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Sam wasn’t new to pain.
It seemed like it made up the entirety of his life. Any brief moments of happiness or joy that life afforded him always seemed to be snatched away shortly after. Just long enough to lure him into a false sense of security, and just when he had let his guard down… misfortune would strike once more.
He had come to expect it, really. After… After Lucy. Shortly after she had told him, right to his face, that the child she was carrying wasn’t his. She had betrayed him in the worst way possible, and it was a new type of pain he had yet to experience. One of the worst, he had thought at the time.
And then, she was dead. As, so had he thought, was the child he was carrying. The child she had told him wasn’t his.
Only, that was a lie, too.
It wasn’t something he wanted to experience again. Which is why he had done what he had done. Why he had become Sam Porter Bridges — the man with no connection to anything, or anyone. It seemed the only way to guarantee he wouldn’t have to go through that agony again. But of course, life never works out that way. Even in a world where humanity had become isolated, spread across the world in what little pockets of safety that can find, too afraid to reconnect with one another.
Lou had become his beacon of hope in his life once more, the little Bridge Baby that sat on his chest, accompanying him on his journey to reconnect America. It was inevitable, really, that he would find his walls breaking down again. But it was after all was said and done, as he held Lou in her pod with Deadman informing him that she was gone, that he remembered why those walls had been built. Which is why he did what he did once more. He became that Sam Porter Bridges again.
So, when Fragile approached him to work with her… he pushed her away. Ignored the pain written across her face as he told her he felt no different now as to how he did when they had first met in that cave, all those months ago. Because the truth was… He wasn’t. Not entirely. Lou hadn’t been the only one to start bringing down his walls, and now reminded of that fresh pain of loss… He couldn’t face losing anyone else. Of the many people he had come to call “friends” along his journey. So, he had left. And with Lou out of that pod, not quite as dead as Deadman had thought, he knew he had no choice but to get as far away as he could. Just him, and Lou. Isolated and alone, once more. But at least alive. Free to raise Lou in peace.
Of course, things could never be that easy.
Fragile had given him his space, sure, but she wasn’t going to let him go that easily. And despite the time apart, it seemed he hadn’t rebuilt his walls as strong as they once were. At least, he thinks that’s why it stung as much as it did that she had come to see him to talk business, and not to catch up as… as…
As whatever they were.
She had talked him into it, at the end. Of course she had. One last job, the only kind of job he knows. That people know him for. Hell, he had done it before, so he knew he could do it again. Then, out there in the blazing heat of Mexico, with Fragile sending him pictures of her and Lou bonding back home… He could feel those walls crumbling once again. It felt so… Normal. Right. The thought that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t have to be alone crept back in. That dangerous, dangerous thought.
And just like that, Lou was gone.
But, no. She wasn’t. Not really. Not in the way that he had thought. Lou wasn’t gone. Not in this plane of existence, but she was alive. Lou wasn’t gone…
But Fragile was.
He hadn’t even known. How could he? How could he know that the clock was ticking? That she was all but a ghost wandering the world of the living? No, not a ghost… That part of her, her Ka, was the part that was already gone. Left with just her Ha, waiting for the moment that time catches up with her Ka on the beach.
He had never wanted to re-live the pain of losing Lucy. So much so that he had made sure to keep people away. Isolated himself enough so that he could never find himself making that connection ever again. Except… as they had stood there together, that photo of his past life held in his grasp and her lips pressed against his… He knew he had failed. Fragile had been too damn stubborn for that. No, she had forced her way into his life, into his heart without him even realising, not until that very moment aboard the Magellan.
And now… Now she was gone. Yet another chance of happiness ripped away from him, and just like that, the pain he had felt when losing Lucy had reared its ugly head once more, bringing him down to his knees in the Magellan’s shower compartment as the sobs wracked his body.
At first, he didn’t know what to do next. When all had been said and done, with Higgs finally sent to the other side and the Last Stranding once again averted. Lou… His Lou, his Louise. Tomorrow. His future. She was here, alive, his flesh and blood. And just like back then, when he had pulled her out from the brink of death from within her pod, a part of him wanted to return to his old ways. Back to the bunker, back with his daughter, back to safety. Alone. Isolated. Safe.
