fool enough to almost be it

Samuel John Kennedy. 24. HGU TA. Musician. Hunter. Hypocrite.

[annanovotny]

at the curtain's call || sam & anna

[annanovotny]

Sam is right. Sam is absolutely right. He knows it, Anna knows it, and Anna knows Sam knows she knows it. With each word out of his mouth, she feels herself shrinking, growing smaller and smaller as each truth clangs against her. She still feels her anger, swimming beneath the surface, ready to lash out and defend what little of herself she has left. 

"I have nothing to offer you." Her voice is weak, but she doesn’t bother trying to cover it up. She couldn’t hide now, not in front of Sam. "I am here, in front of you, all but on my knees because I have no options left. Help me, or do not. Whatever you decide, I will not argue you. I do not deserve your help, I know that. I will not blame you if you walk out of that door right now and never look back."

She pauses, and Sam doesn’t leave, so she continues, forcing out all that she can before she breaks completely. “I have already ruled out the possibility of going to a doctor. I have strong reason to believe that this virus is man-made, specifically designed to counteract my abilities. I believe that my father wants me dead, and he, indirectly or not, is responsible for this virus. Or at least, if it’s not my death he seeks, I am at least once again a pawn in his morbid games.

"I know I am a target because I let…” She stops, unready to say Megan’s name aloud yet. “Because I failed. The only reason I failed is because I chose to. I chose to fail, and that sent me down a path I cannot return from. I refuse to comply with them any further. If they want to play with me, then I will fight back. I am done being the victim.”

The words had never been spoken aloud before, in fact, Anna had never truly considered them before. Victim. She had been a victim before she was even old enough to know what the word meant. Speaking the truth out loud felt freeing, despite the fear. Despite the other truths still hidden away in the darker parts of her mind. Help me because the bullet to my temple failed me and I do not know what else to do. Help me because I cannot help myself, because I have nothing else to live for but vengeance. Help me because you are my brother and I am your sister and they are killing me and I am lost and I am afraid and I am weak and please just smile and stop the pain even for a second just please help me

"That is it. That is my plea. The truth of what is happening." Anna doesn’t mention the dark nights in her apartment, going from gun to water to knives, trying to beat her curse. But just as her abilities were failing her with the virus, so they had failed her again, granting her a continued existence. The result of that irony is what she does share. "I do not deserve to live. I know that. But I will not let them kill me. If I die, it will not be because of them." She looks back up at Sam, a brief surge of adrenaline filling her. "They made you a victim too. At the very least, help me because we both are just pawns to them. We deserve a better death, wouldn’t you agree?"

[samuelkennedy-blog]

Sam couldn't understand why, of all people, Anna would be a target. In the nearly ten years that he'd known her, she'd always seemed to have a giant stick up her ass. She was the most by-the-book Hunter Sam had ever met and absolutely the last person he would think the Hunters would turn on. The why didn't matter, though, because Anna was breaking down in front of him and with each word, Sam could feel his own tough skin shedding.

He dropped his arms and with them his defenses and finally took a seat, leaning over the edge of the desk with his hands clasped in his lap. "I don't know what happened and, frankly, I don't care, but..." He paused, looking away briefly as he bit his lower lip. If you don't deserve to live, then who does? As he turned back to Anna, he shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, trying his best to keep himself from letting too much of his own emotions get in the way of what he wanted to say. "I'll help you; for no other reason than because you're family and because... despite all of our differences, you've had my back. That's something I can't genuinely deny."

It was strange for Sam to be sitting before Anna and having a conversation without that god-awful clock reminding him that his time to prove himself was limited. He scanned the rest of the desk quickly and noticed that the clock wasn't the only thing missing. Why did she clear her desk? Just as the question entered his mind, the answer did as well.

Fear.

"You're right," he said finally, choosing to ignore his sudden urge to bring up their last meeting. He hadn't realized just how much of an impact his actions would have, but if she would go so far as to remove all of the items from her desktop, he figured it wasn't something that should be brought up. "They're cowards and we should have figured that out months ago when we found out that they were hiding our pasts from us." Sam sighed and moved his chair closer to the desk. "Look, even though we haven't seen eye to eye on a lot of things and even if you're not exactly my favorite person..." He paused and looked up at Anna, locking his eyes with hers. "I can't abandon the only real family I have. I don't know about you, but that's important to me. Family. You, by extension."

[annanovotny]

at the curtain's call || sam & anna

[annanovotny]

She doesn’t quite know what to make of the person in front of her - so professionally put together with a polished tone to his words. He looks exactly like Anna had wished he had looked - back when her biggest annoyance was a subordinate who refused to wear a tie and slouched wherever he sat. But now, she has much larger things to focus on, and her brother looks like a stranger. Brother. Keep saying it to yourself. Get used to it. Embrace it. You have to. “Whatever is more comfortable for you.” Her grin is small and fake - she would much prefer Sam down at eye level, slouching the way he always did, in the manner she was used to and was even comfortable with - but she was in no place to make demands. Not today.

