Samson Gray

Great. Her spying hadn’t been as good as she thought. Doe put it down to too many people to keep track of and the fact she spent most of her time ducking out of sight or sleeping whilst they were awake. The reasonable explanation that doesn’t simply point out she’s a kid who doesn’t know what she’s doing. The man explains himself in that voice. The voice reserved for kids. Gentle, slower, and more thorough in his explanations.

She gets stuck on that word ‘patrol’ and casts another curious look up at the stranger. Patrol makes Doe think of a policeman or a soldier, maybe he was one of those. Or maybe one of those others who pretended they were big tough guys like in the movies because there were monsters to shoot at like they had in their games.

“Oh, okay.” A simple answer to tell him she’s listening. Maybe he’ll let more little facts slip through. 

The man even calls his scar intimidating, while he’s self-aware that doesn’t mean much. When he waves a hand at it, Doe takes that as an invitation to look. So she does. Doe tries to look for the eyeball, wondering if it’s still in their just disfigured. ‘My brother said it’d make me look more intimidating’.

Doe frowns at this brother’s words. She can’t respond to that properly. If she lies, he’ll assume she does find it intimidating but doesn’t want to say otherwise. If she does agree then that’s even worse, just admitting she’s scared of him. Doe doesn’t respond either way, let him assume what he will and it won’t have anything to do with her. Kinda.

He has a brother, patrols a lot, awake at weird hours, has one badly scarred eye, and is weirdly calm about being stared at. An odd combination of facts she doesn’t know what to do with yet. The last one though, she can do something about. The dumb thing maybe, but some adults snapped from even one question too many.

“What happened to it?”

She’s a quiet thing, a little nervous, maybe. Sam tries not to actually fall into the role of intimidation with her, not something he’d like to do and when she asks the question, he just gives a small smile. It’s nothing he’s ashamed to admit, nothing he’ll snap at her about. 

“Got a little too close to one of those big beasts,” he tells her, unsure if she knows what the names of them actually are. Unsure if even he knows. He knew what a scarlet beast was, he’d thought. And that they’d seen the one that he and Eli had gone up against and his whole definition of the world and what the monsters looked like and acted like had changed. 

It was safe to admit that he didn’t know a whole lot about the world anymore. Trying to categorize what monsters fell into what niche was going to fail him, so he tried to keep it simple. Demons, revenants, vampires and everything else. Things he didn’t know how to categorize and didn’t think he needed to. All he needed to know was whether his gun was going to kill it or if it required a talent and an ability that he didn’t possess. 

“Brought a knife to a monster fight. Turned out it’s claws were bigger than my knife,” he kept the smile on his face, but he could remember the feel of that claw raking up his cheek. Could remember what happened afterwards too, when he was just seeing an ocean of red. How his brother had been there, how they’d gone through the air in a manner of milliseconds, stepping through shadows at his brother’s behest. 

He should have talked to Eli more about that. 

“I’m Sam, by the way. What’s your name?” he asks afterwards. 

Doe didn’t hear him. In fact, it looks like he was just standing there. Or she’s over-thinking things and the fact his feet are stood pretty evenly apart in line means nothing and she’s grown too paranoid, trying to find meaning in every little detail she can parse out. 

He looks down at her, tells her not to worry and gives her a light apology of sorts. Nothing about him should be scary or intimidating but he is. Taller than her ( like everyone besides Tali ), broad and serious and. Oh. She can’t help the little gasp. Of course, Doe had ‘spied’ on this group. She’d seen something was up with this guy’s eye from afar but… up close? It’s super messed up.

Doe takes a step back and forces her attention more squarely on the other good eye. “Sorry,” she says again, voice more panicked than she means it to be. She stared at an adults scar once, an injury from a monster and she’d been yelled at. Told it was rude. Even before she’d once asked someone about a missing limb and was berated by her then fosters parents. Apparently, those things were supposed to be ignored out of politeness.

Even more worrying though could be he didn’t notice she was staring at that bad eye. That she only made things worse because she’d flashed a light in his eyes – in his eye and he might’ve missed it. She absently chews on the inside of her cheek and continues, pulling something, anything out, “I, um, didn’t think anyone was awake.”

There’s a quiet innocence to the girl in front of him and he can’t help but offer a polite, small smile at her nervousness. He notices the way she’s trying not to look at his eye and sometimes he forgets that it looks as bad as it does to someone who wasn’t used to being around him. They don’t meet many new people and when they do, he just figures they all have scars. 

