In the Tower of the Castle for sci_fis
Title: In the Tower of the Castle
Recipient: sci_fis
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 2.6k
Warnings: Semi-graphic violence
Author's Notes: I tried to combine a few of your prompts. I hope I did them justice.
Summary: "And, for a while, I thought I was the princess, cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle.” A girl-stealing monster steals Sam away, and Dean must get her back.
Sam studied the red on her knuckles. With clinical detachment she noted the purple bruises blooming around the bones; she knew when she woke up tomorrow her hands would ache with every movement.
For now, they burned with fresh pain, fresh cuts, and she used the pad of a finger to swipe a bead of red blood off a knuckle on her other hand. She held it up to her eye, squinting at the roundness of it, the surface tension.
She applied it to her index fingernail. The blood spread easily, and for a minute or so, before the blood dried to an ugly brown, Sam’s nail was painted a glossy red.
She examined it, holding her hand out. It didn’t stir anything within her.
“Sammy,” Dean called, and Sam looked up, casually wiping her hands on her jeans. Dean ambled over, hands tucked into his pocket, jerking his chin up at her in a silent, masculine greeting.
Sam nodded back.
Sam heard Dean’s hitched breath the moment he saw Sam’s knuckles. “Jesus christ,” he swore. He knelt before Sam, spreading one of her hands out in his and inspecting the damage. “How the hell did this happen?”
Sam shrugged. “Sparring.”
Dean’s green eyes flicked up to hers, wide with alarm. “Sparring?” he repeated. “What were you fighting, an army of zombie cactuses?”
“Cacti,” Sam corrected. The concern on Dean’s face got a few degrees more intense. “I’m fine,” she added, offering a smile. “I just had to…” she trailed off, shrugging.
Something on Dean’s face changed, and he nodded. He understood. Maybe not the details--he wouldn’t suspect for a second--but taking out frustrations with violence was kind of the de-facto Winchester way.
Sam had just never thought she’d be one to subscribe to it.
Lately, though, things had been getting to her, even more than usual. Following her in anxiety dreams that woke her up in the middle of the night doused in sweat. In the words of strangers and the language they used. How ingrained so many things were in society, especially in the small towns in the armpit of America that they crawled through.
Sam didn’t mean to slam a whole group of people, including her family. She’d met countless kind souls and Dean was about as well meaning as well meaning could get.
It didn’t change the fact that Sam was lonely and caged.
No one could see her for who she was and she couldn’t find a way to show them. Her voice was silent, her wings trimmed.
And every mirror reminded her of the grim truth: she was seventeen, and her hormones were in full swing. Swinging in the wrong direction.
She loathed the spotty, pale hairs on her chin, but she knew it could be worse; Dean started getting peach fuzz at fourteen. She dreaded the day John decided she needed a buzz cut like Dean and told her to cut all her hair off. Her feet and hands were huge, promising a future growth spurt, and she wished she could be small forever. On the phone, sometimes her voice was soft and sweet enough that people regarded her how she wanted them to.
There was a Sam in the future. Sam had no idea who that person was, what that person would look like.
And it terrified her.
Her future was around the corner, completely uncertain, and she yearned for some eden, somewhere where no one would know her old full name or what was in her pants. She wanted to be somewhere where people knew her for who she was and they accepted her.
She’d been doing research, in the scant amount of free time she had. She’d been saving up for an application. The deadline was a few months away.
It was the only thread of hope she had. Everything else made her feel sick.
She only ever felt like herself when she was alone with Dean. He might not use the right language, and she might not know how to tell him about this, about any of this, but he still understood her on a level that went far beyond normal people and even John.
Dean didn’t mind her feminine giggle. Dean didn’t mind when she chose clothes from the women’s section of the thrift store that straddled the lines of androgyny.
She didn’t want to wear sundresses and heavy makeup. She didn’t love the color pink. She just wasn’t that person. To be honest, there wasn’t all that much about herself that she wanted to change, at least how she was now. Her growth spurt might change that.
It was the perception that mattered. She wanted people to look at her and know who she was. She didn’t want a dress to have to speak for her. That defeated the point.
Sam had met some kids like her, before, in other towns. She’d secretly joined lunch time GSA clubs at high schools, learned about political things she’d never heard of, identities she’d never considered. It was cool. She wanted to learn more.
