Author's Note- As most of you read on the Ingo board, this new story is a revamping of my unfinished "The Road to You". It is edited, gutted, and completely redone! I just want everyone to know, however, that this fic is going to be a lot like an actual novel, my point being that I'll be focusing a lot on all of the elements that go into novel-writing (plot, character stuff, setting). I just thought I'd let everyone who is reading this know that getting into this story will be like reading an actual full-length novel, not just a quick-fix fanfic. ENJOY!!

Run, run, don’t stop, harder, run!

His arms were swinging in a wild rhythm at his sides to propel himself forward, and fast. It was a wonder the overworked limbs didn’t fling from their sockets and tumble along the night-drenched street with lasting momentum, twitching with reflex though detached. He had watched insects’ antennas tremble similarly when severed. He had always wondered how that worked, why the expiring muscles even bothered.

He had squished so many helpless bugs in his twenty-eight years of existence. Oh, if there had been a God and a hell, he would definitely have been deported there for his creature crushing.

Worry about hell when you get there, you idiot! He scolded himself fiercely, though hearing his own voice inside his head was close to impossible. The clamoring of his wild heart echoed through his body and boomed through his ears like the bass of the college parties he had never attended, like a drum that drove his pace. The drum was beating so violently it seemed he could feel his ribs breaking from the inside with every clanging thump.

At a full sprint he shot down the street, his long legs providing him with a gazelle-like stride. He was zigzagging in an attempt to lose the enemy through the middle of the four-lane freeway that wound throughout the populated city. Terror ravaged his veins and pumped like blood through him. He zoomed passed abandoned building after abandoned building at a velocity that he was sure would leave Olympian Michael Johnson in the dust. The Olympics, he should have been in the damned Olympics. Just one more feat he hadn’t found time to conquer.

Run, run, don’t stop, harder, run!

He swore on every last cent he owned that if he ever got out of this terror-driven footrace he would sacrifice himself to more than his ritual hour of exercise everyday. Five miles instead of four. No, no, make it six. And more reps on the Bowflex. He would lift until his biceps exploded out of his skin. He swore it.

He had been running for so long and at such a pace, every piece of logic he could fathom told him that there was no way he couldn’t have escaped. But the unworldly heat that pressed hard against his back continued to numb every nerve that it had cooked up. It refused to disappear or even wane. He felt like he was going to spontaneously combust right there in the street, although he supposed it wouldn’t be so spontaneous. At least he probably wouldn’t ever need to iron this shirt again; the wrinkles were certainly being steamed right out of his gray Adidas T-shirt that hugged his defined structure slightly.

If he could have spared an ounce of energy he would have smiled; that optimism could have come straight from Ned’s lips. Ned… he probably wouldn’t ever hear that stupid voice again.

Trying to push his pessimism aside in his best friend’s honor, he had to conjure up some hope. Just a little sliver of faith to squeeze and latch onto for dear life. It was hard to remember how; it had just been so long.

Not daring to slow his pace by even the most miniscule of fractions, he gathered his wits and peered over his shoulder to glance behind him. Within a millisecond he wished he hadn’t; what he saw literally took his breath away.

Mirrored in his unusually helpless blue-green eyes were merciless orange flames, leaping and diving into the rich black night air, licking the sky hungrily. Like bright burning tongues they stretched high, hoping to scoop up the stars and swallow them as if they were the night’s little white candies. The stolen stars would score a one-way ticket to the sweltering stomach of the blaze, followed by a scrumptious human (the other, other white meat) if he didn’t haul ass.

Run, run, for the love of everything in this world don’t stop, harder, RUN!

His mind was swimming in some distant pool, slipping away into his subconscious. Instead, some primitive animal nature had taken the wheel, and there wasn’t anything on earth that could subdue the beast until the danger had passed. Everyone knows that instinct overpowers all else in this world.

