#i would know. i've dealt with both. they like to change hands occassionally to keep me on my toes.

[krikeymate]

slight Canon divergence

What if Sam also deals with major depression because of everything that’s been going on. Tara pushing her away, not really having a focus or goals for the future outside of Tara. And if Tara doesn’t want her then what does she have to live for?

Cue her argument with Tara at the beginning of the 6 leaves her feeling so depressed that she actually tries to end her life. This way she won’t be a burden to Tara anymore and Tara wont have to deal with people coming after them. She genuinely believes Tara would be better off without her and Tara wants her to let her go and the nsuper angsty aftermath of Tara realizing that Sam is missing, Tara getting the call that Sam is in the hospital for the attempt and then the subsequent rush of guilt that just ruins her as she sits at Sam’s bed side waiting for her to recover.

Sam has depression with anxiety, Tara has anxiety with depression.

Tara wants her to let her go. But how can she? How can she let go of her whole world? Who is she without her sister? She can't do that again. Sam never realised how empty her life was until she held her sister in her arms again. She spent five long years surviving without her heart, nothing but a zombie stumbling her way through life in the hopes it would lead her back home once again. But what do you do when you find it and it shuts the door in your face?

Sam can't do anything but let the latest argument stew around in her head as she sits at the bottom of the complex stairs. Tara's right. She can't just follow her sister around for the rest of her life, can she? Tara's not like Sam. She's normal. She's going to lead a normal life: get a degree, get a real job... meet someone... settle down, have a family of her own... Sam doesn't fit into that equation. Tara... she- she wouldn't be happy with the vision of the future Sam holds. One where they're eternally young and wrapped in each other's arms, where no one can rip the other away from them.

Sam finds she can't sit there any longer. She needs fresh air, she needs a walk.

~

Tara does her best not to make it obvious how hard her heart is racing as the tv drones on. She closes her eyes, trying to breathe deep. This can't be happening, not again. It's a coincidence, it has to be, it has to be. I need to just breathe and think clearly and I need... I need... I need Sam.

"Where's Sam?" Thankfully it's Mindy who pulls the words right from her brain. Tara opens her eyes to find Chad in the doorway, shaking his head. "She's not down there."

Tara finds her body moving of its own accord. Her feet take her back to her room, her hand fishing in her pocket for her phone. It rings, and rings, and rings, and- the number you have dialled cannot be rea- Tara slams the phone onto her bed in frustration. "You're supposed to pick up when I call!"

~

Sam feels her phone vibrating in her pocket, but can't bring herself to look at it. The night air is chilly as she sits in her still-damp shirt, but Sam doesn't really feel it. She's having trouble feeling anything at all. Her hands fiddle with a switchblade aimlessly. Open, closed. Spin it around. Open, closed. Spin it around. Open, clos- ouch. A car horn in the distance makes her jump, knife slipping and cutting into the meat of her palm.

Later, Sam will wish she knew what to say when asked why and what were you thinking. The truth is that she doesn't know why, and she wasn't really thinking at all. It was instinct, perhaps. A thirst for blood that sits in her very bones, starving for another sip, another taste. The next cut is deliberate. The sting feels delicious, it feels. There's a moment where Sam doesn't think about her sister, where she just focuses on the pain and the blood, and then the knife is slipping from her fingers to the floor, and she realises how dizzy she feels, how cold it's gotten. How deep she's cut. Oh, she thinks. Tara's gonna be so mad at me.

She manages to call 911 before she passes out.

~

Tara hates hospitals.

She's spent her entire life in and out of them. Usually as the patient. Somehow, being the visitor is worse.

She sits there unable to tear her eyes away from Sam's wrists, bandaged and tied down to the bedframe. A necessary precaution, just in case, the nurse told her, not unkindly. It wasn't very reassuring.

This is her fault, she knows. She knows. Sam's always been the strongest person of them all, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have a weak point, something that makes her fragile. Tara knows that weak point is her. She may as well have held the knife herself.

She scoots the chair forward, and brushes her fingers over her sister's arm. She has to do better, she thinks. She blew up at Sam tonight, and it was unacceptable. She needs to get control over herself, for her sister. She can't let what happened last year have this power over her. She's stronger than that, she has to be stronger than that. For Sam. Sam needs her.