Chapter Text
It’s not as though he asked for this. He had no choice, had been manipulated before he was even born to begin with. Maybe it would have been better, when he was frail and so young all he knew was the sound of his father’s voice. It would have been kinder, dying there. Instead of the never-ending hell he’s found himself in.
It had been fine, for a while. Before it really started to sink in. To realize just what Bridget Strand had done, in order to keep her dream of reconnecting America alive. But she’s gone, now; cut off from the rest of the Beaches, maybe still watching over from her own. Maybe there’s already a new Extinction Entity, ready to destroy the world for good.
He thinks of Higgs, of that self-loathing journal entry he left for Sam, maybe one of the only ones that truly let the real man, and not the power-hungry terrorist, shine through. He’s probably still on the Beach. Bastard was a cold-blooded psychopath, but sometimes Sam can’t help think Higgs’ fate was a terrible one. Maybe worse than his own.
After all, the more time sped up, the more alien Sam felt. He never did find out how long he was on the Beach, but he gets the feeling it was hundreds of years. For Higgs, maybe it’s been millennia. God knows the real world feels like it enough as it is.
Time kept coming, speeding faster and faster at a breakneck pace as Sam stayed exactly the same.
Lou at two; looking adorable in her blue onesie the Chiral Artist’s Mother made for her. Her giggles at the children’s shows he found on the Chiral Network. The first time she’d exclaimed “Dada!” at him.
Lou, at ten; bringing her fist “boyfriend” home to the shelter, who stares at Sam with wide, wide admiring eyes.
He thinks he can see the BTs clearly now, since he’s started meeting the Preppers in the area, the ones he missed while working for Bridges directly, but who joined the UCA, inspired by the President’s speech a decade ago. Lou still wants to come with him, when he goes into BT area to free the stranded souls from the mortal plane. Sometimes, he still lets her. They’re so much stronger together.
Lou, at sixteen; riding her first reverse trike with a laugh and a “you’re the best, Dad!”
Die-Hardman; given a funeral procession shown live on the Chrial for the first time in its history. Now live-streaming is a regular occurrence.
Lou, at twenty-seven; married, moving out of the shelter to live with her husband. “I’ll visit every weekend, Dad.”
Sam knows for a fact he’s no longer a level two DOOMS. He’s able to Jump now, so many connections, so much power. It’s not the sort of thing he’ll ever abuse, except for, maybe, to come home faster after a particularly lengthy delivery.
It’s something to distract from the fact that even as he makes connections, he feels increasingly isolated.
Heartman, whose heart finally gives out. Sam never did learn if he found his family.
Lou, at forty; “It’s strange looking so close in age to you, Dad. I know you can’t help it, but the kids think it’s kind of scary. Ford is getting nightmares about it.”
Fragile, on her deathbed; now looking as old in the face as her hands did all those years ago. “I think you could Jump anywhere if you wanted to, Sam. You’re stronger than me, now. You could— you could go so far—,” she’s cut off by her own coughing fit, and the nurses usher him away. She dies later that day, and Sam is the one given the order to take her body to the incinerator.
At fifty-five, he stops hearing from Lou so much. She says it’s distressing to see her father looking younger than her. Sam says he understands, but his heart aches. His little girl, who he loved and cherished for so long. He knows her heart aches too; that bond they had so long ago has never gone away. He wishes there was something he could do. Some way he could wake up and be an old, old man, and not the ageless freak he’s become.
Lockne dies peacefully in her sleep soon after. She’s reunited with her sister, now. And Sam can’t help despair. How many people will he be forced to outlive?
He doesn’t know how much more of this he can take.
Sweet Louise, his beautiful baby girl, dies at eighty-eight. When Sam arrives at her funeral, Ford gets angry. Says he doesn’t want his grandfather here, looking even younger than he is. Later, Lisa sends him mail where she apologizes for her brother, ending her letter with “I love you, Granddad”. He cries until he has no more tears to shed, and wonders what he should do next.
Ten years after that, Deadman, seemingly ageless himself, is found in his office with the door ajar. He has a bullet wound in his head, and a note on his desk apologizing for the mess. A man without a Ka; Sam wonders what happened to Deadman’s soul. Did he even have one? He can’t say he remembers anymore.
