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Who: Sam, Mirror!Sam and You!
Where: Both sides of the Mirror
When: Duration of the event
Rating: PG-13 to R I imagine
Summary: Catch-all event post for Sam Yao and his mirror.
The Story:

Real Sam
He thought he'd be able to stay out of things, but that's never really been Sam's style. It's difficult to stay out of things when the last year of your life has involved very definitely getting involved in everything. Everything important anyway.

He starts with the familiar; caches of food and other supplies hidden at various points around the mansion and gardens for anyone to find. A few for himself. He'd rather not get caught short this time, not when that dream and had left a feeling of dread that pooled at the base of his neck and refused to leave.

And then came the messages on the mirrors and people vanishing.

The other side of the mirrors is as cool and alien and familiar as he remembers it being but this time the Mirrors aren't hunting them and there's terror everywhere.

He scrawls a note across a mirror as close to his room as he can, to warn them of where he is.

Mirror!Sam
The sword is gone. They've been tricked! Lied to. Betrayed. And if there's one thing that Sam hates, it's traitors. Monsters like that don't deserve the life the Queen gives them. But first the Jabberwocky has to be brought down. It's strong and fast and Sam sees other mirrors cut down and devoured until there's nothing left. And the sword sure as hell isn't here. So why not let the real thing fight instead while there's still work to be done.

[OOC: Both of them can be found in various places for the duration of the event! Let me know which side you'd like them on!]

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"Yeah, I hope so too." He doesn't want to trust the wrong person, but he also doesn't have all that much choice here. And he isn't an inherently mistrustful person either. He's always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt until the last moment.

Considering Simon, maybe that was stupid of him.

"To be fair, it is also an enormous scaly monster. I think that counts as advanced warning on it's own." He smiles back though. "The mirrors aren't really a friendly bunch are they?"

"Not for the most part, no." She's sure there are exceptions here and there, but those Mirrors are always overlooked. It's the problem children that stick out, and for good reason. "Most of them are pissed at the Reals just because they're jealous. That alone is a pretty hefty motivator, they have this built-in existential crisis, but some of them are nasty pieces of work beyond that."

At this point, she just expects any Mirror she encounters to be trouble.

"Hey-- when you get back," she starts after a moment, because he will get back if she has anything to say about it, "I know it's not really my place to butt in or anything, but-- you should talk to Simon. He wants to change things, if he can."

Maybe it wasn't the best time to say so, but she has to be honest with herself. If the Jabberwocky shows up, there might not be another opportunity, and she has to get it out there.

"Jealous because what? Because we're here too? I mean, they seem pretty real to me." The ones he'd met had not exactly been insubstantial. They'd felt real. But he guessed it would be weird knowing you'd only been created by the Queen.

He pauses to glance at her, but that suggestion earns a dark scowl. "I'm not talking to that- that monster," he says, voice harsh and cracked at the edges. "He's a liar, Jo. He's been lying to everyone at home for months. He's a snake."

"They're real enough, but they're stuck over here. Not hard to see that it's no vacation. Lifeless, colorless-- who knows what it's like serving the Queen. Not to mention the fact that they call us Real Things implies that either they aren't real, or someone else views them as less than real. Enough to give anyone a complex, don't you think?"

She can't say for sure on any point, but from what she's gathered over the last couple of years, that seems to be the gist of it. She knows her own Mirror is downright offended by her existence, thinks she's a waste of skin and would do just about anything to escape the Queen's reign. She can't speak for the others, but she knows her Mirror can't be the only one who thinks that way.

She meets that scowl with a carefully blank look. The situation is a delicate one, one she doesn't have all of the context for, but she knows enough-- and she knows Simon. She's known a lot of liars in her time, a lot of the hunters she'd met over the years were damn near pathological, but there were certain things you couldn't fake. Regret of that magnitude was pretty tough to phone in.

"I'm not saying don't be pissed." She knows she doesn't have the right to say that, just like she'd told Dean way back when that he didn't have the right to tell her she couldn't be pissed at Meg for what she'd done. "I'm not even saying he wasn't wrong or that-- it was okay. He fucked up in a big way. We know it, he knows it." Her gaze darkens slightly, and she shifts her weight as though she's preparing to start down the hallway. "And maybe 'sorry' isn't enough, but it's eating him alive. I think he'd do whatever he could to take it back, to make sure it never happened in the first place. It was a mistake, it wasn't malice. I've known a lot of monsters. He's not one of them."

"It's not the most lively place I guess," Sam agreed, looking around at the greyness of the place. A few hours here and it made your eyes go funny and you were just desperate to see some kind of colour. Imagine being stuck here forever. "I feel a bit bad for them now." Even if a lot of them are pretty crazy. Maybe they have a reason to be. He's seen enough people go crazy at home to sympathise a little.

