sixthiterationlogs | Bought a ticket for a runaway train...like a madman laughing at the rain...

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Bought a ticket for a runaway train...like a madman laughing at the rain...

WHO: Samantha Moon and a bolt of nearby lightning
WHERE: Out and about in the village; then later at the Inn
WHEN: July 1 for first thread; July 2-5 for subsequent threads (just pick the day you want)
OPEN TO: Village thread closed to Mulcahy and Aragorn (#padranger); Inn is OTA
WARNINGS: Foul language (because it's Sam); PTSD; blood; talk of death and vampirisim; will update as needed

On the Edge of the Village (for #padranger)

It hurt more than she ever imagined it would.

What hurt?

She couldn't really remember. But as Sam lay there in the grass, blood rolling down from the corners of her eyes, puddling in her ears, she felt a pain so intense, it seemed to have broken the time-space continuum. The scientist in her was fascinated. The rest of her was trapped, shifting back and forth between the past and the present each time she blinked her eyes. In one second, she was still in the Skinner Box, trying to remember why her hair pins felt so hot. The next, she was back in Phoenix, of all places, and dazzling overhead lights glared down at her, momentarily blinding her and sending a shooting pain to the base of her skull and her temples. She felt sick all over again and wanted to throw up, but there was nothing but bile churning in her stomach. A few dry heaves and the pain began to lessen to an aching throb. Greedily, she sucked in the air-conditioned air. It felt good. Soothing. And it helped clear her senses. But then she blinked again and she was back in the heat and warmth.

There was something on her chest, something thumping against the inside of her. She knew what it was, but she couldn't put a name to it.

Blink.

On either side of Samantha, two men stood up. She had to stifle a gasp. She knew them both. Larry Hiler was a photographer she'd seen exhibiting in several art fairs in the area. He was tall and lanky, wearing a leather jacket. His right ear was only pierced about a million times. Richard Frye was a sculptor who made his work out of old cigarette butts and discarded condoms. He was wearing a suit, his beard evenly clipped and elegant. Neither man was looking at her. Both of them had their eyes fixed forward.

"Prince Kane," Richard said, bowing his head.

A second later, Larry one-upped him, bowing from the waist when he said, "Prince Kane."

A woman--Prince Kane, apparently?--pinched the bridge of her nose. "I understand that you're still disputing who has the right to Embrace this mortal girl? One..." she glanced at a legal pad in front of her "...Samantha Halper?"

Blink.

She was on her back again and the pain in her chest was fading away. Something in her wanted it to stay put, to keep on hurting. But it was going...going...

Blink.

"For the past few months," Prince Kane drawled dully, "the two of you have been fighting over this girl. While there's nothing objectionable about her, I certainly see nothing impressive either. Your argument is a waste of the Court's time." Court? "And, frankly, I'm tired of hearing about it. So. We're going to settle this matter once and for all." She turned to look at a hulking man on her right. "Pedro. Toss a coin."

Larry got bug-eyed. "What?"

"My Prince!" Richard stepped forward.

Prince Kane held up a perfectly manicured hand to stop him. "We're going to toss a coin. The winner may have her."

Blink.

Sam knew she was in trouble. An animal instinct. Maybe it was the Beast. Maybe it was human nature. Her chest was still again. Her scalp felt like it was on fire. She needed...she needed something. She needed...

"Help." Sam tried to scream it, but it came out as a whisper. "Help..."

Blink.

Pedro picked up his hand. "Tails."

What happened next happened so fast that Sam wasn't even entirely sure of the order of events. She wasn't sure if Pedro even finished the word 'tails' before Richard had let go of her and thrown himself headlong into Larry. No human being could possibly move that fast. And yet, suddenly, the two of them were careening into a wall and Sam was being half dragged behind them. What stopped her was the table. Her forehead smashed into the corner, forcing Larry to let go of her. She dropped to the floor as the room seemed to explode around her. There was incomprehensible shouting in at least three languages, and then an eruption of gunfire.

At least, she thought it was gunfire. Sam couldn't really be sure.

She rolled onto her back. The slight motion made her feel unreasonably sick. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make sense of the whirling colors above her, but she couldn't focus. It was like the whole world had been smudged with Vaseline. And something wet was starting to seep into her hair and the cotton of her tee shirt. Sam tried to lift a hand to touch her forehead, but she couldn't.

Blink.

"Help!"