The words are harder to get out than she expected them to be. Sam doesn’t look like Sam and Sam doesn’t sound like Sam and Anna feels as if she is talking to a stranger, and she doesn’t open up to strangers, not now, not ever. She forces herself to look in Sam’s eyes, forcing herself to focus on the small glimmer of the boy she once knew still hiding behind his spiteful gaze. From the day they had met, she had hated Sam, but pretending she was talking to the young boy was easier than facing the man in front of her, the man who was angry with her and for all intents and purposes, surely must hate her. Sam didn’t always hate her, and she clung to that truth. Her last hope.

“I asked you here…” She pauses, the words hitching on the tip of her tongue. She takes it in, the last moment she has before compromising decades worth of self-preservation. “I asked you here because I am sick. My,” (powers, curse, abilities… she still doesn’t quite know what to refer to them as yet) “body cannot heal itself. It seems that with every attempt my body makes at purging the virus, the fiercer the virus strikes back. I fear soon that my physical well-being will be irreparably compromised, if not already.”

“I need a third person to monitor this virus for me. I have done a sufficient job of doing so myself initially, but matters are escalating. Being infected myself, I cannot directly look at this through an unbiased lens. I need… I need you, Sam. I do not have anyone else, and I know our last meeting ended on awful terms, but you are the only person I can trust with this.”

She takes a deep breath, swallowing the rest of her pride. Swallowing the tears she refused to let fall, refused to even form at the base of her eyes. “Please, Sam. Please help me.”

[samuelkennedy-blog]

Sam shifts his weight slightly as Anna speaks, but remains standing with his feet firmly planted. He hadn't noticed it before, but once she had said it out loud - that she was 'sick' (whatever that really meant) - he scanned her and for the first time noticed the gauntness; the paleness; the exhaustion. There was a knot in his chest that he did his best to ignore. She didn't care about him and now she was expecting him to just drop everything and help?

"Sorry to hear that," he stated calmly, in as detached a voice as he could muster. "I don't really see why you need my help. It's not like you've ever shown any sign of giving a fuck about me, so why should I care now? Just because I'm your brother?" He paused, arms now crossed on his chest. "I mean, you know, excuse me for not jumping on this, but I don't see why I should give a shit. You're sick, right? Go see a doctor. I don't have time for this bullshit."

Anna never needed anyone for any reason but just because she was saying she needed him now didn't mean he had to do a damn thing about it. She just wanted him to keep an eye on whatever virus she had and while it surely would have been an easy job to do, it wasn't going to be easy to get Sam to say yes.

Anna is your family. She's all the family you have and might ever have. Help her.

He sighed before relaxing slightly, but the tension remained thick. "Why should I help you, huh? Tell me the truth, Anna. What is this and what's in it for me?"

[weliveonarainbow]

[annanovotny]

at the curtain's call || sam & anna

It had been months since she had last seen Sam. Anna had interacted with him, of course, through brief email reports and the like, and she had seen him in passing on campus at least once a week, but she had not had a face-to-face interaction with him since their last big talk. She should be grateful, after all, Sam was a never-ending source of irritation for her, but suddenly having a life devoid of nagging banter and frustrating smirks was… peculiar. It was hard to place blame of frustration on someone who was no longer there.

She thinks about it for two weeks before sending the email, wrestling with her pride as she struggles to figure out exactly how to go about this. Anna finally sends it, a brief "Report, my office, five o’clock". She hopes Sam’s sense of professionalism would bear its head long enough for him to actually come. She wouldn’t blame him if he did not come, but they were raised to put such feelings behind them. In theory, it would work.

Anna cleared her desk of anything other than her computer, even placing the small placard that read “Anna Novotny, D.Litt.” inside her desk drawer. She hated herself for feeling so nervous, for seeing a clock being thrown at her every time she closed her eyes. But she couldn’t hate Sam for it, not when she needed his help. She couldn’t allow herself to hate him, at least for now.

By the time Sam finally arrives, Anna has wrestled her pride down to a placated position, but pride swims alongside hate and she’s struggling to keep them both at bay. “Samuel.” She nods to the chairs in front of her desk, keeping her voice as detached as she possibly can. “Please, have a seat.” 

[samuelkennedy-blog]

Anna was the last person Sam wanted to see. He was still angry and frustrated (he'd worked out his resentment of her for the most part) even after he'd done his best to try and forget what had taken place in her office. It was a lot harder without Tay around. She'd finally heard from Leo and run off back to Detroit to meet up with and get the answers she had been waiting years for.