Faster! He pushed hard but despite his every effort each step was becoming more difficult. Though there was no gas left in the tank he continued to thrust his weary body forward at a remarkable speed, but he wheezed with each breath that straggled its painful way into his lungs. His legs felt weak, grasping the ground with a strength equivalent to that of Jell-o. He was exhausted.

The heat was escalating, growing more intense as it pounded on his back. It was so bloody hot…

The kindling of flames was louder now. Was it advancing on him, growing closer? Impossible! He had to move faster, to keep running, he couldn’t give up… he never gave up.

Run… run, don’t… don’t stop. Hard… harder…

Practically limping now, he approached a four-way intersection though not a single car lined up nor zoomed through. With desperation he tried to hang a left turn, hoping with all hope that somehow a swerve would fool his relentless foe, but his vision was blurring out of control. His eyes had failed him, just like the others who had failed him. He wouldn’t forget them.

He heard himself groaning with the pain that came with raspy breath, dizzying stagger, and crippling fatigue. In an attempt to brace himself momentarily and to get his bearings enough to move on, he nearly fell into a fat pole that sat on the corner. It was the staff of a crosswalk sign, and at the top of the metal base an empty panel was positioned where normally the “walk” or “don’t walk” symbols flashed.

He wrapped his arms around the pole, embraced the pole, leaned into the pole and pressed himself against the pole, letting it borrow every pound of his six feet and two inches. He would have liked very much to somehow make love to that pole, largely because it was holding him upward on his feet and also because he would have liked to exercise that particular act of affection one last time.

Through his body-wrenching panting he managed to lift his head in the direction of the traffic lights that hung silently against the night, as if begging them for help. They did not glow green, nor did they blare red; instead, strangely, the lights simultaneously flashed a faded yellow. It seemed they were apologizing for their lack of usefulness.

It could have been at that second, it could have been five minutes later, but whenever it was, a cloud glazed over his eyes once more. A pang of weakness clutched him and he cried out, but he didn’t even recognize his own voice—it was so far away… he scarcely felt himself sliding down the pole, still hugging it for all it was worth. The freezing sidewalk leapt up to meet him, and meekly he rolled away from the metal structure, spilling into the empty street.

The cold pavement that iced his back clashed uncomfortably with the heat that was now frying his exposed face, his belly, and his legs as if he were a raw strip of bacon just beginning to simmer in a cold frying pan.

Despite his ham-like cookability, he mustered enough energy from some unknown dry reserve tank to prop himself onto his wobbly elbows. If he was going to be defeated, he would at least look his enemy in the eye before meeting his end. However, upon squinting into the night he yelped hoarsely and threw his forearm over his face to shield his eyes from a blinding explosion of yellow, orange and red.

All right, so much for the look-‘em-in-the-eye tactic. He figured it wouldn’t go over well if he didn’t have any way of looking. He imagined the hellfire cooking his eyeballs and melting them to a liquid in which the once glassy blue and green pigment of his irises swirled in a pool of white, dripping out of the sockets and down his heat-reddened face.

Yep, he was definitely going to keep those eyes closed now.

He dropped himself off of his elbows to lay flat on his back in some futile survival scheme, hoping that in the next few seconds he could gather enough energy to get up and run again. But this unbearable heat, it was grilling him alive, and he felt his blood rising to a boil inside his skin. His glossy head of blond hair was soaking wet, beads of liquid trickling down his sweat-bathed face.

This raw slab of bacon didn’t feel so raw anymore. The pavement was heating up too.

It had probably been a mere sixty seconds since he had fallen, but every one of those seconds passed like an hour. A minute, just sixty little seconds.

The whole ordeal was an incredible invasion to all of his senses. Behind his closed eyelids the fire still blazed, and in his ears it snapped, crackled and popped, just like the cereal. Damned good cereal he would never taste again. The last flavor to ever settle on his tongue would be the thick choking black smoke that was assaulting his throat, ripping it up. And the heat, well, he had never felt anything more vividly. Finally there was that smell… a smell he couldn’t quite place, but it reminded him of… of…

Burning rubber. The rubber of his Nikes was melting beneath the fire! Such a good pair of shoes had suddenly been reduced to a waste of sixty-three dollars and seventy-four cents. And yes, he had memorized that number, just like that of his penthouse, his bed, his clothing, his last meal.

