Restoring communications

"I know she's cheating on me. I just know it. It's all those construction workers in my house all the time. It's the third time this year that we have had remodeling done and it's always the same guys. You know what I think it's that blonde haired fellow. Looks like a Viking, always walking around with his shirt off" said the large man sitting on the couch. He was almost on the verge of crying.

"Of course, she's cheating on you, have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately." thought the psychiatrist.

She looked up at him, reached for the box of tissues, which were on the side table next to her arm chair and she handed them to him.

"Now now Mr. Andrews, what have I said to you about getting overly paranoid. It's not good for your heart."

"I know, I know, but what am I supposed to do. I just love her so much, but I can't stop feeling like this." Mr. Andrews replied half way between a sob and a sniffle.

"Would it kill you to exercise once in a while? How about eating fewer steaks and more salads, you moron. Or you could just divorce her. But you can't do that can you? And here comes the reason why" the thoughts bounced around in the psychiatrist's head as she waited for the man to continue.

"I can't even divorce her. If I can't prove infidelity on her part she gets half of everything" said the fat man in a slightly sheepish tone, embarrassed at voicing his thoughts. "I am sorry I just don't know what to do."

The psychiatrist looked at the man for a few seconds, before looking down at her watch. "Well, Mr. Andrews, This has been a great session. I feel like we made some real progress here. How about we continue this next week?" saying that the psychiatrist stood up.

Mr. Andrews tried desperately to do the same, eventually, after a few very long seconds winning the fight against the planet's gravity and his own body mass. The psychiatrist stood at a distance watching the show.

She was bored and this was the most entertaining part of her entire day. Finally, a very large sweaty man stood in front of her on very uncertain legs, trying to pull a handkerchief from his pocket to dam the flood of sweat that was threatening to come down his forehead.

"I…. I still don't know what to do, Doctor." asked Mr. Andrews still struggling to balance himself.

"Tell you what Mr. Andrews. Let me think about it and we will continue this next week. Until then remember, all of this is in your head. Don't let your suspicions rule your life."

"Thank you doctor" with that Mr. Andrews finally made it out of the door.

The psychiatrist turned around and made her way towards her desk. Her office was quite spacious, much like the older office that she had had once for a very brief period of time. This one she had rented almost five months ago. Even though her practice was new, she had a fairly large clientele.

Most of her clients had been patients of a certain Dr. Malhotra. The man was quite an accomplished psychiatrist, but was something of a ladies' man too. When his little black book of conquests, which was a heavily encrypted file on his personal computer, had gotten leaked on Facebook, he had decided to take a rather extended vacation to an undisclosed location. It had left a lot of his clients high and dry and that was when Dr. Carol von Nuemann had conveniently entered the picture with a glowing reference letter from Dr. Malhotra himself.

In just a few short months she had gained quite a good reputation amongst the psychiatric community and all of her patients liked her as well. She had always been good at hacking people. All you had to do was listen. People just wanted someone to listen to them.

"Maybe I should call up Rockney." she thought. "That's exactly what Mr. Andrews needed, a private detective and Rockney was the most unscrupulous PI that she knew and also the most indiscreet. Mrs. Andrews would have to blind to not catch Rockney and that would surely lead to the desired conclusion. Divorce. In the end even though Mr. Andrews would end up a few hundred million dollars poorer at least he would sleep better at night."

Root was starting to fall back to her old ways of manipulating people and situations, with no one to help and no voice in her head, her natural instincts has started to slip back in. At least it was for a good cause or that's what she told herself.

She pulled up Rockney PI's card from her rolodex and sat in her chair contemplating her next move. She was lost in thought when her secretary walked in.

"Dr. Nuemann… Ma'am?"

Root broke out of her reverie and looked at her secretary who was standing almost next to her. She hadn't even noticed her walk into the room. "Yes Emily, what is it?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you ma'am, but your six o clock has cancelled. He said he was going to be in a meeting with some clients from overseas, so he won't be able to make it."

"That's fine. Are there any other appointments for the day?" she asked

The secretary started to go through her diary, "No ma'am, that's it for today." saying that she turned around to leave.

Root was beginning to get lost in her thoughts again when she suddenly called out to her secretary, "Emily"

Emily stopped by the door and turned around," Yes ma'am?"

"I think I am going to go out for a while and then I'll go home. You can take the rest of the day off too."

"Alright ma'am, do you want me call you cab?"

"No need, I think I will walk." replied Dr. Nuemann.

Dr. Nuemann stepped out of her office building, turned left and started walking towards the business district. She looked at her watch, she had enough time.

She hadn't spoken to the machine in almost five months. The machine had explained to her that until SHE could figure out a way for safer communication, something that Samaritan wouldn't be able to read or would consider benign, communicating with each other could prove fatal.

And, so she was waiting. She would wait for her god even if it meant waiting for the rest of her life. However, even true believers had a heart and her heart desired someone else. Someone she was hoping to catch a glimpse of today.

She picked up a newspaper along the way and started to scan through it. The headline at the bottom of the front page mentioned another 5 people arrested under suspicion of terrorism. One of them had been killed trying to resist arrest. That brought the total terrorism and national security related kills up to 150 in just the past four months, and that was just in New York alone. Across the country, the number was close to 3000. Things were starting to get really bad out there. She knew that they should be out there helping people, but without THE MACHINE that was almost close to committing suicide.

At least she was glad that at least Daizo, Jason and Daniel were out of the country. She had also checked up on Reese and Harold from afar. Reese looked comfortable but bored. Finch had settled in quite nicely in his new job, he was quite used to fake identities. But, those two weren't the ones she was most worried about. She didn't think about them when she was home, alone at night.

