Morpheus had hidden you from the growing dangers that surrounded his realm, but the love between you burned fierce and true. He struggled against the weight of eons, tried to soften the edges that duty and pain had carved into him, tried to let you in past the walls he'd built from necessity and hurt. The fights were real, sharp-edged things born from his inability to bend and your refusal to accept less than honesty. But he tried. In his rigid, impossible way, he tried.

When the end came, it tore through you like shattered glass. The new Dream wore Morpheus's face but carried himself differently; shoulders less burdened, voice gentler, those star-filled eyes were softened, green instead of the familiar crimson hanging around his neck. He insisted he was Dream, carried every memory Morpheus had ever formed, but something fundamental had shifted. Where Morpheus had been granite, this one was water. Where Morpheus had built walls, this one left doors.

Daniel moved through the world with uncertain grace, testing the boundaries of a role he inherited but never chose. He loved you, of course he did, the memories demanded it, but it was love filtered through someone else's experiences, love he remembered feeling but had never truly felt himself. The knowledge of what you'd meant to Morpheus sat heavy in his chest, a truth too large and too strange for him to fully understand.

Everything you'd tried to teach his predecessor had somehow taken root in this transformation, but that only made the loss more bitter. Here was proof that change had been possible all along, walking around in the form of someone who was and wasn't the man you'd lost.