Chapter Text
The hard-shell gleaming under the gloom, black, iridescent as a beetle's back might be, throws Sam back in time. Just a few short months ago, it gave him back the only thing that could ever make him feel whole again. He has his daughter back. She is standing right here next to him. There's no telling who could be lying in this one.
The DHV Magellan is perched in a low valley, somewhere with plentiful resources nearby, so they can all get their bearings. But no one's had time. Not with the pressing issue of this new chrysalis appearing.
Sam clenches his, breathing steadily. Everyone is waiting for him to say something. Why does he have to be the one to say something?
Heartman speaks up, but it's Deadman's voice that comes out of his mouth.
"Well, we should open it, shouldn't we?"
Sam is not sure that's what he wanted to hear. With everything that's happened, it really could be anyone or anything waiting for them past the crack of the ominous shell. Lou takes a step forward, Tool in hand, the same one that was used to pry open her own chrysalis, and wordlessly hands it to Sam.
He takes it, grips it hard in his hand, jaw still set tensely, and he moves to work quickly. There's no other option. What would they do? Bury it somewhere? Drop it in the ocean of tar and wait for it to return later to haunt them? Or worse- carry them right back to the brink of extinction. Anything was possible after everything that they'd seen.
At the first decent size of the shell chipping away, Sam nearly flies back.
"Who is it, Sam? Tarman asks in a somewhat lilting voice, almost as if there were someone he might have been expecting. It's no one that Tarman is expecting.
Sam wants to be shocked. He wants to yell and cry and land his fist down through the chrysalis before anyone can safely resurface from the casing.
But the problem is that- he isn't shocked. Not shocked in the slightest. He doesn't need to say his name.
Higgs.
He looks- different. His hair is the same, that same gold branding on his skin in tiny equations, but seemingly fading away. He looks- younger? Unburdened? Sam has never seen him sleep, and he'd never expected to see it.
He should kill him now before his eyes flit open and he tears a hole right through the veil again. Sam feels stupid. Of course, Higgs would have had another plan. It wouldn't be his first failsafe, and Sam would be a fool to think it would be his last. Instinctually, he brings the prying tool down to Higgs' neck, ready to cut and sever his breath from his lungs by any means necessary.
Would he even bleed red anymore? Or would tar ooze from his veins, sick and slow like the polluted rivers that plague the earth. Was he even human anymore? Did all those millennia on the beach transform him into something different altogether?
Lou's hand rests on Sam's before he can put down pressure. It shocks him that of everyone in the room, she is the one to stop him. Higgs took everything from her. From them both. He finds himself wondering if she can even begin to understand what was taken from them.
"Don't hurt him," she says so quietly, Sam barely hears it. He wants to scream. Don't hurt him?
"Lou-" He can't find the words to combat how ridiculous that is.
"Wait until he wakes up. See what he knows."
Sam pauses for a moment, unsure of Lou's angle. Does she want him awake to be killed? Is she a child of revenge now? It's not what he wants for her. Though he would understand- even if it pained him to watch her display such violence through the lens of her loss, he'd have no right to stop him from taking Higgs' life.
"When I came back from the beach, I couldn't remember anything. I had no name. Nothing. You all gave me time. Took care of me."
Sam's heart nearly breaks open at the realization that Lou is sparing him. Her hand is still resting there over that jagged tool; she gently pulls it away. He allows it to drop from his grasp, still itching to pick it back up and finish what he started. He sighs in defeat, feeling a sense of dread fill him up. Despite his surprise over Lou's gentleness, he doubts any of it is rooted in naivety.
No one says a word. It's too strange to speak on for the time being.
"We've already killed him once," Lou reasons with more compassion than Sam's been able to muster up in his entire life. "Maybe we won't have to do it again."
Sam must be out of his damn mind.
"We'll take him back to the shelter." And just like that, the Magellan sets its course for the border. Sam has gone to be alone in his thoughts before anyone can say another word.
