The States

(i don't know how not to love you- two)

December 11, 1823- PA
Sam had agreed to come down early since she hadn't made it to Christmas or Thanksgiving last year, and since she missed this year's Thanksgiving too.

She's already regretting it.

Sure, she knew, logically, that none of her brothers would ever even think of hurting her like that, but that didn't change the fact that the majority of them were much bigger and stronger than her, and her brain saw threat before it saw family.

The stress is getting to her.
------
When she'd escaped out onto the side porch, she hadn't expected to catch Caleb with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

His eyes widen almost comically. "Don't tell Dad." He blurts.

Sam snorts. "Do I look like Elizabeth? Give me one."

"What?"

"I said give me a cigarette."

"You smoke?"

"I'm about to."

She had had a cigarette before- once on a battlefield in the South, once 'cause she got curious up in Boston. Foster had seen her do it once, had screamed at her and she'd never smoked after that.

She puts the cigarette in her mouth and takes a drag.

Exhales.

She doesn't cough. Caleb looks a little impressed.

December 15, 1823- PA
Foster is not a morning person.

(That was always Sam, up before the sun, up before the stupid chirpy birds.)

Which is why he curses like a sailor when he falls out of bed at five in the morning and can't get back to sleep afterward before he forces himself downstairs to raid the coffee.
------
Foster blinks.

He'd thought most of newer kids were intimidated by the Originals.

But there is Caleb, sitting on the porch railing laughing at something Sam has said.

Sam doesn't smile, lifting a cigarette to her mouth, taking a drag, exhaling the smoke.

Foster's eyes widen. Before he can stop himself, he's marching out and addressing her. "I thought you didn't smoke." It's accusing and angry and something he would have said before. He regrets it immediately.

Sam looks at him blankly- no trace of emotion. "I guess there's a lot we don't know about each other."

Foster flinches away from that blankness before he can stop it.

Sam snubs out her cigarette, tossing it in the trash as she passes.

January 17, 1824- Jersey City, NJ
Brooke had agreed to keep an eye out, to make sure Sam was never in any danger, but Sam knew she wasn't happy.

Brooke was one of the three people (four if you count Salem) who knew what had happened that April, and she didn't exactly approve of Sam's plans.

Brooke's face had crumpled when Sam had plainly told her that to build an immunity to poison, you had to expose yourself to it over time. (Brooke doesn't point out that fear of half the human race isn't comparable to arsenic.)