Chapter Text
The first lie Samson ever tells is that he doesn’t know where his mum’s red markers have gone. He was five. He liked to draw, and would steal any pencil, marker or pen in sight to hide under his bed. In the middle of the night, feeling sneaky and smart, he would get his stolen property out and draw and draw and draw across all the pages in the little journal his mother had given him. It had a print of the stars and the moon across its cover, and a lonely knight in the forefront of the image. He would try to replicate the shapes on the pages when he didn’t know what else to illustrate.
He can’t recall if they were any good. Most likely not, being a child’s creation; colours and shapes meshing together that should not. But free in their creativity. Samson had been free.
More lies follow the first. Not too many, and never that bad. Nothing to keep him awake at night as he becomes six, then seven, then eight, before he becomes nothing at all except for rage and rage and rage.
The biggest lie he ever tells does not leave his lips for many years later.
“Do you remember much from your time out there?” Ian asks him, while Samson helps him prepare a body for another cremation. It involves cutting parts of it into smaller pieces. He doesn’t need to use tools for the dismemberment, but does so for Ian’s sake. He dislikes to remind him of his previous nature.
“No.” He lies, and focuses on sawing off a limb.
The truth is that he recalls it all with perhaps too much detail. It is his childhood, the life before he was a monster, that dims in his mind. Perhaps that is why he clings to it more strongly. Perhaps, if he only focuses enough, he can picture his mother’s face again. Perhaps, if only he really tries, he can remember more than faint flashes of a life not really lived.
Ian doesn’t press him on it. Mostly, he seems happy to just have Samson at his side, his ‘miracle’. He's told him a few times already that he doesn't have to be. Samson is free to do whatever he wants.
“There’s nothing else I want to do than to be with you.” Is what Samson manages to think up as an answer, when the topic comes up again, as it sometimes does. He rehearses the words before he says them out loud.
Ian has no argument to that. Samson even thinks he looks a little pleased, or maybe just relieved. He is glad to be wanted
He despises speaking, in all truth. Words are unfamiliar even if understood, though the more complicated the higher the chance of Ian having to explain definitions to him.
He hates speaking but only because he is scared he doesn't know how, properly. That his words will entangle in each other and come out wrong. That he is wrong and that it will show through every crack in the facade that Ian has gifted him.
He is less familiar with syllables and structuring sentences and more with screaming loud and raw and primal from the depths of his stomach. He is used to his body speaking for itself, standing straight and rigid to intimidate and ward off the few predators who have dared to come too close.
He'd fought a bear, once. He had bitten into its throat and gnawed through its skin as thick as hide. The bear had fallen. Samson had not. Samson had not lost a battle since he was eight years old, when he lost his life and a name and a family.
His life since then is vivid experiences. Trial and error of the bloody, confused kind. Learning how to keep alive. Learning how to kill the beasts which roamed the lands. Not understanding that it was him who was the beast all along.
He feels dirtied from most of his life. Hindsight is twenty twenty, is something Ian said once. Then explained what it meant, without any question. He seems to just know what Samson understands and not, merely by looking at him. A passing glance and he can read from his posture or expression or maybe just the air about him if he is out of his depth or not.
He notices, too, the way Samson will look at his books at night, when they are sheltered away for Ian's safety.
“Do you know how to read?”
Ian always manages to ask all questions like that without any trace of judgement. Samson only feels ashamed from within, from his own frustration of all the things he wishes he knew.
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
Samson shrugs. It feels like a great commitment. He worries he won't be able to, with a patient teacher or not. His eyes and hands are not meant for turning a page. It seems too gentle an activity.
“I could read for you.”
He shrugs again. Then he considers it. It doesn't seem nearly as intimidating, and he has always enjoyed the sound of Ian's voice.
“Alright.”
Ian smiles, turns down the volume of his song. He loves to play his songs, and Samson loves it too. He watches Ian almost every night as he hums and sways to the tunes, sometimes dragging Samson into something of a rudimentary dance. Which he always obliges. There is no world where he would not follow Ian into anything, even these silly movements.
But they don’t dance now. Ian gestures for Samson to come closer to where his books are collected. He comes, and looks at the array of titles he can’t comprehend. Tomes of words that are out of his depth.
Ian hums thoughtfully as he traces a hand along the spines, brows furrowed down in concentration. “Most of these would be rather dull for you, I think. A lot of them are purely academic. But- ah, here we have something.”
He pulls out a thick one, and blows the dust off it.
“Le Morte D’Arthur.” He reads aloud, showing Samson the cover. The image on the cover means nothing to Samson, men dressed in odd outfits he hasn’t seen before. “That’s French. It means The Death of Arthur.”
Samson doesn’t know who that is. He gives Ian a look to convey this.
“He’s a great character from English myth.” Ian explains. “It’s about knights.”
The word floats in his mind, nudging at something. A memory. A journal. A knight in front of a starry sky.
“I think you might like it. What do you say, Samson?”
Samson nods. It seems as well a choice as any other. And, he cannot deny, it has piqued a sincere curiosity within him.
