∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆Sammie's POV∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆

Sammie woke up thirsty at around six in the morning. Since she had work at nine, she had to get up soon. She reach over to the nightstand, and got her cell. Checking her phone in bed, she jumped when it started ringing.

Lucky for her it was on vibrate.

Unlucky for her it was Buttface aka Samuel calling.

She sighed, groggy and reluctant to answer. She wondered if this was what Alex felt all the time, if that was why he slept so much.

Alex slept like the dead, snoring softly and mumbling unintelligibly under his breath. He hadn't moved an inch, still curled up on his side hugging Sammie's pillow. She normally wouldn't have let him sleep with her but the gentle warmth he gave off was comforting.

Samuel called again, she chose to ignore it. Then a text came in.

Buttface:come out on the roof now.

Sammie went rigid. How did he know she was awake?

Alex was hard to wake up even when she tried, but she was careful anyway, climbing slowly out of bed, up and over the side. She glanced over her shoulder. Alex was still asleep. Good. She threw Alex's hoodie over the chair at her desk.

Sammie padded as silently as possible across the room as she texted him back.

Me:okay be rite ther

Buttface: good, you're up. Hurry.

Sammie shoved her phone in her pocket and threw on her shoes.

A soft sound behind her made her flinch again. She turned to its source, trembling. Her magic threw weak, flickering light around the room, making shadows dance along the walls. Alex had shifted, rolling onto his back into the space Sammie had vacated. Sammie held perfectly still, and after a moment, she heard his snoring pick back up.

Thank god.

She did nothing but breathe, in and out, for several minutes. She couldn't stay here. She had to go.

She left, going up the stairs to the roof like a condemned man.

Samuel was waiting on the roof, just on the side by a half opened shed used for tools. Sammie would have found the sunrise pretty, if her attention weren't completely fixed on Samuel.

“Good morning, Sweetheart!” Samuel chirped. “Why don't you sit right here beside me? We need to talk.”

She sank to her knees, the floor felt cold under her. “I m-missed practice,” she said, trying valiantly to keep her voice steady. “I'm sorry.”

Samuel gave her a considering look. “Yes,” he said, “That is one of the things I wanted to talk about, Samantha. You made a really silly decision, didn't you?”

“I'm sorry,” Sammie repeated, as if it would help. “Alex...”

“Why did you let him make you miss our practice? You know how important this is.” Samuel frowned, looking more disappointed than anything. Was he going to hurt her?

She was being led into something, she was sure, but she didn't know what. “He wouldn't leave.”

“Why didn't you make him stay in the house?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

She blinked at him. “I...I can't really make him do anything…?” She knew that was the wrong answer, but she just didn't know what he was angling for.

Samuel laughed. “What do you mean, silly goose? You're much stronger than he is!”

“That's horrible,” Sammie said, recoiling at the very implication. Bullying Alex was not an option. The thought made her feel sick

“You know what would be really horrible?” Samuel's expression turned somber. “Accidentally killing your roommate. I can't think of a more awful thing, can you?” He tilted his face to one side. “You were pretty close to murder last night, Sam. You can't blame it on me this time.”

Sudden dizziness swept over her, and she braced herself with one hand on the ground.

“You saw?” Of course he did. Of course he always sees everything.

“Naturally, when you didn't show up I went looking for you,” he said, almost like nothing happened. “I was worried; you're usually so dependable.” He winked. “It wasn't really that hard to find you. You went up like a crate of firecrackers...you're just lucky no one else saw.”

True. There was always teenagers roaming the forest at night. If any of them saw her and told. She'd be a pariah. Or a goddess..

Either way she was a freak.

“Now,” Samuel went on, “I know you know that I can't just let this go, but I want you to understand I'm not doing this because I enjoy it.”

Her grabbed her arm in a blink of an eye. She gasped, and instinctively pulled away.

“Hey, stop,” he said, gently. “I've got you. Don't hurt yourself.”

One hand on her arm, the other under her chin. Sammie stopped cold. Whatever was going to happen, fighting would only make it worse. Past experience had taught her well. She forced herself to hold still. She could hear a faint, high whine from somewhere very nearby. After a few seconds, she realized the sound was coming from her.

She used a bit of magic, not enough to look like an attack but enough for him to absorb.

Samuel smiled. “Good girl,” he said, his voice husky. “Since I know you're sorry, I'll go easy on you. Sound fair? This'll only take a couple minutes.”

She couldn't nod. It was taking everything she had to hold still and keep herself together. She felt oddly separated from her own body, like she was watching this happen to someone else.

“I won't burn it too much since I don't have much ointment with me,” he said, in a way that was apparently supposed to be consoling. “I promise. Now... Don't wake your neighbors up.”

