Hey! It actually hasn't been that long since I last posted! GO ME!! LOL. Actually, I should be posting more frequently now that I have someone on my behind about getting done. I actually have fanfiction homework. Weird, huh?

Anyways, we are back to Sam's POV. This chapter ended up ALOT longer than I meant for it to be. Therefore, I had to split it into two parts. This is part 1. In a couple of days, I will post part 2. And we are now on the downward slope of the story. Since there are twenty chapters to the story, we are now over halfway. Ok, on with the show.

Disclaimer: I. Dont. Own. Nuff said.

This chapter is dedicated to cursedgirl for being my 100TH REVIEWER!! WOOT!!

Chapter 11

When he was growing up, Sam always felt invisible. Between the legend that is John Winchester and hot-shot, ladies' man, favorite son Dean, Sam felt like he was overlooked as part of the Winchesters. The quieter, shyer, more intellectual son felt like he never exactly fit in with the rest of his family. Of course, it didn't help that Sam had never wanted to be part of the hunting lifestyle.

But no matter how invisible he felt growing up, it paled in comparison to how he felt now. He was a freakin' ghost! As Sam watched, unseen, the confrontation in the lobby between his dad and Angel, the past few days came back to him.

The return to consciousness was vastly different than the last time. Instead of struggling to wake up, Sam bolted awake as if coming back from a nightmare or vision. Oddly enough, he awoke to find himself standing in an empty lobby of what looked like one of those hotels with a retro theme that was so popular. Towards the back and the left of the large area was the front desk accompanied by an office behind it. In the center of the lobby, there was a circular couch with a few chairs and sofas off to the side. In the back was a very large cabinet with opaque windows, so that no one could see what was inside.

He had finished his perusal of the room and had yet to see a single person that could help him figure out what was going on. He was still standing in the doorway, so he took a few steps forward and began to head to the desk, hoping to find one of the bells to summon someone in the hotel. Suddenly, he heard footsteps descending from the floor above. To his surprise, one of the guys from the alley—the one he called Flame-Thrower Guy— was the owner of the foot making the footsteps. He made his way completely down the stairs and continued on to the back office without sparing one glance for Sam. In fact, the black man seemed completely ignorant of Sam's presence at all. As this was rather unusual behavior for someone on a hotel's staff (of which he surely was due to his familiarity with the employee-only sections), Sam became a little miffed. What if he had been a paying customer? Resolved to give the man a piece of his mind and briefly forgetting why and how he was here in the first place, he stormed up to the counter, his feet making no noise apparently due to some plush carpet—he would have been alarmed to know that there was no carpet at all— and slammed his hand on the bell.

Or he tried to. Only, he had slight problem in the form of his hand kept going through the bell. Ignoring the obvious and in denial, both obvious Winchester traits, Sam snatched his hand back, away from whatever the thing was that his hand slid right through. Finally, the black guy reemerged from the office and made his way over to the desk where Sam was standing. He forgot about the bell and proceeded to rant at the idiotic hotel employee.

"Finally! Do you know how long I have been here?" Sam raged at the man, growing angrier at his refusal to look at him. "So you still refuse to acknowledge me? Or are you waiting for me to vanish? I was standing in plain sight when you brought your sorry ass down those stairs and you acted as though I didn't even exist! And now, what? You can't look me in the eye? Where is your superior? I wanna talk to them." Sam knew he was probably over-reacting a touch, but with all that had happened recently, he needed to take the stress out on someone, and this guy was available.

At this point, the black man's face finally raised and looked at Sam. A broad smile grew on his face as he looked at Sam. Sam was taken aback at the odd look, especially in light of the minute long rant he just poured on the guy. For a moment, he half-expected someone, maybe even Dean, to jump out and tell him that he's "on Candid Camera." Then he realized that the man wasn't looking at him. He was looking behind him. Actually it was as if he was looking through him, but Sam pushed that thought away. Sam turned around and saw, coming toward him, a small, brown-and curly-haired young woman.

"Thank goodness," Sam sighed. "Look, Miss, will you please help me get through to this numbskull here?" Sam put on his best puppy-dog look. The girl continued walking towards him. Finally, some help he thought as she opened her mouth to answer him.

"Hey honey. Whatcha doin'?" her accented voice rang out in the lobby.

Huh? was all Sam could think. He opened his mouth to ask her what the hell she meant when the black guy (who he had almost been convinced was a deaf-mute) answered her.

"Just lookin' up some stuff on that last case," he replied to her question, looking down at the folder lying on the desk, which he had been staring at during Sam's rant.

The girl had, by now, made her way behind the desk and was embracing the black guy. "I know that the way it ended bothered you guys, but you did all you could," she soothed.

"I know," he sighed, sounding frustrated. "I just feel like we missed something."

Suddenly, denial was just a river in Egypt. The sudden awakening standing up, his hand going through the bell, the utter lack of response from both people in the room with him, not to mention the gut-wrenching pain from the encounter in the alley, pain that made him feel as if he was dying. Oh, god. What if he HAD died?