As he and his feet continued to roast like the pig he wasn’t, he realized he could drag his heavy ankle attachments only a few inches closer to his chest in an effort to delay the end that loomed ahead of him.

In the far, far distance sirens blared, but aside from that not a soul was to be seen, heard, felt, smelt, anything. The vehement inferno was devouring the city—why didn’t anyone care? Was there anyone else who saw it but him?

It was becoming more and more blatant that he was doing much more than seeing the fire.

Lying there in death’s doorway, he rolled his head sluggishly to the right side. He could swear the weight of his cranium had suddenly been multiplied by twenty. Cracking his eyes open he cleared his gaze enough to lift it limply to the buildings that lined the streets—the enormous, beautiful buildings. He loved this city, his city. He had put his sweat, blood and tears into making it a better place, and now he was going to be burnt alive in this vacant road. There wasn’t even a mangy dog that stood by to watch his entire life come unraveled at the seams as he would fall into oblivion. He imagined the pathetic obituaries: “Pile of charcoal found on the corner of Main and McDonald has been identified as the traces of city’s most refined attorney.”

He felt—and he was—completely alone.

It was getting hotter. His world began to spin around him, and listlessly he watched it reel. Twenty eight was too young to die! There were so many people who needed him, depended on him: Janie and Jill. His dear mother, bless her. Ned. The city. Port Charles Orphanage. Skye. All the women, those he had met and those he hadn’t, who wouldn’t make it without his help. How could he let them all down? He cursed himself. He cursed the Lord he didn’t believe in.

He would have wished to be put out of his God forsaken misery as he sizzled in his sweat-greased pavement frying pan, but he wasn’t that selfish. He prayed, instead, to a God that he didn’t even think existed for the people he was leaving behind. He didn’t understand why he was praying, or who or what made him pray, but he did. For them.

Suddenly, just as he was certain all sound had escaped him and the world had been muted to his ears, he heard a footstep plain as day—one loud vibrating drop of foot through the pavement, even louder than the flames. And then another footstep. Another.

They grew louder—they were coming his way! Someone was coming his way! Instead of holding onto hope that he was saved, he was possessed by the most surreal and maddening panic-stricken terror that had ever haunted him in his life. His heart picked up the drum and beat hard all over again but more ferociously this time, making him realize that he still was very much alive by some miracle.

He tried to yell, to scream over the footsteps and the fire, but his throat was burnt to a bloody crisp.

He continued to pray to the fake God: Please, God. Please! Hell, please make it go away! HELP!

A footstep, a heartbeat, a footstep, a heartbeat, a footstep, a footstep, a footstep…

“NO!!” The broken, guttural cry shattered the silent stillness, resounding in his ears as some kind of surreal tornado sucked him in and dropped him back into the little nest of reality he belonged in. The scream had hijacked his voice, sounding more like that of a terrified little boy than that of a fully competent and independent grown man. Simultaneously he jolted from his bed to a sitting position, springing from it for fear of being swallowed back into the wherever-land he had just eluded.

Alright, now he was bloody confused. His heart was wracking his body with each rapid pump like it had been a second ago. His lungs were expanding like hot air balloons, pressing against his ribcage and causing his chest to rise and fall like it had been a second ago. His head was spinning, eyes were ringing, ears were blinded… no, no, that wasn’t right… head was blinded, the smell was ringing…

With an audible groan he doubled over in his bed, covered his reeling head with his arms in some hope to physically keep it from spinning, and then held his noggin between his knees as if practicing for a tornado drill. Squeezing his eyes shut he waited for his mind to stop playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie and with enormous breathing tactics he tried to subdue his racing panic.

After a minute, or two minutes, possibly thirty minutes, maybe one thousand and six minutes, he lifted his heavy head as his breathing continued to slow. As his eyes whipped around the room like shots, he hit upon an awfully valid question.

