized. Dane Atley, and a couple other Cobalts I've seen before." A pause, a more telling one. "Colson was there. Mordecai wasn't. Not until…"
Roper's jaw works and he shifts in place, leaning back against the wall of the yurt, his left leg bent and propped on the wall, crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes unblinking on Syarra. "That was when the Nightmare sent the sleepers and fucking ghosts at us. Psychological warfare. Taunting things that said stuff, tried to get into people's heads." His eyes are burning cold blue embers, but his mouth moves in a strange smile. "Good stuff. It knew what it was doing." High praise, from the spy.
While he's speaking, Syarra finishes washing up and walks over to fetch her own home clothes. On the way, she raises her hand to cover the eternal wound on her shoulder, but her older scars are still visible, including the old, faded tattoo.
"So Mordecai was trapped, like I was," Syarra says, musing. "It might be that's the silver lining here. So many people see us as other, but here's a common experience we can lean on. And I assume you were paying attention to the psychological warfare. Anything we might use?"
Roper throws his head back in a laugh. It is not a kind sound. He drops his head back down, grinning at Syarra. "It was like walking into a briefing room with dossiers just raining down like fucking confetti. I got a few good ones here and there. Celaven got sent one of you, and he hesitated. Saw Colson choke with one of the Mordecais. That was a lot of the real information — how many people couldn't tell the lie, even with the copies just running around. Mourn was just fighting off a Ralaea with that bitch Kaela, wouldn't hurt her. Theris though," Roper says as he cants his head, almost like he's listening to something, his left hand tapping slowly against his arm. "He went straight for an Alaisa, no hesitation. He knew it wasn't her."
"It used me against Celaven," Syarra says, and she sounds pleased. "And he wouldn't kill it? I did not realize I had such power over him. Mourn I could have predicted. Even knowing it wasn't her, I doubt he would be willing to kill anything shaped like Westwind. That tells us she was trapped as well, and Kaela."
"Not all the shadows were sleepers though. A lot were of the dead. People seemed sure of it. But you know it wasn't really them, because I didn't fucking see anyone. It wasn't actually the dead, it would have come from my memory, and well." Roper spreads his hands out before he tucks them back in. "Nothing to go on." He narrows his eyes briefly in some thought.
"I saw that Vice Admiral – Fallon – in there. A shadow pretending it was a sleeper in the real world getting stabbed. There was this…aesthetic bone wolf thing that got spooked by him and another. Didn't recognize it though, whoever, or whatever, it was, but they're connected somehow to Fallon."
"Hm, that does make it more difficult to draw conclusions," Syarra says, pausing to pull a black shirt over her head, freeing her braid after. "And an aesthetic bone wolf with Vice Admiral Fallon. Curious. I know it would likely be detrimental to the cause, but it would be interesting to meet that one. The Vice Admiral, anyway, though if we could manage the bone wolf then that, too."
Roper shrugs, a flick of his right shoulder. "Don't know if the bone wolf thing was a good connection. Could have been anything. Ex-lover who owes the bone wolf money. But it was an interesting note. Didn't see Fallon himself in there, but it was a crowd."
Syarra finishes dressing in her usual black home wear, this time with no red, and steps over toward Roper. "Still, I wish I could have been there in truth, rather than trapped in my own personal nightmares. With two of us to watch, think of all the information we could uncover. But… then again, I would have been vulnerable, if it were based on memory."
Roper's hand goes out to Syarra's shoulder with the forever wounds, and closes over it in an exacting sort of grip. "And someone might have seen into your head." He shakes his own head. "And then I'd have had to kill some people." Is he joking? He might be. Then again, maybe not.
"Could you, do you think? Or would it have simply woken them up, wherever they were?" Syarra asks, resting her hand over his.
"In there? Dunno. People got injuries, some weird thing of it maybe. Don't know if it'd kill them. Some of them probably died in the real world. Sleepers got to them." Again, that dismissive tone. Other people. Whatever. "But I wouldn't have gone after them there. I'd have found them out here, and taken care of the problem, anyone who might have used what they saw against you."
"So if their bodies died, they died in the dream, but we don't know if it's the other way around," Syarra says, nodding. "It might be difficult to go after someone, if all you knew was their appearance and nothing of their identity. But… I trust you could do it."
Roper flicks both his brows up and down at her. "Who said I'd have let them leave with only their appearance? That's always an easy question. I'm a friendly guy. Ask anyone." That dangerous grin, and that sense in the air of survivor bias of who is actually available to ask. He moves his hand off her shoulder to her hair, pulling the rope of the braid over it, wrapping it around his palm. "But it was just me. And if all they heard was the shadow's taunts, they also saw me cutting the liar down. I didn't let it use you. I destroyed them all. Yours and Alaisa's. It took you both."
"What did Alaisa try to say?" Syarra asks, pulling in closer to him. "Or me, to you or to him?"
"Alaisa's lie was that she didn't say anything. It was like she was empty. Didn't hear if it had your lie taunt Celaven with anything. I didn't give it a chance. Me, it was all the bullshit of how you weren't mine, and I'd lost you." There's confidence bordering on arrogance in the way he says it so dismissively, as though he could not have been fooled, or maybe it's darker and deeper than that — that Syarra, no matter her form, wouldn't be allowed to decide it.
"I wonder if it would have found a stronger angle, if you'd left it long enough," Syarra considers, unconcerned by his confidence. "Probably better it didn't, or we might be hunting down witnesses now. So you fought these phantoms, and then… did something to free us, the trapped?"
Roper pulls her a bit closer, running a hand along her arm, the other still gripping her hair. "Yeah. Turned out to be dragons at the heart of the problem, and some sorta fucking…tree thing. The dragons were fucking weird because they weren't…dreamforms. They felt real." His voice has a softer tone to it, something that might read almost as nostalgia in a living man; in a death knight, it's a pleasant memory of pain. "There was something happening with the Emerald Dream and the real world, some kinda forced merge. That's where I started losing track." Battlefield mania setting in.
"I'm going to assume it didn't work. That we aren't in a realm merged with dream," Syarra says, leaning forward to touch his forehead with hers. "But then, how would I know for sure?"
Roper laughs, a ha. "I'd look even more dreamy than usual," he drawls. But he shakes his head. "No, no, we stopped it. There was a…prison, cage-thing of some sort on a dragon. They told us to hit it, so we did. And we broke it." For some reason, frost breaks out across his skin, touches of it on the edges of his jaw and neck. "And then it started to rain. Felt like a storm."
Syarra reaches up to touch the ice on his neck. To comfort him? Or maybe it's just a reflexive gesture?
"I remember the thunder," Syarra says. "It woke me. I was… it doesn't matter what I was doing, but when I heard it, I saw the trap for what it was. Like at Light's Hope Chapel. I don't know if there was lightning."
Roper's jaw clenches as he forces the frost back, his hand on her hair going tighter. "Yeah. I don't know what happened after the rain. I left. The rain was doing something to the Emerald Dream's corruption, so it was over." And there she is.
"And here we are," Syarra says, with something almost like a smile on her lips for the briefest moment. "And if the Nightmare meant to take something from us, it has failed. We have only gained - new information, new connections. And perhaps we have suffered, too, but we have always suffered well."