They settle, Ian clears his throat, and begins to read.
“Chapter one. How Uther Pendragon sent for the duke of Cornwall and Igraine his wife, and of their departing suddenly again. It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned…”
Samson closes his eyes, allowing Ian’s soothing voice to submerge him in the tales of knights and adventure. At first it is just that, his words and a contentment. But soon enough it develops into mental images, brought forth from an imagination he hadn’t been aware of possessing. It is unlike thinking, unlike memories he doesn’t enjoy, it is a wholly new experience. It reminds him of the before times, those faint recollections of a time spent in childish innocence. It reminds him of voices he can’t remember anymore, if they were deep or soft or rough, perhaps reading to him just as Ian does now.
He pictures men in the same outfits as on the cover of the book. Shaping them into distinct figures and characters, trying to apply the few descriptors given by the text itself. It is a challenge, but an enjoyable one.
It becomes a tradition, this reading together. Every night, before Ian goes to bed and Samson watches most of the night, on guard and needing much less rest than Ian does, he submerges himself in the tales of chivalry, honor and knighthood.
The concepts follow him into the daytime, as well. They distract him from the reality of his own identity. Rather than a beast and his saviour, he imagines himself as the loyal knight to a deserving king. It seems fitting enough- Samson knows he would go into any battle ordered of him. That he would kneel if Ian asked him to. That there is no man he would rather follow than Ian, into anything at all.
Yes. Samson would much rather be a knight than a beast and a monster. He may never be human, but that does not mean he can’t learn to be something good, even if just pretending.
He makes a plan; to become less of what he used to be. To become better. It starts with clothing himself. The only thing is, he has no idea how to verbalise these desires to Ian, how to say it out loud in a way which will make sense and not prove his own unintelligence.
It is not as though Samson has been entirely naked for a while, now. He wears a makeshift apron around his waist, covering his upper legs and groin. It is not that he feels particularly ashamed of himself. He has lived too long in nature, with no care for the matter, to feel as though he is ugly. But he does wish to feel human, and knightly, and no knight would go about in his own barbaric manner.
“I need to go.” Is what ends up leaving his mouth, to his own immediate regret. This is the difficulty of speech, of formulating abstract thought into real words. It translates poorly.
Ian tenses, but though his first reaction is a frown he tries to cover it by not looking directly at Samson.
“I thought this day might come.” He says, solemn but forcibly calm.
“No.” He bites out, fighting his own mind. “I mean. I need-” he stops, makes a frustrated noise. He gestures at himself, at his bare skin of scars and reminders of a long life lived in hardship. “I need to find clothing.”
“Oh.” Ian looks him up and down, clearly adjusting his perception of the situation. “Oh! Yes. I see. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. I’m sorry, Samson. I should have thought of this.”
He doesn’t know the quote Ian speaks, though he recognises it as one. Ian will often do such things, break off in the middle of a sentence to say something odd that only he seems to understand, then carry on as though the interruption hadn’t happened at all.
“I don’t have anything to fit you.” Ian continues, in a more fretful tone. “Yes, I see what you mean. You would have to leave to find something to your size.”
“You’ll come with.” He doesn’t mean it as an order. For who is Samson to order Ian to do anything, when it is the opposite that should be true. He tries anew, scoffing first in frustration. “I want you to come with me.”
“Me?” Ian sounds shocked. “I would only slow you down.”
“I would keep you safe.”
“I’d be perfectly safe here.” Ian refutes, not with any temper. He says it as he says most things, with a competent confidence.
“You don’t know that.” Samson insists, and sees how Ian’s brows raise in surprise. He doesn’t usually speak this much at once. Neither does he usually argue. He feels sick for it, for being difficult, but he’d feel sicker yet about not keeping him safe.
“I do know that. And as do you, Samson. I know this place.” Ian says gently. “It’s all I know. I wouldn’t know how to deal with everything out there, not as well as you do.”
“You go out often.”
“In a radius that I know well, and only to find resources or plants or bodies.”
“I would protect you.” Samson tries anew.
“Yes. I believe that you would. But you won’t have to, if I stay here. It’s the optimal choice.”
Samson feels something he has never felt before about Ian.
It is displeasure, quickly followed by irritation. Irritation is not rage, but it is similar enough to remind him of it.
He has the unwanted visions of enacting on his displeasure, to carry Ian with him whether he likes it or not. He could do it. He’s stronger by far, unnaturally so by Ian’s account, and he would not be able to fight back.
Blood drains from his face. He is not meant to feel these things anymore. It is wrong because he is wrong.
These are the thoughts of a monster, he thinks.
“Samson?”
Samson has lost his words. A lump in his throat keeps them from leaving, and a buzz in his brain keeps them from forming at all. He turns and walks away, because he doesn’t know what else there is to do whilst his emotions are in turmoil.
The anger is real and uncomfortable because it is real. He fears that Ian has recognised it, that he will think him a failed experiment. Not worth having around. What good is something tamed that still bites.
He wanders for a long time, breath heavy with exertion, though he does not feel much of it in a physical sense. He passes through the forest, and it is only by raw luck that he does not meet upon his own kind.
