Forbidden Dreams
A fan fiction by me of the oh-so-great LJ Smith
Disclaimer: I own nothing, with perhaps the exception of the plot of this particular story and any new characters that happen to make an appearance outside of my head. If I did, I wouldn't be looking for the rights up on E-bay. I am only borrowing these characters, and will hopefully return them relatively unharmed. Physically. Mentally is another story entirely.
Author's Note: This is my first fic. Please be kind… By the way, reviews are cherished and needed as much as I need lunch everyday. This is righting the wrong of Tom for all you Jenny/Julian worshipers.
*blah* stands for emphasis
_whatnot_ stands for thought
::I am a monkey in a monkey suit:: stands for telepathic communication or speech in dreams
(I'm a little teapot…) stands for a side note from me
Most of this applies unless I get lazy and just revert to italics and capital letters. Or just plain old proper grammar.
And now on with the story… Oh, and by the way, you have been warned, this might end up kind of strange…
Chapter One
Sighing, Jenny Thornton walked slowly away from her car. So much had happened to her, even if it was three years ago. Despite what she tried, she simply could not get the memory of those dawn-blue eyes out of her head. A part of her died with Julian, and as much as she loved Tom at the time, she was more than just sorry to see that Shadow Man go.
Trudging up the steps to her dorm room, lost in her own thoughts, she almost smacked right into Kris. Kris was her roommate, and they got along fairly well, and they were, despite the lacking closeness of her earlier tight-knit group of friends back home, pretty good friends.
"Whoa, watch it there, Jenny! Eyes are used for seeing while you're walking, not sleeping!" Kris said laughingly from behind her shoulder length curtain of dark blonde hair.
"Oops, sorry Kris… I'm a little caught up in my thoughts today. It's been a stressful day," Jenny murmured, still not completely with it.
"Well, ok, just remember to keep those eyes open, not closed. Besides, the gossip mills would have a fit if *you* fell asleep on the stairs and fell and hurt that pretty little head of yours," Kris replied, grinning at her in her lopsided way. "Well, later sunshine!"
Kris' choice of words sent a pang of loneliness and homesickness through her. Dee used to say that all the time…
Retreating quickly to her room, she flopped down on her bed and let her rundown self slip into a good, hard cry. She sobbed her broken heart out, unable to take it all in. Tom had done the unthinkable: he had slept with another girl, and then lied to Jenny about it, then, when Jenny finally weaseled the truth out of him, he had *raped* her. She would have never thought it possible of time to do that. Never, in all her years of knowing him, had he ever tried to push her limits. Ever. She cried for what had happened to her, she cried for her friends and family she had left behind, she cried for the people in the world not allowed to cry as she was, and she cried, and not just a little bit, for herself.
What seemed hours later, she rubbed her puffy eyes and rolled sluggishly off her bed to get a bottle of water from the small fridge in the slightly messy dorm room: neither of them had much time to clean due to their demanding schedules and part time jobs.
Opening the bottle of Dasani, she drank deeply and resignedly set about doing her load of business and management homework. Glancing at the clock, which read six thirty in the evening, she lugged her bag over to her desk and plugged in her palm pilot to upload all her class notes to her two month old Dell laptop. She sighed, and began to hack her way through her work.
Two hours into her tedium, she thought she heard Kris come back into the room, the customary angry thump of a two-inch heel against the door, kicking it closed.
"Hey Kris," she called out, not bothering to turn around. When Kris didn't answer, Jenny turned in her swivel chair to find an empty room. Slightly unnerved, she got up slowly and went to open the door. "Kris?" she called, poking her head into an empty hallway. "Kris, is that you?"
Feeling silly for talking to an empty corridor, she turned to get back to her work. Sitting back down into her plush swivel desk chair, she found a Post-it note on her computer screen. It was blank.
Looking at it strangely, for there was certainly no Post-it note on her computer screen before she left it, she peeled it off and held it to the light. Nothing. It felt strange, and oddly alien in her hands, but also vaguely familiar. So strangely familiar…
A memory stirred, stirred from the depths of her mind. She had tried to hide it, smother it with work and new things. She felt a phantom weight in her hands, the allure of a slick white box and a tingle of uncertainty.
