Let It Be

Chapter 25

I collapsed onto the orange futon and stared at the ceiling. So much, this was all so much. I didn't want to think about it, I wanted to push it away and pretend that nothing had changed, but I couldn't keep the thoughts away.

Sam was immortal. He was never going to die. He'd be alive until the end of time, just wasting away the time with Emile. I mean, they did productive things. They had chosen to help humanity with their immortal gifts. They both had fought in wars. Emile was an excellent scientist, since he had so much experience from bygone eras. He used his power to influence big medical decisions for the better. He was nearly never wrong.

Sam did important things, too. It took him a while to admit it to me, but he does use his power to help people. The time he helped me with the computer, a month after I had been in Hartford, I caught a glimpse of those second degree burns. Only recently had I gotten him to confess that he had helped when a house had caught on fire the night before; a woman wouldn't get out of the building because her baby was stuck in its crib. Since Sam knew it wouldn't kill him, just hurt him, he ran through the flames, grabbed the baby, and got it and the mother out safely.

He helped with the car accident all those months ago, when we were coming home from the museum. He'd helped a girl being attacked by a dog that one day I saw him covering his blood soaked shirt beneath a hoodie before school. He was always coming to school with scratches and burns and bruises, though they quickly disappeared with his immortal health. He does that stuff a lot. When he sees an incident that he knows that he can help out with, he does it.

But to never die. What was that like? To live forever.

To live forever without the person you were destined for. To know that there was once someone out there for you, one person for your entire eternity, and they had gotten away. Knowing that you would never get another chance at love, not for the rest of eternity. Now that's just not fair.

But Sam. Sam.

For the rest of his eternity, he would never love a woman again. Nobody but me. If I died, he would just sit around for the rest of eternity, knowing that it would never end, his loneliness, his missing me.

I curled into myself. Me?

Me?

There had to be a mistake. To be so in love with me that he would never feel anything for another woman for the rest of eternity? It just wasn't possible.

Nobody but me.

Not Sam. No, not Sam... he didn't deserve that. Why couldn't he have been destined for another immortal woman? It wouldn't be a problem for him. There would never be the possibility that they would lose each other, or that they would ever be stuck for the rest of time alone and pining for someone they could never have again. He should be destined for another immortal; he'd be happy and safe.

I'm mortal. I would die and hopefully get over my misery from losing him eventually, wherever I went after this life. It wouldn't torture me as much as it would torture him. Probably.

And even if he did have to be destined for a stupid mortal, why, oh why, did he have to get stuck with me? He didn't deserve it. He didn't. Not Sam. He deserved a normal woman. A beautiful, kind, undamaged woman who could love him normally. 

Someone who wouldn't shake with fear when he kissed her. Someone who had never been broken. Someone who owned more than few hundred dollars' worth of possessions. Someone who had a family to take him back to. Someone who isn't afraid.