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'Sameen?' Root's voice carries through the darkness of their flat like snowflakes. Tiny whispers that paint the night white and clear and ice cold (Sam hates the cold; how it crawls through layers and layers of clothes and makes the joints in her hand sluggish and her breath treacherously visible).
'Sameen?'
Shaw is sitting in the darkest corner she could find, her legs drawn up to her chest, her forehead resting on her knees. Her dark hair is falling loosely around her shoulders, a protective blanket against Root's voice.
In the white and blue light of Finch's monitors Sam can see the blood dripping off Root's fingertips.
She holds her breath; she stops breathing entirely. There's an explosion somewhere behind her eyes, pressing against her skull from the inside, thudding against the bone in accord with the blood dripping onto the floor.
Drip – thud. Drip, drip – thud, thud.
The light coming from the bare light bulb in their flat is yellow and Sam remembers to breathe, even though her lungs are burning with the effort of it.
She's so angry, she can feel her body ache from all the tension in her muscles, every part of her ready to hit something, ready to scream.
She can hear (and feel – like a fucking phantom limp) Root move through the room.
'Sameen,' she tries again, close now. Sam can feel her warmth on her bare arms.
'If this is about the grenades –'
'It's not about the grenades.'
She looks up at Root (why is she always looking at her? She knows her inside out, has touched every inch of skin and yet, and yet, she just can't help but look) and the spot on her gray shirt that's almost black now, the tiny piece of gauze peaking out of her collar, the dried smudge of blood on the back of her hand.
Something is squeezing her lungs and she forgets to breathe (again).
There are men swarming into the warehouse, armed with machine guns and one of them with grenades (who carries around grenades?).
'Did you set off the alarm?' Sam asks and shoots around the crate she's using for cover.
'I might have.'
'I hate it when you do that!' Sam shouts over the machine gun fire that shreds into the boxes around her.
'I know you do!' Root gives back, but the way she winks at Sam says that she knows the truth.
Sam doesn't hate this; never this.
'I'm done,' Sam says, and wonders who this person is, with her voice and her body, barely using her lungs.
'With what?' Root asks and crouches down in front of her, resting her elbows on her knees. Trusting, open.
'With this, all of this. Us.' (There's a sound like crackling fire in her ears.)
Root's body is still, perfectly balanced on her heels.
Drip – thud. Drip – thud.
'You're scared,' Root states softly, her eyes wide and gentle.
'I'm not scared,' Sam snaps and looks away (maybe it's more like rushing water; a surge).
'I think you are,' Root says and breaths out, a soft puff of warm air.
'I think you consider yourself much too important.' (an ocean sloshing around in her head, drowning her from the inside) 'I'm not scared. I'm annoyed.'
She looks back at Root (always) and it breaks her, somehow, snaps something inside of her that was holding her, back or upright or in check, she doesn't know. She pushes Root off balance, a swift jab against the other woman's (uninjured) shoulder.
'Sameen –'
'I'm angry!' Sam snarls. 'I didn't ask for this, but you make me feel anyway; over and over again. This isn't me. I don't feel. I don't – I don't want to.'
She pushes away the hand reaching out to her; it falls down between them, drawing an invisible line, a crater, that fucking ocean.
'You don't get to do this to me anymore, make me care, make me feel.'
'I have nothing to do with how you feel –' Root starts, pushing herself onto her knees (Please, don't, Sam wants to beg, people kneeling in front of me get shot).
'You have everything to do with how I feel! I don't know even how to breathe without you anymore, how to do anything without you. I don't want this!'
Sam wants to drive her fist into a wall, feel the skin on her knuckles tear (she could choose to feel that).
Root looks down at the blood on her hand, a surprised look on her face, and then just shrugs, the movement making two tiny flakes of dried brown blood float to the ground.
'It's nothing,' she says, as if it doesn't matter. And it doesn't, it's nothing (isn't it? It doesn't matter, except that it does. It matters to Sam, very much).
She doesn't hit anything. Instead she hugs her legs closer and puts her head back onto her knees and waits for it to be over; waits for the rushing in her ears to stop and the pain in her chest to go away, waits for the moment when everything will just switch off and she'll be able to breathe again. When she doesn't hurt anymore because of blood on a gray shirt; when she doesn't believe anymore that stepping out of an elevator was the best thing she ever did.
Sam waits.
Thud, thud. Thud. (Drip?)
Tries to breathe.
And then there's a warm hand on her arm and everything stops (she feels like crying, she feels like throwing up, she feels like shooting somebody, she feels).
She shakes her head against her knees.
'Just go away,' Sam tries. I know you will, is what she thinks.
Root's hand starts moving up and down Sam's arm, leaving a trail of warmth on Sam's skin.
