domesticadventures:

life lessons. 12×02 coda. sam. (ao3)

Sam has been thinking, lately, about wanting to live.

Not that he hasn’t thought about it before, that is. He’s thought about living in the same way he’s thought about dying. He’s thought of it as his duty, thought of continuing to struggle and fight not out of any sense of self-preservation but simply out of a twisted sense of obligation to the world. He’s forced himself to carry on in order to solve problems caused by cosmic forces, by his friends and family, by himself.

This time, though? He hasn’t been thinking about it out of some misplaced devotion to the job or some lingering sense of guilt for debts left unpaid. He’s been thinking about wanting to live for its own sake. For his own sake.

He wakes from the dream about Toni, the violation of it, wakes to his foot throbbing and his head aching, his skin itching after hours spent coated in sweat and blood, and finds he isn’t resigned like he’s grown so used to expecting. Instead, he’s angry. The world has already taken so much from him. He’s already given so much – his friends, his family, most of his life. He’ll be damned if he’s going to give up the rest of the life he has left. He deserves better than that.

I want to live, he thinks, easily, immediately, like there’s never been a time when that wasn’t the case.

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