Hey everyone! I was going through Connection and found a few things I wanted to fix so I'm reposting the first four chapters. I added a few things here and there and took a few things away but the plot is still the same, don't worry. Chapter Five is in the works and should be up by the end of this weekend. Thanks so much for your patience, support, and REVIEWS. Those are the best motivator! Thanks again!
xo
SJ
Disclaimer: I own only those characters not seen on The WB.
Chapter One
Sam Winchester had no fear of the dark itself, per say. Rather he feared what was within the dark, those demons and devils that threatened the lives of the innocent. Just recalling the stories Dean had told him in their childhood was enough to send chills running up and down his spine. Of course, knowing how to kill what threatened him made the seemingly unending blackness less terrifying, but in the past weeks the tables of the cosmos had turned. Sam now feared the dark because of what it meant to his physical state. The darkness brought sleep and with it dreams, nightmares. He often dreamt of Jess and the ceiling, sometimes his mother, and still other times he dreamt of Dean and his father, but none of them held the same sort of power as those dreams that were premonitions, it had been weeks since he'd had one of those. It seemed as though his mother's sacrifice at their childhood home in Lawrence had carried over into his subconscious as well. So, when Sam fell asleep at the motel just outside of St. Joseph Falls, Oklahoma he did so with the expectation that he would be able to rest his mind and body. He was sadly unable to do either.
It started with his back. Each vertebrae had been bruised when the spirit in Lawrence had slammed him against the walls of the kitchen. While the bruises were distracting they were nothing that Advil wouldn't fix and after taking three pills Sam settled back into his bed expecting to finally fall asleep, but still she loomed ever on the horizon, too far away to touch. Sam tried to clear his mind, tried to perform some of the relaxation techniques that Jess had taught him during finals, and even tried to match his breathing to Dean's deep and even breaths that whistled from the bed next to Sam's. Still sleep eluded him. Finally, when Sam was ready to give up completely he felt a wave of fatigue sweep over him that was so strong it felt almost like a physical weight. Within moments Sam was asleep and suddenly dreaming. He could tell right away that this dream was a premonition and not a nightmare; he could feel the familiar weight settling into his stomach. Taking a deep breath he turned his attention to the scene before him. Unlike his other premonitions, where he was an active participant, in this he was facing a movie screen. On the screen, framed by thick, red velvet curtains, he watched a girl, likely still in high school, who was goofing off with her older brother in the snow. At first they were out with the purpose of letting the dog out, but she'd picked up a handful of snow while the older brother wasn't looking and had hurled it at him.
Sam couldn't help but laugh, remembering a time he'd tried the same thing on Dean at one of the many truck stops they'd seen, but Dean being Dean had known it was coming and had avoided getting snow down his shirt. Sam left his thoughts and turned his attention back to the screen. The brother, in retaliation, ran towards her and scooped her up so that her back was pressed to his chest and swung her around in circles. She had been laughing before but Sam saw the change in her, he saw the way she sucked in a quick breath full of pain, the way that her shoulders had tensed, and he saw the way that she tried to hide her discomfort from her brother. The pain that had been manageable to her a moment before became unbearable and she cried out, softly, but still her brother heard. At once he set her back on the ground and turned her around to face him. Sam didn't need to hear them to know what path the conversation was taking; after all he'd grown up with Dean asking him the questions he was sure this older brother was asking now. Where does it hurt? How bad? What happened? He thought that this might be the end of the dream but suddenly, as though the film had been cut and spliced into another film entirely, the scene had changed and the girl he'd been watching before was now looking down at him with dead, unseeing eyes, her blood dropping down in two perfect circles onto his forehead. Sam woke screaming.
Dean was awake in an instant; next to Sam only a moment later after that.
"What, what is it?" Dean asked, his voice still thick with sleep. Sam breathed deeply, trying to regain some semblance of control.
