A/N. Disclaimer: I don't own them, not making any money off this, etc. Spoilers for Blind Spot. T for language. Oh, and I don't really know when Blind Spot was supposed to have taken place (summer?) but in my story it happens in winter.

CHAPTER ONE - CLOUDS

The pain is bad but the fear is worse. Pain she can deal with. She went through labor, after all, and that didn't even compare to the actual near-physical pain of giving up the baby.

Fear, though…

Fear eats away at you.

Fear erodes your sense of self until you're nothing more than a clot of emotions run amok, panic eating away at logic until all the neurons in your brain misfire and spark off random lines of adrenaline and denial and terror and confusion, until you're not you anymore, not unique, just joined inseparably with everyone else drenched in fear, one giant terror conformation.

The human body is not equipped to handle this, she thinks blindly as the metal blade of the scissors runs down her cheek almost lovingly, tenderly, kissing her (I'll never have another kiss).

Then again, she thinks hours later, still hanging like a piece of meat to be cured, the human body isn't equipped to handle whatever's being done over in the other room.

She has to tune out the screams. She feels almost guiltyfor doing so, because the person screaming is a person, someone who deserves to be heard in their final desperate hour, but she's going to go insane if she doesn't block the sound out. Such pure desperate pain.

She disconnects. Pretends she is not here not anywhere. Pictures being on the beach, drenched in sand and sun and sweat. In Issy's backyard with Patrick (oh, Patrick) playing tag. In a castle of clouds in the air, everything pale pink and silvery and shiny and safe. She has a cloud dinner party for her cloud guests, and after cloud dessert Cloud Bobby comes over and reads out loud that odd, abstract cloud poetry he likes so much in their cloud bedroom while she drifts off to cloud sleep.

Not here not here not here not here not here notherenotherenotherenothere.

Not standing up on her tiptoes and swiveling slowly, slowly, slowly slowly slowly until the nail gives and she collapses on the ground, resisting the urge to lay there keening. Not running running running, desperate for a way out before her body gives out entirely and she drops to the ground, raging at her useless muscles while her mind screams on, trapped in this body that will not go anymore.

Not picking herself up and going on anyway.

But oh, she is there when she finds the window, that blessed six by eight slice of air and light and hope. And when the dog comes and she feels his cold nose and scraping hairy face and she's shoving her hand in his jaws, not caring if he bites her hand off because please God amputation, rapid quick blood loss followed by shock, would be miles better than dying beat by beat while the life is tortured out of her.

She doesn't remember how she gets out of the building. She doesn't remember the guy calling 911 or the ambulance arriving. Entering the hospital? Total blank. The police trying to take her statement while the doctors check her out and stick IVs in and take blood and give shots? Might as well not have happened.

She does remember her family coming, her father stiff and old and too broken for tears, her mother unhinged and weeping and promising her everything will be all right. Her sister Issy bringing Patrick who tried to climb up on the bed to sit with his Aunt 'Lex and kneeing her in one of her bruised ribs by accident so hard that she starts crying and he starts crying and they have to leave and she cries some more until they give her some morphine to make her sleep and to stop the ragged pain.

She tries not to think about it.

And now it's hours later and she's awake and there's Bobby, his head buried in his hands, sitting beside her bed.

"You look like hell."

smirk

She's okay at first. She's herself, joking and snarky and sarcastic. She gives Ross the bare basic facts, waves off her brother Greg's concern, shrugs out of the clumsy hug Bobby tries to give her when she takes her first, painful lap around the hallway, dragging her IV pole behind her.

The next day she checks out.

She calls Logan for a ride because she knows he'll crack an awkward joke or two, give her a few worried glances, and then just drop her off and drive away (unlike her family or Bobby, who would insist on staying the night).

She's fine, she tells them when they call, short hours later, wondering why she didn't tell them she was getting out of the hospital and should they come over and does she know it's supposed to snow pretty badly and is she sure she's all right by herself?

She's fine.

Alone.

Right?