Chapter Text
Like most people, Sam has never liked hospitals.
They're too uniform, too antiseptic, too big, and they're far too unfeeling in the face of how much life they hold in the balance.
Sam had discovered this at eleven, when a six-year-old Tara fell off of the playset in the backyard and broke her arm.
Sam and their father had been turned to the little garden against the back wall of the house. Looking at the little tomatoes that had begun to peek their way through the leaves, while their dad was promising they could use the fully grown ones to make sauce for spaghetti, Sam had been distracted. So, when the wail pierced the air, it jolted the both of them upright.
Ice cold shock, white-hot tingles, rocketed up Sam's spine and sent her heart thrashing against her ribs.
Her dad—quicker, longer-legged—made it to Tara first. He'd already gathered her in his arms by the time Sam managed to get gelatinous legs under control enough to run over, too.
Curled into his chest, Tara was nearly incoherent with pain, clutching at her left arm and sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. In the face of it, Sam was wet-cheeked too.
"Go get the keys and unlock the car for me, okay?" their dad told her, his voice calm, how could he be so calm, Sam thought her heart was about to shrivel up and die. "Can you do that for me, kiddo?"
Sam didn't think so. She couldn't focus. Tara's face was red and scrunched, and she was coughing from the lack of air, and Sam wanted to take her into her arms and press her so close they became one. She wanted to absorb all the hurt and all the sound, until Tara was calm and okay again.
"Samantha," her dad said, looking right at her, eyes a few shades lighter than hers. "Please. Can you do that for me? So I can carry Tara there?"
And it didn't matter what Sam felt. Tara needed her help, to be as collected as their dad, to take a deep breath and calm herself.
So, that's what she did.
She nodded and took off through the back door, into the house. It was fainter inside, the sound of Tara's pain, but not by much. Sam was pretty sure it would ring in her ears forever.
Her hands shook as she grabbed her dad's keys from the bowl by the front door. They shook as she grabbed the spare inhaler they kept there, too.
Her dad was making his way to the garage from outside; Sam saw him pass by the window with Tara in his arms.
So, she ran to the side entrance from the kitchen and pressed the button to unlock the car. When she opened the door and stumbled down the steps leading into the garage, her dad was already leant over and working to buckle Tara into her booster seat.
On the other side, Sam clambered into the backseat.
"I have to drive, okay, baby? So, I'm going to let Sam take care of you. It's going to be alright."
He brushed hair from Tara's face, swiped a thumb down a tear-stained cheek, and Sam, finally, saw a bit of a wobble to his chin. Subtle, but there.
It should've scared her more, but, instead, it made her feel better. To know she wasn't the only one straining.
"Here, Tare," she said, as her dad shut the door and moved swiftly to the driver's side. "It's okay. Shh. It's okay."
She scooted across the seat until she was pressed close to Tara's side.
Tara was still taking in heaving gasps, crying too forcefully to help her breathe properly. Sam shook the inhaler, as her mom had shown her, and uncapped it.
She held it to Tara's mouth and said, "This'll help. Big breath in for me."
Tara managed, after a clumsy press of lips, to open her mouth enough to allow Sam to properly administer the medicine. Almost instinctively, Tara held her breath for the few seconds needed to make her lungs work once more.
Her exhale, still, was stuttering, as was her whimper. But her breathing was just a fraction slower, her crying less strangled.
"Hurts," she said.
"I know," Sam said. "Not for long. They're gonna fix it soon."
And they did.
When they got to the emergency room, the nurses took them into a curtained off area, where, after a round of x-rays, a doctor came and said they had to reset the bone.
Sam held Tara's tiny right hand, from right beside the examination table, as Tara, in their dad's lap, had her arm handled by people Sam didn't know but had to trust.
It was done so fast, the blink of an eye, and Sam had to blink through her own stars, as Tara cried out again.
"I'm sorry," she said. Because she had been turned. She hadn't been paying attention. And she knew better than to leave Tara to try to climb the big steps to the slide. "I'm sorry."
Even hours later, when Tara was calmed, and had a pale blue cast of her choosing, Sam couldn't stop thinking it.
Couldn't stop thinking that if she had been paying attention, had been closer, Tara might've been okay.
Couldn't stop thinking about Tara sitting so small against the backdrop of white walls, surrounded by apathetic machines and sterile smells.
Couldn't stop thinking about how she never wanted to see that again.
Not knowing what the future had in store.
When she got the call from Wes, Sam thought about that day for the first time in years.
All at once, she was taken back to those eleven-year-old bones, and the nausea that had seeped into them. Her vision swam before her.
Attacked. Her sister had been attacked. Left for dead.
And Sam had looked away. Sam hadn't been close.
She'd failed her, again. And as Richie drove them across the town line, Sam wondered if that was all she'd ever be meant for. Failing those that meant the most to her.
So, Sam has hated hospitals since she was eleven years old, and every time since, when she was there for herself, after too close calls with a substance she'd hoped to escape with.
But never more than when she walked in to see Tara sat small in a bed, surrounded by her friends but looking right at Sam with teary eyes and tiny voice.
"You came."
"Of course, I came," Sam said.
Because there is no world, no self-imposed distance or punishment that could keep Sam away, even if she knows that getting closer, closing proximity, will be worse in the long run.
Call it weakness, or selfishness, or maybe just the big sister instinct she never can seem to shake.
But she swore, as soon as the details came to light—that even in her absence, her family baggage found Tara and intended her harm—that she wouldn't be in a place where she had to turn around and hear Tara's pain again.
She would stay, and she would keep eyes on her. She would try to catch her, she would try to defend her, and she would die doing so, if need be.
