A small raven haired woman twisted in her black sheets, her body slick with sweat even though her covers had long been discarded on the side of her king sized bed and the air conditioning still ran strong in the room. Her fan was blasting at the end of her bed, the head of the fan rotating as it circulated the air and yet for the woman it was the same every night. Her body burned up, her pulse skyrocketed as nightmares plagued her night time. It was becoming a problem that her friends and family had yet to notice, but that was because when she got up she immediately put make-up on because one of her close friends had this knack for showing up unannounced.

"Ugh," the petite woman said as she flew up, her back arching as pain filled her small form. That was new. Pain hadn't been a problem when the nightmares had started all those weeks ago. No, it had started with just small little dreams that had started out on a good note before twisting into something that woke her up. Then it had become nightmares that started her night and left her shaking in her bed from midnight on. "Guess I need to start taking stronger sleep meds," the woman muttered as she crawled out of bed, the clock next to her bedside reading 12:01am.

She had started taking vegetarian sleep pills, the chewable tablets making her sleep peacefully through the first week until the nightmares took on a more realistic feel and then the pills stopped being as effective. Heading for her bathroom she hopped into the shower for a long hot shower, her late morning ritual having become a midnight ritual. Like a vampire. It was a pretty interesting thought and yet her parents would think her morbid for thinking that, but since her parents had died last year in a hit and run the small woman didn't have to worry about their thoughts on her lifestyle. As she continued her soothing shower someone else was having a similar problem.

The toned male wrestled with his sheets as his body glowed unnaturally, well, for most it was unnatural while for him it was just his other half… His ghost half. The young male opened his eyes, the ice blue orbs dazed and sparkling with what appeared to be a fever, but like the woman he was having nightmares that had begun to interrupt his sleep as of late. They hadn't been to annoying until this last week when he could feel the pain that was from the attacks in his dreams.

He could feel a lot of things in his dreams, but feeling her blood on his hands had been the last straw as he held his dark haired friend in his arms as she died. He could feel her warm skin and smell the scent that could only belong to her. Lilacs. He could feel as her pale skin grew colder and grey tinged. It haunted him in the daytime as well as the night and it certainly didn't help when he fought ghosts with her as his helper. He was beginning to worry because not only did he fear her getting hurt, he was beginning to find that her death a distraction earning him a pair of broken ribs in the last battle.

She had taken the ghost down at that point, but Danny still worried. He knew Sam was stronger than most of the women he had known in his life, except for his ex-girlfriend, the ghost hunter. The Gothic woman was strong, but she was human and could die easier than he could. I need to find a way to protect her better while at the same time not causing me to get hurt. He was thinking of just telling her that she couldn't fight with him, but he knew how that would end. You can't tell me what to do, Danny. You aren't my dad, nor are you my husband! That was how it went no matter what he tried to do when it came to her safety. It shouldn't shock him since she had been that way forever.

He had begun to worry about her after both her parents were killed by a drunk driver last year, but the young woman had spurned his worry with an attitude bordering on disgust. She understood that as an only child she should mourn the loss of her parents, but she found she couldn't even muster up tears on the day of their funeral, her amethyst orbs just staring blankly at their two coffins. Danny had worried about that too because he thought she was holding in her pain even though they had caused her pain with their hurtful words and lack of understanding of her character. Sam was not like either of them, hell; she failed to look like either of them while taking on more characteristics of her grandmother, Gram.

Danny chuckled at that because even as an aged woman Gram had as much if not more spunk and energy than your average teenager. Throwing what was left of his sheets off the bed he crawled out, his feet taking him toward the stash of liquor he kept in his room. Pulling out the fifth of clear liquid he headed back toward his bed where he filled the small drinking glass that he kept beside his bed. The halfa usually used it for water, but since it was midnight and he needed his sleep for fighting ghosts he knew he would need a shot. Re-stashing the bottle he reached to pick up the glass, his ice powers used to frost and chill the drink. Danny didn't like hot alcohol since it already burned going down so he didn't think he needed a harsher burn. Shooting down the contents he placed the glass back on the bedside table before laying back.

Back in the woman's room she was painting, most of her wall covered with her anonymous works. No one knew that those posters and paintings were her own pieces. She refused to tell even Danny and the halfa had complimented them every time he saw a new one. Shaking her head she went back to the mermaid before her, the spiked tail making it look like a monster mix. Smiling she added more green to the tail while her music played in the background.

Yeah, Sam had so many projects, some actually sold to the public, all of them under an alias. Alexandra. That was her middle name and thank god that there had only two people who knew of this and those two were her deceased parents. Sure, she was sad that they were dead and yet at the same time she felt relief that they were no longer hovering over her with dresses and lessons to be learned as well as their hateful things they said about Danny. That had been why she had truly hated them. Sure, she was their daughter so they were entitled to their ideas of how she was to grow up, not that it had mattered since the Gothic woman had rebelled every chance she got, but Danny was not their child so they were not entitled to say one bad word about him.