Back at the Inn (OTA)
In the days that followed Sam's unfortunate encounter with the lightning, she got a little bit better at keeping the past and the present separate. The days were a little easier than the nights. For obvious contextual reasons. But Sam refused to sleep. Her nightmares had always been pretty fucking awful before. She couldn't even begin to comprehend what they would become now. She'd long ago given up on the concept of 'it can't get any worse.' It could always, always get worse.

For one thing, you could get struck by lightning.

It helped to be around other people. Even if Sam wasn't exactly good at interacting with them. So she tried to stay in the common areas of the Inn as much as she could. Usually tucked into her corner table, writing names on some of the napkins she'd stolen from the crab boil. Names like Avery and Grace and Evening Star on the one side. And then names like Aragorn and Jean-Luc and Francis on the other. Separate. The past and the present. Not touching, not interacting. Two different paper islands, drifting past one another in the sea of time.

Or whatever.

Her bobby pins had left incredible burns on her forehead and temples--and even worse ones on her scalp--so she wasn't wearing her wig. Instead, she had a dark, black kerchief covering her hair. She'd cut it out of an old pair of scrubs. She thought she looked like one of the devout, little old ladies from the synagogue. The ones she and Anne used to roll their eyes at, during the High Holiday services, grimacing at the very idea. They'd probably never been struck by lightning, but Sam could finally understand the utility of their fashion.

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There had been a smell in the air since earlier that day that told him it was a good idea to remain in the village another day, at the very least. He also had some final work to do on the Lady Circe's fence and to tan some hides in hopes of providing some good leather to make himself and his soon to be father in law some clothes. Ones that they would be far more comfortable in than the ones provided in their bags upon arrival.

He's decided to keep himself busy in the blacksmith shop that afternoon. The tools are, more or less, familiar and anything that the Ranger doesn't recognize is easily enough compared to other tools he's used. Not that he knows all the ins and outs of the shop, but he does know the basics.

The flash of lightning doesn't immediately cause him concern, but something does make him feel uneasy. Enough to make him move to the open door and scan the area with grey eyes. And that's when he saw her.

Aragorn runs over and drops to a knee beside her, noticing the lines of blood on each side of her face which prompts a very concerned face. She was conscious, yes, but not well.

"Samantha," he says, gently bringing her face to look at him. He can quickly access that she needs to be moved indoors and tended to by healers right away.

When she voices her need for help, he nods. "Yes, you need a great deal of help but I will need to lift and carry you so you can get it."

The day had been menacing. It really was the only word for it; one of those days where the hair stood up on the back of your neck because you could feel something in the air, but you had no idea what that 'something' would be, when it would come, or how hard it would hit. Mulcahy was far too familiar with those sorts of days from Korea; it seemed like you either lived on worried tiptoe, working at frantic pace, or bored out of your mind for years. It made him want to go back to his little house and hunker down, closing all the shutters as he rarely did and trying to ignore everything outside.

In fact, that was what he was doing when that lightning flashed across the sky with a loud crack, a sound that made him jump even as he tried to run and ended up tripping over his own two feet. His glasses went flying in the tumble but he was unhurt, only his dignity a little bruised, and he groped for the spectacles so he could put them on before it got harder for him to see. When he did put them on, all thought of getting home was erased from his mind, because he could see the unfamiliar man kneeling down next to a prone figure.

"What happened?" he called as he scrambled to his feet, ignoring the dirt on himself to get closer faster to the pair. As he got closer, he realized that the one on the ground was familiar, and his jaw dropped a little in silent shock at the state Sam was in. After a moment of quiet, though, he swung into automatic triage mode. "Can you help me lift her? We can take her to the hospital and I can check over her wounds. I have medical experience."

Sam knew she was supposed to recognize the faces leaning over her. The one with the beard and the one without. But she couldn't quite grasp the context. Her mind was shifting too much, too fast. And everything was hurting so much. Everything except for her pulse. That had gone cold and dead again.

Blink.

More sounds rang out above her, like a symphony of violence. But a face suddenly filled her vision, coming into sharp focus. It was the woman who she'd briefly made eye contact with, the one with the short hair. "Samantha?" Her voice echoed. "Samantha, can you hear me?"

"What's going on?" Sam mumbled, not entirely sure she'd actually spoken out loud.

Blink.

"What's going on?" she asked. She was supposed know. She was sure of it. Deep in her bones. Or maybe it was that Karen had taught her never to show weakness. Confusion was a weakness.