“I’m usually awake at this hour,” he tells her gently. “I like to patrol, make sure everything’s okay while people get some rest.” It’s the truth. He had odd hours of sleeping and was usually up during the night unless he was charged with driving during the day. When they’d come to the monastery, they didn’t have to worry about the vehicles so much any more and Sam usually slept during the day and was awake at night, making sure God’s Will held out in keeping them safe. 

He’s quiet for another moment as he regards her and he can tell just his presence is making her nervous. He wonders if she’s one of the guests at this monastery and when she’d gotten here, how long she’d been her and if there was anything she could tell him about the place. But first and foremost, he didn’t want her to be afraid of him. So he thought maybe he should address the elephant in the room. 

“My brother said it’d make me look more intimidating,” he told her, waving a hand at his eye because he knew that she was trying not to stare at it. But he didn’t need people to ignore it, didn’t need them to pretend that there wasn’t scar on his face and he didn’t mind if people looked. It was a natural human reaction to something out of the ordinary and he understood that. “Guess he was right, huh?” 

Bryce is cold to Sam’s suggestion at first. Not that it’s a bad one, but as soon as he hears it, all he can think about is being a boy, asking his father for permission. This was their land, sure. But it didn’t sit right with Bryce that they should have to plea for their freedom to move and act. Or at all. No surprise there. 

But neither was it surprising that Sam would be looking for a diplomatic solution to all this. For a man as prepared as he was for war, it never seemed to be his first instinct. Conflict and confrontation seemed contrary to his very nature, even if his appearance no longer matched. The oppressive patch and deep scars hiding a mangled eye socket like he was some common trope. Bryce stared at it all, his own aggression defused just by Sam’s calm tone and presence. He nodded then, after a pause, let a barely-noticeable smile slip through in his own voice.

“Let me know if you need reinforcements.” Even thought he knew that would never happen. His words dripped with fondness. “Something tells me those old women are just gonna eat your whole ‘good cop’ routine alive.”

A laugh escapes him at Bryce’s words, but he can’t really argue with them. He doesn’t know for certain if they’ll relent any of that freedom they seem to be holding them from. If they’ll let at least a few of their ranks head outside of these walls to scout. There was the idea that someone should scout their next location ahead to see where they could go next and surely these sisters would allow something like that? They weren’t going to be here forever, Sam was certain of that. He was positive that they could be diplomatic about this. 

“I might take you up on that offer,” he tells him in good nature, a smile on his face. His gaze drifts back to the revenants at the gate next to them and there’s also the thought that they might be trapped in here for a little bit unless someone went out there and cleared a path. He wondered if there was a back door or another way they could get out of here and that feeling of being trapped wafted over him with such a sudden sensation that he almost shivered where he stood. 

Instead, he deflected the thoughts with humor. “I never really had a lot of contact with nuns before this,” he tells the man. “Mostly just when they called us about break ins at the church. Wasn’t really the religious type, you know?” 

The large group of strangers arrival was unnerving, to put it mildly. So she hid away. Two months in the monastery meant she knew all the crooks and crannies and all of the Sister’s routines so generally she moved around without being seen. It was difficult to keep that up with all the new faces around but after a few days, she thought she had a general sense of their routines.

It unnerved Doe so much she started to keep her knife on her at all times. She fashioned a holster for it from socks and attached it to her belt, a solution she was quite proud of.

Doe tiptoes through the empty halls, carrying a small wind up torch to light her way. Past sleeping bodies who had never seen her. There was a sense of pride in that, being unseen despite being stuck in the same building as them. Apparently, the universe isn’t always in her favor. Doe turns a corner and the torch lands on a person. She jumps back, light flicking up into the person’s face.

“Sorry,” she says quickly. Eying them up and down before pointing the torch down to their chest, away from their eyes, and having to let them look at her. Doe’s quick to train her expression into something neutral even as her heart races. “Didn’t mean to…”

It was late and it was quiet. As dark outside as it was inside, even with a few candles going to try and give them some sort of vision in a world without electricity. Sam had a flashlight with him, but for the time being, it was dark, down at his side as he slowly made his way through the hallways, letting the natural moonlight from outside and the dim candlelight when he got close to an occupied room light his way. 

Most of the others were sleeping and as much as Sam wished he could lay down and try to catch a few hours of sleep too, he’d found himself to be more restless here than in the past few places they’d stopped. Maybe because his patrols wouldn’t allow him to go outside of the walls. There was a lack of visibility of the enemy that he didn’t like and didn’t know how to get around. Not with the rules placed on them by the sisters who lived in this monastery. 

It was the light of a flashlight coming up the adjacent hall that caught his attention first. He stopped where he was and waited for the person to round the corner. When they did and he caught sight of who was behind the flashlight shone into his eyes, he realized it wasn’t someone he knew. Immediately, his hackles were risen and his shoulders tensed, but he kept a calm demeanor as to not frighten her. 

