Disclaimer: I don't own them, I never will. All I have that's my own are my trusty Fiesta and my toaster, and I can't live without either so please don't sue. I don't own the title either - that's Kelly Clarksons. I do own Bella though.
Content warning: I don't think there's any. Maybe a couple of cuss words.
Spoilers: Nothing beyond the end of Season 11. Suffice to say - this is an AU, based on Season 11's ending and ignoring the events of Season 12 altogether.
Behind These Hazel Eyes
"American Airlines Flight 115 to San Francisco is now boarding through gate 12,"
Sam turned over the ticket in her hand again, hesitating. She watched as the queue began to form, and knew deep down that it was now or never. She pushed upright from the seat, grabbed her carry on case from beside her feet and joined the end of the queue.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"I don't get it, Sam." He challenged – frustrated more than angry, clearly confused. "I don't understand. What did I do wrong?"
"Nothing. You did nothing wrong." She threw another handful of clothes in the bag, irritated that he wasn't just making this easy. He had to make it more painful than it already was, didn't he? "This – this just isn't working."
He rolled his eyes, gaze never leaving her. Sam continued her packing, movements increasingly frantic.
"So you're leaving?" His accent grew thicker the more frustrated he got. "You're running away?"
He demanded, looking to her to get angry as well.
"I am not running away, Luka." Sam reasoned, hazel eyes flickering between pure hatred and the love she knew she once felt for the man in front of her now. "I have nothing left to run from. I am starting over."
"What about me?"
Sam shrugged, closing the case and turning to face him.
"What about you?"
She returned evenly, no nastiness in her tone. No emotion at all, in fact.
"At least tell me where you're going…"
He protested to her receding back as she strode across the apartment.
"Why?" Sam shot back icily. "Goodbye, Luka."
And with that, another door slammed shut behind her.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Ma'am, ticket and boarding card?"
The blonde looked at her with something between concern and annoyance. Sam snapped back into reality, handed over the correct documents.
"Have a pleasant flight."
Sam gave a wan smile as she took back the boarding card.
"Nervous flyer?"
Sam turned to the woman beside her. A kindly, middle-aged face peered back at her over the top of silver-rimmed glasses.
"Uh. Yeah."
Sam replied, faltering, forcing back tears. The woman squeezed Sam's hand lightly, sympathetically.
"Don't worry, hon.," The woman said warmly. "It's really much safer than everyone thinks."
Sam turned away, wishing to cease the familiarity before it went any further. She wasn't a nervous flyer, particularly. But this flight was the irreparable end to her life in Chicago. It was moving on. It was running away, again.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"I'm sorry." Sam heard the resident speak, but all she could see was red. The sandy hair and fair skin, stained viciously red, cut and torn, the small body irreparably broken. "We really did all we could."
How many times had she heard those words? How many times had she said those words? She'd held a thousand bereaved parents, comforted a million grieving fiancés – holding their heads against her shoulder as they cried, as their world fell apart. She was used to being the only thing between these people and oblivion.
The words were familiar to her – they tripped off her tongue – but she had never really felt them before. They had never been as brutal, never felt as real as they did just then. When they hit home with her own reality – that Alex was gone. Forever. He hadn't just run away to find his father, or for one of a thousand other righteous, childish reasons. He was lying, dead, on the gurney in front of her.
She felt Luka's hand on her shoulder, trying to offer her comfort, but unable to reach. She shrugged him off. All she felt was cold and numb and she couldn't take comfort. She could not be comforted until she had felt this properly. Until she had cried for her son.
She wanted to be the one to bleed for him – to touch him and absorb his wounds – for it to be her blood that spilled from open cuts, for it to be her bones that were shattered. For it to be her heart that had ceased to beat. Because in those moments, and many after them, she would have died for him. She would have died to bring him back to life.
And knowing she couldn't broke her world in half.
Her own heart was ripped from her chest, and flaunted in front of her. Taunting her with its vitality, its life.
Standing there, staring at her son's lifeless corpse, she stopped living, and started to merely exist. It was the beginning of the end.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Wake up." A voice filtered into her consciousness. "Wake up, hon."
Sam's eyes snapped open, panicked. She realised her hand was gripping tightly to something soft and giving, and focussed long enough to look up into the same familiar face from earlier.
"You were having a bad dream."
The woman soothed. Sam dropped her wrist suddenly, mumbling an embarrassed apology. No, Sam thought, that wasn't the bad dream. My life is the bad dream.
"Something you're not looking forward to?" The woman asked, irritatingly curious. Sam examined the face, which seemed genuine enough.
"How did you know?"
