After the events of February 2nd, Drew begs off of patrol for the rest of the week, on grounds of homework. Coming from Drew, this would be a fairly convincing excuse... if he'd ever used it before... He doesn't quite beg off practice, but he leaves early and doesn't talk much while he's there. By the weekend, he's a little more like himself, at least on the surface. Goes along on patrol and so forth and seems almost normal... except for a tendency to space out at odd times. Not when they're actually out somewhere where they might get jumped by vamps, but in the car or over dinner or while practicing, Sam will look over to say something to him and he'll seem to be in a completely different world.
A couple days of this and Sam has had enough. Over burgers at the Quarterback Club, during one of those space-outs, Sam flips a quarter in the air and pushes it across the table towards him.
"For your thoughts. Looks like they're pretty heavy ones. Plus, inflation, and where we are."
"Hmm?" Drew wanders back to reality from wherever he is. "Sorry. It's just been a rough week, you know?"
"Yeah. I know. You want to talk about it? Or not here? We could go back to your place and pretend to watch videos so your parents don't overly worry."
"Mmm? No, not really. Just give me a couple days, I'll be fine. Just a little tired is all." He makes an effort to sound convincing, but Sam knows him well enough to recognize an act when she sees one.
"Well, I had an idea that we could, you know, offer to help clean up the mess we made... but I don't think they would let us."
Again, Drew looks totally blank for a moment. Then, "Oh! The bar! Yeah. To tell the truth, I wasn't even really thinking about the property damage. I mean, I guess I feel a little bad about that. But property damage can always be fixed. And obviously the Orchards has good insurance, or it wouldn't still be around after the last two times we were there. This was minor by comparison. They'll need to replace the bar... and all the alcohol... but the bar contained most of the blast. Fortunately for the bartender."
"Yeah. He'll be fine. I think a meteor could hit that place, and the bartender wouldn't bat an eyelash." Sam finishes her meal, and lets Drew relapse into never-land. When he's finished eating too, they bus their trays and Sam gently takes his hand. "You want to go for a walk? C'mon." She leads the way up to High Acre, their favorite talking spot. In the cold of the evening, Sam and Drew wander among the tombstones. They know this graveyard very well by now. "If you don't want to talk, you don't have to. Maybe there's really nothing to say... But I know you. And I know you're hurting, and I keep thinking that I could have prevented it... done something..." She stops, at a loss. "I never knew you felt... that way... about Stephie."
"You could have done something?" Drew is incredulous. "I must have gone over that afternoon a thousand times in my head trying to figure out what I should have done. You and Tori and Magnus were all having your mutual appreciation society thing going..." Sam starts to protest, but she sees a ghost of a smile on his face and realizes he's teasing her, so she just rolls her eyes and lets him continue. "And I noticed that something was wrong with Stephie. Really wrong, not like fashion emergency wrong. She was terrified. And I went over and offered to help. And, of course, she blew me off. 'Cause that's what she does. But, I keep thinking: Was that because she didn't want our help... or because she didn't want my help? If it had been Erik or Joshua instead... If I'd just pointed it out to you or Tori and suggested one of you go talk to her... Would she still be alive?"
Sam shakes her head. "I don't think she would have taken my help, either. With all the scrapes we've had, I'm surprised any of them trusts any of us at all... But, yeah, if I hadn't spent quite so much time talking to the new guy, maybe I would have gotten downstairs quickly enough to keep the dog off of Stephie. At least that time; it would have kept coming... Second chance," she counts on her fingers, "the moment we found out it was Mr. Barrows, we should have gone straight to his house instead of futzing around with the meeting at the Orchards, which is always a recipe for disaster. Third..." Now Sam's eyes tear up, but whether it is the wind or not is open to speculation. Her voice remains under control. "I should have stopped you from using that grenade. I promised, remember? At the QB, wow, is it two years ago now? After we got back from the Gremlins' dimension? We promised each other that, if one of us was freaking out, the other would step in and set them straight. I knew that Stephie's death was affecting you, but I didn't know how much..."