Wait. That wasn't Karen staring down at her. Karen didn't have a beard. Or glasses. No. She was decidedly beardless and glassesless.

Blink.

"An excuse to air past grudges," the woman said. She brisky swept Sam's wig off of her head, freezing momentarily at the sight of her red hair beneath. Whatever surprised her, she shook it off quickly, probing at the damage to her forehead. Sam let out a yelp of pain as blackness flashed across her eyes. "Your cranium has been shattered," the woman said. "You're going to bleed into your brain."

Even if Sam wasn't pre-med, as her parents had encouraged her to be, she knew that wasn't good.

Blink.

"M'I dying?" she muttered. "Should I say the Shema?"

Something inside of her told her that was a funny question to ask beardless. But she couldn't remember why.

Aragorn kept his eyes on the girl calmly as Mulcahy approached. They hadn't met but there was something about the other man that didn't raise the Rangers suspicions that made him question whether he was friend or foe. No one really did in the village as of yet. But there was always that pointed fact that there was something more happening here than any of them could see.

"I cannot be sure but I saw lightning and this is how I found her." he replies, only glancing once at the other man before shifting in such a way that he could slide an arm under her back and knees. But he did not lift her yet.

It is her question that stops him and he doesn't quite understand so he looks to Mulcahy hoping he did.

"You're not dying, but you can say the Shema if you want." Mulcahy didn't really have anything to make Sam more comfortable, but since they were going to move her anyway it was useless to try and make her a pillow for her head or something like that. Glancing up and down her body made him more relieved but also more worried - there didn't seem to be a lot of impact on her, but he was also significantly less familiar with lightning strikes as opposed to combat wounds. There was a faint tang of acrid, meaty smoke in the air, wisps drifting a bit from her head, and that also made him worry more. "Do you want me to say it with you? Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One..."

He sent a brief prayer of thanks for Rabbi Alperstein in chaplain's school, for making sure he knew the basics of that religion for any practitioners that came through the MASH.

Sliding his arms under Sam in counterpart to Aragorn, he nods at the other man, masking his worry pretty well under a veil of calm. "I wish we had a stretcher, but this will do - on three. One, two, three." And at the final number, Mulcahy pushed himself to his feet, surprisingly strong for one of his slight frame. The other man would no doubt outstrip him in physical fitness and coordinated movement, but at least he could hold his own when it counted, and Sam's weight wasn't much of a burden with two to share it. "Let's get her to a bed."

She'd been struck by lightning? Well, that explained a lot. Although as beardless obliged her with the prayer, nothing but a soft burble of near-laughter came out of her. Defibrillation. That's why her chest felt so empty.

It wasn't funny.

Was it?

Blink.

"Listen to me carefully, Samantha," the woman continued. "I can save your life. But it will come at a cost. You won't be human any more. You'll be like me, like the rest of us. You'll have to give up the things you love. There will be grave consequences. Do you understand?"

Consequences? Who the fuck gave a crap about consequences? Sam saw two options in front of her. Life and death. And she was seventeen years old. Of course she wanted to live. She wasn't going to be some kind of cautionary tale about the recklessness of youth and the fragility of life. She wasn't going to have some memorial set up for her in the quad, where people could tsk and shake their heads and bemoan the fact that she was too young to die. She was too young to die. So she wouldn't.

"Yes," she choked out.

Blink. Ow.

She let out an involuntary groan as they hefted her off the ground. There was no specific pain. Just an overall achiness that ran red veins of pain up and down her body.

Sam worked so hard to play a certain role. She was cool. She was calm. World-weary. Far too old and jaded to ever be wide-eyed again. But she let all of that go. It was too much. Too hard. She was just a kid, limp and charred, putting her trust entirely into beardy and beardless.

Her head rolled against beardless's shoulder. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"Do you want me to save you?"

"Yes."

The woman looked mildly unhappy. But whatever it was that was bothering her passed through her eyes quickly. She leaned her face into Sam's neck and suddenly, there was an explosion of pleasure, even more powerful than that time Sam and Chad had fucked in the Motel 6. It was so powerful it took away the pain. But it made Sam drowsy. And she couldn't quite figure out if the blackness was because she was dying or just closing her eyes.

She would never know.

The prayer was unlike anything he had ever heard and likely wouldn't again, despite there being prayers in his world. There was not, however, one single god and suddenly Aragorn was curious about the worlds of other people. Not enough to ask about it right then and there, but it wasn't something he would easily forget. Especially later when the young woman was healing and resting.

