DocTrench

Let me preface this with the caveat that fandom is not any one thing. Just as you can find fics absent of plot that aren't super concerned about character development that are more about "it'd be hot if character A and character B that have never so much as had a conversation or expressed any commonalities fucked", you can find really thoughtful, in depth, intricate character explorations. And what it means for a character to be OOC is debatable! What one person sees as absolutely critical and essential to capturing the soul of a character might not be what someone else sees! There can be multiple reasonable interpretations of a character. Often, these different perspectives can be really interesting. And often, it's a matter of execution – something that sounds, out of context, ludicrously out of character can be, in the hands of a skilled and careful writer, really compelling, if they've thought through why and do a good job selling it.

All this being said, not all interpretations are created equal, and there are broad patterns in fandom. One of those patterns is poor treatment of female characters, characters of colour, and female characters of colour. I do think a ton of it has to do with the fact Samira is a brown woman! It is such a frequent occurrence that women of colour are overlooked in fandom, and I very much believe it plays a role in why Samira is not a particularly prominent character in fic. This is supported by the fact Javadi is also not a popular character in fic spaces. There are absolutely unique reasons why Samira might not be a popular character to include in fic that don't apply to other characters of colour! But even if we accept that the reason Samira is not included is because of these reasons and an awareness it would feel out of character for her to be involved – which I'm mostly not inclined to do, because that logic never applies to white characters, people will bend over backwards to include them in every circumstance – none of those things apply to Javadi. Samira and Javadi are extremely different characters that represent very different things and serve very different purposes in group dynamic settings. So if one were excluded and the other popularly included, we could more easily attribute Samira's exclusion to the actually unique factors about her. The same also applies to Collins! It's harder to directly measure, of course, given she was only in season one, and we'd have to do extensive analytics to understand what exactly is going on in terms of fic, but I remember prior to the announcement Collins wouldn't be in season two, she didn't even break the top ten on AO3 characters.

If we set aside the fandom racism for a moment...as I said, there are real reasons Samira is tricky when it comes to fic that I think play a real role in why people struggle with writing her in a way that feels true to character. Regardless of if awareness of these reasons does or does not stop people from writing about her at all, these reasons do play a role in characterization, and I think they're very tied to why fic Samira doesn't always feel like Samira, even when she's is present.

Generally, there is a tendency in fic to very much file down the edges of characters to shape them into something more broadly palatable. Often, this is in pursuit of a specific relationship dynamic – in order to make it work, one must contort characters into an archetype, rather than taking them as they are. This is especially common in ship fic, but also very, very common when people are hoping for a found family dynamic out of characters that are not a natural fit. And this is something that occurs in all fandoms, with all kinds of characters, even in fic that is incredibly good about different characters. In the case of Samira, I think most fic writers really don't know how to work with her isolation and prickliness.

The writers of The Pitt – seemingly largely by accident – created a really interestingly layered character in Samira. She's this incredibly compassionate doctor who values empathy for patients above all else, but she's approaching it as a data-driven analyst. She's primarily a thinker, not a feeler. She treats empathy as a protocol, something that can be achieved by following the right steps and learning the right scripts, and conveys those steps to a colleague that tries a different approach and gets a bad reaction. She doesn't consider it something people have or something they intrinsically are, she thinks of it as something people do, meaning if they don't do it, it's a choice. She asks patients about their lives, not because she necessarily cares about the answers, but because it makes them feel important and it matters that they feel seen and valued. Even with patients she does feel an emotional connection to, she's very careful with what she shares about herself. She values Robby's opinion of her so highly, but wanting to be on his good side never stops her from pushing back against him and advocating for her patients' needs. He hurts her so frequently and so much, and she clearly calls out that he shouldn't be treating her like that, but she still can't stop caring about his wellbeing. She cares about her colleagues enough to reassure them when they need it, but every step of the way, she will snap at them in defence of her patients. There is so much there! But one really can't overstate how important her isolation is, because it fundamentally means it's a hard sell to take her from there to filling one of the standard fic "roles" a character can have. To say something slightly ridiculous first and explain after...Samira has main character energy but not side character energy, in contrast with characters like, say, Santos, who can be both a main character and a side character, depending on context.