Drew puts his arm around her and leans against her shoulder. Well, her upper arm. She puts her arm around him, too, making a nice warm spot between them. "You weren't supposed to know. That was the point. I went out of my way to make sure that you guys didn't know I had Joshua's arsenal, in addition to my own. I knew you guys would try to stop me, so I set it up so you couldn't... Anyway, the grenade would have killed any normal person, but it didn't kill Mr. Barrows. Getting shot sixteen times in the head while he was trying to surrender killed Mr. Barrows."
"I know. I'm not blaming you for doing what you did. God knows, if Barrows had set that thing on someone I love... If he'd set that thing on you, he would've had a very pissed-off Slayer breathing right down his neck. And then that neck would have been about a foot shorter." She smiles grimly. "I'm just sorry that you had to do it at all." Sam holds Drew for a little while, and they sit down in the lee-side of a mausoleum where there is a cement bench with the owner's nephew's name carved into the edge.
"Yeah. I just miss her. I mean, not talking to her--'cause I never did that. Or being ignored by her--'cause being dead really just makes that easier for her. But... what you and I and the others do is insanely dangerous. And someday, that's going to catch up with all of us." Sam nods in response. She knows this all too well. Drew continues on, "But Stephie didn't do that stuff, not really. She was supposed to go to college, get married, have kids, become a brilliant psychiatrist or a hot-shot police interrogator or something. She was supposed to end up in a nursing home complaining that her grandkids never visit and the staff is thinking rude things about her. She was supposed to be the one person I ever cared about who wasn't just going to die."
Sam doesn't know what to say about that, so she just squeezes his shoulder and lets him talk. He doesn't saying else for a while, just leans against her. "I keep thinking of all the things I could have done differently. Wondering if I'd just been smarter about what was going on, if I could have done something to save her."
"Don't think like that, Drew. Please? You're the smartest guy I know, and you do so much... I know it makes a difference, even if it doesn't seem like it right now. We can't be everywhere, and we can't save everyone. Because we're not God. You're you, and I'm me. And we do what we can, where we are, when we have a chance to do good. Right? Stephie is gone, but Callie and Marcie are safe." Sam grimaces. "I know, small comfort. But still...
He sighs. "I know. When we make mistakes, people die. Occupational hazard. I don't know that I'd say you get used to it, but you learn to deal with it. Or you go nuts. Or you quit. Stephie wasn't the first person who I could have saved and didn't and she almost certainly won't be the last. There are plenty of cases that were much more egregious screw ups on my part." He pauses and, when he speaks again, there's a catch in his voice. "But this one... This one really hurts."
Now, Sam stands up and puts her hands in her pockets. "I can't quit. But if you really want to, you're free to go. Only four months 'til graduation, and I'm certainly not going to force you to do anything that hurts you so badly." Her tone is cool, controlled, but with an undertone of acid. "I'm done whacking this hornet's nest for tonight. I thought it would help, getting you to open up and deal, rather than just spacing out and thinking of her all the time... Well, I hope it was good for you, but all this sharing makes me want to go kill something. If you want to come with, that's fine, but no more talking for a while, okay?"
Drew stands up too, and catches her by the arm. "Not okay. There's one more thing I need to say, whether you want to hear it or not." Sam shrugs, but she listens. "I had a thing for Stephie. Freshman year and the beginning of sophomore year, back before... before. Obviously, I still have some unresolved feelings there. I wouldn't have expected this to hurt as much as it does. And I know it sucks, seeing me hurt this much over someone who... isn't you. But, you have to know, however little time you and I end up having together before something catches up with us, I wouldn't trade a second of it for a lifetime with Stephie. I don't expect you to not be pissed off at me over this, but remember that, too. I had a crush on Stephie. I love you. Big difference."
"Yeah. I know. And I know it's wrong to be jealous of a dead girl, but there it is. I love you too."
They're still kissing when a couple rows over, the frozen ground of a newly-turned grave cracks open and a hand, and then a head, emerges. "Damn! It's cold up here!" The vampire complains.
"We can send you to a place that's warmer." Sam spin-kicks it in the head so it turns a cartwheel and lands at Drew's feet, where he stakes it in the heart.