The pain. Like falling through a thin patch of ice, it swallowed her up. She bit down on a scream that tried to escape. She realized that she was hyperventilating; she didn't know how to make herself stop.

Her eyes were shut tightly. Instinct told her to clutch her arm, but that would only hurt more. She resisted.

“Good,” Samuel said. “Gee, look how tough you've gotten!”

She was only half listening. Most of her focus was on staying upright and keeping quiet. Magic hammered at the inside of her chest and skull.

Ruthlessly, she pushed it down. With everyone was sleeping right under her, she couldn't let them down. She couldn't.

Samuel watched her, his bright smiling turning contemplative. “I want you to meditate for a moment on what you would do if your roommate died. I'm sure you've been thinking about it all night, but just indulge me.”

Somehow, through the light-headedness and the throbbing pain radiating out, she managed to organize a glare.

“Sure,” he continued, “You'd feel really bad, right? But hear me out. You wouldn't have to keep worrying about him all the time. You wouldn't have to wait for him to be at his lowest, he'd already be dead!”

Sammie unable to talk, or she'd have let Samuel know what she thought about that.

He shrugged. “Just an idle thought. Okay,” he said, his hand going to his pocket to pull out another jar of pink goop. It was practically empty.

He rubbed the pink goop on her arm gently, but she still couldn't help whimpering.

In a matter of seconds, the near-unbearable pain ebbed away until it was just a itch on her arm.

"What is in that stuff?" She asked, tilting her head.

"Monster's skin." He said simply.

"What?!" She gasped. How was that possible?

“There! Isn't that better?” Samuel let go of her arm after pulling her sleeve down. “You'll have an itch,” he said, “but it's basically good as new!”

Sammie sat rubbing her arm, glaring daggers at him. She was much more different with Alex than she was when she was with Samuel.

Who was the real her? The cruel girl with Samuel? Or the bossy girl with Alex?

Maybe neither..

“My sister, her name was Anna, she dislocated my shoulder, once.” Samuel was watching her, an expression very much like sympathy on his face. “We were rough-housing, and she were stronger than me. Since I was weaker, I lost."

Still pissed, she said nothing. She just stared at him, her face blank.

Samuel paid her no mind. He seemed to be years away. “Dad found us, and he fixed it. He was a doctor at he time.”

As he spoke, he seemed to soften around the edges, as though something rotten and stinking had peeled away to reveal cleaner layers underneath. “It hurt terribly, but only for a moment. Anna got me ice cream after.”

It was too easy to forget that Samuel had once been someone else, something else, before this. Sammie found herself listening despite her own anger. Her magic scratched at her insides a little less.

“Sammie,” Samuel said, more alert now, more present. “Would you like to know something important? A story no one else in the world knows?”

She was going to hear about whatever it was either way, but she was...curious. Hesitantly, she nodded.

“Good! You're my favorite, Sammie, so you're the only one I can tell this big secret. You see,” Samuel looked over at her and laughed. "I'm a failure, a big loser."

Sammie blinked. That wasn't what she'd expected at all. "Why?"

Samuel laughed harder. “That's right, you need some context, don't you? Well, remember how I said my soul died?”

Sammie nodded. She remembered that conversation with perfect clarity. Where was this going?

“When I said that,” he went on, his smile drooping. “I meant that my sister died to keep me safe from thugs, she was my soul. She had magic like you, but more like pink ribbons. She used to lend me her magic to play with, and some people saw."

Samuel flinched, Sammie's almost reached out to hold him. She shook her head, not that he noticed. Samuel was too wrapped up in the story, as if he was reliving it.

"They called me a monster and tried to kill me. She came in to save me. Trying to us her own magic, but she was inexperienced on using her magic. They stabbed her to death.”

His brow furrowed, like he was squinting at something very far off and small. “I carried my sisters body home after she died. She was too weak so she lost. Someone was finally stronger than her. I swore then that I would save the others like her."

Sammie gasped. Others like her? How many? And did he actually help them? Where are they now?

“I can see the gears turning,” He said, smirking. “You're smart. I don't care what anyone else says.”

She barely heard him. She could half-remembered stories and rumors. They were stitching themselves together with what he had just told her.

The story of Misatora, how a girl was on fire, black fire, ran threw town setting fire to everything and everyone she touched. A fire that no amount of water could put out. It was a cautionary tale to avoid the forest at night.

The whole town had mourned the loss, after all many people died not just the girl. The whole town had burnt while everyone fled. It had been before Sammie's time, but it was an inescapable piece of town history. Everyone in town down to the youngest child knew the tale.

