I'm not scared to jump; I'm not scared to fall

With the weather starting to change, Jordan has, somewhat predictably, become increasingly restless, dragging Sam out of the apartment whenever she has a chance. For the most part, Sam can't say he minds that, though he knows full well that he's probably a little too easily inclined to give in to his daughter's whims. At least he can work on his own schedule, putting the finishing touches on an app that he's hoping to roll out, at this rate, sometime in the next century. It's good, though, having a direction, actually knowing what he's trying to do instead of aimlessly trying to pick up the pieces of a life he didn't get to have. He likes to think that his father would approve of his arcade games from the '80s being revamped for a contemporary crowd, but he tries not to dwell on it for long. He'll never know one way or the other, and he can't let that be the only reason he's doing this.

Today, it's hardly on his mind at all, anyway, Jordan's enthusiasm keeping him more than a little busy. There are days he feels like he can barely keep up with her, like she's got three times as much energy as he ever will. This is one such day, Sam winding up slumped on the grass, half-leaning against a tree, as Jordan celebrates a victory of some kind. He can never really understand the rules of the games she makes up; he would probably let her win anyway.

He's still catching his breath when she runs up to someone on the path before he can stop her, a man with children of his own. "Hi!" she says, clearly catching on to this fact, though it's the father she addresses. "Want to play?"

Sam rolls his eyes, but it's fond, and finally starts to pull himself to his feet. "Jordan," he calls, smiling almost apologetically at the man in question, "what did I say about running up to strangers in the park?"

It's late when Sam gets back from Eden's. He'd feel guilty for that, if he didn't walk into his apartment to find Marie, the college student who lives a few floors down and who watches Jordan sometimes, still leaning over his coffee table, working on an assignment. Still, he apologizes and smiles sheepishly and pays her a little extra before she leaves, even if most of what she's done is get through some of her homework after putting Jordan to bed. At a time like this, it means a hell of a lot anyway. He should have been here, he knows he should have, but at the end of the day, maybe he hasn't changed all that much. Or maybe he's more like his father than he ever realized. There isn't a lot he remembers about when his mother died, but he does know that in the months — the few years, really — after she died, his dad was around less and less, throwing himself into his work, spending time, as Sam knows now, on the Grid. His instinct had ultimately been the same, albeit on a smaller scale.

At least he's here now, though, and he has no intention of going anywhere anytime soon. In spite of the hour, he slips quietly into Jordan's room, where his daughter is sleeping peacefully, unaware of anything that's happened over the past day. Gently, carefully, he scoops her up into his arms, and though she stirs a little, he just brushes a kiss against her hair and shushes her, tells her to go back to sleep, which she does easily. He almost envies that.

She's slept in her own bed, in her own room, for a while now, but there are still occasional nights that she comes in and wakes him up and crawls in beside him. Tonight, he's the one who needs her close, a reminder that she's still here, the one person he hasn't lost. When he finally dozes off, which still takes longer than it should, it's with Jordan tucked against his side, her head on his chest, the two of them alone in the world again.

He wonders if it was ever like this with his dad after this accident. God, does he wish he still had him around now, too. He's lost his old man three times over now, gotten more than used to his absence, but if ever there were a time he could use a little guidance, it's with this. It's not exactly a situation he ever thought he'd have to prepare himself for.

The morning starts like just about any other, Jordan waking up not long before he does, all of her not-quite-three year old enthusiasm meaning he doesn't get much of a chance to sleep in. Today, he wouldn't want one, anyway, instead hauling himself out of bed so he can start making breakfast while she sits playing with a few of her toys. He never did a whole lot of cooking before this place, preferring back home to live mostly off takeout and leftover takeout, and even now, he's probably not as good about it as he should be, but this still seems like something to get right, not to do too half-heartedly. It's far from some special occasion, but to break news like this, but he also wants to preemptively soften the blow as much as he can, to try to make sure she's as okay as she can be. Pancakes probably won't make a hell of a lot of difference on that front, but at least it's something.

Sam waits until he's finished cooking, until he's cut her food and his is getting cold in front of him, the two sitting on the couch rather than at the dining room table, before he speaks. "Hey, kiddo, I've got something I need to talk to you about," he says, his words measured, careful. Jordan looks up at him with wide eyes, her mouth full of food, and nods. "So you know how... I've told you that we lived someplace else before here, and we got here when you were a baby?"

"Yeah," Jordan says around a mouthful of pancake. He's told her plenty of stories about the island in the time they've been here, the same way his dad used to tell him stories about the Grid, and it seems like the best place to start. Maybe he doesn't know what comes after this, but he's not just going to say that two people have vanished into thin air. He knows what that does. If nothing else, he can make sure she doesn't grow up with all the same questions he had.

