Chapter 1

And our story begins. A/N: Italics represents dreams or memories.

Sadie froze in fear at what she saw. A moment in her life that she prayed to God that it had never happened, much less that she would never have to see or relive it again. But, it always seemed to come back to her.

 

It was late at night and during a thunderstorm in an alley downtown. Her brother, Jared, and her previous boss, Maxwell, were fighting to the death. Daniel was lying on the ground near them in a pool of his own blood, unmoving. Suddenly, Maxwell took one strong blow to Jared’s face and Sadie watched, petrified, as she saw her brother fall, limply, to the ground with a sickening “thud”.

 

Maxwell stood over Jared for a second, panting as the rain fell harder, and spat down at him. Then, Maxwell called out, “Now, Jared, I’m going to make sure you watch as I do to your precious little sister what I did to your, dear, friend, Daniel…” as he started walking to Sadie, pulling out a large knife that he had kept tucked away until now.

 

She kept looking back and forth from Daniel’s still form to Jared‘s. A voice in her head kept screaming, “Run!” and she took three swift steps backwards only to trip over a random piece of trash and fell backwards landing in a pile of cardboard and crumpled newspapers as her feet cam out form under her. Looking up, she saw her attacker still approaching, now grinning a wicked smile as he realized that he now had an substantial advantage over the doomed Sadie that lay helplessly on the pile of trash before him. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, there was nobody else around who could’ve heard her cries for help and they both knew this.

 

Maxwell raised his arm, blade in hand, to strike, grinning ever wider, and Sadie closed her eyes shut, letting out a small whimper, awaiting her death. She heard a “whoosh” as Maxwell’s arm cut through the air and closed her eyes even tighter and slightly curling her body into a fetal position. But , at the last second, a voice split the silence, causing Maxwell to freeze.

 

“Don’t you dare touch a single hair on her!” She quickly opened her eyes and saw Daniel slowly pulling himself upright, threatening a second fight with the maniac that stood before her. Maxwell’s eyes widened in anger and he jerked around to face Daniel, striking Sadie across the face mid-swing, and then charging, full-force, at Daniel.

 

As Sadie put her hand over her face, she felt the warm, sticky sensation of her blood on the palm of her hand. She lowered her hand into her vision and stared at the crimson smear that now stained her palm and fingers. Suddenly, she felt all of her bottled up fear and anger explode inside herself, and she threw herself off of the trash pile and onto Maxwell’s back, blindly scratching and tearing at him, howling any and every profanity and crude accusation that happened to run across her mind.

 

Once Maxwell realized what was going on, he rammed Daniel hard enough to upset his center of balance, and then Max focused all his fury on Sadie. He pulled her off of his back and started to claw and tear anything in his reach as Sadie returned each of his blows with one of her own.

 

At this point, Sadie was so mad that it was though pain didn’t affect her. She just kept swinging, clawing, biting, screaming, and kicking. She didn’t even realize that Mac had stopped fighting back out of anger, but in fear. He was desperately trying to get away. He eventually pushed Sadie back and into Daniel long enough that he was able to start running.

 

As he was running, Maxwell spat a warning over his shoulder, addressing Sadie by her full name. “Don‘t be too eager to count yourself lucky this time, Sadie-May Williams. I’ll find you… and that buffoon of a man, Daniel Fuller, too. You both will pay. No one ‘just leaves’ my business. When I find you two, you’ll wish that you’d never been born. You’ll end up just like Jared and all the others before him…”

 

Upon finishing his threat, he hopped up onto a metal fire escape on a nearby apartment building and began pulling himself up higher and higher until the unimaginable happened. In his frantic escape, he had miscalculated his footing and within seconds, was falling back down the three stories he had just climbed up, back down towards the cruel pavement that awaited him below. Daniel and Sadie watched in awe and disbelief as they saw Maxwell land on the cold, wet, hard ground, face down, with the sound of a sickening mixture of crunching bones and splattering blood resounding upon impact.

 

“I-Is he dead?” Sadie asked Daniel, neither of them moving. Daniel slowly nodded his head, “He has to be. There’s no way he could’ve survived.” he muttered, as he scratched his head in amazement. Daniel and Sadie turned to each other, and just stared, looking over the wounds of the other for a mere second until they heard a groan a little further down the alleyway.

 

“Oh my god,” Sadie gasped, “Jared.” She quickly ran to his side and knelt down beside him, tears forming in her eyes and Daniel running close behind.

 

There he lay, fading. And she couldn’t do anything to stop it. Countless cuts and gashes criss-crossed his body. Blood was everywhere. Jared’s clothes where blotted in numerous places with deep red stains created from the blood that was now leaving his body. Daniel knelt down next to Sadie and pulled her close, trying to turn her head away from the horrific scene that lay before them, but she refused and gently pushed him behind her.

 

She just stared. There was a moment of what seemed like absolute silence as Sadie gathered up the strength to check if there was any remaining part of her brother that she could reach out to.

