The Sandman x Reader - Neil Gaiman (Lucifer x you x Dream)

The White Raven (part 2/2 OC)

Somewhere close to the natural world, in an underground bunker there was a young woman's room. She had always dreamed of living in a cosy cottage with a beautiful attic where she could parade around in her outfits and show off herself to her mirror against the wall and there would be books and fairy lights and plants by the dozen... But she couldn't have that nicety. By definition, she was a Romantic. Not the kind where they want to fall in love and be sweet and kind forever... No, that too, I do suppose.. But actually, she was a poet, a lover of the world, of nature. She could take so much from those she believed she loved, by those she believed loved her.
Like her lover. 

Her lover never cared for her, he only wanted to keep her from the world. He would keep her locked away, within his line of sight. Where he can have her alone... because he gets jealous you see. But not the healthily expressed jealousy. 
He was the horrific kind of jealous boyfriend. The one that would threaten to and physically beat the woman if she so much as looked at another man.

And she could take it. She would. Because she thought she was loved by him. And that's always what happens. 

.

.

.

To her.

His name was Peter Burgess. 

And in this house of torment there was the cellar where that cage was. The cage that Peter's father once caged an Endless. Like his father before his father did too. Who began this spiel of horrid, warped torture.

But from tracing the dreams of freedom and flight, she was found. Obliviously, she continued on her daily duties in the cellar of the house. Held captive by the man she so-say loved, he'd locked her down there for a while because she had said abour her dream. Her dream of being a white raven and getting closer to a beautiful being whom she then could not recall. Whom could now not remember either.

Where she had hoped he would be in love with how she was flying in a body not her own in her world of dreams... But alas, he was not. He was angry. Even for defiling their love  in her dreams. Or at least, that was how he saw it. Not so beautifully, not so majestically and enlightening as she did. Because she - somehow in all her days, nights, mornings - of torment and grief, saw the light of everything. Even when it's darker than pitch and night.

"Have you learnt your lesson yet, love?" Called Peter from the doorway.
  "Well, I believe so. Please let me out, Peter. I wish to continue my paintings... They're all upstairs." She pleaded but not pleadingly, she was much more calm than any would believe.

There was no answer for a good few minutes and then a knock was heard at the door. Peter was quick to ask in a crude, jealous snapping whisper, "WHo did you invite home this time?! I thought I told you you could only have girls round when I APPROVE of them!" 

And she shuddered in fear, every hair standing on end, bristling. "No, I didn't invite anyone round! If they're here for me, I- I didn't make it happen, I swear to you Peter, you know I'm not lying, you can check in the usual way if you want, open the door and look at my eyes, I'm not lying! I swear it!" This time her voice quivered, just slightly but slightly was plenty enough for any to notice.

The knock returned and a caw of a raven sounded outside too. A new knocking from the window at the tall cellar wall, she could see him. A raven, it looked to be intelligent, pecking its beak against the glass and cawing a croaky sound. 

She tilted her head to look at the pitch corvid, tapping the glass that had been warped by time and colour. She rose slowly from her crouched position on the makeshift mattress.
Meanwhile... Peter had answered the door to a tall, lean man in all black. He was the spitting image of the drawings that his father had done of the being he had imprisoned in his cellar. In the glass cage they had remade in the cellar of this now home.