𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬. sam uley

𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲-𝐬𝐢𝐱

He returns. The white wolf doesn't come. Sam is grateful for it all the same. He shows his admiration with a nuzzle in its neck, biting it playfully on the ear. The white wolf growls playfully, but whines when Sam turns away to leave.

It's harder than he thought, leaving. He had been with the white wolf for so long that he is not sure what to do without it. It helped, sometimes, with the images Sam saw in his head during his dreams. The echo of laughter that haunted him when he woke was replaced by the insistent barks of the white wolf, demanding that they go hunt together.

The scattered memories of a caress here, intertwined fingers there, and an embrace tucked in between them like trinkets he is forced to carry around with him, are replaced by the piercing pain of teeth in his shoulders--that agony somehow better than the torment Sage's death has inflicted upon him.

In its own way, the white wolf helped, and Sam thinks that maybe he helped it, too. It howled, loud and tortuous, when Sam fled, but the thoughts he had caught before he left had been optimistic and lighter. Though he is regretful to leave, his heart thumps in his chest when he crosses the border into his territory.

Rain pours on his back, and his wolf runs harder and it hurts the closer he gets, but Sam had never been so happy to be home.

The emerald of the trees dance in his eyes like old friends greeting him in school. He throws his head back and howls, the commanding call of an Alpha. It is early, but resounding howls echo back to him, and it trickles into him like honey, the familiarity of his pack and Jacob's.

(There is a pang in his heart when he looks back and doesn't see the white wolf. It does not feel as victorious now.)

Paul's grey wolf collides into him first, growling as it attacks him. Where the fuck have you been?

He shows him the memories, the muted grief and angry purity that had attacked him when he was losing himself. There is the vampire he killed out of malice--rage. The days spent with the white wolf, the days where he thought of fire and ash and red eyes that faded into green.

Where is he? he demands, and that hatred curls up in him, overcoming everything else that pulses in his veins. Where is it?

Jared's thoughts come through. At the leeches' house, of course. Been there for the past two months.

Yeah, two fucking months, Sam, Paul snarls, thoughts loud and brash and comforting in Sam's head. What the fuck was that about?

He can't explain it, so he tries to show them the only way he knows how. What if you lost Rebecca? Or Kim?

And he knows they can't say anything, because Sam's pain is the worst it's been. It is all over him, a blanket of shadows that he cannot take off. Where Paul is, Sage should be right next to him, laughing and crowding around him, pushing Paul, finding Seth. Hunting.

The wolf tries to take over, but Paul's thoughts echo through, oddly solemn. I know, Sam. I do.

They don't, and Sam is spiraling, running through the trees with Paul and Jared following behind him. He passes Brady and Collin, still shaky in their phases, and runs through the meadows, towards the place he last saw her. Maybe he was wrong last time, maybe she came out of the ashes stronger than ever? Maybe Aro actually is dead, despite Jared's declarations.

She'll be there, keeping the rain off her with her shadows. Sam will run into her and they will part like water, and he will tackle her and she'll laugh at him. All will be well and this whole two months will have been a fever dream.

His wolf runs as fast as he can, and Sam finds the field and he stops, panting.

No.

Jared's consoling. We cleaned it up, Sam. It was. . . There was a lot.

Where is she? he begs, sniffing around, wolf angry and saddened, struck with grief as though it were a knife twisting into his heart. What happened--where is she?

No response, not even from the rest of his pack, whose thoughts he can hear, but whose thoughts don't matter when he can't hear Sage--can't touch her or see her or be with her. When she's not there.

. . . she's gone, Paul says, choking out the words like they are curses.

Sam can't believe it, but it's in the way the ash has disappeared, the grass growing up his legs and tickling the fur on his paws.

The flowers are gone.

The comfort of his return is replaced by the deep, heavy weight of reality.

Sage is gone.

Well and truly gone.

Paul shoves him lightly in the side. Sam barely registers it. His bones are weak, worn and tired from running. He shoves his nose into the ground, exhausted. Jared comes on the left, and they hold him up.

The rain mattes his fur.

You need to shift, Sam.

Sam blearily glances up. Jacob's massive, auburn wolf stands in front of him, and beside him, so frail and fragile--the strongest woman he knows--is his mother.

He collapses, unable to keep himself up. A whine escapes his mouth. He crawls to her.

"My boy," she whispers. Her face is wet, eyes rimmed red. The rain is pouring now, and he worries she might get sick.

He pushes his giant head into her tiny, delicate hands and closes his eyes.

In the next second, Sam Uley is sobbing into his mother's lap, and it feels like he's a little kid again, reliving his worst nightmares. She presses a kiss into his hair, then swipes at his forehead, removing his long bangs from his eyes.

"I'm sorry, baby," she soothes, shushes, and whispers. "I'm so sorry. I know, I know. I get it."

He clenches his eyes shut.

Thunder cracks in the sky.

She wraps a blanket around him, but the chill goes into his bones, into his heart. He wishes he would have never come home.