Author's note: Sorry this is going up so slowly. Between school and work and everything in between, it's hard getting typing time. I have a lot written; it's typing it that's the issue ;)

Thanks to all who review! I love y'all :)

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Phoebe quietly opened the door to Paige's room and peeked in to check on her sister. Paige was still fast asleep, completely undisturbed by the bright sunlight filtering into the room around the edges of the shades. She was curled up on her side with one arm slung over the edge of the bed and the other hand resting on the pillow by her face. Phoebe called Paige's name to see if she would flinch. When she didn't, Phoebe sighed, pulled the door closed, and turned to Piper, who was standing behind her in the hall. "When she said that stuff knocks her out, she wasn't kidding. She's not even stirring."

"Really?" Piper asked, a relieved smile playing across her lips.

"Yeah," Phoebe nodded. "You do realize we're going to have to tell her eventually, right?"

"I know," Piper sighed. "I just . . . I don't want to wake her. She needs the rest, and once we tell her, she's never going to want to sleep again."

Phoebe nodded again as she wrapped her arm around her sister's shoulders. Truthfully, she didn't want to tell Paige what she had found out, either. It would only upset her even more than she already was. What Phoebe had found in the Book of Shadows creeped her out and she wasn't even directly involved.

According to the Book, some dreams were actually messages from another being transferred through some form of connection. The connection wasn't necessarily strictly psychic; the two people involved might have been on the same wavelength, so to speak, or the receiver may be in a position to offer help to the sender. But either way, if Paige and Jamie were connected somehow, that meant Jamie was just as real as Paige was. And that also meant that what Paige was dreaming about actually happened. Phoebe, for one, was not looking forward to having that conversation with Paige. But she knew she had to.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be at the office?" Piper suddenly asked, pulling away from Phoebe a little.

"I called Elise and told her I had some family stuff going on," she explained. "She took it surprisingly well and told me I could work from home for the afternoon."

"Ah," Piper replied with a nod. Sighing, she shifted her gaze to Paige's door. "I wish we could let her sleep."

"I do, too," Phoebe admitted, "but it's already ten. We have to get cracking on figuring out exactly what's going on and we need her for that."

Piper sighed again and brushed past Phoebe on her way into Paige's room. She opened the door and tiptoed into the room with Phoebe on her heels. Piper sat down on the bed above Paige's knees as Phoebe sat down at the foot. After hesitating for a moment, she gently shook her sister's shoulder. "Paige."

Paige groaned and pushed Piper's hand away. "Go away," she mumbled.

"Paige, come on," Piper said, shaking her shoulder again. "It's time to get up."

"Too sleepy," she muttered without opening her eyes. After pulling away from Piper's reach, she tugged the covers up to her chin and snuggled underneath them. "Leave me alone."

"Paige, we need you," Phoebe spoke up. "We need your help with something and it can't wait."

Paige groaned, but after a moment, she forced herself into a sitting position and pried her eyes open. "What do you want?"

"Geez, Paige, you're snotty in the morning," Piper teased. Paige just made a face at her before yawning and rubbing her eyes. "All right, I think a little caffeine is in order," she continued. She stood up, grabbed Paige's hand, and tugged. "I need you semi-awake."

"I am semi-awake," Paige grumbled, shaking her hand away from Piper's. With another yawn, she climbed out of bed.

"Okay, well, we need you a little more awake that you are right now," Phoebe said cheerfully, trying to bring Paige around a bit. She ran up to Paige and wrapped her arm around her shoulders. "The coffee's good this morning."

"Coffee's always good," Paige said as Phoebe led her out of the room and down the stairs. "I need coffee with a lot of sugar."

"And that is what you shall get," Piper giggled.

After about fifteen minutes, Paige had perked up considerably. She was still a little groggy, most probably from the last of the sleeping pill working its way out of her system, but she was giggling and speaking more than a sentence at a time. "My poor body's not going to know what to do," Paige chuckled as she downed her second cup of coffee. "Last night it was being told, 'Go to sleep!' and now it's being told, 'Wake up!'"

"Yeah, sorry about that," Piper said with a sheepish grin. "I never would have given you that pill if I had known we were going to need you."