It’s a brilliant fucking joke, isn’t it? Bridget-fucking-Strand, who went on about making America whole, building bridges. And here Sam Porter Bridges is, at one-hundred-and-forty-fucking-eight, and all his, ha, strands have broken. A cruel fate from a selfish woman, for a baby who had done nothing but reach out for his father using powers he didn’t know he had.
One day, he doesn’t know why, he goes rummaging through his shelter for the memories from long ago. The dreamcatcher, he’ll always keep it. At this point, he’s not sure why. Trinkets here and there, from the Preppers he helped a century ago. He even still has the ridiculous otter hood. Maybe he should attach it to his coat, to remember. It’s only when he gets to the bottom of one of the boxes that he finds something he hadn’t been expecting. The mask; that creepy skeleton mask that Higgs had, the one he called his tribute to Ancient Egypt in his journal.
Sam doesn’t know how it works; didn’t care to learn, didn’t ask all the times people said they were looking into it. He only knew it could make a person invisible, somehow. Maybe through magic, hell, maybe it was because of Amelie’s Beach. Whatever the case, he’s not sure why he has it in his possession.
It reminds him of unpleasant things, of Lou wailing in her pod, of tar and monstrous beasts. He still has nightmares about Higgs’ lion. Of shooting it with bullets packed with his own blood that do nothing, with Mama dying on his back. Sometimes in his nightmares, Mama dies right there, never reuniting with her sister. Other times, the lion eats him whole, capturing him in a loop of dying and rebirth again and again.
How did he send it to the other world, again? Was it really as simple as shooting it with his own blood over and over and over again? It seems so simplistic, all of a sudden. Like Higgs’ constant desire to call every interaction with Sam a game. Like maybe he was trying to tell himself it was something he wanted to do, instead of a compulsion from coming face-to-face with the Extinction Entity and being unable to comprehend the truth he was seeing.
It’s a bitter irony, when he thinks of it. The idea that the man who caused untold suffering, who sent him on wild goose chases for fucking pizza, is the last strand from that life that he has left.
It’s not like Sam has never Jumped before; but only to his Beach, and only then when he knew where exactly he was going. Usually to visit one of the Preppers he’d befriended. It might be a challenge, for once, something to do besides drown in his sorrows and drink cheap beer that hasn’t changed in a century.
He stares at the mask. Why is he considering this? Higgs is a monster, a madman who killed countless people, destroyed Middle Knot, Capital Knot, and much of South Knot. A monster, who killed mercilessly and enjoyed every moment of it. But Higgs was also a deeply lonely man, troubled, and an easy target for the Extinction Entity to will over to her side, to be her puppet to bring about the apocalypse.
It’s the man from before all that, the man who wanted to be left alone, but who did what he could for people, the man who worked with Fragile to build up a community the only way he knew how that Sam wants to save. Nobody, except for Sam, even knows his face.
It’s that man, the man who wanted to do good, that Sam hopes is still alive, somewhere inside of Higgs.
But all of that time alone on the Beach, there might not be anything left of either Higgs.
If he’d spent one hundred years wandering his damn Beach when one month passed in the real world, how many years has it been for Higgs? Ten thousand, ten hundred thousand? Fuck it, math has never been his strong suit.
Some part of Higgs, somewhere, must have wanted a connection to Sam. Why else would he reward Sam with schematics for custom-made guns? The mail with the order had to have been written ahead of time, too. Which meant that Higgs must have known what would happen to him. Or maybe he just thought it would be funny, to order a pizza from a dead delivery he’d personally killed.
Yeah, that sounds like him. Bastard.
But maybe the joke’s on Sam anyway, because he’d known Peter Englert was Higgs by the second order, and still completed them anyway.
Still holding the mask, Sam’s eyes slip shut. He hasn’t done this in a long time, and with people almost never. He knows how to look for the strands, the strange, ethereal bands that connect others. He wasn’t always able to see them, and even now he can only sort of see them when he really concentrates. There are so many connections, some worn, so many that used to be but are now gone. He catches sight of a gold one, shimmering weakly through the sea of connections he’s made. It snaps into place.
He’s found him.