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There are some things that have changed about the nightmare upon his reincarnation. There is one thing that has remained the same.
“Tell me, Corinthian,” Dream says. “Why are you so fond of your knives?”
“Well, it’s a big, scary Dreaming out there,” the Corinthian says, lolling his head to look over at his creator, “and a little old nightmare like me has to have something to protect himself with, doesn’t he?”
He shows his teeth in the parody of a smile, all of them, Dream knows, even the ones he cannot see — sardonic, irreverent, mocking — another thing that had not changed and probably would never change about him.
“I should think the rest of us are the ones who need protection with you around,” Dream says, which only makes the Corinthian grin even wider. He chooses to ignore the borderline disrespect for the time being and presses, “but why knives in particular, and not something else?”
Dream had never dwelled much upon the matter previously. He has no need to wield a weapon in his realm, of course, so he does not understand it to begin with. And besides, all the nightmares are peculiar, neurotic beings with their own peculiar, neurotic idiosyncrasies; he does not try and understand that, either, even as their creator. But even he can see that the way the Corinthian regards his weapons of choice is special.
He is constantly toying with them, even while standing around idle, like he cannot go a second without touching them. He has a habit of running his thumb down the flat of the blade as one might stroke a lover’s body. He hones and polishes them after every time he uses them with ritualistic obsessiveness, laying out the rod and strop before him the same way, to his left and to his right, counting the passes under his breath, six to a side exactly. Dream has even caught him speaking to them sometimes, crooning sweet nothings as he turns them over and over in his hands, pressing them to his lips as if in holy invocation. He is fairly certain they have names, though what they are, he neither knows nor wishes to find out.
The Corinthian shrugs, loose and casual, but there is a definite edge in his soft drawl when he replies, “we all have our preferences. This one happens to be mine.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Dream says. Whatever his fixation with his knives is, it goes beyond preference into fetish. “I’ve seen the way you are with those things, nightmare.”
In fact, the Corinthian is doing it even now, his fingers drifting unconsciously across his chest and beneath his suit jacket where he keeps his knives, dancing and circling around the hilt, the handle, ready to draw and strike unprovoked. When he notices Dream noticing him, he abruptly straightens back up and shoves his hands in his pockets with the air of someone who’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t be, yet has to forcibly stop himself from continuing.
“So what is it, really?” Dream asks. “Indulge me.”
The nightmare regards him for a moment from behind his smoke-dark glasses. His expression is blank, unreadable. He is not smiling anymore.
“A knife is … it is simple, and elegant, and versatile,” he says. He’s choosing his words slowly, warily, as if saying the wrong thing will burn his tongue or shock him. Strange, Dream thinks, why he seems so guilty about it. Why it seems like the nightmare feels he’s doing something wrong when it is his own possessions he is talking about. He had never known the Corinthian to be particularly ashamed of anything, and he doesn’t think that has changed, either. “It is clean, efficient. Gratifying to use. But above all, a knife is an honest instrument, and I understand — I appreciate that. That is why.”
“It is a weapon,” Dream says. He frowns. “How can it be honest?”
“It is not a weapon,” the Corinthian retorts. “It is a knife. What it is used for, and what it is called — that has nothing to do with the knife. This is what I mean. It is honest about what it is. It is the one who wields it that tends to be the liar.”
It is like a puzzle with three pieces missing. It is like a poem written in slant rhyme, a chord progression that resolves a half-key off. What he is saying almost makes sense. Almost.
“Would that make you a liar, then?” Dream asks.
“No. Because if you accept a knife for what it is, it will keep you honest as well. If you must call it anything other than what it is, then call it a mirror.”
“A mirror,” Dream says. “I don’t understand.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” the Corinthian says, flatly. There’s something ugly about his tone, the way he’s holding himself still and tense — not malicious, but brittle, fragile, hunted. “Because you would blame the knife if you hurt yourself using it, or resent it for being dull when you did not sharpen it, or curse the cuts it makes when it is your own hand that is unsteady. You would call it a failure, when really what it is showing you is your own clumsiness, negligence, and lack of skill. Do you see? It is truthful. A mirror.”
“Do you think I would do — all of that?” Dream asks. It is pulling into focus now. The pit in his stomach and the tightness in his chest tells him as much.
“Oh, I know you would,” the Corinthian sneers. “A knife only wants what its master wants. It only needs one thing. It is entirely obedient. But when you ask for obedience, what you expect is deference. That, a knife does not know. It will cut no matter who or what is beneath its blade, but that is no fault of its own. It is only acting according to its nature. It’s only mistake was to be the thing that it is.”
“Yet it could not have been made any differently, or else it would no longer be a knife,” Dream says sadly.
“I suppose not,” the nightmare laughs, bitter, desperate. “Nor would it want to be anything else. And so, it is cursed to suffer.”
“What does it need?”
“What?”
“You said a knife only needs one thing. What is that?”
“Only what any instrument would need,” the Corinthian says. He turns aside, suddenly unwilling to look his creator in the eye. “Use, according to its nature. Or else it is nothing at all.”
Oh. Dream thinks. I see.
In his kingdom he cannot be harmed in any meaningful way, yet it still feels as if he’s being carved open with something sharp and bladed, leaving his guts and viscera exposed to the light. He wishes he’d asked much sooner. He wishes he hadn’t asked at all.
“An honest instrument, indeed,” Dream says. “Thank you. For answering me.”
He reaches a hand out across the space between them, an arm’s length that feels like a mile-wide canyon. He brushes his fingertips to the jut of the Corinthian’s cheek, then turns his hand along his jaw, so the crook of his jawbone is resting at the center of his palm. He fans his fingers through the nightmare’s flaxen hair and holds him there, firm, but not rough.