Sam envied Tay in a way he had never imagined he ever would. She and her brother were extremely close and he had always kept a close eye on her even when he was off doing his own thing (such as running away to Europe all those years ago.) Now Sam finally had the chance for to have family he'd always wanted -- a sister of his own whom he instinctively wanted to take care of -- but might never fully obtain. Not that he'd been allowed any sort of choice in the matter. Anna, at best, detested Sam (she made that perfectly clear over the years) and her rejection of him was all he needed to believe that family was really fucking overrated.

When Sam's phone flashed a notification for a new email, he thought about ignoring it, but the only people who ever emailed him were his superiors and as much as he would have liked to avoid anyone even remotely involved in the tangled web of lies he now found himself at the center of, hunting was his job and he had been raised to always prioritize his work over everything else.

The surprising part about the email was not that it was from Anna, but rather that in it, she requested his presence at her office. It was inevitable that they would have to interact, but given the amount of time that had passed, Sam wasn't even sure if she was still active any longer.

For the first time, Sam dressed professionally; combing his hair, covering his tattoos with the long sleeves of a collared button down, trading his contacts for the prescription lenses that had been collecting dust for years. He told himself that he wasn't doing this to impress Anna or change her opinion of him, but simply to appear as though he had come out of the ordeal unscathed. It wasn't the way he normally dressed, however, so the statement was more than likely going to be misinterpreted. (It was a half-truth, anyway. He was trying to make a better impression with his sister, whether he was aware of his own ulterior motives or not.)

He entered the office and stood, hands clasped in front of him, tall and somewhat rigid behind the chair he had previously sat in at least twice a week. "I'm fine, thanks," he replied. He stared at her with an unapologetic intensity, his voice carrying a hint of that spite he thought he had gotten over. "I'd prefer to stand, if that's alright with you."

[mistakeno3-deactivated20151120]

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[tayvia-wade]

wishing for rain as i stand in the desert - tay & sam

[tayvia-wade]

Tay kept her eyes trained on Sam, trying to analyse every flicker of emotion that crossed his face. She’s never tell him, but their being together, despite being all that she’d wanted for a long time, had her more scared now than she was when she arrived in Oregon. Now as well as looking out for herself and missing her brother, she was worried about losing the only non-blood relation who had ever meant anything to her. She eventually smiled when he kissed her, pulling the sheet over the two of them. 

She was snug in his arms, feeling that particular kind of warm that only came from being held by someone else, when thoughts of Ant and their conversation a few days earlier came flashing through her mind. Sam’s words about trust, about sharing things, had her able to button her lip. “Sam? Are you still awake?” She knew he was, just from the rhythm of his breathing at her ear. “I need to ask you about Ant. Did you - do you - know how inexperienced she is?” She wanted to say more, wanted to point out that Ant had never even killed before, but she was Sam’s buddy, and she felt like she should show a little decorum. “We met up for drinks. She was uh, a bit of a mess.”

[samuelkennedy-blog]

Sam stirs slightly, but doesn't open his eyes. He's awake and he knows she knows that, but he doesn't want to move from where he is, wrapped around Tay. "Why do you need to ask me about Ant?" he asks in a tired, gravelly voice. Finally, he opens his eyes, shaking his head slightly as he sits up and slides his arm out from under Tay to rub his face. "Inexperienced? What are you talking about? I trained her. She's not inexperienced."

He groans and drops his hands to his lap. "Well, what the hell did she do this time? Tay, to be perfectly honest, I don't have any idea what you're talking about or why you're asking me."

[louisdupont]

[tayvia-wade]

wishing for rain as i stand in the desert - tay & sam

[tayvia-wade]

Sam said ‘nothing’ and Tay couldn’t help but furrow her brow, even when he pulled her close. The proximity was comforting and worrying at the same time, that Sam needed her and trusted her and in return, she couldn’t imagine being apart from him. “Are you okay?” There were a hundred other questions on the tip of her tongue, but first she wanted to give Sam the opportunity to express how he was feeling. If he was up to that.

When Sam ran his hand over her cheek, she turned into him and burrowed her face into the curve between his shoulder and his neck. “You know, you don’t have to tell me everything. I mean. I appreciate it. So much. But I will understand if sometimes things happen and you just can’t tell me.” It was hard to say, but she knew the reality of their situation. Sometimes they’d be on different missions. And the fact that Sam didn’t even know that she and Anna had met, thus far - well, part of Tay felt horribly guilty. She pushed the thought away, and ran her hand into his hair, dropping a kiss to his lips. “You’re my priority. Your happiness…” She trailed off, not knowing how much to say. “You’re just really important.”

[samuelkennedy-blog]

Sam threw the question around in his mind, not entirely sure how to respond. "I will be," he said finally. And it was true; so he hoped. Maybe he wasn't alright now, but he wanted to believe that he would be eventually. It wouldn't be easy to just go back to 'business as usual' with Anna, but as she'd said, their blood relation hadn't made any difference before, why should it now?