Sam sips his coffee at the kitchen table, wearily tracking Higgs' motionless form on the bed, chrysalis long chipped away, lying in clothes from the ship they had hastily dressed him in. Lou shovels scrambled eggs into her mouth, he eyes darting back and forth, acutely observing Sam's struggle to loosen the knots in his shoulders.
"I don't like this."
Lou lifts her brows as if to say, 'he speaks.'
"He could try something. Try to take you again." He mentions, voice rough, trying to mask the severity of his anxiety.
"Would you feel better if I were back on the Magellan?" Lou is not beyond being accommodating, Sam knows that, but he won't force her to do anything she doesn't want to.
"Maybe." That's all he can settle for as an answer.
She hums thoughtfully in response, as if considering it. It's odd, getting to know her like this. She's practically a grown woman. She was a baby in his arms, playing with her building blocks in the same shelter they currently sit in, not much more than a year ago.
They've only been back at the shelter for a few days. Sam noticed her eyes catch now and then on the photos of them on the wall. She's 11 months old in those photos. If he's lucky, he catches her smiling at them, like she is now.
"Do you miss it?" She asks innocently, "When I was small?"
Sam finds it to be a somewhat complicated question. It should be an easy answer, but nothing ever is really an easy answer these days.
"No," He somewhat lies for the sake of looking forward. "You're here. You're alive. That's all that matters."
Lou finishes the rest of her eggs, looking a little unsure. "Should I call you Dad?"
That surprisingly gets a warm laugh out of Sam. "If you wanna. Dad. Or Sam. No rule book."
"So," She starts with another question. She probably has so many. Sam knows they'll eventually get the time that they deserve to work all this out. One day, he won't have the threat of an unconscious Higgs haunting his supposed safe house. "My name's always been Lou? Even before- Before the pod?"
"Even before the Pod," Sam confirms, trying not to let his voice go tight. He can't believe she's real sometimes. Can't believe she's his.
Her eyes dart over to Higgs again. There's a complicated emotion there. Sam is not the best at decoding it, but he sees an internal struggle of some sort.
"He sang to me, you know."
Sam snaps his head up, brows furrowed in confusion.
"I remember him. I know he hurt me. Hurt you. Hurt- Fragile. But he would find me on the beach and sing to me sometimes. Sing me to sleep. It was nice."
Sam doesn't know what to say- doesn't even know what to believe. Why would he do such a thing?
A cough is heard, weak and almost unidentifiable. Sam tenses immediately, just as he was before, scrambling to the counter to grab the sedatives he's kept on hand just in case. They ran the same tests on Higgs that they ran on Lou when she came back. He's 100% human; he can be sedated. Something must have changed him in the chrysalis, reset him somehow. All his wires have been cut, and his mainframe has crashed. Whatever was once altering him to become organically mechanical, fiercely immortal, has left him.
Sam hovers nearby, making sure to stand between Lou and Higgs, separating them, watching as Higgs blinks against the light. He stares up at the ceiling as if he’s trying to piece together the fragments of a dream he can’t quite remember. It's clear he doesn't know where he is yet, but he hasn't looked at Sam, which is unsettling to him.
There’s a hollow resonance in the room, a silence so thick it feels like it could crack as the chrysalis did. For a moment, Higgs doesn’t move at first—then his eyes find Sam, searching, and there’s neither malice nor recognition in them, just a raw kind of emptiness. Sam’s hand stays clenched around the syringe, muscles tense, but he hesitates, waiting for Higgs to speak first, waiting for the ghost of hostility to return. Waiting for that blackness in Higgs' heart to permeate the room and bring about their ruin. Lou shifts in her chair beside the table, ready but not afraid, and Sam realizes that the balance of power has shifted in uncharted ways—they’re all strangers again, bound only by hazy memory, death, and a sandy shore of lost souls.
A hand rises to reach for nothing in particular. Sam is counting down the seconds until he can put Higgs right back under. He doesn't know what he's capable of yet. Even with how far Sam's DOOM's abilities have developed, even with Lou's effortless power to move through the deadly currents with ease- still. He won't make the mistake of underestimating him again.