There was this post from many years ago where someone discussed the phenomenon of a fandom ghost, where fanon takes these blank slate characters (almost exclusively white, almost eclusively male) and projects onto them this whole personality, such that they become an extremely consistent and wildly popular character that's completely divorced from the source material, clearly highlighting that the reason for fandom popularity has absolutely nothing to do with how well drawn the character actually is in source material. This was in the context of Hux, from The Force Awakens, a character that was pretty much nonsexistent in the source material, but wildly popular in fandom as a lead character. Someone followed up on this by pointing out the most common female variant – the Morgana from Merlin archetype. This archetype, too, is widely recognizable in fanon, with consistent, recognizable character traits in fic, but it differs from the male fandom ghost in that the female one is often a flattening of a character that does exist as a fully fledged character, a sanding down of the edges and nuances of a character that is absolutely not an empty shell to create something that, while not necessarily poorly written or thinly drawn, is fundamentally there for added texture and facilitation of the getting together of two (usually white male) characters. She's beautiful and smart and snarky and rolling her eyes, occasionally a little mean and almost always fond and protective of the characters in the ship the fics are actually about. Once you start seeing this, it's impossible to unsee it – it's often even tied with writers justifying discarding women that are the canon love interests while insisting that they really love these women they're using as props. Instead of outright vilification, it's idealization, in the sort of "oh, she's just too lovely, why would she ever settle for him" type sense, without ever stopping to actually think about that question, and certainly never actually exploring the interiority of the women being flattened. The prime example coming to mind right now is Lois Lane in Superbat fic, but there are just so many examples, in so many pieces of media.

So how does any of this connect to what I'm saying about Samira not being a natural side character, but Santos being able to fulfill that role?Well, Santos is a pretty unique character because these aspects of a fandom ghost are real parts of her in canon, and so it's easy to slot her in. She's far more social and outgoing than any of these other characters. She's vibrant, a character that is snarky and easy to imagine in a different setting. She has this deep inability to not care about the people around her. She ends season one inviting someone she met fifteen hours earlier to come live with her. She has a canonical love interest that is very much not one of the other main characters, so there's no need for people to completely distort her character in order to get her "out of the way". So there are just a ton of reasons why it's easy to slot her into various kinds of fic about other characters! She can fit these very common fic archetypes easily, and it doesn't feel out of character, because in a lot of ways she really displays the attributes in canon. And season two made this even more the case! We find her having a stronger bond with Robby. She invites Mel for karaoke. She has an extended subplot of being concerned about Whitaker's wellbeing (which I found frustrating for a lot of reasons, but I digress). None of this is to say Santos isn't a fully fledged out character with more to her than a standard fic archetype. It's just that it's also easier to slot her into an archetypal role in fic that's not about her.

Similar things apply to Mel, who's sweet and amenable and excited at the prospect of friends, or Dana, who expresses so much care and concern for other people. There are characterization distortions to make it work – one of the most reliable indicators for me of a fic not feeling right to me even when I think its Samira characterization is good has historically been its Dana characterization. Fic tends to make Dana more generally maternal, but something about Dana that I found interesting in season one (which frustrated me in season two when it became incredibly apparent that it wasn't intentional) is that her care is not universal. Her priority is Robby! She closes ranks to protect him! She expresses care and concern for Mel, Whitaker, and Javadi, characters not in conflict with Robby, but Samira gets shut down the second she points out Robby's bad day isn't a reason to take shit out on her. Even Heather, who Dana actually does care deeply about, still gets the "go easy on him" treatment. So even in characters that are very easy to fit into archetypal roles, there's still a tendency to file down the edges for plot convenience, to make them more broadly palatable. But it's still possible to do it in a way where these characters are still recognizable. That...is really hard to do with Samira.

The fic landscape is heavily dominated by ship fic. The two most popular ships in The Pitt are Robby/Whitaker and Robby/Abbot. And even the worst distortions of Samira cannot include her being a ship cheerleader to either of those ships, because Samira's relationship with Robby is at the very least as prominent and important in the source material as the Robby's relationship with either of these ship partners (I'd argue much more important, both thematically and characterization-wise) and it's complicated. Samira's relationship with Robby is critical to both her characterization and Robby's characterization, and if a fic ignores that to try to slot her in as a regular side character, it's going to feel incredibly off!

It's not just about Robby. Samira's prickliness is a major part of her character, and unlike Santos, who is prickly but also extroverted, social, and demonstrative, Samira is a quite subdued character. She is many things, but she's not fun! She is this perfect, glossy professional veneer and she doesn't want to ever let that slip long enough for her colleagues to get to know her. And part of that has to be tied to the fact one of the very first things we learn about her is her colleagues make fun of her behind her back! People have a mean nickname for her that she explicitly states hurt her feelings a lot! We actually watch Robby and Dana laugh at her! So she's defensive and has no reason to want to let her colleagues get to know her. She doesn't go out and socialize. She's not a character that's going to offer words of wisdom that aren't directly related to the work. She sure as hell doesn't care about her colleagues' love lives. And all this is important. A Samira that's good at socializing and making friends and existing outside of medicine isn't really Samira! So that makes it impossible to believably slot her in the "best friend" or "ship cheerleader" roles, which are very common in fic. That's just not her! So when people try, which they do sometimes, it falls flat and doesn't actually feel like Samira, unless a significant part of the fic was devoted to building up how they got to that point where Samira has this relationship with anyone...which is something that's pretty much only going to happen in fic centred around Samira.

