Dreams

Prologue

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"They've promised that dreams can come true - but forget to mention that nightmares are dreams, too." Oscar Wilde

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A/N: Welcome to Dreams, a story that has been percolating in my mind for almost 3 years. This version barely resembles the original in plot, characters, or progression, but it does have one similarity: the use of dreamscape to make a point. In Dreams v.3 (which is basically what the following story is), you will find that every time Kerry goes to sleep there will be a dream from her past formatted in first person and placed in italics. These are not necessarily real dreams she is having. They are memories, meant to show the reader what happened in the past. Consider them something of a prequel if compiled and put in chronological order (which they are not). They are also mostly sexual in nature, which is why this story is rated M.

Summary: What happens after Kerry walks away in the end of Companions of the Night? The natural progression of their relationship was for them to get together for a time, for Kerry to fall head over heels for Michel, for her to have to make the ultimate decision again. In a perfect world, that would be their happily ever after. But it wasn't. Now Kerry's been living without Michel for four years. She's moved on; she's happy. Of course, that's not the end of the story.

Disclaimer: I always forget to write this, and my apologies to Vivian Vande Velde. Most of the time I'm living in the real world and I realize that I don't own your characters. For the other thirty percent, that's the time when I'm daydreaming about ideas like this, and so I'm not really in the real world at all and can't be held accountable for dreaming that Michel belongs to me.

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There was a time when I would look in the mirror and wonder what it was he caught sight of in those unguarded moments when his eyes would stray to my face and the corner of his mouth would soften, a virtually unperceivable transformation from the pleasant mask he wore as an expression. The woman in the mirror seemed too ordinary for him, her hair the brown of maple bark and her face pretty enough but indistinguishable from other decent looking girls. I knew that he deserved beauty, even as he searched for intelligence and companionship.

I also knew that no matter how much I believed that I wasn't good enough for him, that I would never let him go.

He was mine.

When Kerry awoke that morning, it was to the images of a fleeting dream, the last stray strands of webbing holding the memory of it in place washed away as she blinked at the sunlight streaming through the edge of her bedroom curtains at just the proper angle to alight over her eyes. She blinked hastily, it never occurring to her to attempt to hold on to those vanished dreams and cherish them. She let them go, and easily went on with her day. It hadn't been, after all, the type of dream she would want to linger and languish over with her hand between her thighs and a sigh on her parted lips, but neither had it been one of blood curdling fear, making her body feel poisoned and wrong for the rest of the day.

It had just been a dream: random firing synapses that meant nothing. She wasn't one to put stock in the meaning of such things. The only dreams Kerry cared about were those which were synonymous with 'aspirations', and those she had plenty of.

"It's the oddest thing," Kerry told Nelle, dropping her large shoulder-bag onto the top of her already cluttered desk. "All day I've felt like I'm missing something."

"Not something newsworthy, I hope," Nelle quipped, leaning her hip against the side of Kerry's desk. She fumbled with the lens cap of her professional camera, turning it about with her fingers with little thought. Later, when she went to pack the camera away into its carrying case, she would curse at the need to make a quick adjustment to the focus from where her fingers had dislodged the fixed setting.

"No," Kerry responded with a thoughtful frown. "Something personal. Something I'm forgetting."

"A birthday? An anniversary? A bill payment?" Nelle prompted helpfully.

"No. No. And probably, but that's not it." Kerry laughed. She pushed her purse onto the corner of her desk and grasped a handful of papers on her desk, shuffling them into a neat pile and placing them in a folder. "I'll probably figure it out eventually," she said, putting a handful of pencils in the drawer where they belonged.

"Your desk is a mess," Nelle said with a laugh. "If you rearranged it at night before going home, you could save yourself time in the morning."

Kerry shot her a withering gaze from beneath her eyelashes. "At night I just want to get home and eat."

"But you love your job," Nelle observed. She then grinned slyly. "I guess you love your boy toy more."

"Nelle!" Kerry exclaimed with a blush, glancing around the office for ears turned in their direction. In a newspaper office, she knew that a good number of the reporters perked up at any sign of gossip.

"Well, it's true. If I had a McHottie like Luke at home, my desk would be a mess too."

Kerry almost scrambled to answer the phone when it rang, wanting to disrupt the current conversation. She paused with her hand hovering over the receiver, waiting for the second ring so she wouldn't seen too eager. "Good morning, Brockport Tribune, Kerry Nowicki's desk."

"Kerry. You need to get down to the canal between Redman road and Student lane. They've found a car submersed in the water."

Kerry's eyes quickly swung to the window separating her boss from the main room, noticing the blinds were closed and so it wasn't evident that he was on the phone. She felt a thrill rush at the fact that he had called her, though at the moment there was no one else. "Theft?" she questioned, reaching for a pad of paper and a pen. She wrote "Gallant" on it, referring to her new editor-in-chief, and shoved the pad to Nelle.

"A call's been placed to the morgue."