The Corinthian tenses up, fighting it, but the snarl on his lips melts into a whine in the back of his throat when Dream goes to pull away. He doesn’t know what the Corinthian was expecting, to react to his touch like that — to be struck, maybe, to be cursed out, torn apart and unmade and sent to the Darkness again — but apparently even that is preferable to not being touched at all. He admits it so readily. This sincere thing. This perfect mirror.
He slides his hand down the side of the nightmare’s neck, holds for a second to feel his pulse hammering rabbit-quick under the thin, delicate skin. Then down the cut of his collarbone, over his chest, and beneath his jacket, pushing it aside to reveal his shoulder harness and the knives sheathed there. He runs a hand over the leather, thick and supple, body-warm, then pauses.
“May I?” he asks.
“Go ahead,” the nightmare says quietly. So Dream goes ahead, strokes slowly over the hilt of the knife, over the polished black wood of the handle, noting its graceful contours. He understands the gesture for what it is. He’d once seen the Corinthian tear a lesser nightmare to pieces for touching one of his knives without permission. They are his and his alone — except.
“Can I see?”
It is a question, not a command; still, the Corinthian bows slightly in acquiescence. He gently pushes Dream’s hand aside and unsheathes his knife. He twirls it deftly between his long fingers, showing off, catches the blade of it in his palm, and hands it to Dream handle-first.
Dream takes it. It feels strange to hold, and he suspects it is because he is neither familiar with knives, nor is he the being this particular instrument is suited for.
“No, here, like this,” the Corinthian says. He reaches over and gently repositions Dream’s awkward grip, and then suddenly it settles in his hand like an extension of his own arm. He turns his wrist back and forth and watches the blade bend and throw the light, quicksilver, mesmeric.
“Look at that. It is beautiful,” Dream murmurs, looking not at the knife in his hand, but at the Corinthian, who makes a soft, surprised noise and ducks his head coyly. It’s heavier than he would have expected, but so exactly balanced it feels almost like holding nothing at all. It is plain and unadorned, but in a way that bespeaks careful design rather than afterthought. It is polished to a mirror shine and honed to a wicked edge. A simple thing, flawlessly crafted, and cared for meticulously, obsessively. Loved by its owner.
Oh, this poor nightmare.
The Corinthian watches him run two fingers up and down the flat of the blade, along the center bevel. Watches him press it against the inside of his arm, the metal so smooth and cold that it feels like burning, the eager edge biting into his skin even with the barest pressure applied. It feels dangerous just to hold. It feels thrilling. A knife wants to serve, Dream thinks.
He puts the blade to his lips — and then slowly, very slowly, telegraphing his motions very clearly, he reaches out and lays it against the nightmare’s jaw where he’d put his hand not a mere minute ago. The nightmare is breathing hard all of a sudden, fast and shallow, flushed across his cheeks. He tilts his face up so the knife shifts against the side of his neck, where a single slip would bleed him out in seconds. As if Dream would allow that to happen. As if he would not remake him, faster than thought.
The Corinthian shudders when Dream traces the point of the blade down the line of his throat, his fingers curling into fists. Down his belly, along the axial line that would gut him open like a fish, and then pressing briefly against the inside of his thigh, just below where he’s hard in his pants, before drawing back again.
“Ah, be careful,” the nightmare says. He swallows hard and licks his lips, runs his tongue across his teeth. “That’s not something to play around with.”
“Apologies. It is not,” Dream says. It is not a toy, he reminds himself. It is not a weapon. It may be considered a mirror. But it is at its core a knife. Well-made, and well-sharpened, and wanting use. When he goes to return it to its owner, handle-first as it had been offered to him, the edge catches and nicks him across the palm. A thin line of blood wells up, and he hisses in annoyance — not that it hurts much, but he feels foolish for injuring himself after all the warnings the Corinthian had given. He thinks to himself, clear in his new understanding: this is not the knife that is at fault.
Before he can summon up his magic to heal himself, the Corinthian grabs him by the wrist.
“What did I tell you,” the nightmare says on a hushed, unsteady breath, and presses his master’s hand to his mouth, and parts his lips, and licks.
The shock of it is like a bolt of lightning, hot and electrifying. The Corinthian’s breaths come quick and ragged, his tongue hot-slick and reverent against his skin, punctuated in his impatience by the accidental scrape of preternaturally sharp teeth. His fingers are shaking and he’s mewling so sweetly, and he’s pressed up against Dream, bucking his hips up in short, tight motions against Dream’s thigh like he can’t help himself. Dream spreads his fingers and runs his thumb over the Corinthian’s cheek, and the nightmare pulls away with a final open-mouthed kiss to the pulse point in his wrist.
“Enough, shh, it’s okay, that’s good,” Dream says, and the Corinthian goes liquid and yielding against him, leaning his entire weight against Dream. With the slightest push, he goes to his knees, easy as anything, moving like he’s dazed, drunk, come-dumb, even though he’s obviously hard and panting for it. “Open your mouth.”
He opens his mouth, and Dream traces his lips with the tip of the knife, slips the knife in against his tongue for just a minute before withdrawing and replacing it with his fingers. The Corinthian resists him not at all, suckles at him like asking for more. Use, according to its nature. He understands now, where the appeal of this lies. The power he holds, this perfect faithful instrument he has at his disposal, if only he’d known how to wield it.
“Take it back,” he says, and dutifully the Corinthian reaches up and takes his blade back. But he does not sheath it, just holds it loosely cradled in his lap as his free hand creeps higher and higher along Dream’s thigh. When he looks up and smiles at his creator, the metal of the blade catches the light just as his teeth do, one beautiful, lethal thing in the hands of another, sharp and shining and flashing and bright, utterly guileless — the knife, the mirror, the knife.