Disclaimer: I don't own 'em…

Sara spun around in time to see the masked man raise his arm, a gun aimed in her direction. She heard Jenna's scream in the same instant the bright flash came from the muzzle of the gun. As she fell backwards and struggled to raise her arm, her own gun in hand, she felt the piercing pain of a second bullet searing into her flesh, rendering her arm useless. As the masked man grabbed Jenna roughly by her blonde hair and yanked her out of the room, all Sara could do was scream.

"NO!" she screamed. She woke with a start, drenched in sweat, her heart pounding in her chest as she furiously gulped for air.

It had been the same for months now--nightmares waking her up in the middle of the night. And it was always the same nightmare, well basically the same, or some variation on the theme.

Sara fell backwards, her damp tank top clinging to her like a second skin. The pillow cradled her head as she closed her eyes and willed her breathing to even out. Even though she was awake, she replayed the nightmare in her head.

A soft knock at the door followed by, "Are you okay?" brought her back to reality.

When she didn't answer, the door opened tentatively, as she knew it would. There stood Catherine, looking sheepish and somewhat out of her element. She had her hair pulled back loosely in a pony tail, with a few errant strands flitting around her face. She had obviously been in bed or was getting ready for bed as she was wearing a black cotton cami and matching boyshorts.

Sara cleared her throat (and her mind) before sitting up in the bed. "Everything okay?" she asked hoarsely.

Catherine turned the light on and took a few more hesitant steps into the room and spoke again, "I'm fine. I just…I heard you talking when I walked past the door…and then I heard you scream. I…I wanted to make sure you were okay. Are you?"

A flush of embarrassment crept across Sara's face as she hung her head in shame. She sighed heavily and answered without looking up, "Yeah. I'm just super."

Catherine shifted unsurely from one foot to the other before planting her hand on her hip and pointing to Sara with the other one, "We don't have to be enemies. We could at least try to get along."

"Getting along didn't seem to be something you were interested in a few days ago when you were busy calling me names and making rash judgments about my ability to protect you," Sara answered bluntly.

An uncomfortable silence fell on the pair as they stared at one another, each daring the other to back down.

"Who is she?" Catherine finally broke the silence.

When Sara only answered her with a blank and confused expression, Catherine continued, "Jenna. Who is she? You were saying her name and then you screamed 'no.' You're covered in sweat and obviously disturbed by whatever nightmare you're having. I assume she's at the heart of it. Who is she?"

"Please just drop this," Sara pleaded with her current tormentor.

The expression she wore and the stance her body assumed told Sara that this conversation was going to be had. She closed her eyes and dropped her head backwards once more into her pillow.

A feather-like touch on her highly-sensitive patch of new skin startled her. When she opened her eyes, Catherine was now standing over her, her fingers stretched out toward her shoulder where she had just touched Sara's still healing wound. Despite the haze that she was in, Sara could tell that Catherine was uncertain of her actions. She didn't offer an explanation, but dragged her eyes down the body that was so close to her. Catherine's eyes narrowed as she recognized the look that adorned the bodyguard's features.

"Is she why you were shot?" Catherine was refusing to let this go and it annoyed the young brunette to no end.

She bit her bottom lip and toyed with the idea of lying. The problem with lying was that you had to keep up with whatever you said because once you told one lie, you had to tell another to cover that one, and another, and another…and it was all too complicated. Honesty, Sara had found early on, was so much easier to deal with in the long run.

She pulled herself upright in the bed and leaned heavily against the headboard. She rotated her shoulder a few times to work the stiffness out of it. Looking anywhere but at Catherine, she answered barely above a whisper, "Yes, she is."

Her hostess sat down on the edge of the bed and asked, "What happened?"

She took several deep breaths to calm herself before she looked into pools of blue and said flatly, "Someone tried to kidnap her. I was the agent in charge of protecting her. I was shot twice. I got off a shot and killed the bastard. The end."

"I've seen a lot of shit in my day," Catherine smirked, "but I've never met someone who was actually shot." She reached out and touched the scar on Sara's shoulder again as she added, "I probably met a few that have done some shooting, but never one that was shot."

Catherine sensed that she wouldn't get much more out of Sara about Jenna and decided to focus on the scar. "Did it hurt?"