Transporting her to the hospital didn't take too much time and when they were able to set her down on a bed. He had the healing knowledge of the Elves, but not any of the herbs and/or plants that aid in putting a person on the fast track to becoming well again. Of course, he can't help but think of the athelas herb and how it might be able to help in this situation.

But he didn't have it and so looked over the woman before looking up at Mulcahy.

"How can we help her?" Aragorn asks.

The subject of the prayer just didn't register for him as anything anyone would find unusual; he'd certainly been in this strange world long enough for him to know of many other religions (or no religions, in some cases) for the places other residents came from, but even having studied polytheistic cultures in his own history hadn't made him realize some might have trouble with the concept of one God. Mulcahy was obviously devoted to his religion, but everyone he'd met in his life had known about religions not like the ones they practiced. They didn't believe in them, but they knew about them. So far he'd not found any world that was devotedly split, but he'd be fascinated to hear about it when the time came. Which was not right now, as they were much more focused on carrying Sam to a bed, and then checking her over to be sure nothing was about to immediately kill her.

Glancing up at Aragorn, Mulcahy doesn't answer him directly, instead choosing to lean over the patient before him, an unfortunately familiar scenario. "Samantha, you've been hurt. I can check you over and see how bad it is, if you have any further wounds that need treating, but in order to do that I'll have to remove some of your clothing. Are you all right with that, or would you rather I find one of the female doctors or nurses to help?"

Even with his celibacy, he's seen women naked and prepped for surgery thanks to the unit, so it's not anything that's surprising to him; the concern was more for Sam's sense of decency, if she had one, and her preferences. The clothing would have to come off eventually anyway, and if the cause of this pain was genuinely a lightning strike, Sam was probably having too much muscle pain to really be able to move comfortably. Some of it could come off right now, though, and Mulcahy nodded first to Aragorn and then to Sam's boots, gesturing that he should remove them. It would hopefully make her more comfortable, and it was likely that the lightning's path would have taken it through one of her feet as an exit point. That could at least be checked without embarrassment. Mulcahy himself began to work on the wig since the little wisps of smoke coming from her head had him concerned and it was sitting a little askew anyway; it was probably also playing badly on her literally fried nerves. Hopefully they had something she could wear that was less scratchy and abrasive than most of the clothing in the village.

The haze around Sam’s head spoke. She knew she needed to break out of the memory of dying. She was expected to answer something. A question. She could never really answer for herself. Not really. And not in a way that made sense. Life and death could both be so senseless. Especially hers.

A joke.

She made no objections when the boots came off. They were fucking boots. Who cared? But when Beardless touched her wig, Sam let out a noise of pure animal instinct. She didn’t even know why at first. Her mind wasn’t ready to be that coherent yet. But a big, gleaming tear of the reddest blood rolled down the side of her face. Like a ruby in sand.

Karen’s voice started to whisper to her again. Sam screamed to block out the words.

You are alone...

Her arm jerked and Sam rediscovered her hand. She tried to hold it to Beardless, to stop him. “M’hair. You can’t. If you see, I won’t be safe. You’ll tell...”

For all Aragorn had learned from the elves, this was a rare situation that he knew very little of. Yet, he also knew there was something far more involved where the young woman was concerned and that conclusion was made the moment he approached her on that very day. And even still, beyond the odd coloured hair and the blood in her eyes, Samantha was someone that the Ranger felt drawn to. How and in what way? Much like he was with the Fellowship back home.

As Mulcahy set to work in removing her boots, grey eyes search for obvious injury on Sam's arms an legs, while he softly - almost in a whisper - speaks the same language he did when the two crossed paths in the forest not so long ago. If anything, perhaps it can offer a sense of calm to focus on. At least until the priest touches her hair.

At the sound she makes, Aragorn's brow pinches and he gives the priest a quick look before looking down at Sam again, noticing the fear immediately, even though he doesn't understand it.

"Sam," he says gently. "We will tell no one. You are safe here with us."

Though the Ranger suspects it might take more convincing than simply saying so.

The red tear was enough to make him jump in shock, and he wasn't a physical man despite his boxing training - or, more specifically, he'd trained himself out of a lot of his boxing training, except in rare cases when instinct (and a deep-rooted Irish anger) completely trumped everything else, and the situation was coming dangerously close to that when Sam began to flail and grabbed his arm, crying in a way that reminded him all too much of the wounded soldiers brought to the 4077. There was a brief flash before his eyes, the last time he actually punched a person, the soldier who was fighting him so hard in the days before Christmas. He immediately tensed and froze, hands still on her wig because he didn't want to just rip it off and cause her more pain, but Aragorn would undoubtedly see the shock and concern and semi-panic on his face. He could never hide what he was feeling.

