Ruin

by Mistystarshine

Of all the people to sacrifice themselves to stop Gaia there was no doubt that Astrid seemed very unlikely to be the one. The four months following her death were four of the hardest Sam had ever lived through, but slowly things start to come together. AU, Sastrid

AN: I was sick all day, got very little done, and had had this idea stuck in my head for a while. Then I got in a mood to write bittersweet stuff and this happened. This fic is dedicated to Inquisitivefeminist and Hyperactive Lioness. There are sort of spoilers for Light, no details, just sort of a re-write of the ending. Also, the little quote in the beginning is by me, hence the lack of a credit thing. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I, Mistystarshine, do not own Gone or the characters.

~.~.~.~.~.~

Ruin can overtake one's life in a flash, making it seem like a happy ending is impossible. But sometimes, in time, a new life can blossom from the ashes of the old.

Sam didn't know where he had first heard those words, only that her memory was connected to them. Maybe it was in one of those old poetry books he had read in hopes of impressing her during the earlier days of the FAYZ, maybe she herself had said them. All he knew was that they reminded him of her, and for that reason he would cherish them for the rest of his existence. Back before it had all happened, before the very end, he had never given them much thought. After all, back them they had just been some random quote. In fact for the entire year following the end they were nothing but a quote, it was not until those twelve months had passed, not until this very moment, that they had come to hold all the meaning of the world to him.

~.~.~.~.~.~

Everyone knew that there was a large chance of them dying. Heck, if they failed to bring down Gaia it was certain that everyone who lived in the FAYZ would be killed, if not the entire world. The chances of at least one of the four of them dying, himself, Caine, Diana, and Astrid, were incredibly high. But if one of them had to make that sacrifice, if one of them had to give themselves up to take down the Gaiaphage, he had no doubt that no one had expected it to be her.

Her last spoken words were not to him. There was not a teary 'I love you', no 'stay strong', no kiss goodbye, it was not like those tragic death scenes that you see in the movies. Instead she turned to his brother and uttered three words, "hold him back."

Sam couldn't help but glance at Caine at this, the confusion he felt echoed on his brother's face. However, it was slowly replaced by a look of realization and what he thought might actually be a glimmer of respect. He didn't have time to ask what was going on, to try and jump to conclusions, for before he could do anything Astrid turned around with a sense of finality. When she walked to face Gaia she was not herself anymore but Little Pete occupying his sister's body, but he wouldn't come to fully realize that until later. The exact details were blurry, the words the two exchanged, the things he screamed, what Caine might have been saying as he used his powers to hold him back. However, he could still perfectly remember everything he felt.

There was pain, incredible, searing pain within his heart, a feeling of sorrow unlike anything he had ever felt as he watched her burn. He wanted to fight, to rush in and save the day, save her life, force the disembodied child that had started the whole thing to take him instead, but it was too late. Gaia died, the barrier fell, the powers vanished and Caine had to resort to physically holding his brother back from running toward the flames in his despair.

And Sam's world ended.

~.~.~.~.~.~

He felt numb that first month. He knew he should be feeling something, anything. After all, he wasn't exactly in a safe situation right now. The wall was down, he was finally out of the FAYZ, and yet when he could bring himself to feel he found himself wishing that he was back in. It seemed like almost every moment was spent in a courtroom. Someone needed to be blamed for this, the adults wouldn't let this go by without a scapegoat. And it just so happened that he presented the perfect opportunity to fight one. So many times he had gone through this in his head, how he would deal with it when all the fingers were pointed at him, and yet when the time came he couldn't find it within himself to defend himself. How could he? She was dead, she was dead because of him, because he couldn't save her.

It wasn't as though Sam was the only one dealing with legal issues. For every question and accusation he got it seemed that Caine got one as well. A good deal of the time he fought, although he knew that a part of him didn't want to. There was something that he brother was dealing with but couldn't quite bring himself to say, although he tried his best to hide it. Unfortunately it seemed that the harder Caine fought the bigger of a hole he ended up digging himself into. His adoptive parents had disowned him, which only served to deepen the negative image that he had already painted for himself. He refused to have anything to do with Connie, who Sam felt himself growing farther and farther away from. At first he had tried to lie to the court about the things that had happened, about what he had done, but eventually he came to find that his manipulation game wouldn't work there. So he told the truth, which created all sorts of different opinions about him. But in the end it came down to one thing: those there were sympathetic to the children of the FAYZ and those that saw them as monsters. But it seemed like almost everyone agreed on one thing: they needed someone to blame.

It was probably because of Diana that they weren't both sentenced to jail during that first month. At times it could seem like no matter how good the lawyer was he would not be able to get Caine to do anything that he said, listening to others had never been one of his brother's strengths after all. Diana was one of the few people that could break through to him and eventually took to telling him what to say and how to act if questioned, even though it often took quite a bit of arguing to do. As for Sam it seemed almost impossible to get past the wall he had built around himself at the time, yet oddly enough it was those two that stood the best chance. When he seemed like he was ready to tell them to just blame it all on him, just take him away and lock him up, she would convince him to wait just a little while longer and see how it played out. Caine tried to help once, but after a few sarcastic comments and starting to look like he was thinking that Sam's plan might not be too bad he was promptly told to 'go work on not getting all three of us locked up for life before you can make him even worse.'