"What exactly do you need me for?"

Phoebe exchanged a quick glance with Piper. How on Earth were they going to do this? Phoebe opened her mouth to start and explanation, but Piper cut her off, obviously figuring that easing her into it would be better. "We need to know what you remember about the dreams: details, timing, everything. And you need to think hard because it's very important that we know what went on in them."

Paige shot each of them a bewildered look, but after a moment, she shrugged, clasped her hands in front of her on the table, and closed her eyes. Phoebe could tell that it was painful for her to be reliving the dreams, even if it was only in memory, but she did it without a word of complaint. "Okay," she said, opening her eyes, "first Jamie was running through the woods, looking over her shoulder every so often. She looked no more than six and she was adorable: light red hair, green eyes, and freckles. She was terrified and angry at the same time and she didn't want to go back home. Meaghan found her a couple minutes later and told her that they had to go home. Meaghan looked just like Jamie, only a couple of years older, maybe eight or nine. Jamie got upset and started yelling about how she had seen Helen kill their father."

"What were they wearing?" Piper asked quietly.

"Gingham dresses, black ankle boots. They almost look like they walked off the set of Little House on the Prairie." Paige sighed, shaking her head at herself. "It's sad that a majority of my historical knowledge about clothing and such comes from television."

Phoebe smiled and gently steered the conversation back on topic. "What happened next?"

"Just as Jamie was freaking out, Helen found them. Jamie had gotten Meaghan so riled up that she was terrified, too, so she took Jamie's hand and ran. Helen was chasing them, hollering after them to stop. Meaghan said that she was going to tell the sheriff about what Jamie had seen happen to their father. Jamie broke away and hid, but Meaghan kept going. She tripped and Helen caught up with her . . ." She trailed off and gazed down at her hands, tears jumping into her eyes. It was completely obvious that she didn't want to talk about the next event.

Piper rested her hand on Paige's and gave it a tight squeeze. "It's okay, we know what happened next. What about after?"

"Meaghan was hurt pretty bad . . . unconscious and bleeding," she continued, her voice trembling. "Jamie jumped out from her hiding spot and managed to stop Helen from literally killing her. Helen picked Meaghan up, said they were taking her to the doctor's, and told Jamie that if she told anyone the truth about what happened, she wouldn't hesitate to beat her like that, too. And since Jamie had seen Helen kill her father and almost kill her sister, she kept her mouth shut."

Phoebe exchanged a glance with Piper. This was getting too elaborate to be just dreams because Paige was dealing with her decision to quit her job. "What happened when they got to the doctor's?" Phoebe asked her softly.

"Helen told the doctor that Meaghan had run off and that she and Jamie had just found her like that in the woods. The evil bitch was a good actress, faking tears and everything. They left her there and went home. Helen would go check on her every so often to keep up the concerned stepmother appearance. After a few days, Jamie couldn't stand the terror anymore, so she packed a bag and ran away. She was so set on leaving that she didn't care that a storm was coming." She looked up at her sisters and cleared her throat. "And that's all I know."

Phoebe met Piper's eyes again and she could tell immediately that she and Piper were thinking the same thing. Not only was the story construction too elaborate, Paige had made no distinction between one dream and the next. The whole story flowed together in an order perfect enough that Paige didn't have to account for any gaps from one dream to the other. "Did you tell us that in the order you had the dreams?"

Paige nodded, somewhat confused. "Why?"

"Because having three related dreams in a row is strange enough," Piper said gently, "but having three related dreams in a row in perfect chronological order is even stranger."

Paige's eyes darted between her sisters. "Enough with being cryptic. What aren't you two telling me?"

Phoebe nervously met Piper's eyes again. How on Earth were they going to do this? After taking a deep breath, she returned her attention to Paige and gave her a gentle smile. "Last night after you went to bed, I found something in the Book of Shadows that said that sometimes, dreams are actually messages from one person to another. The way you can tell is that the message dreams are more vivid and follow a logical order."

"Okay, but I couldn't receive a message like that," Paige replied slowly, not quite following what Phoebe was saying. "I don't have psychic powers."