"Saman- Samantha, I promise, we're not going to do anything to you but try and help you! I swear, we're not!" She wasn't truly fighting him, but Mulcahy didn't know if she would escalate if he kept going, but she couldn't be allowed to lie there with potentially more injuries. Sending a quick look of help to Aragorn, Mulcahy carefully lifted one hand away from the wig to try and pull her hand off himself without hurting her more. "I'm not sure what you think we're going to tell to whom, but I promise you it won't happen. Whoever you're worried about isn't here for us to tell anything."

The red tear was still giving him a frightened zing up his spine though. He'd seen the message she put out over the watches, but until that moment it hadn't been real to him, the fact that she was a vampire.

Sam didn't have enough fight in her to struggle against Beardless. It was a healthy--ha ha--combination of physical exhaustion and the fact that she felt herself slipping from the present again.

Beardy promised her she'd be safe.

What was safe?

Blink.

When she came out of the shower, wrapped up in a towel, but still feeling dirty, there was no one in the hotel room. She was sure that there had been at least five or six other people, when she'd first woken up, but now they were all gone. So were her clothes. And her wig and her cellphone. It all felt a little too vivid and surreal at the same time, so she retreated back into the bathroom, sitting on the ledge of the tub and staring at the fogged up mirror. Slowly, the condensation cooled, long drips of water running down the glass, leaving behind silver streaks in which she could see her reflection.

Was she supposed to be able to do that? She ran her fingers over her forehead, where it had been split open after hitting the corner of the table. Her skin was smooth and whole, no trace of a scar. She probed her neck and her shoulders. It all felt the same. It all felt like her. But her water-warmed skin was cooling and that was a little frightening. More than a little. The more the cold crept into her flesh, the more she began to remember about the night before.

Blink.

Her hand slipped back down to her side. She closed her eyes, blood seeping into the empty spaces between her eyelashes.

"Don't tell anyone," she whispered. "Please don't tell..."

Weird as I'm sure it seems to some people, I don't really come to the inn that much. I know it's the place where everybody hangs out and plays whist or does needlework by firelight, but it's also where everybody gets together to eat, and I take care of that at home for obvious reason. Then again, I've been here over a month and I barely know anybody, so maybe it's time to start checking in, getting my mingle on, see if there's any new gossip about who was kissing in the corn rows.

I almost don't recognize Sam, and I can't lie, when I catch sight of her out of the corner of my eye, my first thought is, we've got a nun to go with our priest.

"Hey," I call when I realize my mistake, eyebrows lifting as I step over. "You ditched the wig—"

Stopping at the edge of the table, I frown. "What happened?" I don't need to ask if something happened, because that much is obvious: She looks like shit.

Sam glanced up at the sound of Liv's voice. And her first instinct was immediately to add Liv's name to her napkin for the here and now. So she did. In her neat, tidy handwriting. It didn't really help. Of course, she hadn't expected it to help. But she figured it didn't hurt, either. Anything that worked to ground her had to be worth something.

Or...would be worth something.

Maybe.

Probably?

There was no good scale of certainty. She fucking hated the social sciences so much. They were just too unpredictable.

She held up her pencil, making a slow dive-bombing motion toward her temple. "Lightning," she said. Then she made a soft, explosive noise with her mouth.

Boom.

"What?"

Immediately, I pull a chair up close, my eyes darting over her. Now that I'm actually looking, I can see that the signs are there: The places where blood vessels burst, her general pallor, and of course the loss of the wig. Would it be rude to ask if it melted?

"When?" I ask, and resist the urge to grab hold of her arm, take her pulse. "Did you go to the hospital?"

Edited 2018-07-05 23:54 (UTC)

Sam nodded slightly, taking her pencil in both hands, turning it over to avoid looking at Liv. "The priest and Beardy McBearderson took me," she said. She'd refused to stay, of course. Because she was a fucking stubborn ass.

She giggled a little. "Sounds like some kind of set up for a joke, right? A vampire, a priest, and a guy from the Ren Faire walk into a hospital. I'm not sure what the punchline is, but I'll let you know when I figure it out. I'm pretty sure our Overlords thought it was hilarious."