“No worries,” he told her, bowing his head slightly when she aimed the flashlight at his chest so she wouldn’t blind him. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” 

She can’t help how closely she watches his expression as he steps closer, noting the frown, the line between his brows. Just as she can’t help feeling that much more at ease when he joins her to lean against the truck. It’s perhaps the closest thing to a home she has, and while she knows it doesn’t really count for much in terms of practical safety, there’s a certain comfort in keeping a close proximity. All the more comforting to have Sam in that proximity with her.

“Yeah,” she says, though it sounds closer to a question than an answer. Oddly, her usual practice of guilting and scolding herself out of her negativity hasn’t quite relieved her of her suspicions, and she presses her lips into a thin line as she glances toward the gates. “Yeah, can’t complain.”

And that’s that, she supposes. She’s safe enough behind those gates, with all the others. No major injuries, no major crises, nothing but a semi-fabricated sense of anxiety that only seems to feed into itself. She tears her gaze away from the gates, glances over her own garden, settles her sights on him once again.

“Have you slept much?”

Sam nods when she says that she can’t complain. That she’s doing alright and he doesn’t know if he expected a different answer from her or not. Things were going...well, and that wasn’t something he was entirely used to. The lack of a need for a patrol or scouting party. The lack of immediate danger in the vicinity or the possibility that there might be some. 

He can’t quite turn off the vigilance and that’s always been his problem. Even before the end of the world, he’d never really turned off the soldier and the cop side of himself. Even on those quiet nights alone in his apartment, he’d remained vigilant for trouble and mayhem. It was hard this time, because the sisters were claiming this was God’s doing. And Sam’s relationship with God was anything but close. 

Her question has him glancing her way and he gives a small shrug. “Eh,” he answers, because he doesn’t want to lie to her. He hadn’t slept well since their arrival here. He thinks about leaving it at that, because it’s going to be a hard thing to try and explain, but he looks at her for a moment and knows that she deserves for him to at least try. 

“Hard to sleep when it’s...like this. You know, waiting for the other shoe to drop.” He clears his throat and gives her a half smile. “What about you?” 

He waits for Sam’s answer. And if anyone knew Bryce well enough, they’d know how significant that was. As much as Bryce didn’t want it, his respect for Sam endured, forced him to consider what the other man wanted, as eager to serve someone who deserved it as he was to do what he felt was right. Bryce kept his back to him and swallowed, knowing that if Sam said the word, he’d act. Thankfully, he doesn’t. 

Bryce steps back, turning on his side to face him when he says he’s just checking to see how Bryce was doing. It hadn’t been the first time, but maybe that was exactly why it was starting to stand out in his mind. He furrowed his brow, not in irritation but confusion. For a second, his worries about their situation gave way to his worries about this and he became uncomfortable with how close they were standing, like he didn’t need the excuse to read into things more than he ought to. God, he was so pathetic. 

Bryce forced himself to turn back to the gate and resume taking out the revenants, reaching his free hand through the bars to grab scalps when necessary and pull them straight down onto his knife. 

“I’m fine. Restless,” he added, like that would explain anything. After a brief pause, he decides to stop bullshitting, and he could use the excuse to not think about them on a personal level. “…I know we need this place but I think listening to them too much is a mistake. Not seeing what’s out there with our own eyes is a mistake.”

Sam’s quiet as Bryce returns to taking out the revenants one by one. He watches carefully, making sure the motions are calculated and true, the last thing he wanted was for one of them to snatch Bryce’s wrist and get a hold of the man. If there’s tension in his shoulders, it’s because he’s concerned over Bryce’s need to do this in the first place. Equally as concerned because he wishes he could go out there and take them out as well. But the sisters’ instructions had been clear. They were not to wander. 

It makes him wonder how long they should stay here and what will happen when it’s time to get up and leave. He’s in no hurry, but neither is he happy just sitting here. It’s a hard thing to admit, because this place seemed to be right up their alley. Seemed to be some sort of untouched paradise, but Sam can’t help and think of the last time they’d come upon and veritable paradise. 

There’d been a demon at the helm. 

I’m fine. Restless. Is Bryce’s answer and Sam nods his head because he can relate. It’s an odd thing not to be out on the perimeter patrolling. The most he can manage is walking around inside the grounds and there’s not much to see from that standpoint. 

Another nod follows when Bryce calls it a mistake. “Maybe,” he admits after a moment. “Maybe I’ll see if they can’t relent a little bit on that rule.” 

