A/N: If you're reading this, you've read PLAGUE. It's amazing, don't ya think? If you haven't read PLAGUE and are reading this then I am warning you now: there are spoilers. Big, bad, nasty spoilers. You can't say I didn't warn ya!

Okay, so this is a one shot about Sam and Dekka, set after PLAGUE at Lake Tramonto. Unfortunatly my beta Atchair hasn't read PLAGUE yet, so this is pure, undiluted Grace. Good luck with that xD

If the FAYZ had ever had a peaceful night, then this one was it.

Sam Temple was sat on the dock, his jeans rolled up to his knees in order to allow the soles of his feet to trail in the tranquil water of Lake Tramonto. The cool water was soothing, complimenting the warm evening air. There was no sound other than the pleasant, almost harmonious buzzing of an insect somewhere to Sam's left, and the cloying, heavy scent of the forest which seemed to forever linger on his clothes.

For once, he was alone. Alone and – well, not happy, but peaceful. Content. He only wished that she was here with him.

Astrid. Her name was hidden in his every breath – he heard her voice in the soft, lapping sound made by the lake when he moved his feet through the clear water and the delicate pad of footsteps on springy grass.

Since the beginning, she had stuck by him. From that very first day, when the impossible had become very much possible. And now, to find her missing from his side was like waking up and finding an arm or a leg gone. Or a chunk of his heart.

When the FAYZ had come, he had lost everything: his mother, his home, his favourite pastime and his normal life. There had only been one compensation for the disaster, and that had been Astrid. Now that she was gone, it was like all his old losses had come flooding back to him, adding salt to his already throbbing wounds.

The sudden sound of footsteps shocked him out of his bitter, melancholy thoughts. He did not jump but continued to look down into the water, looking but not seeing.

"Can I sit with you?"

It was Dekka. Sam nodded without looking over at her, and he heard rather than saw her flop down next to him.

"I've just been to see Diana," she told him. "She is not in a good mood. She threw up all her dinner – morning sickness came a little late, I guess – so I gave her mine."

"You didn't have to do that," Sam said, tearing himself out of his reverie. "Give up your food, I mean. We've got enough, at the moment. And I'm not going to let Diana starve."

"I know," Dekka said. "But I wasn't hungry." Sam caught the catch in her voice, the slight wobble that gave away Dekka's calm act and revealed how she was really feeling. She must have heard it too, because she gulped and continued in a joking, determined voice, "The FAYZ diet works wonders." She patted her hollow stomach.

Sam stared at her hard until she finally met his gaze. Her eyes were shining, although Sam was unsure as to whether that was because of the reflected light of the fake moon and stars or because of tears. He hated seeing Dekka – strong, powerful Dekka – like this. "What's wrong, Dekka?"

She breathed in hard, although the noise that came from her mouth was more like a gasp. "I – I saw Brianna."

Sam waited until he sensed her usual calm demeanour return to her like the tide washing over the sand. "What happened?"

"It was like – I mean, I saw her and just thought, 'okay, no big deal' and carried on walking past. But when she saw me, she kind of stopped. Her eyes went all wide, kind of like when a little kid gets caught by his mum with his hand in the cookie jar. And then she was just gone. She ran away from me so damn fast that I didn't even see her move." Dekka kept her eyes on the far side of the lake, not wanting to meet Sam's sorry gaze. "She can't stand the sight of me. Whenever she looks at me, it's the same. She's always going to be thinking about it now, no matter what I do, and…"

Sam waited for a few seconds before putting a cautious, comforting hand on her shoulder. "Go on," he prompted softly. He did not say it as a command but as a plea. He sensed that she needed to know that he was still there. That someone was there.

"And when I saw her? Just now? It was there for one second. There was this – this look of disgust. Like I'm some sort of… of slug or whatever that she's just found. She didn't mean it; she didn't do it to be nasty or whatever, but she can't help it."