"He had chances. He- he got people killed. I had to listen to Archie be tortured because he sold her out. He's working for someone who experiments on humans, who wants our entire town dead. Even the kids. He sold us all out to save his own skin."

"I'd probably feel worse for them if I hadn't had to witness my own murdering someone just because he got in her way." Not to mention the torture her Mirror had visited on people she cared about, people who were beyond important to her-- but she doesn't want to revisit that now. It's colored her view of all Mirrors, she'll admit, but even she has to concede that there have to be some who aren't so bad.

Torture, of course, is one of those things she's always thought of as unforgivable, and hearing it in conjunction with something Simon had done makes her shift uncomfortably, but she sticks to her guns. Sam isn't telling her anything Simon hasn't already told her himself, in so many words.

"He made a bad choice. I'm not gonna argue that. But he thought everyone was already dead when he made it. He should have known better, he should have made a different choice, but if the tables had been turned, what would you have done? Alone and scared and thinking everyone you gave a damn about was already gone?" It had been stupid, maybe, and Jo's not even sure she'd have done the same thing if she had been in Simon's shoes, but she can understand it. Getting people hurt had never been his intention.

"I'm not even telling you to forgive and forget. But talk to him. Let him explain and apologize while he's not in hysterics." The anchor event hadn't exactly been the best timing for that particular revelation, she'd reasoned. "I can't be the only friend he has."

Especially if she doesn't make it back to the other side, which she realizes is a very, very real possibility.

"When you put it that way..." No-one wanted to think that anyone like them could be a terrifying murderer, a monster like that. He doesn't like to think about his mirror and what they could be like. He doesn't want to know.

"What would I have done?" he snaps, hands clenching into fists. "I thought everyone was dead and- I've been alone and scared and I've known that everyone I knew was dead because I'd had to kill them. And I was there when Van Ark blew up my home. I saw people die there, I thought we were gone. Still doesn't mean I'd run to the person who did it as soon as he showed up! Everyone has been alone and scared like that at home, but it isn't everyone who decided that their lives were worth the lives of hundreds of other people. Five was the same, and Four and Seven. They were all out there too when the comms went down. None of them betrayed us."

He stops, breathing heavily, the anger and hurt thick in his voice. They'd been friends, of he'd thought they had been, but it obviously hadn't meant much. "If he's willing to betray Janine and Jody, then he's not going to care about anyone else."

Edited 2014-12-21 21:35 (UTC)

"He cares about you. He cares about Janine and Jody, too. He cares about everyone he betrayed. It's killing him."

She's almost proud of herself for managing to retain her calm as well as she has, though her jaw is set now, teeth grit as she tries to swallow down anything more reactive. Sam has a right to be upset, something she has to continually remind herself of. He's not wrong, but she knows that she's not, either. They were both coming at it with a different perspective, but she'd seen firsthand what this was doing to Simon, what the consequences of his own actions had done to him-- things that hadn't even come to pass yet.

"If you really think he doesn't care, that he's not capable of regret or that he wouldn't do anything he could to take it back or make it right, then I don't think you know him at all." Harsh words, maybe, but it took a hell of a lot to reduce Simon to the quiet hermit he'd become over the last few weeks, hiding away in his room and keeping to himself, breaking down at the mere thought of someone, anyone, thinking that a second chance was even a possibility.

"I'm not here as his mouthpiece. Hell, he probably wouldn't want me saying any of this-- he thinks he deserves worse than whatever you're wishing on him right now. He doesn't think he deserves a chance, but I do."

"It's killing other people too," Sam snapped.

God, what about Seventeen, getting torn to pieces by Van Ark's mind controlled zoms? All the people at Holmes settlement. Had Simon just been laughing at them the whole time? It felt that way. It felt like he'd been played. "Obviously I don't know him at all. I wouldn't have thought he'd do this, but he has, so what else is a lie?"

Sam shoved his hands into his pockets, reaching up to scrub at his eyes. "My god, I've risked people's lives for him. I risked the town to let him and Five back inside. And you're asking me to give him another chance just because he feels bad about it? To weigh up people's lives, maybe even the future of humanity, against Simon Lauchlan feeling a bit guilty."

"It's not about anyone feeling a little bit guilty." Phrasing it that way made it sound like he was a kid who'd stepped out of line and just wanted someone to accept his apology for the sake of being absolved. Jo didn't think this compared. Simon didn't want to be absolved of anything. He knew that wasn't an option.

"It's about knowing he did something wrong and wanting to atone for it. This place offers people opportunities they'd never have otherwise-- I know it's too late to undo what's already been done, but there are people working their asses off to find a way for people to keep their memories when they leave. If they manage that, think of what could be done if you gave someone the chance-- someone who really wanted to use what they know to change things."

