Chapter Text
Mornings in the city were still cold enough to wear a jacket in. Samaritan had been keeping suspiciously silent for around a month and its key operatives were also laying low, which was more worrying than it was encouraging. It was a Saturday and Harold was supposed to be at his cover identity’s suburban home grading papers, but instead he’d caught a train into the city, bought a copy of the Times and the Wall Street Journal as well as a cherry scone from the closest café (and some doggy danish for bear). Now, he was sequestered at his desk down in the subway station starting his weekend the same way he started every free day and every evening after work.
The Machine had given them their latest number twenty minutes or so ago and he was gathering the intel necessary to situate John perfectly in the lawyer’s life temporarily until they’d figured out whether he needed to be stopped or saved. He was so caught up in his work that he didn’t notice a new presence entering the station. Only Bear’s barking pulled him out of his research in time to see who was coming.
“I hope you’re not working too hard, Harold. You might strain something.”
Root marched casually closer, the heels on her boots clicking loudly against the floor tiles as she approached.
“Miss Groves,” Harold greeted turning around in his chair to face her.
The hacker didn’t begrudge Harold for his lack of enthusiasm. She’d been gone for a month, off doing only the Machine knows what. They probably hadn’t even known for sure if she was still alive. They’d just hoped that she was.
“Sorry to drop in unannounced,” Root said, “but She says this number of yours will be a doozy and you could use the extra help so who am I to say no.”
“I can only imagine how busy the Machine has been keeping you this past month,” Harold replied, keeping his voice characteristically neutral. “Even so, I’m glad the Machine could spare you to help us this time.”
“Don’t be jealous, Harry.” Root said, in a voice so coated in honey it stuck to everything it touched. “Just because She’s been spending all of her time with me, doesn’t mean She doesn’t still love you too.”
Harold regarded her quietly for a moment and Root turned away from his scrutiny, focusing instead on Bear who was watching her expectantly. Since they’d lost Sameen at the NYSE, the tall brunette’s entire demeanor had changed. John and Lionel had noticed it too. She’d stopped making witty quips at inappropriate moments. She’d stopped smiling that wide, shit eating grin that sometimes masqueraded itself as being demure to anyone who didn’t know her and she’d aged a little around the eyes as though Shaw’s absence had taken a physical toll upon her as well.
So Harold found it odd that not only was Root back, but she seemed to be entirely back to her old self, or maybe too much like her old self as if she were an actress on a stage playing an overstated interpretation of the woman they used to know. He watched her as she bent down and scratched Bear on both sides of his head like Shaw used to do and noted how her smile fell a little as she did so.
“Any new leads?” He asked after a time, not needing to be specific for Root to know what or rather ‘who’ he was referring to.
Root’s smile fell entirely into a defeated sort of frown. She finished lavishing Bear with attention and stood back up. She looked at Harold but didn’t speak, just shook her head minutely.
“Miss Groves…” Harold started, but Root cut him off.
“Save it, Harry. I know what you’re going to say and it won’t work. I won’t stay here and join you and John in going on with your lives like she never even existed.”
Harold huffed in annoyance, standing and limping a couple of steps nearer to her so that he was now a little closer to her eye level.
“It’s very selfish of you to think that you have been the only one of us that was affected by what happened to Ms. Shaw,” Harold scolded her. “Just because Mr. Reese and I have returned to saving the numbers on a daily basis doesn’t mean that we miss her any less than you do.”
“That’s right, Harold,” Root baited, not enjoying the patronizing tone his voice had taken on, “blame me. I loved her and I couldn’t handle letting her go and moving on with my life and that makes me selfish because I can’t put aside my emotions and be a hero, but I don’t care. Nothing matters anymore.”
“You can’t mean that Ms. Groves or you wouldn’t still be working for the Machine. You’re angry about what happened at the exchange, we all are—”
“I’m not angry, I am in pain!” the tall brunette shouted.
The sheer, shrill volume to Root’s voice made Harold stop in his tracks.
“Sameen’s gone!” Root yelled, “she kissed me and then she just ran off to die. How am I supposed to live with that, Harold? Can you tell me because I don’t know how.”
Bear padded over to the pair from his dog bed, confused by the arguing voices. He hovered near them both in the tense silence that followed, unsure of which one to go to just like a child who’s unsure of which distraught parent they should comfort after a fight.
“And the punch line,” Root paused, trying to keep the shine of tears out of her eyes, filling Harold with a sense of déjà vu, “is that your Machine keeps telling me what we need to do to save the world, but she won’t tell me how to save the one person I want to.”
“You said yourself that war requires sacrifice,” Harold reminded her with the somber resignation of someone who was quoting a law he didn’t believe in.
