Guys - I've been on sick leave for six weeks because I had surgery. That has given me a lot of time to write. Now I'm going back to work next Monday, so I apologize in advance - I will be a lot busier, and there aren't going to be as frequent updates. :( I'm not going to abandon this fic, so no worries - just try to be patient.

Thanks to Frankannestein, Kagz419, and EmilyAnnMcGarrett-Winchester for the reviews! You are amazing and I love you.

Also super, mega thanks to the anonymous reviewer in the latest chapter! I was so happy to read your comment. I can't promise you a happy ending, but I'll do my best. :)

The sky was vast and blue.

Jackie lay on the bed on her side, in front of a large, opened window and she watched how the sky melted into the forest, the forest melted into the lake. Blue. Green. Blue. An occasional white cloud drifted across the sky and the water. The wind moved in the trees, the same gentle summer breeze that played on her face, tickled her skin.

It brought the scent of leaves and flowers, of things being reborn.

Nature was growing, changing, and maybe so was she? But for now, there was only this moment. No past. No future. No memories. No plans.

She breathed in and out, slow, weak. She was trapped inside of a body that was foreign and weird. She saw the hand that lay on the pillow near her face, but the fingers wouldn't move.

Maybe it wasn't her hand.

Maybe she didn't have hands at all.

Nor a body.

Her eyelids were so heavy, it was exhausting to keep them open. She wanted nothing more than to drift again, drift like the clouds on the lake, she wanted for the summer breeze to carry her back into the endless darkness.

And then there was a girl, a pale girl with black hair. She sat on a chair next to the bed and said something. Jackie could see the words as they fell from her lips as faint pastel-colored wisps of air.

They were so pretty, but they meant nothing to her. She didn't understand - she tried to, she knew it was important, but… But nothing.

The girl had sad, gray eyes and a gentle touch. When Jackie closed her eyes and drifted away, she felt the girl's hand on her cheek.

The forest turned from light to a darker shade of green.

The scent in the wind changed, the air got warm, then hot, then colder again. The woods began to lose their leaves, the stripe of forest between the sky and the lake turned orange and yellow and red.

And still, Jackie was drifting.

But sometimes she stayed awake for hours now, watching the swaying of a tree branch in front of the window. Watching the songbirds build a nest, then the young ones leaving it. Listening to the sounds of the world around her - the birds, the water and the wind and so many other wild and miraculous things she didn't yet understand.

The dark-haired girl was always there.

She wiped her face, cleaned her, and tucked her in. She brought water for her to drink, and other things too. Warm and spicy and sweet and wonderful things, that Jackie swallowed as the girl brought the cup to her lips.

The sad-eyed girl sat by her bed and talked. Sometimes she had a book on her lap, and she read it to Jackie. The words turned from wispy creatures of light into sounds, and Jackie stopped seeing them - but sometimes she understood a word here, another there. And as the days went past, as the air turned colder and the trees turned orange and red and yellow, Jackie could sit up against the pillows, and she remembered she had hands, and she had legs and she had a body.

And one day, when she opened her eyes, she remembered who the dark-haired girl was.

Her lips still wouldn't form the word, but it was suddenly crystal clear in her mind. Like sunlight after months of cloudy skies.

My sister. My sister. My sister.

Sam sat in a library, staring at the book, leaning his head in his hand.

He knew he was supposed to be studying - he had missed too many lessons and was falling catastrophically behind - but it was one of those days.

One of those days that everything reminded him of Jackie, when the pain was again fresh in his heart, a desperate ripping pain that tore him apart.

Just like it had been on the first days after her…

After her death.

He forced himself to form that thought. It still didn't come easily for him. He suspected it never would. It still didn't feel real - one minute she had been there, her hands in his hair, kissing his bloody face - and the next she'd been bleeding on the floor, and then–

Then she'd been gone.

He hadn't even got to bury her.

Sam shook his head, ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair to drive away the haunting thoughts, but it did no good. The searing pain in his heart wasn't going anywhere - it still felt like a black hole inside his ribcage, sucking out all that was good in him, all the light in the world.

Sometimes he just wanted to give up and let it suck the life out of him.

At least, if he was dead, he'd see her again. Right?

Jackie wouldn't want you to die. She'd want for you to live, to love, to be happy.

But that was insane. Sam made a desperate groan, buried his face in his hands.