"Sorry, it was a nightmare." Sam gasped out, trying to speak and catch his breath at the same time. Dean frowned as his stomach tightened in realization. Sam had been nightmare free for at least two weeks and Dean feared what it meant that Sam's period of peaceful, uninterrupted rest had ended.
"You want to talk about it?" He asked, unsure if he wanted a positive answer to his question or a negative one.
"No."
Dean sighed. He'd wanted a positive answer.
"Sam. . ." Dean began before the younger Winchester cut him off.
"No, Dean I don't want to talk about it. I don't think it was anything important, just a regular nightmare!" Sam exclaimed, exasperated. Dean stared at him for a moment longer, deciding whether or not to leave his younger brother to his thoughts or not. Dean stood and returned to his own bed and Sam was sure he heard him mumble something that sounded like, "Those are still pretty damn important." He pretended nothing had happened.
A mere thirty miles away Adelaide Jameson woke from her own nightmare, drenched in a cold sweat. She took a moment to search the charcoal corners of her room for anything out of place, any person unwelcome, but there was nothing there. Nothing was ever there. Sighing, Adelaide leaned back into her pillows and tried to slow her heart rate. The nightmares were coming more and more frequently, or so it seemed to her. Every one of them was the same. She would find herself laying on her back on a bed, eyes closed in peaceful bliss, but then her tranquility would be disturbed by two drips. She would open her eyes and find herself staring into the frozen face of a beautiful girl, bleeding freely from a gaping hole in her abdomen and suddenly fire would burst forth from her. Most nights the dream stopped there, but sometimes it went on and a strong, fierce looking man would call to her and drag her struggling form from the room. All her life Adelaide had been different in that she frequently knew things before they happened and she knew what people were feeling more often than not, but these dream were unlike anything she had ever experienced before, and Adelaide didn't understand them. She had talked them over with her older brother Caleb, but neither one of them had any bright ideas about what was the root of them. Adelaide thought that, perhaps, she was dreaming of her own death, though she did not share this particularly morbid interpretation with Caleb.
The other thing she'd been keeping from him were the bruises and the fact that the dream of the fire was not the only one in which the rough looking man appeared. Lately, when Adelaide dreamed of him she would wake to bruises like those one might receive in a fight, but Adelaide was a peaceful girl, and small for her age. Addy didn't fight physically, but in her dreams she did. In her dreams she fought with skills that she knew she didn't possess; after all, she'd barley made it through the three day karate demonstration in gym. Her parents, bless them their oblivion, never noticed the way that Adelaide sometimes limped in to breakfast, the frequency with which they were buying Neosporin and Icy-Hot patches, or that she needed to by more under-eye concealer to cover the bruises and black eyes that had no logical explanation. The worst had been the night she'd dreamed that the boy from her nightmares had tried to strangle her. For the next week she'd had to wear a turtleneck to cover the bruises, and even after that she'd had to cover them with a great deal of make-up. Lying had become a part of her everyday life, and seventeen year old Adelaide hated it, especially when it came to eighteen year old Caleb. He was not only her big brother but also her protector, defender, confidant, and best friend and Adelaide had never lied to him, until now. As Adelaide thought about Caleb the desire to go the ten short steps down the hall to his room became overwhelming. She knew he wouldn't mind being woken up at, she checked the clock, three in the morning. He'd ask her what was wrong, tell her everything would be fine when she told him it was a nightmare, and let her climb into his big, warm bed for the remainder of the night so that, for just a little while, Adelaide would feel safe.
A shock of cold traveled up her legs as Adelaide lowered her feet to the frozen wood floor of her bedroom and shivered as she grabbed a throw from her desk chair and made a run for it. Leaving the confines of her pink, flowery room she entered Caleb's sanctuary of blue flannel and basketball trophies. Leaning down she gently shook the older boy's shoulder.
"Caleb?" She whispered. He woke instantly.
"What's wrong Addy? Nightmare?" Wordlessly Adelaide nodded and waited for Caleb to throw back the sheets before climbing in for a, hopefully, a peaceful remainder of the night.
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