Saving Sam: Final Chapter

A/N: "I sing to life and to its tragic beauty, to pain and to strife and all that dances through me." -Canto Alla Vita, Josh Groban

Alex sauntered towards their table. Tucker noticed that he was almost solid, and the glowing black aura about him had been reduced to a light fuzz, only noticeable if one was looking for it. The ghost was clothed in black: trench coat, slacks, boots, and a fedora.

Danny didn't notice any of these things. He jumped up, meeting Alex when he was still ten paces from the table. "Where's Sam?"

"My companions, first."

Without breaking eye contact, Danny slung the thermos off his shoulders and released the two ghosts. They streamed into the afternoon sky and vanished. "Where's Sam?"

"You'll find her in an alley several stores over from this cafe."

Danny sprinted away in the direction Alex had pointed. Tucker jumped up to follow him.

"Tucker! You have to stay." Danny fired the thermos at him like a football, making Tucker scramble to catch it. "Watch them!"

"But I-"

"Watch my sister!"

Tucker hesitated a moment, looking after Danny. He sighed and turned back to the table. Alex sat down with Jazz, who had not taken her eyes off him. "Join us?" Alex asked.

Tucker pulled up a chair at a nearby table. "I'll be over here." Jazz coughed emphatically. "I'll have a better shot over here," Tucker protested. "If anything starts to happen, I'll stop it." He held the thermos in his lap, finger ready on the button.

Jazz turned back to Alex, who looked across the table at her, reclining in his chair. He shifted his feet and folded his hands behind his head. Neither of them said anything. She realized with a start that Alex was also nervous, and she folded her hands neatly on the table. If she could read him well enough to know that, this might go off much more easily than she expected.

"Danny said you wanted to talk to me?"

Alex cleared his throat and sat up. "Yes. I don't want to dawdle," he said, glancing over to the alley, where Danny had paused. "So I'll get right down to it. Sometimes I do things, and I don't quite know why, but I enjoy them."

"What things?"

"Well, I kill or maim people and then, basically, drive them to insanity. I don't need it for sustenance, but I enjoy it quite a bit."

Jazz was looking at Alex in shock. He smirked back at her. She gave her head a little shake, clearing it. She should just treat this like an exercise in one of those psychology books. Keep it impersonal.

She continued calmly. "When did this start?"

He looked at the sky, thinking. "I really don't know, exactly. I think it was when I was still alive."

"Okay," she said nodding, considering how to proceed. "What was life like for you?"

"I can't really remember much. I was frustrated, and people never listened to me..." he trailed off. His eyes flickered over to Tucker. Jazz groaned inwardly. He was getting self-conscious. The whole macho-guy thing was getting in the way, as it usually did with boys she tried to help.

"Do you want to continue?"

"Yes." His eyes shifted back to her, burning with sincerity.

"What did you talk about?"

"I don't know. Philosophy. Science. Literature. They never listened. They wanted to talk about sit-coms and sports and drugs and any number of mindless things." He gritted his teeth, his breath hissing out through them.

Jazz was stunned. She knew exactly what he was talking about. She herself felt the same frustration whenever she tried to talk about psychology and less intelligent friends could only nod and smile or change the topic.

"They were too stupid to understand a word I said," Alex said. He looked up at her. "Do you understand?"

"Yes." But she didn't kill people. Why had he killed people? She searched her mind for prior cases involving violence. Cutters. Anorexics. Suicides. Such behavior was typically seen by the individual as a last resort, and those instances told her what to say next.

Alex had been waiting for her patiently while she thought, and he paid close attention when she spoke. She took it as a good sign. "Why did you hurt them?"

"It was the only way..." he looked up defensively. "I tried! I remember... I think I tried to start a club for intellectuals, can't remember what specifically... I tried to go to other groups around the city, I tried any number of things but they couldn't hold a decent, intelligent conversation with me anywhere." Jazz thought she saw his eyes change for a second, but dismissed it as a trick of the light. She knew she was on the right track now.

"So what did you do?"

"I got angry. I started hurting people. Just minor things at first, a punch or jab." He smirked. "Then I started waiting in the parking lot with a knife." She saw his eyes change again, and this time there was no doubt that the change was authentic. His eyes were beaming a solid, empty black, and they were aimed, reaching, grasping out at her. It was disconcerting, but she knew what had gone wrong with him and how to deal with it, so she pressed on.

