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‘Sameen,’ Root called uncovering herself until down her waist. The other woman groaned, angry, due to being woken up from the point where she was finally falling into deep sleep.
‘What?’ Shaw barked, not even moving or opening her eyes.
‘I had a nightmare again.’ She paused, her voice sounding like a lost puppy ‘They’re so odd. Nothing really happens in them, it’s just the place I’m in when I’m in them.’ Root explained, turning to face her significant other.
‘Hn’ Shaw growled, hardly ever caring at this hour in the very early morning.
‘Sameen,’ Root called, making her companion groan angrily again, but this time turning to face the ceiling in resignation to not being allowed to sleep any time soon.
‘What?’ Shaw stated now clearly, the thickness in her voice out of somnolence now fading.
‘I don’t think I’ve seen these places before, you know?’ Another pause. ‘But just the sight of them in my mind… There’s nothing spookier.’
‘Hn’ Sameen’s voice was now more serene than upset, as if in acknowledgement of what Root was saying.
‘It’s like, I can’t describe them to you, I don’t know if they’re places where I’ve been before, places I saw when I was too young to remember, or places I’ve never really seen.’ Root’s eyes longed for Shaw’s gaze. Shaw exhaled deeply in slight annoyance at the time the clock marked.
‘Maybe I have been to those places, but my brain scrambles them into thinking I haven’t. I don’t know, all I know is, when I see them, it feels like being in serious trouble, or acute pain that I’ve blocked. It’s like, I feel I got terrible news, or like being attacked by an explosion of unwanted emotion. Sometimes mine, sometimes others’. Have you ever felt that?’
‘I really don’t know, Root. Is there some way I can help you put that behind for the next…’ she looks at the time again ‘shit, three hours… so you and I can go to sleep?’
‘You know, there wasn’t ever place in my head for hurting. Torture had nothing on me. Or at least that was true not long ago. But these places in my dreams… They’re beyond that.’ Shaw realized not only that Root was not going to quit the talking about her nightmares, but also that she was suddenly understanding where Root was coming from. ‘It’s like… places where I just know, without knowing if I’ve seen them before or not, places where things went wrong.’ The slim and tall body of the hacker came closer to the other woman, looking for shelter in her. Shaw let her.
‘So these could be, figuratively and literally, bad places of your life, correct? That’s what they would represent?’ Shaw’s hand absented-mindedly led its way to Root’s strands of hair, soothing them, yet her eyes not yet leaving the ceiling.
‘Yeah, I think that’s why they’re so hard to identify, and still so, so scary.’ Root’s body pulled away from Shaw’s, just slightly, to take a glance at her. Root’s hand found Shaw’s and she took it into hers. ‘Is this part of a mission? A simulation of it?’ Root asked rather to herself than the woman lying next to her. Her senses examined all of Shaw –her breathing, her body temperature under the covers, perhaps the sound of her heartbeat. ‘Are you really here, Shaw?’
Shaw put the comfort of her annoyance aside, impossible to ignore Root’s plea. She took Root’s other hand in hers, and brought her close to her body again. She couldn’t relief Root’s nightmares, because she couldn’t erase Root’s past. She gripped the back of Root’s head firmly, the pressure relaxing the hacker in the form of an impulse down her spine, their bodies so close that both their vital signs couldn’t be ignored. She pressed her lips to the side of Root’s face, her nose, her lips, so that there was no need for words to say ‘I’m here.’
Root closed her eyes, feeling finally calm again. Shaw smiling secretly proud of herself, ready to fall back asleep, when…
‘Sameen,’ Root’s hands moved on Shaw’s back. It took everything in Shaw to not growl this time, so she just gripped firmly again on the other woman’s hair.
‘What?’ her eyes too heavy to open.
‘Will you stay?’ Root grazed Shaw’s neck with her nose.
‘Yes, Root. This is home, so I’ll stay. Go back to sleep.’ Shaw was aware of how her own grumpiness gave her statements some certain ambiguity, but she hoped Root understood that when she meant “home”, here with her, she didn’t mean a physical place, but rather the kind of place that could restore Root’s nightmares into dreams again.