Desire

Desire is the older twin of Despair and the third youngest of the seven Endless, powerful beings who are older than gods and exist throughout creation as conceptual ideas given physical form. To the ancient Greeks, he was known as Epithumia.

Desire is the anthropomorphic personification of wanting, craving, lust, and attraction. Desire is a genderless being who is whatever you want them to be, male, female, both, or neither but all the time he spend in the male form with male body. Since each of the Endless is also his own opposite, Desire is also the embodiment of hatred.

Desires's realm is The Threshold, a colossal flesh-and-blood statue in Desires own likeness. More specifically, Desire lives in the giant statues heart, and is the sole inhabitant of the realm.

Each of the Endless possesses an object which serves as their sigil. Desires's sigil is a glass heart.

History: At the beginning of time, during a conference where the future of creation was being planned by various entities, Dream introduces his lover, Killala of the Glow, to Desire. He goes on to tell Killala that Desire, who he describes as his favorite sibling, is responsible for their attraction to one another. After a series of events, Killala ended up in the passionate embrace of the anthropomorphic personification of her system's star: Oa. Dream was extremely hurt, and told Desire not to meddle in his affairs again. In conversation with Destruction, it became clear that Desire was responsible for the breakup, but Desire claimed it was a joke.

After bad blood had been established between Dream and Desire while the Endless were still young, Morpheus was held captive within The Dreaming. Two gods fleeing their homeland took him by surprise, and he was unable to free himself. After reluctantly reaching out to six of his siblings and being denied, he asked Desire for assistance. After he initially balked at the idea, they created Alianora to be Dream's new lover, despite his protestation, and she rescued him in turn.

When Desire sent Alianora to Dream, he said "don't hurt her," but Dream and Alianora ended up having a painful falling out. It is unclear whether Desire meant to help Dream, hurt him, or both, by sending her.

Approximately ten thousand years before the events of The Sandman, Desire also created the attraction between Nada and Dream; leading to their doomed romance. This resulted in the destruction of Nada's city and Dream condemning her to Hell. Desire later admitted that, "Nada was a mistake".

1915-1916: In 1915, after an aspect of Dream died in flame, the orderly transfer of power to a new facet of Dream was interrupted. The interruption was caused by a "wrongness" created in the universe by the mishandling of a past dream vortex; a unique and dangerous entity that can cause the destruction of The Dreaming.

To prevent the wrongness from resulting in the end of creation, Desire used the Saeculum; an object of power, belonging to Time, that allows travel through time, to assist Morpheus in preventing disaster. Desire made two attempts to help him that ended in failure. The third and final time, Desire impersonated an aspect of Dream that resembled a large cat with a flaming tail. This allowed him to infiltrate a meeting of all the aspects of Dream, join Dream in his aspect as Morpheus on his journey, and overcome the hurdle of him only accepting advise from himself.

By deceiving him and working together, they were able to reboot the universe and solve the problem. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the resolution, the events were erased from Destiny's book just before Morpheus was captured by Roderick Burgess. With history rewritten, there is no memory of what happened.

1932: Dream being imprisoned by Roderick Burgess in 1916 resulted in people all over the world being afflicted by a "sleepy sickness." One of those people, Unity Kinkaid, was destined to be a dream vortex. While Unity slept, Desire made his own copy and this copy made Unity pregnant. Desire wants everyone to think that the father of the child is he while he is not.

The sleeping sickness would mean that Unity would not be able to realize her destiny as the dream vortex, and that fate would pass to her offspring, Rose. Rose is thinking that she is a relative of the Endless while she is not.

1989:

Soon after Dream's escape from imprisonment, Desire saw his plan bear fruit, learning that a dream vortex was forming. Desire shared the news with Despair, excited to see the events unfold. However, Unity was able to reclaim the vortex trait and die in Rose's stead. Moreover, Dream managed to figure out Desire's role in the events. He came to Desire's gallery and demanded that he is not the one who made Unity pregnant, it was his copy.

Appearance:

Desire is described as being 1.90 metres high, skinny, with long arms and legs and smelling faintly of summer peaches. He is a handsome, "Desire" (or "Loa") is a being of the Endless. Desire's smiles are brief and sharp, his skin is "pale as smoke," his hair midnight black, and his eyes are "tawny and sharp as yellow wine." Desire casts two shadows, one black and sharp, the other translucent and wavering.

Personality:

Desire is easily the most casually cruel of the Endless. He is obsessed with interfering in the affairs of Dream, in particular. How his vendetta against Dream evolved past the initial incident in Endless Nights isn't clear. Regardless, his interactions with others can range from generous to malicious. In Pre-Roman Britain, Desire gave a young woman the attraction she needed to win the attention of the man she loved. In the modern era, he doomed another to a passionate weekend followed by hating the presence of the woman she shared it with.

Destruction describes Desire as untrustworthy, acerbic, dangerous, and cruel, but not always wrong. His behavior and spontaneity is in line with his function and his nature as a creature of the moment, resulting in his fickle attitude and short memory.

Desire sometimes acts in concert with Despair and Delirium, and is much more distant from Dream, Death, Destiny, and Destruction. Death attributes this to the youngest three Endless playing games that the others don't waste their time with.