“Not her, Harold!” Root replied in a tone that somehow seemed smaller, more hollow than the voice she usually carried. “It was never supposed to be her. It was supposed to be me.”
“Root…”
“I just can’t talk about her right now, Harry. Please,” Root pleaded.
“Very well,” Harold conceded. “What can I do for you then?”
“In addition to helping you with your current number, the Machine’s recruiting again.” Root explained, taking a deep breath and getting back to business. “She needs you to help me get the attention of someone very important.”
“More important than Caleb Phipps?” Harold asked, narrowing his eyes as if skeptical of her motives.
“Everyone has their talents including your new number,” Root deflected easily, seeming more like the flippant killer for hire Harold had once met at gun point than she had in a year and a half.
Harold limped back over to his computer chair and sat down. Root walked into the subway car to retrieve a few odds and ends before she would no doubt leave again and Bear went back to his dog bed and lay down. Suddenly, there was a loud clang from above them—the sort that was usually heard when the ancient candy machine door guarding the entrance to their hideaway slammed shut after someone entered their sanctuary.
“Expecting company, Harry?” Root asked rhetorically, walking out of the subway car already brandishing one of her handguns as she moved in front of Harold.
There was a second metallic creak, then the sounds of an audible scuffle on the stairs, then a gunshot, and a very familiar grunt of exertion. Even with the verbal cue, neither one of them were ready to greet the two bodies tumbling down the stairs in a tangled mess. One was a very recently deceased Jeremy Lambert, the body struggling to get out from beneath his weight was a very bloody, slightly pale, and completely pissed off Sameen Shaw.
“Sameen,” Root breathed, letting her gun drop fully to her side.
Shaw looked up through the haze of blood and sweat, fighting to catch her breath. She took in Root’s disbelieving demeanor and the recent dusting of grey that had crept into Harold’s hair in the past few months and Bear’s anxious whining as he padded over to lick her face.
“You guys still look like crap,” she said, running her fingers through Bear’s fur and not having the strength to push him away from her even if she had wanted to.
After a few seconds, Sameen felt herself giving into her exhaustion. She’d fought her way out of a Decima compound in Jersey and spent the next twenty-four hours running on fumes to get back into the city, all the while being pursued ruthlessly by Jeremy Lambert and Martine. She’d put a bullet in the blonde bitch. That had been satisfying. Maybe Sameen had killed her, maybe she hadn’t, it was all a blur. Then Lambert had been stupid enough to trail her through the city until she’d arrived at their subway station and by that point she had been more than happy to kill him.
But that kill had taken a lot out of her and Sameen slumped back against the subway’s tiled wall not registering Harold’s worried exclamation of, “Miss Shaw!” Or the way Root rushed forward to catch her before she could slide off of the landing as her eyes closed and the whole world faded to black.
O8O8O8O8O
“Short stop looks like she’s been through hell and then some,” Lionel stated the obvious, standing a short distance away from the foot of the hospital bed they’d rigged for Shaw at the safe house.
When John had been called to help transport Shaw, they’d found out that not all of the blood on her was her own, but some of it was. A bullet graze was bleeding from her upper shoulder and another gunshot wound was open in her abdomen. Finch had called Dr. Enright and so far she’d removed the bullet in Shaw’s gut and had set up an IV to administer saline and one to start replenishing the liters of blood Sameen had lost in her bid for freedom.
“She’ll bounce back. Shaw’s tough,” John said, watching as Dr. Enright insinuated the twin prongs of the nasal cannula in Shaw’s nose to increase her oxygen intake until she regained consciousness. “How’s it looking doctor?”
Root stood away from all of them, arms crossed over her chest as she scrutinized the doctor’s actions. She was as close to Sameen as John and Lionel, but she still felt hundreds of miles away, unsure of what to do with herself now that the person she’d been searching for was finally right in front of her.
“She’s lost a lot of blood.” Maddie said, straightening up and looking at each member of the team in turn. “That will take some time to replenish and honestly I should be scolding you for not taking her to a hospital for proper treatment with her injuries, but since I owe all of you for my life, I’m going to let that slide for now.”
“We would appreciate your discretion,” Harold added, carrying a tray with a kettle of freshly brewed mint-chocolate tea and cups into the room and setting it down on the small coffee table in the middle of the living space.
“When will she wake up?” Root asked, her voice quiet as she kept her gaze locked on Shaw’s unmoving form.
“Honestly, whenever her body decides it’s ready,” the doctor explained. “Everyone heals at their own pace. For most people a GSW like the one she sustained to her abdomen would keep a person in recovery for 1-4 weeks after surgery depending on the likelihood of infection and the severity of soft tissue damage, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was back on her feet much sooner than that. She seems like a fighter.”
“She is,” Root agreed softly, hating the pity in the doctor’s eyes as the hacker continued to regard Shaw like she might disappear again at any moment.
