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Logan couldn’t create things out of thin air.
It just… didn’t work. Dreaming or awake, he was never able to start from nothing, to just pull from his imagination the way that Mateo and Izzie and Cooper could. They always made it look so easy to dream-craft, making animals and vehicles and giant pencils, for some reason. Cooper struggled with it at first, but eventually he got it, and Logan was left behind in the dust.
The others told him about what happened in the forge once they met up in the waking world. Logan listened, and thought to himself that it was good he’d bailed when he did. Even if he’d made it as far as the final test, he didn’t think he would’ve been able to make himself an hourglass the way they had. Then he might have forgotten about the dream world entirely, and he definitely didn’t want that.
In the waking world, in between soccer practice and studying and planning for dream chasing, Logan tried to work on his creativity. He tried drawing, watching tutorials and sketching some objects in his room. They turned out alright, but when he tried to draw something without a reference, anything from his imagination, he turned up blank. His mind failed to conjure any images, even when he’d been looking at something just moments before.
It was… frustrating. Eventually he set it aside and went back to physical training, hoping that he could at least fight well even without dream-crafting.
When they all decided to give themselves dream avatars, all Logan could do was turn himself blue. Which was something, at least; something visible that he could see, and if he could see it, he could imagine it.
That… gave him an idea.
Of course, that got put on the backburner as they began the hunt for the sandman, and Logan started making mistake after mistake, slowly feeling more distant from the team. They never blamed him more than necessary, always accepted his simple mistakes, but it began to weigh on him that he wasn't really contributing.
In the waking world, Mateo drafted plans for Sheep Week, and Logan helped him edit them. They mapped out strategies for each possible event, and did their best to keep track of the other teams that were forming. Mateo would suggest strategies, throwing out idea after idea, and Logan would sort through them and sometimes modify them, taking ideas from multiple different plans on several occasions. They worked well together, now that they weren’t fighting anymore. Logan hoped he could keep it that way.
When Logan closed his eyes and tried to imagine something, all he saw was darkness. He had the words, the description of what he was trying to imagine; he had sounds, sometimes, and he had memories to call on. But the visuals just weren’t there, and he got the feeling that this wasn't true of everyone.
Lance approached him in the dream version of the school, and the offer was too good to pass up. Logan couldn’t dream-craft, could barely fight, and kept screwing things up; it was time to do something right, for a change.
So he took the hourglass and slipped into the dream world. He met Lance in the cyber realm, right where they first met, and things took a turn for the worst. Logan really should have seen this coming, but he had a bad habit of taking people at their word, of assuming they had good intentions. That had bit him in the ass before, and as he was dragged to the Shadow Keep, it had come around to bite him in the ass again.
Logan had nothing when he was pitted against the one Grimspawn who had been somewhat nice to him. Nothing but himself, and his practically non-existent dream-crafting skills. He tried to fight, but Sneak was wiping the floor with him, throwing him across the arena at every turn.
Logan glared at him, frustrated, boiling with rage at the sheer injustice of the situation. His mind jumped back to the one bit of dream-crafting he’d been able to do, and he thought surely he could make himself stronger, somehow. He had himself, and maybe he couldn’t make anything out of thin air- or out of dream sand, whatever- but he could change himself.
Small and blue wasn't exactly what he was going for, but he was stronger and faster, and that put him on a level playing field with Sneak. He won, though it didn’t really matter in the end; he wasn't going to help the Nightmare King in the slightest, no matter the benefit to himself.
And besides, he might just have been starting to get the hang of this dream-crafting thing.
The Grimspawn locked Logan in a cell, but he had done the transformation once and could do it again. He shrunk and squeezed out of the bars, and he and Sneak made a run for it. It became easy to slip back and forth into his smaller form, allowing him to hide easily from the Grimspawn and Night Terrors roaming the keep. He did manage to grab the hourglass, successfully undoing that mistake, and soon reached the exit.
Logan kept his hold on the hourglass, and his escape soon turned into a rescue mission for the rest of the dream-chasers. Like always, they opted to run, and Logan ended up in Cooper’s car. They got stuck, and Logan could clearly see the improvements they could make to get exactly what they needed. Then they were sitting in a monster truck, and by the time Logan had fully processed that they were well on their way to the plane.
Logan scrambled up the steps to safety, but his mind was far away from their escape. He could dream-craft, he realized; just not the same way that the others could. He couldn’t make things out of thin air or pull directly from his imagination, but he could change what was already there. He could change himself, his surroundings, and the others’ creations.
Finally, Logan thought, he could be useful.
…not if he lost the hourglass, though.
He dived after it, as did Mateo and Sneak, and somehow they got away. The battle was over, and Logan was finally awake after way too long spent dreaming. He woke up with the hourglass still clutched in his hand, and without any nightmares that could have followed him through.
Launching himself out of bed, Logan dug through his desk until he found his old still-life drawings that he’d ultimately abandoned. Grabbing a pencil, he took a drawing of a pencil jar and started adding to it, the ideas finally coming to him once he had a base to start from.
Maybe, he thought quietly, they wouldn’t need the Sandman to fix the hourglass after all.