"The girl of black flame, she had become a living flame due the betrayal of her lover. And something about how her soul lives in the forest." She muttered.

She shook her head, and asked "Is that how to break the curse of my magic? Love? Is that want you want Samuel? Love?

“Please, don't say the that.” Samuel was strangely quiet. "I'm- I can't feel that."

Sitting there on the roof, nursing her arm next to the person responsible for everything that was wrong with her life, Sammie suddenly had no idea how to feel.

It definitely wasn't love, though.

She immediately tried to reach him. Her arm stung, but that was easily ignored. Her hand hesitated mid-reach. Samuel saw this and leaned into the touch. Letting her hug him.

“Why...” she said, trying to wrap her mind around this 'big secret.' “Why did you tell me this?”

Samuel actually looked unsure, just for a moment. Then he laughed, and pulled away. Just like that it all was back to normal.

"Maybe I'll tell you at next practice, sweety!” He winked. “Gotta give you a reason to show up, right?”

As if Sammie would miss another one. Samuel had said that he'd let her off easy, and Sammie believed him. She still felt a lingering dread, expecting an additional punishment that wasn't forthcoming. She'd braced herself for rage, and when it hadn't shown up Sammie should have felt relieved. Instead, she was tense, uneasy. Waiting for the rest.

“Sammie!?” Alex's voice called from the otherside of the roof door. The door knob started to the door shaking but it did not open.

Sammie jumped. "Uh, I'm out here!"

In a flash, Samuel dove into the shed, leaving Sammie alone on the roof just as Alex managed to open the door to the roof.

☆☆☆☆☆☆Samuel's POV☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Samuel peaked through the gap in the door of the shed, still hidden from sight. For the second time in as many days, that interloper had nearly spoiled the game. And just when he'd given out some crucial exposition! Irritating.

“There you are!” Alex walked over to where Sammie was kneeling. He was barefoot. “What are you doing out here?”

Sammie gaped stupidly up at him for a second. “I just, um,” she muttered. “...I needed some air.”

That was lame. Sammie was still a lousy liar, all improvements aside. Alex fidgeted with the zipper on his hoodie.

“I, uh, I woke up and you weren't there. And you weren't in the house, so I...” He grimaced, seeming to realize how clingy he was acting. “I don't know. I guess I freaked out a little?”

“Sorry about that.”

Alex helped Sammie to her feet. Or, more accurately, Sammie did a good job of acting like Alex was helping him. Samuel caught the lack of tension in Sammie's arm as she stood, the way she timed her movements to sync up with her roommates with practiced ease. He wondered if the act worked.

Did Alex really believe he was strong enough to pull even a small person like Sammie upright, or was this another one of their codependent tricks?

Samuel silently laughed. She must do a lot to make Alex feel important, how pathetic. What else did she do to make him feel important?

They stood there staring at the ground like idiots. Then, finally dropping the pretense of not being a needy sack of shit, Alex grabbed Sammie in a hug. His hands bunched up in the fabric of her shirt, his head buried against her neck. He was probably crying, or something. Disgusting.

She hugged him back.

Samuel had told everyone, including himself, that he had no soul and therefore no emotions. Yet he knew it was jealousy that was boiling up at the back of his throat, hot and acidic.

No, it must be him finding it disgusting that those two were stupid, gross, and so damn codependent. He was probably just frustrated at how Alex kept getting in the way of their game.

He'd told Sammie the truth, and she hadn't pitied him, had barely reacted at all. That was good! That was progress! He wanted his favorite toy to be cool and tough and useful, not a soft-hearted idiot. Not a big crybaby.

Yes. Of course it was going well. This was just what he'd wanted.

Alex pried himself away several minutes later, scrubbing at his eyes with his sleeve. “Uh,” he said, voice shaking like the wimp he was. “Come back inside…?”

Sammie nodded, and they walked together through the door. They were holding hands, that enough made him want to puke.

Samuel watched the pair from the shed, letting the not-jealousy wash over him. It was a novelty, and that was what he'd been after in the first place, wasn't it? He couldn't feel, not really. Not jealousy, not love, not even anger. He knew when things were stupid or annoying or amusing.

He couldn't experience these things, but he knew when they were there, like seeing Sammie's face through glass. It was there....just unreachable.

He hadn't been this close to reaching it in a long, long time. And to hell with love, or Alex!

It was too bad, really, that Alex had survived the night. Samuel had been pretty pissed off when Sammie didn't show, but that would have more than made up for it. That walking piece of trash took up too much of Sammie's time. He was getting in the way and impeding their progress.

Now that Samuel had finally figured out what he wanted to do with this girl, that was annoying.

Nothing he could do but be patient, for now. He was good at being patient. All he had was time.