“Ehhh, I don’t know. Knowing what I know now, it’s probably safer to say that there’s some sort of witchcraft going on here that they either don’t know about or choose to call God’s work. But...I also know that it’s not entirely wise to write off the possibility of some sort of divine intervention either.” 

Footsteps make their way into his ears but Bryce doesn’t turn; he’s almost inviting them in, for the wrong reasons. His thoughts are a jumble of worst case scenarios, and he’s almost ready for those steps to quicken and turn hostile. He wants them to, wants the pretense to drop, wants something to come out of these pristine halls and threaten them finally just so he can have a reason to snap, kill, destroy. Sam’s voice defuses that urge like a waft of cool air. And Bryce is disappointed. 

He sighs deeply at the greeting, shoulders deflating. Yet again…he shouldn’t be surprised. As much as they’d been forbidden to do much, Sam, too, didn’t seem to know what he was doing unless he was looking out. Still, he can’t help but wish for once that the man was less vigilant. It was too soon to be interrupted. He’d barely gotten anything out yet.

Bryce pauses all the same, straightens his back and forces words out his mouth that are much calmer than he feels. “Are you here to tell me to stop?”

Bryce looks as though he’s bothered by Sam’s presence, or at least the interruption and Sam just smirks slightly, trying not to be intrusive to the man. He didn’t want to even begin guessing how people felt about being here. Whenever religion was brought into the mix, he knew that it became a deeply personal thing for some people. He’d respect whatever someone thought about the issue, but he wasn’t going to try and guess what those thoughts were. 

So when Bryce asks him if he’s there to tell him to stop, he simply turns his head to look at the gate and the revenants on the other side of it. They claw at them through the gates, trying to get through and he glances up to make sure that the gate, for now at least, is holding fast. 

“Nope,” he says simply, nodding his head towards the work Bryce had already been doing to the revenants on the other side. It may not be something that these sisters appreciated, but they weren’t around right now and Sam would try to deal with it if it became an issue. “Just checking in to see how you’re doing.” 

It felt like whenever Bryce was starting to get comfortable, something had to come along and make him rethink everything again. Not that they had much choice this time with the detours. On its own, Bryce would’ve had no problem with this pit stop; it was business as usual until they got back out there again. But something about the sisters’ “requests”…didn’t bode well with him. He only had one question: why? 

Why did they care if their group explored? Why invite them in only to impose rules? Bryce itched to disobey, his paranoid nature kept him constantly running bad scenarios through his head, reminding him that the best option was to do exactly what they said not to do, and find out what they were hiding. But Bryce did nothing, because as creepy as their hosts were, he’d watched them. He’d listened. He’d stared and waited and looked, and not once did any of his senses, physical or otherwise, detect a single lie, or deception, or hidden hostility. It ought to have been there. Bryce feared making noise only to have their weary group kicked out of their beds, the chance to recuperate revoked. But he couldn’t just do nothing, either. 

“Enough.” Grunting, Bryce pushed his back off the brick wall he’d been leaning on outside and started stalking towards the gates, towards the growing number of revenants that had been staring and reaching at him for hours. When he got close, Bryce started pushing the blade of his knife through their eyesockets one by one, his nose wrinkled with pent-up frustration.

Sam was seated towards the outer gates, a can of green beans in his hands that he had been munching on slowly while he tried to gather his thoughts. He had never been a religious man and he couldn’t really say if he’d ever been spiritual. If he believed in God, he didn’t have a high opinion of the deity and most days it was easier to just not think about it. To not think that there was a God out there that would let the terrible things happen in the world that he’d seen as a soldier and a cop. 

But being here, he couldn’t argue that this place seemed untouched and unfazed by the world outside. That the corruption hadn’t seeped up through the walls of this place. There was something about it that did feel like some holy hand of God was keeping out the evil and he wasn’t sure why he found that so unsettling, but he did. 

He spots Bryce a moment before the man comes over. He watches him, wondering if he’s about to open those gates that’s holding out a veritable horde of revenants and when he just starts sticking his knife through the gate and into the revanants as best he could, for a moment Sam just looks around to see if anyone else is seeing it. He especially doesn’t want one of the sisters to see it, worried they might outstay their welcome. 

Though as he stands, he wonders if he really thinks that’s such a bad thing. He’s itching to move on already. 

“Hey,” he greets as he comes up beside the man, not telling him to stop or one way or another. 

It must be rude to feel so unsettled in this place. That’s Violet’s current reprimand of choice, at least, in the hopes of pulling her nerves away from the edge. The women have welcomed them all so openly. Given them food, water, even beds. They deserve better than uneasy glances and the distance she’s been keeping. If she offered help, maybe, in that garden of theirs… not that she has many supplies to spare, but maybe they could find some use for an extra set of hands.

