Samaritan had been defeated, they had won the war, but it didn't feel like they won. They had lost to much. After Root, Shaw had thought they couldn't lose any more, but then John had to be the hero. But she understood. His scarifies saved the world and the people he had loved, the people he would have called family, who gave his life a meaning again- she had done the same in a blink of an eye.
It was the first time Shaw allowed herself to mourn Root. A good soldier mourns when the war is over, she hoped Root would understand that. She had to finish Roots legacy first, that was the last thing she could give to Root, its what she would have wanted.
Her Axis II PD had always made her a good operative. While she was able to focus on the task at hand, other people crumbled, feelings clouding their judgement, but it never affected Shaw.
Her legs were pulled up to her chest, elbows resting on her knees. Her eyes inspecting her own bloodied fists. The wall above her was smashed in, blood was still dripping down. She had no idea for how long she had been smashing her fists into the wall, until all her strength had left her arms and she had dropped down exhaustedly onto the cold, hard floor.
She looked at her hands, blood still ran down the side of her arm, when she balled them back into fists. Pain shot through her knuckles into her arms, making her close her eyes. She relished in the feeling for a bit, before unclenching her fists again. The bones of her hands making unhealthy rubbing sounds.
Fighting the wall had not helped, Shaw closed her eyes again, loudly dropping her head back against the wall behind her.
Bear whined again from somewhere inside the apartment, before slowly approaching her, resting his head on her tights.
Shaw swallowed the lump that had formed inside her throat, before slowly stretching out her leg Bears head was resting on, putting a hand on his head. Thats when he whined again.
"Im sorry, buddy… ."
Bear gave another whine, nudging her hand, demanding to be petted. She obeyed, slowly letting her hand run though his fur, before sighing deeply.
She was angry, and bashing the wall had taken none of that anger away from her, if even it made her more angry. She was angry that she didn't get to say goodbye to Root, angry that she felt numb, when she was supposed to feel what normal people felt when they lost someone important. Shaw hated that she felt nothing, besides that dark void that had formed deep inside her. Root deserved more, Root deserved her grieve and tears, she wanted to feel, she wanted to cry for Root she wanted to give Root what she deserved but her PD made that almost impossible for her.
Sometimes she still lost her grip on reality, she slipped, her hand going to the chip that was supposed to be buried in her neck, to find nothing, but that was not convincing enough that this was in fact real. There was one place in her mind she had always gone to, the one place where she had felt save, but she couldn't go there anymore, at least not in the real world.
Back when she worked as a marine or with the ISA people envied her for her PD. Shaw was sure that none of the people actually knew what it would mean for them. They just saw the way it allowed her to operate and making her one of their best operatives.
People died and she moved on, she saw a lot of other operatives fall apart after they lost their partner, their friends. Some went rouge, letting emotions fuel them and ended up dead in the process.
Shaw was never much affected by other peoples deaths. Shaw didn't know what those people felt, but that didn't mean that she didn't have an idea or tried to understand it. When her father died she had been 7 years old, her mother had fallen apart. Shaw had lived it, she lived through her mothers grieve. Young Sameen did not understand why her mother cried so much, obviously she had missed her father too, but it had seemed that it was affecting her mother and the people around her a lot more.
She had always wondered when she was a kid why that was, why she didn't experience things like other people did, she didn't feel scared or sad, or happy. She remembered kids always trying to make friends with her but she never cared much, they bored her, or frustrated her, always expecting things from her that she didn't understand or couldn't give. She liked animals though. They never expected anything from her, they didn't care if she was not crying or if she wasn't acting the way that society said she was supposed to act.
Root had been different from other people too. She liked to push Shaws buttons, but she never expected anything from Shaw, she took what she could get and she was happy with that. It was what made their whole dynamic so great. It was the reason that Shaw could allow Root in, even if she had never planned on it.
Root had become her save place, someone she never thought she could have, someone who managed to make her feel glimpse of happiness, she was more than a friend. Someone she would gladly give her life for. Someone she did give her life for over 7000 times only to have her back a day and have her brutally taken away from her.
When she had become a surgeon Shaw tried everything to spare people those feelings that her mother had gone though after her fathers death. She knew what she was fighting and who she was fighting against. She was good at what she did, she was more than good at saving lives. She did understand people and to some extent she knew what they were going through.