She laughed weakly.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"What the hell?" Steve's voice rose sharply, fists clenched. "He was hitchhiking?"
Sam nodded, her defence lost from her lips.
"What the hell kind of mother were you, Sam?" The use of the past tense stung her heart anew, the vitriol of the words clearly intended to hurt. "Your 12 year old son was out hitchhiking? Where the hell were you?"
"I was at work." Sam shot back. "And he was hitch-hiking to see you."
"What?"
"He was trying to get to you." Sam repeated firmly, making sure the words hit home hard this time. "Only he never knew you were in prison. Again."
"So…"
"I couldn't break his heart again, Steve." She offered by way of a cold explanation. Steve stared at her, blankly, unusually lost for words. She was past anger. He didn't deserve any more of her anger."He deserved better than you. We both did."
"Well, I suppose this is it, isn't it?" He went to step towards her, to touch her, and she reflexively stepped away. He stopped awkwardly mid-pace, looking lost. "We lost the only thing that kept us connected."
"Yeah, Steve, this is it." Sam shrugged, resignedly. "This is it."
o-o-o-o-o-o
The plane landed at San Francisco running about 10 minutes behind schedule. Sam bade her neighbour a cursory farewell, and wound her way through the airport to baggage claim, and eventually out into the early evening San Francisco sunshine.
She caught a taxi outside the terminal building, reciting Bella's address from memory. The taxi driver, sensing her unease, didn't try to make conversation. Sam merely sat back, watching the city streets pass by, thinking how all cities looked the same really. This could be Chicago, in another place, another time.
Another place. Another time. The reason she was here.
She remembered the last time she'd seen Bella. She was 18, Alex was about to turn three. Bella was the only one of her friends who stuck around after she got pregnant. The only one of them who managed to get past her parents to visit her. Sam still wasn't sure quite how she had wheedled that one, but was glad she had.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"I can't believe you're going." Bella's arms felt like they were trying to squeeze the life out of her, and her words were no more than a whisper as a result.
She felt the other girls breath hitch.
"No." Sam pushed Bella back, looked her friend squarely and sternly in the eye. "Don't you dare cry."
"I'm not." Bella tried for a smile, and failed miserably. "I'm just going to miss you."
"Yeah." Sam said, staring off into the middle distance to stem her own tears. "I'm going to miss you too. But you're going off to college. It's a big adventure."
"I'm scared, Sam."
"I know." Sam soothed, fighting down the instinct that wanted her to beg Bella to stay. "But there's a whole world out there, you know. "You've got a whole life to lead, a whole ton of people to meet and places to go."
"Sam…"
"Just be sure to come back and tell me about them one day, OK?"
Bella nodded. An impatient car horn interrupted their conversation, and the brunette turned to the waiting vehicle, leaving Sam standing on the steps of her parents house, alone.
o-o-o-o-o-o
She never did. But that wasn't Bella's fault. Shortly after Bella left, Sam took her son and left. She started running away young. She virtually hadn't stopped since.
So turning up after all these years of correspondence consisting of nothing but letters and postcards would no doubt be a shock to the system. Sam could only hope that there wasn't too much water under the bridge. That Bella would help her.
Now Alex was dead, Bella was about all Sam had left.
The thought of rejection terrified her.
Eventually, the taxi pulled up in front of an impossibly bright, three storey apartment block. Part of a complex, Sam noted as she looked around. Well kept, obviously upmarket. Bella was doing well for herself it seemed.
Sam leafed a couple of bills from her purse and handed them to the driver. She watched the cab recede down the street, knowing her escape route was gone now.
Her hand hovered in front of the door, stomach turning. After an interminably long minute, Sam sucked in a long breath and rapped lightly on the door.
It took a moment, but she heard the lock unfasten, and the door open. And before she knew where she was, she was staring into familiar warm brown eyes.
Whatever else may have changed about Bella, those eyes certainly hadn't.
"Sam!" The word was an exclamation – halfway between pleased and startled. Sam smiled wanly.
"Bella." She greeted softly, weary from the flight. "You did say if I was ever in San Francisco, I should look you up."
"What are you doing here?" Bella asked brightly.
"I…uh…" Sam faltered. "I…I need somewhere to stay."
Bella's soft brown eyes narrowed, suddenly concerned.
"Sam?" Bella questioned softly in the silence. "Sam, hon, what's wrong? Where's Alex?"
The mention of her son's name spilled Sam right over the edge she'd been toeing all day, and she felt herself spiral downwards, right there, standing on Bella's doorstep.
The tears fell slowly at first, but became a torrent Sam couldn't stop. Bella took her against her shoulder instinctively, guided her inside and shut the door.