“There,” Dean said, and Sam blinked. She was sleepy. She’d drifted off, going into another daydream, another day agonizing over things while feeling totally stagnant.
She looked down at her hands. Dean had cleaned them and bandaged them. She smiled up at him. “Thanks.”
He smiled in return and squeezed her shoulder. “Be ready at oh-600 tomorrow,” he reminded her. “Dad’s putting us on scouting.”
Sam nodded. Dean went into the bathroom and she heard the shower turn on a beat later.
For now, she didn’t have the luxury to work on applications or make friends at school. The hunt they were on was dangerous and bloody, and girls were going missing just about every other day. The energy of the town was quiet and paranoid. The monster left bodies around like they’d been put through a shredder. It had to stop.
And they were going to stop it.
***
When Sam woke up, her ears were ringing.
Her ears were ringing, and her body felt like static. She tasted gravel in her mouth. Her breaths were jagged and awkward. It was as if her entire existence was made out of tiny particles of something, harsh and off putting, vibrating and grinding against her bones.
She cracked an eye open.
She was laying on the ground in some dank, concretey place. Her arms were tied behind her back.
And she was not alone.
Dotting the rooms were girls in various stages of dying or dead, also tied up, some leaning on each other, some curled up alone.
A girl across from her had wide, white eyes in the center of her dirt-caked face. She was looking intently at Sam. Sam looked back.
“You’re gonna die,” the girl said. “Sorry about that.”
Sam coughed weakly. Her body screaming at her, a rib definitely broken, she hauled herself up. Her vision went fuzzy and she waited for it to clear before speaking. “You’re gonna get out of here. My family’s gonna come looking for me.”
The girl laughed, but it wasn’t harsh. “That’s what we all thought,” she said. She nodded her head toward two girls dead in the corner, so recently dead they were responsible for the miserable smell. “That’s what they thought.”
Sam shook her head. Her eyes burned and she forced her gaze away from the girls. “My family is--my family deals with stuff like this. They’re investigating.”
The girl’s eyes were still wary, but Sam could read the hope easily behind them. It gave Sam her own boost of hope.
She made eye contact with as many people as possible. “They’ll come,” she said, speaking as loud as her torn up throat allowed. “You guys are gonna be okay.”
No one responded, but the mood felt lighter after that.
Sam had only been conscious in this room for a couple of minutes, but she felt close to the other girls. Not one of them made a comment about why she was here, if she belonged. Everyone wanted everyone else to be okay. No matter if these girls had met under bad circumstances outside this room, inside the room was a commitment to each other.
When the monster returned, dark-faced, masculine, and hunched, Sam and the girl she’d talked to fought back.
The monster barely stepped into the room, only leaning forward enough to grab the ankle of a girl who’d passed out from exhaustion or dehydration. Sam launched forward, bad knee overextending, blindly clawing at the monster. “You can’t take her,” she hissed. “She’s not yours.”
The monster didn’t respond, didn’t look at them, only pulled the passed out girl harder. The other girl went for a face hit, and that bothered the monster enough that he dropped the ankle he was holding and decked the other girl.
Sam watched her drop and felt rage build inside her. She attacked the monster with all she had.
It was not a winning battle. There was a sharp pain in her abdomen. Yet she wasn’t afraid. All she wanted to do was protect the others. And that was what she would do, no matter the consequences.
“Sammy!” Dean roared, from somewhere far off. Something clicked loudly. “Duck!”
Sam ducked.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The monster shook violently with each impact of the silver bullets. He groaned, staggering forward, and Dean shot him one more time before he collapsed in a lifeless heap on the floor.
Sam looked up at Dean, mouth dropped open, and Dean looked back at her, just as surprised. Their moment only lasted a second or two before Dean was running up to her and checking her for injuries, hands on her face.
She slipped out of his grip and backed up. The lost look on his face hurt. “The others,” she croaked. “Check the others first.”
Dean’s face landed on the girl that had taken a serious hit from the monster. He nodded and went to her. He helped her sit up and she blinked up at Sam over his shoulder.
Sam nodded at her. She nodded back.
Sam went to a younger girl curled up in the corner, coercing her to stand. It took a while for most of the girls to be convinced that they were actually safe, that the monster was actually dead.