In my experience, most fics are about one or two characters. When it's two, it's almost always a romantic ship. It's much rarer that there are any more main characters than that. It makes sense – writing a real ensemble is very hard. Balancing multiple characters, all with interiority and motivations beyond being a prop for the main character or supporting the plot, even if they don't all get perspectives, is a tough thing to do. I tried maybe once, that only arguably, and the fic ballooned into over forty thousand words so I gave up and just posted the damn thing. So that means it's a rare fic that's not about Samira that's going to do that for Samira. And since it's not believable for Samira to fall into those common roles that can be given to characters that aren't the main character in a fic, in most cases, she's going to not make much sense unless she's a major character, because as a side character, the options are essentially mischarcterize her or have this really weird, out of context character that serves precisely none of the commonly expected fic side character archetypes.

However, there's also another thing that makes it even harder to give Samira these friendships in a way that feels in character, and that's something that applies to fic that's actually about Samira. Unfortunately, I think another reason why a lot of Samira-centric fic feels a little off to me is tied more subtly to racism than just people being uninterested in women of colour, or resorting to tired stereotypes. To bring up something very specific that I think is really fascinating about Samira...many, many months ago, long before season two started airing, I wrote a post explaining how what interests me about various ships is not what interests most people about those same ships. One of the things I brought up in that post was that for all Samira and Mel's similarities, as characters, they do not vibe, which is really, really interesting to observe. Mel pushes back on Samira and contradicts her in a way she absolutely doesn't any other character. Samira clearly finds Mel's tendency to speak without first checking what she wants to say against the established protocol for the right thing to say frustrating. And there's a layer on top of all of this where they're getting very different responses for very similar traits and behaviours.

It was clear to me from last season alone that the characters and the narrative in general treats Samira and Mel very differently. Season two made it undeniable that they are extremely similar characters being treated extraordinarily differently in ways that, even at my most charitable reading of the situation, are hard to attribute to anything other than racism (both the writers' and the characters' at this point). Mel spends all of season two feeling isolated and unsupported, and she isn't wrong for feeling this way, but objectively, she does get half a dozen different characters supporting her. It's imperfect, but it is a workplace and these are her coworkers. It's hugely different from how no one actually stops to talk to Samira about her obvious job stress. And even though we don't have scenes that point to Samira being actively aware of how differently she is treated, awareness of racism is a critical part of Samira Mohan as a character: the very premise of her character is that she lost her father to systemic racism in an emergency room. I think the post of mine to which you're referring might be the one where I referenced the fact Samira and Mel both needed medical care in season two, and while Mel was treated kindly and gently, with dignity and respect, Samira got screamed at – the racist disparity in their treatment isn't just Robby holding Samira to a different and higher standard than he's holding Mel, it even extends to Samira being a victim of the very sort of care disparity that matters more than anything to her.

While it's believable enough that Samira doesn't stop to think about this during the show we see when she isn't there to witness the difference in treatment (though there is plenty to be said about what we are and aren't expected to infer as patterns based on the limited time spans we see, but that's a broader discussion about the format of the show not being a good fit for what they're trying to do), fic explores longer time horizons and characters being exposed to more about each other, making it impossible to believe Samira wouldn't grasp the pattern. A Samira-Mel friendship therefore seems dishonest if it doesn't confront this uncomfortable truth and what it means. This isn't the most charitable reading of those fics, but it sometimes ends up to me feeling like the product of people content to gloss over some really bitter or tough to swallow elements to the story – and to be clear, I don't think this is necessarily always an accurate reading! The Samira-Mel situation is clearly not intentional and subtle enough that even though it's glaring to me, a South Asian woman that has thought way, way too much about Samira, I think there are very reasonable viewers that could walk away from the show having not noticed it, and so don't have that as baked into their perception of the character dynamics at play in this story. But I also think that people are kind of invested in not thinking about the disparities at play.

Fics where Samira plays a major role usually – though not always – recognize that Robby's treatment of her is deeply unprofessional and completely inexcusable. But it's a much rarer thing that people realize the corollary of this, which is that Robby's nicer treatment of other characters is also not fair. It's easy enough to overlook favouritism if the un-favourites are still being treated professionally. But in The Pitt, they're absolutely not. The show itself doesn't seem to hold that view – everything about how they're handling the Langdon of it all reads as them pushing for Langdon and Robby to make up so everything can go back to the way it was. They don't see the favouritism as the problem, they see Langdon's current lack of favour as the issue. But as an audience member, I absolutely cannot hold that view because of how awfully Robby is treating Samira, and how in season two, Robby starts treating Javadi like he did season one Samira, like he was setting up the stage to treat her just like Samira, the unfavoured that's held to impossible standards, and only can't because she's choosing to go elsewhere.

