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Matthew was just tipping ravioli into boiling water when the doorbell rang. He glanced around, nudging the last couple pieces of homemade pasta out of the bowl and into the pot, then set the bowl aside and made his way swiftly to the front door. He glanced through the viewer out of habit as much as anything, smiling faintly as he opened the door to see Sam waiting on the other side.
She was bundled in a forest green wool coat against the cold, her arms wrapped around herself for added warmth. She met his smile with one of her own, even if it was a slightly more awkward expression than the one he wore himself.
"Perfect timing," he told her, and gestured her inside. He hesitated just a moment after closing the door, then reached over to help her out of her coat. It was a habit left over from her childhood, one that didn't feel quite the same anymore, after everything that had happened this year, but she didn't object, and only smiled at him again over her shoulder as he hung her coat on the row of hooks by the door.
"What're you making?" she asked, starting toward the kitchen. "Smells like pasta sauce."
"Ravioli."
Sam gave an amused snort, shooting him another look, this one wry.
Ravioli had always been her childhood favorite, especially when he'd made it from scratch, like he had today. It was a blatant attempt to both make her comfortable and invoke a certain amount of nostalgia, and she knew it.
He was determined to do whatever he could to make this conversation easier, though. He wasn't yet sure how it was going to go, the kinds of questions she'd ask about Talbot's discovery of his Immortality, and the circumstances surrounding it, but he doubted this would be the easiest conversation they'd had.
Especially since things were still a little. . . stiff, between them. So much had happened this year, so much that had completely undermined much of what Sam had thought she knew about Matthew's nature. That had brought to light the secrets he'd been keeping, even from Sam.
Things between them were gradually reaching a new normal. Despite what he'd asked her over to discuss, he hoped their conversation tonight would help solidify that.
"Smells amazing, as always," Sam's tone was as wry as her expression had been as she opened cupboards and drawers to retrieve plates and silverware, seemingly on reflex, "But you probably know that."
Matthew chuckled at that, stepping forward to give the ravioli a stir. They didn't need long, given that they were fresh, and not dried and packaged, and they were already close to finished. "I have been doing this for a while," he replied, deliberately injecting a bit of smugness into his voice.
He hadn't picked up cooking until a while after he'd become Immortal—he'd been the ward of a noble house, there had been no need—but he'd learned quickly after that that it was a very good skill to have.
And he'd been fond of ravioli in his own youth, as well.
For a little while their only conversation had to do with getting dinner finished and served. Matthew had bought wine for the occasion as well, and poured them both a glass as they finally sat down at the table, plates of ravioli steaming in front of each of them.
Sam forked a couple of bites into her mouth immediately, closing her eyes in contentment. "Someday I need to coerce you to make about ten pounds of this so I can stick it in the freezer and have it forever."
Matthew laughed, moving a little more slowly about taking his own first couple of bites. "No coercion necessary. Just. . . time I don't have, I'm afraid."
He'd only been able to do this today because he—and Diana and Talbot as well, he knew—had taken the day, given how late their flight from South Dakota had gotten in the night before.
Sam made a muffled noise of acknowledgement around her current bite, then swallowed and pointed her fork at him. "Okay, so spill," she said, changing the subject in an instant. "What happened with Talbot?"
Matthew had to swallow his own bite quickly, not quite choking in it, but he still had to clear his throat after. "Right into it, then."
Sam shrugged, stabbing another ravioli. "I want to know what happened. This is a pretty big deal, right? How'd she find out? Is she doing okay with it?" She blinked, leaning forward slightly. "Are you doing okay with it?"
He gave a silent sigh, taking another bite of ravioli as much to buy himself a moment to work through how best to respond, as to make headway on his meal.
He opted to start with the last question first. "I'm alright," he assured her with a considering nod, "So is Talbot, I think. It was—" he paused, thinking back, "About three weeks ago, now, that she found out. We've both had time to think about it, and we've. . . talked it through, some." He leaned forward, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm, nudging a ravioli around the edges of his plate. "There'll be more to discuss, and our partnership won't be the same, but I think we'll be alright."