Once they believed, they began to cry. They began to celebrate.
Dean and Sam led them out of the basement and up into the night air one at a time. Firefighters, police officers, and paramedics were waiting for them. Even without the sun, the world was so bright, so loud. Sam squinted. One by one, girls were wrapped in blankets and given medical attention.
Dean rode in the back of the ambulance with Sam while the paramedics checked her out.
She’d broken her right arm, two ribs, and had serious cuts that would need stitches on her temple and stomach. She was bruised and scratched all over, but in one piece.
“Arnold,” one paramedic called to the other. “She needs an I.V.”
Sam smiled.
***
Sam’s hospital room was nice.
It was a little fucked up that it took being a local hero of sorts to get the room with the four plaster walls and the nice T.V., but she would take what she could get.
John was god knows where. Sam didn’t know what she was going to say to him. Fuck, she didn’t know what Dean was going to say to him either.
Speaking of the devil, Dean walked in at that moment, arms loaded up with greasy brown bags from Sam’s favorite food place.
Sam’s stomach growled, and she reached out eagerly for the non-hospital grade food. She was ready for something more than gruelly mush. Her ribs protested, and Dean ignored her arms, setting down her food on the tray over her lap.
Dean dropped into the seat next to the bed and they ate together in silence. Sam felt a little more alive.
When they were done eating, Dean lingered. They were both quiet. Sam waited for him to speak.
“You good?” Dean asked.
Sam nodded. She wiggled her fingers and toes. “A little achey, but better.”
Dean chewed at his lip. He looked up at her and chuckled. “You know, when I teased you about being a--”
“Don’t even say it,” Sam interrupted, heated. “Don’t you dare day it.”
“Okay.” Dean held his hands up. “Sorry.”
Sam hugged her arms around her body. “It’s not a joke,” she said.
Dean leaned forward. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “It’s not?”
Sam looked him dead in the eye. “No,” she said, swallowing, her voice cracking. “It really isn’t.”
Dean was quiet for a moment and Sam had no idea what was going through his head.
“So…” Dean trailed off, after almost a full minute of quiet. “You’re…?”
“I’m a girl,” Sam said. Her eyes dared Dean to challenge her. “And before you ask, I always have been.”
Dean nodded. “Okay.”
Sam waited for more. Nothing else came. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Dean repeated. “I mean, it’s not like there weren’t signs.”
This was a million miles away from how Sam thought this conversation would go. “I--what?”
“Come on,” Dean hedged, a little red in the face. He gestured vaguely at Sam. “You’re… Sammy. You’re you. You’ve never been able to hide who you are, what you think.”
Sam didn’t know how to respond to that. Her eyes were burning.
“I’m gonna fuck up, though, I’m just warning you,” Dean said with a slight laugh. “And, uh, Dad--”
“Let’s not talk about Dad,” Sam said.
“Okay.” Dean nodded. “He’ll come around.”
Sam didn’t believe that, but she didn’t want to get into an argument with Dean about Dad right now.
“So what now?” Sam asked.
Dean shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “What do you want?”
She’d never been asked that before. She didn’t really know what she wanted, now that she’d been asked, now that she was living in this new reality.
“I don’t want things to change,” she said, slowly, testing her words out. “I just want to be me.”
“Okay, Sammy,” Dean said. “We can do that. Uh. Samantha?”
Sam laughed. “You never called me Samuel, so you don’t have to call me Samantha, but, um, yes. At least I think so. Just Sam works.”
“Got it, Sammy,” Dean said, just to rile her up, and she smiled. She let out a little laugh, but it caught in her throat. She tried to laugh again and it bubbled out as a sob.
“Hey. Shh.” Dean leaned forward, wrapping her in a careful hug, and Sam let out a breath she’d been holding her entire life. She held him back, just tightly enough to make her broken arm protest, burying her face in his neck. She cried into his t-shirt, breathing in his comforting scent.
When she was all out of tears, she pulled away. Dean smiled weakly at her with wet eyes.
“You’re gonna be okay, kiddo,” Dean said. “Just takes some time.”
For once, Sam believed that, with all her heart.
It wasn’t going to be perfect, and it wasn’t going to be pretty, but Sam didn’t want those things.
She wanted to be her.
And, for the first time, she was.
And when she ran away to Stanford seven months later, she would get a brief but beautiful shot at another life.