*No!* she shouted at herself, no! It was too long ago… There was too much pain, too many choices. I don't want to deal with it all again… she thought fiercely to herself. The crushing weight of an upturned memory sent her into the sanctuary of tears for the second time that night, but these were bitter, bitter and painful. They offered no solace and certainly no reprieve from the crushing pressure constricting her heart.
"Why could I have never been normal…? Why couldn't I have never met any of them? No friends makes for fewer choices, and makes my life less of a hell…" she whispered to herself, ignoring her deeply buried conscience's voice telling her she was being outrageously selfish. Practically drowning in self-pity, she didn't hear the gentle, subtle slice of a window opening, and the almost imperceptible pad of leather boots on cheap dorm-room carpeting.
Unable to let go of the blank Post-it note, she fell onto her bed, facing the wall in a very child-like and defeated position, curled up into a ball, trying to hide from herself. She buried her face in her pillow and sobbed.
She was once told that a good cry could make a difference. She had been having good cries for the past two and a half months, and more often then not, more than once a day, and none of them had helped. At all.
After no more tears would come, she lay there, with her face deep in the rather damp pillow case, wracked by a depression that seemed to clutch at her like angry hands, waiting to rip into her flesh and savor her soul like a glass of fine, expensive wine. Wanting it to take as long as possible to finish it, letting each drop stay as long as possible on the tongue, the thick, heady alcohol heading straight into the blood, affecting the senses within moments.
Face blanketed in the darkness of the pillowcase, she failed to see a quiet stranger kneel by her bedside, pain and such a great loss etched across his every feature. The stranger stretched out a hand, resting barely above her shoulder, but not touching her, never touching.
Shoulders giving a derisive shudder, Jenny turned her face from the lavender-clad pillow to face the door, and no stranger. She never even knew he was there.
Slipping quietly back out the window, the stranger allowed himself an angry sigh, his previous look of abandonment and pain wiped away. Cold fury had taken its place. Damn his ancestors! How *dare* they carve him back in? How dare they inflict this punishment upon him, especially when he had been adhering to his expectations? They had always believed that he would cause trouble, and so he had. Up until the incidents in Joyland Park, he had been the perfect Shadow Man: ruthless, terrifying, and heartbreakingly beautiful, of course with the exception of his losses. *Those* had not been taken very lightly. But at the Park, showing *pity* on one of the pawns in their never-ending game, that sent them over the edge. Love. They could deal with his silly infatuation, insisting that it was merely a passing thing, that it was lust, and it meant *nothing.* Julian knew better.
He was just a shadow of his previous self. He smiled cruelly at the irony of it, a shadow of a Shadow. He could do anything he could before, except. There was always an exception for him, whether it hinder or help him. He could not touch her. His Jenny. He could not touch the one thing that mattered the most to him, gave him the strength to fight against the bonds holding him inside Nifleheim, the embodiment of the ice rune Isa. It was sure to drive him mad soon, unable to touch her, her golden hair, her glowing skin, her lips like rose petals encased in the warmth of her flesh. Knowing that someday, maybe, with some infinitesimal chance, he might be able to break the bonds holding him in this state of eternal hell, his rune stave might one day be his own.
Unable to sleep, a one Jenny Thornton groaned angrily, trying to find some position that might aid in her struggle for the slight release of sleep.
"Alright! You win! I WON'T go to sleep…" she muttered angrily and no one in particular. Sitting up, she slowly dropped her feet to the rather chilly cheaply carpeted floor, and groped for her slippers. Sliding them on, she slowly walked the five or so feet from her bed to her desk and booted up her laptop, and decided to write something depressing. Or read something depressing. Hell, maybe I should just sit here and stare at the screen, maybe type in a few million J's and wait for a snake to come at me in the form of a computer cord. Laughing bitterly at her own rather twisted humor, she finished up her paper for World Mythology, due in another two weeks, her astrology charts and diagrams, also due on a later date, then gazed out the window.
