I watched as Sam shifted her dress around. She hadn't spoken to me since last night, which would have been worrying if it wasn't something I had expected. Despite my fantasies, just being in the same proximity wouldn't make her love me again. I mean, it couldn't hurt, but it wouldn't do it by itself. I watched her settle back against the wall and wondered if I should try to start a conversation. If I stared at her for any longer without trying to talk, even I would begin to find myself creepy. And, although this was harder for me to admit, I needed to stop fixating on Sam because I was using her to distract myself from the reality beyond the walls. If I turned my world into Sam, and Sam alone, then there was no need to think of Jazz – possibly dead – and Tucker – probably dead.

"Are you okay?" I blurted out.

Her eyes flickered up to mine, and for a moment, I didn't think she'd reply. Then, I heard her voice.

"Fine. And you?"

I almost didn't tell her the truth. I almost said 'fine' like she had, but I had never been able to control my feelings around Sam. I had never hidden anything from her, except for the thing she had needed to know the most. "I was thinking about Jazz and whether or not she woke up."

"Was Vlad the one who attacked her?"

Before I could say anything, Vlad himself answered. "No."

I didn't turn my head to look at him. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of letting him see my face after keeping me locked up.

"Vlad's not the type to do things for himself. He'd send a minion to do it." I said this all as if he weren't there, as if it were still just Sam and I.

Vlad laughed at me. "Minion? My minions were above such a role. Would you like to know who did it, Daniel?"

Fuck him. Fuck Vlad for always knowing what he could dangle in front of me to make me do what he wanted. Even though I wanted to tell him where he could stick it, I couldn't resist not knowing who had beaten Jazz.

Through clenched teeth, I managed, "Very much so." I still didn't look at him.

Primly, Vlad informed me, "I sent a clone."

Clone? What? No … No. Vlad didn't have clones. He stopped after Dani. He had to have stopped after Dani because not only had we spotted no evidence of cloning, but even Vlad wasn't that insane.

"I thought you stopped after Danielle." I tried to sound accusing, but it just came out as an awkward shriek. Dani was still a wound that was raw. She was my clone, but she was also so much more than that. She was a friend; family. She was a girl that had only wanted to be loved – at first, only by her abusive 'father' who would never give a damn, and then, she only wanted to be able to love herself – and, in the end, she'd been turned into a murderer.

"A hideous mistake that was." In my peripheral vision, I watched him turn toward Sam. "I was trying to make the perfect clone –"

"Using my DNA! You sick freak!" I shouted, because I couldn't let him leave out that nasty bit of info.

"It was only because I could not use my own and you, young Daniel, are the only other halfa." One of the things I hated most about Vlad was how, even when explaining his most fucked up plans, he made it sound like it was all perfectly logical. "That is beside the point. I was trying to create the perfect halfa. After a long string of disasters, there was Danielle. I thought she was perfect."

She was, I growled in my thoughts. She just wasn't a supernatural lapdog for you.

Vlad continued. "She could transform from human to ghost; she seemed to have control of her powers. Alas, it was not to last. She became unstable, like all of the clones before her. I was going to terminate her before she could do any damage, but she ran away. She ran to Daniel and he tried to protect her; he tried to make her think she could control herself."

Like it's my fucking fault you're an unstable freak.

"She couldn't. I knew she couldn't. When Danielle had her final meltdown, she exploded. She killed four people."

I seethed. How dare he try to look upset over Danielle's meltdown? He didn't care about her; only wanted her because he thought that she would be the daughter to the son I would never be. And he didn't care about the people she killed either. He didn't attend all of their funerals, wishing that there was a good explanation that he could offer their sobbing families. He was just an asshole who was trying to play a game. I wanted to yell, but Vlad wasn't done talking to Sam about himself.

"I didn't know if I would ever try again, though I still wanted that perfect halfa. Finally, I gathered my courage. The mix of ectoplasm within the DNA is what makes it so unstable, you know. I created another clone. He was not perfect, but he was stable. He didn't have powers – he was only strong and fast – and he couldn't change between two appearances. Still, he is serving his purpose and well."

"And you sent him to attack Jazz?" I cried, feeling my heart drop. How much did this clone look like Phantom? Could Jazz have mistaken him for me, at first? Did she ever have the revelation that it wasn't her brother or had she thought it was me attacking her the entire time?

"Would you like to meet him?" Vlad offered, smirking in his villain way.

I nodded my head, not trusting my words.

I heard footsteps down the hall and I clenched my fists together, reminding myself that I was tethered. I couldn't move without hurting Sam, and while I desperately wanted to avenge Jazz, now was not the time. Still, I was wound tighter than Tucker without his cellphone when the clone rounded the corner.

Gregor?

What … the … actual … fuck?

"Hello, Sam," Gregor greeted her, casually, like he was picking her up for a date.

Oh God. Sam had dated him.

While I was still shell-shocked over the fact that it was this asshole, because I hadn't seen it and he definitely didn't look enough like me to be my damn clone, Sam threw one of her ridiculously pointy high-heeled shoes at the bars, toward his face. Her aim was way fucking off and I wished she would throw the other one, this time magically getting it through the bars and putting the heel through one of his damn eye sockets.

"What the fuck?" I screeched. "He's a fucking clone?"

"I thought surely you would notice. Or at least suspect. You seem to have more of your father in you than I originally assumed." Vlad said this all pompously, in a way that made me want to shove Gregor into his ass.

