Have you ever had a dream...

That made you honestly depressed once you realised it was only a dream? And not for one of the usual reasons - living loved ones, missed chances taken, you’re a superhero - but for something on a much larger scale?

Say for instance, you had a dream that lead to near-free energy for all, universal healthcare and education (there was no distinction in living quality to mark the Third World anymore), grand societal change for equality and to redress past wrongs, but without committing great new ones. Increased lifespan, revived space program, colonies on two other celestial bodies, mining mostly offworld, environment recovering and being helped along in the process, et cetera et cetera.

Say also that in this dream, you were instrumental in these changes, and you lived forty years in said dream - in dream terms of course, so broad strokes and feelings - and then, going to sleep expecting to wake up to said near-utopian future, you instead woke up in 2013, in your old body.

You are depressed not only because as far as you can see there is next-to-no chance you will get to see such a world in your lifespan, but also the knowledge that barring magic, you accomplished more in that world than you ever will in this.

Now… what do you do? How do you propose to ever measure up to - yourself? How do you manage to deal with all the ways the real world falls short of the dream one, when it feels like you spent more time in the dream world than you have years in this one?

Make it a fic war prompt if you want. – RecklessPrudence

(#00367 - A002)

This was not her beautiful house. There was no sign of her beautiful wife. It was a dingy, dripping, cockroach-infested cupboard that barely qualified as a flat because there was room for a bed in it.

And she was back in the wrong meat-suit again.

FUCK!

She got out her dream diary and wrote down every detail of the life she’d lived. A different reality. A world she’d made out of wishes. And yet, in the dream, she had seen how it had been done.

It was worth a try.

She started with the name of the shrink who had saved her other life. Doctor Weisenbaum.

And, amazingly, she did it again. No judging. None of the usual psychologist shitbaggery. Just a patient ear and potentially helpful tactics to try.

And she got HRT after the first month!

Next on her list of names was Blaize. She was harder to find and a nerve-wracking encounter in a lesbian bar and fretting that her falsies were slipping. Blaize was literally the girl of her dreams, and just as politically savvy as she remembered.

Of course, reality was slower than the dream. It took a year for her breasts to grow in and three for her hair to grow out. It took a painful decade for her to be comfortable with her new self.

Periodically shattered by the inconsiderate cat-calls of men who were offended by her breathing, of course.

Gathering like minds was easier in the dream. As was forming a political party with just enough juice to keep going until the next election.

It was hard, and trouble, and exhausting. She and Blaize fought a lot more than they had in the dream. It never escalated to violence. There was crying and hugs and learning how to be better people to each other. There was money and family and pets and bills and transportation and the smell in the office at home…

A home that was a dinky little two-bedroom in the ‘burbs with a half-butt kitchen, not the mansion of her dream.

She kept a transcript of her dream. Blaize referred to it as her 'cheat sheet’ and kept a score of how accurate it was. Details like silverfish in the filing cabinets were not the stuff dreams were made of, and therefore didn’t count. Big events like the rapist in the summer night did.

They did not tell the police about the cheat sheet. They said they expected a certain level of intolerance for living together as they did.

It made the news, of course.

And that was the key turning point for the Queer party. Support upswelled. Donations surged in. Even from Allies-in-name-only. Votes swarmed in.

The tears in her eyes as Blaize took her oath of office were a fact of her dream, too. The first black lesbian President of the United States.

They had a long way to go, yet. Forty more years of hard work, uphill battles against bigots, congress, raging republicans, and men whose masculinity was so threatened that the merest hint of her presence could shatter their confidence.

Naturally, she sexed up her wardrobe just to spite them.

There was a long road ahead. They both knew it. And every second was going to be worth it.

Even if she woke up in the wrong meat-suit again and had to start over.

Every second with Blaize was worth the pain.

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