Chapter Text
“So how was it?”
“It was good, it was… more than I could have imagined.”
“And the team? God it must have been so cool to work with S.A.S….”
“Yeah, they were… larger than life sometimes.”
-
“Bet you’re glad to be back.”
“Missed the creature comforts, and dunks.”
“Oh I’ll cheers to that!”
-
“No, mom, it’s not happening.”
“Aw c’mon Sam, if you never give it a chance you’ll never know.”
“And lose my job?”
-
“Oh so now you think you’re some big fuckin hot shot now that you’ve run a spec op?”
“How do you even know about that?”
“That is none of your business.”
“Sounds like it is.”
“Heard you’re a traitor.”
“…what?”
-
“Bet she slept her way to the top.”
-
“Well, are they bigger in the UK?”
-
“And how does that make you feel? “
“I don’t know, not much of anything really.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“On what? That I wake up expecting to be drenched and the ringing in my ears makes me feel like I’ve been shot at in my sleep? Or that everyone on base seems to suddenly think I’ve betrayed my country?”
“Do you think you have?”
“No.”
-
“We’re losing her!”
“More pressure on the wound!”
Someone’s screaming
Is that… is that her?
“Where the fuck is medical!”
“5 minutes out, sir!”
“Shit. Hang on Greene!”
“Cap we don’t have time, just leave her!”
“Shut up, Jackson!”
“Wasted effort, if you ask me!”
-
“We’ve managed to save her leg, but it’s not looking good.”
“Do what you can.”
“Of course, Captain.”
-
“Hey Sammie.”
“H-hey Liv.”
“How’re you feelin?”
“Like I’ve been run over.”
“Sounds about right.”
“You look…what-.. what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry Sammie…”
“What?”
“Your parents….”
This time she knows she’s screaming.
-
“The decision has been made, after consulting with Medical and the upper brass.”
“What’s the verdict, Sir?”
“For your service and sacrifice, you’re being promoted to First Lieutenant upon your honorable discharge from the Air Force.”
“W-what?”
“Unfortunately, the prognosis for your recovery is… grim. The doctors have confirmed that you are unfit for active duty and will be so for quite some time.”
“That’s it then?”
“Yes. You should take this time to rest, heal, grieve. You deserve something peaceful now.”
-
“And how are you feeling today, Ms. Greene?”
“4 out of 10.”
“And why is that?”
“Same reason as last week I imagine.”
“You need to give yourself more time.”
“All I fucking have is time and yet every day I feel the same.”
“Healing is not linear, you’ve been through a lot in a short amount of time.”
“It’ll be a wonder if I’m functional again by 50, doc.”
“You’re starting to regain strength in your leg, isn’t that progress?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“The thought is nice but every time I think about that I think about how even if I’m able to run again without pain I’ve still lost my career. There’s no coming back from that.”
“Your parents would be proud that you’re trying.”
“Yeah well, my parents are dead now. Their pride is the last thing on my mind.”
“You’ll have to let yourself grieve eventually.”
“Now’s not that time.”
-
“Leader of the well-known Russian terrorist group, Vladimir Makarov, has escaped again after a stakeout with a special operations unit in London, United Kingdom. He is still at large.”
“You’re still tracking that shit, Sam?”
“Nah, it was just what was on the news.”
“Bullshit.”
“What do you want?”
“Let’s go out.”
“No thanks.”
“Cmonnnnn, you need to get out of the house, meet people! You don’t even have to drink you can just hang out.”
“I’m all set…”
“You’re never gonna meet anyone holed up in your house.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Wait wait wait Sa-“
-
“Alright you’ve officially graduated from needing the crutches. I think it’s safe to say you can walk on your own two feet well enough.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now I recommend limiting your time standing and walking, make sure to wear your brace regularly. No heavy lifting, no running.”
“Got it.”
“I’d like to see you back in about 4 weeks to check up, and after that depending on how you’re doing we can drop down to every six months.”
“Okay, thank you again.”
“You’re welcome.”
-
“Army General, Hershel Von Shepherd, has been found dead in his Washington D.C. home. Police and Military investigation is currently pending.”
Her knuckles scrape the edge of the center console on her car as she slams the ignition, the car falling silent. It’s not funny, but she laughs, great gasping cackles that shake her frame and rattle her lungs, the pressure closing in around her in the driver's seat.