But he couldn’t do that to Lou. She wasn’t the same person she was when she called the shelter her home. She may have lived there for eleven months as an infant, but… It wasn’t home to her anymore. He knew that. The DHV Magellan was her real home. And, quite frankly… He had become rather attached to the place, too. After all, Die-Hardman had assured him that there was always a place for him as a member of Drawbridges.
So, they had stayed.
* * *
Sam wasn’t new to pain.
He wasn’t new to nightmares, either. That never made them any less disconcerting to experience, though. Especially, as of late, where they seem to be focused around one particular person…
He hadn’t been there, and yet his brain brought him there over and over again. Tortured him with it. Replayed the sound of the gunshot echoing through the mountains. The bullet piercing its way through Fragile. Her Ka’s last-ditch effort to get to Lou, desperately crawling for her as little Lou screamed amidst the dust and dirt and flames.
“Another nightmare, Sam?”
Dollman's now familiar voice greeted him as he startled awake, chest heaving with breaths and sweaty hair clung to his forehead. Glancing over to the doll in question, he’s once again met with that same sad, sympathetic look he had been seeing pretty much every night since…
Since.
Sam could only grunt in reply, swinging his legs round to sit on the edge of the bed and wiping a hand down his exhausted face. Dollman sighed quietly from beside him, his little hands sat neatly in his lap.
“Was it the same one again?” Dollman asked.
Once again, Sam grunted in reply.
“I wish there was something I could do for you, Sam,” Dollman said. “I had hoped our previous adventure would help you to overcome your grief, but… I suppose I should have foreseen the grief that would have been placed on you once more.”
“Not like you could have said anything,” Sam said. “She promised you not to tell me, right?”
“Right,” Dollman softly agreed. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”
“I know.” Sam shuffled on the bed, glancing down at his fidgeting hands. “Did you… Did you know it was going to be this soon?”
“No. We didn’t have much of a time frame to work with,” Dollman answered. “It was only a matter of waiting. But, well, when she had to jump us all to Lou’s beach, and with the toll that Jumpshock had taken on her body…”
“It accelerated the process?” Sam asked.
“I think so,” Dollman said, pain laced into his voice. “Unfortunately… We had no choice. Fragile knew that. It’s why she chose to do what she did, despite knowing the inevitable outcome.”
“I couldn’t figure out why she kept saying it,” Sam mumbled down into his lap. “Not just then, but throughout our job across Australia. ‘I’ll always be with you.’ And then right before she was gone, the way she was saying it… It was like she was pleading with me to understand. Like it was the most important thing for me to know.”
Dollman didn’t say anything. He simply sat quietly upon his perch, letting Sam work through his thoughts.
“But she’s not, is she?” Sam asked aloud. Whether to himself or Dollman, he wasn’t too sure. “She’s gone. Body burnt and…” Sam’s voice caught in his throat, momentarily stopping him. “She’s gone.”
“Don’t be so sure, Sam,” Deadman insisted. “I doubt Fragile would mean what she said unless she meant it.”
“She meant it like everyone else means it,” Sam argued. “That she’ll always be here in my heart. In my thoughts, in my memories—”
It was as Sam reached for the photo stuck to his wall to make his point, eyes meeting Fragile’s creased ones in the photo that it happened.
They ran through his mind like flashes. For split seconds at a time, he was no longer on the Magellan, but… but somewhere else entirely. Flashes of miles upon miles of black sand stretching on almost endlessly. Of the bitter cold snow, scattered thinly across the ground, flakes suspended in the frozen air. Of a city far in the distance, stood the other side of a tar-filled ocean, its waves surprisingly silent.
In his shock, Sam had let go of the photo, letting it slip out of his grasp and down to the metal floor of his room. No longer in contact with the picture, the visions that had been flashing through his mind had abruptly stopped, leaving him sitting startled on his bed.
“Sam? What’s wrong?” Dollman asked, noticing Sam’s distressed expression. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, it’s just…” Sam reached down, slowly and cautiously stretching out a hand to pick up the photo. He held his breath as he got closer, fingers brushing across the glossy material and…
Nothing. No more flashes.
