I've been watching Victorious.

This is sort of based off of the episode "Jade Dumps Beck" (about a third of the plot and some of the dialogue). I just watched it and was like..."this would be funny."

This took me so long...longer than it should have.

Eh, I have more explanations below for your perusing after you have read it.

Danny Phantom is not mine, references to Victorious are not mine, Riley is mine, but who cares?

-Phanny

Sam's day had been absolutely full of the question "why?"

Why had her car not started, making her resort to taking the bus? Why had the Box Ghost decided to bother her when she couldn't fight back without possibly hurting someone in the cramped bus? Why had Mr. Lancer assigned a ten page paper?

Why was Paulina Sanchez sitting on her couch and sobbing uncontrollably?

Well, okay, she knew the events that had led up to that last one, but she didn't think it would result in the girl storming into her house (why did she know where Sam lived?) and asking her for relationship advice. How had she gotten involved in this mess? Well, it started when she got to school…

Sam walked into Casper high, already in an ugly mood. She did not need to hear the power couple of the school yelling at each other. People were staring, but Sam could care less about their petty problems, so she walked past them. Or…tried to walk past them, anyway.

"Manson!" Dash called, looking at the goth. Sam froze involuntarily mid-step and groaned.

"What?" She was just walking, what did she do?

"Come. Here." He beckoned. Sam rolled her eyes, but she did so. Her interest had been piqued anyway.

"You're a girl, right?" Dash asked, not realizing that that was exactly the wrong way to start a conversation.

Sam raised an eyebrow, "gee, I don't know. I haven't checked recently."

"Anyway," Dash ignored her and went on, "if you had a boyfriend, would you be mad if he hung out with another girl sometimes?"

Sam thought of when Danny was going out with Valerie – not that Danny was her boyfriend, or anything – and just the thought made her angry. She didn't feel right lying, the faster she spoke, the faster she would get out of here…

"Who cares what she thinks?" Paulina spoke before Sam could say anything.

"Honestly…I wouldn't love it," Sam chose her words carefully.

"I care what she thinks," Paulina's sudden change of heart startled Sam, especially when the girl put her hand on her back to make sure she stayed put.

"Don't touch me," Sam growled dangerously. Paulina moved her hand.

"So you don't think a girlfriend should trust her boyfriend?" Dash asked.

Sam's eyes widened – that hadn't been what she meant!

"Uh, no, of course she should—"

"Get out of here, Manson," Paulina said quickly, her mood changing again.

"Love to," Sam turned on her heels and began to walk to her locker when Dash grabbed her arm. Sam glared at him menacingly and she could've sworn she saw a flash of fear in his eyes when he let go.

"Well, which one is it?" Dash continued as if nothing had happened after his last question.

"Look, I don't feel like getting involved, I don't even like you guys—"

"Dash, this is between you and me," Paulina growled, and Sam began to back away again when they were suitably distracted.

"Maybe it shouldn't be!" Dash's voiced rose in volume.

"Are you saying you want to break up?" Paulina shrieked.

"No!"

"Well maybe I do!" Everyone who had gathered around the couple gasped, as if this was the most interesting thing in the world. Dash looked taken aback.

"You are so overreacting!"

"Oh yeah, what do you care? From this moment on, I'm not your girlfriend anymore!" Paulina stomped away, leaving shocked students in her wake as they parted like the Red Sea to let her through.

Sam stared after her, then at Dash, then at the place where Paulina had been. Suddenly she saw that some students were staring at her.

Sam's eyes widened in realization. People had seen her talking to them.

People thought this whole fiasco was her fault.

"So…did you do it?" Tucker whispered to Sam from his seat beside her in English class.

"No, I didn't do anything," Sam insisted.

"How'd you do it?" Tucker asked.

"I didn't do—"

"Why did you do it?"

"Tucker, I didn't do anything, so zip it!"

Danny just raised an eyebrow at the two of them and shook his head. Did they have to do this in the middle of class?

Danny himself didn't see what the big deal was. So Casper High's hottest couple had broken up – people break up all the time! He didn't see how this was any different, so he didn't get why people were mad at Sam.

"They asked me some questions and I answered them," Sam whispered as Mr. Lancer was distracted, "honestly."

"Ah, there's the issue," Tucker said, "you said things they didn't want to hear."

"So what? I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. You know I don't like to sugarcoat things, especially not for their benefit." Sam reasoned. Danny sighed. Sam didn't seem to realize that brutal honesty was not always the best policy, no matter what those moral-ridden children's cartoons said.

"So, how are you going to fix it?" Tucker asked after a long pause.

"Welcome to the world of 'not my problem,' Foley," Sam said snidely. Tucker put up his hands in a 'fine, I'll drop it' sort of gesture.

