A/N: Thanks to phoenix-91 for the beta and to thedorkone for the support.
Root can't quite believe what she's seeing. The Machine is buzzing statistical improbabilities in her ear but she's not listening anymore.
She is trying to breathe.
She is trying to will her heart into beating again.
She is trying to force her eyes to see reality instead of hallucinations.
"You nerds look terrible," Shaw snarks, and she shoots one two three of the men hunting them down before Reese recovers from the shock and helps her deal with them.
It's done in minutes, clean and efficient, a perfect reenactment of Shaw's style, and Root can only stare on as it unfolds before her.
"Shaw," Reese sighs rather than says when all is finished, so wistful and unlike him. Root thinks she catches a glimpse of a smile on his usually somber features but she can't be sure.
She can't be sure of anything right now.
Shaw is dressed in black, her ponytail is in place, and she has a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. She seems thinner, but her smirk is smug and playful and alive.
Root doesn't want to, she really doesn't, but the tears well up in her eyes and they start falling before she realizes what's happening.
~~.~~.~~
The meeting at the subway station is lukewarm. Harold is so happy to see her, Reese is happier, Root didn't even know she could feel such joy, but Shaw is Shaw and she behaves as if she'd just been on vacation for a while. She waves away their concerns and sits on the bench, Bear wiggling his tail beside her, and the most she says that reveals the gloom of what she has gone through is to the dog.
"I told you I'd be back, buddy."
Harold and Reese are busy around the computers and they don't hear that but Root does. Root listens.
There was always something about Shaw that made Root pay attention, like that moment when you reach the top of a mountain and all you see is the sun, you feel it on your skin and behind your eyelids and you can taste it on your smile.
And now Shaw is here, Shaw is safe, and Root doesn't dare do anything, she just stands alone in the middle of the station and looks at Shaw.
How she beams so openly at Bear. How she cares so much for him and alternates between pats on his fur and kisses on his snout. How there's a new scarline on her forearm and two new bullet scars on her shoulder.
Root always has so much to say but here she finds herself speechless, a dandelion whisked away by the wind. She has the universe inside her but she had told Shaw she wouldn't let her go and that had been more than she should have asked of Shaw, more than Shaw could give.
But then Shaw had kissed her and Shaw had died.
So Root stands there, silent, because the last time they had been together Root had said too much.
~~.~~.~~
It is Shaw who comes to her, after Bear has fallen asleep by her feet. Reese and Harold are now gone and Root should have left too. Root would have left, but how could she, with Shaw sitting right there?
She's numbing her mind to the playing rhythm of Penguin Diner and doesn't hear Shaw approaching.
"Your Machine got any safe place she can send us?"
Root notices the use of the pronoun, of both pronouns, and cocks her head, lets her gaze go unfocused. "There's a motel not far from here."
"Does that come with a TV?"
"Yes." She swallows down the 'Sameen' still so easy on her tongue. She doesn't think she deserves it yet. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer staying here?"
Root would. In the subway that is their most well-kept secret, where the only bad things that have happened are them tending to each others' wounds.
"No offense to Harold," Shaw replies with a snarl, "but that cot isn't the most comfortable thing in the world."
Root nods. She knows. That cot has been her bed most nights ever since that day, so many months ago, when Samaritan's trap had turned her life upside down.
At first, she'd done it because the cot smelled like Shaw. It smelled of gunpowder and sweat, with a hint of tequila and steak. It had a dangerous quality to it and Root would fall asleep with her head buried deep in the pillow. She would dream of Shaw laughing and wake up crying, cursing her subconscious for twisting the memory of Shaw.
Then the smell had vanished but Root had kept on sleeping on the cot, a final act of stubbornness or homage. She couldn't say.
Root had forgotten what loss felt like. She had forgotten the crushing sadness that wipes away everything else and settles inside, in a place where it can't be reached, expanding and tightening, becoming the only truth. She had forgotten the tiny obstacles; how air makes the lungs burn, how food turns to ashes as it touches the tongue, how sounds turn to distant, unintelligible noise.
She had forgotten how loss is like falling and falling, an infinite void with nothing to grasp.
And then she had lost Shaw and she had drowned in anger and pain and emptiness, she had drowned so deep that she had become loss. A new identity, so far from Samantha Groves, no longer Root.
But Shaw is here. Shaw is here and her heart feels like spring, fluttering and singing, so loud and so vibrant Root's chest is no longer enough of a cage.
She smiles. "Let's go."
~~.~~.~~
Shaw's grin is bigger than Root had ever seen it, eyes shining at the sight of the tiny bottles of spirits inside the minibar. She picks the whiskey and takes a gulp without even bothering to search for a glass – Root wouldn't expect anything else – before she turns on the TV. She doesn't ask Root if she wants a drink but,
"What do you want to watch?"
"You're letting me choose?" Root asks, one corner of her lips tilting up.
Shaw grunts and throws the remote at her, harrumphing when Root catches it with just one hand. Root smirks and zaps through the channels, watching Shaw with her drink from the corner of her eye.
"Elf," Shaw says, her monotonous tone somehow perfectly conveying her contempt. "You wanna watch Elf."
"It's cute," is all Root offers, sitting on the bed with the cushions behind her back.
Shaw doesn't reply, she watches her instead, bottle still in hand, and Root focuses on her breathing - in and out, in and out, in and out, until it is effortless and not a chore. She feels transparent and small and she still has no idea what she's doing in a motel room with a woman she thought was dead.
With a woman that she loves and she hasn't lost.
