She is seven years two months and nineteen days old when she falls head over heels in love.


She remembers being seven years old and falling in love with the raven haired boy who sat opposite her in art class. He had the most beautiful inquisitive eyes hidden behind wire framed glasses with thick lenses and a lopsided grin that made her stomach do somersaults. Somehow she always felt sick around him and she blamed it on the butterflies. He'd share his crayons with her when she asked to use them unlike the other boys in the class who would throw them at her head just to see her cry and he'd sharpen them for her when they were blunt.

This caring little boy was called Freddie Benson, the little boy who'd grow up to be the only male brave enough to break Samantha Puckett's heart with a sledgehammer.

One time she drew a picture of the two of them holding hands in a field of flowers and he kissed her on the cheek when she said he could keep it. She wonders if he still has it tucked between his copies of 'The Catcher in the Rye' and 'Hamlet', creased and yellow around the edges after fifteen years seven months and six days.

What she hadn't known back in the year of the millennium was that he would go on to be the only male she'll ever love for the rest of her living days.


She has been in love for fifteen years nine months and eight days and she can't stop no matter how far she runs away.


If she could redo the past then she'd do it in a heartbeat. She'd begin by never returning to Seattle, an act that has thrown her to the metaphorical lions who are slowly chewing her into a bloody mess before they spit her back out. She would then retrace her route back through Oregon and California and Nevada, journeying in rewind through love and loss and hope and hurt, until she is back to being a shy little girl. She wants to return to the shy little girl called Samantha to make sure she never falls in love with the stupid boy in her art class with the cute nose and rosebud lips.

If only she could.

She has awoken in an empty room and it is becoming a reoccurring theme in her life because it doesn't matter if it is a filthy motel room, a spacious third floor apartment, a stylish bachelor pad, a bedroom in a quaint semi-detached house, the fact remains that she always finds herself alone. Alone is what she does best because nobody can understand her motives for running, always running, city-to-city and state-to-state, running until her feet bleed and her lungs give out.

She ran away because she was broken beyond repair and needed a purpose and Seattle just reminded her of what she had lost.

A slither of light creeps along the floor as the door opens and he – the best and worst thing to have happened to her life – steps inside, one arm crossed over his chest and the hand on the other tucked in his jeans pocket. Time has been kind to him; he has grown into his bone structure so his strong features don't look quite as peculiar as they once did and he has shot up, much taller than she remembers. Puberty has finally caught up with him and has granted him the gift of being capable of growing facial hair, something that leads to her think of whether he finally grew the leg hair he always wanted.

She needs to stop this train of thought, cut herself off from the past because she isn't Samantha Puckett, she is Stefanie Plackett and she has never met Freddie Benson in her life. He is a kind man who has given her warmth and a temporary roof over her head. That is all.

"You passed out," he states and she wants to punch him in his concerned face because of course she knows she passed out; she isn't suffering from amnesia, no matter how much she thinks she'd benefit from doing so. What she'd give to start afresh with no recollection of the girl she used to be or the people she once knew.

"Stefanie," she murmurs in reply and the name tastes sour on her tongue, only saying it because she figures that he wants to know her name. She withholds her surname because she is cursing herself to this day over to the fact that only she'd manage to swipe the driving licence of a girl with a name so similar to her birth name. The similarity between Plackett and Puckett may ring the alarm bells in his head she wants to keep deadly silent.

"Stefanie," he replies, a small smile tugging at his lips, and she wants to scream at him that she isn't Stefanie; Stefanie is some valley girl with platinum blonde hair and cosmetically enhanced breasts who carries a rat-like dog around in her purse. She wants to scream Sam, Sam, Samantha Fucking Puckett in his as pretty as ever face, yell obscenities and whisper in his ear if he remembers her, using the husky tone she once used to tell him to go faster, harder, deeper when they had sex in the backseat of his car.

"My ex-girlfriend left some of her clothes here when she moved out and I think they'll fit you, even if they might be slightly loose. You need to get out of those wet clothes," his voice is soothing like he is talking to a five-year old girl who has scrapped her knees in the playground and he doesn't want her to start crying.

