The white walls of the room gave an artificial sense of isolation, periodically interrupted by nurses coming in to check vitals and replace her IV bag. It had been a few hours, Sierra guessed, since anyone had come in. The only sense of time she had was the level of the IV bag, it’s volume waning with each drip into Rose’s bloodstream. Sierra sat in the chair, counting each drop by the IV, occasionally watching the heart monitor as it beeped. She mostly forgot about the noise, her mind having tuned it out long ago. Most of the time though, she’d watch the slow, sedated rise and fall of Rose’s chest. She never liked to leave this room, usually asking others to get her things instead of leaving the comforting signs of life Rose displayed. Comfort. It was a word she never truly understood until she met Rose.

No matter how many times the doctors and nurses told her Rose was okay, that she’d make a full recovery before she knew it, that dead, pale face still plagued her mind. When she first found her only a couple days ago, she almost screamed. Her once red cheeks were now plaster and tear stained. Her clothes stuck to her skin, caked in blood. The hole in her abdomen had only just now started to clot, still letting pints of blood sputter out. Doctors told her how lucky she was that the stab wound didn’t hit any vital organs, but Rose was anything but lucky. She had met Sierra, after all.

The worst of it all though, the sight that would probably plague her mind until the day she died, was her eyes. Those eyes that once looked with ambition and purpose now lolled in her head as any other organ would. She hoped with all her being that people were wrong, that the eyes weren’t the gateway to the soul. Her once Carmel irises dawned a grayish-brown color, akin to the swampy marshes in the home she grew up.

She noticed tears dripping down into her lap, jolting her out of her memories. She watched the rise and fall of her chest, her reminder that she was alive. The tears still spilled from her eyes, but her heart ached a little less.

A few moments later, once Sierra had finally collected herself, the heart monitor started to beep a little faster. It would have been unnoticeable if you hadn’t been listening to the same tempo for days on end. Her breathing became more intentional, conscious, until finally her eyes started to open. Sierra rushed to her side, as though she hadn’t been sitting by her side for days.

Once her eyes were open enough to really see, Sierra sighed in relief. While she was clearly disoriented and beyond exhausted, her eyes were vibrant. Alive.

“Hey,” she croaked, her voice raspy from a lack of use.

“Hey.” Sierra didn’t even try to hide the way her eyes watered at finally hearing her voice again. “How’re you feeling?”

In response, she just groaned, letting her head fall back on the pillow, looking at the ceiling. “Like I just came back from hell.”

Sierra sighed with a genuine, tender smile on her face. She sat there holding her hand for a few minutes, just satisfied with the living warmth radiating from it. Sierra wondered if she’d fell back asleep until she saw the tears streaming down her face.

“H-hey, what’s wrong?” She sputtered, shifting closer to Rose’s face. She was never good at finding the right words to say at times like these. She’d saved thousands of people, but the comforting was always up to someone else.

“How-, Why?” Everything she tried to say got stuck in her throat, interrupted by her hitched breath. Sierra looked her in the eyes, imploring her to go on, but overflowing with patience. Rose couldn’t bear the the eye contact anymore.

“Who are you?” She asked, staring out the window.

Sierra had hoped she would forget, that some of the damage would cause a sense of amnesia. But who was she kidding, Rose never forgot. She knew she’d have to tell her someday, they had been dating for almost two years, but not like this.

The lack of eye contact made her hard to read, but Sierra could tell she already knew. There was no use in denying it, she just wanted to hear it from her.

“I- I’m Meta.”

The words hung in the air like steam on a dry fall evening. It was gravely misplaced, and when someone breathed it in, they found it wouldn’t leave their lungs. It didn’t belong, and it certainly wasn’t welcome.

“I know,” she said, still staring out the window like she was talking to the glass instead of her.

The silence was deafening, the uncertainty suffocating Sierra’s lungs. She wanted Rose to say something, anything to break this nauseating silence.

“I’m- …so sorry,” was all she could muster, all she could think to say. It was true though, she didn’t want her to find out this way. She didn’t.

“I’ve known for a while now. Ever since you grabbed my arm to keep me from walking into the road, I had my suspicions. That combined with your lack of an accounting degree, and I couldn’t deny it any longer”

“I-“ She started.

“I knew, but I still watched you being scared to be caught in your lie, shuffling to ease my suspicions. I wanted to hear it from you. I wanted you to trust me.” Her voice started to choke up on that last sentence, her finally staring back into Sierra’s eyes.

“Where you ever going to trust me?”

The look on her face hurt more than any blade, even the dead eyes she saw in her nightmares couldn’t compare. It was a face of disappointment as much as betrayal.