She'd already gone above and beyond what he might have expected at this juncture, covering for him when the murderer from their last case had shot him, and he'd still been recovering when Diana had arrived on the scene. She'd listened, when he'd told her about his past life in Rapid City, his family who had died there, his own death alongside them. Eventually, she'd believed.
He knew she still had endless questions, but that was a far better outcome than some he'd seen in the past, when people had simply assumed he was something monstrous and untrustworthy. He expected Talbot would still be cautious, for a little while, but he hoped they had gotten through the worst of it.
Sam gave a nod, eating a few more bites as she thought that through. "Three weeks," she murmured, frowning, "Didn't she take leave recently? Was that why?"
Matthew gave a flicker of a grimace and nodded. "Yes, that was why."
Sam watched him sidelong for a moment, still frowning. "Should I talk to her, maybe? I mean, hearing about it from someone else who's known about it for a while might. . . I don't know, settle things, a little." She looked down and away, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "I guess that would kind of change things, though. We're sort of friends, would that. . . I mean, she might not trust me after knowing how long I've known about this. It'd change things, wouldn't it?"
Matthew stiffened, then forced himself to relax again. It wasn't that he didn't trust Sam with Talbot, or the other way around, but that felt like opening the door between his personal and professional lives too wide, too quickly. He was happy enough to let Sam talk herself out of it, at least for the moment. "I. . . think it best to wait on that, at least for now," he said carefully, "I think it might be some time before she's prepared for the news that I have a daughter nearly the age I appear, much less that you're somebody she knows. And. . . you're right, it would change things."
Sam gave that some thought, then gave a nod that looked relieved, to him. "Yeah, I suppose that would be pretty weird to hear, in her shoes, and it'd definitely make things weird between her and I," she acknowledged, and stuffed another ravioli in her mouth.
Matthew took the opportunity to eat a little bit more himself, thinking ahead to his next inevitable encounter with Talbot. He wasn't. . . worried, exactly, but it was doubtless going to be an interesting experience, when he did actually sit down to answer all her questions.
"So what did actually happen? How did Talbot find out?"
Sam's repetition of that question cut through Matthew's musings, and he looked over at her again, shoulders tight. He hesitated a moment, then took a quick breath. "She saw me die," he said simply.
Sam froze, fork halfway to her mouth, then swallowed and lowered it again, letting it rest against her plate. "You died? You. . . again? But. . . How? What happened?"
He hid a wince, setting his own fork down and leaning back in his chair. Sam had only learned he could actually die in the last few months, rather than simply healing from even mortal wounds.
It had hit her hard, when he'd corrected her assumption that he could simply heal from anything, without actually dying along the way. Of course, he suspected that had as much to do with the circumstances of that revelation, coming as it had on his abduction and captivity at Lamar's hands. It had been a difficult time for the both of them.
And, it dawned on him, until now that was the only death of his Sam had been aware of.
He stared down at his plate, idly flipping a ravioli over, leaving a hollow space in the red sauce that covered the dish. "I was looking into a case. A few cases, most old. All murders committed by the same man. He's. . . like me."
Sam's eyes widened slightly. She'd learned he wasn't the only Immortal in the same conversation where she'd learned he could die, and it wasn't something he'd laid out in anything beyond theoretical terms for her yet. "Another. . . Immortal?"
He nodded. "Yes. An enemy. I'd encountered him before, in the fifties. I was trying to catch up to him, to stop him before he killed anyone else." He grimaced again, stabbing a ravioli more aggressively than was necessary. "Talbot caught on that I was working on something on the side." His mouth twisted, and he gave a quiet scoff. "It was just bad timing. Keller—the murderer—chose then to confront me. Talbot just. . . happened to witness the aftermath."
Sam sat in silence for a minute, first staring at Matthew, and then shifting her gaze away to focus on the remains of her food and reaching blindly for her wineglass, taking a hasty sip. "What. . . what did he do? What did she see?"
Matthew turned to stare out the window, not really seeing the view. He didn't want to explain the details, not to Sam. She didn't need that image in her head, of her father being killed that way, even if it hadn't lasted long.
