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It happens when you are seven. You're in the playground on the swings when a boy twice your size comes up from behind you and shoves you off, laughing all the while as you fall face-first into the sand and skin your knee. You struggle to your feet, fighting the pain, and you look him dead in the eye and swing a roundhouse kick into his chest. He goes down like a sack of potatoes, screaming, and you're on him in seconds. Your tiny fists slam against his face, again and again and again, until he's howling, until your father and two other parents have to drag you away from him.
You watch his mother cradle him, limp and bleeding, and feel nothing more than mere satisfaction.
Your father takes you home, sits you down, bandages your leg. And then he does his research. He speaks to therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists. He spends entire nights with you in the living room teaching you what it means to feel. He teaches you the appropriate reactions to specific situations. You learn, quickly, though you retain no deep understanding of what he means. Emotions possess no import for you. You don't comprehend what it means to care about someone, or to feel guilty. When your father dies, you sit at the funeral and stare at the coffin with your chin resting in your hands, wondering what you're going to have for dinner.
People don't understand. They call you cold. You suppose they are right, to an extent. You watch your classmates in school fall in love and moon about their respective others. You concentrate on your schoolwork instead.
Love is an emotion, and that is a world completely foreign to you. You have no visa for it, and you have no wish to gain one.
They deem you unfit to be a doctor, because you'd watch your patients die and just go home for tea and biscuits right after hanging your coat up. So you leave. You turn your life from healing to killing. It's deliciously ironic. You enjoy it, and you are pretty damn good at what you do, too. Not feeling is an asset in your field. It keeps you stoic. It keeps you cool and levelheaded in the face of overwhelming odds. Those who don't know any better admire you. Nothing and nobody fazes you. Your name is Sameen Shaw. You are untouchable.
And then you meet Root.
It's not that Root throws you off your game - nobody throws you off your game. But she makes you feel things - things you don't want to register. Things you had to be taught. Things that remind you of being eight years old, sitting on the ratty sofa and listening to your father's voice. When she laughs, you want to punch her, or shoot her, or choke her. You want to hurt her, because then she will stop. Because when she stops, you don't feel. And when you don't feel, you don't want to do other things. Like touch her, kiss her, hold her gaze.
You hate this - hate is a simple, uncomplicated emotion you have always understood. You like it. You resort to your defence mechanisms. You try to hurt her. The thing is, she's strong enough, and smart enough, to hurt you back. She treats it like a game - like it's fun to be chased, to be hurt, to be run ragged.
You hate this.
You hate her.
And you keep telling yourself this, because the more you say it, the truer it gets.
Root says I need you, and suddenly you're seven again, back on that stupid playground kneeling over that stupid boy punching the living daylights out of his stupid face. Your fingers twitch and you long to feel the satisfying crack of bone beneath your knuckles. You want to mark her cheek with your fist. Everything sways inside you, ebbs, swells, rolls.
You page through a copy of the dictionary, circle the entry for sociopath, underline the definition five times in black marker. You hurl it at the wall over and over, until the methodical thuds become a melody that sings you to sleep.
You're sinking.
You're drowning.
Every time she looks at you, you feel, and it's like you've lost a part of yourself. You don't know who this person is - this person who inhabits your brain and your body, who wants to touch feel taste lick kiss. You spend nights awake punching your pillow.
You push her away with all your might, but she keeps coming back. And somehow, you want her to. It is a game, a dance. You wonder when you started enjoying the music. You wonder why it chafes, because you have never loved her. You don't love her. You will never love her.
Until you're both on a mission, and in the middle of a firefight you slip. There are so many, and you haven't eaten in thirty-six hours, haven't slept in forty, and you're strong - but not strong enough. You pause for the briefest moment to catch your breath. It is your undoing. You find yourself cornered. You turn in what seems like slo-mo, and a few metres away you can see the barrel of a gun.
The gun goes off. The air is treacle. You see the bullet leave the barrel. You see it come your way.
You are going to die.
But you don't. The problem is that you don't. The problem is that you see Root turn. You see her wrench her mouth open in a scream. You see her run, and leap, and throw herself in front of you, and god, god, god, you did you did you do.
She has her arms flung out beside her, shielding your frame with hers. Three slugs plug her in the chest, in the stomach, and you have the sense of mind to shoot a few rounds back at her attacker. They go down -
- but so does Root.
And everything fades out like static around you after that. You think you die. You think you come back. You think you black out for a second because one moment she's in front of you and the next you're on the ground, on your knees, clutching her tight. She commands such a presence, but splayed out in your arms, she seems so small, so soft. Her hair sticks to her forehead. Her face is too pale. The blood is warm and red on your hands, too bright, too real. You can't move. You can't speak. You can't breathe. Her chest heaves. Blood drips from the side of her mouth, so much blood. Your fingers are wet. There are rivulets through the spaces between them. Your jeans are staining. Root lies there, trembling, brilliant crimson blossoming against the fabric of her top.
Root is dying. You think you are, too. You are cold. You are numb. It's like the feeling you get when you run on an empty stomach and end up leaning against a tree by the side of the road, shaking from exhaustion. You don't know how to love. You don't. You are scared. You are scared of being scared. There are no tears, like there have never been - but a chasm is opening up within you. It cracks through your voice.
"Root." It's too loud, too broken, in the sudden silence. You're not sure when the fight ended. You're not sure you care. In this moment the whole world has narrowed to a point that centres entirely around the woman in your arms. The woman whose eyes flicker when you say her name, who smiles, meets your gaze when you dip your head to touch your forehead to hers. "Shaw..."
"You shouldn't have done that," you chastise her, because she had no fucking business pulling some stupid hero shit and trying to save your life. Which you think she has, because if she hadn't done what she did you would be the one in her arms right now. Root chuckles weakly in your general direction. her eyes are dark. Her fingertips twitch, and you instinctively reach down to grab her trembling hand, twining your fingers with hers. "You were... the one who... said... die for something that you love... right?"
You love her too, you think. You love her too, in whatever way you know how, and you are watching her bleed to death in your embrace. You press her closer to your chest. There is little hope right now. The cavalry is possibly on its way to exterminate those who have survived the initial onslaught. You cannot afford to slacken again. You cannot die. You cannot render Root's sacrifice worthless.
"I'm so sorry," Root whispers. Her voice is so faint you have to strain to catch it. "I wanted... so much more... with you."
You can't hear her say this. You can't let her die telling you this. You bend down and press your lips to hers, kiss her slowly, and between breaths you murmur words you learned but have never applied since you were a young girl. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Your palm is on her chest when she stops breathing. You feel her heart give. Your eyes are open when hers close for the last time.
You don't let anyone touch you when backup arrives. You clean her blood off onto a towel and stuff it into your back pocket. You watch them load her onto a stretcher, a sheet covering her from head to toe.
You drown.
They hold a funeral. It's a quiet affair and she is buried, laid to rest, with a simple headstone that nobody would pass a second glance towards. You sit by it for hours and when Finch finally gets you to leave, you dip your head to press the gentlest kiss to the cold stone and try - and fail - to find the lingering warmth of Root's lips.
You hate this.
But you love her, still, and it leaves you raw. You wake up screaming. You wash your hands in the basin every morning and you have to blink a few times before your fingertips stop being tinged red.
You are sinking.
It doesn't feel as bad as you'd have imagined.
She dies.
You feel nothing. You are a sociopath - you have no feelings. And you keep telling yourself this, because the more you say it, the truer it gets.
She dies.
You die.