It feels like she’s cracking open, splitting down the middle and spilling blood and oil across the fabric of the seat, splattering the windshield in gore. Not enough air on earth to fill her lungs suddenly, and despite the leftover heat from her car’s vents she’s shivering.
There’s a sting in her eyes and a tremble in her torso, a familiar prick of needles in her fingertips as she spirals. That feeling of dread, like something is terribly wrong, so so so wrong, and her chest hurts, and she can’t pull in a full breath as she shakes apart on the side of the road.
-
“Alright, if you just sign here, I can give you the keys and let you go.”
“Wonderful, when is the move in date?”
“You can move in on the 25th of this month.”
“Perfect, thank you.”
“Of course. Everything seems to be in order, here are your keys and here is my card. It has the number for security and utilities if you run into any issues. Congratulations on your new apartment.”
“Sounds good, thank you.”
-
She never thought she would struggle to adapt to civilian life, typically tied to a desk at base doing administrative, computer engineering work and training recruits. Her missions were long and spaced out well, giving her time to recuperate, yet this? Worlds different.
She knows, intrinsically, that something changed in her during her brief stint with the 141. Something irrevocably different in the way she saw her job, her life, and the people around her. Always tinted in a haze of suspicion and caution.
The mission was so short that she had a hard time wrapping her head around how vast the consequences have been. Barely a blip in the life she’s lived, a week out of thirty years.
There is something wrong with her, beyond the scars and brace around her leg, beyond the knife’s edge of panic she has not been able to step off since the incident. A too loud laugh has her neck pinching, waiting for the tell-tale gibberish to follow, or a Mohawk in the crowd. The scent of plain cigars has her searching for a bucket hat or waiting for the gruff rasping British accent to follow. The whiff of cologne often has her doing double takes to see if she can see the British flag emblazoned on a man’s hat in passing. Passing by men twice her size has her waiting for a heavy hand on her shoulder, only to remain cold and ignored by strangers she is seeing ghosts in.
None of it is real, every instance dropping a rock of hot disappointment further down her stomach until she can’t stand to be out in public and rushes home with her tail tucked.
She thinks, despairingly, that her style of attachment and brand of mental health issues have always resulted in not missing people she’s not actively interacting with. Out of sight out of mind has always been her default setting especially when off duty or at home. But something in her aches and bleeds with their absence.
It is foreign, unwelcome, distracting to her own healing journey and overwhelming. It makes blood bloom under her teeth as she bites her lip just to stop the near physical pain of wanting something, just to focus back in on her reps, or driving, or buying groceries from the underpaid and overworked fresh out of high-school boy in front of her.
She’d thought that she could heal a bit, feel better and not chase the whisper of something familiar after finding out of Shepherd’s death. Thought that two years and blow after blow later would be enough to soften the hurt of doing her best, thinking she did enough, only to be dropped as soon as it was over.
Not a single text, call, request for transfer, request for temporary aid, no email or letter or God damn fax. Just “good job, Jag.” As she’d left the bar in Chicago. Perhaps Ghost had been right, and not just speaking of their impulsive kiss.
Perhaps she should have declined Laswell’s request.
Her life now is difficult, and quiet. There is simply not a single thing that distracts her from her hurt. From anger and betrayal. From visions of her teammate watching the shot lined up and lowering his gun rather than shooting. From Liv’s stilted explanation at the side of her hospital bed.
Her days are filled with nothing. She tries to fill them the best she can, following a routine and pushing her body’s new limits. Sometimes she can make it through without getting hit with a wave of grief so strong it knocks her to her knees. Sometimes she can’t.
There’s space for the creeping thoughts and heavy feelings to sneak back in, no matter what she does. Most days she wakes up disoriented and sweating. Some nights she wakes up screaming into her mattress. On her best days she wakes up quietly, sunk into her bed and blankets. On those days she stays in bed until her limbs lock.
She avoids her own face in the mirror, refuses to take in the sunken eyes and sallow skin tone. The new scar splitting her face from forehead to cheekbone diagonally across. She doesn’t need to see it to know it’s there. To feel the fresh skin pinch and pull. Dressing is done quickly and in the dark, unwilling to see the mess of new scars, primarily focused on her ruined knee. It’s easy to do, sitting on the edge of the bed with the curtains pulled.
The silences and pauses leave space for her to wonder. To think about what she could have done differently in Mexico to make them want to keep her. To think about what she could have done to dodge the shot that took her career away. If she hadn’t gotten shot, would she have been able to drive her parents that night? They would have been alive. If she hadn’t been shot, she may have been able to make it to their funeral, at least. Ensure their wills were followed.
