Chapter 14: Dominoes

Disclaimer: The show don't belong to me, y'all.

September 7, 2032

"5, 4, 3, 2..." Point.

"I'm Carly," the brown-haired girl said.

"I'm Sam."

"And this is iCarly," they both said together.

"Wait," said the brunette.

"What?"

"You're not Sam."

"Of course I am. I love ham. I'm vicious. I'm Sam!"

"But Sam's a girl!"

"What? Sam is definitely a boy's name."

"Hey!" I said and walked within camera view. "Sam is a girl's name." I poked the boy in the chest.

"Ow. Mom! Aunt Sam poked me." He turned to the brown-haired woman who had walked into the camera's view.

"Sam, don't abuse my son." Cisco grinned and poked his tongue out at me. "Cisco, go clean your room."

"Mom! Kids in school are watching this." I laughed and poked my tongue out at him. He grimaced and grabbed his twin's hand, and they both walked away from camera view. Once he was not on the screen anymore, his grin returned to his face.

"Now, I'm the real Carly," Carly said.

"And I'm the one and only Sam, still not in jail, so some of you have lost some bets," I said.

"And you're watching the second Twelve-and-a-Half-Year anniversary special of iCarly." A graphic appeared on the screen. And then a baggie of colored plastic spoons was tossed in front of us.

"Gibby, you're supposed to throw them out individually," Carly admonished.

"Too lazy," said the voice from off camera.

"Gibby!" Both Carly and I yelled at him

"Fine," he said and walked into camera view. He was, strangely, shirtless. He picked up the bag of spoons, ripped it open, and let the spoons fall to the floor. "Good? Later."

He walked back off screen.

"Clean-up," I yelled. Two boys came out, one about twelve and the other four years younger, both looking decidedly like Gibby, despite their Asian appearance. And both shirtless. They picked up the spoons.

We usually saw Gibby and Shiori and their boys at least twice a year. We would go to Japan once, and they would come to Seattle once. There were some years we saw them more, but it was usually at least twice a year. It's strange. I never really understood Gibby when we were kids-sometimes he was just this strange shirtless goober who was afraid I was going to break his thumbs...again. And other times he was just something entirely different. Or maybe he was just always Gibby, and I had put him in a type of box. I can understand that people do that to each other. And he is just really a cool guy.

I talk to Shiori much more now. Not as much as Carly, but still. Besides Carly I don't really have many female friends, so it's nice to count somebody else in that list. And she doesn't know samurai. It turns out she was joking about that.

Gibby doesn't really work. Okay, wait, no he works; I just really can't tell you exactly what he is doing at any given moment. I know he does work for the art museum. But Shiori has also told me about him working on a fishing boat and acting as a tour guide. One thing Freddie did before he sold his part of the company to Nevel was to give Gibby some stock. Gibby sold it at the right time, right before the stock plummeted from the great height it had attained, and he was comfortable, so he could afford to work at whatever struck his fancy at the time.

Gibby and Shiori had another son. I've never talked about the miscarriage with them. For some reason, it seemed too personal, even if Freddie made a documentary because of them. I thought that over time they might lose some of their hero worship for Freddie, that they would see him as flawed as I saw him. But they both thought he was great forever and ever. Me, too.

I actually hadn't thought we were going to do another anniversary special. It was funny when we did it before, but I thought that was our last hurrah. But...well, you know Carly. Once she gets something in her mind, it's hard to stop her. And I think there was part of her that did want to live in the past a little.

"Wow, Carly, you really let yourself go since our last anniversary," I said.

"I'm pregnant, Sam!"

Carly and David had the perfect marriage. It was kind of boring, actually. I mean, I'm sure it was lovely for them, but from the outside, it was snores-ville. I loved them both, though.

I guess there was one thing that wasn't boring. The two of them were baby-making machines. After the twins and David, Jr., there was Jared Michael. And Robyn Marie. And whatever little thing was growing inside of Carly at the moment. Hopefully, it was just one little thing. I think Carly was afraid to find out. She loved her kids, but she was just one housekeeper away from the Brady Bunch.

Carly actually hosted a different webshow now, aimed at mothers. I have to say, it's not as good as the show we used to do. But she is able to work from home. David is an editor at the paper he works at now. Again, they seem happy.

I wish one of them would get into a drunken bar brawl or something every once in a while, though.

"Oh, wait, guys, you are not going to believe this," Carly said. "Bring it out."

Spencer came out, pushing his soda bottle robot sculpture.

"Yes," Carly said. "Spencer has finally sold this sculpture. It only took about a quarter of a century. Who'd you sell it to, Spence?"

"The buyer, uh, would like to remain anonymous, but chances are many of you know him...or her."

We saw Spencer as much as we saw Gibby, which makes sense considering they both lived in the same area and were brothers-in-law. Spencer and Shiori's sister, Rika, did get together. She ran an orphanage. Spencer, much like Gibby, didn't really have any one job. He often worked at the orphanage, teaching art to children and helping Rika in any way that he could. He also helped Shiori at the art museum. And two or three times a month he appeared on a Japanese game show, often bringing sculptures to be used in the games, but more often to act in his role as "Spencer FIRE!" We would download the episodes every two or three months and have a little marathon and laugh our asses off. When we asked him what they had to do to get the fires to start, his shoulders slumped and Spencer said, "it just happens, guys." In some ways, Spencer never changed.

