Chapter Text
When Shaw wakes up, she has no idea how much time has passed. It takes her a moment to even remember where exactly she is, until she spots the black bat plushie squished between her and Root’s pillow, partly covered in Root’s sleep-tousled hair.
Shaw turns on her back and realizes that Root is once more hogging most of her bedcover.
Asshole.
She sits up and stretches her arms, rolls her shoulders and gets up. Then she checks the time and—
Her phone is covered in news app notifications. The latest reads “President Walker arrested in New York”. Well, looks like the Machine has been busy these past 24 hours. Shaw smiles at her phone, sure that the Machine sees it, and makes her way out of the bedroom as quietly as possible to not wake up Root.
Samaritan is officially dead.
She can’t stop smiling about that when she walks into Zoe’s bathroom, getting ready to take a shower. Zoe is still in Washington DC, and will probably stay there until the end of the week. Some loose ends that the Machine wants her to tie up, and Shaw can think of a thing or two that might be meant by that. She turns the water on and wonders what the others are doing.
Reese’s last status update was yesterday, just a few hours after they’d finished infecting Samaritan’s servers with Root’s virus and destroyed the last hard copy of its code. New York had been subject to another black out, a last ditch effort from Samaritan to stop the team’s final move to kill it for good.
Feels good to have killed an evil AI god, Shaw thinks while washing her hair. Of course, that doesn’t mean her brain is suddenly back to its old form—and Shaw doubts that will ever be the case—but she feels more relaxed now. Ready to focus on something other than “avoid security cameras and suspicious black SUVs at all cost.”
Once she’s dressed and her hair is towel dry, she starts to prepare breakfast. She finds enough stuff in the kitchen to prepare some pancakes and eventually it’s the smell of it that has Root shuffle into the kitchen with sleepy eyes and a yawn. “Hm, breakfast,” she mumbles and plops down onto a chair at the dining table.
Root is absolutely useless in the morning, but Shaw leaves it uncommented. At least, she’s not sitting in front of a laptop first thing in the morning, like she’s been doing the past few days leading up to the completion of that virus.
Shaw finishes making their breakfast and carries everything to the table, while Root watches her, yawning from time to time.
“Here,” Shaw says, throwing Root’s pill bottle at her. “Don’t forget to take these.” Then she fills a glass with water and places it in front of Root.
“Yes, doc,” Root mumbles and smiles. “Finch and Reese want to meet us,” she says next, fighting with the pill bottle.
Shaw pretends to be too busy reaching for the maple syrup. “Where?”
“Finch got the old library back. I told him that we need to renovate the subway to keep the Machine safe.”
“Wait, you really want to keep the Machine down there?”
“I’m working on a different solution. Maybe upload the Machine onto a satellite, see how that goes,” Root says and shrugs. Then she puts a pill in her mouth and washes it down with the water Shaw has brought to her. “I’ll have to chat with Harry about this.”
“He’s probably going to be really excited by that,” Shaw quips in a dry tone, trying to imagine Finch’s face when he hears of that plan. It’s no secret by now that he’s kind of pissed at the Machine, and Root is aware of that, too. It just seems that she’s decided to ignore it—or honor it in her own weird way of suggesting a solution that probably won’t make Finch very happy.
Then again.
Root kind of saved the world by using her brain to code one of her more devastating viruses in recent time. Who’s to tell that woman what she can or can’t do? Aside from the Machine, which would’ve stopped her if it weren’t a fan of that idea.
Shaw starts to eat her pancake. “So, when’s the meeting?”
“In an hour,” Root tells her, beginning to prepare her own pancake. “Fusco is going to be there, too.”
“With Bear, I hope.”
“Of course.”
Shaw smiles.
*
“Can’t believe we’re back here,” Shaw muses, taking one step at a time. Mostly, so that Root can keep up with her. The wide staircase leading up to the old, abandoned library still looks almost exactly the same, and the smell of old, dusty books lingers in the air, just like Shaw remembers it. Only some of the old books that were lying around this place, covering the floors and stairs, have partly been pushed back to the walls or put away somewhere. There’s some black, ominous plastic containers that are still here from the raid that Samaritan probably ordered, right after it went online.
“How did Finch even get this building back?” she asks and stops mid-level of the stairs, looking down at Root. She’d meant to ask that at breakfast and then forgot about it. Figures.
“Samaritan apparently never sold this building,” Root says, rubbing her almost completely healed wound with her free hand, the other touching the bannister. “It was some sort of souvenir, a reminder that it won. Which it didn’t, but we already know that Samaritan was not as all-seeing as it wanted the world to believe.” She reaches Shaw and bumps her shoulder against Shaw’s. “So technically, Finch never stopped being the secret owner of this building,” she continues and starts walking again.
Shaw follows her. “Good,” she mumbles. They reach the end of the stairs in silence. Finch, Reese and Fusco are already here, their voices carry over to where Root and Shaw are lingering.
