by Chloe Garner
“Both,” he answered.
“You sound different,” Doris said. Sam was typing fast; Samantha had stopped drinking to watch. There was something going on.
“I’m fine,” Jason said.
“Well, come home soon. We’ve missed you.”
“I missed you,” he said. “We’ll call when we head that way.”
“Love you,” she said.
“Yeah, you, too,” he said and hung up. He nudged Samantha and she handed his beer back.
“What’s going on over there?” he asked.
“He’s sad,” she said. “I think Simon’s already gotten reassigned. We’re going to get assigned to a different Seeker.”
“How do you know that?”
“He’s guilty, but he isn’t angry or… Well, he’s grieving, but not like someone is dead. Simon’s alive, something bad happened, and Sam feels like it’s his fault.”
“No, about Seekers being reassigned.”
“Oh. We brought your mom’s books up a while back. They’re at Carter’s apartment. I read them a couple days ago.”
He almost asked - all of them? - and remembered. She must have seen something on his face.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Hmm?”
“Being back. After that much time.”
He scratched his arm, then finished the beer and went to get another one.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “I honestly don’t know if it helps or not. I never did. But I’ll tell you what I found, because I wish I’d had someone to tell me. It’s weird for a long time. The platitude says that it’s like grieving, and it gets better with time. You just have to wait it out. And it’s true,” she said, glancing at Sam with a small frown, then looking back at Jason. “It’s true, but it’s not like grieving. It is grieving. The old you is dead. You have to learn how to be a person again from scratch, and you’ll never be who you were before. Everyone else will think you are, but you’ll know better, because you can’t be something you can only remember.”
She glanced over her shoulder again, this time as if making sure Sam wasn’t paying attention, and stepped closer.
“This, though, I give you my word on as a Shaman. One day, you will look up and realize that you are you again, and that that time in the middle is like remembering something that happened to someone else. And if I guessed, I’d say it will happen for you much faster than it did for me. You’re a warrior. Not only that, but I think you might be kha, a dragon. That’s part of what’s so weird. You feel like it should be worse than it is. You’re stronger than anyone knows. But I also think it will go faster for you because I wanted to hang on to it, and you want to move past as fast as you can.”
“When did it happen for you?” Jason asked despite himself. He didn’t want to have this conversation, even if he wouldn’t give up for anything what she had told him. She looked down.
“The day I met you.”
The sense of buzzing attention made Jason look up to find Sam staring hard at Samantha, as if startled by a gunshot.
“What did you just say?”
“It’s not important,” she answered.
“Obviously that’s not true,” Sam said, shifting the laptop onto the bed and beginning to stand. She put out an arm and he fell back down onto the mattress.
“Am I lying?”
His eyes hadn’t left her.
“No.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. Jason couldn’t remember another time she’d said those words. She loved to explain things. If she didn’t explain it, she would cop out that it was complicated. Never that she didn’t want to talk about it. Sam looked stunned.
“What’s going on with Simon?” she asked.
Sam scowled, and Jason went to sit back up on the counter. Samantha walked halfway across the room and sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of an open space where she normally sparred with Sam. The wood there was scuffed and featureless.
“He’s got a brand new Ranger he’s trying to coach,” Sam said. “They punished him hard for getting all three of us killed.”
“I shouldn’t count against him,” Samantha said. “I was never his responsibility.”
“Doesn’t matter. You were an asset.”
“So what now?” Samantha asked.
“Who’d we get?” Jason asked.
“Kerk,” Sam said. Jason grimaced. True, he wasn’t going to be happy with any of them. The Seekers were nerds, cliquish ones, and they didn’t trust Rangers very much. In good relationships, a Seeker would eventually come to trust his Ranger, but they didn’t trust other Seekers’ Rangers. It was like being in high school, where the nerds thought the jocks were dumb and the jocks thought the nerds looked like good targets for random beatings. When he wasn’t trying to have a real relationship with a specific Seeker, he thought of them fraternally, as little brothers it was his job to protect and show them how life should be lived. Individual Seekers, though, were all a pain.
Kerk, though, was unfortunate because Sam didn’t like him. And Sam actually liked most of the Seekers. Kerk didn’t play video games with the rest of them, and he had a patronizing sense of his own intellect. He was about as good as they got, outside of Simon, and he wouldn’t slack off or fail to show up when they needed him, but none of the good Seekers would.
“Tell him that’s not going to work,” Jason said.
“It’s done,” Sam said. “Simon agrees with them, and he says he isn’t going to give up on his new Ranger like that.”
“Tell him it isn’t about him,” Jason said. Samantha shook her head.
“It’s done,” she said.
“What, now you’re the psychic?”
“No. He already had that fight. He lost.”
Jason grunted.
“This isn’t over.”
Samantha stood.
“It is for now. I need furniture.”
Jason took a drink of his beer.
“What’s wrong with this?” he asked, motioning to the sparse, mismatched furniture that Sam and Samantha had accumulated by dumpster diving while he was gone. Samantha was stretching double over her feet, raising slowly and continuing over into a back bend, balancing over her hands, and slowly circling her feet over her head and onto the floor on the other side.