Their mother was gone, and so was their dad. No longer were either of them met with soft voices and gentle touches and soothing reassurances from their parents. It was just them.
And Sam would meet the role with as much resolve as she could.
So, at the new hospital, she's been shuffling between back-to-back rooms. (Tara in one, and Chad, post-surgery, under intensive care, with Mindy in the other.)
It's another private floor, but, this time, multiple nurses are stationed at the desk, and a doctor is available on-call. There are four guards posted at the doors to the rooms, and more are at the entrances to the floor and the elevators.
(Even with the deaths of Richie and Amber, it wouldn't do to lack caution.)
Despite her attempts to remain vigilant, whenever she’s trapped in her own room, herded back in by worried health professionals, the days all seem to combine in an amorphous blur, and Sam feels as if she only catches glimpses. Flashes of Tara's face, wan and weary against the backdrop of her hospital bed. Police officers, and IV drips and heart monitors, and more doctors than she'd ever cared to know in her life.
It all just blends together, smears at the edges and shines where it shouldn't, and Sam can't keep a firm grasp.
A lot of which is likely due to sleep deprivation. Hardly of her own accord does she sleep—too in tune with every sound in the halls, every squeak against linoleum, every whisper around the corner. More often than not, she stares at the thin strip of light under her door and tries not to flinch at every shadow that passes by.
So, while her body needs rest, desperately, and while the nurses sometimes take matters into their own hands and sedate her, Sam, otherwise, has rarely been able to find relief in unconsciousness.
She's sure it isn't helping things.
Really, the only times she finds she feels truly present are when she's allowed to see Tara, and Mindy and Chad. Being able to have eyes on her sister, and her friends, keeps her where she's supposed to be. Reminds her what she needs to do and who she needs to look out for.
When they've started to heal a little more, and are set to be released soon, she and Tara are transferred to a shared room, and it's only then that Sam really has lasting moments of grounded-ness.
It's half-past two in the morning, one and a half weeks since they survived, the first night in their shared room, and all is quiet around her. Tara, in the bed over, is asleep, and looks, mercifully, peaceful.
But Sam is sitting up and staring at the orange-black shadows of the streetlights shining through the blinds, elongated across the floor and the foot of her bed. The silence, a ringing thing in her ears, strengthens and softens in a cycle that's almost hypnotic.
It lulls her into half-consciousness.
One which only breaks when she hears a quiet, "Sam," from her left.
Her eyes burn as she blinks.
She turns her head and sees Tara's gaze on her through the dark, like a shock to the system. Like every other moment she's been with Tara since they survived, she's suddenly, almost painfully, rooted into her body.
The pain in her side, the sear of each inhale, is still near-excruciating. It burns so badly sometimes, both along the stitches, and deep, deep inside, where the blade had been twisted and yanked. Where the betrayal had first been branded.
But Sam uses it to ground herself.
"Hey," she whispers, eyebrows drawn in concern, trying not to reel too noticeably. "What's wrong?"
Tara is watching her in much the same way she had the first time she saw Sam in five years, soft and wondering and relieved to find her there. Except, now, there's concern of her own, too.
"You haven't been sleeping," she says, by way of response, matter of fact. "You didn't tell me you haven't been sleeping."
Sam presses her lips together. She tries to think of something to say that isn't how can I sleep, how can I ever sleep again, I slept in the same bed as someone who hurt you, who used me to hurt you, I'm scared I'll see his eyes when I close mine.
She tries to think of something to say that softens the truth, but Tara interrupts her.
"Don't try to lie to me," she says, still quiet, un-accusatory. Wiser than she should be, she looks at Sam like she understands. "I get it. It's hard for me too."
Of course, it is. How could it not be? To have a friend, who held your hand and your spare inhaler and promised to protect you, turn around and put blade to bone... Tara understands better than anyone else.
An ache pokes at the underside of Sam's sternum.
"So, what do you say?" Tara asks, scooting over in her bed, as best as she can. "Sleepover?"
Sam huffs out a little breath of a laugh, feeling tender in the heart and so unbelievably fond that she could burst right into tears.
"I'm not sure it's medically approved," she says, a ghost of a smile on her lips. "I don't want you to pull anything out, or strain yourself."
"I don't toss and turn, and neither do you," Tara says. "Last I recall, you sleep like the dead." A grimace, a flinch. Wrong choice of words. "I—sorry.” A beat. “You don't have to—"
Sam's already climbing out of her bed as carefully as she can, wheeling her IV stand over to the left side of Tara's bed, and sliding under the covers with painstaking caution.
Against her, Tara is almost startlingly warm, the type of warm that only comes from sleep, and Sam does an admirable job of refraining from flinching at the contact. Already, it's a part of her again, the instinct to flinch away from touch. From doctors and from Tara and from the twins.
Borne from the fallout of her thirteen-year-old mistakes, her aversion to touch is something she'd been working toward bettering. She'd opened herself up to some modicum of love and intimacy, with Richie, after he'd worked for weeks to worm his way in. (Despite what he said about any ease.)
And look what that had gotten her.
Look how plainly she’d been made the fool. The culpable one. Gullible, believing anyone could say they love her for herself, for her past, and mean it.
It was bullshit. All of it. And she might’ve deserved it, on her own. But Tara didn’t.
Wes didn’t. Liv didn’t. Mindy and Chad didn’t. And Sam had gotten all of them harmed.
Everyone who knows the truth about her parentage and her history hates her, either avoids her because of it or uses it against her in a cruel, twisted plot to make her and her loved ones pay. She’s scared to think what Tara might conclude, once she’s healed enough to move around on her own. Once she doesn’t need Sam in the immediate vicinity for threat of a Ghostface appearing around the corner, what might happen?