Where in the world, or outside the world, was he?

Almost immediately he was able to rule heaven out: it was too damned hot in this joint to be heaven. Hell? Well, that was a possibility, but his expectations of the fiery place of condemnation had never so closely matched the appearance of his very own bedroom.

His bedroom? Jesus, it was his bedroom. But, that would mean it had all been a…

Just then a pang of heat tremor slammed into him, starting right in the heart, and had a ripple effect on his body as it burnt up his limbs. His stomach felt like a rotisserie chicken as it flipped over an open fire inside of him, and bile rose in his throat as nausea seized him. Holy hell it was hot! As quickly as possible he tossed the deep rouge-colored silk sheets and comforter off of his body and leapt from his bed. He landed on his feet, but a short spell of dizziness gripped him and he was forced to hold an arm out in balance.

Man, he thought to himself, that was no run of the mill dream. The fact that he was experiencing a post-snooze aftermath scared him half to death, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as when he had been scared nine-tenths to death a mere few minutes ago.

Realizing he was no cooler upon standing up, he all but flew to the thermostat in an attempt to strike relief. As a lingering bead of sweat skidded down his nose, he pushed the knob so that the new temperature read sixty-five degrees: a mere ten degrees warmer than the chilly March air that blew outdoors.

After his quick pit stop to adjust the heat factor, he sped forward out of his bedroom and blew down the stairs. They trailed into the roomy den, the front door located across it. Throwing on the lights momentarily, his eyes roamed the landscape quickly. All seemed to be in place; the forest green couch and beige arm chairs still formed a half arc around the oversized plasma television. The windows were still accented by gorgeous cream and grassy green tapestries. The deck still laid beyond those windows and the glass door that opened to it. The large painting of the city of Nashville still hung perfectly straight above the mantle, where the spotless brick fireplace sat silently below.

Satisfied, he flicked the lights off and rushed into the kitchen, repeating the process. Then with the downstairs bathroom. Finally, he ran a much safer and detailed check on his home office which was positioned in the back of the penthouse. He unlocked his file cabinet, just to be absolutely sure that every receipt of virtually everything he had bought in the last six months, possibly longer if it was an important or valuable possession, was still there. All in alphabetical order, of course.

At last, he heaved a sigh of relief. Everything was still in order, just the way he liked it.

But he was deeply frustrated. His little security sweep had only limitedly pacified him; it had answered no questions, nor solved any problems. His flesh was still pink with lasting heat, his hair still drenched. The dream still haunted him.

Ascending back to the bedroom, he took the stairs two at a time.

He wasn’t exactly sure of what he should do with his restless self, so he absentmindedly migrated to the window of his extravagant penthouse and peered out the bay window at the world below. A siren wailed quietly, vaguely, somewhere in the distance, a few streets away. A dream away, he thought.

What the hell time was it anyway? His head rotated on its axis to peer over his bare shoulder at the digital clock that blared 4:22 in a bright red glow. The numbers, however, were not nearly as interesting as what lie next to them.

Suddenly it seemed the other side of his bed had sprouted a lump; a very human-like lump at that. From beneath the thick coat of covers that blanketed it a mop of stray blonde hair tumbled. The heap of human squirmed uncomfortably, and simultaneously a muffled little whimper of a girlish sort drifted from underneath the covers.

A girl plus his bed; nothing strange about that picture, but Skye didn’t have blonde hair. So the estrogen-enflamed being that occupied his king-sized bed wasn’t his girlfriend.

Actually, when he came to think of it, that wasn’t exactly “strange” either. The only missing piece of the puzzle was putting a face, much less a name, with tonight’s company. Granted, he led a busy life, and he was sure it would come back to him in a minute. Just a minute.

With one more little groan the girl stirred, but this time she rolled over towards him and the blankets that she was tangled in were dragged away from her face.

