1000_cranes | (no subject)

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sam merlotte

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She kind of expects tears, but none come. It might just be that it's finally happened - she's finally lost too much. She lasts at home for as long as she can, on her own in the dim light. She puts clothes away, reads a book, tries to work on a painting. She's got all of this nervous energy and nothing to do with it. She hasn't even got Cadi to fuss over - she's spending the night with her grandfathers. And there's just her.

In the end, she can't stand it anymore.

It's really too late to be doing it, but she hopes that he won't mind. She doesn't change, just pulls on a sweatshirt with her pajamas and heads for his front door.
She'll figure out what she's going to say when he opens the door.

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Sam never expects anyone late at night on the island and while it's taken the better part of four months to get used to having a regular schedule without a crisis every day, he's used to it enough now that finding Charlie at the door's a shock.

"What's wrong? Something wrong with Cadi?"

She must look like hell. She must look like hell and he wants to take her dinner, and he probably won't want to take her after this. But she doesn't know where else to go.

"Not Cadi. Cadi's fine," she says, hands buried in the sleeves of her sweatshirt. "But Shari's gone. I don't...I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't know where else to go."

"Gone? Like disappeared completely?"

It's happened to him once before, with Jason, and from what Sookie had explained, it's something that can happen on the island on a regular basis. Shari was one of the ones who'd been here a long time, though, and Sam thinks it's weird her number's suddenly up. Still, it's about Charlie right now and he motions her close.

"C'mere. You don't ever have to be sorry for getting me if you need me, promise."

"Gone as if she was never here," says Charlie, wearily, stepping into his space. It's not like she's used to it, could ever be used to it, but she's just lost so much this year and maybe she doesn't have it in her to weep any more.

Without really thinking about it, she presses her face into Sam's chest.

Sam doesn't think twice about wrapping his arms around her, hand rubbing slowly against her back to try and comfort her as best he can. He's lost people before. Bon Temps isn't exactly the safest place in the world to be human or supe but this is different. This is just disappearing out of thin air.

"It'll be all right, Charlie. Maybe not right now, but that hurt stops someday and when it does, you'll have good memories left."

He's comforting in the way that she hoped he would be when she came her, solid and near and warm. His touch is good; it's centering.

"You'd think I'd be used to it," she says, softly. "I ever tell you that I lost the same guy three times?"

"How'd you manage that?"

It seems like it's a story to tell and if Charlie's thinking about telling a story, maybe she won't be thinking so much about Shari. It's worth a shot, anyway, and Sam just wants to make her feel better.

"His name was Hiro," she says, lacing one arm around her waist to hold onto him tight. "I met him for the first time back in Midland. He...wanted to take me away, I guess. He was the sweetest man in the world. I was..." She frowns, not ready to tell Sam about her brain and how crazy her memory was for a while. "I was really different then. But then I died and I ended up here. And Hiro was here. Twice. And I was with Ianto the second time, and...It was really hard. But Hiro was always so sweet."

She flushes. "I'm talking a lot."

"You are, but that's all right," Sam says, slightly uncomfortable that she's so close right now. Still, she's grieving, and if this is what she needs, he'll give it to her.

"You know, I kind of like hearing you talk. It's part of this whole thing where I like you and I want to see where it goes?"

"Oh, God," she says, stepping back from him a little bit, covering her face with her hands. "You're supposed to be taking me to dinner and I've turned up here in my goddamn pajamas."

"I'm pretty sure we can raincheck dinner," Sam promises. "I'd rather know you're all right than worry about some date we can always have later. Pajamas are fine."

He's so worried about her that this has pretty much taken over his brain and he figures he'd be useless on a date anyway.

"I'm a mess," she says, combing a stray strand of her hair back from her face and trying to tuck it behind her ear. "I just...I never thought it would happen, but I've just...I've lost so much that maybe I've stopped feeling it. I feel like..I ought to be weepin' and wailin' and pulling at my hair, you know? Instead, I just feel..." She frowns. "I'm just so tired, Sam."

"Sometimes it gets like that. I ever tell you that Bon Temps has a pretty high waitress mortality rate? I've done this more times than a man my age ought to."

More than anyone ought to, really, but Sam's aiming for levity and hoping he hits it to some extent.