She narrows her eyes for a moment, trying to decide how much more to say. She doesn't want it to be a lecture, it's not about that, but maybe they're both too close to the situation in different ways. Maybe for Sam, it's still just too fresh-- but she's seen worse. Even with as many people as he says have been killed because of Simon's mistakes, she's seen much worse.

"I see people die in my line of work all the time. Sometimes it's because the people involved make bad choices, like Simon did. And sometimes, those people are rotten to the core, there's no changing them-- but sometimes, it's just a choice. A mistake, or an error in judgement. It doesn't bring people back. It doesn't necessarily earn them forgiveness, but those people, if they really want to, deserve a chance to at least try to earn back trust. You don't have to give it. Nobody has to give their trust or absolution to anyone they don't want to, but they should still get to try." She pauses, just for a beat. "... I just think you should talk to him. For five minutes, even. Just once. That's all."

She's so earnest about this, so dedicated and sure that Simon is worth all of the effort she was putting in. It's a faith that Simon had shattered with Sam the moment he'd made that admission. 'At once trusting and untrusting'. That was what Maxine said about all of those who had survived. You needed other people to keep going, but so many people had gone bad, gone crazy, gone cruel, and he'd had to turn people away from Abel himself, back in the early days.

"It's not even up to just me," Sam said. "Maxine is here too. I need to speak to her about it. She knows more, I think." If she knew how things turned out, maybe she could help. "Right now I can't trust him. I don't know what I can believe from him. I've seen too many people die and knowing that he- he was complicit in killing more... I don't even want to look at him."

"Then the two of you should talk." And really, it occurs to her that she'd like to talk to Maxine, too, if only to gain a better understanding of the situation. Some tiny part of her doesn't want to, doesn't want to risk hearing something that changes her view on all of this, but she's not sure anything could. She wants to believe Simon has been honest with her, that he's told her everything he knows. He's been honest about everything else-- and he knows she's heard worse stories than his. Hell, she's lived through them.

She sighs, pushing her hair back from her face and raking her fingers through it as she takes a moment to collect herself. "I know trust is hard to earn. And that's-- that's how it should be. It's even harder once it's been broken, sometimes it's close to impossible, but--" She pauses, just long enough to press her lips together.

"I've seen stranger things happen. That's all. I won't push you, I can't, I just don't think you should have your mind all made up just yet, either."

"Maybe you should talk to her too," Sam said quickly. Maybe Maxine could get Jo to see that Simon was bad news, that what he'd done was unforgivable. Because he might disagree with her, but he doesn't want to see her hurt because of Simon Lauchlan.

"They've killed people for less at home," Sam blurts suddenly. "This girl, Tess, she nicked some information, hard drives and stuff, and they hunted her down, took it back, and left her outside the gates. Dunno if she made it to New Canton. We can't afford to trust easily. Too many people went bad after the apocalypse. So knowing someone you trusted and worked with, someone who was a friend, and he just saw you as collateral for his own life... it hurts."

"Believe me, I've thought about it." She and Maxine have spoken before, but only briefly-- never about anything serious, nothing that happened back in Abel. "But if it's just a campaign to get me to change my mind and write Simon off as a hopeless case, we won't be talking for long. Maybe the fact that you think he's so unrepentantly bad is the reason why he needs me to stick around and be his friend. I've steered worse people back onto the right track-- and you don't change people by abandoning them. You leave them to fester and become the worst versions of themselves. If nobody else wants to give him a chance to try and get it right, then that's fine, but it might be exactly why I have to."

Everyone needs someone in their corner, especially those who want to make the change and set themselves straight. Simon wishes he could undo it, wants to find a way to make things right-- she believes that. She has to, because letting herself come to trust someone again after so long only to find out that she really can't-- no. That's just not an option.

She won't accept it.

She purses her lips slightly as she listens, letting Sam say his piece. He's not wrong. They can't afford to trust easily, not when survival is so touch and go, and she won't argue that. She never would-- but her eyes narrow slightly as something about his explanation touches her somehow, causes her to stiffen, become more guarded.

"Trust me," she says quietly, "I know all about betrayal and how deep it cuts. It's rarely ever black and white-- but I can respect that you're close enough to the situation that it just looks black. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't think you're one-hundred-percent right, either." A pause. "There's more to what happened than just seeing people as collateral. He's not heartless."

"No," Sam snapped, although it was, just a bit. "Maxine knows what happened. She's been there, lived through it. Shouldn't you listen to that before making up your mind?" All she'd heard was from Simon after all. Maxine was much more trustworthy. He would have said that even before finding out. "I don't see how there's a right track after this. It's done already."

He folds his arms stubbornly over his chest, every inch of him is stubborn, his mind made up by anger and grief. "We're not going to agree. All I can see is that he decided his own life was worth all of ours, even the live of people he loved. Doesn't that worry you?"

