Sam and Paige, late Monday night

[x-cannonball.livejournal.com]

After Angelo tells her about Sam's accident, Paige goes looking for Sam to deliver a little first aid, and perhaps a bit of a talking to.



People were going to start accusing him of being a masochist, Sam thought dimly, sitting slumped in the chair at the front of the darkened classroom. Here he was, steps away from medlab, and yet he was sitting here dabbing with a tissue at a cut along his hairline that probably needed stitches. But he didn't want to go to medlab, didn't want to explain. Most of the rest of it just felt like bruises, anyway. Lots and lots of bruises.

Idiot, a wiser voice from the back of his mind said to him sternly. You could have killed yourself. He just hadn't been thinking on the way back down. His thoughts had slowed down a little too much, maybe.

"Idiot," repeated another voice from the door, which had opened and was letting in a pale beam of light. The silhouette of a young woman holding what looking to be a briefcase paused for a moment before the door closed again, leaving Sam once more in darkness. "I've been looking for you everywhere."

No handy windows this time, Sammy-boy, a different, rather nastier voice taunted him, and Sam flinched suddenly, for the first time thinking about what could have happened if he'd come down a little to the west, onto the mansion rather than the lawn.

"Angelo told you," he said hoarsely, unable even to get angry at the thought as Paige came in, closing the door behind her.

"Don't flatter yourself," Paige replied coldly, setting down what ended up being a medkit on his desk and flipping open the latches. "You happened to make a huge crater in the front lawn and thought nobody would notice?"

Sam started to laugh, but the stab of pain in his ribs and the look in his sister's eyes made him think that might not be such a good idea. "Thought someone might assume Mr. Marko was doing some late-night landscaping..."

Noticing the wince, Paige pulled out a roll of gauze and a pair of scissors, along with the disinfectant. "No. Mr. Marko is upstairs in your room repairing the window. Shirt off."

He hesitated for a second, but she really didn't look like she was in the mood to tolerate him digging in his heels. Slowly, he pulled his shirt off, unable to help a pained noise as he tried to get one arm out and his shoulder popped again.

"I said shirt off, not destroy what's left of your body," Paige said tersely, reaching over and giving Sam's shirt a quick yank. The fabric ripped easily and freed him from any more pain in trying to remove it from himself. "Hold still." The disinfectant went on any open cuts, but they were few, before she began wrapping him in gauze.

"Not sure what happened," he muttered. "Don't remember losing my blast field..."

"Whether you remember losing it or not you still did, Samuel." Paige finished her shoulder wrap, tying it off tightly before checking his ribs with two not overly tentative fingers. At his jump she rolled her eyes and began to wrap those too.

"I've been flying most of every night for weeks," Sam said, still a bit dazed and not really thinking about what he was saying. "Haven't had anything bad happen. Well. Except for the thing with the 747 but I was high enough up I had plenty of time to recover..."

Paige didn't bother to reply especially well to that. "How lucky of you," was her only answer, and rather cold at that. "And, of course, the plane holding the three-hundred or so people that you would have killed."

Sam looked up at her and sighed. "Paige, damn it, I just got caught up in its wake. Wasn't anywhere near the plane."

"Fine." Paige pulled the last of the rib wrapping tight and tied it off as she had before with the shoulder one. Taking his face in her hands she examined the hairline cut with squinted eyes before giving up and turning on a lamp. "Do you want stitches or not?"

Sam blinked, his eyes watering at the light. "Leave it... maybe it'll remind me not to be stupid," he said, looking away as she let go. "Thanks... for the help," he said very softly.

Paige rolled her eyes, unwilling to play sympathetic right now, and picked up the bottle again. "No. I'm not having you bleed all over the place so that I can come and clean up after you again." She grabbed his hand firmly, the other moving up to his cut. "Squeeze when you need to."

He wasn't planning to, but caught himself doing it anyway. His jaw clenching, he tried to ignore what Paige was doing as she finished tending the cut, but his eyes were watering again, and his thoughts weren't going anywhere pleasantly distracting. He kept seeing the ground coming up at him...

Her hand in his shifted to a metal alloy as she worked, carefully and meticulously as she did everything, so that when she finished and pulled away he was left holding a skin glove. "Sorry," she muttered automatically, not sounding very sorry at all, and took it from him, laying it on the desk. "I won't give you stitches, those would hurt like the dickens and I really don't think you need them, but I'll be checking up on this wrap every day for the next little while," she said in dull tones, trying to keep her voice steady after the panicked look that had shown up in Sam's eyes, and went back to what seemed like neverending wrapping, this time around his forehead.

Sam swallowed. "Ah'm sorry, Gee," he said, his accent thickening. "Wasn't planning on this. Just... misjudged." There was some movie he and Alison had watched, with a line in it about not saving anything for the swim back. But there it had been something inspiring. Not an excuse for what anyone'd interpret as half-assedly trying to kill himself.

"I'm sorry too," Paige said quietly, looking down at him. "I've already lost my father, Sammy. Don't you dare make me lose my brother, you got that?"

Sam nodded, hardly able to look at her. "Not... planning on getting lost," he said, choking the words out past the lump of shame in his throat.

"Good." Paige let him go, slowly packing up her things into the medkit. "We're done." Her skin she threw into the trash, along with the metal husk that had formed only up to her wrist and made a jangling noise like keys as it hit the bin.

Getting up, Sam held onto the edge of the desk to steady himself for a moment as his head spun. There was a stiffness to the way Paige held herself that made the impulse to reach out and hug her a very fleeting one. "Thanks, Gee," he said hoarsely, turning to go.

Paige nodded and made to finish cleaning up but found herself unable to tear her eyes away from her brother's retreating form. Making an angry noise in the back of her throat she cried out, "Wait!" and crossed the room in two quick bounds, her arms instantly going around Sam's waist, as gently as she could manage. "You're welcome, Sammy."

Before he quite knew what he was doing he was wrapping his arms around her as well, even the one that wasn't working all that well at the moment. "I'm sorry, Paige," he whispered, shaking. "Won't... do it again, I promise. Think I'll pass on the night flying for a while."

"It's okay, it's okay..." Paige soothed gently, ignoring the way her own voice cracked. "I forgive you, okay? I forgive you." She found herself holding most of his weight, her legs shaking slightly as the days exhaustion took it's toll. "Come on, we're getting you to bed."

Realizing he was doing his very best to fall apart all over his little sister, Sam forced his aching body to straighten, but left one arm around her shoulders, just in case. His legs were a little wobbly still. "Okay," he said, his voice low and hoarse. He tried to smile at her, didn't quite manage it. "Think we could both do to go to bed, huh?"

Paige managed it for him, keeping an arm around his waist. "Probably. This is what? The fourth Monday of the month? I think that's a sleeping day."