Late afternoon sun brushed Sam's eyelids, painting his slowly waking world with warmth. As he rose to consciousness, eyes still closed, a tuneless humming whispered past his ears, further coaxing him to wake. Opening his eyes, the first thing he saw was a large vase of roses occupying the space on his bedside table, where a bouquet of daisies had been previously.

He frowned. Unless he'd been asleep a lot longer than he thought, the daisies had not even been a day old, and already they'd been replaced?

His frown lifted when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and realized that the humming that had drawn him from sleep was not a figment of his imagination, but actually emanating from someone who was quietly moving around the room.

He started to turn his head slowly, wary of the spike of pain that small movement had caused in the past, but when it did not come, he turned it fully, pleased. His eyes first landed on the daisies that had been usurped, which now sat on a small table at the end of his bed, next to several other bouquets. Turning a little further, he spotted Libby, who was carefully placing another vase of flowers along the wall. She turned and eyed the arrangement at the foot of his bed, hands on hips, clearly displeased. She stepped towards it as if to fix it—though it was already perfect in Sam's estimation—and glanced at Sam as she did, then returned her gaze to the apparently errant arrangement.

A beat later, she froze. Her eyes flew back to Sam's face, as her brain finally registered what she'd seen. "Sam! You're awake!" she exclaimed, still frozen in place, as if approaching him would cause him to fall back asleep and rob her of the conversation she'd no doubt been waiting days and days to have.

"And I see I have you to thank for all of the flowers."

"Well, I figured it's the best way to cheer up the space and distract your visitors, because for a while there you weren't much entertainment yourself, what with just lying there," she commented, staring at him reproachfully. "So, I brought a bouquet each time I came, including over the past few days, because even though you were supposedly out of your coma, you never had the decency to be awake when I was here."

"You only brough one bouquet each time?" he queried doubtfully, looking at the number of bouquets in the room; there were well over two dozen.

"Okay, maybe two," she conceded, crossing her arms.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, I may have gone a bit overboard," she admitted, hands on hips, "but you weren't helping matters by not being awake, so I remain unrepentant."

"There's nothing to be repentant about anyway, they're lovely. I saw they were changing whenever I woke up, I just didn't know who I had to thank for them, so thank you."

She crossed her arms again, clearly a bit perplexed. "Well you're welcome, but you're stealing my moves here, Sam. First with the eyebrow raise," she gestured accusingly, "then with the thanks. It is I who should be thanking you."

Sam frowned in confusion. "For the flowers?" he asked carefully, figuring he must be missing something because surely that couldn't be it. "In case you didn't notice, I'm a little immobile these days."

Libby's eyes rolled so hard Sam could practically hear them. "Smart Alec," she grumbled affectionately. "No, not for the flowers, dummy. For saving my life. Again."

"Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh.'"

Sam smiled apologetically. "I blame the drugs. Things are going over my head and in one ear and out the other, and there are definitely times that I don't know which way is up."

She grinned. "Doesn't sound all that bad. There are definitely times I wish I didn't have to listen to others, my parents for example."

Sam huffed in amusement. "Well, it is 'all that bad;' I'm not a fan. How's your arm?" he questioned, changing the subject.

"My arm?" She glanced down at it as if she'd forgotten it was broken. "Oh, it's fine," she assured him. "In fact, that's a funny story, because way back when you were still in surgery and fighting for your life," she tried to be brazen about it, as if it didn't bother her, but she faltered slightly, before continuing, "I had a soft cast on, and the pushy doctors really wanted to get a full cast on me. But I wasn't having it, because I knew that the minute I walked away was when we were going to hear from your surgeons—and it had been hours at this point, Sam. Hours," she stressed, glaring at him as if he'd done it deliberately, but he knew she was just hiding her fear with the bluster. "So I wasn't gonna do it, until your doctor came out. And he finally did and said you were through it, but we couldn't see you because you weren't stable and it was gonna be awhile. So I let my dad convince me to go get the hard cast, and what would you know but probably not five minutes after I walked out of that room, the doctor came back to get us to let us see you and I missed it! You can't even imagine how much grief I've given my dad over this past week for that!" she exclaimed.

Sam smiled, and listened as she continued to rant about the injustice of the situation, enjoying their banter, but he couldn't help but notice that something was very wrong. Despite the drugs messing with his perceptions, he hadn't missed the fact that Libby had made no move to come any closer; she still stood several feet back from the end of his bed, where she'd stopped when she first noticed he was awake, gesticulating wildly as she continued her story. And she looked… well, terrible was probably not a descriptive enough word for it, but it was all Sam had.

When she finally wrapped up, he frowned and cleared his throat. "Sounds pretty rough," he acknowledged. "And speaking of 'rough,' while I might be drugged up, I am not too drugged up to see that somehow I think you look worse than I do, and considering I'm in the hospital and you aren't, something doesn't feel right about that."

She huffed in indignation. "Gee thanks! You're clearly drugged up enough to have no filter."

"Agreed. But seriously," Sam continued earnestly, dropping the teasing tone from his voice, "why do you look like you haven't slept in a week."

She paused, opened her mouth as if to respond, then closed it again without saying anything. She sighed. "Okay, I was going to lie, but I think we need to have this whole policy about not lying to each other, starting now. So yeah, I look like I haven't slept in a week probably because I haven't. Not really."

He stared at her. "Seriously? Why?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she dropped her gaze from his, starring at some point on the floor as if it fascinated her. She crossed her arms, then shifted them to a position where she was more hugging herself—at least as much as her cast would allow—than she was displaying any sort of defiance or crossness. Finally, he heard her whisper, "Because I can't get it out of my head."