He tries to make a sound. He nearly whimpers through the rasp in his unused voice. Not much of a sound at all. Sam winces; that noise is unfamiliar to him on Higgs. He shakily sits up, taking in his surroundings. He's been here before. He knows Sam lives here. This is where he took everything from him. So why does he have that lost look in his eye?
"Higgs?" Sam asks tentatively.
Higgs flinches at that. Call Sam crazy, but Higgs looks- afraid? Sam wants to indulge in it momentarily- he has to stop himself. It's not the time.
"Higgs, can you hear me?" Sam steps forward, just for Higgs to fly off the bed on the opposite side. Sam prepared the syringe in case Higgs became a threat. Higgs was cowering in the corner, covering his head.
"Do you think he knows who he is?" Sam asks Lou, without taking his eyes off Higgs.
"I'm not sure," Lou says softly, not wanting to startle Higgs any further. She gets closer, straying away from the table. "It all came back to me slowly."
"Don't get any closer, Lou."
She stops moving, despite feeling fully confident in protecting herself against Higgs, having taken him down twice already, she can respect Sam's protective nature.
Sam gets closer, as slow as he can, syringe at the ready. He doesn't have to use the whole thing. Higgs is peeking out an eye at Sam, uncertain, terrified.
"It's okay," Sam finds himself saying. "It's alright."
He extends a hand. Higgs hesitates, but he lifts his head in increments. His eyes are wet, a fat tear silently rolls down his face, and he trembles in his corner.
"It's Sam," He feels compelled to say, as if his presence would offer Higgs some kind of comfort. A ridiculous thought in itself.
Higgs lifts his hand, lets Sam have it despite the trembling, and Sam takes his chance to quickly hold Higgs' arm tight and inject the sedative while he has the chance. Higgs spasms, lunges forward to push him away, and the needle yanks cruelly out of his skin, most certainly leaving some nasty bruising. He falls against Sam, not quite fully unconscious yet, but the fight certainly leaving his body.
Sam lowers him gently to the floor, heart pounding, wary of every twitch in Higgs' limbs as the sedative takes hold. He glances at Lou, who watches with a careful, unreadable expression, her arms loosely crossed but her body poised to act if something—anything—goes wrong. The silence in the room is now tinged with a strange, heavy sadness. Sam wonders, not for the first time, whether this is mercy or simply necessity, and if there is any chance to go anywhere from here. As Higgs’ breathing slows, Sam lets out a shallow breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and the three of them linger in the stillness, each left to the storm of thoughts that refuse to settle. What has Higgs become? Sam wonders. Is there anything left of the interdimensional terror that he was before? Or has the particle finally dissolved back into the sediment?
They come to an agreement. Lous stays on the Magellan for a few days. She'll check in every now and then. Sam just wants to get the dust settled. Figure out what's going on without worrying about keeping her safe.
Three days pass with a tentative, uneasy rhythm. Sam spends the quiet hours pacing between the confines of his shelter and the distant hum of the Magellan, his thoughts looping relentlessly around Higgs’ unraveling and Lou’s absence—how the emptiness feels different now, a sharp echo rather than the dull ache he’s used to. Higgs remains mostly sedated, drifting in and out of consciousness, sometimes murmuring unintelligible fragments that Sam strains to decipher, hoping for any sign of the man he once feared. The walls of the shelter seem to close in tighter with every sunset, each shadow long and heavy with memory. Occasionally, Lou’s voice crackles through the com, bright and grounding, and Sam finds himself clinging to those moments, reminders that hope still lingers on the shore with the rest of the survivors.
He tried to feed him, but Higgs seemed uninterested in food. He doesn't show any signs of hunger either. For the brief moments he's awake, he goes from staring ahead blankly, to crying, to trembling back down to sleep. It's on this third Day that Sam really is stuck on the fact that Higgs has also not spoken a single word.