Recipient: sci_fis
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 2.6k
Warnings: Semi-graphic violence
Author's Notes: I tried to combine a few of your prompts. I hope I did them justice.
Summary: "And, for a while, I thought I was the princess, cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle.” A girl-stealing monster steals Sam away, and Dean must get her back.
Sam studied the red on her knuckles. With clinical detachment she noted the purple bruises blooming around the bones; she knew when she woke up tomorrow her hands would ache with every movement.
For now, they burned with fresh pain, fresh cuts, and she used the pad of a finger to swipe a bead of red blood off a knuckle on her other hand. She held it up to her eye, squinting at the roundness of it, the surface tension.
She applied it to her index fingernail. The blood spread easily, and for a minute or so, before the blood dried to an ugly brown, Sam’s nail was painted a glossy red.
She examined it, holding her hand out. It didn’t stir anything within her.
“Sammy,” Dean called, and Sam looked up, casually wiping her hands on her jeans. Dean ambled over, hands tucked into his pocket, jerking his chin up at her in a silent, masculine greeting.
Sam nodded back.
Sam heard Dean’s hitched breath the moment he saw Sam’s knuckles. “Jesus christ,” he swore. He knelt before Sam, spreading one of her hands out in his and inspecting the damage. “How the hell did this happen?”
Sam shrugged. “Sparring.”
Dean’s green eyes flicked up to hers, wide with alarm. “Sparring?” he repeated. “What were you fighting, an army of zombie cactuses?”
“Cacti,” Sam corrected. The concern on Dean’s face got a few degrees more intense. “I’m fine,” she added, offering a smile. “I just had to…” she trailed off, shrugging.
Something on Dean’s face changed, and he nodded. He understood. Maybe not the details--he wouldn’t suspect for a second--but taking out frustrations with violence was kind of the de-facto Winchester way.
Sam had just never thought she’d be one to subscribe to it.
Lately, though, things had been getting to her, even more than usual. Following her in anxiety dreams that woke her up in the middle of the night doused in sweat. In the words of strangers and the language they used. How ingrained so many things were in society, especially in the small towns in the armpit of America that they crawled through.
Sam didn’t mean to slam a whole group of people, including her family. She’d met countless kind souls and Dean was about as well meaning as well meaning could get.
It didn’t change the fact that Sam was lonely and caged.
No one could see her for who she was and she couldn’t find a way to show them. Her voice was silent, her wings trimmed.
And every mirror reminded her of the grim truth: she was seventeen, and her hormones were in full swing. Swinging in the wrong direction.
She loathed the spotty, pale hairs on her chin, but she knew it could be worse; Dean started getting peach fuzz at fourteen. She dreaded the day John decided she needed a buzz cut like Dean and told her to cut all her hair off. Her feet and hands were huge, promising a future growth spurt, and she wished she could be small forever. On the phone, sometimes her voice was soft and sweet enough that people regarded her how she wanted them to.
There was a Sam in the future. Sam had no idea who that person was, what that person would look like.
And it terrified her.
Her future was around the corner, completely uncertain, and she yearned for some eden, somewhere where no one would know her old full name or what was in her pants. She wanted to be somewhere where people knew her for who she was and they accepted her.
She’d been doing research, in the scant amount of free time she had. She’d been saving up for an application. The deadline was a few months away.
It was the only thread of hope she had. Everything else made her feel sick.
She only ever felt like herself when she was alone with Dean. He might not use the right language, and she might not know how to tell him about this, about any of this, but he still understood her on a level that went far beyond normal people and even John.
Dean didn’t mind her feminine giggle. Dean didn’t mind when she chose clothes from the women’s section of the thrift store that straddled the lines of androgyny.
She didn’t want to wear sundresses and heavy makeup. She didn’t love the color pink. She just wasn’t that person. To be honest, there wasn’t all that much about herself that she wanted to change, at least how she was now. Her growth spurt might change that.
It was the perception that mattered. She wanted people to look at her and know who she was. She didn’t want a dress to have to speak for her. That defeated the point.
Sam had met some kids like her, before, in other towns. She’d secretly joined lunch time GSA clubs at high schools, learned about political things she’d never heard of, identities she’d never considered. It was cool. She wanted to learn more.