Looking back on it Sam felt incredibly grateful for Diana. She had been in the FAYZ as well, she had seen so many people die, she had lost her own daughter, and yet she managed not to break down. While the ever-manipulative Caine floundered at pulling himself out of the grave he dug and Sam fell to pieces she played the role of the strong one. In a way it might have been harder than what he was going through.

~.~.~.~.~.~

The first half of the second month wasn't much better than the first month. More arguing in courtrooms, getting featured on the news, declining interviews, and trying to make it through the day. Sometimes Sam thought that he should try fighting, that he should stand up and say that it wasn't his fault what happened, that they were just a bunch of lost kids with no idea what to do. Yet he couldn't bring himself to. He knew that it wasn't healthy, what he was feeling. He knew that it had moved past mourning and onto depression. But he couldn't bring himself to care.

It was half way through the month that the letters were found and the announcement that one of them would be read live on the radio made. At first Caine had looked rather worried about the whole thing, though Sam couldn't understand exactly why. But when he was told that there were three letters, one of which was addressed to him, worry gave way to confusion, although exactly why this was would remain a mystery for the time being. There were bigger things to worry about though, things like the letters.

First was the one read to all on the radio, the one that seemed to make it all worse. She took the blame, she took the blame for everything. In that letter, the letter read on national radio and would doubtlessly make her way around the world, she claimed that her brother, Little Pete, had created the FAYZ in his panic during a meltdown. From there she had manipulated him into causing so many terrors, claiming that she had figured out a way to make him do what she told him while being blissfully unaware of all the harm he was causing. And finally she made the claim that he knew to be completely false, that she had killed her brother in order to gain his power for herself, a crazy scheme which had worked, and that it was only her doing all of those horrible things in the end.

It was a weak excuse and a wild story, one that he believed almost everyone who had survived the FAYZ knew to be false. But it was enough. Even if it could never truly be proven to be true or false it gave the courts the scapegoat they needed. By the end of the month the charges had been dropped.

However, Sam found it suddenly seeming insignificant compared to the letter he received, the last words he would ever know she thought, the last thing she would ever tell him.

Sam,

I know you probably have a lot of questions, more than I could think of and more than I can answer with this. And if I know you as well as I think I do I know that you might be blaming yourself for this, for me. But I want to tell you this: it's not your fault. I had to do this. I'm the one that killed Little Pete in an attempt to end the FAYZ, I'm the one that got us into this position in the first place. It has, or had by the time you'll be reading this, to be to see this through. I might not have been the strongest of you but I think he understood how I felt, that it had to be me. He also knew what would happen if it wasn't me, I couldn't let that happen.

They deserve their happy ending, and I am glad that I might have been able to help give it to them. My only regret is that it had to end this way, that I won't be able to ride off into the sunset with you when all is said and done. Don't let that stop you from finding your happy ending though. Remember me, remember our love, remember all the good times, remember the struggles we made it through. And then let go. I am not sure if there is a God anymore, and if there is I don't know that I will go to heaven, but wherever I am know that I want you to be happy. You were the love of my life, my only love in fact, and I want you to be happy. So move on, let go, and let me become a memory.

Go find your happy ending.

Astrid.

~.~.~.~.~.~

In the third month he fought. He pulled himself out of his shell and forced himself to face the world again, made himself be something other than numb. She would want him to do that, in fact she had flat-out told him that she wanted him to do that. That didn't mean it wasn't hard though. It didn't mean that he didn't think about her and begin to cry, didn't mean that the wound left by her loss was anywhere close to being healed. But he was trying, and that was more than he could say for the previous months.

Things only got worse with his mother, who had become a stranger to him. Following Caine and Diana's lead he emancipated himself, although that didn't mean that things were immediately easy. He found himself living sleeping at the houses of friends or in group homes for a while, not yet ready to find a way to make money so he could find a place of his own.

There was a sort of memorial for the deceased of the FAYZ during this month, but he couldn't bring himself to go. He felt ashamed for this, he felt like he was insulting those that had perished by failing to show up, but he just couldn't bring himself to face them all yet, to face the place where she had died. Sam was trying, but that doesn't mean that it was completely better yet.

Diana and Caine went though, and afterword they stopped by at the group home he had been staying at to give him greetings from those that had showed up and tell him what had happened. It was then that Diana said that he would be moving in with herself and Caine. No, it was not a question or an offer. No, he did not get any choice in the matter. Apparently Caine did not either, as judging by the look on his face at the announcement she had not consulted him on this matter. Part of Sam wanted to put up a fight. After all, even if things had been getting better with his brother he wasn't sure if that would be a very good idea. There was also the matter of him not wanting to interlope. However, before he could it was made very clear that any protests he might have on the matter would be futile.

He had been moved out within two days.

~.~.~.~.~.~

Month four was when the more confusing parts about the letters began to make sense.