“...thought I saw something…” Sam remembered to finish his sentence.
“Alright. Well, if you ever need anything… You know I’m here for you, Sam.”
“Yeah.” Sam glanced over at Dollman, managing to force out a somewhat thankful, if not strained, smile. “I know.”
* * *
Sam probably should have guessed this was coming.
He knew he couldn’t treat Lou like the eleven-month-old baby he once knew. Even if it was sometimes hard for him to accept that the growing young woman in front of him was that very baby mere months ago, he couldn’t keep treating her like one.
That didn’t make it any less painful when she wanted to start doing some jobs on her own.
It wasn’t that he didn’t get it. Independence… It was a big step in adulthood. And it wasn’t like she couldn’t look after herself. Hell, she had saved his ass on more than one occasion. But… still. It was hard not to look at her and see his little girl. To have missed out on all those years of watching her grow. Deep down though, he knew, there was going to be a day when he was no longer going to be here. A day when Lou will have to go on without him. Stopping her from going out on her own… It would only be holding her back. He just… Wanted to spend as much time with her as he could, he supposed. To make up for all those missing years.
But he knew… the tighter he held on, the more she’d want to escape from his grasp.
After years of being by himself, his time reconnecting with others had taught him…
He didn’t want to be alone.
These were the thoughts echoing around his head that night he lay atop his bunk on the DHV Magellan, hands resting atop his chest as he stared blankly at the ceiling. Dollman wasn’t here to offer his usual guidance, either. He had offered to keep an eye on Lou whilst she was out and about making deliveries, if only to ease Sam’s mind a little bit. Whilst it did somewhat, it didn’t exactly help with the whole ‘feeling alone’ thing.
With a tired grunt, Sam pulled himself up to sit on the side of the bed. Sleep didn’t seem like a likely occurrence tonight. Sleep didn’t exactly feel restful anyway, given that he would inevitably find himself thrown into the world of nightmares.
Like they had been for a while now, Sam finds his eyes drawn over to the Polaroid stuck to his wall. It was strange, how something as simple as a picture could both bring comfort and that stinging reminder of grief back all at once. He reaches for it, unpeeling it from its place on the wall. His fingers find themselves trailing the sharp edges of the picture, his thumb gently swiping across its surface as he gazes upon one of the few happy memories he has.
Sam closes his eyes to fight back the familiar burn behind his eyelids, grasp tightning on the photo in his hand. The silence of the Magllen had never felt more deafening, more isolating. More lonely.
When Sam opens his eyes again, he’s on the beach.
The silence remained. It was… it was the same beach. The one he had seen flashes of before. But now… now he was here. But something didn’t seem right. The beach… it was like it had been frozen in time. And not just in time, either.
Just as last time, the snowflakes surrounding him remained suspended in mid-air, unable to fully descend to the ground. Yet, despite this, a thin powdery layer of snow still littered the ground, bright against the deep black of the beach's sand. And the water—no, the tar. It was still. But not in the way the ocean can be on a still day. No, it was completely still. Waves frozen in place, stuck mid-crash as they approach the shore.
It wasn’t just snow that covered the ground, either. Pieces of random cargo had been strewn about the place, broken and deteriorated from timefall. Now he could get a better look, the city that he had seen briefly in the distance in the few flashes he got wasn’t in the best of shape either. Its towering structures were crumbling away, collapsing on one another in a state of ruin.
And there, standing upon the shoreline, was Fragile.
“Fragile?” Her name seems to slip from his mouth without his permission. But if she hears him, she shows no reaction. She’s as still as the landscape around her, except whilst the world around her was in colour, Fragile herself was nothing but grey, appearing almost like a statue with her back to him, staring out into the seemingly endless tar ocean.
Sam takes a step towards her, his eyes immediately drawn down to his feet. The second his foot had made contact with the ground, the snow around his feet had melted away, revealing the solid black sand underneath him. He glances back up towards Fragile, yet she remains as still as she was.