“You okay?” she finally asks, giving Root a short side glance.
“It’s weird being back here.”
Shaw feels her stomach drop. Of course it would, Root had been held prisoner in Finch’s weird makeshift library room slash prison cell. And then, they’d lost access to that building. Things have changed since then, true, but Shaw is the last person on earth who would hold this against Root—not with her own hang up of not being able to go to the subway.
“It’s where it all began, for me working with the team and the Machine, at least.” Root sounds almost wistful about it, the small smile tugging at her lips looks not at all like the overly playful smiles she usually puts on.
Shaw pauses for a beat or two. “Well, technically you weren’t really a part of the team until…” She stops and blinks. Huh.
“Until Samaritan went online,” Root finishes for her and nods. “Hope that doesn’t mean you kick me off the team, now that it’s destroyed,” she jokes and chuckles.
Shaw rolls her eyes.
And is relieved.
They start walking again, through the narrow corridor that brings them to the office room that Finch had used as his mission control room or whatever he’d been calling it. Now, it is mostly empty, save for the dust and some remnants of broken furniture. The floor is covered with some shards of broken glass here and there, some chunks of cut cables and broken off pieces clearly belonging to a computer.
Looks like the raid had been a successful one, Shaw thinks.
Finch and Reese are standing at the window, talking in low voices, while Fusco humors Bear with a mildly disgusted look on his face when Bear drops his chewed out bunny slipper. Bear forgets all about Fusco the moment he hears their steps. He bounces towards them, his tail wagging in genuine happiness.
“Hey, buddy,” Shaw says and kneels down to award him some long overdue scratches behind his ear. She can feel Root behind her, probably watching her with that dreamy smile. Ugh. “Did the old man not forget to feed you?” she asks Bear and leans back a little to look into his eyes.
Bear licks her hand.
“Hey, I can hear ya,” Fusco complains, drawing the attention of Finch and Reese to their little scene. “He’s fine, we had a great time at the precinct. Especially when he chewed through one of my files. Just wonderful.”
Shaw chuckles and stands up.
“Miss Shaw and Miss—Root,” Finch says and catches himself before Shaw can properly glare at him for his near-mistake. He clears his throat. “It appears that you have been successful in your quest to destroy Samaritan,” Finch continues, sounding almost disbelieving and disapproving at the same time.
“I know you don’t like how the Machine handled some things, Harry,” Root says and takes a step closer to him. “There was no other way. It’s been a close call anyway,” she admits, briefly looking at Shaw.
Shaw doesn’t look away. “Even if we had died on that mission, as long as that thing is offline it would’ve been worth it,” she says, ignoring Fusco’s widening eyes or Reese’s frown.
Finch doesn’t disagree. Instead, he nods. “I assume that, despite Samaritan being now successfully destroyed, you are still not done?”
Shaw glances at Root who has that focused glint in her eyes. “Don’t worry, Zoe is going to take care of the loose ends in Washington. I’ve already briefed our back-up team on the Decima agents that might still be following orders given by either Samaritan or Greer. It’s been over 24 hours post-Samaritan, but you never know with these people,” Root explains and shrugs. “Better safe than sorry.”
“So this back-up team is going to replace us now?” Reese asks with curiosity in his voice.
Root tilts her head. “I suppose, if you want to retire then it shouldn’t be a problem now. The Machine is constantly looking for new recruits, just in case.”
“That means we’re off the hook, then?” Fusco asks, looking a little lost there in his grey suit and tie that has no mustard stain on it so far. Shaw suppresses a smile.
“You are welcome to support the new team, Lionel,” Root tells him with a wide smile. Shaw is pretty sure that she’ll never get used to how much Root belongs into this team now. Not that she minds, it’s just—she’s been gone for so many months now that the contrast to what she remembers (and she’s sure those are her memories) to what actually is feels way bigger than she’s comfortable with.
“Whatever you say, Nutter Butter.”
Well, maybe she just needs more time to get used to this.
“Now that the topic of retirement has come up,” Finch starts and pushes his glasses back, “I will see that our old HQ in this building is operational again for the new team before I leave.”
“You own a nice beach somewhere, Glasses?”
“Probably several,” Reese quips next to him, pretending not to stifle a chuckle at Fusco’s suggestion.
Finch relaxes a little, shaking his head. “No, I will go to Italy, I think. It’s time to go back to my old life, or what’s left of it.”
Shaw knows instinctively that he’s talking about Grace. She gets what he’s talking about and that’s why she makes a point not to look at Root. Now that this welcome back party has turned into a farewell meeting, she isn’t sure what the future has in store for her.
And she hasn’t talked to Root about it yet, because if there’s one thing she knows it’s this: Root will follow her no matter where she goes.
She’s oddly fine with that.
