A/N: I just got into this fandom and fell in love with this ship right away. My only issue? Everything people have written for them is far too wholesome and happy. Sammy and Susie are both such dark, tragic characters – a dark, tragic romance is only fitting. And so, I was inspired to do my own take. This is going to be a series of drabbles about Sammy and Susie at different points in the timeline – no real order, just whatever ideas strike me.

I'm not sure if Sammy chopping off his fingers is canon or just something that the fandom made up because I never really noticed that in the game. Either way, it's a powerful image.

TW for this chapter: gore and self-mutilation

Please enjoy and don't forget to review!

His pinky on his right hand was already gone when they found him. Susie begged him to stop but he kept on hacking. Hacking. Hacking away with his four-fingered cartoon hand at the strands of muscle fiber that kept his other fifth finger attached, blubbering in pain every time the rusty fire axe collided with bone.

Mr. Drew wrenched the axe out of his hand and Susie fell to her knees by his chair. "No, Sammy, Sammy, what have you done, what did you do?" she wailed. As the blood loss made his head droop, she took his pale face in her hands. "Don't leave me, don't you dare leave me, Sammy!"

One of his eyes opened and stared straight through her. "Alice…?" She had never before heard his lovely voice so slurred, so purposeless. He was dying. And happy as she would be to be called Alice at any other time, right now there was too much that Susie had left unsaid.

"I'm – I never forgave you for everything that happened with Allison. I should have, a long time ago, and I can't believe it's taken me 'til now…" She ran her hands over his face, down his neck, through his curls that were matted down with blood. It made her sick how right it felt. How many opportunities had she gotten and squandered to touch him like this and hold his beauty in the palm of her hand? She caressed his corpse-like cheek. "I'm sorry."

"Don't act so defeated, Ms. Campbell!" said Mr. Drew, hooking his arms under Sammy's to hoist him out of his chair. Susie gasped and grabbed onto his bloodied wrists as he was lifted away from her. "He's gonna be just fine."

"You don't really think so?" Susie said hoarsely. As she stood, Sammy groaned and tilted his head, muttering something about the flesh, the ugliness of the flesh

Alice!

Through the well of tears in her eyes, Susie could see Mr. Drew's shiny, too-wide smile. "Trust me, sweetheart, I can get him fixed up right away. Good as new or even better." His expression flattened suddenly into one of deep concern. "Head on home, Ms. Campbell. A girl who's seen what you have oughta get some rest."

She didn't trust him, but what other choice did she have? She held Sammy's poor, mangled hands tight against her chest, feeling the warm blood seep into her blouse. "You hear that, Sammy?" she whispered in some shaky, tearful attempt at hope. "Joey is gonna take you to a doctor and you'll be all patched up. And when you are? Sammy, we'll be together, I promise we will, with everything we both wanted but were too shy to say out loud – the house, the kids, the room that's just for us and a grand piano…"

Her tears began to pour as Mr. Drew started to drag him away to who-knows-where. Sammy's hands slipped out of hers, and as they did, Sammy happened to open his eyes just slightly enough to notice his left pinky finger, frayed at the edges and still dangling from his hand by a string of calloused skin. The shock made him raise his head and locked lucid eyes with Susie, allowing her to share in his final terrified moments of clarity. Before Mr. Drew disappeared around the corner, she swore she saw Sammy mouth Susie.

Susie couldn't bring herself to run. She collapsed onto her hands and knees as she screamed after him: "Even if things are different, Sammy, I promise! If you can't play your banjo like you used to, if you have to relearn every instrument you ever played and you can't keep your job… You're more than this studio, Sammy! You're more than your music! I love you for so much more than that, I promise!"

His rambling response to her echoed down the halls. "Sing thy praise for the Ink Demon, that He might remake thee in His own image!" And Susie sobbed.

It was the only time she ever told him she loved him. Of course it had to be the very moment he lost the ability to listen to her forever. Just their luck.