She lies in bed.

In, out. In, out.

She counts the breaths as she takes them.

One. Two. Three. Four.

A steady rhythm, the backbeat against which her heart plays its counterpoint, hours later still beating so rapidly she fears it will burst from her chest.

He slides under the covers next to her, fresh from the shower.

"Can't sleep?" he asks.

She shakes her head and allows herself to be cradled in his arms; her ear rests on his chest, the sound of his heart reassurance that they're both alive.

"I'm still not used to it," she apologizes, sniffling. The tears came hot and fierce earlier, wracking her whole body, but only for a few moments. She ruthlessly exerted the control she'd worked years to perfect, and is embarrassed by this perceived show of weakness, this crack in the warrior-woman façade she's so carefully built.

"You never get used to it," he replies, gently pushing her hair behind her ear.

"But you--"

"Just hide it better." He flexes his hands unconsciously, thinking of bloody knuckles in the shower, beating the tiles in impotent rage at all the lives they couldn't save that night.

He holds her almost too tightly, reassuring himself of her continued existence.

This clinging is something no one would ever believe of him, unless they'd seen it.

Unfortunately, they've all had cause to witness it too many times over the years.

"How?" she asks finally, breaking the susurrus symphony of their breathing.

He shrugs, a curiously non-committal response to such a weighted question.

"I concentrate on breathing." She frowns, her eyebrows drawing together as she considers this. "Inhale, exhale. That's all."

She nods, focusing, and her whole world telescopes to the action of her lungs, expanding, contracting.

He drops a kiss on her hair, tangles his legs with hers, and attempts to pull her even closer, deep inside of him where he can protect her from all they've witnessed, tonight and a hundred other nights before.

"I see," she whispers after a while, her voice heavy and soft as she allows herself to slip off into sleep.

He lies awake for the rest of the night, watching her breathe.

End