Okay. So she was still a little shaky.

Gently, Sam put her pencil down, although she continued to stare at it. "I'm already dead. It could have been a lot worse." And based on her parentage, it should have been a lot worse. Sam didn't know how to reconcile that fact with everything else. And wasn't sure she wanted to.

I have no idea who Beardy McBearderson is, and not for the first time, it occurs to me that I need to get out more in this place. I feel like with a description like that, I should probably just know who she means.

"Okay, but that doesn't mean you can't be hurt," I counter, frowning. "Trust me, of anybody here, I get it. But your special little problem doesn't negate that being struck by lightning is massively screwed up. What did they say at the hospital?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "No pulse. Which isn't much of a surprise. Some second-degree burns, I think." First? Third? She honestly didn't remember. Her mind had been drifting back and forth over the line of time.

That was kind of poetic.

That was kind of pathetic.

"Burst blood vessels, although that's not too bad since I don't bleed, I guess." Not that it was good. Especially since she didn't heal like normal people either. "We're not entirely sure if I lost consciousness or not. So that's fun..."

"Can I see?" I ask with a motion Sam's way. "I'm a doctor. I don't know if I ever mentioned that before. I'm not like, trying to sate some morbid curiosity or anything." Well, not much, anyway.

"Have you had any problems with remembering things? Or like, fine motor skills? Picking things up, hand-eye coordination, stuff like that?"

"You might have mentioned it," Sam said with a bit of a wry smile.

Were it anyone else, she probably would have immediately said something thoughtful, like 'fuck no, get your hands away from me.' But with Liv, it was a little different. She couldn't name it. Maybe it was just that Sam was as fascinated as could be by zombies. And if their roles had been reversed...

Or something.

She didn't want to put too much thought into it. But she did turn her head slightly so Liv could see the burns on her temple.

"To be perfectly honest," she said, her voice very low and sulky, "my memory's kind of been on overdrive. Thinking it has something to do with the electrical current firing neurons that haven't fired in a long time. Like my body got a jump start. I don't know. It's better now, but right after it happened, I kept skipping around like the Sam from Quantum Leap."

"That makes sense, yeah," I reply with a nod as I lean up to get a better look at the burns. "You just got zapped by thousands of volts, and the truth is that even doctors don't understand the way the brain works that well on the best of days."

I settle back down into my seat, brow pinching. There's not much I can do now so far after the fact, which I don't exactly love, but it is what it is.

"But it's improving? The brain skipping stuff?"

Sam nodded slightly, oddly grateful for the concern. Not for the first time, she desperately missed Anne. Her adoptive mother was all about the mothering, when Sam stayed home from school on sick days, when she'd gotten her ears pieced.

Those little mortal days that were so far away now.

Along with Anne.

"It's better." She paused, pursing her lips. "But you know what was even weirder?" And she didn't use the word 'weirder' recklessly. "The lightning defibrillated me. Only for a couple of seconds. But it was so fucking weird."

My eyebrows lift, but then I'm tilting my head, because yeah, that would be about what would happen. "That also makes sense, if you think about it. I bet it did all kinds of crazy stuff to your nervous system." Even if that nervous system was artificially sustained.

"Listen, this is important. If you have any kind of issues, even little things, physical or mental — Forgetting where you put something, whatever. Write it down, okay? Keeping track is the best way to tell if there's any long-term issues that need to be addressed."

Unconsciously, Sam's hand ran across her chest, gripping the fabric of her ugly-ass scrubs. Humans took their heartbeats for granted. And the funny thing was, she'd had the chance to be human again. And even she'd taken it for granted, in spite of everything she knew.

She missed it so much now.

Fortunately, Liv was momming her. That snapped her back to reality with a steely nod. "That's probably a good idea. I just hope I don't forget to write about the things I forget. Vicious cycle waiting to happen."

"Yeah, har-har, I'm actually being serious for once," I reply, although I'm smiling despite that. I definitely get it; why acknowledge trauma when you can just use humor to punt it away? It's obviously a foolproof method for being an emotionally stable and well-balanced post-human.

"And look, you know where I live— Or, maybe you don't, I don't live with Ravi anymore. But you know where I work, so if you get worried about anything, come find me." I lean in, dropping my voice. "Do you need any additional special accommodations?"

Sam dropped her eyes at the mention of special accommodations. She was actually pretty famished, as much as she hated to admit it.