"And you know how, a little while ago, Clementine, the girl your mom adopted — we don't know how or why, but she went somewhere else?" He can't say disappeared. He won't.

"Yeah," Jordan says again, frowning now, evidently aware that there's something serious going on here. "Why?"

Sam sighs, his shoulders slumping with it, and for a moment, he feels impossibly old, far more so than his thirty-one years. Jordan shifts towards him, twisting on the couch, and then he moves closer, too, turning to face her, taking her small hands in his larger ones. "I found out last night," he starts, and then has to swallow hard to stop his voice from breaking, "that your mommy and William, they went somewhere else, too. They're not here anymore."

Jordan's confusion is evident on her face, the pieces in front of her ones she can't put together, and God, does he remember how that feels. Somewhere under years of bitterness and resentment, he's not sure he ever stopped feeling it, not until he found his dad on the Grid. "But how come?" she asks. "When do they come back?"

It's not like he didn't know this is what he was leading up to, but still, he can't answer the question at first, closing his eyes for a few seconds, wanting to delay the inevitable just as long as he possibly can. "They don't, sweetheart," he finally replies. "It doesn't work that way. Just like we can't go back to where you were born." She's about to cry, he can hear it, see it, and he lets go of her hands only to rest his against her cheeks instead. "But listen to me, alright? It's not because they wanted to. And it doesn't mean your mommy doesn't love you. She does. She'd be here if she could. It's just the way things work here sometimes."

They're things he vaguely recalls being told to him, too, but in this case, it's just the truth, and all he can do is hope she believes him. That, and hold her close when she climbs into his lap, skinny arms wrapping around his neck. "But I want her here," Jordan says through her tears, the words muffled into Sam's shoulder.

"I know," he says softly. "I know. So do I." That's been the case for a long time, longer than just the half a day he's known about Andrea's disappearance. Someday, when she's older, he'll tell Jordan that whole story. This morning is far from the time for it. Besides, he stopped being quite so hung up on her ages ago. It's his friend he wants back, the mother of his child, who's dealing with a loss now that he knows firsthand there's no fixing. That's another story to tell her at another time.

When Jordan draws back, it's abrupt, her cheeks flushed and eyes red and watery, hiccuping around a sob in her throat. "Are you gonna go away, too?"

Maybe it's a question he should have seen coming. All things considered, given his own history, he doesn't know why he didn't. All Sam does know is that it feels at once like he's been punched in the stomach, the air knocked out of him, the fact that she's in a position to have to ask that hurting quite possibly more than anything else. Everything is so uncertain in this place, too, and he doesn't want to lie to her. Someday he very well might be gone, and there'd be no way to predict it or prepare for it. He remembers something Eden told him once, though, about kids disappearing with their parents, and that Jordan would be with him if he ever went anywhere. Just how true that is, he isn't totally certain, but William disappearing with Andrea definitely lends credence to the theory, enough for him to act on it now.

"Hey, no," he says, ducking his head towards hers, careful to hold her gaze. "I'm not going anywhere. I am never, ever gonna leave you, okay? I promise." It's all he's ever wanted, for her to have a life different from his. And sure, nothing here is all that predictable — hell, life itself isn't — but he'll do whatever is in his power to ensure that she doesn't have to lose another parent until years and years from now, when old age eventually takes his toll and she's got a family of her own. Until then, he intends to stay right here.

Smoothing a hand over her hair, he presses a kiss to her forehead. "You and me, kid, we're on the same team. Always."

It's hard work, starting a company. Maybe that should speak for itself, but as stupid as it makes him feel, Sam had underestimated just how much that would be the case. Certainly it's a far cry from what finally taking over ENCOM would have been like at home, with everything already in place, even if he'd intended to change a lot. Here, he has no connections and he's starting from scratch, and he's been doing so with a daughter who'll be two soon to take care of. Growing up, he never really understood what it must have been like for his dad, raising him alone and running a company and whatever else at the same time. He has a hell of a lot more respect for the old man now. He's still determined to be different, to be present.

Today, though, he has a sitter with Jordan while he gets things done. Normally, he can get enough work done in his apartment with her around, what he'd been doing before starting to get this off the ground, but he can't exactly bring her with him while meeting with programmers he's hired to go over some plans. It would be easier, God knows, if there were more people from home here, if he could at least have a person or two on his staff familiar with ENCOM and the way it was run, or was supposed to be, but he's got to bring them all up to speed, and that's going to take some time. It will be worth it, though. Maybe it'll be ages before he has anything to show for it, but he'd rather take his time and do this right, in a way that would make his dad proud, even if he'll never be here to see it.

He's still sitting at the table outside a little café where they've been going over everything a little while after the others have left, poring over notes both on paper and on his laptop. When he accidentally knocks over his glass of water, though, it's only the latter he manages to save, the pages in front of him getting soaked through. "Shit."