There had been times that Sam had screamed at them when they made remarks about how poor looking the boy was or how he needed to learn how to walk or that his family were a bunch of crazies that needed to be wiped off the face of the Earth. She had let them know how she felt about the Fentons on numerous occasions. She had praised their parenting while downing her own parents' ideas on how a child should be raised. She had pointed out that her own parents were crazier than the Fentons could ever be with their old fashioned plans and training.

Sam had to admit that her parents had raised her as if she were a porcelain doll that was to be on display for the best buyer who would take her home and do as they had tried to do. Use her as eye candy. She knew her parents were disappointed with her attitude and lack of proper manners. Having great grades and scores on everything she put her mind to had never made them happy, if anything they had become more upset that she could accomplish so much and fail at doing what they wanted her to do. Stepping back she wiped sweat from her brow as the sun rose high over the horizon, but she had pulled her curtains closed so that it would not bother her since Sam wasn't a big fan of the sun and mornings in general. She loved the night time and couldn't wait until the moon rose high in the sparkling skies. Looking at her art she smiled. It had turned out rather well with the mermaid looking deadly and yet exquisitely feminine. It was her as a mermaid, but no one would figure that out because she had glamorized it to the point that unless Sam wore the same make up and had the same length of hair she would never be found out.

"Hey!" The Goth turned around quickly, her body standing before her art as she came face to face with Danny. "Whatcha' doing?" Sam glared at her best friend, his intrusion another thing that made her angry. Sure, he was her friend and she loved him dearly, but man did he like to scare the shit out of her!

"Trying not to die today," she muttered as she moved forward to make him turn around. "What have I told you about popping up in my room unannounced?" His muttered response obviously expressed to her his displeasure in her rule. "I guess you are a pervert then, huh?"

"What?!" he cried out as he attempted to turn back to her, in which she forced him to stare forward as she backed up to grab a sheet to cover up her work. "What in the hell do you mean by that?!" He turned, his cheeks burning red as he eyed his best friend.

"Well, let's see…." She faded off looking thoughtful. "What happened when we were fifteen and you decided it was okay for you and Tucker to pop into my room one morning before school?" The halfa's face turned a deeper red as his hand fell to the back of his head and he let out a nervous chuckle. Yeah, he remembered that day and he remembered almost killing Tucker.

Truth was he was rather pleased with his peep on her, not because he was a pervert because he wasn't, but Danny had had a thing for Sam after his dates with Valerie had turned sour, his affection for the ghost hunter and the cheerleader, Paulina, having made him see that those girls were nothing but pit stops in his romantic life. He had realized early on that Sam was the woman for him with her loyalty, her fighting skills, and her attitude for life. When she had turned sixteen she had started to bud, her body filling out in all the right ways, though she tried to hide her looks under baggie clothing for the first year since none of the other girls had filled out as earlier as she had.

Now she still wore rather baggie clothing, but not always, just when she felt like being comfortable. She claimed that all the stuff most women wore were rather painful and she was all about the comfort. Right now she wore black shorts that barely covered her ass while her shirt was white with lots of paint covering it. He could tell that she wasn't wearing a bra, but she had been up front with him about that one time when he had knocked her down during a ghost attack. That had been a rather awkward moment for the pair of them, but he had enjoyed it as well.

"So, what's up?" she inquired as she moved to clean up her art supplies leaving the halfa to look at the covered canvas. He wondered about that. She had never shown him any of her art projects, though there were the ones she had done at school that she had done as part of her grades, but those had been generic. Sam never did that kind of work, but for that class she had even though he could tell she wasn't proud of it.

"Nothing much, just wanted to know if you wanted to go to a movie or something?" A thin black brow rose in question.

"No ghosts?" she queried as she disappeared into the bathroom. Danny smiled. They had tried to hang out on the occasions, but every time they were stopped or interrupted by a ghost attack. When he gave her the affirmative she came back out with a smirk that showed quite baldly that she didn't believe him. "Danny, you can't even confirm that." He smirked now.

"I am going to today since it has been rather quiet these last few days." She nodded in agreement. It had rather hushed in the Ghost Zone for the last few weeks. In fact, it had been that way since the dreams had become nightmares. Strange. Giving herself a mental head shake she put that information in the back of her mind for later.

"Okay, so what do you want to see?" There were a few good ones that had come out, but since Sam never had to pay for them she had seen most of them. He shrugged because thanks to Sam he had seen all the new ones before they had even hit the big screen. Just then she remembered this really strange commercial at three this morning. "There was this one commercial I saw for a movie that not even my family's name could get for free."

"Really? That's weird." She nodded in concurrence. It had been strangely absent from any list that she could find on the newest movies, but she figured that it wasn't even finished, but yet it showed up as being shown somewhere in west Amity at a theater that Sam had never heard of.

"Yeah, what's weirder than that is that it's only in one theater." Danny raised a brow in shock. "Strange, but I still want to see it." The halfa inquired as to what the story was about to which Sam said, "Not entirely sure, but it was a horror film." When he looked at her strangely she clarified that the commercial had been vague, but that the shots it had shown had been scary.

"So let's go then," the halfa said.

"Just give me a moment," the Goth stated as she headed to her closet for a change of clothing before closing herself up in the bathroom.