Another step. And another. With every step, the snow around him continues to melt. The radius of its effect getting bigger and bigger, white disappearing into black. His pace quickens, and the snow around him starts to fall, yet does not land. It becomes thinner, weaker, slowly melting away as he gets closer.
Not far now. He’s almost running. The crashing sounds of the ocean return, thick tar waves lapping at Fragile’s feet, barely audible over his own ragged breaths and his beating heart in his ears. It’s only once he’s just behind her that his feet begin to stumble, hesitancy laced into his movements as he makes those final few steps. He doesn’t bother to say her name. He simply reaches a trembling hand out, clasping it softly around her arm.
Colour and warmth blossom from his touch, spreading out from his hand across her body. His breath catches in his throat as she moves, finally turning around to face him. That familiar smile pulls at her lips as her eyes meet his, like she had never gone. Like he was simply running into her aboard the Magellan after a job well done.
“Sam.”
That’s all it takes. His name. That’s it, and he’s using the hand wrapped around her arm to pull her closer, throwing his arms around her body and burying his face into her neck. He knew it wasn’t just the aphenphosmphobia that was to blame for why he hadn’t let himself touch her in the past. Now, he was beginning to regret every missed chance that slipped through his fingers.
“Miss me already?” Sam could practically hear the smile in Fragile’s voice, and it only made him hold on all the more tightly.
“You have no idea.”
It’s only when she hears the pure despair in his answer that she pulls away to look at him, smile turning sad as she sees the tears swimming in his eyes that threatened to spill over at any second.
It only takes her hands pressed against the side of his face for exactly that to happen, his eyes falling closed as she swipes away those that had escaped.
“I want you to know… I don’t regret a single bit of it,” Fragile tells him, hands still held to his face. “Doing what I could to try and save Lou… The time we spent together? Every last moment with you was worth it. I don’t regret it one bit.”
“I do,” Sam ground out. “I wish you’d told me. I wish I knew the time you had left.”
“How would it have changed anything?” Fragile asked. “What happened, happened. There was nothing you could have done to stop it. I was already gone.”
“I know,” Sam barely gets out. “But if I knew the time I had with you would be the last… I would have made more use of it. I would have made sure to savour it.”
Fragile gives him another sad smile. “Well… If anything, I suppose you could take this as a lesson. To spend every moment with the ones you love like it could be your last. Don’t take it for granted.”
Sam nods, reaching up a hand to gently take hold of her wrist. “Is this… Is this your beach?”
“It is,” Fragile answers, briefly tearing her eyes away from Sam’s to take in said beach. “My beach.”
“Why are you still here?” Sam asked. “Why haven’t you moved on?”
“I’m not sure,” Fragile said, the smallest of smiles pulling at the corner of his lips. “I guess… I’m just waiting.”
“For what?”
Fragile doesn’t answer him. Not with words, only with that knowing smile.
“Are you okay?” Sam asks. “Here, I mean? You’re not… You’re not in pain or anything?”
“No.” Fragile shakes her head. “I’m okay, Sam. I promise you.”
Sam didn’t exactly look assured at her answer. His lips tightened as he glanced around at the cold and desolate-looking beach, then back to Fragile. Alone. Isolated.
Waiting.
“How did I even get here?” Sam asked. “One second I was in my room on the ship, then… I was here. It was like I’d… I don’t know, like I’d jumped.”
“Because you did,” Fragile tells him.
“But… how?” Sam asked. “I can’t do that. I don’t know how.”
“Oh, Sam.” Fragile shook her head at him. “I wish you didn’t underestimate yourself as much as you do. You’re special. More than you seem to know.”
“But… the photo—” Sam spluttered, seemingly unable to take a compliment. “I was just holding it and then—”
“Then you were here. I told you, Sam: I’ll always be with you.” Fragile stepped closer, placing a hand to his chest, right atop where his heart beat steadily beneath. “We’re bound, Sam. My Ha may no longer exist, but the connection between our Ka’s can never be broken. You only need to call upon it… and there you’ll find me. There, you can follow.”
“Not out there, though,” Sam countered. “Not out in the real world. Out there… you’re gone. I’ve lost you.”