"I'm going to tear you limb from limb, Gregor. And then, Vlad, I'm going to slit your motherfucking throat."

"My name is Elliot," Gregor said, conversationally once more. Except … he sounded American now. He didn't actually have the pretentious accent.

"I thought an 'E' name fit since Danielle was the last one."

Vlad needed to stop talking about Danielle. "I will kill you slowly just so you feel every bit of pain you caused."

Vlad laughed at me. "If you ever get out, Daniel. I have different plans for you than I do for Samantha."

I looked away from him and at Sam. She had curled into a ball and I wondered what she was thinking about. I wondered if she realized the same implications I had: Vlad was planning to kill me. I had always been vaguely aware of the fact that someday Vlad would decide it was time for me to die, but I had never really expected it to come – especially so soon. But the way he had said 'plans' left no room for doubt. He didn't intend for me to leave this mansion. But it gave me hope. If he had different plans for Sam and I, did that mean that she might get to walk out of here? Even though she had seen his face, Vlad and I were both aware that no one would ever believe her if she decided to tell the truths about half-ghosts, clones, and a kidnapping and murder plot.

"I just wanted to introduce you. I have other business to attend to. Come along, Elliot."

Elliot padded after Vlad like the useless lapdog he was. When they were gone, I felt the need to tell Sam that just because Vlad and I were both halfas and that just because I had tried to figure out his plan, didn't mean that I knew about this part.

"I'm so sorry," I breathed, rushing the words. "I had no idea that he was a clone. I really thought that he was just from Vlad's family. I never suspected. If I had known Vlad was going to hurt you like –"

"Shut up."

I clamped my jaw shut, more out of shock than anything.

"You don't get to comment on people hurting me. You were the one that lied to me for how long?!"

Longer than I wanted to admit, even though she probably had a good idea in her mind of just how long I was abusing her trust.

"Exactly," Sam said coldly. "His actions sucked. Your actions sucked worse."

Excuse me? I may have been an all-around shitty human being, but I never knocked her out and then locked her up in a basement. Sam jumped to her feet and for a moment, I thought she was actually going to come over and kick me. I wouldn't have blamed her if she had. I wouldn't have even tried to defend myself. But she just paced, shouting at me all the while.

"I was in love with you! I would have done anything for you. I poured out my heart to you. I let you in. I'd never let anyone in before and you knew that! You knew how much I was hurting on the inside and how much I tried not to let it show and you decided to be an asshole to me anyway!"

There was nothing I could disagree with.

"You decided to play me, lie to me, and manipulate me. You cheated on me. No, worse than that: you used me to cheat on your damn girlfriend. You made me doubt myself. You made me hate myself. You caused my whole world to crumble around me and for me to second guess everything." She stopped moving to look at me, and I was struck dumb by the intensity in her purple eyes. "You know what the worst part is?"

I had thought all of it was the worst part. I hadn't made a single right decision our entire relationship.

"The worst part is that I would have understood," Sam said. "If you had come to me, before you kissed me and before you got so deep in your lies, and told me the truth, I would have forgiven your negative actions, provided they didn't continue. If you had told me that you were just trying to protect yourself but that you realized it was time to tell me the truth, we really could have been together, as a real couple, without the lies. If you had done that, we might have still been together."

She made it sound so simple … It probably could have been that simple.

"And we certainly wouldn't be here! But you didn't do any of that. You decided to screw everything up! You're the reason I'm in here and you're also the reason that my second chance to have a good relationship with someone turned out to be a lying clone. What kind of a fucking life is this!?" Sam screamed, and then tears began to fall down her cheeks. Impulsively, I almost reached for her. It took everything I had to restrain myself and tuck my arms back into my sides. "You took so much away from me."

"I didn't mean to," I mouthed, but she wasn't looking in my direction at all.

"Falling in love for the first time is supposed to be beautiful, even when it ends there's supposed to be something wonderful to take away from it but there was nothing. It was just awful. And that's how I felt when it was over: awful. I felt awful and stupid. I thought you might have been lying to me but I believed you when you promised that you weren't. I trusted you and you just threw it all away. I … I hate you, so don't you dare offer me sympathy and don't you dare say you're sorry he hurt me. In the end, he hurt me because of you. If you hadn't done what you did, I never would have been here. If had been a good enough person to stay away from me instead of being a jerk, Gregor … Elliot … whatever, wouldn't have had the opportunity to come in and destroy me. Damn it, he's even you. He's your damn clone. In the end, it's always you hurting me … So shut the hell up!"

Sam turned around dramatically, falling to her knees. She was only showing me her back; cutting me out in the only way she could in this small cell. I watched her back heave, and I felt my own chest tighten. There was no way that I could have ignored the fact that I had hurt her, but somehow I managed to ignore just how deep I had gone in my destruction of Sam. Everything she said crashed into me again and again, driving the reality home. Nothing I could do would ever fix the parts of her that I had broken. Nothing I could ever say would remedy what I had put her through … was still putting her through.

But I couldn't just say nothing right now. "If I could go back, I would. I'd save you from this."

I stared at her back, but she didn't move; didn't twitch. Like I had never spoken. I turned to face my own wall. I curled my knees to my chest and then I clamped my hands over my ears to drown out the sound of her pain – the pain that I had caused.

Fuck.

I don't own anything recognizable. Thanks to my betas: Forever Sky.

~TLL~