"Oh really?" Kerry questioned, her voice stressing both surprise and excitement. She swatted her hand at Nelle, who had straightened and was now giving Kerry her full attention. Kerry made frantic motions with her hands, mimicking taking pictures as she pointed to the camera case on Nelle's desk containing extra film and a spare digital camera. Nelle jumped off the desk and lunged across the space to grab the case.

"What are you still sitting there for?" Her boss said harshly. "And bring that slacker photographer with you."

Kerry hung up the phone with a grin and grabbed her purse. Rearranging her desk, drinking a second cup of coffee, and checking her emails would all have to wait. She was on assignment – a real one – and it filled her with a buzz of excitement unlike anything she had felt in a while. "Come on," she said to Nelle, grabbing her by the arm, "let's go. We've got an assignment."

"What's the rush?" Nelle asked, stumbling behind her. "This isn't like those big city events you see on TV with all the reporters milling about for a story. If it happened in Brockport, it ain't going anywhere for a while."

Kerry shot Nelle a quelling look, dragging her friend through the glass doors to the front of the newspaper office. Nelle was right about the Tribune not being like the big-city newspapers. For one thing, there were only three full time reporting positions, four part time, and a few freelance. Over the past two years Kerry had managed to work her way up to part-time. Nelle was fortunate enough to be the only photographer attached to the paper, practically inheriting the position from her great aunt. Nepotism was alive and well in rural America. "I want to get pictures before the M.E. reaches the scene and removes the body."

"Body!" Nelle exclaimed over the roof of Kerry's car as she got in. "Whoa. That's totally unexpected. Where are we going?" Nelle had finally caught up with the enthousiasm, tapping the foot of her crossed leg against the dashboard.

Kerry filled Nelle in on the particulars she knew from Gallant, few as they were, and turned the car towards the outskirts of town in the direction of the SUNY Brockport campus. Nelle didn't point out that even if they got there on time to get pictures of the grisly scene, that there was no way it was going to print. Small towns did not use the remains of their own citizens to sell papers. Both girls were young and idealistic enough to still want their names involved in a big scoop.

"This is the assignment," Kerry said. "I can feel it. Something big is going to happen. I deserve this. I worked hard to get off those puff piece assignments and into crime. You know I did. When I came here from college with all those journalism awards under my belt I really didn't think my talents would go to so much waste." Really, Kerry thought, she had moved down in the world.

"You got this job because Rebecca's on maternity leave," Nelle reminded her, hand braced against the dashboard as Kerry took a sharp corner, bouncing onto the soft, rutted ground leading to the waterside.

"Yeah, but I was the next logical choice."

"Because Marty's in traction after breaking his leg in three places pursuing the Duncan story."

"He really broke it when his wife pursued him with her car when he slept with Duncan's widow."

"See," Nelle pointed out, "you were the only one left and it isn't as if much crime happens here to get put on the crime beat page. In the last issue your major story was about a kegger getting noise complaints."

"Don't be such a downer," Kerry responded sharply and then sighed. "Aren't you the teensiest bit excited?"

"I've taken pretty gruesome pictures before. Remember that big accident on the highway last year? Frig! Would you slow down?"

Kerry ignored Nelle as the car rounded a bend on the dirt road, undercarriage scraping dangerously over the high middle. A parked tow truck loomed in front of them, the yellow body contrasting with the black and white police car parked next to it. Kerry pulled off the road, the car going over the road bump with a dangerous jar and mowing down thick, weedy grass to create a space in an empty field to park. Kerry could only hope that underneath all the grass there wasn't marsh, or it would be her car that needed the tow truck.

She got out of the vehicle, dismayed to find her sensible work heel sink into the soft ground. Luckily, it wasn't too wet, which was a blessing for this time of year when the river was swollen with runoff from melting snow, and even the most solid ground had a tendency to retain water. She only wished she had thought to change into the sneakers she kept in the trunk.

"ICK!" Nelle exclaimed as she poked a toe at the ground, not actually stepping foot out of the car. "I'm wearing three inch stilettos. Can I borrow those sensible running shoes you keep in the trunk like a girl scout?"

Kerry sighed with impatience, itching to go join the group of officials milling around the water bank. She could see a few familiar faces, including police officers who were good friends of hers. She retrieved the shoes for her best friend, and then left Nelle to change into them as she walked down the remainder of the road. She could feel the familiar thrum of excitement at the idea of finally becoming a full-time reporter, which was exactly what would happen if she did well on her assignments while filling in.

This story was it.

"Kerry!" one of the police officers exclaimed, breaking away from his conversation with the police chief in order to approach her. Kerry wove to Chief Atherton as she paused and waited for Luke to join her. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm working," Kerry said with a smile, taking in his broad shoulders in his uniform and the way his hair glinted blond in the sun. "Same as you."

"Hardly the same," he told her, grinning back. "I have a gun."

"Oh Luke, believe me, I know," Kerry smirked. "I've seen you use it. So tell me, what's going on here?"