But he'd promised to tell her everything. He was already pushing that, trying to skirt around the edges of explaining the challenge he'd issued Keller, and the existence of the Game.
"He shot me," Matthew explained quietly, keeping his voice steady and even. "Talbot saw it."
He kept Talbot's unnecessary efforts to save his life, her panic and her fear and her confusion, to himself. Whatever he'd promised to tell Sam, that part was not his to explain.
Sam's fork clattered against her plate as she set it down, leaning back in her chair, her face pale. "He shot you?" she repeated faintly.
Matthew only nodded, glancing at her from the corner of his eye, then leaning forward in concern. She looked like she was going to be sick. She was pale, and he could see her throat working as she swallowed.. "Are you alright?" He reached over, resting a hand on her arm.
Sam swallowed hard, taking one shaky breath, then another. "I just. . . you got shot. What if. . . what if you hadn't been Immortal?" She darted a look at him, then stared down at her plate again. "And you said, after that Lamar guy. . ."
She couldn't seem to bring herself to finish the sentence. Matthew sighed and squeezed her arm. He could have pointed out that neither of those scenarios even would have come up if he hadn't been Immortal to begin with, but this wasn't the time, and he didn't think it would ease Sam's mind at all.
She took another shuddering breath. "That's twice," she murmured, her hands closing to loose fists on the table's surface. "If you weren't Immortal, you would've just been gone. Twice."
Despite his best efforts to conceal any reaction, Matthew must have shown something on his face, or in a twitch of his hand. Sam turned her head to stare at him, her jaw so tight he thought he could almost hear her teeth grinding.
"It's twice, right?" she asked him, her voice low and uneven.
He looked away with a gradual exhalation. He'd never intended for her to find out about any of this, about how often he'd gotten hurt or died in this last year or so.
He knew it was true he wasn't as careful with himself as most mortals tended to be. He'd long since reached a point where he took it for granted, that he'd heal from nearly any injury with little more than painful memories to show for it. Especially in this job, he had to watch himself to make sure he wasn't too overtly careless with his physical well-being.
Would any of his injuries this past year have happened if he were a regular mortal man? Would he even have been in those situations, had he not been what he was?
He genuinely couldn't have said. But even by his own standard, he'd gotten hurt or killed with startling frequency in the past year.
"Dad," Sam's voice was sharper this time, harder, and she was staring at him with growing alarm when he looked around at her again. "How many times has this happened?"
He leaned back in his chair, staring blankly across the room for a moment. He actually had to think about it for a moment, how many times it had been. Baines had killed him twice in a row, Lamar had done so at least once, then Keller and Morris had both shot him, within a week of each other. "Five, in the last year."
He didn't include the additional deaths he suspected he'd suffered at Lamar's hands. The whole ordeal remained a confused jumble of unclear memories, and he couldn't be sure how many times he'd died, or if he'd merely been unconscious or briefly comatose. Either way, it was not something Sam needed to hear about, and he didn't care to speak of it.
She'd gone pale, when he looked over at her again, her face slack with shock. "Sam-" he began.
"Five?" She cut him off, leaning urgently toward him. "In the last year? You've. . . you've died-" She broke off again, sitting back in her chair and covering her mouth with a hand.
Matthew pushed his chair back from the table and rose, circling around to Sam's seat and stooping awkwardly to wrap his arms around her. She turned into the embrace, burying her face against his shoulder. He cupped a hand around the back of her head, stroking her hair gently. "I'm fine, Sam," he murmured. "I swear it. Everything's fine."
He felt her stiffen, and she pulled back, staring at him disbelievingly. "You died. Five times!" She gave a breathless scoff, shaking her head. "That's not fine!"
He shifted back, sinking into a crouch and keeping one hand resting against Sam's back. "Sam," he began, speaking gently. "I know this might sound like platitudes, but I swear to you it's not. It truly is fine." He reached up to brush some disarrayed hair back behind her ear, attempting a comforting smile. "I've had a very long time to come to terms with what I am, and what I'm capable of. I know how far I can push, and the things I can do that other people can't safely achieve."