It hurts, it would pull her heart from her chest and disco dance all over it if it were there, knowing that he has moved on and loved others, girls prettier, nicer, mentally stronger than she will ever be. But what did she expect? He was never the kind of person to wait for a girl who was clearly never going to return for as long as he lived. Of course he has had other girls in the years that have passed since she left, he is an attractive guy and he never did learn how to say no to a beautiful girl if she fluttered her eyelashes hard enough.

Thank you is all she can muster in response.

"I'm assuming you're homeless and I have the spare room so I guess you can stay for a while, I mean, I could do with the company." He pushes forward despite her lack of communication and enthusiasm and she really wishes he would figure out when to keep his mouth shut.

"I'm not homeless," she states bluntly, "I just arrived here and I don't know what the hell I'm doing." She can feel the tears stinging her eyes again and she wants to know when she became such an emotional wreck. Samantha Puckett never cried but Stefanie Plackett seems unable to stop.

She keeps wanting, wishing, wanting, but never does or gets.

It takes him three strides to get across the relatively small room to sit beside her on the couch-turned-bed and he wraps an awkward arm around her shoulders as a form of comfort. She has to stop herself from pushing him away because the heat radiating from his body is too much for her to bear. She also has to hold back from curling into him, snuggling her face into his shoulder like she used to when she got tired while he was still watching some movie they had rented.

"Where are you from?" He sounds genuinely interested and she wants to carelessly cut him up and laugh while he bleeds out onto the carpet.

There she goes again.

"California, but I came here from Carson City."

She elbows his arm away and stands from the bed, not being able to withstand the closeness any longer without imploding from all her secrets and lies.

She starts pacing, up and down and up and down, until a single framed photograph on the wall catches her eye and when she steps closer she can see that it is a photo of the old Samantha and Freddie, back before everything took an ugly turn and plummeted to the deep depths of hell. She cannot remember the photo being taken but she figures they've got to be only sixteen. They've both got large cheesy smiles on their faces that signify that they're in the throws of the honeymoon phase.

"Who's this?" she asks, pointing at the younger, blonder version of who she was. She asks because she wants him to give her a clue, give her anything to cling onto and never let go of, wanting to immerse herself in flashbacks of the first time they kissed on the fire escape on a cold January evening, the first time they made love against his kitchen island while his mother was working the late shift at the hospital. She wants all their firsts while bypassing their lasts.

"Sam," he stammers, thrown off course before he rights himself, "Samantha. She is – was my best friend, my sweetheart for a few blissful years in my teens."

She doesn't turn to look at him, not wanting to see the hurt that is laced in his voice also swimming in his liquid chocolate eyes. The past may still hurt him like a punch in the groin, but her hurt eclipses his. If he knew what she had to do alone in the Nevada desert he'd choke and suffocate on the shock.

"What happened to her?" she tries not to sound too interested, too desperate to know what everyone thought happened to her once she fell off the face of the earth. After not being part of a civil conversation for so long she realises her voice still sounds foreign to her, the sugar coated feminine tone nothing like her sarcastic one from years past.

"She disappeared, but we all assume she's dead. She was too good for this world."

She has to suck in breath between her pursed lips, choking on the intake and she excuses herself to the bathroom, stumbling down the hall until she finds the correct door. She slides the lock across to keep him out and turns on the shower head, stepping beneath it fully clothed and letting herself go. She curls into a foetal position in the tub and weeps for her death, for everyone who has slowly forgotten her over the years because they came to the conclusion that she was dead, that she was never coming back to dreary Seattle to grace them with her presence. She cries for the memories no one will have of her, all of them being locked away in secret boxes that are never to be opened again and she claws at her skin for the mess she's made, the hearts she's broken and the pain she can't heal.

This was a mistake.


Samantha Mia Puckett was declared dead four years five months and thirty days ago. They never found a body and the investigation was listed a cold case.


'Cause I've been broken hearted and maybe I'm guilty of the same.
But suddenly something started; I'm like a moth into the flame.


Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction and I do not own iCarly. Lyrics used in both chapters belong to Victoria Hesketh.
A/N: I don't know how consistent my updates are going to be for the time being because I'm very close to finishing a 12,000+ word Sam/Freddie story. It'll either be one hell of a one-shot or a two/three-part fic so keep your eyes open for that. Thank you for reading and I'm sorry if this is a little too dark and gritty for the tastes of some people.