"Why did you hurt people initially?"

Those eyes seemed to grow. "I told you. I was frustrated with them. They were just too damn stupid..." he seethed.

"Yes... but just for kicks, let's say I didn't understand how those two things were connected. I assume you understand logic? Geometrical proofs? Lay it out like that for me."

He struggled with it for a moment. "It's obvious. I was angry, and they were the source of it."

"What could they have done to satisfy you?"

He sputtered. "They could have gotten... ambition; they could have studied..."

"It's a scientific fact that some people will always be more intelligent than others." She backed off, but only slightly. "You strike me as someone smart enough to realize that."

"Yes..." he hissed. Those eyes boiled. Black tendrils seemed to be stretching out of the corners. She tried to take a closer look without attracting his attention. Tendrils were stretching out at the corners. She glanced a warning at Tucker, who nodded and tightened his grip on the thermos.

"Okay." She waited a moment before going on. "What does it mean when an individual is unsatisfied with his environment?"

His voice dropped dangerously low. "It means... that the individual must rectify the environment."

The darkness in those eyes grew and grew around her. It spread up and down Alex's form until his aura was saturated with it. Tendrils reached lazily at her from his eyes.

The ghost spoke, but its voice was no longer smooth and calm. It rasped and echoed, ageless and potent. "Finish it."

Jazz understood that she was no longer speaking to Alex. The brittle voice emanated from the darkness oozing out of his eyes. Her mind raced. The ghost Alex had never been in control. Maybe Alex the human had, but not his ghost. The ghost had become nothing more than a willing vessel for the despair the human had developed in life. She was speaking to the tangible manifestation of despair itself, and it was waiting for her to respond.

"Finish it!"

She ordered her thoughts carefully, pulling together all the information she'd gathered and conclusions she'd drawn from countless hours of study and peer counseling. "It means that the individual must try to adapt to the environment. A change in the environment, or in the individual's perception of it, requires him to adapt if he wishes to continue living a healthy, productive life. A strong, resilient mind will adapt." She caught her breath. The blackness was still. It was listening. "But sometimes the mind doesn't adapt. Three main reasons for that. Biochemical imbalance: the individual is physically unable to adapt. Ignorance: the individual tries to adapt but doesn't know how. Finally, outright refusal to adapt. When any of these three conditions are present and sufficiently serious, the individual abandons the idea of truly enjoying life, thinking it impossible. It's not uncommon for them to turn to self-mutilation or violence against others for consolation instead."

But then, sometimes, something else starts to happen." Jazz's eyes narrowed. The tentacles began to thicken and stretch out toward her again. "What began as a way to cope begins to take control. The individual can begin to define themselves by their affliction and its destructive symptoms. Soon, they don't feel like they can control it anymore. They sink deeper and deeper until they either pull themselves out of it, with or without outside help, or they continue to deteriorate. You," she said, addressing the black smear across the table. "Are that self-perpetuating depression. And you," she scoffed. "Are nothing more than a pathetic lie that preys on confused minds."

Those boiling, creeping, reaching eyes exploded, pouring themselves out into the world and engulfing her. She had enough time to see Tucker jerk his arm to the thermos, but then there was only darkness.

As Jazz and Alex had begun to talk, Danny had arrived at the alley and stood frozen. It was dark. Overhanging roofs blocked out the light. Trash littered it, and puddles of filth occupied small dips in the pavement. It was very much like the alley that night, three eternities ago.

There was a dented, lidded trash can in the corner. A crinkled piece of binder paper was attached to it. It read, "Happy Birthday" in a dark, spattered red. Danny stood, transfixed. He was crying.

He forced himself to move, putting one foot in front of the other mechanically, slowly. He broke halfway there and raced up to the can, tearing off the paper. His hand was on the lid and then the lid was off and he was looking inside. A tangle of fabric, skin, and boots. Some blood.

"Sam," Danny cried. "Sam, are you alright? Sam! Say something, oh God please say something." He grasped the can and gently tipped it over and poured her out. He threw away the can and bent over her, cradling her and holding her over the filth of the alley floor. Soiled rags, stained black with blood, were tied about her wrists. They still dripped crimson. He looked in her eyes, but only a moping, lazy darkness looked out from her sockets.