So I find it a discordant note in a fic if it acknowledges that Robby's behaviour is bad, but it's limited to strictly that. Samira's whole ethos really comes down to fairness. That's ultimately what Samira's consideration for care disparities is about – pushing for all demographics to be treated fairly and equally. As I've said before, I think this philosophy is a huge part of why she's great at traumas and excels in the MCI. A clear protocol that applies to everyone and a specific instruction to spend only five minutes to stabilize her patients are exactly what she needs and wants out of medicine. So to have her be totally unaware of the unfairness feels like a disservice to the character, and it feels reductive to the ways in which Robby fails. Especially after season two and his treatment of Javadi. And in the longer time horizons of fic, the other characters benefiting from the favouritism not noticing makes them feel less likeable.

I do think a fic would also feel off if Samira directly brought this up to most of the characters who benefit from Robby's favouritism (with the exception of Langdon, which is obviously a unique case)! Samira is very systems focused. She's not blaming patients for getting better care, she's blaming doctors for providing worse care. It isn't Mel's fault that Robby treats her better than he does Samira. But I do think she'd have a deep awareness of it and even some degree of bitterness about it! And because one of Samira's interesting traits is that she has a bit of a temper, I think it'd be both very plausible and very interesting if she didn't bring it up calmly, but snapped about it when under stress! Particularly if it were a result of someone trying to be offer her some sympathy about how Robby treats her! I've used Mel as an example here, and I think it's probably especially true for her because of the way she and Samira really don't much indicate liking each other, but a similar thing would apply to Whitaker and even Santos (the Santos situation is more complicated, which I'm not about to get into now, but I think she could still fill this role as someone Samira could very reasonably get extremely upset at if they tried to say anything about the Robby situation). If Whitaker were to say something (which in season one, I would have considered an actual possibility because season one Whitaker was aware of Robby's failings in a way season two Whitaker simply isn't), it's very plausible she'd react even worse. Having her not notice or react at all just files down her character complexity.

But most of the fic that I've enjoyed takes a generally thoughtful approach to the Robby-Samira of it all, which makes it stand out when they don't take it to what is (to me) the logical extension of that, through exploring how Samira might feel about other people, whom Robby has known for much less time, getting such positive treatment. There's this one fic that I've enjoyed immensely that I think does some really interesting things with Samira and her relationships with the people around her. I don't necessarily agree with every choice made in Samira characterization in this fic, but it all feels carefully considered enough that I can easily buy into the story being told. It's well written. It's believable. It gets much closer to something I feel absolutely captures Samira than most, because it contextualizes Robby's treatment of Samira with his much better treatment of Langdon and Whitaker and explores how Samira might realistically react to different characters and different scenarios. It even touches upon the typical gender and colour of Robby's favourites. But because of that, when I read it, the Mel of it all becomes a major elephant in the room, and because of one very specific scene in it where Samira and Mel actually briefly talk about how Robby treats Samira, the lack of acknowledgement of the fact Mel is also benefiting feels off. What I think might be going on is that it's a comparatively easier pill to swallow that Robby has a sexist streak and that the men are benefiting than it is that he also has a racist streak and Mel is benefiting. People can recognize that his favourites run towards characters who are white and male. But they struggle with the fact it's not just that he likes the white men and doesn't like everyone else. There is a spectrum of who he likes, and both aspects of that – race and gender – play a role.

To be fair, I do think part of this comes to how Robby treated McKay and Mel in season one. Robby's treatment of McKay and handling of the David case was the most obvious example of sexism in season one, and McKay was one of the characters Robby treated worst. That, coupled with the fact Robby was completely uninvested in Mel in season one, created a situation where he felt sexist but he didn't feel racist. But season two very much veered away from that. He still treats McKay pretty poorly, but it pales in comparison to his treatment of Samira, Javadi, and Al-Hahimi, and that coupled with the shift in how he treats Mel leaves me with a very, very different impression of his character. In season one, Mel and Robby basically did not have a relationship. He demonstrated incredibly little investment in her, except for a single moment of telling her not to apologize for feeling for her patients when she's crying in a hallway. It turns out, that lack of investment was incredibly loadbearing for Robby's character and the Robby-Samira dynamic!