Ah, now he remembered his mystery guest: Ms. Evian Challis, whose tepidly pinked cheeks and meticulously shaped nose had attracted her to him. Of course, she shared a quality with all the rest—the need to be rescued. Twenty three years old, five years younger than him, Evian still dwelled with her corporate-raiding father. She was a thumb-twiddler by day and a club-hopper by night, and finally it seemed Daddy’s boot had connected with Evian’s little tush.

Of course, being the good Samaritan this vehement dreamer was, there was no way he could let a woman whose skill level was about equivalent to that of your common housefly wander the streets aimlessly.

“Jax?” She whined on the wind of a tiny yawn, her somehow bleating tone contorting the nickname he usually favored into a sound he hated almost as ardently as his given forename.

His gaze had again become fixated on the view of the window he stood in front of. At the moment, rather than acknowledging the girl at all, he had resolved to watch his breath condense in a swirling cloud that disappeared soon after it came on the cool glass. It reminded him of fire, climbing up the window in a sweep only to die down as if it were alive. He stopped almost immediately.

“Jax,” She slurred sleepily, her tone entwined with a frustrated twist. “I heard a noise. A loud noise.”

“No worries,” he murmured sardonically, uninterestedly as he gazed out the window, “that was just me screaming my bloody lungs out.”

“Why would you do that?” She yawned again, sounding confused as she reluctantly sat up in the bed and rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes with her fists.

“Oh I don’t know, for kicks.”

Her eyebrows knit together, and Evian struggled to understand. Why would anybody enjoy hollering into the night, randomly, at almost 4:30 in the morning? Finally realization came to her, and, proud that she had so cleverly decoded his sarcasm, she informed him matter-of-factly, “You had a dream.”

Right, ‘dream’, Jax answered her inside his rattled brain. Dreams consist of fluffy rabbits chasing each other in fields of gold, laughing with cheesy smiles on their cartoon faces. Dreams would be images of himself standing atop the world with every man, woman and child at his feet, living in some sort of harmony. Those fantasies would bring a silly, almost embarrassing warmth into him that was as foreign as it was imaginary.

But in this particular ‘dream’, he was being chased by a fire that was a trace less than fluffy, and the only warmth that filled him was an insufferable one that petrified and cooked him in a deathly duo.

“A nightmare?” The relentless gal ventured, tilting her head as if straining to use the unfamiliar muscles of her brain caused her physical discomfort.

"I’ll live,” He replied flatly, but the two ironic words were like magic to him. He was alive and living, and if all went according to plan he was going to continue in that process.

As for the blonde-haired dream sleuth whose mystery-solving ability was off the charts, she studied the man as he stood at the window, his back to her. His stillness led her to believe that he had grown roots and was now an extension of the floor. And what a lucky floor it was to have adopted such a beautiful attachment, Evian pondered with a smirk while admiring the muscles of his bare back, jutting out and molding his skin to a new shape. Statue-like beside that window pale blue moonlight shrouded him, creating both eerie and elegant shadows that exaggerated his features, especially that of his somber face. Though it was only partially visible to her from this angle, she would be brain dead not to notice the cool cobalt of his eyes cutting the air in front of him, slicing a clear path of vision. With his chin tipped slightly upward he appeared abnormally wise, causing Evian to conclude that whatever it was being mulled over beneath that adorable head of glossy blond hair must be eons beyond her.

Needless to say, she was not incorrect in that assumption.

Out of seemingly nowhere there was a break in Jax’s train of thought, and at that moment he sighed heavily and turned toward her. With this action the girl felt an immense surge of blood rush to her head, and being the highly educated citizen she was she momentarily wondered if it was possible for him to actually see her heart beating in her throat. He was looking at her again.

“I’ve decided to go out for a walk,” Jax informed her, his eyes leaving her in an unintentionally aloof manner. At this statement, this abrupt action, and the sight of his only-clothed-by-dark-silk-boxers body disappearing into the closet across the room, her heart fell at least thirty stories to its rightful place in her chest.