“There,” Dean said, and Sam blinked. She was sleepy. She’d drifted off, going into another daydream, another day agonizing over things while feeling totally stagnant.
She looked down at her hands. Dean had cleaned them and bandaged them. She smiled up at him. “Thanks.”
He smiled in return and squeezed her shoulder. “Be ready at oh-600 tomorrow,” he reminded her. “Dad’s putting us on scouting.”
Sam nodded. Dean went into the bathroom and she heard the shower turn on a beat later.
For now, she didn’t have the luxury to work on applications or make friends at school. The hunt they were on was dangerous and bloody, and girls were going missing just about every other day. The energy of the town was quiet and paranoid. The monster left bodies around like they’d been put through a shredder. It had to stop.
And they were going to stop it.
***
When Sam woke up, her ears were ringing.
Her ears were ringing, and her body felt like static. She tasted gravel in her mouth. Her breaths were jagged and awkward. It was as if her entire existence was made out of tiny particles of something, harsh and off putting, vibrating and grinding against her bones.
She cracked an eye open.
She was laying on the ground in some dank, concretey place. Her arms were tied behind her back.
And she was not alone.
Dotting the rooms were girls in various stages of dying or dead, also tied up, some leaning on each other, some curled up alone.
A girl across from her had wide, white eyes in the center of her dirt-caked face. She was looking intently at Sam. Sam looked back.
“You’re gonna die,” the girl said. “Sorry about that.”
Sam coughed weakly. Her body screaming at her, a rib definitely broken, she hauled herself up. Her vision went fuzzy and she waited for it to clear before speaking. “You’re gonna get out of here. My family’s gonna come looking for me.”
The girl laughed, but it wasn’t harsh. “That’s what we all thought,” she said. She nodded her head toward two girls dead in the corner, so recently dead they were responsible for the miserable smell. “That’s what they thought.”
Sam shook her head. Her eyes burned and she forced her gaze away from the girls. “My family is--my family deals with stuff like this. They’re investigating.”
The girl’s eyes were still wary, but Sam could read the hope easily behind them. It gave Sam her own boost of hope.
She made eye contact with as many people as possible. “They’ll come,” she said, speaking as loud as her torn up throat allowed. “You guys are gonna be okay.”
No one responded, but the mood felt lighter after that.
Sam had only been conscious in this room for a couple of minutes, but she felt close to the other girls. Not one of them made a comment about why she was here, if she belonged. Everyone wanted everyone else to be okay. No matter if these girls had met under bad circumstances outside this room, inside the room was a commitment to each other.
When the monster returned, dark-faced, masculine, and hunched, Sam and the girl she’d talked to fought back.
The monster barely stepped into the room, only leaning forward enough to grab the ankle of a girl who’d passed out from exhaustion or dehydration. Sam launched forward, bad knee overextending, blindly clawing at the monster. “You can’t take her,” she hissed. “She’s not yours.”
The monster didn’t respond, didn’t look at them, only pulled the passed out girl harder. The other girl went for a face hit, and that bothered the monster enough that he dropped the ankle he was holding and decked the other girl.
Sam watched her drop and felt rage build inside her. She attacked the monster with all she had.
It was not a winning battle. There was a sharp pain in her abdomen. Yet she wasn’t afraid. All she wanted to do was protect the others. And that was what she would do, no matter the consequences.
“Sammy!” Dean roared, from somewhere far off. Something clicked loudly. “Duck!”
Sam ducked.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The monster shook violently with each impact of the silver bullets. He groaned, staggering forward, and Dean shot him one more time before he collapsed in a lifeless heap on the floor.
Sam looked up at Dean, mouth dropped open, and Dean looked back at her, just as surprised. Their moment only lasted a second or two before Dean was running up to her and checking her for injuries, hands on her face.
She slipped out of his grip and backed up. The lost look on his face hurt. “The others,” she croaked. “Check the others first.”
Dean’s face landed on the girl that had taken a serious hit from the monster. He nodded and went to her. He helped her sit up and she blinked up at Sam over his shoulder.
Sam nodded at her. She nodded back.
Sam went to a younger girl curled up in the corner, coercing her to stand. It took a while for most of the girls to be convinced that they were actually safe, that the monster was actually dead.
Once they believed, they began to cry. They began to celebrate.
