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Part Twenty-Four

   "Skip?" Leo stepped forward at the slowest possible pace, cupping Sam close against the strange look in Skip's eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Put Sam down," he instructed, completely ignoring the question and releasing the cereal box enough for it to breathe.

"Not until you explain what's going on."

"Put him on the table, Leo."

"No."

"Leo..."

"What the hell, Skip!" Eli bounded into the room, pissed off beyond repair. "Don't blow me off like that!"

Skip didn't even acknowledge his presence. Instead, he lowered the box to the table, and set it flat on its stomach with such a gentle amount of care that only meant one thing.

Something was inside.

"You can come out," He announced, a softer tone than usual wafting from his voice. The kind of voice he only used with Sam, and even then it was a rarity. Though, he still sported an incredibly annoyed look on his face, as if someone had been pestering him for far too long, and Leo's smart brain began piecing the puzzle together.

Needless to say, he put Sam on the table.

Sam, clueless as ever, didn't move. He didn't feel safe, especially with the way Skip was acting. He stayed right where Leo left him, refusing to move and wishing he was back in the human's hands. It wasn't until Leo nudged him forward with a gentle finger and pressed his way closer to the box, that his breath got caught in his throat and the room went silent.

Standing in the entrance of the box, holding on tight to one another, were three borrowers. Two of which held silhouettes that gave Sam a damn near panic attack at the familiarity, and the other cowering as far back as it could.

And then the two in front stepped even closer, and Sam saw their faces for the first time in four years. He saw the eye bags that weren't there from his childhood, the way they looked like they hadn't slept a day since they were separated. Sam saw a white streak in the woman's hair that hadn't existed before, and the way the couple cling to each other with a sincerity that only fit the description of two parents reunited with their lost child.

He saw so much pain from so far away, the way tears sunk from their faces, and the way they began to run to him. And without any control over his limbs, Sam ran right along with them. His breathing stopped, his ears rang with silence, and his hands wiped the ever growing heat from his eyes. All while running to meet the two halfway on the tabletop in the middle of his best friend's house, Sam cried his heart out.

His parents.

Four years ago, the very family he had to say goodbye to. The family he swore he would live a good life for. The ones that raised him, taught him everything he needed to know and so much more, the ones that Sam remembered every single day of his life. He remembered the week after they died, and how he finally gathered the courage to take his mother's favorite blanket into his own nest. The way he cried for weeks into it until it was soggy from tears, and then he cried a little more at ruining the one good thing he had left from her.

Sam remembered not being able to use the hook his father left on the kitchen floor. Not until he was bigger, stronger, and he knew for a fact he wouldn't accidentally damage something so important. Even as Sam ran, his hand brushed against the string holding up his cloth and felt for the absent hook, only to remember he didn't need it anymore.

Not now: not when the people he fought to remember were no longer at risk of being forgotten.

And when they finally collided with one another in a mess of tears and hugs and not a single word, Sam sobbed into his parents with so many years of pain and loneliness and yearning for the ones that were ripped away from him. They cried right back, holding his frail body and consuming him in a pile of limbs and comfort.