With a rushed slowness, Dyllan walked over toward Cedric’s ego and sat down next to him. “…hey. How’s it going?”

Cedric paused before he responded, shooting Dyllan a slightly confused look. “Aside from the fact that I’m falling apart from the inside out?” He spoke in a tone walking a tightrope thin line between vulnerable honesty and cutting sarcasm. “I’m doing well… enough. For the most part. I guess.” His gaze drifted downward. “I don’t really know anymore. Sorry.”

“I… uh… Look -” Dyllan took a deep breath. “I’m not super good at noticing things. I’m not bad at it, but I can’t go all Sherlock Holmes like you do, and Andie… sometimes does.”

“I’d rather be compared to Miss Marple, actually.”

“Sorry, I was kinda caught up in my own momentum -” Dyllan paused his rambling long enough to make the mistake of looking Cedric straight in the eye, something Cedric usually responded poorly to. “What did you say?”

“It was nothing, don’t worry about it.”

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“Right.” Dyllan really didn’t believe it was actually “nothing,” but messes like this needed to be taken one problem at a time. “As I was saying, I’m not great at noticing things, but I’ve known you longer than anyone - save for your parents. And something’s always bothered me about your dreamwalker form, something I couldn’t put into words until recently. You’ve always been more confident when you’re dreamwalking, but there was something… halfhearted about the confidence. All the direct symptoms of insecurity were gone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something else that should have changed. It only clicked after Andie talked to me inside my Nightmare, and I started to realize that being insecure means hiding parts of yourself, and that when you stop being insecure those parts show back up again. Or, at least, they’re supposed to. The way I figure it, your ego doesn’t have your insecurity, but not because it’s more accepting of the things you’re insecure about. It’s because when you dreamwalk, your ego doesn’t have the parts that you’re insecure about. You aren’t afraid of those parts being seen when you’re just your ego, because those parts aren’t there to be seen. You’re trying so hard to fit in, but in the process you’re just pushing yourself away.”

Cedric pulled his legs in close, scrunched his whole face closed, and just generally seemed to compress himself as much as he could. Then he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and spoke. “…do you really think I didn’t already know that?”