It wasn't like he could stop loving her just because she was dead.

With a deep sigh, he stood up, slammed the book, and stuffed it into his messenger bag. He knew better than to try and study when his thoughts were all over the place. Maybe tomorrow, maybe after another sleepless night.

As if.

For the first time in his life, studying felt like a burden and not a joy. For the first time in his life, he had difficulties in finding the motivation to read the books, to write essays. Hell, he had a hard time even getting up from the bed in the mornings.

At this rate, he'd never graduate.

Why am I even here? This is pointless. I never should've come here in the first place.

But if not here, then where?

He had no place to go, no home to return to. After what Dad had done-

The image of Dad, a smoking gun in his steady hand, was burned in Sam's brain. He could never forget, he would never forgive. What home he had had, it had been destroyed in that one split second.

Sam had left that night. In his torn and bloody clothes, with nothing but a bag where he had stuffed his few belongings with trembling hands, he had left and he was never going back. Dean had tried to call him the first days, the first weeks - but Sam had never taken the calls and finally, he had stopped calling.

And Dad - well, he hadn't even tried.

The black hole in the place of Sam's heart ached like a missing limb, and he drew in a sharp breath as he walked out of the library, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He had barely gotten out of the front door when he heard hurrying footsteps behind him, and someone called his name.

"Hey, Sam!" a girl's voice - and Sam's heart made a desperate leap into his throat.

But when he turned to look, it wasn't Jackie.

Of course, it wasn't Jackie.

It would never be Jackie again, never, because she was-

Dead.

Bleeding on the cold, marble floor. Pieces of bone and brain drifting in the blood.

Sam's throat bobbed. The blond girl had caught up with him and smiled at him, clearly unaware of his inner torment.

"It's Sam, right?" she asked and started walking down the stairs by his side.

"Yeah, um-" for the life of him, Sam couldn't remember if he had ever seen this girl before.

"Jessica." she helped and flashed him a grin that would've lit up any room. "We have ethics together."

"Oh, right."

The ethics class - he had missed at least a third of the lectures and would fail it soon.

"So, you have the book?" asked the girl - Jessica, Sam reminded himself.

"Umm, yeah," he replied. "The Introduction to Moral Philosophy."

The book he'd tried and failed to read in the library just moments ago.

"Oh, great." Jessica smiled. "Because I was wondering-"

"You want to borrow it?" he asked.

"How did you guess?"

Sam shrugged. He stopped to dig the book out of his bag and handed it to the girl. "Call it a hunch."

Jessica took the book - the heavy, leather-covered volume, and smiled again. She seemed to do that a lot, and Sam wished he could return that smile, but the place where smiles were born was dead and barren inside of his chest.

"Actually I was going to ask if we could study it together." the girl - Jessica - said, still holding the book in her small, manicured hands.

She was a lot shorter than Sam, short and slender and curvy. And pretty, the blond locks of her hair fell around her round face. Her eyes were blue and full of life, laughter and something else, something that made Sam look into them a bit longer than would've been strictly necessary.

His cheeks heated, and he turned his eyes away. He felt horrible for noticing her, for noticing her looks and liking what he saw.

"Together?"

"Yeah." she laughed.

"Why?" Sam asked. He couldn't think of any reason why someone would want to spend time with him, not with the man he was nowadays. The gloomy, miserable shadow of a human being.

"Maybe I wanna know if you have dimples when you smile?"

"I…" Sam began but stopped mid-sentence.

He'd been going to say that he didn't smile - and how pathetic was that even if it was true?

"I just don't think it's a good idea." he managed, after a heartbeat or so.

"Come on - this stuff is hard and I could use some help."

There was something in Sam's throat, like a tight band around his windpipe, choking him and making it hard to speak.

He thought about Jackie. About the first time, they had met - when she'd ran straight at him, a book had fallen from his hands to her head and she'd lied her name to him, had stolen his heart with a single smile.

It wasn't even six months ago, and yet it was another lifetime.

And now there was another girl and another book, but he had no heart to give anymore.

"I'm sorry, I can't," he said, still not meeting her pretty eyes.

"But-"

"I said I can't!" he forced the words out of his mouth, forced himself to start walking. "Just… just keep the book, Jessica."

She didn't follow him.

But the next day she asked again.

And the day after that.

When she asked him the third time, Sam said yes.