AN: the POV was inspired by KeyLimePie14, who writes fics in second-person and inspired me to give it a try! It is FUTURE SEDDIE basically answering the question: what is the last thing you expect to happen to get these two crazy kids together? hope you enjoy it!....forgive typos ;)

disclaimer: we do not own iCarly

You are Sam Puckett

Sophomore year you are arrested for the fourth time—this time because you took the wrap for a friend. It was your fault he did it to begin with, you pushed him until his anger blinded his sense of reason. But rather than let him spend the night in jail, face the wrath of his mother, and lose his scholarships, you step up and tell the cops that you did it, he was just there trying to talk you out of it.

Like a nub, he tries to tell the truth, but you crush his big toe and he keeps his mouth shut to keep his girly scream of pain on the inside. You are handcuffed, put in the backseat of the car. As it pulls onto the highway, you look out of the window through stony eyes. You refuse to let your true emotions show at this point. Fear has no place in this situation, and besides, you are concentrating too much on pretending like you had every intention of breaking the law tonight.

You are afraid because this was number four—the last straw, your probation officer had already said so, and your mother agreed, one more arrest and it would be Military School for the rest of your life. Damn, you think to yourself with a shake of the head, there had better be a good reason why you just did this…

Your back muscles twitch as your body nearly twists in the seat so that you can look through the back window at him, but years of practice makes you check yourself and you do not turn around after all. You refuse to look at your reason.

At the police station, you get one phone call. You take the quarter out of the beefy cop's calloused fingers and drop it into the payphone. The number you dial rings three full times before it is answered on the fourth by your J'MaMaw. Her voice is shaky, but happy to hear your voice. You hate to spoil the occasion by bringing up your current situation.

Her disappointment makes tears sting your eyes—another promise to this woman broken. No wonder she tends to favor your sister. She listens to your side of the story (that's the reason you called her) before she angrily tells you that she can do nothing about it, being too old to leave her house. An arrangement for her to contact your mother is made, but you both know that you will be spending the night in a cell. Your mother doesn't answer the phone when J'MaMaw calls. You curse that stupid caller ID phone.

Despite everything, before you hang up, she tells you that she loves you. Your voice cracks as you return the sentiment and then you place the receiver back on the hook. No change falls into the return slot. You take a moment to get your eyes dry and stony once again before you turn back to the cop. With an expression of boredom, he leads you to a cell and locks you in.

The next morning, you are wakened by a persistent phone ringing and the echoing slam of a door that doesn't seem to stay shut for five seconds straight. You sit up and look miserably around the busy police station. Everyone ignores you as they bustle past your cell. You feel like a neglected pet in the circus and begin to miss the old days—Jr. high, when all the cops knew you and wanted to hear your reason for 'visiting' this month. That was before you had found your current friends, and stopped craving whatever odd familiar attention you could find here.

You are pulled from your reverie by a loud shout that disrupts the hustle and bustle of the station. Looking up, you see first, the freakishly tall shape of your best friend's brother as he darts around people to the main desk, asking for you loudly. Then you see in his wake your two best friends, who spot you and come straight to the bars.

As the three of you talk, and you threaten the dork to keep his trap shut and hold onto his scholarships, your friend's brother fails in his attempt to spring you from the pin. Your probation officer has arrived and explains the situation. The looks on your friends' faces are heartbreaking as you tell them that you have to move in order to attend the hellish military school.

He looks so guilty you expect him to turn around and tell the nearest cop that he did everything. He doesn't, because it won't help. You were both at the scene of the crime. All it would do is get him locked up for a few hours; you are still going to military school.

…

The rest of the school year is tough at the Military Academy. Here you can't be lazy, you can't eat snacks in the classroom. You have a uniform, and your hair has to be clean and brushed everyday. You make no friends; all the other students are the worst kind of army brats or the delinquents who love to disrupt things every chance they get and then do push ups all day long. You are too lazy for that. Better that you just keep your head down, do what you are told and finish the year with no problems or court marshals. Maybe then you can talk your mother into letting you come back home.

