A/N: Hey guys! Sorry for the long wait and thanks to all the lovely reviewers who made my day! It's hard for me to update because of college apps (kill. me. now) but I really want to finish this before the series ends, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

II. ANGER
Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Anger can manifest itself in different ways. People can be angry with themselves, with others, and especially with those who are close to them.

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
~Dylan Thomas

She's never been good with emotions. She just never really learned how, she guessed. If other people had feelings like kittens or puppies or bunnies, her emotions were like an untamed wolf tearing up the ground with its claws and snarling to get loose.

Carly kept it at bay. Freddie could keep it at bay. And once upon a time, Sam tried to keep it at bay.

But now, now, she lets go of the rope and watches the carnage unfold, detached, cool, above it all. She watches the wolf rip flesh to shreds, watches blood seep into the ground , watched it hurl itself through the world like a meteor hurtling through space, and in this way, she feels like she can breathe.

And when it turns on her, she lets it come, watches blood swell and burst into angry red rivers washing over her skin.

Of course, this is all a metaphor.

There are a variety of treatment options –

I don't want your fucking treatment.

Sam, a combination of chemotherapy, radiology, and immunotherapy will be able to extend your lifespan by-

By what? A month? Two weeks? Will I get six months of hell instead of five? What a fucking gift!

...

I thought so.

School becomes her gladiatorial arena. She doesn't just push, she kicks and scratches and rips and claws her way through the hallways.

When Wendell the Weirdo calls her a bitch, she slaps him clear in the face. It isn't just a glancing blow, it is a whip to the cheek and it is meant to scar, to wound, to bleed.

With the sound still ringing in the stunned silence, Sam walks away, chin up, shoulders back. Violence is always the answer.

She wakes up in the night now, gasping for air, covered in sweat. It's like every breath is a knife to her back and her heart feels so constricted that she thinks she's having a heart attack. Every heartbeat is a thud that shakes her entire body and each one pounds through her entire body like she's nothing but a throbbing pulse.

And it isn't from fear or terror, god no. It's the cancer that's doing all this to her. It's just because of the cancer that eating her alive, the body that is betraying her from the inside and that every cell in her body is working against her. It's because of the tumors that are being fed with every breath she takes that are going to leave her dea-

When she tells the doctor about it, he says it isn't because of the cancer. She tells him to go to hell.

Sam chews on her pencil, blatantly ignoring both the teacher at the front of the room and Carly staring holes into her back. She has more important musings on her mind.

Why didn't a serial killer get cancer? A prisoner sitting in jail with a life sentence? Hell, the old man down the street who looks like he's gonna croak any second now? The loser with greasy hair at the Walmart who's 52 and unmarried and whose friend in the world is a dog? She isn't a saint, but surely her life is worth more than that?

Her mouth twists as she thinks of another puzzle.

Sam toughened herself up and made herself strong. She ran, she swam, she lifted weights, all so nothing would be able to touch her. She took self-defense classes until she started making up moves of her own, all so she could walk the streets at night safely, knowing that she was the one to fear. It made her feel safe, like nothing could touch her.

But her twin had always been the weaker one. Melanie cried at a touch. She was a wimp. She was a girl. She still couldn't handle a punch and a pinch would probably bruise her skin.

So why didn't Melanie get cancer?

Hell, Why didn't Gibby? Spencer? Why didn't -

(she knows she's sick in the mind in more ways than one. she doesn't need someone to tell her that)

Freddie's been getting angry, she can tell.

Every time she snaps at Spencer or Carly or Gibby during iCarly rehearsals, she sees his eyes darken ever so slightly and his jaw set a little more. Subtle things, but she's always been able to read him better than most.

A tiny voice of reason inside of her agrees with him and tells her that she's being irrational and that she's been too destructive lately, even for her.

But the majority of her wants to sink her fist into his stomach and watch him cry in pain. Because really, what gives him the right to be angry at her? Because really, he's not the one DYING.

One cloudy Seattle night, she takes all of her college pamphlets and burns them in an alleyway. With a hiss of a match and the fragrant scent of gasoline, she's got a decent sized flame going pretty soon, and gathers the sizable pile of papers into her hands.

She couldn't believe it when she got into NYU. Carly had gotten her letter of acceptance a day before and Sam had smiled and screamed and pulled all the appropriate face motions, but on the inside, she was breaking, because if Carly's letter had come and hers hadn't, well, there was only one logical conclusion.

But when her letter arrived the next day, she had torn into it with shaking hands and collapsed into a shrieking Carly's arms before running around the entire apartment screaming her joy.

(Turns out decent senior year grades and being the star of an internationally renowned web show trumped even three terrible years of schooling).

And no matter how happy Carly and Freddie were for her, they would never understand the depth of her relief. Finally, she could escape. Finally, she could get away from the prison she called her home, the jailer she called her mother, and the ghost she called her sister. She could start over in the city of her dreams, with Carly and Freddie by her side, ready for freedom. She would be able to breathe.

But now, she looks down at the packet of papers, tightens her lips, and tosses everything into the flames. Acceptance letters, transcripts, recommendations, she watches as they all curl into smoke against a black sky. What did any of it come to?

When she hears sirens wailing in the distance, she skirts around the blaze and into the dark night. Laughing.

When she steps into the apartment, it's half past twelve. The time is no surprise to her, she's been coming in late for the past two weeks, spending her nights wandering city streets, but the sight of her mother sitting on the couch in the living room is.