“I don’t plan on being here when you and Kara get back together.”
Sam’s eyes got wide.
“Neither do I,” he agreed.
Jason shrugged.
“We can go somewhere else.”
Samantha stretched her back to one side and then the other, then turned to face him.
“I haven’t told you this because you aren’t going to like it and it hasn’t mattered, but you are not to leave this apartment without me. You can be here on your own, but you may not leave.”
Jason raised an eyebrow.
“You’re right. I don’t like it.”
“Don’t care,” she said.
“She’s right,” Sam said. “Not until we know what’s still after you.”
“And why,” Samantha said.
“Brandt, I thought,” Jason said. “To get to Sam.”
“No, they took you and told us you were dead. It means they had some other reason for wanting to snatch you.”
“I can handle myself,” Jason said. Samantha smiled.
“I expect you’ll surprise everyone the next time you get into a fight, but that’s not the point.”
Jason looked around the dingy apartment and took another drink.
“What’s so special about here?”
Sam snorted.
“What isn’t?”
Jason looked at him and waited, unwilling to go along with them any more than he had to. Sam knit his brows and shook his head.
“You know that there’s a phone on the second floor, just sitting in the hallway, that no one has walked off with, even after we put it there more than six months ago?”
“La
ndline?” Jason asked. Sam paused, knowing where Jason was going and not wanting to be led.
“Yeah.”
“Who would want to steal a landline?”
“You,” Samantha said. He grinned despite himself.
“Just sitting there in the hallway?”
She nodded.
“Okay, yeah, I’d snatch that. I mean, who leaves a phone in the hallway?”
“How do you think we ordered delivery?” Sam asked. Jason looked around. There wasn’t a phone here. Sam had left his phone in Jason’s Land Cruiser as some kind of mis-directed tribute, or something, and Samantha refused to own a cell.
“How did you make calls?”
Sam looked at him like he wasn’t keeping up.
“With the phone on the second floor.”
“That someone just leaves there?”
“That she paid them to leave there.”
“And no one takes it.”
Samantha screwed one eye shut.
“No one else really knows it’s there,” she said.
“Really?” Sam asked. She shrugged.
“I could have made it impossible to take, but that would just encourage them. Easier to make it un-seeable.”
“Unseeable,” Jason said dully. She smiled.
“It’s the same magic Lahn has on her,” she said, drawing the strange blade from the sheath she wore on her back. It had two points facing forward and one facing back toward her hand, a short sword with a second pair of points forming a crescent on the back of it. It didn’t matter how many times someone searched Samantha, if they didn’t know Lahn was there, they wouldn’t find her. She was an angel-forged blade, given the word in Angeltongue that translated both ‘peace’ and ‘victory’ as her name.
“You can do that for Anadidd’na?” Jason asked. His own blade, translated ‘hello’, was one he had physically crossed to Hell to get, and he had named her after Samantha. The angels had named her Anadidd’na Anu’dd during her time on the Paradise plane.
She nodded.
“It’s how Carter carries Diana.”
Jason put his hand up reflexively to check that Anadidd’na was in her sheath on his back. Anadidd’na was a much longer weapon than Lahn, and her pommel reached nearly to the top of his head. He drew her overhand, whereas Samantha kept Lahn handle-down under her shirt and drew underhanded. His sword had gotten him out of the hellsgate where they had been keeping him. Samantha had tried to explain to him, before, how epic blades had personalities embedded into them, but he hadn’t understood until he had gotten Anadidd’na. She wanted violence. She vibrated with the need for it, even as she rested on his back, and she was protective of him. The demon who had taken him had used her against Jason the entire time, and one day Anadidd’na had snapped and betrayed him, giving Jason the window he needed to escape. He’d been unwilling to put her down except to bathe and sleep, ever since.
Samantha reached up to touch the figure of a dragon’s head at the pommel.
“It isn’t going to be the same as what Lahn has. Lahn was forged in that magic, but I can keep regular people from noticing her.”
“Why didn’t you do it before?”
She looked at him with sad eyes.
“I wasn’t strong enough.”
He didn’t ask more. She hadn’t wanted to be powerful. She’d come to Carter, her mentor, an orphan, just trying to figure out what to do next, and being around him had catapulted her into a world she had been blissfully unaware of, before. Jason and Sam had grown up in this kind of a life. This was certainly a new degree, but it was the same life. She had been normal, once, and while she deserved the power she had - she respected it and was careful with it - she’d never asked for it. He also knew she felt guilty about not being able to protect him, when they had known that Brandt wanted to kidnap him, and then not being able to find him after it had happened.
Her eyes lit again, and she snapped her fingers.
“Furniture. We’re going furniture shopping.”
“Where are you going to put it?”
“Across the hall.”
Jason stared at her for a second.
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you aren’t me,” she said and grinned. She turned to Sam. “It’s going to be okay. The mistakes are past. We can’t change them. Stop stabbing yourself over it.”
Sam looked at her with a glum expression, and shrugged.
“He’s training a new guy. Simon.”
