"Bring Some New Jokes!"

The first thing she noticed when she woke up was that she was warm; the second was that she was hungry.

Hungry for her children, rather. Or were they her siblings? Perhaps a combination of both. Anyway, they loved her, and she could feel it, while their vines wrapped around her legs, as if they were holding her close. She could feel their heartbeat. They were everyone she had ever known. They were her family, her children, her siblings, her parents.

They wrapped their way into her hair and around her waist and arms, crossing across her neck to form patterns across her skin. They didn't like her clothes. Why should they? They weren't blissfully green.

You are our female, said the children. You are our mother/sister.

The transition was not hard, and the chlorophil was pumping through her veins like blood by the time she rose to face the males.

"Ahh, yes, the female. Every garden needs a caretaker!"

She informed them of their purpose; the troublesome one -- Danny? -- escaped, as was expected. She knew that he would. He runs to the only place he deems safe, the place where nothing grows, but there is only death, the place of sickness, the place of ghosts.

But she followed him, and she stood before the doorway, and he couldn't get through unless he hurts her. Her vines wrapped around the levers of the laboratory.

"Hello, Danny," Sam-an-tha purred, and she could the flowers in the room begin to open up and blossom. "Where are you going?"

Sam woke up about three hours after she and Danny had fallen asleep (she'd made sure to check her watch this time). Blinking her eyelids up slowly, a fond smile crossed her face as she perceived Danny... out like a light, fingers sprawled protectively over her lower back.

"Can't stop being a hero even for one second," she murmured, and lightly kissed his cheek, smoothing back one or two black, thick strands of hair from his face. "Dork."

She didn't want to move -- and didn't, for a few minutes, just relaxing and enjoying feeling cozy and warm and close -- but eventually her bladder won out, and she gently slipped out and away from him, mourning the loss of warmth.

Yawning sleepily, she made her way out of the bathroom a few minutes later, fully intending to crawl back into bed, when she did a double take and peered back inside. Because there was a bathtub and shower there that looked big enough to rival her own. Considering Sam's house mansion, this was saying something.

A bath would be... really, really nice... She bit her lip.

She already knew where the towels were after cleaning up after Danny's drinking episode last time. She peered into the cupboard and had a nice jaw dropping moment. "No way!" No way was that a bottle of lavender bubble bath. Just... no way.

She was totally giving the Bar all the money she had left. Totally.

She turned on the water and was pleased to see it was sparkling and adjusted the temperature, still rubbing sleep out of her eyes. After all the stress of the last few weeks (months, years), she'd barely been able to get enough sleep, let alone have time for other relaxation techniques. Sam loved bubble baths. Sam loved being able to relax and not be afraid to take longer than a five minute shower (the way things were going, she was not risking a ghost flying through her shower wall, she just wasn't).

Once the tub was filled with amazingly huge and fluffy purple bubbles, she sank in and let out a rare completely content sigh, submerging enough to soak her hair and rub bubbles out of her eyes. Life was great.

Sam woke up hazily around when her watch said two. She didn't know whether time followed very well here, but she knew that they'd fallen back asleep sometime around eight.

"Hey," she murmured into her best friend's ear, and rubbed at her eyes some more. "Wake up."