It's Over,

Written by WickedSong.

Disclaimer/Note : I do not own Glee, FOX does. This is a sort of prequel to my oneshot 'Even If The Skies Get Rough,' which was a oneshot based on speculation for 3x13, Heart, which is mostly wrong but whatever. This is also a sequel to 'It's Not Over', which was a prelude to the 3x08 hallway scene. In that I'm showing Sam's hope and here, well...read and find out. Takes place after the last scene of The Spanish Teacher.

There's a moment when you have to ask yourself how far you'd go for the person you love.

You have to evaluate whether you can save your own heart in the process or if you're already so far gone that waiting and waiting and waiting doesn't hurt anymore.

"Dinner's ready."

Sam looked up at Finn and Kurt who stood at the door and waved his hand in acknowledgement. He had been up in the room he had been lucky to have in the Hummel-Hudson home since he had come home from school that afternoon. He still sat in silence and then gave an almost silent self-depricating laugh.

"What did I do wrong, guys?"

"Dude," Finn said, sighing as he walked further into the room, sitting on the bed beside Sam. Kurt sat on a chair opposite his step-brother and friend and wore a look of sympathy, "you didn't do anything wrong. Maybe you just have to-"

"Have to what?" demanded Sam, and he looked as if his patience had worn thin. "I am open to any and all suggestions since I've tried everything and it all obviously ends in shit!"

Kurt looked taken aback by the outburst. "Finn's only saying that maybe-"

"No, no, I can't do just 'maybe' anymore." He closed his eyes and threw his head back, not wanting to hear about the wishy-washy promises of the word 'maybe.' That word had let him down one too many times. "I really thought we weren't over. I really let myself-"

"Boys, if you don't come down right now, your food's going to get cold," shouted Carole from downstairs. "Hurry it up!"

Dinner flew by, Sam silently eating while Finn and Kurt only spoke when they spoken to by their parents. Burt and Carole could both notice a dip in the mood, noting that Sam seemed to be the most upset. They had quickly put it down to homesickness and missing his family, while they had taken their sons' silence as letting their friend be alone with his thoughts.

Finished his dinner, and with no homework to be done, a rare occurence in itself, Sam trudged up the stairs to the room, quickly thanking Carole and Burt, as he usually did, and apologising for his quiet. They had insisted that they understood and he let them believe whatever it was they thought had him down.

What he hadn't expected was Finn and Kurt's insistence in following him and continuing the conversation they had been having pre-dinner.

"Guys, really, I'm fine," Sam replied when the two had come to the door and sat down in their previous places, looking interested in what he had to say. "I just...I just need to rethink a few things now. It's so clear."

"What's so clear?" asked Finn.

"She doesn't need me anymore. It doesn't matter what I thought was there," he answered. "Obviously, summer's long over."

"You can't be serious," Kurt replied, shaking his head. "And you obviously don't believe that either." He gave Sam a look that said he was judging him severely. "You join synchronised swimming, take slushies, put her name in lights and sing her a Spanish mash up but you give up now?" Kurt was still looking at him confused. "Why not give up after that first slushie, or when you put her name in lights or before you sang that song?"

"Because-"

"Because you love her and she still loves you. And what's worse is that you both know it." He sat back in the chair and rubbed his temples. "So what really brought this on? What happened today? Was it not the end of the week long ban on speaking?"

This made Sam's expression turn even more sour. He sighed deeply. "I don't want to talk about it."

Kurt shrugged. "I can wait all night for an answer. And I'm sure Finn can too." He nodded to his step-brother who nodded back, under the intent gaze from Kurt.

"Guys, I appreciate it but I just don't want to talk about it." He walked over to the window.

Kurt gave out an annoyed sounding 'humph' sound but Sam wouldn't budge from his silence as he looked out the window. Finn wasn't sure whether to leave him but Kurt gave him a silent glare that told him to sit down or risk his wrath. Looking at the table beside him, Kurt noticed the pile of photographs and picked them up. "What are these?"

Sam turned around at the voice and smiled slightly but he never let it reach his eyes. "Pictures of the summer. Mercedes sent them to me when we were in Kentucky." He sat down on the bed again and Kurt looked through the photos when Sam nodded that he could.

"So this is the lake?" Kurt turned a picture around and Sam nodded, in an unsure fashion, wondering how Kurt knew about the lake. It had been more or less the only place he and Mercedes could go without being seen. Kurt answered his unspoken question. "Mercedes told us about your 'summer fling.'" He actually used air quotes at that phrase, something which forced Sam's lips to quirk up in a smile.

"Yeah. We found it by accident when my truck broke down on the way back from the carnival," Sam reminisced. "When we weren't at the park with Stacy and Stevie or babysitting them, we were there."

His thoughts were instantly transported to late night picnics by the water, talking about the future, discussing their greatest fears and dreams, wondering aloud about the most weird and wonderful things, laughing and - in the run up to his departure from Lima to Kentucky - crying over the nights like that that were no longer theirs to have.

