Title: some call her sister of the moon
Fandom: LOST
Characters: Samuel/Claire
Rating: R
Word Count: 843
Summary: He needs to hate her. (for
12_stories , black)
He hides behind dirty faces that don't belong to him, to this place, and she sees through him because they are the same.
Cold surprise jolts through him as metal slices his skin. Samuel curses aloud, yanking the knife from her sticky hands. He should have seen her coming, all grass stains and knotted curls.
"You promised," Claire yells, smacking her fists against his chest. "You promised you wouldn't leave me."
He slams her into the sand and she falls silent, watching him with wide eyes. "I told you," Samuel grumbles, "I have to go-"
He stops when she wraps her fingers around the spot on his neck where she tried to stab him, feels an odd sting at her touch. Pulling her hands down to look, he doesn't know why he expects to see blood. There's none. Of course there's none.
"There's a red mark," Claire says. Her veins stutter against his thumbs, blue ribbons flowing erratically. Samuel pins her legs under Locke's knees, her bones pressing into his skin.
"Impossible. You can't do anything to me."
Her tongue flickers over her lip, and his own throat goes dry. "Then why did you stop me?" He hates her like this, clear blue eyes that get past the skin he's wearing. It's easier when she's stumbling through the jungle, caught halfway between sleep and understanding.
He hates himself for wanting her like this.
The unfamiliar mouth presses hoarse kisses along her collarbone. Blood pounds hot behind his temples, drowning out the one advantage his human form grants - control.
Claire grunts as his teeth scrape over her scar. "John."
"It's me," he growls, and the island's admonishment swarms inside his chest. He's not supposed to care about his name. A living, breathing man needs a name and he is none of these things.
"I know. I can't, I can't remember-" and he stops her from trying with an angry clashing of his mouth on hers. With rough hands tugging at her hips. Locke was clumsy at this, and it spills over into his own movements. He pauses to concentrate, to find Samuel inside the blur of personalities. "Don't stop," Claire moans, burying her face in his neck.
It's easy to comply, too easy to focus his resentment on her, to punish the goodness that still rests in pieces inside her. He forces them out of hiding, tainting the parts of her that are still soft, fragile.
Samuel grabs at her hair. There's a single smooth curl, just behind her ear, that she combs her fingers through when she's distracted. It dirties in his sweaty fist, like every other part of her, flesh that yields and bruises fast under his grip.
He wants, needs, to tear open the lies, the illusion that says Claire is real and Samuel is not. He imagines her cracking like glass beneath his fingers, taking more and more from her until there's nothing left but slivers, shoving her down into his palms. Watching her disappear into his blood.
Samuel will never be a man until she is a monster.
She cries, tiny disconnected words that drag chains across his back, tying them to the ground. Claire brings his hands to herself, forms them into harsh caresses he doesn't know how to hold back anymore.
There's something resilient inside her, buried deep under the dirt and tears. Claire knows when to let go and when to hold on, something the chaotic black vapor that calls itself power can never hope to copy.
"Samuel," she remembers, sharp and sweet, her voice burning as it slides like melted gold down his lungs.
He groans and falls away from her. The sand is cold on the back of his head, and he closes his eyes against the night. He listens to her breathing, quiet, barely reaching past the howl that rips through his body, threatening to turn him to smoke.
Claire slides in between his arm and ribs, bringing his mind back to the earth. He tightens his elbow around her waist, and she shifts to fit too perfectly against him. They are alike and opposite, ashes and dust, blood and water.
"It doesn't matter if we leave," she whispers into his ear. "We can never be who we want to be."
Samuel looks over at her, at the starlight biting down on her skin, on the skin that makes up John Locke. He doesn't need to answer.
Claire runs her hands over his chest, hands that only love when she feels like touching, only kill when she wants to pull the trigger, hands that squeeze tight over life and death and the shadow of his heart. He feels wicked for trying to change her.
"I'm never going to see you again," she says. It's not a scream, and it's not a plea. It, she, is nothing. Samuel turns his face away and lies, lies because it's his only defense, lies because she sees him as he is and he'll never be able to run away from that.
"I will come back for you."