Instead, she lingers near her truck, pacing, poking, prodding, peering needlessly beneath the open hood. Her gun feels too heavy where it’s strapped to her thigh, but the weight of the blade at her hip is comforting, and she’s long since stopped noticing the way she reaches for it every so often. As if it might just disappear if she lets it go unchecked for too long.

She’s on her fourth semi-aimless lap around the truck when her skin prickles. Head cocked, she waits for the sound of footsteps before casting one last glance over the engine and shutting the hood. “Careful where you wander.” She lifts a hand to briefly block the sun shining in her eyes, then points, leaning uneasily against the side of the truck. “There’s a whole bunch of stinging nettle that way, if you go back too far.”

Sam’s can’t remember a time when he’s been so unsure of something. A part of him wanted to believe that this was exactly what it seemed. That this was actually some safe haven that God was protecting because there were true believers in its midst. But the unsettling feeling hadn’t left him and refused to let him get any sleep. Not for more than a few minutes at a time. 

The worse part, to Sam, was that he couldn’t wander. Was that he couldn’t go outside these walls and scout and that left him very little space to truly walk as he wandered. There was the feeling of being trapped that he couldn’t quite get passed, no matter how nice these sisters were being to them, how accommodating. 

The voice startles him, because he wasn’t truly paying attention to where he was wandering and he glances up at Violet, giving her a small smile as he diverts his original route to come and stand next to the truck she’s working on. “Won’t go that way, then,” he tells her, leaning his back against the truck and looking the way she’s pointed. There’s a frown permanent on his face as he stares out at their surroundings. 

“Holding up okay?” he asks, finally, turning to look at her. 

Some place a little more permanent.

There’s a familiar, nearly inconsequential, tension coiling quietly in the pit of her stomach at the thought. Not that she considers it a concept entirely past her capabilities, exactly, or that she’s frightened for the future. Only that simple, lifelong sense of doubt, that these kinds of matters aren’t hers to consider in the first place. That it would be presumptuous of her to think so far ahead, to think beyond the day-to-day at all, when she never quite managed to think of her future as a guaranteed thing.

But she hesitates, eyeing the plants for a quiet moment of thought. She was always such a solitary person, before all this happened. All those decisions she never felt she had any right to make only ever affected her. A conscious decision, maybe, but a system that kept her in a comfortable, well-deserved sort of stasis regardless.

Maybe that’s different now, too. This isn’t her garden - an argument she has with herself all too often, when she starts noticing hints of those territorial tendencies - and beyond the simple pleasure she takes in the work, the comforting familiarity of it all, she’s not really doing this for herself. The bare minimum that got her through each day for so long hardly has any place here, tending to this garden for everybody, and so why should she think the same way now as she looks toward the future? A future that she surely hopes will include all of the others, after all. So if a more stable, a more expansive, option for growing food could be called for eventually, maybe she has every right to start anticipating that now.

“I don’t think any place is really a home without a big garden,” is what she says first, though, absentminded words as she turns her thoughts over and over in her mind, her typical, careful sense of consideration at work. They’ve been heading toward California, as far as she knows. Safety, she hopes, though she hasn’t asked for very many details along the way. Only what she might need to know to keep the vehicles running from stop to stop. A consummate follower, perfectly content to do her own work and yield to the decisions of people better suited for those roles, and for this world.

“The soil out there’s supposed to be really good, actually. I think. It’ll be a good place for it.” And she pauses again, waiting to see if that curiosity will sort itself out, put itself back in its place. Accepting this end goal, this final destination they’re working towards, as a part of her own future, would inevitably mean grappling with some concepts that have long since been unfamiliar to her. And she can’t quite say she’d know how to face any of that. In the end, though, she only tilts her head softly, her tone casual when she asks, “So, why California?”

Sam gives a small smirk at her mention of what makes a home and he wipes his hands on his cargo pants, turning around to sit down on the bed of the truck, his legs swinging out in front of him. He looks out over the horizon and for the moment, there’s no danger on it. Just an empty wasteland where a bustling city had once been and there’s something sad seeing it so empty and devoid of human life. Sad because he’d lived for the lights, the sounds, the people of the world. He didn’t like it when things got too quiet and he’d never given much thought of moving out of the city or not being around people in the first place. 