Without it, we get what we see in season two: a season that leans heavily into presenting Samira and Mel as parallel characters that are incredibly similar and experiencing very similar life disruptions, then has Robby react very harshly to only the brown woman after ignoring her for most of the day, while being so gentle and supportive of the white woman and reassuring her about how great she is. Which takes the Samira and Robby relationship from this story of two people trying to solve very different problems, with Robby trying to mould her in his image and struggling immensely to do it and being frustrated because he believes in her ability to be the kind of doctor he most values (which I do think is the most textually supported reading of what was going on with them in season one) to something far, far less interesting and also far grosser (Robby simply doesn't like Samira and his poor treatment of her is racially motivated). There was a very real shift in season two, and I think people still haven't adapted to what it means. It's also far more subtextual than the Robby sexism – there are multiple lines dedicated to Robby's sympathy for David and his prioritization of him over the girls on his list. The sexism is an explicit, textual problem, even if the writers don't grapple with the scope of it, or how it impacts his treatment of subordinates. The racism is glaring, but easier to miss, especially when it's something that's a new addition that isn't built into people's understanding of the story and characters from day one.

Now, if we take a step back, I don't actually agree that season one was setting up for a kind of familiarity between Samira and Javadi or Santos involving banter or shared interests at all. I've actually long argued that her building relationships with Collins, Langdon, and McKay is way more narratively interesting – this post, from July of 2025, so a full year ago, explores this idea. Now, I absolutely think the way the Samira and McKay familiarity was conveyed in season two felt cobbled together and weak, but as a concept, it makes far more sense based on who Samira is as a character and what conversations she had in season one. I felt Samira's relationships with Santos, Whitaker, and Javadi were all mostly set up to be mentorships, not friendships. There was an avenue for Samira and Santos to become friends, far more than I think there was a similar avenue for Samira and Mel, or Samira and Whitaker, or Samira and Javadi, but the casual conversations, the moments of being comfortable, the deeper expressions of something real – all those were with characters she'd known longer than that day. I think the problem with season two wasn't that Samira wasn't bantering or having closer friendships with the younger residents, it was that they refused to treat her like a senior resident at all. They didn't let her teach. They completely threw away her relationship with Santos when it should have been so crucial, given the Langdon and Robby situations.

I do have a big problem with how thinly drawn the McKay Samira relationship is in season two. I think it makes sense that it's a very casual, shallow friendship, mostly rooted in Samira trying to follow McKay's advice from last season, but it felt so absurdly disconnected from season one Samira that it's this talk about sex and romance and family in the workplace, and felt very weak in that even though they bent over backwards to skip ahead to a version of Samira that will talk about herself and her family and her sex life, despite having been so closed off in season one, the sole thing we knew about her life until the final episode confirmed she was single and didn't like socializing was that she'd lost her father, they still ignored the elephant in the room of what these two characters have in common: an attending that coddles the others while treating them much more harshly. And this actually connects to the same reason most fic featuring Samira and Mel developing a friendship doesn't quite sit right with me. I think Robby is pretty much indisputably canon Samira's most important relationship, and it's a deeply complicated one. Not grappling with how that affects her relationships with others just doesn't feel honest.

A lot of the most compelling Samira fic I've ever read has involved her friendships with the night shift characters instead of the day shift, and I think the reason why is that for those characters, there isn't the elephant in the room of Robby treating them better than Samira. If they support her in relation to Robby's treatment of her, it doesn't have that weird condescending undertone that the same attitude coming from the day shift would. With Ellis, there's even a ghost of a commonality instead – Ellis so clearly wants Robby's approval in season one and didn't get it. Collins has directly faced the issue – she explicitly apologizes to Samira and actively stands up in her defence, and it's very different coming from her because she's senior to Samira, not junior. It's a much harder dynamic to work with when it comes to the day shift characters that were new in season one.

To be clear, none of this is a criticism of fic writers that write things like a Samira and Mel friendship. I get it. I touched upon that theme in my first fic in this fandom without exploring the ways in which their personalities don't gel myself before my understanding of the characters shifted over the first few months of thinking about them. It's just that now, after season two, it starts feeling really bad, because the Robby of it all is so big and overwhelming. I think there's something similar, though not exactly the same, that makes Samira's most popular ship challenging! Not the Robby of it all, though I do think that's an important topic to explore, as Robby is so obviously important to both Samira and Abbot. But fundamentally, I think the ship is hard to make believable without grappling with the implications of him having a thing for her. It has become somewhat more common over time as the general understanding of who Samira is has become a bit more nuanced and settled, but like how fic often files off the edges of characters to make them fit a specific archetype, it's an easy trap to fall into to file off the edges of relationships to do the same. And based on everything we know about Samira, I think her instinctive reaction to learning Abbot is into her would be to be pissed, not happy or flattered, regardless of her own feelings, because Samira sits in a very unique place in the story where people do doubt her and she has to keep proving herself. In season one, there is this very clear distinction between Robby (and the newcomers, whose only influence is Robby!), who doubts her, and everyone else that's worked with her, including the other attending, who does not. The fact that the person that doubts her is influential matters. And so therefore, the notion that the other person, equal in authority to that person, might have any reason for people to believe his faith in her is not an objective evaluation of her strengths, even if it's not true at all? That would impact Samira.

