Magnetic North: A Tale of Separation Anxiety

"I'm fine," Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove insisted anxiously, cradling his infant daughter in his arms.

April Alice Apple rolled her eyes. "You're a terrible liar," she scolded her husband.

"No, I'm an exceptional liar," Dream shot back distractedly by reflex, stroking the peach-fuzz on Iris Paintbrush Sunrise's head.

"Okay, you seriously need to quit trying to sell that line as your next catchphrase," April advised him sternly. "Especially since it's not true."

"Oh, fuck you!" Dream objected, trying to sound offended. "As much time as you spent grilling Silicone Sally, about what happened between her and me in The Land That Common Sense Forgot, you're saying she didn't tell you about how I fooled her and a pack of elder vampires both?"

"So much like Robyn," Elisabeth Barrie shook her head in exasperation. "He could tell tall tales to trick any pirate, but he was never nearly as convincing when he tried to do the same with someone whom he truly cared for."

"Which is why, if I actually thought that you could lie convincingly to me, I would divorce your ass in a heartbeat," April stroked her husband's cheek, gazing into his eyes sympathetically to leaven her harsh words. "But I know you couldn't, because I know your tells too well. For as much as you love to lie like hell, you're the most emotionally honest man I've ever met."

Dream's shoulders slumped. "Oh, thanks a lot," he sulked, genuinely displeased by her compliment.

"So, out with it, then," Bettie crossed her arms over her chest, as she fixed her lover with a firm stare. "What's been bothering you?"

Dream averted his eyes for a moment, breathing heavily as April spotted his jaw muscles flexing, before he glanced back up at them. "I was afraid, okay?" he finally blurted out testily.

April blinked in surprise. "That's ... a change of pace, isn't it?" she checked skeptically. "I mean, God knows, not that I mind you exercising more caution. It's just that, ever since you did your whole Death and Return of Superman deal, you've been acting more and more like Captain Jack Harkness —"

"He's not afraid for himself," Bettie discerned, narrowing her eyes.

"Twice," Dream clenched his teeth in a hostile smirk, as he held up two fingers on his free hand. "Twice in a row. Between the Moderator's universe and The Land That Common Sense Forgot, I had back-to-back extended sessions of being separated from you. From all of you. When we got split up, the second time, when I kept my memories, all I could think about was getting back to you, because I was so afraid of what would happen to you ..."

"Please tell me that this is not some sort of Silver Age Superman thing, where, because you see yourself as so invulnerable, you start to see the rest of us as all the more vulnerable," April pinched the bridge of her nose, as she shut her eyes tight in anticipatory dread. "You've never once treated me like a Lois Lane damsel in distress before, so please, please don't start up with that bullshit now —"

"I know, okay?" Dream countered agitatedly, his volume rising even as he made an effort not to wake the baby. "I know you all can take care of yourselves! I get that! I always have! But this isn't about that! It's ..." here, he paused, and struggled to verbalize the source of his fears. "Okay," he soon resumed, nodding his head. "It's like, I knew I'd make it back, yeah? Sooner or later. But I was in a place where time flowed way differently, and I was afraid that, by the time I got back —"

"We'd be gone," Bettie gasped, before turning to April to explain. "It would have been as if I'd hoped to find my family still alive, when I returned from Faerie."

"Actually, it's way worse than that," Dream chuckled ruefully. "Because I'm composed of Impossibilitium now, yeah? I'm literally made out of Chaos. Which means, there's some unquantifiable degree to which my perception of reality now directly affects my personal reality. And my ability to perceive things like time, on anything approaching the same yardstick as consensus reality, has always been way off, which means ..." here, he paused again, this time biting back the words he'd already chosen in his head. "I know how this story goes," he eventually muttered under his breath. "In the end, I wind up playing the Highlander."

"Hey!" April took hold of Dream and pulled him into a close embrace, even as they both took care not to squeeze Iris too tightly between them. "None of us are going anywhere. Not for a long time yet."

"I'm not gonna be a goddamn deadbeat dad," Dream swore. "I won't let fate or destiny or anything else recast me as Bryan Singer's Superman, and I won't let it Mephisto you like Mary Jane Watson, or meta-crisis you like Donna Noble."

"Not all awesome redheads are created equal," April snorted, "even those of us with magnificent tits." She elected not to mention her theory that the son of Jor-El was not the father figure that the son of Louis Laughing Fox was afraid of emulating.

"It's unfair of me to compare you to Robyn, I know," Bettie winced apologetically, "but you need to know that you harbor at least one strength that ... he did not share. Even when we were together, I always worried that he might simply ... forget me —"

"I could never forget you!" Dream rushed to reassure her.

"Yeah, that's her point, dumbass," April giggled chidingly, even as she succumbed to misty-eyed sniffles. "You're inherently incapable of letting go of anything, ever, because you're the world's most OCD nostalgia-hound. In the Moderator's universe, you somehow managed to remember us, even when you didn't actually have any memories of us. That's practically a Divide By Zero paradox."

"You said it yourself," Bettie pointed out to him. "You're literally An Impossible Thing now, and the more sure it seems that you'll never return to your home in our arms, the harder you fight to find a way back, and woe betide anyone or anything that dares block your path."

Iris stirred and squirmed herself awake, squinting up at her daddy and reaching instinctively, with squat hands, to grab onto his face. Dream smiled softly, and lifted his daughter up just high enough for her stubby fingers to grip the tip of his nose. "Nine times out of 10, my internal compass can't even track a straight line as far as five feet in front of my face," he sighed, "and yet, I always somehow manage to make my way back to the ones that I love. I should have guessed that you all are my magnetic north."