Phantom ▷ b. barnes [1] ✔️

ii. call me sam

"We can meet in the middle, bodies and souls collide. Dance in the moonlight, where all the stars align." -- You and I, PVRIS

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Samantha weighed the scissors in her hand. If her mother would have known what horror she was about to perform, she might have fainted. Grace had always said Sam's wavy brown hair was one of her best features... but then again, her mother wasn't around anymore.

Clenching her jaw, Sam set to work. Long strands of hair fell to the bathroom floor as she worked, barely paying attention to her reflection except to make the cuts. In a matter of five minutes, her hair was copped past her chin— for the first time, Sam realized how sharp her jaw was. But she appreciated it at the moment. It made her look more masculine.

Sam has never been... womanly, as her mother, despite always meaning the best, might have put it. While the girls around her grew up and grew up, Samantha had always maintained her long, flat, unfeminine form. Gazing at herself in the mirror now, she wondered what William would say if he could see her.

He'd probably fall to the floor in a fit of laughter.

Sam lifted her chin, narrowing her green eyes. The face that stared back at her looked angry; and broken. She blinked and looked again. "My name is Sam Clarence," she dropped her voice into a lower octave. "I'm here to enlist for the army."

Internally, she winced. She sounded like a teenage boy who hadn't hit puberty yet... Well, maybe she could make it work. Her memory flew back to the previous night and the skinny blond man she'd seen with Bucky.

If he could enlist and get away with it, there was no reason she couldn't.

"My name is Sam Clarence," she tried again, thrusting her jaw forward and puffing out her chest. This time, she sounded a little more convincing... Sam sighed, dropping the facade. "Oh, please let this go right."

Her brother had been a part of the 67th. Sam didn't know where she'd be stationed if she did make it past enlistment, but she figured it wouldn't matter as long as she could get armed and put out of the field. If she could just take out enough Nazis to avenge her brother... Sadness stuck her chest again. Even if she didn't last long, she'd see him again. That was all that mattered.

She was so tired of being alone.

Brushing strands of cut hair off her shoulders, Sam slipped out of the bathroom. She shifted through the cardboard box of her brother old things and clothes at the end of her bed, finally deciding on a long coat, baggy pants, and a cap.

They smelled like William; Sam closed her eyes for a moment, trying to regain her calm.

Clutching at the tags around her neck, she tried to remember his face before the war. His stupid grin. Silently, she swore a promise.

A vow.

I will avenge you, I swear.

Changing into his clothes, she risked one more glance in the mirror. For a moment, she actually saw the part of her brother in her face that her mother had always insisted was there— but then it was gone and she was staring at the saddest scrawny male she'd ever seen. Taking a deep breath, Sam forced herself to turn away, wandering over to the coffee table and picking up the handwritten letter she'd spend the last night working on.

My dearest Meg,

By the time you read this, I'll already be gone. I'd love to tell you where, but I fear you'd think I'd completely lost my mind if I did. Or maybe you'd try to stop me, and I just can't allow that.