Sam wouldn’t blame her, if she were to tell her to go. After all, she was already gone for five years. What right does she have, now? Especially after her return has brought nothing but pain and turmoil.
Tara might just think that she’s better off on her own.
“You’re somewhere else again.”
Tara’s voice is even sleepier now that they’re settled in, but her eyes are attentive, shadowed by the furrow in her eyebrows.
“I’m right here,” Sam reassures.
Tara looks as if she doesn’t agree, but she presses her lips together, similar to how Sam had earlier. Sam sighs and reaches up to brush some hair from Tara’s forehead.
“Go on and say what you want.”
“I’m worried about you,” Tara says. “I know it’s only been a week and a half, but still.”
Her eyes are so earnest, open and intense in a way Sam had forgotten they could be. Sam goes impossibly softer.
That big sister urge, the one that drove her back home, that spoke plainly to her as Richie tried to convince her of falsehoods, swells up at the base of her throat.
“It’s my job to worry about you,” she says. “Not the other way around.”
“Yeah, well”—and, here, Tara gives a ghost of a smile, wry—“I do what I want, these days. So, I’m gonna worry about you.”
Sam huffs out a breath of a laugh, barely half a sound wave in the air but more levity than she’s expressed since their whole world was rocked off its axis.
She tightens her arm around Tara’s shoulders and brings her other around her front in a full embrace, leaning her cheek against the top of Tara’s head and holding fast.
She doesn’t know what to say, really. They’re so far removed from that day when the worst injury either of them had ever seen was a fracture in the forearm. And Sam has failed so terribly at being the one to take Tara in her arms and absorb the pain. She doesn’t deserve the care, or the comfort Tara has given so freely.
So, she opts for silence, as it has to be better than any sort of broken promise would be.
After a while, into the quiet, Tara says, “I’m sorry he did that to you,” and Sam’s entire body tenses. Her throat closes up. “You don’t have to be okay yet. Just don’t hurt alone, okay? We have each other, right?”
Sam’s, “Right,” comes out strangled, but at least it comes out.
It’s Tara’s turn to tighten her arms around Sam. She shifts a little and rests her head more solidly against Sam’s shoulder. Sam, on instinct, lifts a hand to the side of her head.
“I’m sorry, too,” she says, into Tara’s hair. “About Amber.”
She doesn’t have to see, somehow, to know Tara grinds her teeth. She feels her nod, just faintly, like the powering through of an unexpected blow.
“Yeah,” Tara says. “Fuck her.” A beat. “Fuck him.”
Sam nods, too.
“Fuck them.”
It doesn’t help the burn of treachery, consistently lapping at their skin. But it still feels good to say.
They fall into a bit of a lull once more, and Tara is so still that Sam thinks she might’ve fallen asleep again.
She isn’t sure whether or not she wants her to be, when she says, “I know it might take a while for you to trust me again, but, I promise, I’m not gonna leave you. I’m gonna try my best not to mess up like I did before, and anything that wants to get to you will have to go through me. Okay?”
She kisses Tara’s head, closes her eyes momentarily, to just take in the fact that they’re alive and they’re together, and it’s everything eleven-year-old Sam had sworn to guarantee. It’s everything she never thought she’d have again.
It’s everything she’ll fight for. Without hesitation.
When the whisper comes back from Tara some time later, it's shaky and tearful.
“Okay.”
It only solidifies Sam’s resolve.
She says, "Go to sleep, Tara. I'll be here when you wake up."
Tara is out within a minute, and, Sam, for the first time in a week and a half, isn’t far behind.
. . . .
Unsurprisingly, as the protective streak in Sam reignites for Tara, so it does for Mindy and Chad.
As the four of them continue to heal in Woodsboro, caught in a limbo of planning for the future and fearing their lack of one, it grows into a steady flame.
Whenever Sam isn't with the other three, she asks for her call to be put on speaker and goes through their checklist.
"Tasers?"
"Check," says Chad.
"Cell phones?"
"Yes," is Mindy.
"What have we practiced?"
Now, Tara, "Be aware of the doors, keep our eyes on each other, don't turn our backs."
It's a little much, Sam knows. But in the wake of what they've been through—in the reality that they have experienced most people's wildest nightmares—it's just how they cope. It's just best practice.
"Okay, great. I'll be off work in a few hours. Call me if you need anything at all."
"Yes, mom," is usually from Mindy, already further in the background.
"Love you," Sam always says right before they hang up, to Tara.
"Love you too," Tara always says back.
When the future seems to be more attainable, when Tara and the twins get into Blackmore University all the way in New York, Sam is left trying to figure out her place in the world, and what it might mean if it's not beside Tara again.
The thought unsettles her in a way she doesn't like the return of. In a way she used to repress and repress and repress, but, now, couldn't even dream of ignoring.
In the few months she's been back in Tara's life—since Tara's been back in her life—Sam's come to feel her presence like a phantom limb, or a newly healed hollow of her heart. An intrinsic part of her, existing outside of her body.
The thought of being without her and surviving the absence is unfathomable.
And the problem is, Tara doesn't ask her to come with. She talks about rooming with Mindy and the upcoming orientation in June, before the July summer semester starts. She talks about how she's always wanted to see New York, and all the pizza she's going to try, and she doesn't ask Sam to come with. It makes Sam's chest hurt so bad she has to fight the urge to double over.