"Some high school students skipped school to smoke some grass and one of them got dared to go skinny dipping. He found the car and apparently wanted to see if the radio was salvageable."

"In a car underwater?"

"Yeah. It can happen. Anyway, he didn't even get the door open before noticing the body. I'm not even sure how he did that. One of the divers said it was all bones. The car's been there a while."

"Really?" Kerry asked, bemused by the fact that Luke was so willing to talk about the case with her, a reporter. She wasn't sure if it was because she was his girlfriend or if it was a small-town thing. A lot of the guys on the police force didn't mind talking to her. Kerry liked to think they knew she had integrity, but that probably wasn't it. Kerry was trying to formulate her next question, her mouth already posed to speak when Luke interrupted her.

"Hold that thought," Luke said, his fingers brushing against her arm. "I'm being hailed." He gave her a quick kiss, almost missing her mouth entirely, and then hurried off to talk to a group of his bosses and coworkers.

Kerry shook off the goofy smile evident on her features, the one she reserved for moments when she was under the spell of her boyfriend, and reminded herself that now was the time to be serious. She could see someone else she knew standing close to the water edge, and she made her way over to him, wondering why he wasn't standing with his coworkers.

"Hey Kev," Kerry said, tilting her chin towards Luke's partner as her greeting, watching in vague amusement as he ate a powdered doughnut without spilling any of the sugar over his dark blue shirt. That would explain why he wasn't with the crowd. The other cops would tease him for being stereotypical.

"Hey Kerry," he muttered, white powder puffing from his lips. "Hard at work or hardly working?"

"I'm working real hard at keeping up with your fresh wit," Kerry bantered back, feeling herself relax as she stared out in the water. She tried to remember who had disappeared from town in the past few years, but she couldn't come up with anyone except for the wife of a local businessman, and she had been found later cohabing with a younger man. It was like the Momma Nowicki story all over again, only without the missing laundry machines and with a few thousand dollars in private investigator bills.

"I save my best for you, babe," Kevin responded, shoving the last of his doughnut in his mouth, jelly squirting out of the corner of his mouth.

Kerry hid a smirk. "I feel sorry for you, if this is your best attempt at conversation."

"If you really felt sorry for me, you'd sleep with me." Kevin's attention was drawn from the water and towards someone walking up behind them. "Hey Luke, why is it that your girlfriend won't have sex with me?"

Luke rejoined them, his arm brushing against Kerry's. "She has morals. And standards."

"Then why are you with him?" Kevin turned his attention back to Kerry. "Luke couldn't even find a woman's clit if it had a huge flashing arrow pointing to it. Seriously, why not run away to Vegas with me?"

"There aren't enough antibiotics in the world," Kerry retorted with a mock shiver.

"You two," Luke interrupted scornfully. "They're about to tow the car out of the water, so if you can stop exchanging some of the most clichéd banter I've ever heard, then maybe you'll be able to witness something—"

"Cool?" Kevin asked, cutting Luke off.

"I was going to say 'that doesn't happen often in Brockport' but it is pretty cool." The men grinned, having a bonding moment over cars and death.

Kerry shook herself out of being amused at their conversation, remembering that she was here for a reason that had nothing to do with teasing Kevin. She turned back to the river and watched the rusting, silt-coated car emerge from the water, her small camera recording the event even as Nelle snapped rolls of film. There was silence among the people milling along the bank, and Kerry recognised the M.E. waiting first in line. Dr. Roberts looked grim as he observed the tow truck pull the car out slowly, the old bumper not looking as though it could take much more of the pressure.

Kerry recognised the car as a Nova and took a step forward for a closer look. The frame groaned and creaked as water poured out of any available seam. Kerry stopped breathing, her face going white as she realized the vehicle wasn't just familiar looking. She knew the car and knew it well. The world slowed and she felt as though she was the one under water, unable to breathe, or scream. The sounds around her became muted, disassociated with reality.

"Oh my God," she breathed, sitting down hard on the ground as the car finally emerged from its watery grave. She felt haunted by a moment a million lifetimes ago, when she had sat in the front seat of that car.

"Kerry? Kerry are you okay?" The words were at a distance and inaudible over the roar in her ears. Luke finally touched her shoulder and she jumped. "Are you ok," he asked again.

"Get your father," she begged.

"Dad's busy," Luke responded uncertainly.

"Get him," Kerry snapped, swaying to her feet and turning away from him. She took one step towards the car and stopped. She couldn't look. She took another step, realizing that she was going to have to.

"Kerry?" Police Chief Atherton asked, placing a hand on her arm. Unlike his son, he didn't question her motives for calling him over. Hovering behind him with a worried look on his face was Dr. Roberts. "What is it?"

"The car—" she croaked, unable to finish the sentence. She could feel the tears gathering in the back of her throat. "It's Ethan. Ethan Bryne."

©RelenaFanel.June13.2008