“If I have to, I will go use jedi mind magic on all of them and make them give him back to us,” she said. Jason hopped off the counter.
“You can do that?”
“No.”
<><><>
Samantha was cooking dinner on the grimy stove when Kara called for directions.
“I don’t know where I am,” Jason said. Sam held up a hand and bookmarked his page in his novel. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed reading.
“Hand it over,” he said. He took the phone.
“Hey, Kara.”
“Hey, Sam. It’s good to hear you.”
He grinned.
“Sam’s making dinner. Let’s just get you here.”
He heard her laugh, away from the phone.
“Can she cook?” she asked.
“If she still remembers how.”
“What does that mean?”
“Long story,” Sam said. He gave her directions to the nearest place to park, then walking directions to the building. He felt Samantha listening to him to make sure he didn’t send Kara to the lot that would have required a subway ride to get here, and he pushed her away playfully. He knew better than that. Subways made Jason nervous, and would probably do the same to Kara. They were open-country people, compared to the New York life he’d adapted to.
“See you soon,” she said after he finished.
“Give me a call if you get lost.”
“I’m insulted,” she answered and hung up. He grinned at the phone, then dropped it behind him and went back to his book.
About an hour later, someone knocked on the door and Jason went to answer it. Kara was carrying a small bag, and looked exactly how she always had. Tall, skinny, and beautiful in a way that usually divided people into two camps: those who hated her and those who wanted to sleep with her. With Kara, though, the giant personality won most everyone over. Even Samantha liked her, and Sam knew from inside her head how much she disliked women in general.
“Hey, beautiful,” Jason said. Kara paused, looking confused.
“Come on in,” Samantha called from the kitchen. Kara’s eyes lit up and she tossed her bag at Jason.
“Sammycat!” she crowed, dashing across the apartment to tackle her. Samantha got the spoon in her hand back into the pot she was stirring just in time to avoid spattering sauce everywhere. Sam smiled at the rush of joy he got off of Samantha, then grinned wider at Jason’s expression.
“What about me?” he asked. Kara turned sideways, keeping an arm around Samantha’s back.
“What about you? We’ve got all night.”
Jason hesitated for a few seconds as Kara turned to chat with Samantha, then he threw Kara’s bag at Sam.
“Not this time,” he said, approaching Kara with intent. Samantha stepped out of the way just in time as Jason wrapped Kara up and kissed her hard. Samantha giggled and scampered out of the kitchen over to Sam.
“We should go,” she said.
“Now. We should go now,” Sam said as the two of them started clawing at each other’s clothes. Samantha winced.
“Just…” she edged back onto the linoleum and around Jason and Kara. “Need to turn this off…”
She quickly moved things around on the counter, getting a bowl out of the way as Jason lifted Kara onto the counter.
“Sam,” Sam said. “Now.”
“Hot,” she said. “Guys, the stove is hot.”
There was grunting that might or might not have been a response.
“
Sam,” Sam said.
“Just… Okay, heat this, mix it with this, then… Right. Serve it over the noodles there…”
“Sam,” Sam urged, opening the door. She made an exasperated face, then looked away as the amount of visible skin got to be too much.
“Right. Have a good night.”
“Sam,” he said, pulling her harder. She darted out the door in front of him, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head.
“Don’t know why I didn’t see that coming.”
Sam grinned.
“Usually she does make him wait longer than that.”
“What do you want for dinner?” she asked. Sam looked back at the closed door as Samantha unlocked the door across the hallway. He’d wanted whatever it was she’d been making. It had smelled good. His face twitched when he realized he’d left his book, too. He sighed.
“Italian?”
“You want to go order?” she asked. He shrugged.
“Don’t forget to give him the right address,” she said as he headed downstairs to put in the call. He mentally pinched her and he heard her laugh as she closed the apartment door behind her.
He called and ordered from memory, then went back upstairs. Samantha was doing calisthenics he had learned a while ago, and he joined her.
“What do you know that you aren’t telling me?” he asked. There was a long silence as she stretched.
“Something you wouldn’t understand,” she said. He waited through the next four counts and sat up.
“What wouldn’t I understand?”
She went through a couple more forms, not mentally avoiding him, just focused.
“What it’s like to come back eighty years older than everyone else,” she said.
“You think there’s something wrong with Jason?”
“So does he.”
“What is it?”
“That’s what you wouldn’t understand,” she said. “Please, Sam. This isn’t about you. If you pick at it, especially with him around, you’re just going to make him feel more like he doesn’t fit here any more.”
“But… this is where he belongs. With us, I mean.”
She sent him warm agreement and something like sympathy.
“I know. And he knows. Just… please. Let it go.”
She gave him as much sincerity as she could. She wasn’t hiding from him, it was just something deep inside of her that she was remembering, and he wasn’t a part of it. It was a foreign feeling to him. He and she had been on the same team for everything, for a long time. Even when they disagreed, they had agreed to let each other make their mistakes, after Jason died, so they were on the same side even when they were wrong. He didn’t want to be jealous that she had something private with Jason, but he was anyway.