Being alone was something he was both fantastic and terrible at. Fantastic because it was hard to let people in too close, hard to put them before the job or the task at hand. But terrible because he kept people around him at all times anyway. When he was in the Marines, he’d had a bunker full of other Marines to share the living quarters with. When he was a cop, it was the locker room, the apartment building. There’d always been noise. Always been the sounds of life all around him. That was the hardest thing to get used to in this new world. 

There just wasn’t any noise. 

His therapist had asked him once what he planned to do when he retired. Most cops had a nice little retirement plan, an idea to move out of the city and someplace quiet where they could live out the end of their days. Sam had told his therapist he didn’t have one. He never planned to retire. He never planned on growing old. Never pictured himself as growing old, always pictured himself dying young, in the line of duty, preferably. 

Now? He didn’t know. There wasn’t such a thing as retirement, was more of a chance he’d die trying to protect people than there’d been before all this happened, yet, Sam had less of a will to die young. It was funny and ironic that he had more of a will to survive now than he’d ever had. 

Why California? she asks and for a long moment, Sam is just quiet. He stares out at that horizon and he wants to tell her that it’s because California is safe. Because California will be their safe haven, their sanctuary. But he can’t even promise that and instead, the real reason behind it is something a bit more convoluted. 

“New York had a Hell Gate,” he starts, quietly and he doesn’t look at her. “Supposedly, California has a Heaven’s Gate. I’m not fool enough to think it’s some sort of salvation, but I figure...heaven’s army must be a little bit more benevolent. And if it doesn’t work out...we can always just visit the ocean as we pass through.” 

She asked. 

There’s something in that. A shift of blame, maybe, if Sam was the type. It’s innocent but it still lodges into Bryce’s heart in a strange way, makes him wonder what the truth actually was. Maybe he was looking too deeply into things; he’d never been the “cohabitous” type after all. Always demanding clear answers and lines and limits. It was hard finding his place in all this. Harder still to accept it was something that wouldn’t be solved today.

Bryce just hums, then turns to glance at the older man when he says he’s never tried. And smiles.

“Does it really or are you just trying to let me down easy?” He provokes, chuckling. He’s heard plenty of those ‘just trying to make conversation’ hints before and knows regardless of what Sam really thinks, he’d try to seem open-minded. But Bryce is secretly hoping that the expression was genuine. “I could walk you through some stances if you want. 

There’s an awkwardness in the conversation that he doesn’t know the cause of. Whatever it is, he wants it gone. He likes Bryce, cares for the man and if he’d done something to wrong him, he wants to fix it immediately. That’s why he’s glad when the man smiles, ducks his head and then offers him a joke. 

“Nah, man, it seems interesting,” he tells him genuinely, lifting a brow when Bryce offers to show him a few stances. He turns to look over his shoulder, eyeing the building because he can practically hear Eli calling him on how ridiculous he’ll probably look. 

But there’s a part of him that wants it to work. Wants it to put his mind at ease and rid him of that restlessness he can’t seem to shake. So he crosses his arms over his chest and gives Bryce a nod. “Sure, why not?” 

Sam. Justin wondered if being alone with the man would always feel this way; if it would always be this career cop-minded to find him whenever he started to fracture. The blonde was in no hurry to explain himself but he did sit up, balancing the pail on his knee and pushing his soaked-flat fringe out of his eyes, over his scalp. 

“I thought, uh,” he responded with a shrug. The words felt like they blurred on his tongue. He blinked, disguised by the rain, rubbing his eyes. Justin pauses to get them straight. Straighter. “You know…water.” As if that could speak for itself. Everything after that seemed hard to settle on. He glanced at Sam with a casual, tensed cheek, looked past him for a while, then back reluctantly.

“I’m good. Trying to stay out of the way.” What happened when his medication was switched still weighed heavily on him. Even though he had the answers he’d been looking for, it was no consolation. Being alone, at least he didn’t have to worry about it. 

Water. As if that should explain everything. In a way, it did. He could understand the need for collecting it. For catching raindrops in a pail so someone could wash their hair or their clothes or even drink from it if that’s what it came down to. Though these days he didn’t know if he trusted the world enough to drink rain water. It seemed the world was out to get them and that would just be the perfect way to bring it home, poison their drinking water. 

He nods his head and they fall into an awkward silence for a moment before Justin tells him that he’s good. That he’s trying to stay out of the way. It seems like an odd thing to say and Sam just watches him for a moment and wonders whose way he’s trying to stay out of. He’s not selfish enough to think it’s his. 

The last time he’s spoken to the man, Justin had been in the depths of one of his episodes. He didn’t pretend to know what the man had gone through and he’d gone to find Eli to see if his brother would have some better luck dealing with the man. He seemed better now and Sam gave the man another look. 