At first, Sam doesn't think all that much of it. That in itself is probably ill-advised when he knows he's a hell of a lot stronger than he was the day before, but he learns quickly that shit is weird all over the city. At least is isn't climbing up buildings or accidentally starting fires or anything of the sort. This is manageable, and it isn't as if he's about to go wasting his time asking around, trying to figure out what these newfound abilities mean or where they might have come from. He'll wait it out, like the weekend on the island when he was a kid again, and all the other weird shit that happened there.

It's when he goes to sleep that everything changes. The dreams are — unsettling, to say the least, dark and gruesome, featuring women he knows he's never seen before, except he's pretty sure he is them, which is even weirder. It's not as if he expects everything that happens in his head while he sleeps to make total sense, but this is different. Only, then, there is someone familiar, and even when he wakes up with his heart racing, he knows who might have some answers for him.

He doesn't bother letting Buffy know he's stopping by before he heads over, just hoping she's home when he stands at her door and knocks, arms folding over his chest as he waits. When the door does open, he grins crookedly at her, offering in lieu of a greeting, "So, uh, I had this dream about you last night."

He hadn't meant to fall asleep. One thing Sam has been learning quickly, though, is that with a baby around, he needs to take whatever sleep he can while he can get it. It hasn't been as bad lately as it was during those first few months, but Jordan still keeps him awake as often as not, and while he's gotten somewhat used to running on less sleep than he was used to before, that doesn't make him any less exhausted. Occasionally, dozing off without intending to is just impossible to avoid. And sometimes, that just happens to be when he's sitting on the couch holding his daughter.

If Andrea weren't around, it would probably be more of a cause for concern. As it is, he knows can count on her to take Jordan if that becomes necessary, which is about as much considering it as he gets to do. When he wakes up, he isn't sure just how long it's been, if it's been minutes or hours, just that Jordan has started to cry, shifting in his arms and pulling him from his sleep. "Hey, hey, it's alright," he says, rocking her gently, voice soft, if rough. "It's —"

His sentence stops there, because suddenly, he isn't sure if it really is alright after all. They aren't on the couch in his and Andrea's hut anymore; they're moving, as the view outside the window serves as proof of, train tracks rattling underneath them. No wonder she's started fussing, he thinks. She's never been on a train before. He doesn't know why they are, though, or how they could have gotten here. Nothing he sees looks familiar, and he'd wonder if this is one of those weird island transformation things, except that a few of the people on the train have started looking at him like he must have just appeared out of nowhere, and it still doesn't make sense that he would have gone from being in his hut to being here. That isn't how this usually works.

It's more nerve-wracking than he'd care to admit, or than he's able to focus on. Before he lets himself freak out about it, he has to figure out what any of this is in the first place, and has to try to get Jordan calmed down. It isn't long before the train pulls into a station, at least, and that seems like a good place to start. Jordan's quieted some by the time he's stepped off the train, too, which is a relief. He doesn't want to have to ask someone for an explanation with a wailing infant in his arms. That relief gets quickly put to rest, though, by how cold it is, which he's more than unprepared for. "Oh, Jesus," he says, drawing in a sharp breath. He's been through a couple of winters on the island, but that's about it as far as his exposure to cold weather goes, and the t-shirt he'd been wearing around the hut really isn't going to cut it for this. Answers are still a top priority, but he'll have to do something about that, for himself and Jordan both. Nodding once to himself, he ducks his head to press a kiss to his daughter's hair, then starts forward. "It's gonna be okay, kiddo," he murmurs. "We're gonna figure this out."

[from here]

"What if we both drown?" Andrea asks, her voice dropping slightly, even as she continues smiling. Right now, it's hard to stop and she's really not all that worried about going under. Another wave pushes her from behind, this one stronger now that they're out a little deeper and she can feel it splashing the back of her neck. Sam's right, though, it's not as cold now that they're further out into the water.

"Now that we're out here, this is probably a bad thing to say, but I think we just reenacted a scene from Jaws," she says. "I remember some couple running down the beach, not totally sober, clothes flying... that's pretty much what we just did."

Somewhere deep down, Sam was aware that both of them swimming in this state, heading out into deeper water, probably wasn't the safest of ideas, but he'd never been bothered with that sort of thing before. If anything, it made him like it all the more. He'd been accused before of having a reckless streak, and the island didn't do him any favors on that front. Between the vague risk that wasn't actually anything to be concerned about, the high from the brownie that hadn't worn off and the drinks that had preceded it, and his current company, he actually thought this was one of the best things he'd done in a long time.

