You feel the pain the second you wake up, it slices thought the fogginess of your brain and rapidly wears its welcome out. You groan and turn slightly, but regret that decision immediately as the flash of sharp stabbiness shoots up your abdomen. Sam is by your side immediately, and you've never been so relieved, until you realize that staying in one place is dangerous. Samaritan. You remember Samaritan. You try and sit up but Sam is holding you down,

"Root it's over, we won," and you shake your head, because there's no way that's possible.

Analogue interface was injured protecting admin. Admin uploaded ICE-9. Samaritan was defeated.

The voice in your head comforts you and you immediately relax, Shaw feels it and lets you go. You whisper quietly,

"How long has she been here?" Sam had stopped talking to you after John was taken, and you were afraid you'd never get her back.

Primary asset Sameen Shaw has been stationed in analogue interface's room for 298 hours 14 minutes 27 seconds.

Almost two weeks. Relief washes over you and you pull Shaw onto the bed with you, stiffly trying to ignore the burning in your abdomen. She lays her head on your shoulder and reaches over to turn up your morphine drip, you hold her as close as you can.

You're allowed to leave the hospital after two weeks. Sam stayed by your side the whole time and as much as you were worried about it, you didn't have the energy or the will to be able to tell her to go out and live. She's changed, and the stronger you become the more you fret, because you almost dying seems to have killed her in the process.

"How about I make you a steak tonight?" you give her a hopeful smile, trying to coax one out of her as well. She just shrugs,

"You're probably too tired. You should rest some more," you sigh and shut your eyes for a second, Sameen Shaw never turns down steak. She opens the door to the apartment and it's clear that no one has stepped foot inside for weeks. You grab Sam's shoulders and pull her in front of you, bending down slightly so you can take a closer look at her. She's skinnier, by a lot, you know she hasn't been eating, Finch and his broken nose had begrudgingly told you that. You kiss her forehead and she pushes you off, but there's no agency, it's weak. You sigh and head for a much needed shower.

Sleeping in your own bed is glorious. You fall asleep in a matter of seconds, with Sameen lightly touching your arm. She wakes you in the middle of the night,

"Root?" she whispers, and shakes you lightly. You instinctively reach out and thread your fingers through her hair, scratching her scalp, because usually that's all she wants when she can't sleep or is having nightmares. But she shakes her head and crawls over to you, laying her head on your chest and wrapping both your arms around her. You're exhausted, barely able to stay awake or control your body enough to give her what she wants, but you drop a kiss to the top of her head and try and hold her tight enough that she can relax.

"You scared me Root," and you suck in a breath because Sameen Shaw doesn't get scared.

You haven't slept in a week, coming home was supposed to be relaxing but it's been just the opposite. You worry constantly, because you broke Sameen, the person you love the most in this whole world. She clings to you, especially at night, because all of a sudden she can only sleep if she's on top of you and you're holding her tight enough that she can't move. You can't really sleep on your back, and while she is tiny, having all of her weight on your chest does make it pretty hard to breathe; when it comes down to it though, you'll always choose her sleep over your own. The guilt eats at you, because you're realizing that the first strong emotion Sam ever felt was fear, fear that you caused. It was traumatic, and she never wants to feel that again, so she stays as close as she can to you.

"Sam, sweetie," you kiss the back of her head a couple times and she shakes herself awake. It's four in the morning and she's sleeping in your lap while you're coding, something she hasn't done since she was probably sixteen. You sigh and hold her tightly for a second, just so she can relax, she's not very good at waking up.

"Sam I love you, but I'm really tired and I just need to finish this, and it's a little bit too hot with you on top of me. Go to bed, I'll be in soon ok?" she turns around, gnawing her lip, and you give her forehead one last kiss, which she violently shakes off before storming into the bedroom. You allow yourself a couple of tears, because you turned her into this shell of who she was, and you may never forgive yourself.

You crawl into bed about an hour later, as promised, and Sam immediately rolls over to you and lays her head on your chest. After a few fidgety minutes, she finally relaxes and is able to sleep, but she grips your shirt so tightly that she rips a hole in it.

Shaw rips probably twenty more of your shirts trying to pull herself impossibly closer, she's trying to crawl inside of you, fuse herself to you so she can keep you. You're so spent, and slightly delirious from all the sleep you've lost. Finally you take her hand and pull her to the couch, kneeling in front of her.

"Sam, I'm going on a mission for the machine," she reaches for her backpack full of guns and you shake your head.

"Just me, you've got a numbers mission, Harry has something lined up," she shakes her head.

"I'm going with you," you smile softly and squeeze her hand.

"You can't. I need you to let me go alone. Plus, I want you to have fun with this new toy," you smirk and rummage through your bag, pulling out a new shiny gun for her. Her eyes light up for a second as she takes it from you.

"I promise I'll be back, and I'll be safe." She chews her lip but eventually nods, heading out to the library to go find the boys. Truth be told, you're definitely still in no shape injury-wise to be doing any sort of mission, you're just going to a coffee shop. But Sam needs to see that she can leave you alone and you'll stay safe.

When you return home later that night, she's waiting up for you, but her whole body deflates when she inspects you and sees you're unharmed.

"Have fun today?" you ask her, and she gives you a small smile and a nod. When she falls asleep that night, she settles at your side instead of on top of you, and you get your first good night's sleep since before getting shot.

It's not a quick process, bringing Sam back to normal, but you take it day by day. You start leaving her for longer periods of time, and eventually she finds her balance again. She gains back her weight and John tells you that her fieldwork is at where it was before. She rides her bike around the city for hours at a time (all you want is for her to wear a helmet to protect that beautiful head of hers but she's back to resisting you with things like that).

"Sam I was thinking steak tonight, what do you think?" she grins and nods eagerly, running out the door to go to the store and buy everything for dinner. You laugh and let out a relieved sigh. That's your girl.

She sleeps regularly now, and lets you sleep and code without having to be on top of you. She likes contact, but she doesn't crave it the way she did, she doesn't smother you to death. At night she still keeps a hand touching you, but if she wakes you up now, all she wants is a headscratch. You pull her into your lap tonight when you sit down with a glass of wine and your computer, and pepper the side of her face with kisses,

"I love you Sameen Shaw," you whisper into the side of her neck with a smile. She groans and wipes the side of her face before pulling herself out of your lap to go grab a book.

"Don't be gross Root," and you've never been so happy for her to say those words to you.