in triplicate

'in the end, in the end, in the end,
it doesn't even matter
anymore.'

iCarly lasts until the three of them are seventeen-going-on-eighteen, in their final year of high school. Although their audience has grown up with them, and new audiences are joining all the time, efforts to keep their show clean are becoming more difficult by the day. It's not Sam that swears first on live podcast, oddly enough - it's Carly; She drops the f-bomb (albeit quietly), but numerous parent groups ring in to complain. iCarly is a groundbreaking podcast, after all, and many children watch and emulate them.

The official end of iCarly was meant to be after graduation, as the three of them went their separate ways, and they planned for it.

The unofficial end of iCarly was the second week of the third term of senior year in high school, when Carly kissed a girl - Sam - on live podcast, and very much so enjoyed it, and Freddie either didn't pay attention or was too busy gaping to turn off the camera and claim 'technical difficulties'.

Lots of parent groups rang in this time, and a number of them boycotted the show; banned their children from watching it. What really made iCarly fall apart, though, was the number of perverted teenagers that flooded the forum, asking them to do it again, or maybe go further. Freddie banned them. Sam teased them. Carly ignored them. The point was, though, that even more parents banned their children from watching.

Then Sam and Freddie had an almighty fight, and things got tense. Every week, the quality of iCarly dropped bit by bit, as Sam didn't look so much at the camera and instead focused on sucking up to Carly - something that Freddie didn't like, the male teenagers loved, and parents banned their children from watching.

So in a way, iCarly's shutdown was in part entirely Sam Puckett's fault, but in the years ahead neither of the other two blamed her at all.

They did make it to graduation. They did have one last podcast, which they advertised widely. They bought extra bandwidth, got everything ready.

The server still crashed a week before the podcast was due to go on, purely because of the number of hits. They bought more bandwidth. Again, a day before. More bandwidth. And even through all of the fights, the final podcast was their best, and the servers held all the way through, which was fantastic.

The servers then crashed immediately afterward, but that wasn't really their problem anymore.

Left in the room with the camera turned off, Freddie kissed Carly softly, and then Sam, slowly, lingeringly, and walked out of the Shays' apartment - walked out of his girls' lives.

Sam kisses Carly, long, lingeringly, gropes her, and holds her in a bone-crushing hug. She leaves with a wave and a smile. Carly packs up, stares blankly at the iBook Freddie has left behind, goes up into her room, and cries.