Because rooted deep within her, present at all times but prominent when she's lying alone in the dark of her room at night, is the thought that the five years she'd been gone were enough to open and then cauterize the wound of her absence in Tara. The thought that Tara doesn't need her anymore, even if she wants her around sometimes. The realization that it would be understandable, for that to be the case.
After all, in her eighteen years, Tara has been through so much, too much, and she's done so much of it alone, and all of that is Sam's fault.
So, she would understand how Tara could have come to the conclusion that Sam is dead weight harboring a death omen.
But any time she actually thinks about packing Tara's stuff up and helping her move across the country, about leaving her and Chad and Mindy in a new city and returning to California all on her own, she feels a bit like she's dying.
And she just doesn't know if she's selfless enough to do it. No matter how much she wishes she was.
It's the night of the kids' graduation. After a bittersweet posthumous bestowing of diplomas to Wes and Liv, and a raucous round of cheers for Tara, Mindy, and Chad's walk across the stage, with Sam in the very front row with the Meeks-Martins, the celebration party is in full-swing.
As opposed to the dreaded house parties of Ghostfaces past, it's a family event, hosted by the Meeks-Martins, celebrating the twins and Tara, as an honorary third member. There are adults and teens alike, and Sam was graciously offered an invitation by Mrs. Meeks-Martin.
(She's tried to apologize to her, and Mr. Meeks-Martin. For bringing the danger back to their family. But they wouldn't hear it.
"This horror has touched my family long before you," Mrs. Meeks-Martin told her, gently. "I cannot blame you for bringing danger any more than I could blame my brother for it. You're a victim, too, Sam. You don't need to apologize for that."
Mr. Meeks-Martin was nodding behind his wife, and they looked so much like they meant it, and it was too much, too kind. Sam had to blink through unexpected tears and clear her throat.
In a last act of kindness, neither of them called her on it.)
Sam has been content to sit on her own for the majority of the night, watching Tara and Mindy lightly shoulder and elbow each other over who will go first in Monopoly, and then whoop in victory as they defeat Chad's team definitively.
It's the first time in months that they've seemed fully their age, uninhibited by the thought of any impending doom. Uninhibited by thoughts of tasers and fully charged phones and whether their exits are covered.
Full of hope for the future and their friends. As they should be.
In three short weeks, they'll be leaving, and looking at them brings that same bittersweet ache.
Sam has to take turns looking and then looking away. She takes a sip of her wine and eyes the front door. When a short, sudden burst of laughter and noise from the gaming table startles her in her place on the couch, she barely smothers her flinch.
Instinctively, in the wake of her increased heart rate, she looks at Tara. Reassures herself all is well.
Finding her smiling and arguing with Chad over how much he has to give up after landing on her property is enough to make Sam smile too. Faintly.
Content, for the moment, that Tara is as safe and happy as she can be, Sam stands and makes her way to the backdoor, where the grilling took place earlier.
The night is warm and dry against her skin, but the air is fresh, and the wind feels nice as it moves through her hair.
The elevated, wooden deck is empty of people now, and, so, Sam makes her way to the steps that lead down into the yard and sits on the top one. She leans her elbows on her legs and looks out into the darkness, only barely dented by the moonlight and the white string lights crossing back and forth between the far posts of the railing.
She isn't sure how much time passes before the door slides open behind her again. She glances over her shoulder and finds Chad approaching.
She smiles a little as he settles in next to her.
"Got tired of being worked over, huh?" she asks.
"Oh, yeah," he says. "My sister convinced me to sell out before it was too late. I took the money and ran."
Sam chuckles.
"What're you doing out here?" he asks. "Even with your tank top, it's too warm. Plus, all the fun's inside."
Another burst of noise and clapping.
"That it is," Sam says. She shrugs. "Wanted some fresh air."
Chad hums.
For a few moments, they sit in silence, comfortably.
Eventually, Chad says, "So, are you really just going to stay behind while we go to New York?" Sam blinks over at him, meets his eyes. "I find it hard to believe being in Woodsboro is what you want."
"It isn't, particularly," she says. "This town and I don't quite seem to get along." A beat. "But I also can't stomach going back to Modesto." Nausea tingles through her jaw at the mere thought. She swallows and shrugs again, shakes it off. "So, yeah, I guess Woodsboro is where it's at, for now. Before I figure it out."
"Have you talked to Tara about it?" he asks.
"Not really," Sam says, like it hasn't been all she's thought about doing since the acceptance letters came in. "She's so excited for New York, and college, and moving across the country takes a lot of fucking logistics, so we've mostly been focusing on that."
Chad hums again, and, this time, Sam leans a little bit away to fix him with a narrow-eyed look, mildly curious.
"I feel like you're working toward something specific," she says. "Go ahead and say it."
He's quiet again, for a few seconds, and then he asks, carefully, "Do you want to live on your own again?"
Sam feels like the air is vacuumed from her lungs. She feels a bit like she's been punched in the chest. She has to resist a gasp for air.
God no, she wants to say. I hadn't realized how awful it was until I was reminded how it felt to be surrounded by people. I don't know if I can handle going back.
She swallows thickly. She doesn't say anything, for fear of everything she might let slip.
She thinks he reads it all in the shine of her eyes.
"Maybe you should tell Tara that," he suggests.
The laugh that comes out of her is watery.
"No," she actually does say this time. "She's too excited about moving to feel guilty about leaving her big sister behind." A sigh. "Our mom has already made a fuss about it. I'm not going to add to that." She tries for a smile, a nudge of her shoulder against his. "I'll be okay, Chad. I promise."
He doesn't seem convinced, and she doesn't blame him. Her voice cracked halfway through his name.