All of this is just a longwinded way of saying...Samira is a really complicated character, with a lot of different facets, all tied to her relationships with different other characters. Writing her as believably in character is hard. And it gets even harder when taking into account how fucking different the way she's presented in season one vs season two is. Are there ways to bridge the gap? Absolutely. But based solely on what the show presents, without a lot of legwork by the audience? She may as well be two different characters. And that leads to something else that's interesting about fandom – for all that people talk about picking and choosing what they like from canon, that rarely manifests in a way where people completely disregard past a certain point in canon. There are very few "I'm operating as if season one is canon and season two isn't" people out there. And so if people want to write canon compliant – or even just mostly canon compliant – fic that takes into account what happened in season two? It becomes increasingly difficult to write about Samira unless it's fic about Samira. Especially because a lot of the very same things that make Samira (and more specifically, the Robby-Samira dyamic) so completely different in season two are things that people writing about characters other than Samira actually like. People don't really want to consider it as all part of the same thing. But that's what it is.

There is this bizarre dissonance in the way the show frames the Robby-Samira dynamic where Robby is so clearly in the wrong and behaving in ways that are deeply harmful to specifically one person while also being completely unwilling to explore the implications of that in terms of how their relationship develops in the longer term, or how he treats others. Even as they tried, so hard, to shift towards depicting the parallels between Robby and other characters, particularly Santos, and really emphasized the Robby-Langdon relationship in a way season one didn't for the sake of this running theme of how damaged that relationship is, in terms of actual character moments and conflict? That still largely came from Robby and Samira! Him screaming at her was the most dramatic moment of conflict in the season, and occurred concurrently to Robby being so much kinder to other characters! And because the writers and producers have totally broken my faith and I'm disinclined to give them any benefit of the doubt after cutting Samira....that's hard to disentangle from creative racism. Because they cut Samira, making it clear that they don't see her story as worth telling or her relationship with Robby as crucial to the story, the message they're sending is that they're using her to convey Robby's low point, not because they want him to grow from it, but because they believe the audience will forgive him from mistreating her, but wouldn't forgive him for mistreating other characters. I can't think of a single alternative to justify the choice to have Robby treat Samira worse than Langdon, given that it's clearly not the intentional portrayal of a racist and misogynistic character.

Viewers that aren't Samira-centric seem for the most part really happy about this. They like that Robby expresses care and concern for these other characters. They are delighted by Robby's praise for Mel and Whitaker. They love him expressing fondness for Santos, how the narrative moves towards showing them as deeply similar, with this close connection, and aren't really comfortable with exploring the ramifications of this and all the ways it doesn't really hold up as sweet under examination. And in order to preserve that in a positive sense...they really can't include a realistic Samira with all her edges and complications, because if they do, it quickly becomes apparent that Robby being nice to these other characters is not sweet, it's a character in a position of power exhibiting blatant and harmful favouritism.

Season two made it really easy to not have to confront this in fic! Not only did it completely ignore the Samira-Robby relationship until it came time for him to scream at her, meaning it didn't at all explore how she might feel about him going from being so invested in her in season one to completely ignoring her in season two while at the same time being so caring and attentive to the others, it shifted the narrative in a really significant way that heavily impacts what fic might look like going forward by eliminating all of Samira's teaching moments. As I pointed out, season one Samira had moments of mentoring Santos, Whitaker, and Javadi. Mentorship doesn't really describe what was going on between her and Mel, but she was the also the only character making any effort to correct Mel on missteps. Season two reduced Samira's relationship with all the other non-McKay characters. She does not interact with Santos or Whitaker all season. She gets no dynamic with Langdon (and the speculation that the two of them might have a rivalry was a big part of what was happening in fic pre-season two!).

A strange light found its way into Trinity's gaze. People who didn't know better would guess that it was a sly sort of glee. It was actually something much more guarded. Hopeful. "You were worried about me."

Baran went into Trinity's kitchen, found a clean cup, and filled it with tap water.

"Of course I was," she said as she made her way back towards the couch.

Baran stroked her face softly, smoothed damp strands of hair away from her face.

"I brought you water," Baran said, her voice low. "You're still feverish. You need to stay hydrated."

Trinity had been complaining about not feeling well for days, really playing it up, too, whining, listless, and overall pathetic, but the fever had only started in earnest last night. Baran had felt the heat radiating off of her body lying next to her in bed. Sometime in the night, Trinity had migrated to her sagging corduroy couch. It didn't appear that she'd moved since, which was more than a little concerning.