On the evening of the third day, the silence grows heavier, and Sam sits by the bed, the lights flickering briefly. He watches Higgs for any shift—a twitch, a glance, a hint of language—wondering if the man is lost entirely or simply locked up behind whatever the chrysalis did to him. Lou's next message comes through soft and brief, her voice softer than usual, asking if anything has changed. Sam glances at Higgs, who seems almost spectral in the half-light, and answers, "Not yet," feeling the words sink deep into the quiet. Sam knows this limbo can't last forever, and somewhere beneath his exhaustion, a resolve begins to form: if Higgs ever comes back to himself, Sam will be ready. Ready to kill him again. It's better if Higgs never comes back to himself. Never gives Sam the satisfaction of smashing his head in all over again.
"This is getting old, Higgs." He feels like he's losing it a little now, talking to him like this. "Quit with the game and wake the fuck up."
He leans over, head in his hands, half laughing.
"You took Lou. You took Fragile. And you killed me about a thousand times over." He swallows around a lump; he tries not to think about it. Any of it. But what else could there be to even think about? "You tried to end the whole fuckin' world. You don't get to lie down and give up, you son of a bitch."
God, he wants to hit him. He wants to hit him even as he lies here unconscious. Doesn't even care that it's a cheap shot.
"Fuck you," Sam murmurs in defeat, "Fuck. You."
"Sam?" Comes a raspy voice.
He jolts up like he's been electrocuted, not expecting to ever hear Higgs' voice again. He blinks awake, eyes opening blearily. He actually spoke. He knows Sam's name.
For a moment, Sam can only stare, frozen in place by the weight of that single, ragged word. He doesn’t dare trust the hope that flickers at the sound, doesn’t let himself believe that Higgs is truly present, conscious, anything other than a shell cracked open by some twisted sense of mercy. Sam’s hands hover uncertainly above the bed, another sedative close by, pulse hammering, and he forces himself to meet Higgs’ gaze, searching for the familiar glint of malice or memory. Instead, he finds a flicker of something haunted—remorse, maybe, or just the empty aftermath of erasure.
"Do you know who you are?" Sam tries to stay calm, to steady his voice. He doesn't want to send Higgs right back into hysterics.
"Higgs. Higgs Monaghan."
"And who am I?"
"Sam," Higgs says flatly, staring somewhat blankly as he did before. "Sam Porter Bridges."
"Where are we?"
Higgs' eyes well up with moisture as they flick around the room.
"I don't know."
"Bullshit." Sam can't help it; he knows Higgs is lying.
Higgs curls in on himself, shaking, hugging his knees.
"Don't fuckin- lie-" Sam urges him the answer as he tries to pry Higgs' arms away to make him sit up and look at him. He does not expect Higgs to scream.
Sam ignores it and tries to pull him up through the strain. He is murmuring something. Over and over again, sobbing through the words. Sam finally gets his arms away, prying the defensive position open as he holds Higgs' wrists firmly in each hand.
"Sorry," Higgs sobs, unable to get a hold of himself. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." His breathing is shallow, picking up speed, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." And then He's fighting Sam violently, thrashing and pulling and trying to knock his head into Sam's, sheer, raw panic coursing through him. Sam's eyes widen in disbelief, trying his best to hold steady. He can't let Higgs get the upper hand, and he doesn't have a free hand to grab the sedative. He'll just have to bring him down on strength alone.
Sam grits his teeth, bracing himself as Higgs’ panic intensifies, the fight desperate and erratic. He tightens his grip, refusing to let go even as the struggle grows reckless, both half-tangled and fallen on the floor, curses tumbling out in equal measure. It takes all of Sam’s resolve not to lash out again, to remember that beneath the violence is a mind shattered by something unknown, the same man who once wielded the power of absolute extinction now can barely remember where he is. When the worst of it passes, Higgs collapses, sobbing and spent, and Sam doesn't let go of his arms yet just holds on, feeling the exhaustion seep into his own bones. Higgs' head is turned to the side underneath Sam, hair falling over his eyes, adrenaline crashing into dust.