She has to fight the urge to look away. She has to fight the urge to leave. She, instead, listens to the night bugs, and watches his forehead move with his thoughts.
She doesn't know what she's expecting him to say, maybe that he'll miss her, maybe that she's not fooling anyone, maybe that she deserves what's coming to her. (Well, definitely not that last one. That's not his voice she heard it in. That's all her own.)
But it definitely isn't for him to change tracks with, "I think that Tara isn't used to people staying, let alone wanting to follow." His eyes are intent on hers, gentle and serious. "And I think she's been scared of asking you." He searches her face. "For the same reason you've been scared of asking her."
Of all the reasons she's guessed Tara might have been avoiding broaching the topic of Sam's approaching solitude, that had never occurred to her.
Nothing about Tara's tone of voice had ever suggested any hint of remorse for leaving Woodsboro behind, and Sam had lumped herself in as part of that deal.
But if Chad's theory is correct, then maybe Tara's, "Freshmen can't say in the on-campus apartments, so we'd almost need to get one off-campus. Though Mindy and I couldn't afford one just by ourselves," and Tara's, "I know how much you hate driving. I think you'd probably like the subway," and, late at night, with a movie going quietly in the background, Tara's, "I don't want you to be alone," had all been pointing to something else.
Maybe they had not been off-handed comments that had unintentionally rubbed salt in the wound. Maybe Tara had not been hoping for Sam to reassure her that the dorms would be a good experience—despite her internal fear of so many strangers in such close proximity to the three of them—and that the subway would be nice, and that, really, she would be okay, Tara didn't need to worry about her.
Maybe they were indicators of something else.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
"Huh," she says.
Chad smiles something small at that. She watches the right side of his mouth quirk up and focuses, for a few seconds, on the steady up and down of his chest.
Backlit by the lights, shoulders relaxed and pain-free, he looks so different yet so similar to the boy who'd begged her to keep his Pikachu onesie despite the other kids telling him he was too old for it. She feels such a fondness for him she doesn't know where to put it.
Soft, teasing, she says, "Since when did you get so smart?"
And his grin grows.
"I always have been, thank you very much," he says. "It's just proximity to Mindy. She makes everyone look dumb by comparison."
And he's still joking, she can tell. But she reaches for his hand anyway.
"Well, thank you," she says, earnestly.
"Of course," he says, squeezing her fingers. "Survivors gotta stick together."
She nods and squeezes his fingers back.
"You know, if you were gonna miss me, you could've said that."
"I would," Chad admits, easily. "But I'm hoping I won't have to."
And, well, Sam is starting to hope the same.
They've been staying in a small apartment together since they got out of the hospital. They were lucky to find a sympathetic landlord, who was willing to rent to them on such short notice, because there was no way they were going back to the Carpenter house.
It's a one bedroom, but they couldn't afford to be picky. Hotels weren't convenient enough for Tara's required set-up for rest. There wasn't enough space for all her bandages and medications and monitoring equipment.
So, Sam had signed a month-to-month lease a few days before Tara was set to be released, and she had the bedroom all ready for her when the day came to bring her home.
She's been camped on the couch, as a result, ever since, and though her side gets sore, and her back protests, she's gotten used to it.
And even though Tara doesn't need all the bandages and antibiotics and elevation equipment anymore, she still has the bedroom. Sam had quickly shut down any suggestion that they take turns.
So, she's standing in the living room, fluffing her comforter and preparing to bed down, when Tara turns the light out in the kitchen and steps out with her bottle of water.
She looks tired, but contentedly so. Healthily so. The kind that comes after a long, fulfilling day.
Sam smiles as she watches her rub a hand against her eye.
"High school graduate," she says. "How does it feel?"
Tara smiles too.
"About the same," she says. "But I bet that'll change once summer semester starts. You know how teachers always like to point out how different college is.” She exaggerates her voice and raises her hands in an approximation of being haunting. “How woefully unforgiving and cruel the professors are when it comes to homework and using the restroom.”
Tara rolls her eyes, likely thinking about her specific pre-cal teacher who would tell the kids the real world wouldn’t be as kind to them. (She’d graced Sam with a handful of rants about him.)
Sam nods. Despite her and Chad's conversation, the familiar pang appears, as it always does when Tara talks about leaving.
"Well, I just wanted to say, I'm really proud of you," she says around it. And, then, carefully, "And I'm really gonna miss you."
It's the first time she's admitted it out loud. She hasn't wanted to place it on Tara. Hasn't wanted to make her feel like she shouldn't go or shouldn't get away from Woodsboro.
She was so worried about burdening Tara with a tie to the town that hasn't done her much good, that she hadn't thought about how Tara might've needed to hear it. Might've wanted to hear it. Might've wanted reassurance that her absence would be felt, and deeply.
But as she watches Tara receive it, and absorb it, she thinks that had been a mistake. She thinks Chad may have been right, and Tara was waiting to hear what she was too scared to ask for.
So, Sam decides to be braver, to make up for a lot of the cowardice of her life, and she continues.
“I was thinking, you know, that I don’t have any fondness for Woodsboro, and, without you here, I really have no reason to stay.” She fiddles with her pillowcase but keeps her eyes on Tara. “And when I said I wouldn’t leave you, I meant it.” She sees Tara’s chin wobble. “But I can understand if it’s not—if me coming with would be weird. I can understand if you want to…”
Leave me.
She gestures vaguely, lets the implication hang. She braces herself. She's always bracing herself, she's found. Even before the attacks.
When Tara limps over to her, her muscles are so tense she could likely snap under a wayward wink.
She isn't expecting the hug that comes. This time, she does flinch a little.