He has killed many of the local pack - his own pack, he thinks without wanting to - and no others have come to replace it yet. There are only stragglers about, these days.
He remembers the clean up from the train. He’d notified Ian of the carnage he’d left behind there, though part of him would have preferred to leave his old companions to rot without ever having to see them again. Ian, of course, made sure to give them a place of honour in his monument.
Samson does not feel guilt for having killed them. It is too complex a situation for something so simple as just feeling bad for an action. Neither does he feel mournful. Mostly, he thinks, there is a wistfulness. A form of nostalgia for them. They had not known each other as people do, not as he and Ian do now.
But there had been a mockery of companionship in it. Known faces, children, washing in a stream together. Meals shared, of all kinds of meat. They had followed him without question, because of an ingrained loyalty to the power he displayed, and perhaps an understanding that he would keep them fed for it.
In a sense, it was he who had been the ruler then. A king in his own right, a land of his own, a people who followed him.
But no more.
He thinks very hard about how glad he is that he no longer lives that life. He thinks very hard about all the people he has killed. Whose heads he has ripped from their shoulders. Whose bones he has crushed, rather than cleaned and worshipped.
There is a stag in a clearing. The sight of it pulls him out of his spiral of thoughts and frustrations and angry nostalgia. It hasn’t noticed him yet. He stands frozen in place as he looks at it.
His first instinct is to kill it. It is more a stalled reflex than a conscious want. He could do it. It is not difficult- not with his endurance and speed. Not enough to outrun it, maybe, but enough to follow it until it falls from exhaustion. And as it is, he is positive he could ambush it and have it killed before it can run.
It would feed Ian and himself. It would not be a needless kill. It would surely be just.
The stag has its head lowered, eating from the ground. Soft grass swaying in a breeze. There are flowers interspersed with the green, none Samson knows by name. But they are small and white and grow in clusters together. As wild as the forest, and as stunningly beautiful as the prey between them.
If he breathes very deeply in, he thinks he can smell them.
Unbidden, vague memories float through him. More like smoke than pictures, details obscured. Flowers given to someone. A parent? A sibling? A friend? Another child? It carries the scent of apology, and of affection.
Ian’s voice, a fresher and clearer memory, weaves itself into the abstract sensations of his past. By my head, said the other, there have I been and espied the court of King Arthur, and there is such a fellowship they may never be broken, and well-nigh all the world holdeth with Arthur, for there is the flower of chivalry.
The sun has nearly lowered in full by the time that Samson returns to Ian’s bunker. Ian himself is standing, tense, by the entrance. When he sees Samson’s large form approaching, a great weight seems to leave his body.
“I wasn’t sure I’d see you tonight.” Ian says, when he’s close enough to hear. Things feel uncharacteristically hesitant between them. “I thought you might have gone off on your quest.”
Samson nods, feeling, despite himself, a slight tug at the corner of his mouth.
“I wouldn’t leave you.” He says seriously, because despite his relief to see Ian not mad at him, it is important that Ian understands that he would never so explicitly betray him, if at all. Not about something such as this. Then, because he has sincerely used more words in a day than he can bear, he stretches his arm out and lets his gift speak for him.
Clutched in an awkwardly large hand are as many of the wild white flowers as he’d managed to pick in one grip.
“What’s this?” Ian takes a long moment to study them from afar, then process, and then blink up at Samson with something like surprise. Their eyes don't really meet. “Are these for me?”
Samson nods.
Ian looks more surprised still. But then his mouth stretches out, revealing his ray of blunt teeth; they’re in better shape than Samson’s own, which are infinitely more yellowed and crooked and feel sharper even though he knows they can’t be because, as Ian had once told him, they were born the same creature.
“Thank you, Samson.” He says, and the quality in his voice makes something pass through his body like the jolt of an arrow burrowing into his flesh, warm and odd. He nearly looks for blood, but only follows Ian back into his shelter, watching him put on one of his music plates at a low volume before searching for something else.
A cup. Ian makes it into a makeshift vase for the little flowers, which he has since taken from Samson’s grip. “There we are.” He shows him his teeth again- smiles at him, he rethinks. He is so tired, exhausted in a way he isn’t familiar with, where it is not so much his body that aches as it is his mind.
He has the inexplicable urge to reach out and touch Ian in some way, as he tracks him with his gaze in the dim light of their shelter. But they don’t often touch, because Samson may be cured or healed or made new again, but the sickness of rage and violence is still coursing through his blood, and they can’t risk the infection. The fear is not spoken aloud, and it doesn’t need to be. Samson knows it, so he doesn’t ask for the touch he feels he must have craved for longer than he was consciously aware.
He stays another day before he resolves to leave. Ian, surprising him, says he might come along after all. Leading up to this, the air between them had still felt fragile. The reality of parting dawning on them both, perhaps. Samson would have left, and come back, regardless. But he is pleased, and even charmed, that Ian has come to see it his way. He feels he has not done it because he thinks it a good idea, but only to be kind to Samson.
That is reason enough.