"A what?” Evian puzzled, anger setting into her voice as reality located her.

“You know,” Jax answered finally, emerging from the closet while pulling a white muscle tank over his head, “a walk. It’s when you put one foot in front of the other, slowly, and repeat the process until you’ve gotten where you need to go. Get it?”

“But it’s like, 3 in the morning!”

“Nearing quarter to five, actually,” he tweaked, vanishing again to grab his sneakers. He found his Nikes and admired them for a minute, thankful when he realized that the rubber was still in tact. Worn down from use, but surely not melted.

“And it’s freezing out there,” Evian went on whining despite Jax’s lack of presence. “It’s freezing in here!” She pulled the soft crimson covers around her shoulders snuggly and simultaneously a pout fell over her face. “I don’t know why you keep it so cold in this place,” she was stating as he materialized in the doorway of his bedroom, decked out in walking attire. “Jax,” she continued with close to zero pause between this and her previous thought. Sighing quietly, she queried, “Is it me?”

For the first time since he had awoken from hell a look of sensitivity and perhaps caring came over his features as he tilted his head at her. He took a few small steps toward the bed and crooned, “Evian.” Perching on the side of the bed, he grappled underneath the thick blankets and located her hand, covered her icy fingers with his slightly sweaty ones. His musing eyes passed over her face, though she didn’t return his gaze; rather, she deliberately focused on a spot near her lap from which she could not look up. “Look at me,” He said softly, though it was an order.

Her responsive was a small sniffle.

To make this as quick as possible he slid closer toward the head of the bed and, taking her by surprise, dove down and caught her lips in a brief kiss, though he made sure it was long enough for her to embroider false meaning into. When he pulled away the girl was reluctant to open her eyes, and as he glanced over her once more with a smirk he became very aware that he liked her better silent. When her eyes fluttered open they roamed his face, and he took note of the fact that their ability to move quickly was hindered to a slightly sluggish crawl.

Quietly she asked, her voice begging, “Will you call?”

“You know I can’t,” He chided softly. When her face fell, he squeezed her hand and again found her gaze. Leaning forward for effect, he penetrated her cloudy-day eyes until he watched them sparkle beneath his stare. He always waited for the sparkle—a flicker, a flash, a visual snap that could be stirred from every woman’s eye as soon as it was penetrated. He knew, and he loved knowing, that when he had conjured that sparkle, any woman would flee to any corner of the earth to give him precisely what he wanted, whatever that may be.

Well, almost any corner. But still, the power was invigorating.

Holding that sparkle, he whispered in a final tone, “I will never forget you.”

It was a fib. He was fully aware upon uttering it. Even when his ears caught the treachery echoed in the Australian twang of his voice, it hadn’t bothered him. Of course, he was no advocate of lying; he was a man of principles. But a nearly negligible white lie here and there to save someone, especially a woman, a little heartache? Well, he was not above doing that.

“Oh, Jax,” She gushed breathlessly, her wind catching in her throat as she caught his hand in both of hers before he could sneak it away. All of a sudden it appeared her cheeks had been stained with a hint of cranberry along with the bridge of her meticulously shaped nose. He had been fond of her little nose, along with the shade of her long hair, which in some partially subconscious corner of his mind reminded him of his own. “I will never forget you.”

He lent her a small smile which flashed over his face fleetingly. Rising from the bed, he instructed, “You should probably be gone by the time I’m back. Make sure you lock the door on your way out.” He was about to spin on his heel and make a break when he remembered, “Oh, and tell your father I said hello.” She nodded quietly, sadly, and at that he turned from her and strode briskly out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out of the front door which he locked securely. He did not look back, but then again, why would he have?

As he opted to take the stairs over the elevator in order to get on ground level of the building in which his penthouse was located, his mind shifted mechanically to the subject at hand: this strange, terrifying nightmare. The heat tremors he had been experiencing lately. The bouts of sleep troubles.

As he started down the first flight, the girl lying in his king size bed at that moment was already more than halfway out of his mind.