But as Tara presses her ear to her chest, and wraps fierce arms around her, Sam snaps, instead, into focus. She returns the embrace around Tara's shoulders.
A few moments, maybe minutes, pass in this way, before Tara's voice comes quietly, "Now we really can get that off-campus apartment."
Sam laughs, brushing a hand down Tara's hair, hanging loose around her shoulders.
Some of that ever-present tension of hers releases with the sound. Her shoulders loosen with it.
"Yeah," she says. "We can. Whatever you want."
Tara pulls back and grins up at her, and Sam means it. Whatever Tara wants and needs, she'll try to provide.
She'll look out for her and keep her safe, and she'll stay by her side.
No matter what.
. . . .
The only problem is that New York brings all new circumstances and all new threats and so much potential for things to go wrong, and it's too much.
It's far too much, and Sam has a hard time adjusting. Because Woodsboro might be suffocating and soaked in tragedy, but at least it's predictable. At least they know the streets and the alleyways and the parks. The buildings are the same as they've always been, and the speed limit doesn't go above twenty-five despite having the space for it.
New York is just too big, too unfeeling, an antithesis to the sterility of hospitals but disturbing in its own way.
So, while Tara seems to revel in the millions of bodies and faces, trying to disappear into the crowds and be as careless as kids her age should be, Sam only gets more paranoid. She only tries to hold on tighter in the face of all she can't predict.
And it creates strain. A lot of it.
To the point where, when she calls and checks in, Tara begins to get short with her. She starts to get impatient.
She says, "We're fine, we'll be careful, seriously, Sam."
And when Sam says, "Okay. Love you," Tara, more often than not, starts to say, "Yeah, talk to you later.”
Which hurts more than a knife ever could.
Of course, it's not all bad, all the time.
There are nights where they'll talk and joke and laugh, and the distance expanding between them will go, mercifully, faint. It'll be almost transparent enough to ignore.
But the nights where Tara goes into her room and slams the door. The nights where she refuses to talk to her, or, worse, talks to her with cutting tone and cutting words, start to become more frequent. They become closer to the norm.
And Sam is left wanting so badly to take Tara into her arms, and to absorb her pain, but now knowing, acutely, that she is the one causing it.
It leaves her feeling adrift, trying her best but failing and failing and failing at every turn.
It doesn't help that, suddenly, rumors start to sprout up. Conspiracy theories that she's a mastermind, the true Woodsboro murderer, who framed her boyfriend and Tara's friend, as revenge for her father.
It doesn't help that, suddenly, it seeps out of the internet forums and people start to become bold enough in the street to confront her. To yell at her. To throw things, even.
The first time it ever happens, she's out with Mindy, walking through a farmer's market in search for some special quinoa Mindy had convinced her she just had to try.
She's leaning into a stall, examining mangoes for ripeness and wondering if Tara still prefers them over strawberries, and Mindy is right beside her, texting someone with a small smile. A smile that Sam recognizes.
She waits a few seconds, bides her time.
“So,” she says, faux-casual, when Mindy still hasn't looked up. “When, exactly, are we going to get to meet this Anika?”
Mindy immediately locks her phone and slides it into her back pocket. She meets Sam’s expectant eyes, raised eyebrows, ready-to-tease smile, with a defiant expression.
“We’re still taking things slow,” she says. And, then, matter-of-fact, “I have to be sure she’s genuine.”
Which, okay, fair. No one can ever say Mindy doesn’t tell it like it is.
Sam does a remarkable job of remaining unflinching. She nods and says, “Okay. Heard.” She picks up two mangoes and puts them in her bag. Hands over the money to the vendor. “Well, I hope the day comes, eventually.”
They move on to the next stall.
Then, more softly, Mindy says, “Me too.”
Sam smiles at her, just as soft. She reaches down and takes Mindy’s hand in her own. She squeezes faintly, once, before letting go.
And before either one of them can say anything else, a voice from behind calls out, “Hey!”
They turn to find a group of three guys, about Mindy’s age, only a few feet away.
The one that had first called out, standing in the middle, says to Sam, “We know what you did.”
Confused, with wrinkled brow, Sam says, "I'm sorry?"
From the guy on the right comes, "You should be."
Sam’s eyes flit, first, to Mindy, and then to the final boy, who is holding up his phone and pointing it right at her.
Mindy steps in closer to Sam’s side.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” she says.
“We’re talking about how she’s got all of you fooled,” is the middle one, the ringleader, presumably. “She’s the one who orchestrated all of that shit in Woodsboro. She’s the real killer.” His eyes meet hers. “She’s just like her father, and none of you know it.”
For a split-second, a low ring whines in Sam's ears. Her stomach drops out from within her, falls brick-heavy to her feet and the market cobblestone. She has to blink through the surprise sensation of a gut-punch, and the sting of tears that she refuses to shed.
“Yeah, you should stay away from her, Mindy,” comes from the guy with the phone. “You could be next.”
“Dude, are you fucking serious?”
Sam snaps back into it when she feels Mindy’s body jerk with movement. She reaches out on instinct to grab her and hold her back by the waist.
“Mindy,” she says, from behind her, holding her tight. “Mindy, just leave it.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Mindy says, sharp and loud and definitely drawing attention. “Get the hell away from us.”
The three guys are laughing, sneering and jeering in that way that means they wanted a spectacle. Sam maneuvers herself and Mindy so that she’s standing closer to them, even as she pushes Mindy a little to urge her down the main thoroughfare.
People around are beginning to slow and stare, curious and confused, and Sam just wants to get out. She's too stunned for much else.
