Amy went back out dressed in her normal attire. Sheldon wouldn't look at her for a moment, but once he noted that she was dressed like herself, he was fine again. Amy smirked because the only other time she could remember that he had difficulty looking at her like that was when she was dressed as Snow White.
"I ordered the food. It seems that they are busy enough that it might take an hour. It's almost as if Penny is serving the food," Sheldon told her.
"That's quite a while. What should we do while we are waiting?" Amy asked.
"I didn't anticipate a lot of down time, so I didn't bring any games," Sheldon said. "We could watch TV," he finally suggested.
Amy agreed, but she got out her computer to check some work emails. She hadn't had the time to check in a while, and while she trusted the lab techs, she wanted to make sure everything was going okay.
It wasn't. Apparently there was a power outage in the lab and the generator didn't kick in and a number of samples were lost. Amy was panicking. She pulled out her phone and tried to get a hold of anyone she could, but it was Saturday night. There was no one to get a hold of, and Amy was sent from message service to message service. There wasn't really anything she could do. The samples were lost and so was weeks worth of work. It happened in the middle of the night, so there was nothing Amy could do about it even if she hadn't taken off time from work to go to ComicCon. It didn't matter, she still felt angry and guilty about it.
She didn't even realize that she was crying until Sheldon was standing over her. Amy had forgotten that he was even there in her haste to figure out some solution that couldn't be found.
"What's wrong?" Sheldon asked frantic.
Amy explained her problem at work. She didn't blame Sheldon or the convention for her problem. She was logical enough to know that there was nothing she could do, but she was still upset. First Sheldon awkwardly patted her shoulder and said "There, there," but he knew it wasn't working.
"Would a hug help?" Sheldon asked.
Amy nodded and stood up from the bed where she had been working. Sheldon started to gently put his arms around her, but she squeezed him and put her face into his chest. She left tears on his wizard robes, and she tried to wipe them away when she pulled away from him.
"Sorry," Amy said.
"It's okay," Sheldon said. He was looking down at her, and Amy almost thought he was going to kiss her until a loud knock at their door startled them both and they jumped away from each other before Sheldon went to go answer the door.
A man rolled a cart with their food on it into the room. Sheldon removed the lids and inspected it before giving the man a tip and allowing him to leave. He moved the food to the small table in the corner so that they could eat away from the beds.
"Is there anything I can do about your work problems?" Sheldon asked as he dug into his food. "Do you want to try to go home early? I can look up train schedules and we can get Leonard to take us to the station early tomorrow."
"There's nothing I can really do until Monday, and even then, it looks like I will have to just start much of my work over. There's nothing to rush back to," Amy said. She didn't fail to notice that Sheldon had offered to go home with her. "Thanks for offering."
He nodded. He wanted to take care of her even if it was the hard thing to do. They ate together in relative quiet, and then watched more TV together. Sheldon would have slipped his hand in Amy's but they were in separate beds. He wondered if it was an overexposure to her that caused him to miss it a little bit. He would be himself again when they got home. He hoped.
Amy was calmer by the time they decided to go to bed. She had started forming a plan for when she got back to work Monday afternoon. She had originally planned to take all of Monday off, but she thought it would be best to get back in the lab as soon as possible. She wrote a few emails, but it was clear that Sheldon was ready to go to bed, so Amy shut down her computer and changed.
A couple of hours after Sheldon had fallen asleep he woke to a strange noise. It took him a few moments to wake up enough to place it as whimpers and small cries coming from his girlfriend in the next bed. She hadn't described her night terrors like this, so he wasn't sure if it was the same protocol. Still, he got out of his bed and went over to her and started lightly touching her hair. She pulled away from him, stayed asleep, and kept whimpering.
Sheldon sat down next to Amy on her bed and took her hand instead. Amy calmed as soon as he took her hand. Sheldon wondered if he should try to wake her or if she would be fine for the rest of the night. That was answered when Sheldon tried to take his hand back to go back to sleep. Amy started crying again when he left her. He didn't know what to do, so he woke her up.
She startled awake and started apologizing right away. It was obvious that she'd woken him up. "I'm sorry. I was just having a bad dream. Go back to sleep," Amy told him.
Sheldon moved back to his bed and lay down in the middle of his bed. He looked at the ceiling for a while, but he couldn't fall asleep. "Are you still awake?" he whispered.
"Yeah," Amy whispered back.
"What was your dream about?" Sheldon asked.
Amy sighed. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell him because she didn't want him to know how much she needed him. "I couldn't find you," she finally replied simply.
He was confused. "What do you mean, 'you couldn't find me?'"
Amy knew he wasn't going to let this go, so she decided to just tell him. "I was in the expo hall and everyone was dressed like you, but they weren't you. I was looking everywhere, but I couldn't find you. At one point you reached for me in the crowd and you found me. Then you lost me again."
"You won't lose me. I'm tall. Plus, we hold hands now. That will keep us together," Sheldon said simply. It was his childlike enthusiasm again, and it chased away the lingering chills from her nightmare. She fell back into a calm dreamless sleep.