And more, she was kind of...scared

She cleared her throat softly. "See," she said, "the thing of it is...I don't know if I can...heal."

All of a sudden, she was back in front of the library again, hunters shooting at her, one of them grazing her shoulder. She remembered Avery's hand over hers, his calm, reassuring voice as he gently tried to walk her through the process of healing herself.

Just imagine your blood going into the wound. Imagine it filling in what's gone. Imagine it replacing what you need.

That trick didn't work so well in the clown rodeo.

Sam's blue eyes swept back up to Liv. "I may be stuck with these burns for...I don't know..."

Forever?

"You haven't injured yourself here at all before?" I ask, frowning. "Not even a scratch or a bruise?" The idea that Sam can be alive at all and wouldn't also have the magical vampire means to heal herself just seems wrong, even if on some level it makes perfect scientific sense.

But she's obviously in distress about it, fear in her eyes instead of a snappy rejoinder.

"We'll figure it out. Lucky you, you've got your own private physician, who also happens to be besties with the world's foremost expert on undead pathology."

Sam had only hurt herself as a human. And had been amazed and delighted to see her body repair itself automatically, the way a human's did.

Maybe she should have gone into pre-med.

She sighed a little, her posture sinking down the side of her chair. "Everyone here is so nice," she said. "I don't get it. I mean, I'm not ungrateful to you, Liv. You're awesome. It's just..."

What could she say? She wasn't used to it.

Sam shrugged.

"Well that's easily in the top ten saddest things I've ever heard in my life," I reply, and push out a sigh, my eyes round with disbelief at the simple fact of it. I get it from a purely academic, tragic vampire backstory standpoint, but even in my early days as a zombie, I wasn't alone or completely shunned. I had to work on a select few people, but I always had somebody looking out for me.

"I guess you're just going to have to get used to it, because people around here are pretty nice, all things considered. You probably should have seen this coming, there's a free lunch everyday."

Free lunch was an unfortunate choice of words, considering Sam's somewhat limited diet. But she could see Liv's point, at least. The damn place was like a kibbutz, only without the awesome citrus fruit.

The fucking opposite of LA.

Sam shook her head. "The thing is," she said, "I was taught that Kindred are innately selfish and self-involved assholes. My sire basically told me that I could never trust anyone ever. Because someone was inevitably trying to use me and would eventually stab me in the back."

She made a helpless gesture. It was conditioning. Plain and simple. And conditioning wasn't easily shaken.

"I mean, some people are definitely innately selfish and self-involved assholes," I allow with a slight shrug. "Maybe there were more of them where you come from, I don't know, but where I come from, people were generally okay. A lot of them are more secretly weird than you would guess, but generally okay and well-meaning. The percentage of back-stabbing evil villains is actually pretty small."

It's kind of surprising we don't seem to really have any here— Well, at least not yet. Now I feel like I need to knock on wood.

It sounded very Seattle.

Sam smiled a little bit, nodding. "Well," she said, "for what it's worth, I definitely don't check the 'back-stabbing evil villain' box when I fill out my census." Had she made some questionable choices in the course of her Requiem? Oh, hells to the yes. But there had to be something said for intentions.

She hoped.

"Maybe some day I'll get used to people being nice. It would be refreshing."

Given that the Inn is the closest thing to a community center that the village has Sam's presence doesn't strike Picard as being terribly out of the ordinary. A little unusual, perhaps, but it's hardly his place to say where she - or anyone - can and can't be. The kerchief covering her head, on the other hand, is distinctly out of the ordinary, and that's more than enough to have him heading over in her direction.

"Is everything alright?"

He's noticed the names she's written on the napkins, yes. But he's not entirely sure whether or not that's something he should be asking about either, and so he's erring on the side of caution.

Somehow, she wasn't surprised when Baldy approached her. For reasons Sam couldn't entirely interpret--not even when she was in the best state of mind--he seemed to like her. It made no sense, of course. She was obnoxious and disliked. But he was stubbornly nice.

That was probably why she'd included his name on her napkin.

She looked up warily, her eyes somewhat out-of-focus. "No," she replied. "But it hasn't exactly been fantastic in a long, fucking time."

They were still in the Skinner Box, after all.

Picard hasn't yet given up on finding a way out. But even despite the fact that he's been looking off and on for the better part of a year he's yet to find any sign of one. Admittedly, the fact that they seem to be on a planet as opposed to be stuck in a glorified holodeck is something. But even then he would have expected there to be some indication of exactly how they'd arrived.