Sam had no idea how it happened. One minute he was listening to Dekka, and the next she was crying unashamedly into his shoulder, and he had his arms wrapped around her in a motherly gesture, murmuring soothing words which were about as helpful as a plaster being placed on an amputated limb.

Their embrace, two broken hearts, took place for no more than twenty seconds before Dekka had hiccoughed her way back into seriousness. Sam pretended that she didn't have tear tracks on her face, that her eyes were not ringed with red. He couldn't even convince himself.

"I was thinking about Astrid."

He blurted it out before he'd even realised he was going to say anything. But Dekka had told him, and he felt like he owed her something. She'd done something almost unheard of; poured out some of what she was feeling, and Sam, knowing what a closed person she was, felt a sense of pride. She had confided in him.

"I've not seen her in months. It's like she's just disappeared. I mean… things weren't going too well before the battle, but now that she's completely gone…" He trailed off, partly because he did not know how to word what exactly he meant, and partly because he felt like he was going to start breaking apart at the seams.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" Dekka asked sympathetically.

"Every day," he admitted for the first, and hopefully last, time. "She's just… disappeared. I don't know what's happened to her. I don't know where she's gone – I wouldn't even know where to begin looking."

Dekka sighed, a long, drawn out sound that made it seem as if she was letting all the worries, all the pain out of her body in a single breath.

Silence reigned for a long time after that. Even the lazy humming of the insect Sam had heard earlier had disappeared, exhausted from its long day of collecting pollen. Then again, in the FAYZ a small insect like that would be more likely to be toting a ray-gun, or mutating crazily in some other way. Sam wished normal would come back. Mentally, he could see himself writing a postcard to normality. Wish you were here – and Drake wasn't.

Dekka's sardonic laugh cut through his thoughts. "Look at us. Sitting on the dock and moping. We're like those old war veterans who come back from the fighting with all those stories to tell. My granddad used to tell me some of his when I was a kid."

"We've had our fair share of wars," Sam pointed out wearily. Tired. He was always tired.

"Yeah," said Dekka, turning serious again. "And we won a lot of them too. But what good did that do? We're both just sat here, nursing broken hearts."

Sam wanted to disagree, to remind her of all the lives they'd saved from Caine and more importantly, from Drake, but he didn't have the energy. It was sapped out of him, the way blood gets sucked out of the body steadily but surely by a mosquito. He was so tired. In the end, all he could manage was, "I guess you're right."

"You know what would have worked?" Dekka asked pensively. "You and me, Sam. If things were different – very different – we would have been pretty good for each other. Maybe even perfect. But we fell in love with the wrong people. Seems like every so often, Fate puts together a cruel joke and throws it at the world, pretending that it's a human being."

Sam smiled. "We would have been great, wouldn't we?" he asked. Dekka's calm to his impulsiveness. They balanced each other out nicely. "In a way, it's too bad. I'm very attractive."

Dekka laughed along with him, both of them trying a little too hard to make the situation seem like two friends just hanging out. "Obviously I could never replace your one true love: yourself."

"It's a big space to fill."

There joking was interrupted by a loud retching. It came from where Diana was staying nearby.

"Still," Sam said, trying to ignore the sound. "I guess our problems aren't as bad as being knocked up by a crowned, telekinetic sociopath, don't you think?"

Dekka shrugged. "In a way."

Sam sighed. "Breeze will come along, Dekka. This won't last forever."

"And Astrid will be back soon."

They both tried hard to believe that the lies they told were true. And even though it would never, could never mean anything more than just friendship, Sam grabbed Dekka's hand and held it tightly in his, with her clinging on just as desperately, the two anchoring on to each other like ships in stormy seas. They clasped hands and looked their lies in the face, both saddened and glad to know that they were not facing them alone.

Finished! I'm uploading this in the library, so I'll have to wrap up quickly. What did ya think? Leave me a review, please, and I may love you forever! No promises though.

Also, I'm working on the next chapters of Body Shock (bein' beta'd now), Welcome to Coates (in the process of) and some mysterious new fic that I should kick off soon. Until then, my friends, this is goodbye!