Sam didn't know exactly how much of a problem it would turn out to be.

Sam shoved her books in her locker after her last class, not caring about making the bus. She'd rather walk. As soon as her last book was in her locker, she winced as she heard the sound she dreaded every day.

"Sam! SAM! SamSamSamSam! Saaaaaam!" Riley Matthews' voice wailed as the girl, all decked out in her red and white cheerleader uniform, ran toward Sam and then skidded to a stop in front of her. Sam resisted punching her locker. Just what she needed.

Now, Riley was in no way Sam's enemy. She was even trying not to be as clingy as she was when she first met the trio. Sam liked her well enough, but she frustrated her. Her energetic personality clashed harshly with Sam's gloomy disposition, she didn't know when to shut up, and she was such a ditz that Sam wondered how she could even function in society. She understood why Danny was a little protective of her – she was a danger to herself, really.

"What?" Sam asked, a little harsher than usual, so Riley flinched.

"Is it true?" Sam didn't need to be a genius to realize what the girl was referring to.

"No," Sam rolled her eyes, then she had a thought, "hey, you're a cheerleader, can you tell me why Dash and Paulina breaking up is such a big deal?"

The look on Riley's face screamed 'At last! I know something you don't know!' but she didn't say this out loud, "you didn't hear? The big game is on Friday, and Paulina's so depressed that she keeps falling off the pyramid, and Dash can't even catch the ball, he's so upset. What did you do?"

"How is this my fault?" Sam all but shouted, "I didn't tell them to break up, they just did! Tell them to suck it up and get over it! Why can't everyone just mind their own business?"

"It's Paulina and Dash," Riley told her, "their business is everyone's business."

"Not mine," Sam turned back to her locker, locking it, "go do some cartwheels or something."

Riley's eyes lit up, "I can do a cartwheel!" She prepared to do just that, but tripped and fell on her face. "…I can't do a cartwheel."

"Yeah, I noticed."

Sam was enjoying a quiet evening. Danny hadn't texted her with any ghost emergencies so far, so really, she didn't quite know what to do with herself. She was a little relieved when the doorbell rang frantically – answering it would do away with at least twenty seconds of boredom.

Sam opened the door to find Paulina Sanchez standing on her doorstep, mascara darkening the tears that ran down her face. So many questions ran through her mind at that point: why was Paulina here? Why was she crying? How did she know where Sam lived?

"Uhm, what—" Sam was cut off when Paulina pushed past her and sat down on her large couch, "—and now you're in my house…"

Sam had no idea what to do with a sobbing teenage girl who had mysteriously ended up in her home? How did she get her to leave? Why did she come here of all places?

"I want Dash back!" Paulina wailed, answering Sam's unasked question.

"You broke up with him!" Sam looked exasperated, "why are you even here?"

"Well I don't want anyone cool to see me like this!" Paulina countered, "you have to help me!"

"No, I don't!" Sam tried to drill this into her head, she didn't get it! "We're not even friends!"

"Well, yeah, but if you help me maybe I'll like you!"

"I don't care if you like me or not!" Sam told her bluntly, "he's just a guy – not very smart, or nice, or handsome, why do you care?"

"Do you have any idea what it's like to be the only cheerleader not dating a football player?" Sam opened her mouth to speak, but Paulina cut her off before she could start, "if you're about to say Matthews isn't dating a football player I don't want to hear it. Doesn't count."

Sam rolled her eyes, "no, I have no idea what that's like, and I don't care. You shouldn't either – you don't need a guy to be important."

"That's not it," Paulina mumbled, "I think I might love him…"

That seemed to strike a chord in Sam's mind. Love. She was in love, she admitted. It felt awful when you couldn't be with the object of your affections. Did she really hate Paulina enough to put her through that? Wait – how did she know Paulina was even being serious? Why should she care? She didn't care! She couldn't care less! But…what if she was serious? What if she was driven to something worse as a result? God, her head was starting to sound like the plot summary of a bad romance novel…

Sam shook her head and made a decision she was sure she was going to regret.

"Stop smearing makeup all over my couch and…what the hell, I guess I could help you." She had to force the words out. That was almost painful.

Paulina smiled, "really?"

Sam glared at nothing. She was going to make her say it again? "Yeah, sure, whatever."

"I have this urge to hug you right now!"

"Fight it."

Sam began with the obvious: tell Paulina to just ask Dash to get back together. If he missed her too, like Riley said, why shouldn't it work? This should be simple.

Of course, nothing in Sam's life was ever simple. That was why Paulina had dragged her into the janitor's closet, looking close to tears. Oh god, more crying…

"He rejected me!" She wailed. Sam held in a sarcastic 'gee, who would possibly do that?' but even that show of restraint couldn't make her look sympathetic. Sam realized that she didn't have another plan – she thought they were so shallow and stupid that a minor squabble wouldn't keep them apart, but apparently she was wrong. She hated being wrong.