Trinity shook her head as Baran brought the cup to her lips. Sipped it and spat it out, let it dribble down her chin, onto her t-shirt already damp with sweat.

"I need water," Trinity said. Baran brought the cup to her mouth again.

"This is water," she insisted. But Trinity tugged her chin away, petulant even as she was half delirious.

"Water," she croaked.

Baran sighed and set the glass down on the coffee table. Trinity shifted her legs to make room for Baran at the end of the couch. Baran settled in and pulled Trinity's feet into her lap.

Trinity made a little moaning sound and let her eyes close.

"I want to go home." Trinity's voice was small.

"Of course," Baran soothed. "Where's home to you?" She only knew vague details: something about the west coast, the ocean.

Trinity was quiet enough that Baran almost thought she had fallen asleep. But no: when Baran glanced over she saw that her eyes were open again, and she was staring hard into the middle distance. Baran didn't press further; she understood the longing for a home that she didn't know anymore, maybe had never known. She wasn't sure that that was the nature of Trinity's quiet, exactly, but she guessed she might not be so far off.

"What would make here feel more like home?" She asked instead.

—

Baran let the water run cold before filling the tub. It made her nervous, running a bath so cold, far too cold, really, but Trinity had insisted.

Trinity appeared in the doorway, face pale and drawn. She was clutching a box of table salt with both hands. She shuffled over to the tub's edge and dumped the entire box into the water.

"I could pick up Epsom salt for you," Baran watched her as she set the emptied box down onto the tile and dipped her fingertips into the water, testing.

"This is better," Trinity said, voice still rough. She stepped into the tub with her clothes on and sank down until the water touched her chin. Her shirt clung to her, translucent. Tiny bubbles silvered her bare skin where it was underwater.

"I can't let you stay in there long," Baran said. She was already searching for signs: shivering, blue lips, even though she knew hypothermia wouldn't settle in quite so quickly.

Trinity looked up at her, hands still swirling the water softly. "I'm fine," she told Baran. "You can leave me here."

Baran shook her head. She wanted to touch Trinity's face, prove that she was already too cold, prove that she had to get out immediately. "Out of the question."

Trinity considered this, then bent her knees so that she could slide her body until her entire face slipped under the water. It was only a few seconds before surfaced again, but watching her go under had made Baran's heart hammer.

Trinity wiped the water out of her eyes and looked up at her with a look that was so existentially exhausted.

"In my bedroom, top drawer" she said, and it took Baran a second to realize she was receiving instructions. "There's something there that might help." Her eyes flashed then with familiar mischief. "Don't go looking through the rest of my stuff like a perv. You'll find exactly what you might expect."

"What am I looking for?"

Trinity gave a little shrug that translated to ripples in the bath water. "It'll be easier to explain once you find it. You'll know what it is."

Baran was familiar with Trinity's room as a place to sleep and a place to fuck. She knew the basic geography: she could feel for the switch on the bedside lamp in the dark with reasonable precision, she knew that the drawer in the same bedside table held the toys, the lube. But she'd never lingered in the space before, looked at the detritus of Trinity's life (mostly blurry polaroids and hair elastics). She'd certainly never gone through Trinity's dresser.

She pulled open the top drawer, as Trinity had instructed. It was a sock drawer, mostly, but next to the balled up basic crew socks was a folded animal fur. Baran lifted it out of the drawer gently. It was surprisingly heavy.

Trinity's eyes were liquid as they watched Baran return carrying the pelt in her hands. She looked absolutely terrified.

"I don't usually let people touch it." Baran tried to hand it to her then, so that she could stop holding it. So that maybe Trinity might stop looking so scared. Trinity took it from her and hugged it to her chest, the chestnut fur turning slick and shiny where it touched the water. The fur was soft leaving Baran's fingers; it left a briny smell on her hands.

"It's a pelt?"

Trinity squeezed it tighter. "Sealskin. California sea lion. It's…mine."

Baran nodded, sat down on the closed toilet seat lid. "It's beautiful," she said, because it seemed like the right thing to say.

But the look Trinity gave her was hard. "You aren't getting what I'm saying. It's mine," she repeated. "It's my skin."

Baran nodded again, but she understood in that moment that Trinity was right: she didn't get what Trinity was trying to tell her, only that the moment seemed monumental, a confession.

"I think the fever's because it's been too long," Trinity said. Tears welled in her eyes then, spilled down her wet cheeks. Saltwater meeting saltwater. "No, I know that it's because it's been too long. I just—" her voice hitched and snagged on a sob, "I can't put it on anymore."

