disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to cookies at midnight
notes: why is there no post-show fic what is this I am judging you all

title: turn off the lights
summary: It's just ten years, but it's such a long time. — Sam, Alex, peripheral Sam/Tim.

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Sam's twenty-six, working in WOOHP's bioengineering labs full-time.

The bags beneath her eyes have gone dark bruise-purple with lack of sleep, but, well, Sam doesn't sleep very much. Hasn't, since she woke up and found that her boyfriend had gone on a rampant killing spree and ended a dozen-plus lives.

There are fourteen deaths on her hands, and Sam doesn't see the sun anymore.

The door opens, closes, and then a voice goes "Hey, Sammy."

Sam looks up. Her insides twist.

Alex looks the same; she's still short, wearing great shoes, dark-haired, dark-skinned, dark-eyed. But there are spectacles across her nose that Sam never knew about, and a certain sharp set to her shoulders that doesn't look like the Alex that lives in Sam's memories.

"Hi," Sam says.

"How are you? It's been a while," says Alex.

It's just a normal conversation—could have been something they'd had over coffee, months previous. It's so mundane.

And that, more than anything, is what sets her off.

"Why are you here, Alex?" Sam asks. "To remind me that I make worse life choices than Clover? To rub it in? To tell me to forget about the boyfriend, I'm lucky to still have my job?"

Alex folds her hands in front of her, smooths down her skirt. Her hair's still short, dark as ink and just as fathomless. "I'm here to tell you it's not your fault."

"Yeah," Sam says, "except that it is. It's not like I didn't know he was a criminal—seriously, how many times did we put him behind bars—but I just. He was smart, and he made me feel pretty, and it was nice to…"

"To?" Alex prompts.

"To know that he cared about me. After everything."

Alex is quiet for a long time. "You're different now, Sam," she says at last. "We all are. I mean, you practically live down here. I work in testing, because blowing shit up never got any less cool. And Clover—"

"How is she, anyway?" Sam asks.

"She's terrorizing teenage agents with GLADIS. She took over when Jerry retired, remember?"

"God, that feels so long ago," Sam murmurs

"Well," Alex grins wryly. "It kind of was. And don't change the subject, Sammy, I know you. I know how you get. You can't blame yourself for this."

The breath left Sam in one fell swoop: her shoulders dropped as the air went out of her lungs. "What else am I supposed to do, Al? How am I supposed to—" she paused, waved her arms around. "—to do any of it? Even… My bedroom, Al, I don't go in there because I've still got his shirts in the closet and I can't even… I can't even look at them without wanting to vomit."

Alex's face goes slack with sympathy and she reaches across the gulf of a decade's worth of time, different jobs and the hurt between them to wrap her arms around Sam's lab-coat-clad shoulders.

"Oh, Sammy," Alex sighs the words out. "Baby, it's okay."

Sam can't help tucking herself up in her friend's arms. It's been a very long time since they touched each other casually like this; when they were teenagers, it wasn't a question, but age and the poison of bad boyfriends weighs heavily on them both.

"It's not, Al," she whispers. "He—he used me."

"For five whole years?" Alex says it like a question. "I don't believe that."

Sam closes her eyes for a second longer than a standard blink, trying to keep the sloshy feeling inside from escaping into the world. She hasn't cried yet, and she's not going to. It would ruin the last little bit of pride she has left.

"Don't tell me he loved me," Sam says. Her voice ticks into harsh, scratchy with pain to her own ears. "He didn't."

"I don't think he knew what love was, Sammy," Alex says softly, and smiles unhappily out of the corner of her mouth.

"I don't think I did, either," and it comes out a whisper, trembling through her lips. "I messed up, Al. I messed up so bad."

"It could have been worse?"

"How?"

"Well, okay, no, like twelve people are dead, and that's pretty bad, but… Sam, he would have found a way to do it anyway. I mean, you said it yourself. He kept breaking out of prison, it's what Tim did," Alex paused, giving Sam the time to let the words sink in. "And yeah, he was totally a psycho killer and the next time we see him I'm going to fry his ass so you don't have to, but… But he let you sleep. He killed a bunch of people, but he let you sleep."

"I don't even know what that's supposed to say about my taste in men," Sam mutters, sardonic.

"Maybe sorry? I dunno, he's nuts. But you can't… Sammy, you can't let it stop you from living," Alex said. She reached over to tuck bright red strands behind Sam's ears, fingers gentle with long practise.

"So what I do?"

Alex shrugs a shoulder, the movement crow-like. "You move on, like everyone else."

The oxygen goes out of Sam's lungs, and with it goes three weeks of self-hatred. The twisting inside her stomach stills for the first time in what feels like months and Sam—Sam can breathe again.

"Okay," Sam says. "Okay! I think that can happen."

"Of course it can," Alex says briskly. "We'll go clean out your closet after this. You're not doing that alone."

"Al… Thanks."

Alex raises a single perfect eyebrow. "Thanks? Don't thank me. Thank Clover, she sent me down here. She thought something out of WOOAP's dragon division had eaten you when you didn't show up to lecture her about hitting on the new recruits boyfriends."

"She has got to stop that, she is going to get smacked," Sam mutters.

"C'mon," Alex snickers. "Let's go break her out of her office. You need some sun, and I need new shoes."

"Retail therapy?"

Alex sighs happily. "Retail therapy."

There are still problems, Sam knows that. There are still pictures of the pair of them in her apartment, and he still has a key. She is always going to blame herself, and fourteen people are still dead on her account.

But Alex is grinning at her over her well-dressed shoulder at her, eyes glinting in the unforgiving fluorescent light of the lab. She looks like a teenager again, feels like it, too, maybe. Sam isn't sure.

For now, this is going to be alright.

As they leave, Sam turns off the lights, and breaks out into the sun.

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fin.