It was late at night, or maybe extremely early in the morning, Sam hadn't looked at the clock for a long time. He was sitting on the couch reading some old book about dragonriders. Now, he had never been much of a reader, but it had come to be that he sometimes found himself drawn to reading nowadays. It distracted him from thinking more unpleasant thought and allowed him to get lost in a world other than his own. In a way he also felt like he was honoring her memory, he knew she would have been glad to see him reading.

Seeing a frustrated looking Caine wander into the room was no surprise, over the last month living with him he had discovered that his brother had a problem with insomnia. That wasn't to say that Sam didn't, but Caine was the one that took to wandering around when he couldn't sleep. Normally Sam just stared at the ceiling or read, as he was doing now. However, this time it looked like it wasn't just trouble sleeping that it was keeping him awake. There was something on his mind, or at least he thought so judging by the way he kept furrowing his brow and glancing at Sam's direction. He didn't ask what it was, if he was going to talk about it he would say something without being prompted.

For a little while there was silence. His brother sat in a chair and stared up at the ceiling, internally debating whatever he was considering saying. Finally it was shattered by him muttering, "it was meant to be me."

All Sam felt when he heard this was confusion. That sentence was already pretty vague, and it was even worse when you took who had said it into consideration. Caine thought that he was meant to be a lot of things. Setting down his book he asked, "what was meant to be you?"

It took a while for Caine to respond. He seemed to look everywhere but Sam's face, which only served to confuse him more. Eye contact had never been a big problem with him. His voice was low when he brought himself to reply, "it was meant to be me that died. I had been in contact with Little Pete, he was going to take my body. I had written a letter saying that I made everyone in the FAYZ do those things. The letter Astrid wrote to me, it just said that she had destroyed the letters I wrote and thanked me for the idea. It was meant to be me that was blamed for everything, not her."

At first he wasn't sure what to say or feel about this, the silence between them lasted for roughly a minute. It was Caine that would have died if Astrid hadn't done it, she would have been alive and he would have been gone. How would life have been different? He felt a swirl of pain, loss, and somewhere in there, respect and understanding. In her letter to him Astrid had said that they deserved their happy ending but didn't clarify who they were. As he listened to his brother's confession it became clear. He had last Astrid, he had lost one of the people she loved most in the world, but if she hadn't given herself up Diana would have lost both Gaia and Caine.

Astrid did what she did not only out of a sense of responsibility but out of kindness.

She had given them their happy ending.

Sam's voice was a whisper when he said, "she knew that, she wanted you to live. She made her own choices and Little Pete understood them and wanted to help her. It's not your fault." He paused before adding, "it's no one's fault." They did not speak for the rest of the night, not out of anger but because they were too lost in thought, and memory, to discuss anymore.

~.~.~.~.~.~

Over the next eight months life began to get better. Slowly old wounds began to heal, and although it was not completely gone and there would always be a scar he could now imagine a happy ending. Slowly but surely a new life began to rise from the ruins of the old.

~.~.~.~.~.~

"So here we are, one year later."

He spoke to empty air. There was no one within hearing range, no one dared interrupt what they knew to be a private moment. One year, it was exactly one year since the last time he had seen her, the day his old life had fallen apart in ruin. What was more he was standing at the exact spot he had been one year ago, gazing out at the place where she had died. No one lived in the area known as the FAYZ anymore; the whole place had been turned into a sort of memorial, left untouched for the most part. Sam was grateful for this. Normal life had ended there the day that wall went up, it only seemed right that it never came back.

For a little while after saying that he was quiet, not quite sure what to say. Then the words came out all at once, along with the prickling of tears welling up in his eyes. "I have so much I want to tell you. How much I miss you, how I still see you in everyday things, how when someone says something smart I can't help but be reminded of you." He paused then, sucking in a shaky breath before continuing, "but… I don't think that's what you'd want to hear. Instead I'll tell you this, I'm listening to you. So many times I didn't listen to what you had to say when we were together, so many times I didn't follow your advice, it's only right that I do now. I've been getting better, I've been making myself get better."

By now the tears building in his eyes had begun to stream down his face. "You were right, they deserve a happy ending. And they are happy, I promise you that. It might be surprising to hear but I think they might miss you as well. I'm sorry I couldn't live out the rest of my years with you but I understand what you did, why you did it."

Sam took a step forward then before crouching down. In front of him was a tombstone with a name carved into it, 'Astrid Ellison'. It was two words, two little words, but to Sam they stood for more things than anyone could ever write. Slowly he reached to touch the cold stone. "You said something once," he whispered, "or maybe I read it thinking of you. I'm not sure. 'Ruin can overtake one's life in a flash, making it seem like a happy ending is impossible. But sometimes, in time, a new life can blossom from the old.' I'll never forget the life you gave me, how happy you made me feel. But it's time for me to find my happy ending."

He lowered his hand and slowly stood up, stepping away from the grave. Finally he whispered the two words that ended his old life, "goodbye, Astrid."

With that he turned around and began to walk back toward the car, Diana and Caine were waiting for him.