“Existing is not being in the way,” he says with a slight smile, but eyes Justin and then voices a concern he hopes is unwarranted. “No one’s giving you a hard time, are they?” 

All his life, Justin had felt comforted by rain. The heavier the downpour, the greater the relief, even better when he was out in it. The only time real life mimicked a static television, natural white noise. Thousands of tiny, cool explosions on his skin, all drawing his attention at worse. It was hard to explain, but he found it easy to just rest when it was raining, even if the rest of his brain rarely did.

Alone with his thoughts and himself, Justin laid out across the hood and windshield of a discarded car in the lot, soaked to the bone as it stormed above. He balanced a little pot on his stomach with his hands, just holding it there, listening as the impact of the rain around him miraculously drowned out the unintelligible whispering. 

Only, a few syllables hit his ear drums in a different way and Justin turned his head before he even digested it fully, looking for the real voice through all the fake. “…come again?”

When it had started raining, thundering, Sam couldn’t help a moment of dread. It brought him back to the day it had started snowing, before the lich. He had his doubts that this rain was the same as that, too normal of a downpour to be something brought on by the supernatural, but the thought was there all the same. That this was the start of something they weren’t going to enjoy. 

It didn’t stop him from patrolling. So long as the rain didnt’ start melting his skin away, he was fine getting a little wet as he walked around the IKEA. He stopped himself, though, when he saw a familiar figure laying out in the rain looking unfazed. 

As he approached, Justin asked him to repeat himself and Sam gave a soft smile, wondering how he was doing with his medication and if he should start looking for more. 

“Asked how you were doing,” he repeated, calling over the rain.  

She laughs at that, a soft sound, rendered nearly uncertain by her lack of experience with such things, but genuine nonetheless. “I wasn’t good,” she assures him. If nothing else, she was at least reliable enough to show up consistently, to take on shifts and tasks that others seemed to avoid. She had nowhere else to be, after all, and certainly relied on those meals. And getting her hands dirty with those less-than-desirable chores never fazed her much.

“I, um…” A careful smile starts to play at her lips, as she drops her gaze to her hand in her lap, fidgeting absently with the roll of twine. “I wasn’t always this bubbly.” It may be a clumsy, obvious joke – the thought of anything about her being considered ‘bubbly’ rather laughable, she thinks – but it draws that smile from her all the same. It’s a strange concept. How different things were for her then, how different she might have been. She’s not sure she ever once smiled at that job. “So customer service wasn’t really my thing, is all.”

Maybe it’s rather self-indulgent, to think of how sullen, how wary and defensive, she was back then, and to wonder if she’s really so different now. For all her introspective tendencies, the thought’s never quite occurred to her before. Not so consciously, at least. She might prefer the smiling now.

Now, though she can’t help but be reminded of so many of her childhood evenings, trying to convince her dad to eat something that didn’t come out of the microwave. Or the gas station a few blocks down. She never worried much about keeping herself fed – Mrs. Hadley was eager to ply her with odd snacks when she visited as a child, and there were always school lunches to hold her over. But keeping him fed on a limited budget, with limited supplies, was one of her more constant anxieties then, when hunger so often seemed to make him more irritable.

“Rice and beans are easy. They stay good for a while when they’re dry.” The words are nearly absentminded as she brainstorms, thinking out loud in turn. It would surely be easy enough to cook over a fire, too, considering their options there. “And if we could get some people hunting, maybe-” Bryce comes to mind, naturally, and she knows that Charlie has hunted for meat as well, slim though wildlife may be these days. Rice, beans, fresh meat, fresh vegetables. Practically a real meal. “I don’t think it’d be all that impressive, but we could probably throw together a big pot of something, every so often. Make sure anybody who wants some can get a bowl or something.” Excluding herself, she’s already assumed. She can fend for herself well enough otherwise. “We’d have some time to plan between harvests, try and stock up on what we’d need.” Food is scarce enough as-is, of course, but she has to believe they’d be able to make it work. “But that’s a good idea, yeah. Using them in something else. We could plan on that for now, I think, try and get something together with the radishes in a few weeks.”

“I’ll take your word for it, then,” Sam just smiles. He can’t imagine Violet being bad at waitressing, but then again he hadn’t known her back then. If she claims she was something different, he thinks a lot of them were. He thinks a lot of people had to do some growing up and moving on when the world had ended and he wonders how different he’s become since the end of it all. The thought strikes him that maybe he’s one of the ones who hasn’t changed. 

Soldier then, soldier now. 