He drew a slow breath, thinking through his words carefully. "I take more risks than a mortal man might," he went on slowly, "Because I know almost nothing that happens to me will be more than an inconvenience. I don't enjoy it, when I get hurt or die, but knowing that the damage won't last. . ." He gave his head a considering shake. "It's like the risk mortals frequently run of getting scraped knees, or paper cuts, or twisted ankles. It's just a part of what I am, Sam, and if I can prevent someone else getting hurt, or stop bad people from causing harm by enduring some temporary discomfort, then to me at least, there's no problem." He gave a small shrug, and a slightly more wry smile. "It truly is more frustrating than anything else. It involves a lot of lying about what I've been doing, what's happened, and concealing. . . signs, of injury, can be difficult."
He did not think Sam would appreciate just how casually he routinely cleaned or disposed of ruined, bloody clothing, and how commonplace an activity it was.
From Sam's expression, he wasn't sure if he was alleviating her fears, or adding to them. "That makes it sound like you have a death wish," she croaked.
That conclusion made him blink in surprise. It was so hard for him now, to look at his own life from a perspective like Sam's. He wasn't indestructible, but he was the next best thing, and it made sense to him to use that as needed, as long as he was careful about who saw and learned what.
"I swear to you I don't, Sam," he said, fitting as much conviction as he could into his tone. "I've lasted this long, and I plan to keep on living. It's just. . . a matter of perspective. I've had eight hundred years to get used to the idea that things that would kill a mortal will only slow me down for a couple of minutes, and I've died. . . many, many times."
He didn't want to go into detail, didn't want to put that in her head, but he wasn't sure how else to explain. "The first time I died, it was. . . it was a lance. Here." He leaned back a little, moving his hand briefly to touch his ribs, and when he spoke again he very deliberately let his affected Louisiana accent fall away, settling instead into the accent he'd used when he'd been Matthew Grant. "The woman who taught me, she did not hold back in training. I died as a learning exercise. I died when I disobeyed her, and went after my brother's killers. I have died hundreds of times since, in all manner of ways. Compared to many, getting shot isn't so terribly bad."
He glanced down, reaching over to take hold of her hand. He could feel a tremor in her hands, an invisible tense shivering. He turned it slightly, running his thumb along a scar on the side of her finger. She'd cut herself chopping carrots for a salad when she was fifteen. It had bled quite a bit, but they had cleaned it and bandaged it up and she'd been back to helping with dinner in ten minutes. "It's no worse than this, for me," he went on softly.
There were exceptions, of course. Lamar's violence was not so easy to put behind him, but it was true enough about most of the deaths he suffered.
For a long stretch, they were both silent, Sam staring down at their hands, Matthew watching her expression. He didn't dare move, even when his legs started to hurt from the awkward crouched position.
"That's still a lot, Dad," Sam finally whispered. "I mean, you'd be worried if I needed stitches or something five times in a year, right? That'd be a lot of injuries."
Matthew stiffened slightly, surprised at having his own argument turned around on him that way, but she wasn't entirely wrong. She'd certainly suffered her share of childhood injuries—he knew well her knees were scarred from a couple of falls on concrete, and she'd broken an arm one time falling out of a tree—but even the more serious ones had been well spaced out. Here and now, in her adult life. . .
Yes, he supposed he would be worried if she were injured so often as that.
He conceded with a nod. "Yes, I would," he said, rising slowly to his feet, his hand never leaving Sam's shoulder. "I would be worried. And you're right." He heaved a sigh, tilting his head up for a moment. "Five is. . . a lot. Many more than I'm used to experiencing in such a brief time."
He truly couldn't remember the last time he'd suffered so many deaths inside a year. Likely during some war or another. Certainly not in a life like the one he lived now. His job had its risks, to be sure, but most in his position made it to retirement easily enough.
He finally moved away, sinking back into his abandoned chair. "This has been a. . . a particularly unpleasant year," he confessed. "I promise you, Sam, it's not usually like this." He gave a weak, soundless chuckle. "As prepared as I am to handle the sorts of situations I've found myself in, I do hope next year is. . . quieter. If nothing else, managing the fallout of such incidents is. . . complicated."
