The Sandman/Heartwarming

"Hob: I... I wasn't sure you'd be coming. Dream: Really? I have always heard it was impolite to keep one's friends waiting. Would you like a drink?"
 * The issue "Men of Good Fortune": Dream is walking around with Death sometime in the middle ages, and he meets a guy named Hob who says he's not going to die. Death and Dream share a brief smile, and Dream tells the guy he'll meet him again on this spot in a hundred years time. They do, and they keep meeting every hundred years. Then the man notices that there are other people who don't die, and he wonders why Dream keeps coming back to meet him every hundred years. Answer? He needs a friend. Dream is insulted and leaves in a huff, while the man yells after him that if they meet the next hundred years later it'll be because they're friends, and for no other reason. Cut to a hundred years later. The man is sitting down at a table and he looks up, and Dream is there.

"Rainie: You've come for me? Blessed, merciful Death. You've come to make it all stop. Death: No, I haven't come for you, Rainie. [...] Like I said, I was passing, and I heard you crying, and, well, the door was open..."
 * Pretty much everything that Death does is this (not as strange as it sounds). For example, when she goes to comfort the suicidal Urania Blackwell in "Facades", and the following exchange ensues:

"Despair: I hoped that you would come back to me, Joshua. But no. I would seem to have failed. You're a pitful madman, a Tom O'Bedlam, dying in the gutter, in the rain. But you never despaired."
 * At the end of A Game of You, when Barbie crosses out 'Alvin' on  and writes 'Wanda' above it. The few pages leading up to that moment count as well.
 * Also, the very end,
 * Earlier, Nuala admits she disobeyed Dream and warned Barbie about what was coming. Dream first curtly accepts it and walks away, then comes back and tells her she did the right thing.
 * The stand-alone issue "Three Septembers and a January", where Morpheus gives delusions of grandeur to Emperor Norton I of the United States, just to prove Despair wrong. Norton also rebukes the manipulations of Desire and Delirium, unwilling to give into temptation or true madness. Based on a True Story. Long Live Emperor Norton!

"Death: I've met a lot of kings, and emperors and heads of state in my time, Joshua. I've met them all. And you know something? I think I liked you BEST! [...] [That's] a great hat. Can I try it on?"

"Joshua Norton was buried on Sunday, the 10th of January 1880. 10,000 people filed past the body, as it lay in state; and his funeral cortege was over two miles long."


 * In Brief Lives Dream apologizes to Delirium, when he's hardly ever apologized to anyone in his entire existence. She asks him if he likes her, to which he replies: "Yes, I suppose I must do, Delirium. You entertain me. And it distresses me to see you troubled."
 * Death and Dream's exchange in The Kindly Ones right before . Death scolds him for what he's about to do, and he recalls their conversation in "The Sound of Her Wings" (her first appearance in the series), when she capped off a scold by throwing a loaf of bread at him, and reveals he's brought a loaf of bread in case she felt the need to do it again. Seeing their simple, sweet sibling relationship in this situation is both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
 * The entirety of book ten.

"Hazel: Well, you always thought I was the stupid one. And I always thought I was the stupid one too. And then you say something like that. Foxglove: I said I didn't think I loved you... Hazel: I know. And you because I needed you. What do you think love is?"
 * Death Talks About Life, an eight-page public awareness pamphlet about AIDS, presented by Death Herself (with some reluctant assistance from John Constantine).
 * In Death: The Time of Your Life, when Foxglove confesses to cheating on Hazel and no longer returning Hazel's constant faith and trust. This gives us the following exchange:

"Foxglove: What kind of relationship did we have, for Chrissakes? You're dumb, you know that? Dumb and selfish and, and deceitful, and secretive, and -- and -- and -- dumb. *pause* Oh... shit. *pause* Do you know how much a baby's going to cost us? For a start we have to buy one of those dumb books full of names... Hazel: Fox? Fox, I do love you. Foxglove: Damn straight you do. Jerk."
 * And a very angry one from much earlier, when Foxglove first finds out that Hazel is pregnant (it obviously isn't hers).

""All right. I admit it. He's got a point. The sunsets are bloody marvelous, you old bastard. Satisfied?""
 * Dream's breakdown when he realizes he has to go to Orpheus to find his brother, and the fact that despite his stubbornness, he DOES go, even though he knows it'll probably result in his son's death. Also from that segment we have Delirium being sane to allow Dream a moment, and Destruction giving Delirium his dog <3.
 * Lucifer on the beach at the end of Season of Mists.


 * Matthew refusing to leave Dream's side when he goes to confront the Kindly Ones, and telling him how good it's been working for him.