"HEY! HEY!" he yelled at the couple before him, beginning to panic. "PLEASE! TELL ME THAT YOU CAN HEAR ME!!"

But the couple did nothing. The black man was still staring at the file and the girl was holding him from behind, her chin resting on his shoulder.

Shock settled on the shaggy-haired young man. He couldn't be dead. He had too much left in his life to be dead: Dean, his Dad, the hunt for the demon that killed his Mom and Jess, even the people he hadn't seen since he left for college (like Pastor Jim, Bobby and Caleb). But what else could explain what was going on?

If he was dead, why was he still here? Why wasn't he with Jess and Mom? Had he somehow turned into the very thing that they hunted?

He didn't have any answers to any of these questions. The only thing he could do was hope that these people, the same people that had seen him…die, would be able to figure this out and….do whatever needs to be done.

And so Sam waits. He starts with the black guy and his girlfriend. He just follows them around trying to figure out how he got into this mess and how to get out of it. Time seemed to have no meaning to him, but later he figured it must have been around a week or so. He seemed to have lost time between the time he died and woke up a ghost.

During this week of watching and waiting, Sam was able to discern how many and what kind of people he was dealing with. There was Angel, the vampire with a soul that had once killed and destroyed with the glee of a two-year-old with a puppy. Sam had, of course, read about him but never once imagined that he would meet the mysterious being. Of course, he wasn't exactly meeting him, per se. Then there was Cordelia Chase, a beautiful brunette that had been gifted by "The Powers That Be," whoever they are, with visions. She intrigued him because she had visions while awake, instead of the frightening nightmares he had. The couple he had seen before was Fred Burkle and Charles Gunn, a former librarian and former gangster, respectively. There was an Englishman named Wesley Wyndom-Pryce, who was once a Watcher, something else he had read about but never expected to come into contact with. Finally there was Lorne, a club-owner who happened to be a demon, a corporeal one at that. Sam was shocked to see a demon amongst humans, but apparently this particular demon was on their side.

About a week after he awoke to find himself dead, the monotony that had become his "life" was broken, quite unexpectedly one day. The Angel Investigations team, as he learned they were called, was gathered together discussing a case they were employed in. Sam's thoughts had turned to Dean more often than usual, which was still a lot. He had been having a feeling the past day or so, a feeling that something was about to change, a feeling that had grown in intensity the past few hours. So with Dean on his mind and a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, Sam began to hum. It wasn't a conscious decision or thought, but Dean would do so when he was nervous and Sam unconsciously copied his older brother's bad habit, down to the Metallica he was humming.

Suddenly, Lorne bent over in pain, gripping his head and moaning. All sounds stopped from alive and dead people alike. Just as Cordelia was going to rush over to help to demon, Lorne stopped suddenly and sat up, no longer in pain.

"What the hell was that?" Gunn asked.

"I don't know," Lorne answered. "It was like when I read someone when they are singing, only much more intense and painful, which it has never been before."

"But none of us were singing," Fred insisted, confusedly.

"What about humming?" Lorne asked, rubbing his temple to rid himself of the headache gathering at the pressure points.

Everyone in the room answered in the negative. At least, everyone that was visible. Sam had frozen in shock at the question. In his entire week there, he had never known about this ability of Lorne's and would never have thought that his humming would have been heard. Apparently, he was incorrect in this regard.

While he hated to cause someone else pain, at least a good someone else, this half-alive, half-dead state was starting to drive him crazy. No wonder those who can't crossover end up becoming violent and crazy. He felt halfway there. If this was his chance to change this existence, even if it meant ending it, then he was going to take it.

He began to hum Metallica's "King Nothing," a tribute to the older brother he would leave behind. The demon doubled over again, in pain.

The AI team watched in confusion as their friend once again doubled over in pain. For Lorne it was a completely foreign pain. He had been listening to people sing and reading them for years and never had a pain like this. Pictures and flashes of memories passed through his mind in blinding speed. He had never seen the brief flashes of faces before. Due to the speed at which the memories flew, only a few words and phrases were understandable to the demon.

"Dean!" …. "…have the prize." …… "Damien…"... "….fire demon…" ….. "Captain Helluva Big Brother."….

A wealth of emotions accompanied the flashes from fierce love to fear to deep, deep rage. The pictures were just as varied. Some were of two young boys in a variety of situations; others were straight from a horror movie with monstrous beings. The pain worsened and worsened.

The rest of the private eye team watched, unknowing to the things passing through their friend's mind. The confusion permeated the room as they all realized that not a one of them had been making any kind of musical noise to set off their friend.

All of a sudden, Lorne gave a pain-filled gasp and passed out, his face splat down onto the table. Angel, who had been quite quiet, leapt forward. He grabbed the back of Lorne's luridly purple suit jacket and pulled the unconscious demon off of the table, keeping him balanced in the chair.