“Who says the physical world has to be the one that’s real?” Fragile asks. She reaches down at this, lacing her fingers with his and holding on tight. “What about this doesn’t feel real?”
“I…” Sam stumbled over his words, unable to find the right ones to say.
“I’m here, Sam,” Fragile insisted, reaching up her other hand to wrap around the back of his neck, goosebumps racing across the skin there as her fingers brushed against his hair. “I’ll always be here. With you.”
Warmth blossoms back to life within his own chest in the moment she pulls him closer, lips brushing against his. It felt oddly reminiscent of the last time, though the tears that slipped down his face this go around weren’t entirely due to the chiralium.
He makes sure to take his time with it. Savour it, just as he had said. As he wished he had with the time with her he hadn’t known was coming to an end. He wanted to memorise every part of it. The taste of her against him. The softness of his lips caught between his own. The feel of her skin under his hands. The feel of her body pressed into his. The warmth of her bleeding into him. All of it.
If this was truly the last time, he was going to be damn sure he would never forget it.
If that was even possible.
“I don’t want to leave you here,” Sam whispered as they broke apart, foreheads pressed together once more as they had so many times before.
“It’s not your time yet,” Fragile said, fingers still tangled in his hair. “You still have life to live, Sam. Time with Lou. Time with the ones you love. So live it. Live it for me, Sam.”
“What if I never see you again?” Sam asked.
“You will,” Fragile assured him. “Death can’t tear us apart. Not us. Not our bond. We’ll be together again.” Fragile’s hand once again found itself placed against his chest, a sad smile playing across her lips. “Just not yet.”
“Fragile—”
“Goodbye, Sam.”
One firm push to his chest, and Sam finds himself knocked off his feet, the breath knocked out of his lungs as his back meets the cold surface of the tar ocean. There he sinks, further and further down, the blurry image of Fragile watching from above slowly fading away the further he sinks into the black abyss, until finally—
Sam opens his eyes. He’s back aboard the Magellan, back in his room. Back on his bed, photo still in his hands. One look at the clock tells him that no time had passed. Or if it had, only mere seconds. It was like he had never left. Was it even real? A hallucination brought on by exhaustion, stress, and a lack of sleep? An attempt by his grieving mind to placate him, even just for a moment? One moment of peace, and happiness?
“Always with me, huh?” Sam asked the picture that sat in his hand. He leans back over to his wall, sticking the photo back in its rightful place. “Alright, Fragile. I’ll hold you to that.”
* * *
The concept of time wasn’t fully understood even before the death stranding.
After that, it only became all the more confusing. The concept of the beach, and the flow of time through it. How the beach can still connect to the world of living, and yet exist in different spaces of time.
A lot still wasn’t understood. But there was one fact about time that was known for certain:
Sam wasn’t given enough of it.
He supposed you could argue that his number should have been called much earlier. That it was only due to his status as a Repatriate that he had lived as long as he had. The irony of it was, though, that it was because he was a repatriate that his time had been cut short.
Repeat Repatriate Syndrome. Or ‘RRS’, as they had taken to calling it. Not much was known about it, since, well… he was their only test subject. They had taken what research they could from what Deadman had left behind, of files upon files of notes his once dear friend had written about his condition.
The fact of the matter was… his body was failing. Too many resurrections, too many instances of his body—his Ha—being torn apart to a degree it should be impossible to come back. His Ka trapped in the Seam with nowhere else to go, being forced back into his broken body over and over again, until…
Until now. Until his body can no longer keep up with the damage inflicted upon it. It wasn’t just a case of no more second chances. He was dying. Slowly, but surely.
The question on a lot of the researchers' minds had been of what came next. For most, their Ka would awaken on their beach, briefly suspended in limbo between the world of the living and the dead, before finally taking the final trek to the other side. Thing is though, Sam doesn’t have a beach. At least, not anymore. It was the reason he was a Repatriate, after all. With no beach for his Ka to pass onto, it had no choice but to find its way back to whatever condition his Ha was left in. Now though, with a Ha that was uninhabitable, where else could his Ka go? Would he skip the beach, and go straight on to the afterlife? Or would he go nowhere? To nothingness? Stuck in the seam for eternity?