"Oh Sam..." he held her and rocked her, weeping. "I love you. I'm sorry I never told you but I love you and I should have listened to you back at that alley, before this ever started." I love you and I can't do this without you. Danny felt his own demons stir. He felt them, and he looked at Sam, and he heard people scream outside. He couldn't do it. He couldn't take it anymore. It was time to let go it was time to give up it was time to admit he was nothing more than an average joe who could never do anything right-

But not while Sam still breathed and people screamed outside.

He stood up, carrying her, and walked into the street. He glanced back at the cafe. It was gone. It was just that black darkness boiling around, an amebic mass grasping into side streets with long tentacles and throwing hapless pedestrians into itself. He looked down at Sam. She hung limp and unconscious in his arms.

Danny walked over to it, passing those who were fleeing. They gave him a quick glance, but nobody cared about a foolish high-schooler and his injured charge. Danny walked up to the darkness. A long, dripping black tentacle snatched him up around the waist and threw him into absolute emptiness.

It swallowed him alive. That which he had insisted was nothing more than a farce ate him whole, and he felt it begin to eat away at his mind immediately. It chewed up everything that was Danny Fenton. Thoughts, hopes, dreams, it destroyed all these equally relentlessly and replaced them with more of itself, a hollow, empty void. It ate everything it touched in him, but he wouldn't let it touch Sam. His Sam. He still carried her in his mind, and he wasn't letting go.

He gathered together what was left of himself. "Fix her," he roared into the all-consuming black. "Fix her."

The deep, ancient voice echoed through his mind, toneless, impassive, definitive.

She is ours. There is nothing you can do. We have you. Give up.

"No!"

She is ours by her choice. She gave herself up to us. Give up.

"You're lying!" he shouted. "She would never-"

But she did. It's easy and painless. Give in. Give up.

"The cuts on her wrists. Were those painless?"

Those were self-inflicted, before she joined us. Give up.

"Break me if you can," he challenged, and the pressure on his mind increased exponentially. It hurt; the pain shredded his consciousness and consumed every rational thought. He was aware only of a searing black gash across his brain. He screamed in agony.

Give up.

"Danny! Danny, is that you?" someone called.

The pain let up an infinitesimal amount, indignant at the interruption. It was enough for Danny to begin to think again. That voice... he knew that voice. But who- "Jazz!" he remembered. "Help me Jazz!"

"Danny listen to me. This darkness is built on the assumption that it's impossible to live happily or that life is not worth living. If it's true that life is worth living, than this thing is a lie. It's a lie, Danny!"

Then he had been right about it. The act of comprehension was a cure for the disease. He breathed with relief as the overwhelming pressure lessened and lifted off his mind. His memories came rushing back in thick, eager streams as the darkness retreated into the distance. He still couldn't see anything around him, but he could think clearly.

"I'm okay, but what about Sam?"

"How is she?" Jazz answered.

Danny found it an unbelievable relief that he could call and someone would answer. "Comatose."

"You have to reach her somehow. Nobody can forcibly pull another out of depression, at least not without heavy medical treatment. They have to decide, one way or another, to make the effort to get better and resume normal life. I think the same principle applies to this stuff."

Danny looked down to where Sam's head should be. "Sam?" There was nothing. Danny phased out and entered into her.

There was a dark, oppressive fog, but a light had to be coming from somewhere, because Danny could see his hands. "Sam," he called again. The light seemed a little brighter off to his right, and he flew towards it. He came to a black sphere, and its surface seemed to continue curving up and down into infinity. It had a leathery, cracked exterior that promised to be painful to the touch, but the sickly light seemed to be emanating from impossibly deep inside its fissures. Sam's light. She was still alive in there, somewhere, and Jazz had said that he had to reach her.

Danny plunged his hand into it and screamed as it burned into him, forging a link between him and itself.

A powerful bolt of something jolted through Sam. A bright beam of light was shining in from the exterior of her shell. She winced and tried to move away, but it followed her. It was pulling at her, but it was not the savage pull of the darkness. This was a different kind of pull. A worried and gentle but very determined kind of pull toward the outside. She tried to back away again. She wasn't going to come out. Not after what had put her inside. She was resting from life, she was tired of it, and she wasn't going back. She didn't care if it was Danny out there.