“You’ve done enough, Harold,” Root says in a soft voice.
“I’d like to talk to you in private for a moment, Root,” Finch says, this time not hesitating to use the correct name.
Root nods, and Shaw is sure that Root is going to use this talk to voice out her half-cooked idea of basically shooting the Machine up in space. A part of her would love to see that, but she’s convinced that Root will tell her about it later in the car, anyway.
“You gonna retire too, Shaw?” Fusco asks after a small awkward pause once Finch and Root are out of the room.
“No,” she says, shrugging. “There is one thing I want to do and then—I guess I’ll just watch Root’s back on whatever mission the Machine is going to send us on.” Then she turns to Reese and gives him a long look. “What’s your big retirement plan?”
Reese makes a face. “Maybe I’ll open a bar, give some self-defense classes. You know, just trying to be an ordinary New Yorker,” he says after some hesitation. “Doesn’t sound as exciting as your plan to travel the world with your girlfriend, Shaw.”
“Watch it, dickhead.”
“Partner in crime, then.”
“Fuck you, Reese,” Shaw tells him with a growing smile.
Fusco just snorts. And then he stops, remembering something. “How come I never knew about this base, huh?”
“You weren’t really part of the team back then,” Reese says in his calm, low voice that still can’t hide his amusement. “And I wasn’t sure if we could trust you, most of the time.”
“You better be kidding, I risked my life for you guys,” Fusco says with a huff. Then he looks at Shaw. “Did you know they took ages to tell me about the Machine?”
“You mentioned that before, yes,” Shaw says with as much patience as she can. And then she rolls her eyes anyway.
“We tried to keep you safe, Lionel.”
“You all lied to me for months! Years, if we’re honest with each other. Which I know is probably hard for you guys,” Fusco goes on to complain.
Reese tries to appease him with some logical reasons for the decision to keep him in the dark, and it turns into a bickering discussion that Shaw pretends not to follow.
She looks at Bear to hide her amused smile.
*
Later, in the car, they have that talk Shaw has been expecting to happen.
“He’s tired of working with the Machine. I guess Her pretending for even a moment that I had died in that car so that he would agree to use Her help was just … too much,” Root tells her and sighs.
Shaw hums in agreement. Haven’t they all been suspecting something like this? “What else?”
“He said that he trusts me not to do anything stupid with the Machine,” Root continues, almost in a whisper. Her eyes look a little glassy when she says it, and Shaw makes sure to look ahead again and focus on the traffic.
Finch and Root—two people that, by all means, should not have become friends, and yet.
Shaw wonders if the Machine is aware of how much she’s changed their lives—on a personal level, not just from a safety perspective. And when she looks back at Root, who watches traffic through her passenger window, she’s pretty sure the Machine knows.
“Does he know when he’ll leave for Italy?” She checks the rear mirror while asking this to make sure that Bear is still comfortable on the backseat. Now that the team is more or less in the process of peacefully falling apart, it’s a no brainer for Shaw to claim ownership over Bear. No one tried to fight her on that, anyway.
“Ah, so you figured it out, hm? Well, he wants to make sure that the back-up team will have everything they need, but their little HQ in that warehouse looked pretty well equipped for their job, already. I think he just wants to know that he can leave with no one getting hurt.”
“Dude really needs a break,” Shaw mumbles.
“And what about you?” Root asks and of course she would.
“Depends,” Shaw says, speeding up to make it on the yellow light. “Will the Machine send us on missions again? Relevant ones, I mean.”
Root doesn’t say anything for a while, and when Shaw looks to the side she meets Root’s warm gaze. “We have some time off until things settle down. Vacation time, if you will.” She pauses and reaches for Shaw’s free hand resting on the middle console. “I’ll follow you wherever you want to go, Sameen.”
Shaw bites her lower lip in thought. How best to approach her idea? “I want to go back to Johannesburg,” she blurts out and switches lanes, not taking her hand away from Root’s soft grasp. “There is a Samaritan-built prison complex I want to burn down. After I free a friend,” she adds, thinking of Samuel and wondering if he’s still there. It’s been weeks since her own breakout, maybe he’s managed to get his friends and himself out of there. Doesn’t hurt to check before chucking a lit Molotov cocktail into a former Samaritan prison to burn it down, though.
Root leans back in her seat. “Burning down a former Samaritan-owned prison complex it is,” she says in a festive tone. “Always wanted to do that,” she muses in a low voice.
Shaw makes a turn and starts to look for a parking spot. “Calling dibs on burning down my prison cell,” she says.
Root draws circles with her thumb on the back of Shaw’s hand. “The Machine Herself couldn’t force me to take that away from you,” she promises. “Not that she would,” she quickly adds, after having earned protest from the Machine, most likely. “I never said you would,” Root says in an apologetic tone, followed by a deep sigh.
Shaw can’t help but smile.