Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. Everything except Sam and Sarah Boscorelli belong to NBC and all those guys.
Author's Note: I had to take a break from my other story for a minute, just to get this story out. Sorry if I confused anyone. This was one of those stories that I had to get down before I forgot it. It has some stuff to do with my other story. It's AU, as with my other story Safeguarding Sam. You may want to read that before this, just to understand what happened to Bosco's wife. Also, in this story, Sam is only five, whereas in my other story, she's nine. I found out that I like writing a younger Sam.
Summary: Bosco has a heart to heart talk with Faith about his wife's death. One-shot.
There was a woodchip in his shoe. He hated that feeling. Ever since he was a kid, he couldn't stand woodchips in his shoe. He could stand sand, gravel, pebbles, heck, he could probably tolerate a wild chipmunk in his shoe. But woodchips always bothered him.
Sam, on the other hand, could care less about what was covering the ground. She ran from one thing to the next on the playground on that chilly, fall day. She didn't seem to notice the sharp drop in temperature from the previous day. Things like woodchips and cold fronts just didn't matter to a five year old.
The cold, however, bothered Bosco. It seemed like everything bothered Bosco that day. The sounds of car horns on the street bugged him, the ever present cold breeze that wafted through the trees, the dogs that never shut up, the dinging of the bell from the store across the street, all bothered Bosco to no end that day. And the stupid woodchip just wouldn't find a comfortable spot in his shoe. He probably could have just taken the shoe off and dumped it out, but then his foot would be cold, and that would be one more stupid thing to be irritated by.
"Daddy! Watch me!" called out his daughter from her place at the top of one of the slides.
"I'm watchin', Sam," he called back, although he really wasn't, due to the fact that he had placed his face inside his jacket.
"No you're not Daddy!" She wasn't fooled for a minute. "Watch me! I'm gonna go down the big slide!" Sighing, Bosco pulled his face from his coat and watched as she slid down a twisty slide and immediately leaped up as she hit the bottom. "Did you see me Daddy? Did you see me go down the slide?" she called.
"Yes, sweetheart, I saw it. Good job," he said half-heartedly. She seemed to accept this small bit of praise and ran over to the swings. He was having a hard time pin pointing exactly what was wrong with him. Normally, he would have been right there celebrating with his daughter.
He knew what it was. He had been trying to avoid thinking about it, but he knew. Sarah had died 2 years ago to the day. He didn't want to make a big deal about it. Sam didn't need to think about it. What she was doing right now was all she needed to be doing that day.
Unfortunately, Bosco couldn't forget about it like Sam could. Everything bothered him today, because his wife's death was always in the back of his mind. He couldn't get it out of his head. He shouldn't, but he wished that he could just get a break from thinking about it, like Sam could.
He felt someone sit next to him on the bench. He turned towards the person to tell them to bug off, until he saw that it was Faith. He felt slightly comforted by her presence.
"Hey Boz," she greeted him. She knew what this day was to him also. She was there that day two years ago. She also knew that he was trying not to think about it. It sounded callous, but it wasn't that he was trying to forget his wife, it was just that he was trying to forget the horrible way she died.
"Hey," he said back. He noticed something was missing. "Where are Emily and Charlie?" It was strange for Faith to come to the park without her kids.
"With Fred," she replied. "I came to find you. I knew you'd be here." He wanted to think that he was distracting Sam from the day, but he was really trying to distract himself. Faith knew this, too. Faith knew everything. "How's Sam doing?" she asked.
"I don't think she even knows what day it is, which is a good thing."
"And how are you, Bosco?" she said, asking the question she really wanted to ask. At first he didn't say anything. He watched Sam swing higher and higher.
"I…" he started. "I don't really know. I feel like I should be grieving or something. I should be feeling something different than I do."
"How do you feel?" At the moment, she was starting to feel like a shrink.
"Irritated. And I can't figure out why. Shouldn't I be sad or somethin'?" he asked, turning to face Faith for the first time. "I mean of course I'm sad. I'm more than sad. And I will be for the rest of my life. But I'm just not feeling it any more than usual today, and I should be." Faith thought about it for a minute.
"Bosco, you're annoyed simply because you think you should be more emotional than you are."
"But I should be! My wife is dead, Faith," he said. "She's gone and I can never get her back." The emotions that he had been holding back began to pulse their way to the surface.
"Bosco, you've been holding this in because you think it's good for Sam. It's not. That's why she doesn't seem to be affected. She needs to understand that she's gone just as much as you do."
"But I can't do that, Faith. I can't…I can't watch her miss her mother. If she starts talking about her mother, all I'm gonna see is Sarah in her. And that might just kill me." Tears had begun to form at the corners of his eyes, and in a way, Faith was relieved.
"You have to Bosco. Talk to her. Let her grieve for her mother. Don't think about how miserable it would make you, be glad that you still have a piece of your wife in her. She's not completely gone, Bosco. A part of her is in that beautiful little girl over there."
Bosco sniffed, aware that he was losing himself in front of Faith, and embarrassment began to creep over him, until he heard the one word that warmed his heart every time.
"Daddy!" called Sam. "I wanna do the monkey bars!" He knew what that meant. She still wasn't able to do it herself, so she always needed Bosco's help. He looked up and saw her standing at the top platform in front of the monkey bars, and he smiled for the first time that day. He decided to take Faith's advice.
He walked over to where Sam was standing and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her up to reach the bars. He held onto her waist as she struggled to get to the next bar, all the while dodging her wildly kicking feet.
"I did it!" she exclaimed, when they made it to the opposite platform.
"You sure did, sweetheart," he said. He then picked her up and placed her on a bench nearby. "Sammi," he started, sitting down next to her. "I need to talk to you." And the healing began.
THE END