She held the pelt up then, dripping over the edge of tub, for Baran to see. There was a large slash through the fur, a cut so clean it had to have come from a sharp knife or straight razor. Baran touched the sliced open edges with her fingertips.

"How'd this happen?" Baran asked, Trinity didn't answer, just kept swiping away at the tears trailing down her face.

She reached for the pelt again. "May I?"

Trinity nodded sullenly, but Baran still had to coax it gently out of her grip. She examined the cut more closely, then looked back to Trinity.

"I have to get back," she said, "but can I take this with me? I think I can fix it."

Trinity looked scared again. "You'll bring it back?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

"Trinity, of course I'll bring it back," Baran told her. "What would I do with a sealskin?"

Trinity seemed to realize something then. She laid back down in the tub, water lapping her chin again. She nodded. "Okay."

"Just promise me one thing," Baran said as she turned to leave, the sealskin draped carefully over one arm. "Get out of that tub soon."

—

Trinity was still in the tub when Baran returned, gym duffle slung over one shoulder. She looked up at Baran with glassy eyes.

"You came back," she croaked. Baran realized then just how awful Trinity must have felt while she was away: adrift on feverish thoughts and afraid that Baran might not actually come back, that her pelt might be gone forever.

"I came back," Baran echoed softly. "And I have something for you."

She reached into her gym bag and pulled out the sealskin, dry now, and held it out to Trinity, who reached for it with pale, pruned fingers.

She ran her hands lovingly over the fur. Her searching fingertips found Baran's work immediately: a tidy line of sutures.

Trinity looked up at her, searchingly. "Do you think this might work?"

Baran thought the sutures could hold up to a fair amount of tension (she had good technique), so she nodded.

Trinity considered this, then held out her hand to Baran. "Help me up."

Baran took her hand and pulled Trinity upright and supported her as she stepped out of the tub. Her skin was cool now to the touch, but Baran sensed that the fever still lingered underneath.

Trinity stood there, dripping onto the tile, clutching her mended sealskin.

"Um," she said. She seemed suddenly self-conscious. "It might be weird if you watch."

But Baran didn't want to leave Trinity alone again, not when she was too ill to get out of the bathtub on her own, too ill to take care of herself properly. She told Trinity as much. She didn't add that she was also curious.

"Okay," Trinity said, a little doubtfully. Then she drew in a breath, peeled off her wet, clinging clothes and, naked, slipped into the skin.

Baran watched, stunned, as Trinity's body winched forward to make a new shape.

Baran knew, distantly, that she was somehow not reacting to Trinity's transformation. That, outwardly, she was maintaining the same professional calm with which she dealt with blood and viscera and life-changing injuries. But on the inside her thoughts were a roiling counterpoint to her calm. What the fuck? She thought. What the fuck? What the actual fuck?

She was trapped in Trinity's bathroom with a six-foot long sea lion. A sea lion that, as far as her senses could be trusted, was Trinity. It had Trinity's eyes, startling in an animal face. And, yes, there it was: the line of sutures.

Baran wasn't familiar with sea lion anatomy but, if she were to guess, the wound that she had closed lay right over the heart.

Trinity barked loudly and the sound made Baran jump. She scrambled backwards out of the bathroom and pulled the door closed.

She kept moving backwards until her back met the wall across from the bathroom door. Baran realized that her heart was hammering. She was frozen, panic pinning her in place.

What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?

There was a wet, crunching sound. A soft thump. Then silence.

Then: "Baran?" Trinity's voice was muffled through the door. Baran opened her mouth to answer but her words had run dry.

"Shit," Trinity swore, "Fuck. I tried to tell you. I—Fuck."

Baran's better instincts told her to just leave. Go home. Sleep the day off. Maybe check in with Trinity tomorrow. Maybe check her own temperature. Maybe she'd caught something too, was delirious, hallucinating.

Trinity cracked the bathroom door open. Her hair was wet, slicked back from her face. Her face, Baran noticed, had a little bit of its colour back.

Trinity opened the door a little wider when she realized that Baran was still there. Beyond Trinity (who was definitely naked) Baran could see the seal pelt puddled on the tile floor, wet and glistening, next to the pile of wet clothes Trinity had worn in the bath.

"Let me try and explain again. Better this time," Trinity looked down at her bare feet. "If I didn't freak you out too much."

Baran cleared her throat, tried to line up her words just right. "Freaked out doesn't begin to describe what I'm feeling," her voice came out strained. "But I'd love a proper explanation."

"Yeah," Trinity said. "I'll order in something. It might take a while to, um, get through everything."

She padded over to the couch to find her phone. "I'm thinking sushi?"

Baran couldn't be certain of her expression, but she supposed she must have looked appalled because Trinity immediately laughed awkwardly and muttered to herself.