About a year ago, when Spencer and Rika were visiting, he told us what we had already guessed, but were afraid to bring up. Rika and he had gone to different doctors and found out that he would not be able to father children. Shiori and Rika had gone with Gibby to Gibby's mother, and it was just Spencer with Carly, Freddie, and me.

"Have you thought about doing a surrogate?" Freddie asked.

"We talked about it. And we talked about adopting. And we decided that wasn't for us. We have the orphans." He shrugged.

"I just can't think about you not being a father, Spencer," Carly said, crying. He smiled and came over and sat on the couch between Carly and me.

"Maybe not by blood, but I think I've had the experience. That I had with you." He leaned down and kissed Carly on the forehead. "And I had with you." And he kissed me on the forehead, too. "And, of course, there's my boy." He smiled at Freddie, sitting across from him. Freddie grinned back.

As Freddie played a video, I looked at everybody behind him. Rika was downstairs with all the children. All the many, many children. But everybody else was here. Melanie stood with James. David stood near the back, trying to surreptitiously communicate with his work by texting. Nevel, who had come in to read a poem as a favor to Freddie, scowled at everything and scooted closer and closer to the door.

Nevel sold his stocks the same time Gibby did. With Freddie's agreement, they had sold the software to a large company. And then they all got out, selling their stocks and refusing jobs with the larger corporation. I don't know if Freddie or Nevel realized it first, but the credibility of the software went down soon after it was taken over. Freddie didn't care. He was happy about what he created, but that was in his past. I don't think Nevel cared, either. Not that we ever were the best of buddies, but we had learned to tolerate each other. We kind of had to, considering we were both such big parts of Melanie's life.

Nevel opened that haberdashery he had talked about years ago. Actually, he opened two. And then he opened about twenty-four total in four different states. I'm still not sure what the need of these stores is, but apparently somebody saw it.

Melanie and James opened their own law firm together. Quite honestly, I expected that to end their marriage. For most of our lives, Melanie has been the nicer, sweeter, saner sister. She's not like that in the courtroom. In the courtroom there appears to be little difference between Melanie Lewis and her twin sister. But somehow they made it work. They were partners, but they never worked on the same case together. Maybe that helped.

They had the one daughter. That was enough for Melanie. She loved Krista unconditionally, but I think maybe our father had a larger impact on Melanie that I originally saw. Melanie was always worried about being a good parent, and she was afraid if she had more than one child, she might not be able to handle it. Luckily, Krista had the Matthews brood, who we basically looked at as her cousins.

Our father died four years ago. Like Freddie's mom, he had a heart attack. Unlike her, he didn't survive it. It happened on the car lot he worked at. He fell between two cars and nobody noticed until too late. Freddie told us. He had my father's name on alert on his computer, just in case, and one day it popped up.

We discussed going to the funeral, and we both decided quickly not to. Bill Puckett had left Melanie's life a long time ago. And I had finally reached a point in which I had gotten over what his leaving had done to me. Plus, if I needed a father figure, there was always Spencer. And there was another family to think about.

Melanie and I decided the only thing we could do was to provide an anonymous payment for our stepsisters' college.

"You know there's a chance they could find out where it came from," Freddie said.

"Freddie, legally..." Melanie stopped when Freddie laughed.

"Melanie, I could find out who did it. Maybe they couldn't. But maybe they could. If they're anything like you two, they're probably very smart." I looked at Melanie, and we both shrugged.

"If they find out, then we will deal with it then," I said. "Until then, we leave it to fate." Leaving things to fate was not a Sam-thing to do (Puckett rule 20: I decided the next course of action). Some things change, though.

After we completed a video submitted by a long-time fan, Carly turned to me and nodded. I glanced at Freddie and gave him a signal. He gestured Gibby over. Gibby took over the camera, and Freddie stepped to the back of the room. He didn't trust himself holding the camera during this. I stepped up.

"It's been great fun, iCarly fans, but we would like to take a moment to say something about somebody who was important to everybody here." I paused, looking at Freddie. His head was down, and he wouldn't look up. "We would like to dedicate this episode to the memory of Marissa Benson."

A/N: There is one more chapter left. We will find out what happened to Marissa Benson. Oh, wait, I didn't really touch upon Sam and Freddie, did I? I guess I might mention them next chapter, also.

Thanks for reviews from afanoffanfic, Elise Suzanne, KressxBlack, ShooshYeah35, Purple550, Dani96, and ccQTccQT.

ShooshYeah35: As you see, yep, there was another time jump. I debated between calling this (and the next chapter) a chapter or epilogue. I guess it's both. Next chapter is definitely the last one, though. There will be an author's note I will post after, too, but that's only for people who want to see inside my brain. Freaks.