Laughter [Tobuscus/Toby Turner]

Chapter Twenty - Toby's POV

Numbness.

I look around my room. It's empty, like my head. I don't even know how to process what I did, what I tried to do. I block out the therapy they try to give me. It wouldn't work. I'm already gone, I know I am. Every day is just another day. I'm tired. I don't want to be here. I only want to be with Cassie.

Considering I can't see her for three weeks, I don't really have anything to live for at the moment.

Eventually, I leave my bed and wander the halls, occasionally glancing into windows and ignoring the "Hello, Toby"s I get from nurses and doctors. I just want to walk.

I don't know how I wind up in the rec room, but suddenly I'm surrounded by people in the same blue outfit that I'm wearing, and some of them turn to look at me.

I spot a girl sitting alone. Doesn't take much notice of me. Long, brown, curly hair. Dainty, petite, with an elvish look to her. I slowly walk over.

Brown eyes. Hazel. Soft, with touches of green. And they're staring right at me. She blinks. I blink.

"You know you have Disney princess eyes?" I ask, because it's the first thing that comes to mind and I can't be bothered to care. It takes her a second, but eventually she smiles, looking down. I sit down across from her. She's playing with her hands. I can see marks on her wrists. I don't ask. She doesn't offer.

She laughs, and her laugh is soft, like a fairy, and I smile. "I don't get that often," she says, looking up at me. "But I think you mean it as a compliment?"

"Yeah, yeah!" I assure her, and she smiles.

"Toby, right?" She asks, and I'm slightly stunned that she knows my name. I nod, and when I ask how she knew, she tells me that she saw me come in on my first day. I ask her for her name.

"Sam," she says quietly, almost hesitantly, and with that one word there's so much more I want to know about this girl I just met, this quiet fairy of a girl, Sam. I want to know who she is. What songs she listens to when she's alone, her favorite comfort food after a hard day, every little detail.

I know we'll get there, one day. I know because I met a girl once, a girl who loves lavender and lilies and Ben & Jerries brownie batter ice cream and old, cheesy love songs, a girl who loves soft kisses in the morning and food fights in the kitchen and the feeling of just letting go. A girl I fell in love with.

I take Sam's shaky hands, holding them in mine and resting them on the table. I have a girl at home that I'd do anything for. A girl I love. But I don't know about Sam. She looks beat down, lost, like a puppy who's been kicked too many times and then left out in the streets.

Nobody deserves that. Nobody deserves to be left out in the streets.

I decide, there and then, that I'm going to show this girl as much care and affection as I can. I'm going to put Sam back together again.

- - -

So Toby's POV! How do you like it??