"It's not that I felt like I had to... I guess it was more of me wanting to because I care about you and I trust you and I think it's... I don't know, it just seems important to share shit like that and not bottle it up." He smiled at her confession, kissing her reassuringly when she finished. "Hey, you're important to me too, alright? Let's, uh... let's get some rest, huh?"

[devanchanning]

[She rolls her eyes.] First off, if you ever call me mom again, you’ll find yourself down one best friend. When do I get to meet the poor, unfortunate soul you’re dating?

[samuelkennedy-blog]

Right. I'm not saying you don't have it in you, but you don't have it in you. 

Hmmm... Not sure. Soon, I guess. Is there a certain amount of time you're supposed to wait before you subject your girlfriend to the intense scrutiny of your best friend?

[devanchanning]

I mean, it’s the summer. You’re not supposed to care—you just go with whatever happens to come up that day. At least, that’s what my summers look like.

Your what? Oh, my God, Sam. That’s the kind of thing you tell a best friend when it happens, dickweed. Who is she? What’s her name? Does she have a set 401k? Did you get her social security number? These are important things I should already know, but. Does she make you happy?

[samuelkennedy-blog]

Just make sure that I'm involved in some of those Not Plans, huh?

It did just happen! Kind of. Cool your jets, Dev, it's a new thing. Her name's Tay. I've actually known her for a long time, but... Yeah, she and I hadn't seen each other in a while and now she's in town indefinitely and... [He shrugs.] Yes, mom, she does make me happy. Thanks for the concern.

[devanchanning]

I don’t know yet. Plans are for people whose lives need to be controlled. I’ll figure it out when I get there.

What about you? I bet you’ve got a super long, interesting list of things to do this summer.

[samuelkennedy-blog]

That's right... I forgot how refreshingly apathetic you are. I mean that in the best of ways. I probably couldn't be your friend--let alone your best friend--if you actually cared about something like that.

I don't, actually. I'm kind of relying on my girlfriend to make all of those decisions. I'll go along with whatever as long as it gets me out of the house.

[thesego211]

Visit Original Link

[samuelkennedy-blog]

You've got a worried mind I've got a worried heart You don't know what to do I don't know where to start

[devanchanning]

Too bad almost doesn’t count, Sammy.

[samuelkennedy-blog]

True, true... So, tell me. What are your plans for the summer? What are you most excited about doing when this shit's finally over? 

[devanchanning]

So close to summer, and yet… I’m still writing papers.

[samuelkennedy-blog]

Almost there, sweetheart. Almost there.

[asciitombstone-deactivated20140]

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[samuelkennedy-blog]

Fool enough to almost be it Cool enough to not quite see it Doomed Pick your pockets full of sorrow And run away with me tomorrow

[notdavidfincher]

[tayvia-wade]

wishing for rain as i stand in the desert - tay & sam

[tayvia-wade]

Despite the fact that she’d spent they day imagining every possible reason Sam might have just abandoned her, Tay struggled to make sense of what he was saying. His words were supposed to be comforting, but she’d never heard a promise that someone was okay sound so dejected. And then he was staring at the ceiling and there wasn’t a part of them touching any more, and Tay was struggling to put all the pieces together. Anna contacted Sam in the middle of the night. Anna and Sam are related? Siblings? And then she rejected him? It’s the sheer ridiculousness of the story that made it easy to accept.

She hesitated before reaching out, tentatively taking Sam’s hand. “I believe you.” There was an ache deep in her chest with the desire to take some of Sam’s hurt away. “I understand. I mean, I have no idea what that must have felt like…” The idea of being rejected by her brother has Tay speechless for a moment, unable to comprehend what her life would have been like if Leo hadn’t brought her with him when joined the hunters. “But I understand that you must have needed some time to think.” 

More than anything, she wanted to be back in his arms, resting her head on his chest, but Tay wasn’t sure how close Sam could bear having her. She whispered the next words into the space between them. “What does this mean, Sam? What happens now?”

[samuelkennedy-blog]

When Tay took his hand, Sam lifted it and brought it to his lips. He wasn't sure what to say anymore. What he had told her was all he really knew. Anna had called him in, shared the information of their parentage, and then... nothing.

Sam slipped his hand out of Tay's and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her in closer. "I don't know what it means," he said, chewing mindlessly on his lower lip. "Nothing, I guess. It means nothing." He took a shaky deep breath, recognizing the fact that the word 'nothing' had so much more than one meaning in this situation. "It hasn't even been a day and I already miss the days when I didn't think I had any family."

He sighed again, placing his hand on Tay's cheek and running his thumb along her cheek bone. "But you can't tell anyone, alright? And you can't let Anna know that you know. I wasn't even supposed to tell you, but... I--I thought you deserved to know why I was gone."