Chapter Text
Sam wakes up to the feeling of someone watching her. She’s curled up on the chair beside Tara’s hospital bed, her head resting on the edge of her little sister’s pillow. As she begins to sit up in the chair Sam is caught off guard by someone standing in the doorway watching her. Sidney Prescott. She finds herself genuinely smiling at the older woman’s presence, which she never thought she would do. Sam found that Sidney is one of the few people in the past 3 days to seem completely indifferent to the fact that she was Billy’s daughter, until now anyways. Both Sam’s face and heart drop as she sees the look of recognition plastered on Sidney’s face and her nervous, fidgety demeanour. The younger woman is suddenly aware of the fact that she’s still wearing her blood soaked clothes that bear an eerie resemblance to her father’s and Sidney had seen her kill Richie. She’s finally seeing Sam the same way everyone else does, as a threat.
“Sorry, did I wake you up?” Sidney whispers the question across the room just loud enough for Sam to hear, most likely not wanting to wake the other sister as well.
“No, you’re good. Also Tara’s a pretty heavy sleeper so you don’t really have to whisper.” Sam doesn’t miss how the other woman’s eyes stay glued on her the whole time, even when she gestures to Tara.
Sidney lets out a brief, silent laugh as she finally looks away from Sam and to the younger Carpenter sister. It doesn’t last long though, and in a second her attentions back on Sam.
“Could I come in for a bit? I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Sam braces herself for another lecture about her ‘concerning behaviour’ and how she ‘needs help’, but this time it’s worse. This isn’t Judy Hicks trying to talk her out of her sudden ‘reckless and illegal rebellion’, or her mother complaining about family reputation. This is a woman who’s already had her life torn apart by Sam’s family through murders and affairs. A woman who has now seen Sam kill a man more brutally than her father ever did. Sam can’t bring herself to speak so she just responds with a quick nod.
When Sidney walks into the room, Sam can see a black backpack hanging off of her shoulder. She watches carefully as the older survivor pulls up a chair so that she’s facing Sam as she sits down. Sidney closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, preparing herself for whatever she’s about to say to the most recent target of ghostface, but she’s cut off before she can even begin.
“I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
Sidney opens her eyes at the quiet, broken, high-pitched apology that sounded as if it came from a crying child’s closing throat. Sam’s legs are now curl up on the chair, her mouth is hidden behind them while her nose is being pushed up in the ‘v’ shaped gap where her knees don’t quite meet. The only parts of Sam face visible to her are the big, pleading brown eye spilling tears onto the blood-stained fabric of the girls jeans. This reaction alone confirms every assumption she had about Sam’s life that she’d prayed weren’t true. It causes Sidney the sudden urge to vomit, though she manages to push it down with tears welling up in her eyes.
“You have nothing to be sorry for Sam.” Sam looks away at the statement, so Sidney moves her hands to gently hold the younger woman’s face. “Look at me Sam, it’s not your fault. None of it is your fault.”
Sam lets out a quiet sob as tears stream down her like rivers. Sidney quickly moves to the chair beside her, letting the girl fall into her arms. She holds her until the sobbing stops and she’s able to sit up on her own again. Sidney gets up and walks to the small table on the other side of Tara’s bed, grabbing the box of Kleenex before sitting back down. She hands Sam a tissue and the room goes silent.
Sam put the used tissue in her back pocket, not wanting to walk all the way over to the trash can. When she turns back to Sidney, she’s seemingly lost in thought while staring at Sam’s tear stained face. The silence starts to feel awkward to Sam, but Sidney doesn’t even seem to notice it, to focused on whatever she’s thinking about. Then, Sam sees a faint smile apear on the face in front of her.
“What?” Sam asks, but her usual sharp tone is gone, it left as soon as Sidney walked in the room.
“You don’t remember me do you?”
“Huh?” Sam is now infinitely more confused and slightly freaked out while Sidney reaches for her bag. She pulls out a dark grey hoodie with a beautifully detailed flower painted on it with bleach. On the right side of the hoodie there’s a faded stain of some sort.
Sam recognizes it instantly as she thinks about the night she lost it. The stain on the side was from her vomit. She remembers waking up on the ride to the hospital and talking to the stranger who was holding her hand, she could never remember their face though. Not until now anyway. When she had woken up again at the hospital she had asked her mother about the hoodie, but was told it was thrown out.
Sam takes the hoodie from the other woman’s hands and stares at it in disbelief before Sidney begins explaining.
“It was a few weeks, maybe a little over a month after the Jill’s mascare. I had been released from the hospital and I decided to stay in town an extra day to finish my book signing.” The pieces seem to be clicking into place in Sam’s head as Sidney talks. “I had just walked out of the bookstore when I saw a guy sprinting out the other side of the alley and someone’s leg sticking out on the ground behind a garbage bin. I ignored every instinct screaming that it was a trap and walked in anyway. I found you lying on the pavement unconscious, covered in puke with a needle still in your arm.”
Sidney’s speech unlocks a memory Sam didn’t know she had before the ambulance got there.
“I woke up. When you were on the phone with the police I woke up.”
“Yeah.”
“I… I was trying to grab the phone.” Sam says, visibly struggling to trace through the foggy memory.
“Do you remember what you told me?” There’s a pause before Sam shakes her head.
“I remember yelling at you, or at least my best attempt at yelling… but I don’t remember what I was trying to yell.”
“Stop.” Sam’s eyebrow furrow in confusing before Sidney continues. “You told me to stop, that you didn’t wan’t help. You said… you said it wasn’t an accident, that you knew how much to use.”
Sam’s blood runs cold. She had never told anyone that her overdoses were usually intentional, at least no one in Woodsboro. She didn’t want Tara thinking she left her on purpose, which looking back now she can see the irony in that. She also knew it would make her mother’s comments even worse, so she played them off as just getting carried away. The only other person she’d told this to was Richie during a breakdown on her birthday, as it was the first year since she’d left that Tara hadn’t sent a text. Suddenly she remembers that Tara’s asleep only a foot away and decides to change the subject, not wanting to risk this being the way she finds out about all this.
“My mo- Christina told me that she threw my hoodie out because of the vomit.”
“The paramedics took it off on the ride to the hospital and handed it to me. I tried to give it back once you were stable enough to have visitors but Christina told me to throw it out.” Sam lets out a bitter laugh, not shocked at her mother’s coldness, before pausing to think about it.
“Wait, why did you keep it?”
“I saw that the flower was painted on with bleach. Assumed you probably did it yourself and you might want it back at some point.”
Sam thinks about this for a minute.
“How did you know you would see me again?”
“I didn’t. I just hoped I would if I ever came back to visit Dewey and Gale.”
Sam is about to say something when Tara makes a sort of hummed groan as she opens her eyes.
“Sidney?” the still sleep dazed girl questions.
“Yeah, I just came by to check on you guys before leaving. how you feelin’?”
“Better, safer.” Tara responds before looking past Sidney. “Is that your flower hoodie?” She uses her good hand to points at the piece of clothing that her sister is holding.
“Uhm, yeah it is.”
“I thought you lost that when you were like 13?” Tara looks at her sister, extremely confused at the reappearance of the item. Sidney loos back at a nervous Sam and decides to jump in.
“Well I’m gonna go check on the twins before I head out.” She pulls a sticky note and pen out of her bag. “Here’s my number if you guys ever need anything, or just someone who understands this shit.”
Sidney hands the note to Sam and gives her a knowing smile before leaving the two sisters to catch up.
“Still confused about the hoodie by the way.” Tara states flatly, and Sam can’t stop herself from laughing at the whole situation.