'Do you how I can tell that you're scared?' Root asks. She's so close, Sam can feel her lips moving against the top of her head. She almost sounds sad, somehow, and that's worse than blood and Sam doesn't know why.
She blinks at Root through her hair, watches Root's hair move and her pulse beat against the thin skin at her neck. She's touched that spot, she's tasted that spot, and now (don't think it, don't even think it) she wants to press and press her hand there (she thought it).
'Do you know how I know?'
Shaw just keeps staring, her hands slightly trembling fists against her shins.
'I know because I'm scared, too. Because there are nights when I look at you and I see all the different ways in which you could be killed and taken from me. And then,' she puts one long hand against Shaw's neck, to the same spot Sam's been thinking about on Root's throat, 'I think about all the ways in which I could kill you. All the ways in which I could hurt you and all the ways in which I have already hurt you.'
The pressure on her neck tightens just the tiniest bit; Sam can feel her pulse beat against Root's hand, trying to push her away, maybe trying to pull her closer.
She puts her hand on top of Root's and closes her eyes.
She has always looked at death, at the people out to kill her, those with the guns and knives and bombs. She won't look this time, because this is the only death she won't fight, the only one she can't (the only one she cares about; and she isn't even sure anymore, whether she means her own death or Root's – it might be one and the same).
'I could tear you apart without flinching,' she whispers.
'Then why are your hands trembling?' Root asks.
She's so fucking scared.
When she opens her eyes again, there are tears on Root's face, silvery lines down her golden cheeks.
'How do you live like this? With all of that inside of you?' Sam asks, quietly, brokenly.
'I just keep looking at you.'
And just like that Sam can breathe again.
She licks the tears off Root's face, her hands cradling Root's head. The right cheek, up to the barely visible lines at the edge of the eye, and then the left cheek, the skin soft and warm under her tongue; alive.
When she's done, she just keeps going, licks at Root's pulse until she's sure their hearts are beating at the same rhythm, mouths her way down Root's throat to the edge of her shirt.
There are hands pushing at clothes, incredibly gentle but with a hungry urgency underneath.
Sam pushes at Root again, all gentleness this time, and lays her down on the carpet, crawling over her; a shield against everything else. Root smiles up at her, hair splayed around her like a halo.
'Shut up,' Sam grumbles against Root's neck, her hands pushing up the gray shirt.
Root only laughs, barely audible, and it bubbles through Sam's stomach like really good whiskey. It's difficult, to get the shirt off without Root having to lift her arm, but Sam takes her time. She gets to have this, no one can take it from her; at least not tonight.
The shirt feels brittle in her hand, where the blood has stained it, and for a second Sam can hear the ocean again. But Root splays her hand against Sam's neck, warm and steady and very much alive.
The shirt gets stuffed under the bed, where the shadows hide it ('Shut up,' Sam says again).
She skirts her fingers around the gauze that's taped to Root's upper arm, the cut adhesive tape speaking of Finch's handiwork.
'It's –'
'Don't say it's nothing,' Sam interrupts. She replaces her fingers with her lips, keeping her touch as light as possible. 'It's everything.'
I won't leave, Sam promises silently, memorizing hot flesh with warm hands.
I know.
Please don't leave me.
Root sights into Shaw's shoulder open-mouthed. I couldn't.
Sam forces herself to keep her eyes open; she used to be empty for a long time, on her own rules, in her own way.
She isn't anymore, in any way (it takes her breath away, again and again, but Root kisses her and that is breathing, too; the best kind).
They take each other apart and then put the other one back together again and there is no one else they would allow this, no one else with whom they would forget to listen to steps in the hallway, or the sound of a safety being released.
I'm sorry, Sam taps into Root's back in Morse code, later, much later.
'What for?' Root asks, her face half-buried in their only pillow (Sam is a blanket hog, Root always steals the pillow, it works perfectly; and Sam has an excuse to use Root for a pillow).
I'm not sure.
'Then why are you apologizing?'
Sam buries closer to Root, pushing her head under Root's arm, her skin dragging deliciously against the other woman's.
I'm not sure. She slings her arms around Root.
'I'll be here when you figure it out,' Root promises, her breath ghosting over Sam's cheek.
They don't sleep.
They watch the sunrise through their window.
The light stays on the whole night.
(Sam burns the gray shirt and brings Finch tea and almost makes John laugh. They save a number and Root pulls her stitches; it's alright, though. Sam re-does them and dressed the wound again, ripping the adhesive tape with her teeth. Her hands are steady and sure and she washes her hands afterward and watches the blood being flushed down the drain.
One day, this might kill her;
one day, she just might let it.)