The work is easier than you expected, and then you wonder why it should have been any harder; here they don't care about brains—it's all brawns, that's what you think, because once you put your mind to the homework, it isn't too challenging. You begin to wonder why you couldn't make yourself buckle down back in public school, take one measly hour out of your day to get the work done, and you begin to understand that you were in some pretty horrendous habits back then. As you find your favorite subjects, and you know what an A+ in those subjects feels like, you feel yourself metamorphosing into that which you have always hated: a dork.

You eventually do make some pals on the side, but no one you would give up free weekends for. That time is still reserved for sleeping in as long as possible and taking a break from everything, and eating the junk food your mother sends you as per your desperate pleas over the phone. You miss your old life, but you are really beginning to like your new one, and when the school year finishes, you aren't too sorry to hear that the deal was military school forever.

You have to do military summer school—the worst summer of your life by far, in which you are forced to exercise, rain or shine, until you can do an obstacle course with ease. Then you must pass the tests in those subjects that never did grab your attention, like the History of American Combat, English, and Latin. You are bummed you can't visit your friends, but email keeps you in touch. The next year starts and because you want to be here, it's twice as fun.

…

Junior year you finish at the head of your class. Your grandmother and your sister visit to tell you how proud they are of you. You appreciate it, but you can't help feeling resentful for the fact that your sister has been proven right; straight A's were easy for you, you just had to apply yourself. The positive side of this is that now you share half of her lime-light, if not more. After all, your sister doesn't have such rigorous physical training at her boarding school. You love how strong this place makes you, you're proud of yourself for keeping up, and it isn't the first time you feel glad that you were faced with this challenge in life.

For the summer you get to go back home. It feels strange now, after a year away. It is great seeing your friends again; she has changed her hair; he hasn't changed at all. They both can't get over how different you are as far as obedience and respect to the rules go. You make sure that they understand you are still the girl who left. It takes a day but they come around, and maybe you do soften around the edges and relax.

Your break isn't long enough before you have to return. The new friends you've made here over the year ask about your vacation, you give a brief summary and then listen to theirs, and then it is back to your comfortable routine of exercise and study.

Your senior year, you realize what you want to do for the rest of your life. After graduation, you go into the Air Force. It's the flying; you love to fly. It is the last summer you go home. Your first order of business is your grandmother's funeral. Then you check in on your mom, find her between men and worse off for it. You just want to visit with your friends, so you can feel like you have reached the destination of your trip. Once there, you have a rude awakening.

It isn't home anymore because it is broken. No grandmother, and no iCarly team. This time she hasn't changed and he is different. They aren't close friends anymore. You learn it is because something happened between them months before. After the break up, without her popular web show and what with his new work hours, it was easier to just part ways.

You only see him once at the Groovy Smoothie before he has to jet off to work; now that he buys his own clothes they aren't as dorky as they once were. It stings you just a little to learn that he dated her and not you, but after two years you have began to feel that crush you resented for so long finally wearing off; the sting is for a What If you don't answer.

After your last visit home, you start your new career in the U.S. Air Force. You live on bases and air-craft carriers that travel around the world. Once a year, you meet your oldest best friend in L.A., where she is chasing her dreams of stardom, and your sister in New York, but you are just too busy to meet him. You don't even go to Seattle. Your sister is your go-between with you and your mom; you tell yourself you have no reason to go back there.

Years pass and you continue to grow into a well rounded individual. Hell, the friends you have these days can't believe you even have a criminal record. Old iCarly fans like for you to reminisce about doing the show, but it is all in the past tense and you dismiss all childish behavior; it isn't like the fun things you do now to make people laugh. They all say you should go to L.A. and try to make it big with her in a television sitcom, but you just laugh and say you can't be that funny anymore. You don't really realize that you tend to be the life of parties.

The magic of the web show has a formula in your head and the thought of you and her in L.A. has one variable missing. The last you heard of him he was a professional student, whatever that means. Well, he had better be, you think. It was your sacrifice that got him into the ivy-leagues. Then you smile and thank him because it was his stupidity that got you on this path in life.