 

“Jared?” she called out in a soft whisper, almost too scared to say it. Slowly, Jared turned his head towards Sadie. He looked up at her and smiled though she noticed his eyes were already beginning to glaze over. His face was already significantly swollen in some areas from the many punches that Maxwell had unmercifully thrown his way.

 

“Hey, sis,” he said in a winded voice, “some fight, huh?” Sadie nodded as she smiled weakly and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing Jared‘s blood and her own across her face. He always had a way of acting so relaxed and calm, even when it looked like all hope was lost, and at this moment, all hope was certainly lost. Jared turned his gaze away from his sister and to his best friend, Daniel.

 

“Danny, promise me that you will take care of Sadie for me.” He said sternly, his eyes pleading. Daniel slowly nodded, fighting back tears of his own as the meaning of Jared‘s words sank in, “I will.” he knew that this was Jeradon‘s way of saying goodbye. Then, Jared turned his head back to Sadie. She was vainly trying not to show any fear but the tears plummeting down her cheeks betrayed her.

 

“He won’t have to take care of me,” she told him, firmly as she reached out and took his hand in both of hers, holding it close to her “ you’re going to be okay. You’ll get better and take care of me like you always have. You-” she cut herself off as she broke into sobs.

 

“You’ll be fine, sis.” Jared wheezed; it was getting harder and harder for him to talk by the minute. The bitter taste of death already inching into the air. Sadie put her head in her hands, shaking from her own sobs as Daniel pulled her into his arms and tried to comfort her; all the while, tears were streaming down his own face.

 

When she lifted her head back up, the rainy alley was gone, Daniel was gone, everything had seemed to fade away. This was how this dream ended every time, with everything disappearing and Jared’s last words echoing through the darkness that surrounded her. “I’ll always be with you…”

 

“No,” Sadie called into the darkness, gradually getting louder with every word, her whole body beginning to tremble in a potent mixture of heartbreak and rage, “this can’t be happening! Not again! I can’t loose you again! You can’t leave me! You promised that you would never leave me!”

 

“ Sadie! Wake up!” Daniel shouted as he gently shook Sadie. She jolted awake and sat bolt upright in her bed, tears forming yet again as the real world came rushing back to her and the terror began to reveal itself as just a horrible memory. Daniel pulled her close and started rocking Sadie slowly, allowing her to attempt to chase the few remaining daunting images from her own mind.

 

He looked down at her; she had the charm on Jared’s necklace, a small silver tag shaped like a lighting bolt with his name crudely carved into the back of it, that he had made entirely by himself held tightly in her grip and was running her thumb over it in a slow circular motion. She never took it off and would hold onto it whenever she was distraught at times like this. The necklace was one of the few things that belonged to Jared that she had refused to part with.

 

“It was that dream again, wasn’t it?” he asked her, already knowing the answer. She nodded slowly, and then looked up at him with a tear-stained face, the flow of tears finally beginning to subside. “It’s just so real,” she whispered.

 

“I know that they’re both gone and that there is no way he could come back and find us. But it still haunts me when I think about how we had to just leave his body there like that. How we had to leave without ever telling our parents goodbye. Danny, our parents think we’re dead. Our parents honestly believe that we all shared the same horrible fate as Jared. I would give anything just to have one day to go back to my mom and dad and at least let her know that I’m alive. Just to see my mom and dad one more time… ” She quickly pressed her face into Daniel’s chest, letting out a muffled, tearless sob.

 

“I would love to see my mom again, too ” he remarked, continuing to hold her, looking across the room to no specific thing, his mind flooding with memories of his single-parent mother and a younger, more carefree self. “But you know why we can’t do that.” he added. “If we ever came back, we would instantly be arrested. If not for being accused of Jared’s death, then at least for the crimes we committed while working for Max.”

 

“I know.” Sadie sighed, the tears finally coming to a complete stop. “I’m sorry for being so dramatic about this. Thank you for being your usual patient self.” she gave Daniel a tight hug which he returned and then proceeded to use his thumb to wipe away the last tear that sat upon her cheek.

 

“Well,” he said, peering to the clock that sat on the nightstand next to Sadie’s bed, “it’s almost five a.m.. There’s no point to going back to sleep so I guess we might as well start the day.” Sadie nodded in agreement as Daneil stood from the bed and held out his hand, offering to help her up. She grabbed her robe off of a nearby chair and slid it on over her pajamas.

 

“Coffee time maybe?” Sadie joked as she finished tying the robe around her waist. Daniel edged closer and wrapped his arm around her shoulders as he placed her own arm around his waist.

 

“Most definitely.” Daniel grinned, escorting Sadie to the kitchen of their shared apartment. “Tell you what, I’ll make the coffee if you make the breakfast. Deal?” he offered. The two laughed at the underlying joke in Daniel’s comment; they were both well aware in the fact that he always made the coffee while Sadie cooked breakfast due to Daniel‘s severe lack of cooking expertise.

 

As the two finished their breakfasts, they each grabbed their second cup of coffee for the day and began to go the daily morning rituals they each possessed to prepare themselves from work or whatever was needed for the day. Before they both parted ways, they gave each other a quick hug and a smile, the troubles of the night before already behind them.