Disclaimer: These kids belong to Dan Schneider, and I promise to put them back just exactly as I found them.
This fic contains Sam/Freddie, and also the future of Sam and Freddie.
He remembers the things she doesn't say.
She doesn't say I love you or you make me happy or I'm glad you're mine. If she had, he probably would have had her institutionalized, no matter how nice it would have been to hear the words. No, she leaves her stuff in his locker and only steals a third of his lunch, and he knows what she means.
And in return, he waits for her to get out of detention and rides her home on his handlebars, rolling his eyes behind her back as she waves like the Queen. He listens to her iCarly ideas a little more seriously than they sometimes deserve, and she grins triumphantly when one makes it in, and that's worth it to Freddie.
xxxxxx
She doesn't say I'm scared or I'm worried or I don't wanna lose you. She just fidgets with her notebooks and spaces out during graduation practice, giving halfhearted smiles while Freddie prattles on excitedly about college and scholarships and how they're going to manage iCarly. Then one night she just kisses him, right in mid-sentence, and he gets the idea that maybe she wants him to shut up.
He starts leaving fliers around the Shays' apartment - she's more likely to see them there than at her own house - for the local college, tiny and under-funded but with a reputable culinary program, and best of all it's just across town. He catches her reading one of them at the kitchen table and wraps his arms around her shoulders, slipping a real estate catalog in front of her with three apartment listings circled in red. She just stares, saying nothing but asking him all the same, and he smiles his answer.
xxxxxx
She doesn't say this isn't working or I don't want to hold you back or even goodbye. He just wakes up alone one morning, the closet half-empty and the medicine cabinet raided, and his heart sinks into his stomach. He drives the half hour to her old house, blowing off class and rehearsal and everything else, and finds her sitting on the front porch with a cat in her lap.
He says everything, I'm sorry and I love you and I can be better, just talks and talks until he runs out of words and breath, and then just stands there while she stares at her feet.
And then she speaks.
I never loved you, she says quietly. I used you. You were convenient. I'm not who you thought I was. Every word carefully enunciated, said directly to her toes, timed with the precision to send Freddie's heart into his shoes. She finishes, sitting on the step for a few minutes more, then gets up and goes inside without so much as a backwards glance.
She never said I'm sorry.
She never said I regret it.
And she never said I hate you.
Freddie notices, and he remembers.
This is my first iCarly fic, so any constructive criticism on my characterization would be much appreciated.