The 'it' wasn't hard to figure out. Sam would have hit himself on the forehead if he didn't think that would have been a terrible idea—given the wound to said head—or the fact that he wasn't 100% sure he could actually reach his head with his hand right now. Duh, Sam! "That's perfectly understandable," he reasoned aloud. "You were shot at, broke your arm, in a very intense situation—"

"No, no," she cut him off quickly. "I mean, yes, all of that is true, but that's not it." She drew her gaze up from the floor and looked at him, hugging herself harder, before saying, "You have to promise not to feel guilty, because it's about you, but you had no control of it."

Sam pursed his lips. "What if I can't do that?"

A steely glint entered her eyes and she raised her chin. "Then I'm not going to say anything and we'll change the subject."

Sam sighed. "Okay, I promise I will try," he conceded, echoing back to his and Ed's conversation.

She stared at him a long moment, clearly debating whether to take that or not, before she made a decision. "I watched you get shot, Sam. Not just shot in the shoulder, like you see on TV shows all the time, where the hero gets hurt but walks away from it. I watched you get shot in the head," she explained bluntly.

Sam had to bite his tongue in order to prevent himself from saying anything, because he could see she wasn't finished.

"I saw your head whip to the side, saw you go down, felt your blood hit my face, and I was so certain I'd just seen you die. Right in front of me." She closed her eyes, drawing in a shuddering breath. "And every time I close my eyes, I see it. Over and over. And I never see you open your eyes again."

When the silence stretched on, and she clearly was not going to add anything, Sam couldn't stay silent any longer. "I'm sorry."

Her eyes snapped open. "No! See, that's why I didn't want to say anything! Because you'll just feel guilty!"

Sam shook his head in frustration. "No, I'm not sorry like that. The English language is pretty inadequate in this area. I'm not sorry like I caused it. I'm sorry in that I understand what you are experiencing, and sad that you are going through that."

"Oh, okay." Mollified, she scuffed a foot across the floor, looking down self-consciously, almost guiltily. "Yeah well… I do need to say I'm sorry in the traditional sense of the word. Because while you were still unconscious, what was happening in my head was a reality because you weren't getting better, you weren't opening your eyes. And so, I was selfish and begged you to wake up before you were ready, so that my dreams wouldn't be reality. And that ended up causing you all sorts of problems, and you got hurt, and I'm sorry," she rushed the words out in one continuous stream of breath.

Sam blinked. "Uh, okay, know how we started this conversation with the fact that my brain is not firing on all cylinders? Yeah, that went over my head. Why are you apologizing to me?"

"I was talking to you right before you woke up, and I begged you to wake up out of selfishness, and you did. And clearly it was too soon, and you got hurt. Because of me."

He eyed her. "Hmm, you seem to have an awfully high opinion of how convincing you are," he teased, careful to make sure his tone was light so that she would understand he wasn't serious, because she wasn't looking at him and couldn't see his amusement.

His teasing had the desired effect, because she snapped her head up and her hands went to her hips, no longer hugging herself. "Hey!" she cried indignantly.

Dropping the teasing tone and becoming more serious now that he had her attention, he explained, "Regardless of whether I woke up because you asked me to or not, it was time. I know I wasn't myself for a while there, and I can only imagine that must have been upsetting to see. But you know me, I'm not a patient person, and staying asleep longer wasn't going to help me. So, thank you."

"Hmph," she scoffed.

"And," he continued as if he hadn't heard her, "I have a lot of other things to thank you for, namely for saving my life. Not only did you keep me from bleeding out, you risked your life to get that phone so that we could call in. And that meant I got medical attention a hell of a lot faster."

She clearly remained unconvinced.

"Well fine, be stubborn if you want. I know when I won't be able to talk sense into you. I won't win on that front, but," he raised his arms and held them out towards her, "I can do this."

She stared at his raised arms skeptically. "Do what?"

He couldn't tell if she was being purposefully obtuse or just not catching on, but he managed to prevent himself from rolling his eyes and instead explained gently, "Give you a hug, silly, because I bet that never happened in your nightmares."

She sucked in a breath, but didn't move. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't."

"Okay well then I don't want you to hurt yourself."

This time, he did not suppress the eye roll. "Just get over here. Please."

Finally, her resolve crumpled, and she stepped forward and around the end of the bed, slowly approaching his right side. Carefully, she sat on the side of the bed and leaned forward tentatively.

Sam wasn't stupid enough to try to sit up to fully embrace her—that would end in disaster—but once she was within reach, he encircled her in his arms and pulled her close.

She resisted for a moment, trying to keep them more separated, clearly still convinced she would hurt him, until at last she gave in and let him pull her in.

They stayed like that for several moments, until Sam felt her relax and let out a big sigh. "Okay, you're right," she admitted. "That made me feel better."

Sam grinned. "Uh huh."

"I can hear that smug grin in your voice, Samuel Braddock," she admonished. "Don't get used to it."

"To what?"

She pulled back and he let her go. "Being right. It doesn't happen often in my presence, in case you didn't know," she explained with fake haughtiness.

"Uh huh," he repeated, grin widening.

"Oh, hush you," she grumbled good naturedly, before standing up in order to shift into the chair next to his bed. "I tell you what, we're going to have words if this whole shot to the head means your insufferableness has increased, because I will not have it," she warned. "There's only room for so much insufferableness in this friendship, and I claim it all."

"Whatever you say," he replied easily.

This time, he definitely heard her eyes roll.

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A.N. Hope you enjoyed! I just love these two. I can't believe there's only one chapter left after this!