The sun was hiding behind the big-city haze, rather nasty looking clouds, and her own tears. Unable to deal with crying again, she glanced at the clock. Five thirty in the morning. I'd have to wake up soon anyways… she thought rather dryly. Grabbing a change of clothes and her hair stuff, she trudged over to the showers, annoyed that they had not cleaned them out from the night before, with hair clots in the drains and soap scum riming the rather disgusting peach-and-apricot tiled walls.
Turning on the water, and letting it warm, she stripped off her rumpled pajamas, and stepped into the for once steaming water. Maybe I should shower at ungodly times more often… more hot water for me, she thought, somewhat pleased by this small personal victory.
Letting the hot water soak through her, she tried to figure out why she was so depressed. Her first answer would be Julian, but that didn't make any sense at all. Julian had died, excuse the phrase, was *cut out* over three years ago, why start letting it eat at her now? She had it all under control before, accepting that Julian was gone, accepting that she really did love him, and, most of all, that she couldn't dream him into a place of warmth and light if she wasn't sure what either of those were anymore. Her life had been thrown into a veritable whirlpool of confusion, what with college and leaving home and her younger brother Joey's car accident. He had been biking home around four in the afternoon when a drunk driver had sent him flying into a ditch. He didn't make it.
Just thinking about her little fuzz-ball of a younger brother brought hot tears to her eyes, but she refused to let them spill. I have cried enough, she reprimanded herself harshly. The world needs no more tears.
Shutting off the water and toweling herself dry, she changed into her clothes as a wave of early risers began to trickle into the bathroom. Her navy tank top still clung damply to her skin and her faded blue jeans hung loosely on her lean hips.
Walking slowly back down the hall to her room, she opened the door to grab her purse and bag. As soon as she stepped inside, she felt someone watching her. She felt eyes on her as she hadn't in three years. Whirling, heart pounding painfully in her chest, she stared wildly about her room, looking for the source of the heated intensity of the gaze resting on her.
Seeing no one, she slowly backed towards the door, unsure of what exactly to think of her situation. She moved her hand behind her, groping blindly for the doorknob digging painfully into her back.
Opening the door slowly, she quickly darted into the hall, slamming the door in her haste. Back to the door, she slid down slowly, hands clutching vainly at her temples.
Ohmigod… he's back…
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Why do I always screw things up? Julian reprimanded himself harshly. I come here, trying to make amends, despite the rather out-standing problem of her not being able to see me, and I end up fucking it all up. I am such an idiot! I should've just left her alone. She was happy enough without me going and freaking her out all over again.
Ha. Don't kid yourself, Julian, you saw her the other night, a tiny, malicious voice in the back of his mind murmured to him. She was in pieces. And you know why? Because you left her all alone. Tommy boy had raped her after the Games, after cheating on her of course, she needs you! She needs you, not the other way around!
Great… I'm talking to myself. I must really be going crazy. This is hell. The elders must be loving it! I'm sitting here having a nice, long conversation with my inner egotist over the predicament I've thrown myself into, not to mention Jenny, and they're probably splitting themselves over it! At least somebody's amused here… I certainly am not…
After a few long shaky breaths, Jenny got slowly to her feet. Steadying herself with another long breath, she stood up straight, calm and proud, and walked to her class, not letting anyone know that she was anything but calm and proud underneath her outer façade.
She reached the lecture hall just in time, and quickly took a seat in the back of the room, not wanting to draw attention to herself.
She booted up her laptop and opened a new Word document, to attempt to take notes and pay at least a small amount of attention to the product of a $50,000 tuition.
A third of the way through the lecture on Ancient Cultures, Jenny awoke from her semi-stupor state of note taking, which consisted of ear to keys and out the other ear, making no contact whatsoever with her brain. She heard a mention of runes and something about the Nine Worlds. Perking up immediately, she switched on the sound recording function on her computer, hoping that she hadn't misunderstood the context the word were in.
Quickly re-reading the notes she had taken, she found references to Norway and Germany, and quite a few allusions to Ragnarok.