I don't own anything to do with SoN. Nope. Nothing.

Note: Yeah, I took my time with an update. I know. This chapter is a bit different from the others, the healing slowly begins. I hope people still like it. Rock on. Thanks for the wonderful reviews, as always.

Part 5

She dreams she's five years old and running through the snow after her father. He stops to wait for her, smiling as she bounds through the snow drifts high enough to lose herself in if she fell. But Spencer's not worried, her father is watching her. Just as she gets to him, he reaches down and pulls her up onto his back. She giggles and holds on as together they continue their journey.

"I love you, daddy," she whispers into his ear.

She feels his body shake with laughter and as always Spencer's pleased by his mirth, especially since she was the one that caused it.

"What does it feel like, baby? When you say love what does it make you think of?"

Spencer's surprised by his question. She tightens her arms around his neck, careful not to go too tight, she was, after all, old enough to know not to choke him. She doesn't understand why the question is important. You're supposed to love your parents right? And she knows she does. It should be as simple as that.

But somewhere deep down Spencer realizes this is a dream.

She leans her small head against the back of her father's and smells his hair, smells his musky cologne and answers the best way her innocent mind can. "Safe. And warm. And full."

Spencer's father puts her down and she sees his eyes sparkling with delight. She can't help but grin back. She will always love her father's smile. She will always love being the one to put it there.

"Safe, I understand. Warm, I get too, but full?" he asks with a chuckle.

"Yeah, yeah," Spencer protests, really getting into her answer. "Full, like, like when you eat a big meal, but not here," she says putting her hand on her stomach, "here!" she finishes, putting her hand around where she assumes her heart is. But now she wants to explain further. "And warm like the hot chocolate that mommy makes, when she makes it just for me and it doesn't burn but slips out of my stomach and fills my whole body."

Spencer's sure she's not making any sense, but her father nods as if he understands it all.

"And safe like?" he asks fixing the hat on her head.

Spencer looks up at him, again thinking how silly her father is, how he must know the answer to this one. "Safe like you."

"So I make you feel all that huh? Then I must be the most special daddy in the world. Anything else make you feel like that?"

Spencer feels her face scrunch up in concentration. What else did make her feel that way? Spencer just focused on what made her really happy. "My bed. My bike. Snow. The puppy next door," she begins to list, and then her unconscious mind slips one word in, "Ashley."

"You know I love you right?" he asks, as if he hadn't heard the whispered name.

Spencer just giggles again, silly daddy. "Of course."

"And when someone really and truly loves you, in the most important way they will never leave your heart, you know that right?"

Spencer gives a serious nod. "When someone loves you they'll be there for you, right daddy?"

Her father's grin lets her know she got it right. She giggles and falls into the snow to try for a snow angel. She closes her eyes and just rests for a moment. Letting herself fall into the feeling of love. She feels pressure against her shoulder and she knows it's someone she loves coming to help her back up.

She opens her eyes.

"Ashley?"

- - - - - - - -

Spencer was confused. She felt as if she had been walking through a fog and somehow it had all slipped into her head. Her body hurt and she was exhausted. But that wasn't the part that had confused her, she remembered she was in the hospital. The confusion was entirely the fault of a brunette with sensual lips and deep, passionate eyes, staring into her own when she woke. The confusion was a result of the tears in those eyes, the words leaving those lips. She was confused that by the time she was able to understand what had been said, the girl was gone.

Spencer almost began to believe the whole thing was a crazy drug induced dream. But she couldn't stop her hand from traveling to her shoulder and feeling the tears on her shirt that were already beginning to dry. It had been real. She had been real. Her head pounded right along with her heart and Spencer was no longer sure which one was more painful.

Her hand involuntarily clung to her shirt holding onto the smallest part of Ashley that she'd possessed in a long time. She began to feel herself drifting off yet again, but she didn't want to lose the image of Ashley apologizing, she didn't want to lose the memory. She didn't want to wake up again and have the tears on her shoulder be gone, making her believe it had only been a dream after all.

She had been there. Ashley had been there. What did that mean? Spencer's foggy mind couldn't form coherent thoughts. She could only seem to focus on Ashley saying she would always love her, playing over and over again like a broken record.

Suddenly the door began to open and Spencer unconsciously took in her own image, inwardly cringing at how horrible she looked, and prepared herself for the return of those eyes, those lips. But instead her father walked in and the heartbreak was so much, the loss so complete that Spencer burst into tears.

"I'm sorry," she whimpered through her sobs, noting the irony of the situation.

Her father just enveloped her in his arms in a way he hadn't in years and held her. "Oh, Spence," he sighed causing a new batch of tears to spill down Spencer's cheeks.

It was an angry, vicious cycle. Spencer hurt and didn't know how to handle that. Now she was hurting the few people she still had in her life. And that caused her to hurt even more.

"She really was here wasn't she," it wasn't actually a question and therefore her father didn't answer it. "My heart actually hurts. And I don't know how to make it stop," she finally opened up.

There was a long pause and Spencer began to wonder if perhaps she had said to much. But then her father pulled away from the embrace and looked her in the eyes, his own sparkling with unshed tears.

"You're a rare breed, hunny," he began, slipping a stray hair behind Spencer's ear. "You actually let yourself feel. Pain. Love. Happiness. Anger. You let yourself feel it all. And when those feelings are positive you experience greater love and joy than most people in this world can ever hope to know. But, as with everything in life, there's the other side of things. And when you experience the sadness and the heartbreak it will also take you to a dark place. But always remember that you're more than that. You're more than one person, one love. And always, always hold on to what you know about true love, Spencer. What you've always known."

"And what do I know?"

"You have to decide whether you'll let it go, or whether you'll fight for it. But never lose yourself in the process. And if you begin to feel lost, go outside and stand in the sun to feel the warmth, drink some hot chocolate and let it flow through you body, and remember that your father always loves you. Love, true love, doesn't just disappear."

With a kiss to her forehead her father started to walk out of the room.

"What are you saying?" Spencer called after him. The wall between her dreams and reality had been cracking enough as it was today.

Her father stopped at the door and turned to look at her. "Yes, Spencer. She really was here."

With those words, Spencer was once again left alone with her thoughts. With her hand on her shoulder yet again Spencer began to think rationally for the first time since the breakup. With her father's words ringing in her ears and Ashley's smell lingering on her clothing Spencer realized what she had to do to begin to heal.