"I'll talk to her," Jo starts, though there's a certain edge to her voice that suggests there's a 'but' coming, which it does. "And if she can respect that I'd like to try and see it from both sides, then maybe it'll do us both some good."

But she's not interested in anyone trying to coerce her to take back what she's already promised, just like she can't tell anyone else that they have no right to be angry. They're coming from different places, that's all.

"No, we're not," she tells him, cementing that as the one thing they can agree on. "But maybe just like you don't think you can afford to be anything but angry, maybe I can't afford to believe that someone can't change." She gives him a rueful look, and for all her determination, there's something bitter there. Hope has no place in this conversation, not really-- but she's lost too many friends already. Maybe she's just too stubborn to admit she could lose another, or maybe her expectations aren't all that high anymore. Maybe she's just been let down too many times to care. She's not sure she knows which it is.

"You could be right, but a big part of me really, really wants to keep believing that you're wrong. I want to believe he knows better now. I think he does."

"Maxine's the best person I know. You can trust what she says." More than anyone else, he trusted Maxine. Even when she slipped away from him on a mission, he'd known that she would tell him the truth when it came to the big things. And he trusted her opinion more than anyone else's.

He took a breath, the words sticking in his throat. "I want to. I'd love to believe that people are good, that they can change. But I just- I can't. Not anymore." That had died with the apocalypse.

"Yeah. She seems trustworthy." They didn't know each other well, but there was no denying that. Jo would hear her out, so long as it was reasonable-- but that's something to take care of when they're back on their own side of the glass, not here. If she makes it back at all.

She frowns, a moment of understanding. "When there's not much left, it's hard to hold onto any kind of hope. I know."

Her apocalypse hadn't involved zombies, but it had still damn near been the end of the world-- and she hadn't experienced it for herself, but Dean had told her a little about the future where things went wrong. Where Sam said yes. It sounded even worse than Abel, and she imagines that if she'd survived that long, she might have felt the same way Sam did now.

"Wonderland's not perfect," she says after a moment, "But it can be better, for a lot people. Maybe even someday make you believe in things again, given enough time."

"I've seen too many people lie. Entire settlements were turned because just one person wouldn't admit that they were bitten. It's horrible and I can't keep just... just hoping that this time it's different. And sometimes I- sometimes I think the people who died, who went grey, they're the lucky ones because they don't have to see it or try to rebuild something that's broken anyway."

He took a shuddering breath, his chest painfully tight and aching.

"I like it here. If I could bring everyone from home here, I would."

"It is horrible." And she understands. She sees how that could be enough to make anyone want to stop hoping. You can only be disappointed so many times before you have to stop believing things could possibly turn out any different. She presses her lips together, frowning. "For what it's worth, I could just-- try to do enough hoping for the both of us."

It's not much, maybe, but it's what she has to offer. After a moment, she nods.

"I like it here, too. If I had things my way, I'd never leave. Bring my whole family here, or what's left of them."

That makes him laugh, a soft, watery sound, that is more miserable than humourous. "If you want. I- you know how I feel. I don't want anyone else to get hurt." He was sick of seeing his friends die, of seeing people he cared for get hurt or become monsters that he had to kill. He wondered if eventually it got better, or if it was when it got better that you took a gun to yourself.

"Glad it's not jut me. I know most people want to get out of here."

"Yeah, I do. And you know how I feel."

Maybe they didn't agree, but that didn't mean they couldn't come to understand each other.

She smiles wryly, thin and tight-lipped. He's not wrong, most people wanted to get home-- but home wasn't an option for everyone. It wasn't for her, and she knows it's not for anyone from Abel, even if the reasoning is different. "No, it's not just you. There are a lot of us who feel that way. Life is better for us here. Whether it's the people, or something else-- it happens."

"Yeah, I do." He doesn't like it. He thinks she's making a mistake, but she's determined and he can respect that even if he thinks it's dumb.

"Do you ever worry that if they find a way to send people back home, then they'll just kind of... of throw you back too? Some of them get kind of made when you say you like it here."

At least they can agree to disagree. That's more than she's come to expect from some people.

She worries at her lower lip for a moment as she considers that. Early on, she might have been concerned about it, but now? She's not sure. She pauses before offering a shrug, followed by a shake of her head. "Yeah, you're right, some people do get mad, but-- if you explain your situation, if you tell them your reasons and they really care about you? I'd like to think they'd understand."

Her Sam had understood when she'd told him. In fact, he felt much the same way, even though their situations were different.

"You'd hope," Sam says. Most people so far have been decent about it when he's explained, but that doesn't mean that if it ever came to it, they wouldn't think of themselves. It doesn't mean that everyone will understand. "You just hope it never comes to making a choice for everyone."