She doesn't let her confusion show though, and looks at the woman with flat eyes before throwing her bag on the loveseat. She's just turned to stalk down the hallway to her bedroom when her mother speaks.

"Where've you been?" There's weary anger in her mother's voice, a pathetic attempt to exert control over another human being.

Sam snorts. It's almost funny, how sad this play is. Mother pretends to care, daughter acts like she's sorry. "Like you care," she says coldly without turning around, deviating from her usual lines.

Her mother's voice sharpens. "Don't talk to your mother like that."

Sam smirks before turning to face the woman in the chair. "A mother is someone who gives a shit about her kids," she says slowly, soaking each word in malice. "I'm sorry, but I don't see my mother here."

"How dare you-"

"Give it up Mom," Sam sighs, a mocking smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "You don't give a fuck about me."

"I love you Samantha, and I don't know why you would ever suggest otherwise," her mother says loudly.

If she says anything else, then Sam doesn't hear it, because at that moment, rage, pure, hot, rage, floods her veins and blurs her vision. Her hand twitches and she comes this close to slapping her mother across the face, because how dare she, how dare she say those lies when it's obvious that she's never meant them.

In her mind, she flies towards her mother and tears into her with flesh and watches her bleed. She wants her mother to feel in full the pain that Sam has felt every day for the past eighteen years. She wants her mother, breath broken and body bruised, to cry, to beg for mercy.

But even she has a limit, so she uses her words instead. "Fuck you," she says in a low voice, slowly, deliberately. "Fuck you." When she locks herself inside her room, she looks down to see her hands trembling.

Sam drums her fingers on the table as she waits for the page to load. When email finally opens, she skims through American Sparrow offers and Fat Cake coupons and is ready to empty the entire inbox when she sees an email from sparklypinkprincess . Melanie.

Her sister emails once every couple of months, claiming that she's been busy with schoolwork and friends and apologizing profusely for her absence. Melanie always say that she misses Sam and that she has to visit soon, but Sam has known for a while that it's only to stave off the guilt.

Usually, she replies wearily, with her usually brusqueness to let Melanie know that she hasn't changed and that she will always be the brash sister at home. But she's sick of being the good one, the unselfish one.

So she moves her cursor over the file and clicks the delete button. She stares at the blank screen once her action has been completed. That was extraordinarily satisfying.

breaking point: /brākiNG point/ (noun) the moment of greatest strain at which someone or something gives way

ORIGIN 1908, first used by H. G. Wells in elaborating the apparatus of war, "until the accumulating tensions should reach the breaking-point."

It happens on a Tuesday.

"Sam, you can't do that!" Carly's high-pitched voice has long since taken on the tone of whining, and Sam didn't even want to come to iCarly rehearsal today, and the sound of her best friend's voice is literally making Sam's ears bleed and she has a monster headache that's threatening to split her in two.

So she cracks. She breaks the unspoken rule that Sam never swears at Carly, Sam never hurts Carly, Sam always protects Carly, and wishes her words into knives.

"Yeah, well, fuck you."

Everything falls to pieces after that.

Freddie shoves her and she stumbles back, half caught off guard, half caught up in her pain, but she catches herself before she falls and lashes out at him.

"Don't touch me!" Her hand whips towards him, but in one fluid move, he wrenches her arm down and pushes her back. His eyes are black and blazing.

"Back off Sam." He waves Carly behind him and crosses his arms. By now, Sam and Gibby are off their feet and have identical looks of confusion on their faces, but all Sam can see is the look of hatred on Freddy's face. She juts out her chin and pretends like she doesn't care, but on the inside, she's already starting sobbing.

"What the hell is the matter with you? You're acting like a bitch, Sam." Freddie's words crack against her skin and she flinches invisibly. No one disagrees with him.

Spencer's hands are slightly outstretched and his eyes are open and curious. Gibby has one hand on his hip and the other stabbing the air in her direction, already a believer in Freddie's statement. Carly's reaching one hand out towards her with eyes pleading. Freddie's face is cold, colder than she's ever seen it. They're standing in a line, closing her in like a chain-link fence, facing her like a firing squad.

She's all alone.

And that thought alone is enough to finally, finally, break her.

"I'm DYING, okay?"

Those five syllables rip the tape from her lips and open the floodgates of her mouth, and for the first time in forever, she lets herself speak without thinking. The deluge of words pouring out of her washes her away from the people in the room, bringing her an ocean away from them, leaving her both powerful and terrible as she destroys them with every twist of her lips.

In reality, the look on their faces would crush her little paper heart; in another life, the way their facial expressions change would make her laugh out loud. But she doesn't have another life, and she only has one reality, this one, right now, and it's slipping away from her with every beat of her traitor of a heart. So she spurs the anger to rage through her and doesn't even let herself feel when Carly starts crying.

When she's finally done, her lips feel stained and corroded by the words that burned themselves free. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand before daring to look at her friends.

Gibby is frozen. Spencer is rocking back and forth with his head in his hands. Carly is on the ground staring at Sam with eyes that won't blink, legs splayed at an angle that has to be uncomfortable, with a hand clamped over her mouth and a face glazed with tears.

And Freddie-

Sam turns on her heel and slams the door behind her.

She's had enough pain for this lifetime

"We think that by hating someone we hurt them...But hatred is a curved blade, and the harm we do to others, we also do to ourselves."
― Mitch Albom

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