Although he is well aware of the fact that they haven't really made a thorough search of the entirety of the surroundings yet.

"No," he agrees, "it hasn't. But if you don't mind me saying so, this doesn't look like the usual level of 'not fantastic'."

And by the tone of his voice, he's concerned, a little. Not quite enough to worry, but enough to want to make sure that things are as alright as they can be.

She gave him a thin smile that didn't stand a chance of reaching her eyes. She found the observation weirdly endearing. Like so many other things about her space captain companion.

Which was why she made a vague gesture, inviting him to sit.

"I remember reading this story once, about a guy who was electrocuted. He said it tasted like his mouth was full of peanut butter. I always thought that was fucking weird, but now I can genuinely call bullshit."

Not that that was much of a victory.

But Sam did love a good I-told-you-so.

He takes a seat without so much as a second thought, once she gestures. There's nowhere else he needs to be, and he's hardly going to simply up and leave, when it's clear that Sam is at something distinctly less than her best.

"I can't say that being electrocuted is an experience I've had."

He's been through an awful lot of other things, some of which he doesn't mean to talk about. But somehow electrocution hasn't been one of them, and he's not sure whether to consider that a blessing or a curse.

"Did it taste like anything, if you don't mind me asking?"

If the answer is no, he'll absolutely understand. But for all that Beverly's far more the doctor than he is, he figures it can't hurt too much to know all the same.

The question earned Baldy a little bit of a laugh. Sam could appreciate some good, healthy scientific curiosity. Especially when it was misplaced. She made that mistake all the time. Part of not being great at people.

Slowly, she drew in a breath, between her teeth. "It tasted like..."

A poet would do a better job of putting it to words.

Sam was no poet.

"...like the way ozone smells. Heady and drenched and rusted."

For all that he is Command and not Sciences, curiosity has always been one of Picard's driving forces. In fact, most people who manage to make it through Star Fleet have some sort of innate curiosity, in his experience (for all that, say, the average Vulcan would do their best to deny the fact). As for the fact that she's not a poet, that's perfectly fine by him. What matters most is having a description, not so much how poetic it should happen to be.

Instead, he waits patiently while she considers, and once she finishes speaking, he nods understandingly.

"That makes sense. It's still not something I'd have liked to experienced, myself, but it does make sense."

"Yeah," Sam said. "I definitely wouldn't recommend. I give it a negative three on Yelp. If you're going to be hit by a force of nature, I would suggest something like an ocean wave or a nice summer breeze."

Snark was the refuge of the hopeless. Which was fair, because Sam was feeling pretty fucking low right now.

"I'll be fine, I guess," she sighed. "One of the benefits of already being dead. Or something."

The mention of Yelp means absolutely nothing to Picard. But even without knowing what, exactly, it is, the number she associates with it is enough for him to get the basic idea. Or at least, the idea that it's not at all something that she would consider even remotely ideal.

"Unfortunately, we don't always get to choose that sort of thing."

He won't deny that it wouldn't be nice if they could, mind. But life is rarely that convenient, even without any of the other problems that come of being trapped where they are.

"That doesn't mean it isn't still a serious injury. You might not be what most people consider to be traditionally alive, true. But you still exist. You can still be hurt, and need to recover from those injuries, even if the finer details look different than they might in anyone else."

"That's a more philosophical approach to it than most humans give me," she said. Even after all these years, it still felt weird to refer to 'humans' as something other. Even if she'd never actually been one, it was still who she thought of herself as. In a way. And she was kind of proud of the fact. If she didn't separate herself from the human race, that meant she would never see them as...less. As, say, just food and nothing else.

Oh, being a vampire was so fucking complicated.

And Sam was no philosopher.

"Thanks," she said, giving him a very weak smile. "I know it sounds weird, but it's nice to be reminded that I exist. Really. Sometimes, it doesn't feel that way. Especially here."

Picard knows next to nothing about what it's like to be a vampire. Myths and legends have never precisely been one of his areas of interest. And even if they had, he wouldn't assume that they're accurate to Sam's experiences as one. Even if she is from a version of Earth.

But that's something to consider later, if he feels it necessary to do so. Just at the moment, however, there are other matters at hand.

"Do you mind if I ask why you feel that way?"

He's mostly interested in why it feels that way here, but if she wants to talk about having felt that way somewhere else as well, he's certainly not about to stop her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bought a ticket for a runaway train...like a madman laughing at the rain...

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