Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "Another Time, Another Space" by Ayreon.

No matter how many times he is defeated, no matter who else draws his eye... you will stay.

Rainbow of Nowhere

She knows they are more than just dreams. They are the echoes of another world, a different time when different choices were made. The first month's dreams were simple predictions of their early adventures, a child fighting brightly colored caricatures of nightmares. There is fear, but no more than in any other danger. It's only a game, after all.

Then the dreams change. For once, the dream is of someone else's life, and Danny is walking through a mansion at night. She wakes that morning, remembers Danny's offhand comment about a college reunion, and runs to the bathroom to puke. He never would tell her the whole story.

Most of the dreams are through her eyes, if not quite the same "her", but those were fuzzy and strange, odd details popping out and crucial facts forgotten until they were realized again in the waking world. They were simply dreamlike, and why she did not realize they were more than dreams until much later.

She had suspected earlier, when Paulina really had turned up overshadowed, but the turning point is the night after Circus Gothica left town. In her dream, the ringmaster had been a madman with a magic wand, using the gem to bind a ghost's loyalty to him. He'd caught Danny. She'd been terrified when she woke up, and just on the off chance that it might not have just been a dream – they'd been so close before, but she didn't want to think about that because going through the same events twice she noticed a lot of details she'd glossed over in her passion and righteous fury, that time around – just because of that, she'd "accidentally" unplugged the TV in Danny's house, knowing his parents would check the power cord last, if they ever did. When Danny came over to watch a movie, she made sure the DVD was already set to play and didn't switch it back until he left.

Danny's behavior didn't change in the least, and Freakshow left town after a few days leaving a lot of devastated jewelry store owners behind him. Freakshow had been a human criminal, and he could have hurt Danny, so she just hadn't let Danny know. It wasn't like it mattered, since he was already gone.

Then she dreamed of a big top, a tightrope and a crazed young man in a black cloak. She dreamed of falling (and Sam would have an aversion to heights for the rest of her life) and of Danny breaking the control, and when she wakes up, she realizes: That happened. Not here, but it happened, and it could have happened here.

NO.

She would not let it happen. The dreams showed her, every night. There were some enemies she could not fight, because she was only human and that monster of monsters the ghosts called a king could extinguish her with a look and she knew it, but the other ghosts were easy enough to deal with if one knew the trick, and she had the mother of all cheat codes. Ember, Desiree, Spectra (she hurt Danny and I will make her suffer), Skulker, Walker, even that idiot Box Ghost – she could learn to use the Fenton weapons properly and zap the hell out of them as many times as it took.

She could ask a friend of a friend to track down Freakshow the next time he blew into town and ask him a few questions. Nothing specific, nothing anyone could use to track her, and Danny through her. Just a little exchange of information, where to buy supplies for rituals and such, and a pointed warning. She walks away with a brand-new ritual knife, its twin staining the forest floor as he tries to pull it out one-handed.

As for those idiots, the Guys in White? She'd just buy them out before Vlad could, when they'd be desperate enough to take her much lower bid, and then they wouldn't be desperate enough to take his bet. The fine print on their new contract helped a lot. Blood was just so useful. There were so many wonderful rituals she could do with enough of it on hand, but sometimes all it took was a drop. Hospitals were so useful.

Oh, and Valerie (that crazy bitch). Paulina (the stupid bitch) hadn't been a real threat, not really. As long as Danny was her friend, he couldn't get too close to the cheerleader without risking her disappointment, and Danny hated disappointing people. But Valerie? She'd been everything that other Danny had wanted – strong, smart, pretty (ugh, boys and their hormones), and above all, she'd wanted to be normal just as badly as he had.

(Silly boy. He was a hero, and heroes weren't normal.)

Well, she'd taken care of that. Valerie might have those weapons Vlad had given her before Sam had realized how useful her dreams were, but she didn't know Danny, not like Sam did. It was easy, so easy she had to laugh, to convince Danny that Valerie knew his secret and she was just trying to make him let his guard down so she could put a knife in his ribs, or whatever it took to kill him permanently. Oh, he still hoped she could be "redeemed", but there was nothing to save her from! That was the best part!

Sam smiles, putting on her new shirt, the cleavage cut just low enough that he'd be too distracted to listen, but not so much that she couldn't get his attention if she wanted it. Too easy.

Oh, there were a few little blips, but nothing she couldn't deal with. A few blank spots in her memory (and for some stupid reason, a shirt that smelled like Nasty Sauce) were a small price to pay for the power to keep Danny's enemies under her thumb.

Danny calls Valerie by her first name, but her father isn't around. There's just her, Danny and the bitch. (Outside of gaming and bribing him to deal with Technus, she hadn't seen the technogeek in months. Danny didn't need him anyway, he didn't need anyone else.) And he turned back, daring her to shoot, to get it over with already (Why? Why would he do that?), and she froze, and she just had to take the shot.

Sam says she's sorry, that she had no idea the Fenton Ecto-Annihilator could do that kind of damage to a human, and it's true. The prototype had been mostly harmless, but its rays had reacted badly with the ecto-signature of another Fenton weapon during testing, and she'd wondered what it could do to one of Vlad's weapons. Well, now they knew. (And the bitch wouldn't be trying to hurt Danny or take him away ever again, once she finished transferring those funds to the trauma doctor's account. It would just be a power cord "accidentally" unplugged. No big deal.)

Eventually, Sam has gathered enough loyal hunters to set them on Vlad – Plasmius, of course, but all she needs is for him to be injured. All she needs is a tiny ectoplasm sample to set the spell and bind his mind, his will, his very soul to follow her commands until the world ends, and the last great threat to Danny's life is gone.

She grins. Finally, she has won.

And the dreams? Well, it might be interesting to see if she could reach the alternate self who'd sent them. Sam likes the idea of having a financial empire to go with her magical empire, and maybe then she can get started on a physical one, even multi-dimensional. Danny doesn't like the idea, of course. He's such a sweet boy, still, but he'll come around.

All she ever needs is one drop.

A/N: And this came out of nowhere. Please read and review, especially where you think I might have made accidental rather than deliberate slips of Sam's character.