“You can’t hide forever, Samantha!” the first guy calls as they retreat. “The truth will come out!”
Sam grits her teeth and keeps insistent hands against Mindy’s back to ensure she doesn’t turn around.
They only make it two steps before Sam feels the harsh and heavy thud of impact against the back of her left shoulder.
A shatter of glass erupts a second later at her feet. The two sensations that come are of a warm wetness trickling down her back and an immediate ache rolling through her muscles. She catches a glimpse of the broken bottle, what was a half-full Calypso lemonade, and places the scent suddenly seeping into her clothes.
The shock of the blow is what pulls her up short. She turns in time to hear one of the sellers yell, “Hey, knock it off!”
The guys laugh and point at her once more, before taking off in the opposite direction.
“Fuck you, assholes!” Mindy yells after them.
But she doesn’t try to go after them. Instead, she steps in front of Sam and turns the full force of her gaze, and sudden concern, onto her. She places a warm hand on Sam’s dry arm and lets her other one hover.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “Are you really hurt?”
Compared to how well they know what really hurt means, no, Sam is not. Sure, the blow of the glass bottle is going to bruise, and it has, already, begun to ache fiercely. But she got lucky that it didn’t shatter against her. And she’s been through worse.
So, she shakes her head.
“It’s fine,” she says. “Let’s go.”
There are too many eyes on them. She can feel each one. Mindy senses it too.
So, though she looks unconvinced, she begins to walk at the same time that Sam does.
She stays noticeably close the entire trek back to the apartment.
When they walk through the door, Chad and Tara are sitting on the couch, flipping through youtube videos.
“Hey,” Chad says, still looking at the screen. “Settle a debate for us. Do you think video essays are more palatable than written ones, or—” he glances over and immediately sobers “—what happened?”
Tara looks over too. She straightens and stands.
The majority of the lemonade that had spilled out of the bottle onto Sam has dried, leaving her feeling sticky. But some of it still clings to her hair and drips every so often.
Her arm has started to hurt all the way down to her fingers, and, in the back of her mind, she’s already dreading what it means for the diner job she’d just landed the week prior.
More than any of that, though, she feels cut open and raw, a nerve left exposed to the air, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t even want to process it. She hates how frozen she'd been. How the words of strangers had managed to slice so deep.
“It’s nothing,” she says, toeing off her boots. “I’m fine.”
“Sam,” Tara says, walking forward. “What—Are you covered in…" She gets near enough to smell it. "Lemonade?”
And Sam is just so tired. She’s too tired and too vulnerable to take any amount of the acrimony that might come her way.
The only reason she and Mindy had been out of the apartment in the first place is because Sam, in an attempt to provide space, had sequestered herself in her room after an argument the night before about Tara sending a text when her class runs over and she won't be home at the usual time.
She had only come out in the early morning hours to grab some food, and it was, as Mindy put it, sad, and needed to be amended, and though Sam didn't like the implications, she appreciated the sentiment and accepted the invitation.
And, well, see how that had worked out for her.
“Don’t worry about it, Tara,” she says. "I'm just going to get in the shower and lay down."
She isn't sure if she predicts it in her head, or if it actually happens, but she pictures Mindy reaching an arm out, keeping Tara back with a gentle shake of the head.
She's immensely grateful that it seems to work.
And when she's under the hot water, turned scalding on purpose, she knows it's because to tell Tara about what happened is to tell her what those guys said. What people are beginning to say all across the internet.
That she's a product of her father, an apple that hasn't fallen far from the tree, and she's destined to hurt those close to her.
She didn't kill the people of Woodsboro, didn't plan the massacre that so traumatized her little family, but she has been scared, all her life, that she would turn out just like her birth father.
And when she killed Richie, all she could think about in the moment had been that he had used her, violated her, with the sole purpose of causing pain and seeking personal gain. Not only that, but he had targeted her sister as a means to do it.
And she hated him. She hated him so fiercely for it that she hadn't stopped after a few stabs. She let the urge to cause him pain, so much pain, pain close but never equal to what he had caused, take over.
And it had felt good. She'd relished in foiling his bullshit plans and making him eat his words in blood. She'd just had to picture Tara struggling to move, crying out in pain on the hospital floor with a robed figure stood above her, and she couldn't feel bad for it.
And it scares her. That she still doesn't feel bad for it. It scares her, that killing him came so easily.
She doesn't want to be a ticking time bomb. She doesn't want to think that this started with killing those who were proven threats to her family but could evolve into killing more freely. She doesn't want to think that she might be capable of such things.
She doesn't want to think that she, too, poses a threat to her family.
But the truth of the matter is, that even if it's not by her own hands, she does. Because she knows, just as the rest of them do, that Sidney has only escaped the wrath of the Ghostface lineage in recent years, after decades.
And, now, Sam is the successor of that terror. Meaning, anyone around her is too. Meaning, anyone around her could be used as collateral damage or a means to push pain onto her.
So, no matter how hard she tries, she does pose a threat to her family. To Tara. To Chad. To Mindy.
And it's only a matter of time before something gives. Before it's her or someone with a vendetta against her who rocks their world off its axis and brings nothing but horror.
That's why she had frozen in the marketplace. It's why she had been so shocked. Because all her deepest fears are becoming fodder for public conversation, and to hear it in voices not inside her shook her to her core.
Because despite how much she wishes otherwise, she's selfish, and she doesn't want Tara, or Mindy, or Chad to view her the way so many are starting to. Because she thought if she could keep her fears to herself, and struggle with them herself, she might be able to salvage it.
But if everyone starts talking about it, how long will it take, for the three of them to come to a new conclusion? A new realization.