"Not technically, but you do have a sympathetic sensing ability because you're half Whitelighter," Piper pointed out, "and you do have a soft spot for children in need. Plus, the connection isn't necessarily strictly psychic."

Paige drew in her breath, finally understanding what her sisters were thinking. "Wait, so if I'm connected with her, that means she's a real little girl and all the things I'm dreaming about really happened, right?"

"Yeah," Phoebe said softly.

"But there's something else," Piper broke in hesitantly. "If you are connected with her, that also means we can't stop the dreams again. We have to let them through to find out what she wants."

"So I have to watch them," Paige said bluntly. "I have to watch her die."

"Paige, we don't know that she--" Phoebe started, but she broke off when Piper caught her eye and shook her head. Realizing that arguing wasn't going to get her anywhere, Phoebe instead reached across the table and gripped Paige's hands. "Yeah, it's a possibility, honey. Do you think you're up for this?"

Paige closed her eyes, sighing heavily. "No." She shook her head, opened her eyes, and fixed her gaze on the table. "But it looks like I don't have much of a choice."

**********

Paige sank onto the divan under the window in her room with a small groan. She just couldn't believe it. Her sisters thought Jamie was real. She was desperately hoping that they were wrong because she hated what it would mean if they were right. That would mean that Helen really did kill Jamie's father and it was also quiet possible that she had killed Meaghan. Paige didn't know whether or not Meaghan had ever regained consciousness. She just couldn't bear the thought that two children so young could have lived with such a monster. It made her sick.

She wiped her eyes and sniffled, turning her attention to the house across the street in an effort to take her mind off of Jamie and Helen. The young couple's four-year-old daughter, Paige was pretty sure her name was Madeline, was playing on the front lawn with a kitten. Paige smiled; babies playing with babies. She was amazed by how gentle the little girl was being with the tiny orange cat. Her eyes filled with tears again as she realized that a four-year-old was showing more tenderness to an animal than Helen had ever shown to Jamie and Meaghan. She wiped her eyes with another groan. So much for taking her mind off of Jamie and Helen.

A soft but insistent knock on her bedroom door a moment later caused her to start. With her back to the door, she wasn't sure which sister was standing there, but whichever one it was, she didn't want to talk to either of them. "I don't want to talk right now," she said without turning around.

Two sets of footsteps walked into the room. She rolled her eyes; it was both of them. A second later, she heard the bed creak under the weight of someone sitting down on it. "Too bad," Piper said, her voice coming from directly behind Paige.

"Piper, I mean it," Paige replied with an irritated tone.

"So do I," Piper answered. "I am not about to let you close yourself off from us. There's no reason for you to have to deal with this alone."

"Paige, tell us what you're feeling," Phoebe said pleadingly. "Tell us what's going through your mind right now."

"How can you tell me I have to watch her die?" She turned around and fixed an angry glare on Piper before turning it to Phoebe. "How is that fair to me?"

"It's not," Piper answered, leaning forward and touching Paige's knee. "It's not fair to you at all, but if she is real, she connected with you for a reason. If she's not real, we still have to figure out why you're having the dreams and what they mean. Either way, we have to see where the dreams lead us."

Phoebe gave Paige a comforting smile. "Sweetie, if it'll make you feel better, one of us can stay the nights in here with you until we figure this out. I used to take that old couch all the time when we'd have movie nights with Prue."

A touched grin began tugging at the corners of Paige's mouth. "You'd really do that for me?"

"Of course," Piper smiled. "That way, if the dream gets too bad, we can wake you. And you won't be alone if you wake yourself."

Paige smiled and let out a relieved sigh. Having one of her sisters in the room with her would definitely help ease her mind. She was afraid of the dreams and afraid of what she would see, but she had mostly been afraid of facing the dreams alone. Now that she knew someone would be with her every step of the way, she felt herself relaxing about the whole situation. "That would be wonderful."

"Great!" Phoebe exclaimed. "Piper and I will switch off nights, and I'll take tonight. It'll be like, a mini slumber party!"

Paige giggled. "Thanks, guys. For everything."

"No problem," Piper said with a smile. "We'll get you through this, Paige. I promise we'll figure it out."

I hope so, Paige thought a little nervously. I certainly hope so.