"Complicated," Sam repeated faintly.
Matthew nodded. "Concealing evidence. Witnesses, like Talbot. Downplaying or lying about what happened to avoid suspicion."
She scoffed, picking up her fork again to listlessly poke at the remains of her dinner. "I. . . look, I'm trying to get my head around this, I really am, but I'm kinda stuck on the fact that it being 'complicated' is what you're worried about here."
The corner of Matthew's mouth twitched upward, but the smile died before it spread any further. "I almost had to leave because of those complications, Sam. I almost had to start a new life."
Her expression went tight, and her hand closed more forcefully around her fork. "Yeah, and you would have just left me here like that, with a stupid letter and no good explanation. You didn't even call, not until you were halfway across the country."
Matthew winced at that, a weight of guilt settling on his chest. He hadn't liked sending that letter, but he'd felt his options had been limited. Still, it was possible he could have found a better way to handle it.
"For both of our safety, yes," he said quietly, picking up his own fork again. "If Talbot had taken what she'd seen or what I told her afterward badly, she could have made things very dangerous for me. And you, by extension, if anyone learned of our connection."
He didn't want to think about it, if the wrong sort of people ever learned what Sam meant to him.
"It was the safest way I had to explain things," he went on before Sam could speak, cutting off what looked like the beginning of an argument. "But you're right. It wasn't. . . wasn't necessarily the best way to handle the situation." This time he did smile, if only faintly. "Forgive me. I've never had to leave suddenly and worry about maintaining contact before."
Sam sat back, her fork going still and her eyes unfocused. "Suppose I can see why you're so concerned about the complications," she said at last, a weak attempt at humor.
He dutifully chuckled anyway, reaching over to squeeze her arm again. "For now, Sam, everything's alright. I'll do my best to stay out of trouble for a while, and Talbot. . . we're going to need to have some conversations, but she's come around. I'm not going to have to go anywhere any time soon. Not if I can help it."
Sam considered that for a moment, then took a shaky breath and nodded. "Okay," she finally said. "Okay. And I'll. . . I need to think about some of this, but I'll. . . try to get my head around it. It's just kind of a lot, knowing. . . the kinds of things that have happened. What could still happen." She fixed him with a worried look. "Even if it's just an inconvenience to you, I still can't help but think. . . what if it was different, one time? What if you didn't come back?"
He could only nod to that. He'd wondered that himself, on occasion, what might happen if he just. . . stopped being Immortal somehow. He didn't believe it could happen, but it had crossed his mind once or twice. "I'll do my best to stay out of harm's way," he promised.
Sam nodded too. "And can you please keep me in the loop, in the future? I'm really tired of finding out about all this stuff after the fact. I appreciate dinner, but I don't want to have another conversation like this, learning about all this terrible stuff that's happened and I didn't even know about it."
He didn't respond immediately. That was a promise he wasn't comfortable making, especially since there were still things he was keeping from her. "I'll do what I can," he finally said quietly.
The look she shot him told him she wasn't entirely convinced. "Dad, I need to know what's going on."
That didn't change his mind. She was still his daughter, and he still wanted to protect her from the worst of the ugliness he dealt with. He only nodded.
Both of them fell silent after that for a minute, both chasing their remaining ravioli around with their forks, and neither actually making any move to eat more of it. Matthew didn't have much of an appetite anymore, after this conversation, and Sam clearly didn't either.
Finally he drew a deep breath, pushing himself to his feet. "Why don't I pack this up for you to take home as leftovers," he offered, "And make some tea? We can talk about more pleasant things for a little while, before you need to head home. Why don't you tell me if you've talked to your mother lately? She and I haven't spoken in a while. Or you can tell me how things are going at forensics, you've been there a few months now."
Sam let out a quick sigh that sounded relieved to him, and got to her feet as well. "Yeah," she said with a smile. It was still a little uncertain, but genuine nonetheless. "Yeah, I think that sounds good."