Wait. Danny? She looked toward the beam and felt his memories and emotions flow around her. She saw an ant struggle across a blade of grass. It pleased her, and she found it beautiful in a very simple, elegant way. She saw the stars singing in all their glory against a rich, lustrous blackness that encouraged and mothered them. She found it curious. She had never realized that any darkness could be gentle. Through his eyes she saw the city awake like a beast, civilization as it stretched and started off to another day of progress and hope in spite of all of history's wars and disgraces. And then she saw Danny.

He loved her. He loved her so much and he was sorry any of this had ever happened. He had gone through everything to reach her and he was knocking at her door for her to come out. She had given in, yes, but it didn't matter anymore because he understood what she'd gone through and he was here now to bring her back. He told her to look at all the real things in life, all the beautiful things out there worth living for, and he asked her to save herself and come back to him.

And Sam said yes.

Tucker was near the middle of it. He had heard Jazz yell something earlier, but he hadn't been able to hear her. He hadn't been able to press the button and suck up the ghost, either. He just hadn't wanted to, all of a sudden. Not after all that dark, spooky goop. It pressed hard, but once you gave up to it, it really wasn't that horrible at all. It was kind of a relief, actually. He slipped away rapidly as it ate away at him, feeding on his mind.

A ripple of astonished discontent transversed the blackness and was followed immediately by a burst of light somewhere off to Tucker's left. It streaked out and shredded the darkness into ragged tatters which dissolved out of existence in the brilliant afternoon Sun, just as it had been dissolving him a moment ago. The shroud had disintegrated within half a second. Tucker stumbled as his feet touched the earth, blinking in the bright light. He saw Alex appear as all the darkness vanished, destroyed or racing back into his eyes. The haughty doofus had a confused, surprised look on his face, and his material clothes were gone, leaving him in his normal ghostly attire of tattered jeans and t-shirt.

"Not such a hot shot now, are ya?" Tucker managed to press the button on the thermos before he passed out.

Danny woke up staring at a white ceiling with linens under him. He looked around the sterile room. There was a sink in the corner and bandages on a table. Jazz sat on a chair next to the bed. "I'm in the hospital?"

She smiled to hear him speak. "Yes."

"For what?"

"Essentially, nothing. They brought you hear to make sure you're okay, along with about a dozen others who passed out, including Tucker."

"Where's Sam? Did we win?"

Jazz laughed. "We won. Whatever you and Sam did back there was enough to blow it apart. Tucker caught Alex, so that's over. As for Sam-" Jazz pointed to the opposite wall. Sam was in the bed across from him.

"Sam!"

"She's still asleep, Danny. Her condition's a little more serious." Danny looked over at her, anxious. "Don't worry. She'll be fine."

"What's she here for?" He noticed that Sam had an IV.

"I'm not family, so I haven't been told. From appearances, I would say blood loss, malnutrition, dehydration, maybe an infection..." she caught the look on Danny's face. "It's not as bad as it sounds. She'll be okay."

Danny looked over at Sam's sleeping form. "Thank you for what you told me back there."

Jazz smiled sympathetically at him. "Anytime."

"Do you want me to tell you what was going on?"

"Not right now. You should rest. Mom and Dad are downstairs trying to get you out of here. I should go down and tell them you're awake." Danny looked up at her and then back at Sam. "Or I could take a leisurely detour to every other hall in the building, get a soda, eat dinner, see a movie..."

"Thanks a lot for everything, Jazz."

"Not a problem." She left the room, opening the curtain and pulling it shut behind her. He heard her walk off down the hallway.

He stood up and moved the chair Jazz had been using next to Sam's bed. He watched her sleep. She had lost some weight and had bruises on her face and arms, in addition to the cuts on her wrists, but her face wore an expression of contentment. He reached over and touched her hand, running his fingers along the inside of her palm. He grasped it and squeezed it in his own. She stirred, mumbling, and opened her eyes.

She blinked up at him with her clear, brilliant lavender eyes and Danny's heart burst.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey."

"How long have you been there?"

"Since I realized you were gone."

She giggled. "You're such a cornball."

"I love you."

"I love you too. I came back for you."

"You would have come back anyway."

"Maybe not."

"I think you would have."

"Shut up and kiss me."

Danny did.

END

---

A/N: How'd you guys like this? Thanks to all my reviewers: Sakura Scout (I'm happy to help), Mrs. Granger-Weasley, autumngold, and cheerin4danny. Thanks also to Wiggle Lizard for offering me a B-Day card. Check out the challenge in my profile, and keep an eye out for the sequel!