The thought doesn’t stay with him for long, a melancholy he doesn’t want to start visiting. If one thing was different in him now, it was that he was less equipped to handle the world than he was before. When the enemy was a person, or an army, maybe he would know how to handle it. But when they’re monsters that he barely knows how to hold his own against, it gives him a feeling of inadequacy that he doesn’t particularly like. Coupled with the fact his hand still shook whenever he got into the SWAT vehicle and that sometimes he still dreamed of fire, it’s nothing he wants to spent too much time thinking about. How inadequate he was for this world. 

She talks about how they could mix the items she’s growing with other things and Sam nods. He’s glad she likes the idea because otherwise, he wouldn’t know how to ration these things out. Doesn’t think there’s a good solution. Their group had grown and was continuing to grow large enough that this couldn’t possibly feed them all. 

Sam nods, looking at the potted plants in front of them. The first harvest would be radishes, something he can’t rightfully say he enjoyed. But any fresh ingredient was going to be worth it and while he didn’t plan to partake, he hoped enough people would get what they needed out of it to satisfy their needs for something fresh and healthy. It was a growing concern of his, the food situation. Eventually those non-perishables would perish. Eventually the food stuffed away in cans wouldn’t be good anymore and they were going to have to start thinking about nutrition in other ways. More than just eating to survive, but eating to stay healthy. 

“You know, maybe when we settle down some place a little more permanent, we could look at this sort of stuff on a grander scale,” he says, looking over to her. He didn’t know what truly awaited them in California. Zoe claimed it was a Heaven’s Gate, but Sam’s hopes weren’t up for much of what that meant. Maybe things were equally as bad over there. Eventually, he was planning on getting somewhere permanent. Eventually, he was planning on settling some place like the base group had done. Crops and harvests would be a big part of that new life. 

God, it’s a relief. To exist without the constant dialogue in his head, worrying about this, that and the other thing. Bothered over the existence of Sam, bothered over himself. When it was all gone, it felt like he’d never breathed as cleanly or easily, and he could almost fool himself into believing that none of it mattered beyond this moment. Again, he took a deep breath, not knowing what trellises were but not sparing the brain power to riddle it out. He even managed an approving hum when Sam said it was a good stress reliever. Good, that he was seeking out such things. Good, that he’d found it with her. 

“Mm. You looked like you were having fun. ’Good to see you taking more time out,” he muses absently, the corner of his mouth tugging up into a hint of a smile at Sam’s next question. 

“Tai chi. Same basic principles with regards to meditation but the emphasis here is on fluid movement, whereas yoga tends to be more…still.” Bryce mumbles off his explanation with distant passion, implying he would have tried it all at one point. Though he had his preferences, he had respect for it all as a means of refining personal discipline. As if to end his sentence with a demonstration, he reaches out without locking his elbow, other hand turning and tracing down underneath his forearm before he brings both arms backward and feels several kinks release between his shoulder blades. The wendigo scars on his shoulder pull but he doesn’t allow them to impede his movement. 

“’Ever tried it?”

Sam dips his head slightly when Bryce says it’s good that he’s taking some time outs to help Violet with the gardens she has in her truck. It hadn’t really been his intention in the first place, and there was really only one reason he’d decided to help her out. “She asked,” he says as way of explanation and that should say it all. She’d wanted some help, he’d been there, he wasn’t going to tell her no. Not Violet. 

He still doesn’t know what Bryce was getting at earlier, but he lets it go for now because the man has seemed to move on from the topic of Violet and into something he has a passion for. Sam’s never tried Tai chi. Never tried yoga or any of it before. A kickboxing workout routine had been the closest thing he’d come to anything like it, but that had been the furthest thing from meditation. That had riled him up, got his blood pumping. He’d found stress release in the way his legs and hands had hit the bag. 

“Can’t say I have,” Sam shakes his head, almost sorry that he hasn’t because he would have liked to spoken to the man about it some more. “Looks interesting, though.” 

“That’s the plan.” Jacks nods agreeably. “More of us there are, better we can hold off them.” 

He hopes that Sam takes his meaning. Hie doesn’t know these people, can’t tell yet if he’ll be able to trust them. Doesn’t mean he’d turn a weapon on any of them unless they tried to get the jump on him first.  “Thing is, I ran a shop. Gun shop. If you need anything worked on, or if anybody wants some training. I can help out there too. I appreciate the hospitality, not much of that to go around anymore.”

“Good,” is all Sam says to the man. He’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, because that’s just what Sam did. Trusted people until they gave him a reason not to and maybe that was a backwards way of living, but so far it had worked to his advantage. 

“Think there’s plenty of people that might take you up on that offer,” Sam told him. He himself might come to the man at some point, if his aim didn’t come back the way he’d like with his vision the way it was.