Maybe Higgs isn't lying. Maybe he needs time to remember, like Lou said. Sam can kill him later. He pulls Higgs up slightly, enough to have him sit up on the floor. His body seems heavy, like it weighs three times as much as it does.
"Higgs. Look at me."
Higgs obeys, eyes tracking slowly, tears still falling.
He tries something new.
"How old are you?"
"28." He rasps out, voice straining, like if he doesn't answer, Sam really will kill him.
"Where do you live?"
"Shelter. West of Lake Knot."
"What are you?"
"A porter."
Sam sighs deeply in defeat. He doesn't understand what's going on.
"What's the Last thing you remember?" He tries, his tone much gentler, as if Higgs is a child he could frighten at any moment.
"I was- I had a delivery. There was a voidout."
Sam read his journals. He knows this is all true. Perhaps his memory had reset back to that time. There's no telling how much damage the chrysalis did unless he keeps him talking.
"Do you have DOOMs?"
"I think so."
"How do you know me?"
Higgs' brow knit together in confusion. It's as if he knows Sam but can't exactly remember how.
"Listen to me, Higgs," Sam starts, trying his very best to keep it simple. "You've lost some memories."
He searches Higgs’ face for any spark of recognition, any crack in the daze that might let the truth slip through. There’s nothing but blank terror and exhaustion, the kind that settles deep and won’t shake free.
"I-I'm sorry," Higgs says again.
Sam keeps his voice low, almost soothing. “It’s okay." Silence stretches, heavy and restless, before Higgs finally nods, shoulders curling inward again. Sam loosens his grip just a little, enough to let Higgs feel his own shape and space, but not enough for him to bolt. “We’ll figure it out,” Sam says, more promise than conviction, and in the dim room the words hang between them. He doesn't want Higgs to remember. What would be the point? So, they can kill each other all over again?
"Sam?" He coughs, swaying forward a bit. "Are we- friends?"
Sam is so tired. So, he just nods. Higgs knocks his forehead into Sam's chest, and Sam feels the urge to flinch away immediately. For the sake of avoiding another episode from Higgs, he allows it, loosely wrapping his arms around him in a feeble attempt at comfort.
He did not bring Higgs here to comfort him. He brought him here to kill him.
Sam sits there, numb, trying to remember the exact moment everything turned upside down—when the line between vengeance and mercy blurred and he found himself holding him like this. Higgs is trembling against him, and Sam can feel the stutter of his uneven breath through his shirt. Sam still feels the sting of his phobia. This is the last person he wants touching him.
He inhales slowly, the scent of antiseptic and detergent in the air, and tries to anchor himself in the present problem, not in the memory of every wound both given and received, but where to go from here. Sam wonders what Lou would say if she saw him now—if she’d recognize him at all, hunched awkwardly on the cold floor with his mortal enemy shivering in his arms. The silence stretches, not quite peaceful but no longer on the edge of violence, and for a fleeting second, Sam lets his eyes close, exhaustion and dread pooling behind his eyelids. He tells himself it’s only caution that keeps his grip steady as Higgs settles against him, nothing more. He can't let his guard down, not when his memory could return at any moment.
They decide not to tell Higgs any details. They act like he doesn't have two years of lost time and hand him a porter uniform.
Sam watches Higgs accept the drawbridge uniform without protest, the fabric unfamiliar, his eyes darting between Sam and the silent room as if searching for permission to exist. There’s no ceremony, no explanation—just the quiet exchange of necessity and the heavy, unspoken pact to carry on as if nothing has changed. There's a small part of Sam that can recognize that Higgs knows something is off. Knows they want to keep an eye on him, though he's not quite sure why. Higgs slips into the role with an uncertain determination, and Sam finds himself answering questions about routes and deliveries in clipped tones, careful to avoid the landmines of memory.
There’s a tension that lingers from job to job, but for now, Sam pretends they're just two ghosts forced to share ruins and that the past is just lost cargo.