They weren’t. She wasn’t there. She was shot. They didn’t keep her.
It’s the complete change of her life, change that she’d never been good at handling, the loss of her immediate support system, future and for a long time, what felt like her life, that leaves her flinching at shadows and unable to sleep more than four hours. Leaving her in pieces in a tiny apartment that’s too quiet and too empty.
The rigid discipline instilled in her by the Military washed away when faced with her ruin. Bits of it stays, making her bed once she leaves it, tucking the edges and making sure it is crisp and flat. Snacking as often as possible and working out. But often she runs out of clean clothes, hair turning greasy because showering is a chore she cannot spare the energy for.
But slowly, after six months of pushing her limits both mental and physical, repairing her physical health, of living on her own as a civilian and going to therapy as often as she can bear, she gets better.
It gets easier to stay out when the ghosts of people she barely knows threatens to pull her under, gets easier to track when she last showered and ensure she cleans herself, gets easier to catch herself drifting and reposition her brain on something better.
Panic attacks calm easier, still frequent but able to be shaken off. She starts doing her laundry and filling her closet with civilian clothes, not just hoodies and sweatpants and cargos, checks the safe holding her weapons less often and flinches less obviously when cars backfire on the street. She works harder in PT and focuses on regaining her mobility.
Nothing about it is perfect, she is not healed by any means, only a little less heavy.
She still hears Johnny in every raucous laugh, still sees Price in every strange hat and thick beard, still smells Gaz in every well-dressed guy walking past, and still sees Simon in every broad-shouldered man skulking through the streets.
She still imagines a gunshot every time a car backfires in the bustling streets of Boston below her. She still wakes up some days unable to stomach the sight of herself in the mirror or of her scars as she changes.
She still can’t bear to see where they were buried.
The grief hits her at random moments. Seeing a cute cat and going to tell her mother, only to remember that she can’t. Watching the news and seeing the political parties snap and snarl at each other and wondering what her dad thinks, only to remember that he doesn’t think anything anymore.
There are perpetual bags under her eyes, sunken and purple under her skin, washing out her features and making her eyes look more gray than blue. Her hair falls longer than it ever has, often thrown into a bun just to get it off her neck, the ends splitting and uneven. The scar splitting her face lightens in increments, turning from angry red to shiny pink. Perhaps one day it will be a pale silver.
She’s lost weight. Not enough to be concerned but enough to see that she wasn’t one hundred percent. Her muscles stand in stark relief under thin skin, tight against the ridges and curves of them, capillaries creating mosaics of blues and purples around her knees and elbows. The harsh black of tattoos only adds to the paleness.
Her right leg is visibly smaller than the left, but she’s working on that too as she regains strength and learns how to walk on it again without aid.
-
After six months of living in a quiet apartment above the ever-busy streets of Boston, she decides to accept her civilian friend’s prodding.
They meet at cafes around the state, picking up food and hanging out at small parties. She spends time speaking with them over phone calls and across tables, lets them nudge and pry and fret. She listens to their complaints about their corporate and retail jobs. The weird coworkers and the exes that slink by too close.
They urge her to join them at bars, which she does. Allows herself to be goaded into a drink every few weeks, usually ends up driving them all home when she doesn’t. She spends the night at Liv’s once a month, having girl-time and doing typical feminine things that she hadn’t had time for before. Face masks and skin care, glasses of wine, gossip, and House MD on rerun in the background.
On the seventh month mark, she gets a new tattoo to honor herself.
Dozing on the low table as the tattoo artist, George, pushes ink into the skin of her back painstakingly. He plays metal music quietly, a backdrop to the buzzing of the tattoo machine. It’s a good day, a day where she’s comfortable with herself and was able to look herself in the eyes while she brushed her teeth before leaving.
With her head tucked into the crook of her arm and the repetitive back and forth scratching of the needles along her back, she thinks that maybe she will be okay.
She didn’t die in Mexico, she didn’t die in Israel, she didn’t die in the Alps, and she hasn’t died in Massachusetts.
-
She eventually ends up going to the VA, listening to older veterans talk about the wars they were in, their PTSD and healing journeys. She listens to an older man named Adam who speaks softly as if he can’t bear to raise his voice, speak about how lucky he feels to watch his niece go to prom, and how he didn’t have an episode when his brother yelled at the Pats game in excitement.
