Legal Disclaimer: Sadly I do not own the characters (Tom Lynch).
Rating: PG-13 for now, will differ as the story continues
Pairing: Always Spashley.
Feedback: Is appreciated. Good and bad.
Summary: I'm twenty four and I want to start dreaming again.
A/N: Well, a new one again. I'm obsessed I know! It's just that this story has been playing in my head for so long and I just had to give it a shot. Readers of Dream Deferred (and/or Split Screen Sadness) no worries, I will not neglect them. I'm actually gonna try a start writing their updates this weekend, so keep an eye on those thread. I don't know what the updating-pace will be for this story, it depends on a lot of things. I think I've been doing a pretty good job on DD prior to my vacation (I will purposely not mention SSS …), mostly because of the feedback I've been getting. I like to write this fics and I'll write them no matter what, but I cannot deny the influence of feedback. Anyway, that the summary says pretty much nothing ( I tend to do that a lot), so you just might as well read the intro to understand it Expect a whole lotta twists in this story …

Enjoy the read!

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"This is it. When you walk out that door, there's no way back."

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When I was six, I wanted to become an astronaut. Astronauts got to wear these cool suits while floating around the milky way. I was pretty sure that nothing beat being an astronaut and I was one hundred percent sure it was my calling. No cartoons or pop stars adorned the walls of my room. Only one faded poster of Neil Armstrong decorated the ceiling right above my bed. Making it the first image that crossed my eyes first thing in the morning, wanting nothing more. It was a present from my grandfather and it became my most precious possession. I was going to be an astronaut and Neil Armstrong (or the poster anyway) was going to guide through the whole process. So as I kept drawing astronaut after astronaut in the corners of my notebooks, I couldn't help but daydream my way to the fabulous future that was awaiting me.

I was six and I wanted to become an astronaut.

When I was twelve, I wanted to become a doctor. Six years had passed since my NASA-dream. Six years of maturity and knowledge that were gained and six years of naïve innocence that was slowly drifting from me. Instead, I choose to mirror myself with my mother. Paula Carlin, surgeon extraordinaire, one of the best in the entire state of Ohio. As my astronauts' delusions started to fade away, new and exciting reveries began to shine behind my closed eyelids once more. My mother made me dream passionately again. Made me strive to become the person, the doctor she already was. My admiration for her was never ending. My mother saved lives on a daily basis, how could I not be in awe of her? So every night I'd secretly watch her put on her trustworthy scrubs, readying herself to save helpless souls on her graveyard shift. Secretly, because I wasn't allowed to stay up that late. But they didn't know, that sleep only came after that routine I had created through the years. Doctors, were God's Angels on earth. And who wouldn't want to make part of that legion?

I was twelve and I wanted to become a surgeon.

When I was eighteen, I wanted to become a social worker. My dreams of saving lives shattered mercilessly as I saw my darling brother get shot before my eyes on prom night. Helplessly bleeding to death in the arms of his girlfriend as we waited for help. As we waited for the aid that would end the nightmare we suddenly were catapulted in. As we waited for him to be saved by those golden hands of those I once named Angels. They came, but to no avail. I watched powerlessly by the side as paramedics, nurses and doctors did their best to save him. To give him a second chance to the brilliant future he once was promised. Instead he was zipped up in a plain white bag. Shoving him into anonymity. Tarnishing his unique soul and turning him into another number, another statistic. My dream died the same I lost my brother.

Hard times awaited me after prom. Times in which I didn't saw the meaning in life anymore. After all, Clay saw the meaning in life, he believed in life. He trusted in it blindly and he got screwed in the harshest way possible. I almost hit rock bottom when I came across of a worn card my dad had silently handed me one day. Granting me a way to start living again. He was an excellent social worker himself, but none of his experience was helpful when he was faced with the most difficult and painful case he had ever worked one. He couldn't be a social worker, when all he needed to be was a father. He couldn't be either as he saw his only daughter stumbling lower and lower with each month that passed. That card saved my life. The phone number that was scribbled on it saved my life. The person behind that number saved my life. I once believed that doctors where the ones that saved lives, but through my own personal highs and lows I learned differently.

I was eighteen and I wanted to become a social worker.

I'm twenty four now and I work in a bank. I do not work in accounting or finance, nor do I work in insurances. I am the Jane Doe behind the counter, directing you further in phony kindness to aforementioned sections. Eighteen years have passed since I first started dreaming about my promising future and no top surgeon or monumental social worker came out of me. I am but the mere clerk that can be so easily replaced by some blonde bimbo named Candy. I think I stopped dreaming when I got stuck in the middle of my parents' divorce. Soundlessly ducking from the dirt that was being torn from one parent to the other. Desperately trying to not lose one parent in favor of the other, but ending up losing them both in some way or the other.

I don't think people would believe me when I say that I completely stopped dreaming altogether, even through my lonesome nights. I go to bed and sleep like any other person, but in the morning no subconscious images can be recalled. Nothing but a large black in hole in which I find myself every night. There's no excitement, no passion in my life, not even the will to just end it with the self-destruction I had started more than six years ago. I have no intent to end this life I've been given, no matter how much it leaves me impassive and indifferent. Maybe it's out of respect for Clay, for the fact that he did not have a choice over his fate. How he wanted to live his life so badly, when all I wanted was to end mine. Or maybe it's because deep down in me there's still some belief, some hope of something, anything waiting there to be discovered by me. Something that will shift my life completely.

I'm twenty four and I want to start dreaming again.