Sara laughed throatily, "Did it hurt? It hurt like hell. You know that burning sensation you get when you cut yourself shaving?" She waited for Catherine to nod before continuing, "It's like that, but only a million times worse."

She pulled the tank top to the side, showing Catherine the second scar, just at the top of her breast. "I guess the SOB wasn't happy with just one shot to the chest. The doctors said I was lucky. The first one barely missed a nerve which could have paralyzed this arm. The second one didn't penetrate the bone or else it would have perforated my lung."

Catherine looked at her quizzically, a question playing at her lips. She considered not asking it, but decided against that course of action. "I would have thought you'd have been wearing a bullet proof vest. Don't agents wear those?"

"Typically, yes, we…they do."

"But you weren't? Why not?" Catherine knew these questions were making Sara uncomfortable. The brunette was shifting under the covers and kept repositioning herself against the headboard. On top of that, she refused to make eye contact with Catherine.

When she didn't answer, Catherine was forced to draw her own conclusions. "Well, let's see. You're supposed to wear one, but you weren't at the time of the shooting. I'm guessing you had taken it off. Now why would you take off a bulletproof vest if you're protecting­­ someone important? Who is this Jenna, by the way?"

Sara still didn't answer. She just continued to look down at her hands, playing with the ruffle on the quilt of her bed.

"Secret Service agents protect dignitaries, politicians…" her thoughts trailed off and she looked at Sara with a shocked expression on her face, "the president and his family."

The slight twitch of Sara's eye when she finally made eye contact with Catherine told the story. "Oh shit, you were…Jenna…the president's daughter? I don't remember hearing about an attempted kidnapping though."

Sara pushed the covers off and slid out of the bed on the side not occupied by Catherine. "There's a lot of stuff that happens on the president's detail that never makes it to press," she said matter-of-factly.

She leaned against the window frame and stared out into the dark night. Catherine took the opportunity to look at the younger woman, now so vulnerable, standing before her. She was lean, but not unhealthily so. She had subtle curves and a tan body. She was caught staring when Sara turned her head back in her direction.

All Sara could do was frown as she said, "I never should have been involved with her. It clouded my judgment. You don't fish off the company pier. It's one of the first things they tell you when you're going through training. You're going to spend a lot of time with the people you're supposed to protect, if you get too close, you lose your edge. But you have to get close enough that you're willing to give your life for that person."

She wrapped her arms around herself trying to protect whatever there was she could of herself. "Jenna was sweet. She was spunky and full of life. I had always been hyper-focused on the goal at hand. The moment I started to feel something for her, I should have requested a change of detail. But I didn't. It almost cost us her life." She chuckled humorously, "It almost cost me mine." She rubbed absentmindedly at the scars on her chest.

"I wasn't even shocked when I lost my job. It was to be expected. I'd broken the rules and couldn't really be trusted on a detail again. Only a handful of people know what really happened that night. And I haven't seen Jenna since then. She's engaged now," Sara pushed off of the frame of the window and walked to the nightstand beside her bed and pulled out a prescription pill bottle, unscrewed the cap and took two pills out. She tossed them back without water and chucked the bottle back in the drawer and sat down beside Catherine on the bed.

"You never heard about it because the last thing this president wanted was his constituents finding out that one of his daughters had been screwing the female Secret Service Agent who was supposed to be protecting her. After all, he has an image to protect. Things could have ended up a lot worse for me than being stuck here protecting you," she said wryly as she placed a hand on Catherine's bare knee and then quickly removed it, struck by what a familiar gesture that was to do to someone you could barely tolerate—and even then only in short bursts.

As if she'd been poked with a cattle prod, Catherine sprang up from the bed and took a few quick steps toward the door. With her hand on the light switch she said, "You should get some more sleep. We have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow. We're going to a party." She flipped the switch off and shut the door behind her.

After pulling her sweat soaked clothes off and climbing back under the covers, Sara was left in the darkness with her conscience and her libido as her mind drifted back to what had been happening in the hours preceding the masked man entered Jenna's dorm room.

As the sleeping pills took effect, her mind flittered between images of the young blonde beneath her who was beneath her then and another blonde, an older one.