She listens and she watches, quietly from the sidelines, both as a reminder that she is not alone, but also a reality check. She’s one of the lucky ones. She still has her leg, even if the knee is filled with screws and metal, and her tattoos split by thick scarring.
She can walk down the street without aid, made it through the Fourth of July without breaking down completely. She has no need of a service dog, can live on her own. Her therapist does not push medication on her, and she has still never been drunk. She is sober, alive, and managing it.
This does not make her better, for as the stories unfurl in doses before her, she realizes just how little she’s seen of what true warfare can be.
On her fourth visit they ask about her.
She explains what she can in stilted sentences.
Air Force, sniper, with computer engineering training. Her hardest mission? The southern Alps. Her most important? Classified. Why’d she get discharged? Shot in the knee with a shotgun during an ambush. How long did she serve? 11 years.
From there it is easier to be open, occasionally piping in during their talks and sharing bits and pieces with the others. They don’t judge her. She doesn’t judge them.
Their demons are their own. Their struggles are an inspiration.
The taste of repeated failure is mitigated by their tales.
-
During the eighth month, she lets Liv set her up with a dating profile.
She goes on one date.
After two hours spent internally comparing the poor man she doesn’t even remember the name of to someone she’ll never see again, she calls it quits and goes home. They don’t speak again.
She tells Liv she isn’t ready.
She doesn’t tell her that the ghost of lips pressed against her own won’t let her look. That everyone she’s met so far pales in comparison to someone she’ll never see again.
She carefully keeps the secret of that night tucked behind her teeth. Doesn’t allow the thought of him and how he felt and sounded against her see the light of day. That now that she’s felt that rush of want for someone, she’s afraid she’ll never feel it again.
-
On the ninth month, she gets a call that changes the directory of her life again.
One year, nine months and two days since she had left 1-4-1 on the dusted streets of Chicago, one year and eighteen days since her time in the military was cut short by a single shotgun shell and a knife, nine months and 5 days since she sold her childhood home and packed her life, and what remained of her parent’s lives, into storage.
The caller ID reads unknown.
She hits the green accept call button, sliding her thumb across the screen to answer before she can consider whether or not she wants to deal with a spam call.
“Sam?”
-
It’s eight days later when she calls Kate back regarding the offer.
It’s two days after that when she pulls up to a coffee shop a few miles outside of the main city, bugs crawling under her skin and trying to ignore the low-grade nausea caused by the feeling of her hair touching the sides of her neck. Ready to shake out of her own skin with nerves and worried beyond reason.
She’s rehearsed the words in the mirror, each time more pathetic than the last. She is prepared to fight back the soft part of her that wants to scream and cry ‘why now?’ Why now when she is just beginning to settle into her new normal. When she can just now say that most days she’s able to drag herself out of bed and look at her own face. When the ache of wanting what she can’t have isn’t so overwhelming that it’s paralyzing.
She is prepared to decline despite it all. She will tell Laswell that PT is going well, but the experts have remained unmoving in their stance that she will never return to active duty. Keep her head, stick to facts and logic. There is no room for childish whining and wishing. No room for misplaced hurt and confusion.
Her heart beats a steady staccato of want.
When it rains, she can’t bend her knee, struck useless with pain that radiates hotter than the original injury. Walking more than an hour renders her useless for the rest of the day. Jogging sends sharp pains shooting up her thigh.
When she thinks of them, all she can think of is the sense of abandonment she had let fester for over a year.
She has no right to it, logically. But her heart does not care for logic.
She has been split down the middle since the news of Shepherd’s death. She wants, desperately. But she no longer knows how not to bite the hand that feeds.
-
The jingle of the overhead bell above the door of the café rings, any chance of slipping in unnoticed gone with the sound. She pointedly refuses to look around, striding to the counter instead to order a drink for herself.
It’s a concentrated effort to not limp, even if it would sell her pitch better. She’ll show weakness when she’s ready and not a second sooner. Laswell is a friend, in some stretch of the word, but Sam’s had time to fester, to analyze every interaction and how pieces of the world came together.
Laswell works in red tape and side stepping it, that same red tape is what landed Jaguar a forceful retirement.
“Hi welcome in, what can I get for you?” She’s jolted out of her thoughts by the falsely cheering voice of the barista, a young girl. Could have been her if she made better choices.
“Hi, can I get a medium hot caramel latte?”
“Sure! For here or to go?”
“To go please.”
“Alrighty, and can I get a name?”
“Sam.”