It feels like it’s only a matter of time.
And Sam might be selfish enough to want them close. But if they told her to go, she would.
Even if the mere thought chokes her enough to have to step back out of the shower spray, just so she can catch a breath.
It only helps a little. The air in the bathroom is steamy and humid and hard to breathe in. Her skin is red, red, red. Just like her hands.
She blinks and rubs at her eyes. She winces when they feel tender under her touch. She hadn't realized she'd started to cry. She doesn't know how long she has been.
Lifting her left arm to wash her hair, and to rinse it, is already a challenge. The sharp soreness of a deep bruise sending the pain through her entire upper back and down her to her fingertips.
She uses it like she'd used the fresh stitches in her side: to ground her. She focuses acutely on it, rather than the way her brain wants to go back to its spiral.
Its they don't need you here, they'll hate you eventually, Tara already sort of does, you need to let them go, you need to go, you're destined to be alone, it's for the best.
She moves just a little too quickly, a little too abruptly, so that the pain radiates with renewed vigor. So that she can lean into it and stay just above the precipice.
When she steps out onto the bathmat, the injury is so irritated it's throbbing. It feels a bit like her arm might fall from the socket.
All over, she's achy and heavy-limbed, more exhausted than she ever remembers being, and it takes all she has to put clean clothes on.
She climbs into her bed about two seconds away from collapse. She doesn't even bother taking pain killers. Just hopes that the pull of sleep will minimize the discomfort enough to have her forget it in her dreams.
Her eyes are drooping and halfway to closed when there's a quiet knock on her door.
She gives a hum in lieu of a yeah?
She watches the yellow sliver of light appear and then widen along the wall, as the door opens behind her.
"Sam?" comes carefully to her, and, of course, Sam rolls over so that she can look at Tara there in the doorway.
"Yeah?" she does say, this time. "I put the mangoes on the counter for you, if you're looking for them."
"I—No," Tara says. "I mean, thank you. But that's not—"
Tara cuts off with a sigh and shakes her head. She steps inside just enough to close the door behind her. Then she leans against it.
Sam has to blink a few times to get her eyes to adjust again.
"I just wanted to check on you," Tara says. There's a beat of quiet, where Sam is hoping, desperately, that she's not suspecting correctly, and, then, "Mindy told us what happened."
Sam's eyes slide closed — in defeat, or disappointment, or something else entirely, she isn't sure. Maybe all of the above.
"It's—It's really fine, Tara," she says. She resents how hoarse it comes out. "Just some assholes hoping for a viral video."
"No, it's more than that, Sam," Tara says. She takes a few steps forward. "What they said to you... It's not okay. They don't know what they're talking about. They're wrong, and anyone with a brain knows that."
It's everything she wants to hear, of course. It's too much for her to absorb.
Her brain, without the pressure point of pain to distract it, says You think that now, but when will you not? When will you see through me? When will you decide it's not worth it?
Because there are some days when it seems like Tara is close to that point of no return. When it seems like Tara might just say, "Fuck off," and mean it.
Sam’s even started to keep a go-bag in her closet. She tells Tara and the twins to do the same. She tells them it's for if the worst comes to pass, and they need to get out of town in ten minutes.
She doesn't tell them that hers is also for if she needs to go on her own. If the worst comes to pass, and the only solution is if she peels off and draws the heat-seeking missiles to herself.
She feels like shit for it, most nights. Because she told Tara she wouldn't leave again, but she keeps thinking maybe she should, and how is Tara ever supposed to trust her if she doesn't even trust herself?
What happens when the day comes where Tara throws in the towel and decides all the frustration isn't worth it?
Sam doesn't want to think about it. But it's all she thinks about sometimes.
And, right now, curled under her covers, threats and accusations ringing in her ears, she can't shake it off enough to pretend.
She speaks without planning to, propelled by something innate.
She says, "Tara," and nearly doesn't recognize her own voice.
It's too small to be her. It's just the right size for her. She doesn't know anymore.
Tara approaches until she's standing right at the edge of Sam's bed.
Sam blinks up at her through the darkness, through the hot blur of tears.
"If you ever want me to go, you promise to tell me?"
Tara breathes, "Sam," like it hurts to say.
"Because I know it's getting so complicated, and it's not what you signed up for, and I'm sorry. I never want to make your life more difficult, okay? I love you, and I want what's best for you, and if that's not me, then—"
"Whoa, whoa, Sam, hey." Tara sits right beside her, concerned eyebrows creased right down the middle. "Slow down. Stop."
Sam takes in a shuddering inhale, feels it catch somewhere along her ribcage before making its way into her lungs. Still lying down, one of her tears falls across the bridge of her nose before dripping onto her pillow.
“Sam, no. There’s no world where I’d want that, okay?”
And that’s not true. It can’t be true. The space between them has been growing so fraught.
“Tara.”
“No world,” Tara says, firmly. “Okay? Don’t say that ever again.”
“Tara—”
“I mean it.” Tara places a cool hand on Sam’s forehead, relief on her over-heated skin. “Drop it.”
Sam’s eyes close again. Another tear falls. Maybe she is small, at her core, in voice and resolve and constitution. Maybe she needs to do better.
But as Tara reaches over and grabs Sam’s brush from her nightstand, as she says, gently, “Scoot over,” and joins Sam under the covers.
As she uses careful fingers to brush through the wet strands of Sam’s hair, Sam lets herself be small. Weak. Selfish.
She lets herself, despite her fear, feel cared for and wanted, and she dreads dreaming of Tara looking at her dead-eyed and distant.
She dreads waking up and finding the same.