Dean and Sam led them out of the basement and up into the night air one at a time. Firefighters, police officers, and paramedics were waiting for them. Even without the sun, the world was so bright, so loud. Sam squinted. One by one, girls were wrapped in blankets and given medical attention.
Dean rode in the back of the ambulance with Sam while the paramedics checked her out.
She’d broken her right arm, two ribs, and had serious cuts that would need stitches on her temple and stomach. She was bruised and scratched all over, but in one piece.
“Arnold,” one paramedic called to the other. “She needs an I.V.”
Sam smiled.
***
Sam’s hospital room was nice.
It was a little fucked up that it took being a local hero of sorts to get the room with the four plaster walls and the nice T.V., but she would take what she could get.
John was god knows where. Sam didn’t know what she was going to say to him. Fuck, she didn’t know what Dean was going to say to him either.
Speaking of the devil, Dean walked in at that moment, arms loaded up with greasy brown bags from Sam’s favorite food place.
Sam’s stomach growled, and she reached out eagerly for the non-hospital grade food. She was ready for something more than gruelly mush. Her ribs protested, and Dean ignored her arms, setting down her food on the tray over her lap.
Dean dropped into the seat next to the bed and they ate together in silence. Sam felt a little more alive.
When they were done eating, Dean lingered. They were both quiet. Sam waited for him to speak.
“You good?” Dean asked.
Sam nodded. She wiggled her fingers and toes. “A little achey, but better.”
Dean chewed at his lip. He looked up at her and chuckled. “You know, when I teased you about being a--”
“Don’t even say it,” Sam interrupted, heated. “Don’t you dare day it.”
“Okay.” Dean held his hands up. “Sorry.”
Sam hugged her arms around her body. “It’s not a joke,” she said.
Dean leaned forward. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “It’s not?”
Sam looked him dead in the eye. “No,” she said, swallowing, her voice cracking. “It really isn’t.”
Dean was quiet for a moment and Sam had no idea what was going through his head.
“So…” Dean trailed off, after almost a full minute of quiet. “You’re…?”
“I’m a girl,” Sam said. Her eyes dared Dean to challenge her. “And before you ask, I always have been.”
Dean nodded. “Okay.”
Sam waited for more. Nothing else came. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Dean repeated. “I mean, it’s not like there weren’t signs.”
This was a million miles away from how Sam thought this conversation would go. “I--what?”
“Come on,” Dean hedged, a little red in the face. He gestured vaguely at Sam. “You’re… Sammy. You’re you. You’ve never been able to hide who you are, what you think.”
Sam didn’t know how to respond to that. Her eyes were burning.
“I’m gonna fuck up, though, I’m just warning you,” Dean said with a slight laugh. “And, uh, Dad--”
“Let’s not talk about Dad,” Sam said.
“Okay.” Dean nodded. “He’ll come around.”
Sam didn’t believe that, but she didn’t want to get into an argument with Dean about Dad right now.
“So what now?” Sam asked.
Dean shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “What do you want?”
She’d never been asked that before. She didn’t really know what she wanted, now that she’d been asked, now that she was living in this new reality.
“I don’t want things to change,” she said, slowly, testing her words out. “I just want to be me.”
“Okay, Sammy,” Dean said. “We can do that. Uh. Samantha?”
Sam laughed. “You never called me Samuel, so you don’t have to call me Samantha, but, um, yes. At least I think so. Just Sam works.”
“Got it, Sammy,” Dean said, just to rile her up, and she smiled. She let out a little laugh, but it caught in her throat. She tried to laugh again and it bubbled out as a sob.
“Hey. Shh.” Dean leaned forward, wrapping her in a careful hug, and Sam let out a breath she’d been holding her entire life. She held him back, just tightly enough to make her broken arm protest, burying her face in his neck. She cried into his t-shirt, breathing in his comforting scent.
When she was all out of tears, she pulled away. Dean smiled weakly at her with wet eyes.
“You’re gonna be okay, kiddo,” Dean said. “Just takes some time.”
For once, Sam believed that, with all her heart.
It wasn’t going to be perfect, and it wasn’t going to be pretty, but Sam didn’t want those things.
She wanted to be her.
And, for the first time, she was.
And when she ran away to Stanford seven months later, she would get a brief but beautiful shot at another life.