"He's fine, just unconscious," Angel announced, after checking Lorne out. He hefted the green demon into a fireman's carry and announced, "I'm gonna take him upstairs into one of the rooms, so we can figure out what the hell happened."

Angel deposited the demon onto the bed and turned to Wesley. Sam had followed the group upstairs and was taking in the entire situation. At the unasked question, Wesley replied, "I don't know, Angel. We need to…"

The Englishman was interrupted by a groan from the bed. Everyone whirled around to see Lorne clenching his eyes shut, pain etched into every line on his face. "Next time," he said, his voice gravelly with pain, "Make sure the bus kills me, not just runs me over."

Everyone chuckled at the usual humor coming from the club-owner. He couldn't be too bad off if he was still making jokes.

"What happened, Lorne?" Wesley asked, breaking the momentarily lightened mood.

"I'm not sure. One minute I was talking to you guys and the next I am getting a crash course in someone's life. I got everything from this person- emotions, visual, some auditory. Who was doing the musical mojo?" Lorne asked, looking around the room at the group of people.

"None of us were doing anything musical, Lorne," Cordelia added, sounding confused.

"That's not possible," Lorne protested. "My abilities do not work unless someone is singing or humming."

"But if none of us were doing it," Fred started.

"Then who was?" Gunn finished.

"Are we sure there was no one else in the room?" Wesley asked, the ever logical.

"You mean like, an invisible person or something?" Fred queried.

"No," Angel answered tersely, "I would have known if there was someone else there.

"Someone alive, yes" Wesley drawled out, as if an idea had just struck him. "But what about dead?" The ex-watcher turned to the green being. "Lorne, can you get readings from ghosts?"

But Lorne was already shaking his head, having deduced what Wesley was going to say. "No, I can't pick up on dead people."

Silence descended after that; everyone was completely clueless on what had happened. Everyone, that is, except the one person nobody could see.

Sam was stricken when the implications of their discussion hit him. If Lorne heard his humming and Lorne couldn't hear dead people then….that meant he wasn't dead. It was as if he had been plunged in a ice-cold lake. This knowledge buoyed him. Somehow he hadn't died in that alleyway. Somehow he was still alive. Somehow, he was going to fix this and find his brother, vision be damned.

Lorne seemed to be recovered for the most part. While he hated to further injure or hurt the demon (and wasn't that an odd thought), he needed to get this figured out. Without thinking more, Sam began to hum once more, Led Zepplin this time.

Lorne clutched his head once more, the barrage of memories swarming his mind once more. When he was on the verge of passing out once more, Sam stopped his humming with an unheard frustrated sigh. He wasn't going to get anywhere if Lorne kept passing out.

Lorne clutched hard at the edge of the bed to keep himself from falling off.

"Did it happen again?" Fred asked, concerned for her friend.

"Yea, sweetie," Lorne answered, a grimace on his face. "Although, it wasn't as bad this time."

"Well," Cordelia said, "it didn't last as long."

Lorne was shaking his head slightly. "No, I mean the pain itself wasn't as bad."

"What? Like you're adapting to it?" Wesley inquired, curiosity evidently displayed on his face and in his voice.

"I guess," Lorne shrugged. He grimaced again. "Still leaves a hell of a headache."

Cordelia looked at him, concern filling her large brown eyes. "Why don't you get some rest, Lorne? We'll look into what could be happening."

"Ok, that sounds good," Lorne groaned as he lay back down. Cordelia started to usher everyone out of the room. Eventually, everyone left the pained demon alone, and Cordelia shut the light off before shutting the door.

"I'm worried about him," Fred whispered. Gunn wrapped his arm around her shoulders, trying to offer comfort to his distraught girlfriend.

Wesley looked at them, a look of envy slightly passing over his face. "I'm going to see if I can figure anything out," he muttered, not waiting for anyone else's approval or comments, before heading downstairs.

While Fred was ignorant of Wes's abrupt change of mood, Gunn noticed it and, more importantly, noticed the reason for it. Knowing he should probably steer clear of the man for now, Gunn decided he needed to get out of there, for a little while. "Since research isn't my big thing," Gunn reasoned, "I think I'm gonna take a quick patrol."

"You okay?" Fred asked, worry tingeing her eyes.

"Yea, just don't feel like bein' cooped up with a bunch of old books," Gunn smiled.

"Well, I am gonna go help Wesley," Fred said. "I wanna do what I can to help Lorne."

"I'll contact some contacts to see if there is some big bad we don't know about yet that could be responsible for this," Angel murmured, heading out the front doors.

"I'll check with some of the local gangs, too, while I'm patrolin'," Gunn offered. He gave Fred a quick kiss before following his brooding boss out the door. Fred turned and followed the brooding Watcher, leaving Cordelia alone in the foyer.

Cordelia watched as the rest of the team splitting up into respective duties, feeling slightly useless. Now would be a good time for a vision. Waiting for a moment, the young woman sighed as the Powers apparently weren't listening. Worriedly, she headed back up the stairs, intending to check on and stay with Lorne.

To Be Continued...