#but sjskissnsk that's so much energy to write out in full

[starstaiined]

it hits her one night without warning, as she's kneeling on broken bottles nursing her mother's latest bender.

sam isn't coming back.

tara meets her mother's dark eyes, clouded from alcohol and god knows what else, and suddenly she's eleven and panicking as sam stumbles and slurs messy apologies. her chests constricts sharply. her ribs bite into the fragile edges of her bleeding heart. it's okay, hey, it's okay, i'm okay, it's okay. she murmurs the same lie now that she did then. it blurs the line between past and present a little more. tars never noticed how much sam looked like their mother before now. christina had always been sharp edges and sharper words, leaving tara in pieces like shrapnel littering the battlefield of her childhood home. cruel indifference or pointed malice: tara never knew which was worse.

but if christina had been the open wound, sam had been the balm. gentle eyes and gentler hands, always reaching out to patch up her wounds and guide her in the right direction. when christina tore her to pieces, sam sat and stirched her together again. when christina picked up a sword, sam picked up a shield. they were two opposing forces. they couldn't be more different.

but as tara drapes a blanket over her mother, as she brushes back messy hair, it's like someone superimposed an image of sam months before she left. the haze of drugs, the festering loneliness, the haunting heartbreak. it makes her dizzy. she wonders, briefly, if tragedy had been bred into their blood.

sam, the victim. sam, the villain. sam, the martyr. sam, the monster. sam, the light. sam, the liar.

sam, who's gone.

sam, who left.

sam.

tara's throat tightens. her fingers curl into fists as the fire starts licking at the bottom of her spine and blazes into a roaring inferno: she's choking on ashes and smoke as her ears ring.

sam is gone.

sam left.

sam is never coming back.

her eyes meet the foyer mirror, and tara jerks back violently. those eyes ... dark, miserable, lonely, haunted, manic ... they aren't hers. they're sam's. the slope of her nose, the curve of her cheekbones, the bow of her lips ... it's all sam. sam and their stupid fucked up family legacy. glass shatters as tara's wilted fingers fly into it. again, and again, and again, and again, and again—

she isn't sure when the screaming devolved into crying or when that desolved into bone deep weariness: all she's sure of is one thing.

sam isn't coming back.

tara stumbles up the stairs and to an empty room, untouched in almost two years.

sam isn't coming back.

she curls up on the bed, bloody knuckles staining it with more than memories as she sniffles.

sam isn't coming back.

and for all intents and purposes, neither is tara.