You leave the room with an uneasy feeling burning away at the pit of your stomach. Something about the whole deal with this number doesn't sit right with you. You don't like this. You don't like how careful you have to be, how much you'll have to compromise to save his life. You don't like how ruthlessly efficient that blonde bitch seemed. You especially don't like how drained Root looked, the way she avoided your eyes when you looked at her. But you can't think about that, you need an extraction plan and that's what you'll get. So you quench the feeling down and leave the room.
John meets you at the extraction point, ski mask in hand and an intense look in his eyes. He nods once at you, and it's easy, familiar. But the feeling just won't leave you, pulling at your chest and clenching around your lungs. It's not the electric burn of anticipation, tightening your muscles and making your skin tingle before a mission. No, this is something different altogether.
This is the constricting, bitter nausea that fills your insides as you think back to the look Root gave you on the bench, and how she seemed to be so tired, tired, tired. Dread is burning its way inside you cutting your breath short, and the realization hits you like a punch to the stomach.
In your line of work you've gotten used to trusting your gut, it's why you're so good at what you do, it's why you've survived this long. And it's why you know you have to go back.
"John," you start, but he just nods. "Go," he tells you, and that's what you do. He gets it, he gets you, and you know you can trust him to handle the number on his own.
It's more than you can say for yourself right now.
You get back to the hotel and when you open the door Root and Finch turn to look at you at the same time. You don't know what they were talking about, but you feel the tension thick in the air.
"They know he's here," Root tells you, and you know there's more to it by the urgency with which she sticks two handguns in the back of her pants, by the way she carefully looks away from you.
You reach for your piece then, and check the ammo. "Let's do this," you say, but she's looking at you now, and you know what she's going to say next.
"Sameen... You have to stay here."
You tell her to shut up and check your sidearm too. She's stepping closer now, her hand warm on your forearm as she tells you that it's the only way, that if she doesn't go then you all die, and you know she's right. You fucking know she's right. Still, you shake your head and scowl at her. The clenching in your chest makes it painful to breathe and you don't get why. You don't know why you feel like this, you don't know why her hand burns you where she's touching you, you don't know how to breathe right again.
So you get angry. You know angry, you can do angry. She doesn't get to make this decision for you, she doesn't get to go in without backup, she doesn't get to go on some kind of martyr crusade and leave you to deal with the aftermath. You step closer and tell her exactly that. You keep you voice dangerously low, tell her that she's been reckless and shove an angry finger at her face, but she just looks at you. She looks at you with those tired eyes and that sad, sad smile. She looks at you the way the pulling in your chest feels, painfully and relentlessly, and you don't know what to do with it.
You're extremely aware of your surroundings. You're aware of the clock on the wall, it reminds you that you don't have enough time. You're aware of Harold sitting at the desk discretely pretending not to be in the room at all. But most of all you're aware of how close Root is. You're aware of how her hand hasn't moved from your arm and of how her hair sways when your breath hits it.
You're aware of her thumb brushing down the line of your jaw and how her eyes follow the movement. "Don't you get it, Sameen?" She asks you, and you don't, you don't, you don't.
"I can't let you go."
The tightening in your chest pulls and pulls and pulls, until it gets stuck in your throat and you have to shallow around it. "Root..." you try, but she's shaking her head at you. She keeps shaking her head as she leans down, until that sad smile is pressing against your mouth and then she's kissing you, her lips too soft, her touch too soft, and you don't know how to deal with it.
It feels real, final in a way you can't explain and you can't, you won't-
She pulls back and you grab her shirt, you pull her close again. You kiss her harder, deeper, until all you can feel is your tongue in her mouth and her shirt in your hand.
You feel her exhale, her shirt slips from your fingers as her lips barely press against the corner of your mouth and then she's gone. She's out of the room before you can open your eyes and you're left to stare blankly at the wall.
"If I don't see you, it's been a fun ride."