"You okay there?" asked Finn, and Sam now noticed that he was looking at the pictures as well.

Sam nodded and Finn nodded back to him. "Is that a picture of a tree?"

"Not just any tree," said Kurt, as he craned his neck around and pointed to the picture. "Look, SE + MJ. You can see it if you look really carefully."

"Oh yeah," answered Finn.

"Yeah, it's really corny, I know. I just wanted something to let the world know how we felt. We carved that the night before I left for Kentucky."

Finn shook his head. "Nah, dude, it's not corny. Just don't let Rachel hear that story. She'd probably demand we plant a tree in her backyard or something and put our initials there."

Sam and Kurt laughed at this, lightening the mood and Sam wasn't exactly sure how they had gotten to this place of finding out about his summer with Mercedes but he would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy revisiting the joy of the previous summer.

Sam shrugged. "Mercedes loved it in the end. Said that it was the perfect way to say goodbye." This brought the mood down entirely and Sam took the pictures quickly from his friends and shoved them into a drawer as carefully as he could in his haste. He turned to them. "Speaking of goodbye, you know I'm grateful for everything you've done for me-"

"If the next words out of your mouth have anything to do with Kentucky, I will call Santana to kick your ass," Finn interrupted, surprising both Kurt and Sam.

Sam let out a breath and his irritation had increased ten fold, a far cry from the happiness he had felt only moments earlier. "You guys don't get it, do you? You don't know how hard it is to watch the person you love walk off with someone else and be powerless to stop it because, hey, newsflash, she may sing a duet with you, the two of you may kiss, you may go to couples counselling with her, and you might sing songs to each other, but you are not her boyfriend. You are not the person she chose, no matter how sure you were."

"So it all comes out, huh?" Kurt asked folding his arms. "When did she choose Shane? As far as I could tell she only had eyes for you this week."

"This afternoon. I had been all ready to talk to her and I thought, I thought," he let out another laugh, full of anything but joy, "I actually thought she was going to tell me that she chose me. She looked so happy."

"And then?" Finn asked, hoping he'd elaborate.

"And then he showed up, and she walked away with him," Sam said simply, as if this wasn't the one thing gnawing at him. He shrugged his shoulders in a way that said he didn't care when the two other boys in the room were finding that impossible to believe.

"How do you know for sure that she chose Shane, maybe, maybe and this is a completely outlandish thought," Kurt said in an even tone with a hint of sarcasm, "maybe she's just waiting to let Shane down gently. She wouldn't be the girl you fell for if she just left him, huh?"

Sam didn't reply immediately. "I know that. Don't you think that was one of the scenarios I thought of? But if that's the case then why hasn't she called me? Why didn't she speak to me after that? I can't wait around forever." He sat down and looked determined. "I'm going to try one more time. One last chance. But if it doesn't work..." He looked down, as if thinking about the consequence of that. "I can't watch her walk away from me again. I've done it too many times."

"Sam, please think about this," Kurt insisted.

Sam didn't say anything, just gave a small sad smile. Eventually he looked to his friends. "Thanks for talking to me guys, but you can't change my mind. It's over now. I doubt she'd pick me. But I gotta take one last chance, don't I?"

"Don't give up hope, Sam," replied Kurt, as he finally rose from the chair, Finn following from where he sat on the bed. "I had to watch Blaine walk away a lot before he came to his senses and don't even get me started on the will-they-won't-they that is his relationship." He jerked a thumb in Finn's direction. The two walked out of the room but Sam didn't take Kurt's words to heart, only lay back on the bed.

He had gone to his extremes for the person he loved. He hadn't cared about things which, last year, which would have been his undoing. Popularity didn't matter, status didn't matter, being the quarterback didn't matter, so long as he had her. But he didn't have her. And he had to protect himself for once.

He had to ask himself that simple question that he had constantly wondered about before every attempt he had undertaken in order to win her heart again. How do you tell yourself it's time to walk away?

At this moment it wasn't about telling himself that. It was about forcing himself to do so. Because there were only so many times he could take it and they were slowly becoming numbered.

This became much longer than intended but I wasn't originally meaning to put in the small section with the summer reminiscing but I got a little carried away there with the Samcedes summer head!canons.

This fic was basically based off of a quote from the movie, 'The Vow' which I went to see on Saturday. "How do you look at the girl you love and tell yourself it's time to walk away.' From what we know about Heart I think this quote is going to become very relevant to my OTP at Valentine's Day. But I'm not worried. I sense a reunion in the near future. Didn't actually use the quote in the story but used some variation of the idea.

So thanks for reading. I just love all this angst but hopefully I'll get some fluffier ideas soon. Maybe when/if Samcedes are back together (look at me saying 'if' purely just to cover my bases because I'm like 100% sure a reunion is on the horizion :D)

Please review if you enjoyed!

WickedSong x