Working at the hospital taught her more about people and emotions and how they dealt with them. Every person grieves in their own way, Shaw found that there are different types of people, the ones who go home numb and drown their sorrows with liquor, the ones that break down and let everything out, or the ones nodding numbly, leaving and ending up in the hospital days after. She watched and she learned, she wanted to learn, even though that part wasn't a part she liked as a doctor, having to deal with other peoples emotions, it made her uncomfortable, she lacked the sensitivity of those situations.
When she had been fired, her anger had overtaken her, boiling to the surface as she had walked away from her former workplace. She was 24 in a world where she had spent her whole life working towards becoming a good doctor, and then every possibility was taken away from her. When she had rounded a corner and knew she was alone she had bashed her fists into the brick wall, until her skin had split open and blood formed and streamed out of the wounds.
When there was only pain and a stinging left in her hand she had stopped and dropped down on the cold stone floor of the street, her hands still shacking from anger, anger at herself, anger at the world.
Some part in the back of her brain had wondered what she was going to tell her mother. Her mother had still been a big part of her life back then. She cooked every weekend for her, asking her about the shifts at the hospitals and about how her days went. Her mother had been a nurse thats also how she had met her father.
Her father had been a marine, meeting her mother at a regular check up in the hospital. They both were fighters for what is right, they had passed their strong moral code down to her, it always had been an important part of their parenting. Her father always used to say 'How you do matters as much as what you do!"
Once she had accidentally killed a bird with a slingshot, her father had been worried about the lack of feelings on Shaw, she remembered that she kept insisting that it was just a bird. Thats when her father took her to the side, telling her stories about his time in foreign countries as a marine. He tried to teach her to value life, no matter how little she may thought it means, you always mean something to someone, he said.
Shaw had always been in awe of him and her mother. They were good people who tried to make the world a better place and Shaw had wanted to be a part of it since she was a kid, listening to her fathers stories.
Thats when she had made up her mind, she was going to join the marines. They had been surprised by her. She was a good operative, able to keep a cool head when in critical situations, she later had become one of the most deadly operatives of the ISA, and most importantly she had saved a lot of lives.
There was a vibration on her leg, and a loud ringing sound in her ear, as she steered into consciousness. She let out a low growl, feeling the sun light dance across her face. She could feel movement next to her, as she reached for the phone inside her jeans pocket.
"… What?" Shaw asked annoyed and sleepy, as she shielded her eyes from the sunlight coming in through the windows.
Shaw cringed at the voice on the other line, it was Root, no ... Robot!Root. She hated that short flicker of hope that she got every time she picked up the phone, just to realize it wasn't really her. It felt like a sick joke, but she didn't have the strength to tell the machine to use a different voice, it would mean to move on, she couldn't go there yet. Root was special and she had a special place inside Shaws heart. Anger boiled up inside her again, she had wanted to say things to Root, things she didn't have time to tell her, or maybe she had just been a coward and purposely missed her window.
Shaw had been naive to think that maybe they would have had more time and she was paying for her foolishness now.
Shaw turned her phone off again, looking over to her side to see bear curled up next to her. She petted him twice, before pushing the covers off herself and walking over towards the laptop on top of the desk.
She put in the information the machine had giving her. Her eyes widened in surprise as she saw that her new number wasn't in New York, but in LA. There was also a strange lack of information on this girl, it seemed like she had vanished for at least 5 years. Looking up the woman called Winifred Burkle also did not seem to own any social media accounts.
"Well I guess ill have to do this the old fashioned way then… ." she sighted, before there was a sudden knock on her door, her hands instinctively went to her weapon next to the computer. She purposely made her way over to the door, hiding the weapon just behind her, as she slowly opened the door.
A man in his mid 30ies was standing in front of her, baseball head on, chewing on his gum obnoxiously.
"You Sameen Shaw?" he asked.
Shaw just nodded once, as he held out a package towards her. It had a label in gold letters that read 'Thornhill' on it, it was from the machine.
Shaw grabbed the package, slamming the door shut in his face, before throwing the package on the table and opening it.
She pulled out varies of fake ID's, signed papers, verifying that she had a PhD in physics and biology in Medicine. One id stood out the most, she looked at it.
"Sameen Grey, (H) science department at Wolfram and Hart… ." she read out loud, coming to the realization that it was a work id.
She looked down at Bear thinking for a minute, she put everything back into the package.
"Guess I cant take you on my trip, buddy." she said as she crouched down so she was on eye level with him.
This number better be worth it...