Your favorite thing about your life now is that your possibilities are endless. Eight years ago, your best hope was a technical collage degree and a job with heath care benefits. Now when you lay in your bed looking up at the stars through your window, and you imagine flying a space shuttle, all it takes is an application letter. The thrill of the idea, the sheer contrast of who it would make you and who you had always expected yourself to be, sparks a flame of desire.

After a week of careful consideration and research, the thought just won't leave your head. You have to give it a try at least. So you send in the letter. Never in your life have you had such aspirations, it makes you feel wobbly, like you are stretching out of your skin. As the period of wait stretches on and more people hear from your gossiping friends about your new goals, you start to really wish you had just left it alone. You can't fly a space shuttle, what the hell where you thinking?

Then the letter comes and you pass out. No one else is surprised you got in to the NASA program, you're the only one. Your sister makes the first joke, you a brainy astronaut? You smack her on the back of the head, make her swallow her gum. Your old friend's mind is blown. You never did get the guts to tell her that you even sent in the letter. After her shock of hearing your new dream, she is just over the moon for you (no pun intended.)

You had every right to feel wobbly about this. When you enter the program you find that it is twice as hard as you could have imagined—a real challenge. But if you have been anything persistently throughout your life, you have been competitive. No way are you letting something like The Geeks win. Yes, you are joining the club, but they are still geeks, dorks, and nubs; you are just using them as a stepping stone to get what you want: the stars.

After uncountable months and months and months of vigorous training, body and mind, you are ready. You are so excited you could puke and die. They give you a flight: simple, very short. You aren't going to the moon or anything. You are a co-pilot, taking a new team up into the international space station for a few days in the name of science. It's a year away. You spend those twelve months in suspended animation, waiting and waiting. Then the day comes.

You wake up, have some root-beer on cereal (you didn't buy milk this week, it would have gone bad before you got back) and you change your voice mail:

I have left the planet for a few days. Leave a message and it will be received when I return to planet earth.

You have learned that even NASA has factions like high school. The nerds that do the math, and the nerds who workout, training for actual space flight. You have fallen in with the nerds who workout, the "jocks" if you will, and you don't spend a lot of time getting to know the individuals of mission control. They are names, voices, and authorities who say when you can fly and when you can't. This team you are flying up to the station falls in the grey area between. They are training, but they are doing it for the math and science on the other end. You still haven't met them thanks to conflicting training regimes. As pilots, you and your partner have a million things to check again and again. For passengers, once fit, it's hold on and enjoy the ride.

You walk into flight prep to get ready, practically levitating off the ground thanks to the butterflies in your stomach, and you and the pilot are introduced to your cargo. Just a bunch of anti-social scientists with a boring hypothesis about the effect of zero-gravity on something or other you don't even know--you couldn't get through their mission statement; it isn't vital that you know it. Once up in the space station, your job will be simple maintenance chores as you wait for the experiments to finish so you can take them home. Someone is rattling off their names as you shake their hands, you aren't committing them to memory, you're giving them names in your head: Tall Guy, Four Eyes, and—

You shake his hand in pure shock. His face is mirroring yours maybe ten-fold. He didn't even know you had left the air-force. You are tickled pink with his melting brain. This was exactly why this job appeals to you; anyone who knew you in high school crapping their pants to see where you ended up: flying the freggin' space shuttle.

Professional student indeed. So he was a scientist, a geek to the bone, a nub who honestly cared about the effect of zero-gravity on that something or other, whatever it was…well, what more could you have expected from him, though really?

"How's it hangin' Benson?" you say, playing it casual. You are smiling at each other and the handshake still hasn't ended yet. He shakes his head. "Sam Puckett. Well, I must admit I always knew I'd see you again."

AN: most of the chapters will not be quite this long...this one got lengthy, but it had to be set up so the rest would make sense! Also I do not pretend to be a NASA/space program expert, it is what I learned from such fantastic movies as Apollo 13 and Armageddon... lol