When he had first been told of his fate, he thought such questions would be on his mind too. They had been at first, but towards the end, he imagined those thoughts would take on a different feeling. From indifferent curiosity to downright fear. The fear of the unknown. A fear that had existed within humanity for millennia before the death stranding.
And yet, like most towards the end, Sam found himself oddly at peace.
Perhaps it was the fact that it was out of his hands. Out of his control. This was just it. There was nothing he could do but wait for the end to come to pass. And it was there, his failing body resting in his bed with Lou’s hand in his as she sat by his side, that he did just that.
Sam closes his eyes to the sight of Lou’s tear-filled ones, his last breath escaping his body.
When he opens his eyes again, he’s sitting on the beach.
Not his beach, no, but the beach he finds himself on is one that fills him with a sense of comfort and security. The feeling that… that it was all going to be okay.
“Welcome back, Sam.”
Fragile was there. By his side. As she always had been.
Her hand enters his field of vision, offering to help him up. He takes it without hesitation, letting her help pull him to his feet, and when he meets her eyes, he knows she feels that same sense of comfort, too.
“Guess I’m dead, huh?”
Fragile can’t help but smile a little at his bluntness. “I’m afraid so.”
Sam hums softly, gazing out across Fragile’s beach. The sounds of the waves softly crashing were oddly calming. Almost… inviting. “Guess I should have figured I’d end up here.”
“You sound disappointed.”
Sam shakes his head vehemently at that, returning his gaze to Fragile. “Not in the slightest.”
“Good.” Fragile slides her hand down his arm, lacing her fingers with his. “I’ve been waiting a long time. Though… not nearly long enough. You shouldn’t be here so soon.”
“Yeah, well… I got longer than you. You shouldn’t have—”
“My story is one of many, Sam. So many that have been taken far earlier than they should have. I can’t say everything in my life went perfect. But I’m happy with the life I lived. With the choices I made.”
Sam nods, squeezing Fragile’s hand in his. The two glance down at their conjoined hands, a beat of comfortable silence passing between the two.
“So what happens now?” Sam asked.
“That depends,” Fragile replied. “Are you ready?”
“I…” Sam hesitates, looking off towards the beach. Away from the crashing water, and to the endless stretch of sand and rocks. Fragile didn’t need to ask what he was thinking about.
“Lou will be okay. She’s strong. The strongest of us all.” Fragile gives him a somewhat sheepish grin, nudging her shoulder against his. “She is her father’s daughter, after all.”
Sam huffs in laughter, though nods his head in acknowledgement. He had known Lou would be okay without him for a long time now. Perhaps it was why he was able to go as peacefully as he did.
“What do you think will happen? On the other side?” Sam asked.
“No idea,” Fragile admitted with a shrug of her shoulders. “I suppose we go find out.”
Fragile started towards the inviting ocean, hand still clasped with his, pulling him with her.
“Wait—”
Fragile stopped at his command, looking somewhat confused as she turned back towards him. Sam wasted no time in bridging the space between them, taking her face in his hands, heads tilted as their lips met in what had felt like way too long. His thumb gently caressed her cheek as she eagerly returned his kiss, her body melting into his with every soft touch.
They pulled away lazily, neither ready for it to end. When Sam gazed upon the warmth shining in Fragile’s eyes, he knew he was reflecting it right back at her.
“Just in case, whatever’s next… we’re not—”
“Don’t say it,” Fragile ordered sharply. “It’s not possible. Not with us.”
“Okay,” Sam gave in with a whisper of a breath. “You and me.”
“You and me,” Fragile happily agreed, before reaching up to place a quick kiss on Sam’s lips. “And that’s not for 'just in case'. That’s just because.”
This time, when Fragile pulled him with her towards the ocean, Sam gladly let her. With every stop closer to the shore, towards the end, any worries Sam had left seemed to melt away. The water lapped calmly around their feet as they waded in, hand in hand, the other side welcoming them in with a warm embrace.
He wasn’t sure where the ocean ended or where they began—only that, somehow, he wasn’t alone anymore.
Loss had brought him here. Love would carry him the rest of the way.