“The important thing is that we have her back,” John said. “Everything else will come in time.”
Harold smiled, even though it didn’t reach his eyes, and gestured to the tray he’d just brought into the room. “Tea, Dr. Enright?”
John and Lionel left to go back to the precinct after that. Dr. Enright stayed for only a few minutes longer before following them out and Harold found some menial excuse having to do with his cover identity to get away from the stifling atmosphere that had settled over the safe house, which left Root alone with an unconscious Shaw and the consistent beep of the heart monitor for company. She plopped down in the hard wooden chair she’d pulled up to the side of the bed and sat there, staring at Sameen in a way that Shaw would have told her was creepy had she been awake until Harold called and she had to leave the safe house again to help John with their number.
It was dark outside by the time she got back. John had looked like he’d wanted to accompany her back to the safe house to check on Shaw, but he didn’t protest when Root insisted she go alone. The Machine hadn’t arranged for Root to stay anywhere else while she was back in the city so the same place where Shaw was, seemed as good as any.
It felt strange to say the least. Root had never had a home to call her own—not since she’d left Bishop and that ratty little hovel her mother had moved them to could barely be counted as one. However, Harold’s safe house with Sameen inside felt as close to an actual home as Root was ever going to get and after months without Shaw, Root could accept that.
The safe house door closed and locked automatically behind her as she entered, dropping a few bags of things onto the island counter in the kitchen. She’d stopped by a few of Sameen’s favorite take out places. On the off chance that Shaw woke up soon, she would no doubt be hungry and one of Root’s favorite past times was watching Shaw eat. The unrestrained, lustful zeal with which she attacked her food allowed Root to imagine the way Shaw would throw herself into other pleasurable activities like sex and lend herself to imagining how violently passionate Sameen could be. She’d seen glimpses of that promising fervor when Shaw would look at her in the middle of a firefight, pupils blown with both adrenaline and desire.
Quietly, Root shook off the memory of those heated looks that had made her heart leap into her throat and hope explode in her chest and unpacked the Styrofoam containers of food from their plastic bags, arranging them neatly in the nearly empty fridge. With that done she made her way into the main living area. The safe house covered the entire floor of an empty office building owned by one of Harold’s aliases. The floorplan was largely open, though there was a loft above everything, a balcony, and multiple rooms that could hold anyone needing to lay low for as long as they needed to.
Root had always admired the expensive furnishings. They weren’t particularly her style, but she knew they were Harold’s and it was interesting, having the high end tastes of the usually illusive billionaire on display for her scrutiny. Shaw’s hospital bed had been set up in a corner of the spacious main floor, away from the leather furniture in a corner beside one of the widows where blackout drapes were drawn against the night and Samaritan’s prying eyes. The hacker took up her position in the hard backed chair she’d pulled up to Shaw’s bedside before.
Sameen hadn’t moved since she’d lost consciousness in the subway. She looked only slightly different than Root remembered: somehow leaner, maybe a little more gaunt but still just as strong and fierce as she’d always been. If only she would only wake up so that Root could know for herself that Shaw was okay. Half the battle had been getting her back, but winning the war would only happen for Root at this point when Shaw opened her eyes. Root watched Sameen carefully for a couple of hours, re-familiarizing herself with the sharp attractive features she had been missing for months and cataloguing ever shallow breath Shaw took.
Root looked down at her boots, trying for the hundredth time since Shaw had sacrificed herself not to dwell on how everything that had happened was her fault and failing. The change when it came was almost so subtle that Root missed it completely as Sameen’s breathing became less even, more alert. Finally she looked up again and found eyes like dark stars staring back at her thoughtfully.
“Sameen…” Root was afraid to breath too loud, afraid one wayward gasp of air would cause the apparition of the woman she’d spent months fighting for blow away.
Shaw cleared her throat and when she spoke her voice sounded rougher around the edges than Root remembered, but it had that familiar deep timbre that made her heart lurch forward in her chest.
“Yes,” Shaw said so quietly Root would have missed it if she hadn’t been so attuned to the woman laying in front of her
“Yes, what?” Root asked, after a time, not able to let the silence drone on between them even if it was comfortable now that she finally had her gloriously grumpy firecracker back, “Sameen?”
“Yes,” Sameen continued slowly as if almost regretting what she was admitting to, “we’re good together...but don’t…let it go to your head. You’re still the same…pain in the ass you’ve always been.”
And Root couldn’t help it: she laughed, dark eyes dancing with a shine of tears that for the first time in months were the product of joy, not grief. She smiled down at Shaw, the warmth from her expression radiating off of the hacker like she was her own sun and despite herself, Sameen leaned imperceptibly closer to the light she’d missed.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Root said, tilting her head to the side and grinning like a fool in love.
And she was.