“Okay Sam, your total is gonna be $4.58.”
“Sounds good, card.” Sam replies, pulling her credit card from the pocket of her slacks and slotting it into the chip reader in front of her. It beeps after a moment, and she plucks the card back out, tucking it away and moving to the other end of the counter to wait for her drink.
She can feel the weight of eyes on the back of her head, but she waits.
Watches the barista who rang her out and the other mill around each other, making drinks and warming food. It takes less time than she’d like for her drink to be done, the barista holding it out with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
She quirks her own lips in a halfhearted smile, nodding in thanks before turning. It takes effort to drag her eyes from the cup warming her palm to scout the area for Kate. She’s nervous, scared, uneasy, and her hair is still touching the sides of her neck in a way that has always made her overstimulated and snappish.
It must be a quiet day, or a slow time, because the seating area of the café is nearly empty save for a couple of older men sitting together. It makes it easier and faster to locate Laswell, sitting in the corner with a mug in front of her, hands steepled and looking out the front of the café.
There’s an empty chair across from her, and Sam shuffles over.
She’s not quite sure she can do this and not lose it.
The distance closes quickly despite her own dread, and then she’s pulling the chair back and sitting down. Her knee twinges, a sharp radiating pain as it bends, both in protest and a reminder. The pain of it threatens to take her breath away, but she pulls on every ounce of training to not react save for an involuntary pinch of her eyebrows.
“Sam…” Laswell breathes, a greeting filled with relief and concern.
“Kate.”
“I’m… so sorry.”
That brings Sam up short, expecting a myriad of things that aren’t a heartfelt apology. Perhaps a sales pitch, or an interrogation, or even just ‘wanted to confirm you were alive.’
“What? What are you sorry for?” She rasps, grabbing her cup with both hands and letting the heat of the drink fight the latent chill of her fingers.
“I.. I heard about your parents, and your discharge… A year after it happened.” Laswell explains, choppy.
“Isn’t it your job to know things?” She’s confused, rightly so. Laswell had always known shit before anyone else.
“I was being blocked. Denied at every turn. I’ve sent request after request, even feelers out for info after you went dark.”
The world could have ended, and Sam wouldn’t have been able to react.
“What?” She hisses, off kilter. “I didn’t go dark I was discharged; I’ve been here nearly the entire time!”
“I know that, now, but the military has been very tight lipped about you.” Laswell sighs, a sense of defeat written in slumped posture and downturned eyes.
“I’m not sure I follow, Kate.” She can’t help but challenge, her guts a block of ice. The military? Blocked? That same military that kicked her out after she was labeled damaged goods and sent her on her merry way with a sum of money and a ‘thanks.’?
But, thinking of the abrupt turn around the base in regard to that mission against Hassan, perhaps she shouldn’t be so quick to disregard. They just… seemed so ready to be rid of her, and it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t want someone else to take her off their hands.
Laswell looks up, holding her eyes as she shifts closer, brows drawn low over her eyes.
“After Shepherd’s death I finally was able to make progress tracking you down. I’ve been trying to finalize your contract with the team since Chicago. After some digging I was able to figure out why that never happened.” Laswell starts, her gaze flitting away briefly to ensure no one was listening in.
Her words stop Sam cold, a sense of dread hitting her chest and the ice crystallizing in her stomach.
“It was Shepherd.” She breathes, hoping to be rebuffed but knowing in some instinctual way that she won’t.
“Yes.”
She leans back harshly in the seat, the back rest digging into her shoulder blades and knee sending residual shocks of pain that land somewhere in the crease of her pelvis. Her eyes burn as she drags them up, trying to fight the sudden urge to cry. She can hear Laswell move slightly in front of her, but if she looks it’ll be over before it can begin.
“We never accounted for him retaliating, and I’m sorry that we didn’t. With Konni we were more worried about chasing leads before they went cold. He couldn’t touch the others. It was my oversight in forgetting that he could touch you.”
“He didn’t discharge me or shoot the gun that caused it.” She challenges around a lump in her throat.
“Yes but you shouldn’t have been on that mission. It didn’t strike you as odd, that you’d be stationed in Israel in close combat with a fresh team?”
“Obviously it did Kate. But it was an order.”
“Yes it was. From Shepherd.”
The death knoll tolls distantly somewhere in the depths of her brain. She doesn’t want to listen to the rest, but she’s stuck to the spot.
“You were a loose end. Something within his realm of influence. Taking you out, either permanently or otherwise, would weaken the team. He was counting on that.”