Root had never had a problem with being alone. Given the fact that she didn't really like most people made it easier being alone. So she was surprised how much she missed Shaw. That day five months ago when she had stood on the sidewalk and watched her walk away had been one of the worst days of her life. What made it even worse was the fact that she had never gotten a chance to tell Shaw how she really felt about her.

Root finally neared a large non-descript office building, one of many that lined both sides the street. She stood on the other side of the street facing its entrance, she found an empty bench on the sidewalk where she decided to sit and wait. She had bought a hotdog along the way, which was half eaten by now, she sat there and focused her attention on finishing the remainders of it. Almost fifteen minutes passed by with little to no activity on the other side of the street. Finally a small group of young managerial types exited the building. Office was finally over. Pretty soon their exit was followed by a mass exodus of a variety of employees of all strata.

Root stood up, trying to spot her reason for being there. She didn't want to miss her in crowd. A little while later the crowd thinned and Shaw was nowhere to be seen. Root looked around trying to spot her. She was crest-fallen, maybe she had missed her after all or maybe she hadn't come in to work today. She was about to leave when a small group of ladies made their way out of the building. Root turned her attention towards them. At first she couldn't quite make out everyone in the group and then the woman in the front moved away and standing behind her was the person Root had been dying to catch a glimpse of all week. Shaw.

Root sometimes forgot how small Shaw actually was. Shaw always exuded this persona which made her seem a lot bigger and she had an attitude and skills to match. But in reality, her size sometimes made it difficult to spot her in a crowd.

Shaw was dressed in a light grey business skirt and a white shirt. She was going by the name of Samantha Harris. She was part of the secretarial pool at Kirkland and McKenzie and she looked bored out of her mind.

She was standing there with the other office assistants, talking and laughing, but Root had been watching her long enough to read her even from a distance. She looked bored and about ready to kill everyone standing around her. Root smiled and admired her mental resolve that she had gone for so long without murdering the entire office. As she stood there thinking this Shaw and colleagues split up and started to go their separate ways. Root looked around and saw Shaw making her way to the subway station. Usually Root would turn around and go back but today she was feeling a little adventurous. She decided to follow Shaw for a while maybe till she boarded her train. She just wanted to be in her company for a little while longer.

So she hurried along trying to catch up to her. She followed her at a distance till Shaw started to go down the stairs that led to the subway station. Root followed a little closer now, trying to hide in the crowd, even though she knew that Shaw had probably seen her a while back. A little while later they turned into a tunnel and a few steps later Root lost sight of Shaw. She looked around but couldn't spot her. She made her way a little further, when a hand shot out and she was pulled into a small adjoining corridor.

"What the … oh hi Shaw, what are you doing here?" asked Root feigning surprise at seeing her, even though Shaw had her pinned to the wall.

"Really, you are going to pretend that this is an accident. You think I haven't noticed your weekly stalking" asked Shaw.

"Well…. I was just making sure you were alright" replied Root embarrassed at being caught.

"Alright...alright, why wouldn't I be alright at Kirkland and McKenzie? Being a secretary to a 65 year old corporate lawyer is exactly how I wanted my life to turn out, while you sit there in your plush 10th floor office pretending to be a psychiatrist" commented Shaw in a slightly annoyed tone.

Root gave Shaw her ever so mischievous grin and asked, "So who's stalking whom now?"

Now it was Shaw's turn to be embarrassed, but Shaw's muted emotions let her hide her reactions quite well. "I was just making sure you were alright." Suddenly Shaw's face got a lot more serious, "Why are you following me Root? You don't usually do that. Is everything alright?" Shaw sounded genuinely concerned.

"Ya, it's just that….. I missed you. I just wanted to see you from a little closer." Root replied sheepishly.

"You risked getting caught and maybe getting us both killed, just because you missed me. Root, there is a war going on out there, a war that sooner or later, we are going to have join and you are a key part to winning that war. You can't make stupid moves like this. You know how important you are to the mission."

Root knew the truth of everything that Shaw has said, but was that all she was. "Important to the mission. Nothing else."

Root was good at hiding her feeling but this time they almost showed up in her eyes as she looked back at Shaw. She was still lost in that thought when she heard Shaw say something else.

"What did you just say?" asked Root

"I said you are important to the mission" replied Shaw

"No, after that, you said something after that."

"I said …" Shaw paused halfway through her sentence

Root kept looking at her intently.

After what seemed an eternity Shaw finally continued "I said you are important to me too. Alright, fine there I said it" Shaw said rather gruffly. "So don't do anything stupid and keep yourself alive till we are back together again. Understand?" Shaw said trying to feign anger.

Root was too stunned to react. She had never expected a confession of this magnitude from Shaw.

All she wanted to do was to bridge the gap between them and just kiss her. But she knew better than to surprise Shaw with something like that. She would probably end up with a broken arm or something.

So, instead Root gave Shaw her most radiant smile and just nodded her head in return. Shaw looked up at her smiling face, rolled her eyes, stepped back into the main corridor and disappeared into the crowd leaving Root with her back to the wall and a stupid grin on her face. The only thought ringing in her head was "I am important to her."

A little while later Root stepped back into the corridor and started to make her way towards the exit when she suddenly heard a faint beeping. She turned around trying to see where it was coming from when she heard it again. She turned around again but stopped halfway through her spin when she realized that the beep was inside her ear. And then she heard that old familiar question,

"Can you hear me?"

Root smiled and replied "Absolutely."