"You wanna stay for a little while? I don't mind the company."

He says it as a throw away line and it's not really his fault that it hits the way it does. For a moment, even though it's years later, she feels a little bit sick.

"Yeah," she says. "So does Midland."

She nods, swallow.

"Yeah. Yes. I'd like that."

Sam brings her a little closer.

"Then you'll stay and we'll figure all this out as best we can. It's hard to make heads or tails of stuff like this but we can either try or just forget it for the night. Whatever you need, I'm here for it."

"Let's not talk about it," she says, rubbing the end of her nose with the flat of her hand, not pulling away from him. "I don't want to talk about it all night long and not get anywhere."

"Not gettin' anywhere? I wasn't aware we were going anywhere," Sam says, confused. Then he thinks maybe he missed her meaning and shakes his head. "Oh, but sometimes it's not about getting somewhere with grief or anything like that. Sometimes it's just...letting it out. At least for me. And I'm happy to be a sounding board if you need it, Charlie."

"I feel like I've spent half my life grieving for one thing or another," she says. It's warm in the hut and she unzips her sweatshirt, t-shirt underneath. She sighs.

"I'm so ready for something new, Sam. I'm sick of feeling heavy. That makes me a terrible person, doesn't it? Just being so sick of this."

"If you're terrible, so am I. I've been through it before coming here and sometimes you do get sick of it. But unlike back home, I can't just run away and start over."

He had, once, and now he's in a place where that's just not an option and he's got to face his demons. It's nice, in a way.

"Neither can you. But we can enjoy our life. Isn't that what Shari would want anyway?"

"I spent my whole life wanting to run away," says Charlie, lowering herself down into a seat, leaving room for Sam to sit close, if he wanted. "Never made it until I got here, though. Seems like MIdland was pretty much where I was doomed to stay." She sighs. "None of them would want it, would they? None of them would want life to just...stop. No matter how it feels."

"Life can't stop, sweetheart," Sam says quietly. "No matter how much it hurts, you gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other and making it through the day. I wish I could guarantee I'd be here but you know I can't make that promise."

He wishes he could, though, and instead settles for sitting close and sliding his arm back around her shoulders. "We just have to make do with what we've got, huh?"

It's possibly the closest they've ever been, sitting down anyway, and Charlie's intensely aware of him but not in any way that's bad. She settles in against him and nods.

"Find something," she says. "Some way to pull on through, I guess. I always have. I mean, there's Cadi."

"There is Cadi. She with her uncles tonight?"

Sam thinks a child is a pretty damn good thing to hang on to and maybe it doesn't help right now but Sam hasn't heard of the kids disappearing. Maybe Cadi's as dependable as anyone.

"Geoffrey and Duck might as well be grandparents. They're as close as she's ever going to get, anyway."

She leans back against him, comforted by the warm solid line of him against her, her fingers against his knee.

"I try not to think about losing them."

"Maybe you've got them for a while. They've been here as long as you, right? Longer?"

Sam doesn't know how the island picks who stays and who goes. He has a feeling it's pretty damn arbitrary, which doesn't help him comfort Charlie any, but the one thing he does know is that it doesn't usually hit the kids. If anything, the kids seem to stay.

"Way longer. Duck was one of the first guys I met," she says, with a flicker of a smile. She scrapes her nail against the fabric of his jeans. "I just feel like...I feel like clinging to everything I have until my hadns bleed. I've never felt like this before."

"Well, you did just lose your husband," Sam points out.

"That's bound to scrape someone a little more raw than usual. Besides, it adds up after this many years, doesn't it? It adds up when you lose people over and over and over again. At least it did for me. You get to a point where you just can't take it anymore."

"It's just so many people, Sam," she says, covering her face with her free hand, the other still against his knee, scraping her nails lightly. "I just...I can't think about it anymore. None of it. What's the point?"

"Then don't think anymore tonight. Just be."

Maybe it's bad advice but Sam doesn't know what else to say or do when everything circles back around to the fact that he can't give her any promises because he doesn't know that he'll be able to keep them.

"I don't know if I even know how to do that anymore," she says, half turning towards him, her eyes flickering over his face. "I think I've forgotten how."

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