She’s numb in shock, around the closing of her throat and the stinging of her eyes, but she drops her chin back down to look at Kate through quickly welling eyes.
“He wanted me gone to stick it to Price. Kate, that doesn’t make much sense, we ran one mission together, I barely knew any of them, and I wasn’t exactly the model or best soldier.” She counters, allowing those dark thoughts to surface.
“You’re part of the team, Sam.” Kate implores.
“Not anymore.”
“Always.”
“Bullshit.”
“Sam, listen to me.”
“I am listening, but you’re wrong.”
“I’m not, I promise I’m not. They wanted you for Makarov and countless missions in between. Price hounded me to find you, everyone was under the impression that you didn’t want to come back or you were dead.”
“Kate, you can’t come here and tell me this shit after I’ve spent a year trying to rebuild. Even if I wanted to, even if I wasn’t compromised emotionally, I’m sure you’ve heard by now that I’m physically compromised. I will never be cleared for active duty. I’m done.” She can’t help the hurt that leaks into her tone, or the way her voice breaks as it pushes past the strangling urge to cry.
“Sam, I’m not here to push you into something you can’t do or aren’t ready for. I’m here to see you. I’m here to explain and see with my own eyes that you’re alive and okay. To open up that communication channel. I’m sorry, for everything.” Kate implores, reaching across the table quickly to grab Sam’s wrist. She holds it, and her eyes, and Sam could fight many things, but it feels good to be seen by someone who gets it.
Her friends have tried, but they don’t understand, can’t. Anyone she had been close with in service dropping her with the rumors presumably started by someone on Shepherd’s payroll.
There are a lot of things that struck her as odd that she’s starting to look at with different colored glasses. Things that will haunt her dreams and disrupt her mind.
“Fuck.” She wheezes, feeling the tension drop out of her body after a moment and slumping in the seat as the weight of it all wraps around her shoulders like anvils.
“Drink your coffee.” Kate sighs, letting go of her wrist to take a sip of her own. Sam follows suit robotically, worn out. The taste doesn’t quite register on her tongue, but the warmth of it is enough to calm her body.
“Well, as you can see, I’m alive.” she murmurs after a moment, turning to look away from Kate’s concerned gaze.
“How are you?”
“Better than I was, I suppose. Got a pretty regular date with a therapist at least.”
“That’s good, I’m glad.”
“H-how is everyone else?” She almost doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to open the can of worms but doing so anyways.
“They’re… good. Started working with other groups, especially now that Makarov is still at large. Price recruited a new member on Kyle’s recommendation, Gary, goes by Roach. Kyle’s good, as usual, but John and Riley have been… frankly miserable. It’s been tough going, lot of dead ends and bad intel. MacTavish is… well I can’t tell you the specifics just yet but he’s recovering, currently. Not helping Riley’s mood.”
Recovering?
“Kate?”
“London was… difficult.”
Sam breathes out a heavy sigh. So many things left unsaid. Difficult? Recovering? Johnny’d been hurt. Bad enough to still be down after months. Ghost and Price have been miserable. Miserable to work with or? Roach as well. Guess they had to fill her position with someone. The thought both stings and heartens her. Glad that they have someone watching their back, but jealous it’s not her.
From there, the tension settles into something a little more bearable. Catching up with Kate, despite the nearly two years' worth of time between them, is not as scary or hard as it was to speak at the VA. They catch up in between sips of coffee, falling into the easy rhythm of mutual conversation. Even as the sun lowers in the sky, and they finish their drinks and move outside.
She finds it in her to tease as Kate lights up a cigarette, complaining that her wife hates it. It’s easier to stand than sit, and she revels in it and the receding warmth of summer as she takes drags of her own cig.
As they part, while the sun tucks beneath the horizon and paints the sky in a riot of warm colors, Kate asks if she can let the others know.
Sam doesn’t ask how much Kate wants to tell them, doesn’t let herself think or regret as she says yes. Doesn’t let herself doubt that they even care. She tucks it all away for later. Focusing instead on the road before her and her favorite song on repeat through the car stereo.
And as she lays in bed that night, safely ensconced in soft blankets with her face turned into the pillow, she assumes that that’s the end of it. She’ll hear from Kate every few months to make sure she’s still alive. Everyone else is surely too busy chasing leads and ensuring that civilians never have to know terror.
They’ve no use for someone who can’t go out on the field. No use for someone who can’t fight or run.