elite_muses: APPLICATION: Describe a dream you had as a child t

Dreams often take images from the subconscious mind, which is why they’re so often left up to interpretation. Mine are no different, except for the fact that my own memory has been so thoroughly compromised through the machinations of circumstance and the ever vigilant servants of the Centre.

I dream of many things...I always have. The things they’ve made me do, the things I can’t remember...like my parents.

I suppose that’s the one dream that haunted me the longest, and in some ways still does. In the dream, I’m surrounded by clocks, and in the distance I can see a house. I’m on the front lawn...at least, me when I was younger, about four or five years old, not long before the Centre took me, I’m guessing.

I also see my mother...she’s hanging wash on the line outside, her back to me. I can hear her voice calling my name as my child self stares at me...trying to tell me *something* with his eyes...but even when I call out to my mother, she doesn’t turn around. I never see her face in the dreams. I didn’t then...and I don’t now.

What’s disturbing is that now? I *have* seen her. I have a photograph of my mother, and I’ve seen her in person...I was so close to meeting her, to holding her...

Yet in my dreams, I still can’t see her face. I can’t dream of my younger self running into her arms, of her turning around to smile...perhaps it’s because I don’t have those memories anymore, nothing for my mind to manifest. Sure, the imagination can do wonders...but mine was pretty severely restricted while I was growing up.

Maybe that’s why I can’t see her face, though...I need that memory. Going to her, putting my arms around her...maybe it’s one of those dreams that don’t come in sleep. You have to make it happen before you can ever even see it.

Well...just like nothing gold can stay, neither can the darkness. And when this waking nightmare that is the Centre is finally over, you can bet your life that I’ll find my family...my father, myself...and my mother.

And together...we’ll make the dream come true.

Muse: Jarod
Fandom: The Pretender
Words: 379

elite_muses: If you could change one thing in history, what wou

Are you speaking in the literal sense? Because I’ve done just that...to a certain degree. Granted, at the time I executed them, such things were recent, but I have lived through a lot of historical moments. I became Lee Harvey Oswald to learn whether or not he had an accomplice in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I became a member of the Apollo 13 mission in order to figure out a way for them to safely return to earth.

I’ve been through a lot of history in my life...not all of it good. You want to know what I would change?

That’s an easy answer...nothing. Because I couldn’t change it the second time around.

Wishing to change the past is an exercise in futility...and *not* wishing to do just that is equally useless. It’s a part of human nature, wanting to correct the mistakes of the past...to right the wrongs that are so painfully obvious in hindsight.

The fact is, we live in the present...and in the present, there is no way to correct the mistakes we make. We’re human...it’s both a terrible and beautiful thing.

Now, in regards to the question, if you’re asking me what I would change about my *own* past if I could? I might change my parents past instead...keep them safe from the Centre somehow so that the Centre never found me...so that we could all be a family. I might let myself die rather than do any of the things the Centre wanted me to do, even as a child.

Other than that? I couldn’t change a thing, even if I wanted to.

You have to *have* a past in order to change it.

Muse: Jarod
Fandom: The Pretender
Words: 289