He didn't feel the first punch land, or the second, or the third. He didn't feel the bite of her nails scoring lines into his arm, or the jab of her elbow into his ribs.
He didn't feel, and if he had, he wouldn't have cared.
She was shattered, screaming. Her screams echoed in his ears, the only thing he could hear. Everything else had faded away. She was screaming, and his throat hurt.
And then she wasn't screaming any more, but his lungs were on fire, and she was heaving great gulps of air, gasping for freedom, gasping for breath. For something other than terror.
The polyester of her jacket was rough under his hand. He seemed to be moving without conscious thought, rubbing her back, trying to say anything and everything that might help, might heal.
She was shattering in front of him, and his heart was shattering with her.
When she fell against him, still gasping, he almost sobbed in gratitude. She was shattering and he was shattering with her but she was here, she was alive, and he was holding her to him because letting go was impossible, so impossible.
Finally she remembered how to breathe.
"Come on, Havers, come on." Away. That was the important thing right now; to shield her and shelter her from the accusing eyes, the prying hateful eyes of those bastards who had no idea, no idea what it had to have been like for her in there. She mattered. Nothing else.
"It's okay." Was he talking to her, or to himself?
Blank and white the knowledge of what he had nearly lost stretched in front of him, incomprehensible.
He was so scared. And it didn't matter. She did. Nothing else.
Her hair was soft and silky under his cheek, damp with the tears that scattered on the fiery red. Contact. To touch, to hold, to know she was here, her warm dear stocky fragile body shaking and sobbing in his arms.
"Shhhh. It's okay." Could she hear him? Could he hear himself?
Desperate and broken, she turned her face into his chest and began to sob in earnest, the hysterics sweeping over her. He surrounded her entirely, shield and sword and shelter. Safe. She was safe in his arms and so help him safe she would stay. The blank terror of the last hour clamped him in an icy vise, and he held her closer and closer still, enfolding. Shaking, shattered, alive, she curled into him and he held, held, held.
It was easy, so easy, to wrap her close, to kiss that beloved hair, to tuck her safely under his chin where she could never be hurt again, never be terrorised or held hostage or threatened or terrified. She cried and she cried, tears washing away fear and grief and anger, and he cried with her, less dramatic perhaps but no, no less real. He held and he held and he swore on his life, on his badge, on his love – for, yes, he loved this shattered woman, and he knew it even if he could not yet know that 'love' was the word for how he felt – that never again, never on his watch would anyone hurt her, and if they did it would not be because he did not fight to save her from it with everything he could give.
Her eyes were red and raw, her face salt-stained, her nose snotty, her hair a disaster. She had never looked more unkempt, more inelegant, more ravaged.
And she had never, never been so beautiful.
She was shattered but she was alive and he was shattered with her, but what had been shattered could be mended. He would be her glue and she would be his and they would find a way to mend each other, stronger than before. That was how it went; he was her glue and she was his and somehow they made each other whole, because he would fall apart without her and she would break without him but together, together they were strong.
She cried and he held and in the salt-silk of her hair under his chin, in the tears on his cheek, in the sob of her voice, in the warmth of her body in his arms and the safety of his arms around her, in the unity that argued and argued within but withstood any assault from without, in security and acceptance and love, they began, somehow, to find healing.