"Then maybe it's time to move on," Sam told her bluntly, "did he say why he didn't want to get back together?"

"Something about me being conceited and not caring about what he does or some crap like that," Paulina sniffed.

Sam decided not to make a crack about the hypocrisy, and vowed to get them back together – if anything, these two deserved each other, no doubt about that. She couldn't unleash them on other people.

"Have you tried…not being that way?"

Paulina looked at Sam as if she had grown a second head, as if it was a foreign concept that she just couldn't grasp. Sam decided that she had better get some compensation for this uncharacteristic act of mercy.

"Why don't you do something nice for him? Take your head out of your cleavage for like, a day," she wasn't worried about pissing off the queen bee – if Paulina actually resorted to violence, it wouldn't end well. Two years of ghost fighting ensured that Sam could probably wipe the floor with her – literally and figuratively. "And…I don't know, what does he like? Besides himself?"

Paulina opened her mouth—

"Or football."

Paulina frowned and tried again—

"Or boobs."

Paulina had nothing.

Sam sighed, having a last-ditch idea that sickened her, "…do you want me to talk to him for you?" This had mistake written all over it. She knew this when Paulina nodded. Oh god, why couldn't she just stop? What was keeping her from quitting?

Maybe seeing someone looking gloomier than she did just rubbed her the wrong way.

"What do you want, Manson?" Dash grumbled, walking across the football field and tossing a football up and down as he did so.

"You to take Paulina back because she won't leave me alone," Sam kept up with him easily, which sort of surprised him, "I mean, you can tolerate her because she's pretty in a slutty kind of way, but that does nothing for me, and I'm so close to punching her in the face."

Dash didn't respond.

"Look, at least tell everyone that it wasn't my fault you two broke up," Sam tried to approach this at a different angle, dropping the pretense, "everyone seems to think it is, even though I couldn't care less about your relationships. I mean, I don't care what people think of me, but if they're going to glare at me as I walk down the hall I want to have earned it."

"Fine, whatever," Dash sighed, "I don't want people to think I listened to you about anything, anyway."

For some reason, that wasn't enough. She did come here with a goal, after all.

"She said she loves you," Sam said, and Dash stopped walking, "I don't know if that means anything to you. It should. At least talk to her."

"…I'll think about it."

Sam shrugged, walking away. "Good enough for me."

All seemed well in Sam's world after that. She had just completed her first good deed in ages, and she couldn't help but feel just a little pleased with herself. She just hoped that Dash and Paulina didn't tell anyone that the rekindling of their relationship was her doing – she didn't want to make this whole 'good Samaritan' routine a regular thing. The last thing she needed was people coming to her for advice.

It seemed ironic, though, that she managed to solve someone's love problems when she couldn't even get a move on solving her own. She looked around for Danny, and her stomach plummeted when she saw he was talking to Paulina. Did that girl not appreciate anything Sam did for her? She had looked deep inside herself for her hidden deposit of niceness out of pity for her, and she was talking to another boy. Danny. Her Danny. She was so mad she didn't even notice Paulina point at her as she whispered in Danny's ear. Danny's eyes went wide and looked at the goth, who was leaning against her locker with her arms crossed, looking down at her boots.

Danny walked over to her, his quiet footsteps not alerting her to his presence. She didn't notice him until he grabbed her chin so that she would face him, looked her in the eye, and touched his lips to hers.

Both teens felt like their brains had exploded in fantastic fireworks, an electric shock when through them both, and their stomachs did flips until they broke apart for air.

"Wha…? Sam wanted to ask what had happened, but she couldn't get the words out. Danny had a dreamy, stupid look on his face, so she bet that he wouldn't be saying anything for awhile either.

Paulina walked past Danny and Sam, whispering almost inaudibly.

"I sort of owed you one."

Have you ever done something, and all the while you know you shouldn't be doing it, but you do anyway? I do, and so does Sam. She likes dark and dreary stuff, yeah, but - with her being a superhero sidekick - I have a hard time believing that she enjoys watching people suffer. I put in the part about clearing her name so she would get something out of helping. Yeah, she feels pity, but that's not enough to drive her to help.

I decided that the most believable way for Paulina to come to Sam for help would be to copy one of Jade's lines from the episode: "I don't want anyone cool to see me like this!"

Riley is there because she is the only one who would be able to tell Sam what was going on. So there.

I know I didn't give Dash a reason for rejecting Paulina but...eh. Maybe he's secretly deep.

And the last part...I needed some DxS, and yeah, I made Paulina do a nice thing. OH SH-