𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬. sam uley

𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐞

Sam doesn't go back to the Cullens' for a couple of weeks. He goes to work mindlessly, coming home to find his mother already in bed, dinner warm in the microwave.

He thinks about Sage—not a leech, a cold one, or the vampire anymore—a lot. All of his thoughts are consumed with her. He wakes up to her light eyes bleeding into his mind, goes to sleep thinking about her choked voice as Edward strangled her. He places these thoughts in a box that gets full too quick, a box that spills over and out onto his pillows until he can't sleep without wanting to go be by Sage's side.

Sam hasn't talked to his mother about it. He knows that he probably needs to, needs to clear up the tense air that has doused the house for weeks now.

He will, he decides, when he deals with his pack being dysfunctional (dysfunctional in which Paul still doesn't listen and nothing is right because Jacob is gone and pack dynamics have been array ever since) and his thoughts of Sage subside into nothingness.

He goes into town on the fourth week of being holed in his house, restless and jittery. He decides to head down towards the convenience store and search for something if only to ease his unease.

Because he's thinking about Sage, he wonders if the person he sees walking with his mother—his bloody mother—is a mirage. After a few seconds, he confirms that it is Sage, and that his mother's pants are riddled with blood. Her shirt is stained, too, and she is walking too close to Sage for his liking.

Immediately, all thoughts of wanting to see the vampire fly out of his mind and he storms up to them, shouting, "Mom?!"

His entire body shakes with the need to shift, to let his bones crack and his skin change to fur until he is snarling in front of them vampire. If this vampire has so much as laid a finger on his mother. . .

Sam ignores the way that Sage flinches from his loud voice, too hyperaware of everything that's wrong with this situation to care about Edward's words uttered so long ago. He approaches his mother, hands hovering in the air as he checks over her injuries.

"What happened to you? Why are you bleeding? What happened to your jeans? Who did this?" He swiftly turns to Sage, venom in his eyes. "Was it you?!"

Amber meets brown, but Sam can't focus on the warmth it sends through his body, too worked up about the entire situation.

"N-No," she says, shaking her hands in front of her. "I wouldn't—I didn't know she was your mother! I'm sorry."

This comforts him none. "You hurt my mother?"

His fists clench together, and he bites his lip to hold in an inhumane growl. It's his mother saying, "Now, Sam, stop being so rude. She actually saved me!" that stops him from shifting right there.

He turns to his mother with a cautious glare. "She did? What happened?"

"I fell in the woods and was bleeding, and she came to my rescue," his mother says shortly, giving Sam a knowing look. Great, they would be talking about this later.

"Oh, to your rescue?" He addresses his mother, but his eyes fall on Sage once more, suspicious and demeaning. Once again, she flinches away from it, and this time Sam feels a bit bad about it. But still: "Or was she coming to devour you?"

She is a vampire, after all.

"Well, probably," his mother says, "but she didn't. She even healed my broken leg, Sam! Look!" She lifts her jean leg up, showcasing the spot where blood is drying up from the break.

Sam is stumped. Sage—she saved his mother. Fought her instincts which would have led her to devouring his mother and saved her life instead. Sam had no clue that his mother was out in the woods; he would have gotten there too late to do anything. Would have felt guilty for letting her sit in pain for so long.