Previous Post “Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!” (Saving the Future, Part 7 & The Moderator Saga Epilogue, Part 2) Previously: The Moderator Saga Epilogue, Part 1: How to Disappear Completely “… And you think I can find him,” concluded Gwendolyn “Wendy” Leslie, the Agent of Chaos of Destruction known as PsychoAcidPervGirl! “I think you’re one possible path on the road toward finding him,” clarified Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove, the Agent of Chaos of Creation known as CrazySugarFreakBoy! “You’re the one member of the Globetrotting Gangbusters that nobody knows about. Everyone still thinks your alias is a supervillain.” “So, doors will open for me that won’t open for you,” Wendy deduced. “Is that it?” Dream shook his head. “My name opens more doors than yours,” he chuckled, “even if I have to kick them down. But while I’m walking through the front door, you can break in through the back.” He cocked his head to one side in consideration. “In a weird sort of way, you have more stealth than I do … in certain situations.” “And when I find him, or I find out something, then … what, I report my findings to the Lair Legion?” Wendy snarked with a smirk. “No,” Dream declared decisively, “you report them to me. We’re … not involving the rest of the Lair Legion on this one just yet.” Wendy arched her eyebrows. “Somebody’s got some steel in his balls,” she muttered. “You should kill cannon fodder more often –” “Stop right there,” Dream growled with a glare, “and think, very hard, about the next words that are about to come out of your mouth.” Wendy blinked mutely before continuing. “Okay,” she finally ventured, “I’m guessing your session of rooftop bro-bonding with the Boy Scout didn’t do much to improve your mood.” Dream’s shoulders slumped. “I tried to explain it to him,” he sighed, “but I don’t think he understood where I was coming from.” He shrugged. “Maybe he just can’t understand –” “I bet I can,” Wendy beamed eagerly. “I bet I can understand better than anybody.” Dream turned toward her, and squinted speculatively. “I bet you can,” he smiled sadly. “How much of our identities is just … the sum of our memories? How much of that is even more true for me, with my photographic memory?” “No wonder the Moderator picked you to brainwash,” Wendy grinned with chagrin. “For all the bad noise you’ve had to navigate, even just growing up, you’ve actually had a decent life, with semi-functional friends and family, to draw strength from. Me? I’d sell my soul to Joephisto to forget my childhood.” “Except that the Moderator couldn’t have chosen you, even if he’d wanted to,” Dream rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand, before pausing briefly to regard the artificial appendage. “You’re not the one who’s composed of Impossibilitium … and Imaginesium.” After a few silent seconds, he snapped out of his reverie. “But, yeah … the child I’d been, the things I’d changed … the beliefs and skills I’d developed, as a direct result of my experiences … everything I’d already done, and everything I could have done …” “All of it was lost and gone,” Wendy recognized. “Your past was nothing but denials, and your future was nothing but dead-ends. You had nothing good to look back on, and nothing good to look forward to. Once the bad noise gets inside your head, all you know how to do is … lash out, and afterwards, all you can feel is -” “Numb,” Dream nodded. “And that’s how it starts, isn’t it?” he studied his younger sister. “That’s how you can turn anyone down the wrong road.” “You tell me,” Wendy confronted her older brother. “From where I’m standing, you’ve already started heading down a decently dark path yourself.” “I can’t change what I’ve done,” Dream conceded, before a stray thought occurred to him, and he suddenly burst into a brief fit of laughter, startling Wendy. “In fact, it’s actually harder for me to change what I’ve done because it’s already been changed and undone. But I can always choose what I do next.” He breathed deeply. “And so can Danny.”

Interesting... I wonder which avenues Wendy will explore, and what they'll uncover about all of this. I quite liked the way Dream shut down her "cannon fodder" comment. You've established well the problem he faces in making right something that has already been retconned... Now, how is he going to deal with it?