"God, that is how the movie opens, isn't it?" he laughed, shaking his head. It had been ages since he'd seen it, but he was pretty sure she was right. Some things just weren't easily forgettable. "Guess we better hope there aren't any sharks out here."

The thing about getting close to people was that it was mostly involuntary, the sort of thing that happened before a person could realize it. Sam, for his part, had spent the better part of his life trying to avoid exactly that, and had done a damn good job of it, too, keeping even the most important people in his life at a distance. Somehow, though — and he didn't know what to blame, though he suspected all that preceded his arrival had something to do with it — that had changed since he'd shown up here. Approximately half a year, and he'd found himself with a kind of remarkable number of people who actually mattered a great deal to him, which was really ironic, considering that they could quite literally disappear here with even more frequency than they'd gone in and out of his life back home. More hard for even him to believe than that was the fact that he honestly didn't mind it. They would probably all still leave, but for now, they hadn't, and that was kind of cool.

Still, he was a creature of habit, and for all that some things had changed, others had remained exactly the same. In this case, he could thank the island for that, too. No matter how many people he may have found himself inexplicably attached to, the company he preferred most was still Marvin's, the dog a hell of a lot more consistent than anyone else in his life had ever been. Others came and went, but the two of them had each other, and while it was probably ridiculous to get so sentimental over a pet, he still couldn't help being grateful that whoever ran this place had seen fit to reunite them. Whatever else happened, this was how things were supposed to be.

After Marvin's recent brush with death — okay, so none of the stuffed animals had actually gotten close enough to do any damage, whatever — Sam couldn't help but feel like he kind of owed him something, anyway. They'd spent the day hanging out, just the two of them, playing fetch on the beach for a while before starting back for Sam's hut, and he'd stopped into the Winchester on the way, picking up a burger that he'd meant to wait until they were home to give Marvin. The dog, however, had a different idea, and it was only a couple of minutes before Sam relented to the insistent yipping and jumping at his ankles. When it came to his dog, he couldn't even pretend not to be a pushover. Kneeling on the side of the boardwalk, he set down the container he'd gotten to bring the food back in, setting it down in front of the dog. "There you go," he said, "yes, Marvin, you can has cheeseburger."

Only then did he look up and realize there was someone just nearby. "Sorry," he called, looking up with a crooked grin. "We're not in your way, are we?"

Most of the time, Sam remained pretty convinced that Marvin was adjusting to this place a hell of a lot better than he had (or ever would). Granted, that made a lot of sense — life for a dog was probably a lot simpler than a person's, whatever similarities Sam might have found in their backgrounds — but was still of note even so. The island was a whole lot different than L.A., after all, and yet, after just about a month, it seemed as if Marvin had never been anywhere else. Sam, on the other hand, had been here for five times that, and there were days it was still completely beyond him. He'd always been stubborn, though, and had a suspicion that that was mostly to do with how much he hadn't stopped thinking about home, and what he could be doing if he were there. All that time, he'd avoided anything involving ENCOM, save for his annual pranks; only once he had decided to change that did he wind up with it out of his reach. Simply put, it kind of sucked. Marvin, on the other hand, would never have to worry about anything like that, and Sam almost envied him for it.

He was trying, at least, dabbling in classes, teaching one and sitting in on a couple others, even if he hadn't seen the point in registering. It wasn't remotely the same, but at least it was something. For now, though, with a free afternoon, he'd taken Marvin out to the beach, secretly hoping that some of the dog's easygoing manner might rub off on him. (He'd always cared more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.) Fetch was simple, mindless, leaving him grinning as he tossed a stick for Marvin to retrieve, and even broader when he spotted Quorra a little ways off. "Quorra!" he called, waving one hand high to make sure he got her attention. "Hey!"

That Sam hadn't seen this coming wasn't something that surprised him, in retrospect. He'd been told for most of his life that he had an unhealthy tendency to run headlong into things, to act without considering the consequences, and that sooner or later, he would find himself paying for it. More often than not, he managed to get out of such situations with only a few scrapes, metaphorical or otherwise. Now, he was finally beginning to consider the possibility that this time, he might not be so lucky. When he had first heard about Rapture, he had jumped at the chance to get to explore it, the first time in weeks that he hadn't felt like he was going to suffocate from how stifling this was. Being there was intriguing, like the moment he'd shown up on the Grid but less familiar. Faced with the inability to leave, though, he was considerably less fascinated.

At least he wasn't alone. At least, for that matter, he was well aware of how capable Buffy was, even if his knowledge of the TV series was rusty at best. What was more, she was good company; hell, if he had to be stuck in a place like this, where they clearly weren't entirely safe, then he could think of few other people he'd have rather been with. It worked. He wasn't giving up yet, anyway; it wasn't in his nature to. Turning towards her, he lifted a shoulder, as casual as could be managed in the situation. "So where to now?"