Cedric steadied his breathing and kept his eyes tightly shut as he stood there, just… waiting. It took longer than he’d like to admit to remember that illusions made by any part of himself - Nightmare included - could be dispelled simply by disbelieving in them. All he had to do was open his eyes and refute the existence of…

Where did all the horrid eyeballs go?

Cedric let his eyes wander nervously around his surroundings, searching for anything of note. Anything other than empty void or the clutter of a mindscape undergoing revolution. It was a uniquely distressing feeling, when something horrible disappeared without an explanation. It was like being cornered by a tiger, only for it to vanish into thin air as soon as you blinked.

Much like the hypothetical tiger, the tangled feeling in Cedric’s gut and the buzzing in his head were fading - alongside anxiety, fear, that strange pressure that had tainted the air of his mindscape… Well, that was really just three ways of referring to the same thing, wasn’t it? Still, in spite of how much had changed, that was the only thing Cedric could focus on right now. Over a decade of trauma, gone. Just like that. He’d suffered under this weight for… basically his whole life - save the first few years. Now it was all gone, well and truly gone.

It almost didn’t feel right. Unearned, unnatural or more likely, a mixture of the two. He identified the problem, came up with a solution, and executed it. That was how things were supposed to work, right? So why was he so uneasy? Was he so used to pain that feeling normal didn’t feel normal? Or was he just worried that this newfound peace could be lost as easily as he’d found it?

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Then, Cedric was struck with a sudden understanding of why dreamwalkers kept their existence secret. As sudden as the rewards had been, Cedric had worked hard for this peace. He’d really fought to understand himself, to confront his problems. Dreamwalkers like him risked their lives to help people, but from an outside perspective it was as though a magic wand had waved away all the trauma. To give someone else this peace - a normal person, without dreamwalker powers - was not a bad thing, but they would not have gone through the process like Cedric had. No matter how easily Cedric’s inner demons had fallen once confronted, he had still taken the time to understand them before he faced them.

…if someone received this peace without understanding their demons, or worse, without even facing them… they would surely just dig their way right back to rock bottom. But you couldn’t just deny people this peace, or expect them to climb out of the depths of trauma on their own.

But if they didn’t know the truth, if they saw the peace as naught but a sudden burst of clarity - they wouldn’t rely on it. They would keep trying to solve their problems the hard way, pursuing therapy and trying to sort through their own heads.

That’s what it meant to be a dreamwalker - not solving other people’s problems, but giving them what they need to solve those problems themselves.