Shaw drinks the last swig from the bottle and lies down next to Root without saying a word.
Maybe this is exactly where they need to be.
~~.~~.~~
"You're awfully quiet," Shaw comments, and it's off-handed and disinterested. "That's new."
Root hums, trying hard not to turn to look at her. She chuckles at the expression Will Ferrell is making but stops herself, bites her lip. By her sides, her hands clutch the sheet for a moment, the moment it takes for her to collect herself.
What can she say?
Should she admit that she'd gone blind with rage and single-handedly brought Samaritan down? Shaw would like that; she would be impressed even.
Should she say that she had put all the weight of who she was on her relationship with the Machine, only to find out that by losing Shaw she had been stripped of her self-assigned above humanity status and been reduced to bad code, to raw naked ugly humanity, so vile and vulnerable, and Root had hated every single second of it as she grasped on to the fading walls of the identity she had built for herself?
Should she say she had gone so far as to get rid of her cochlear implant and for a long time she had forsaken her god, her Machine, the meaning she had given away her life to find?
Should she say it took Shaw being gone for her to realize the unconditional, all-embracing, chest-constricting, heart-ripping love she never thought she had the ability to feel?
Or maybe she should just say she had missed Shaw every time she laid eyes on Bear, and every time she used two guns at once and every single time she rode her motorbike into a mission.
"I just..." She finally turns and her eyes meet Shaw's. Shaw's eyes that are dark but not without
warmth and Root gives herself a second of hope, a second to believe that maybe, just maybe, Shaw had remembered her during the time she'd been gone. "Sameen, I don't know what to say."
Shaw studies her, her lips pressed together, and Root feels herself shrinking under her scrutiny even if she refuses to look away. She waits.
And waits.
And waits.
But Shaw says nothing, because there is nothing to say.
~~.~~.~~
Shaw is the one that kisses her first.
Root is just laying there, the movie still the focus of her attention, when Shaw grabs her face and kisses her.
It's a little awkward.
Root is not expecting it and their positions are definitely not helping. Their noses bump and Shaw kisses her chin more than she kisses her mouth and for a second there's a gruff and Root's eyes widen as Shaw moves away and stares at her, gaze going from her eyes to her lips.
Then Shaw kisses her again and Root melts.
It's embarrassing, really. She whimpers and her whole body molds into Shaw's, dissolves into it, and her hands find Shaw's neck and pull her closer. She wants Shaw, she needs Shaw. Now that she's here she can't let go and oh, that is why this is such a bad idea.
Root breaks the kiss and tries to say something, show something, do something, but words get stuck in her throat and she is sure there's way too much emotion in her eyes but she can't help it, she's lost all control of herself.
Shaw smirks, clasps her shirt right at the center, on the spot where her heart is hammering in her chest. "C'mere."
And Root goes.
She lies on top of Shaw and kisses her, kisses her, kisses her. Kisses her for all the times she had dreamed of kissing her and all the times she had missed kissing her. Shaw tastes of alcohol and eagerness and even with her right there, Root is overwhelmed with longing and despair.
She nibbles Shaw's bottom lip to swallow her own sob and pulls away to remove her clothes while Shaw grabs the remote to turn off the TV.
"What?" she deadpans, halfway through getting rid of her pants. "Elf is not sexy, okay?"
Root smiles, a blinding, unrestrained smile that brightens her entire being, and then she's kissing Shaw again.
~~.~~.~~
The whole thing is surprisingly gentle, considering who they are. It's another first time, begging not to be the last. Root can feel the words unsaid filling out the spaces between their bodies, and so she follows their lead.
She lets her fingertips trace Shaw's scars instead of marking them with her nails. She allows her tongue to travel from Shaw's jaw to her chest to her nipples and she never once bites her. She leaves half a moment to rest her lips on every inch of skin she can reach.
When her fingers enter Shaw, Root sighs and Shaw growls. They find a rhythm, bodies sliding and glowing, and Root shifts, uses Shaw's leg to apply pressure on her core, and as their breathing grows quicker and more shallow, it's hard to tell their sounds apart.
Root comes first.
She feels it rising inside her, even tries to push it down, but it's been so long and she feels so damn much that in the end it just shatters through her, relentless and needy. She hides her face in Shaw's neck and inhales, is invaded by that scent that is so Shaw but is now also real. Shaw doesn't let her dwell for long, she bumps their heads together until they're kissing once more.
They're kissing until Shaw comes too, abrupt and discreet, and as their hearts quieten their wild drumming and their breaths start mingling with the cold night air, Root is taken over by panic – a pulsating, maddening fear of loss and rejection –, and she disentangles herself from Shaw.
"Where do you think you're going?" Shaw asks, gripping her wrist and pulling her back down. "We're not done."
Root had never thought herself to be the type, but she grins into the kiss and, for that one moment, she feels invincible.
~~.~~.~~
When they're exhausted, bodies spent and useless, they settle on different sides of the bed and Root pretends she isn't craving the closeness, the certainty of knowing, feeling Shaw is there. She watches her back, the way the covers move up and down as Shaw breathes, and tries to remember that this is enough.
"Root."
Root startles, and shifts a little closer in the process. Shaw was supposed to be asleep.
"I can hear you thinking."
"I'm sorry," Root quips, eyes meeting Shaw's when the other woman spins to face her. "It's hard to keep the fantasies in check."
Shaw rolls her eyes before she closes them and Root falters, struck by the sight. After all this time, Shaw still trusts her.
"Sleep," Shaw mumbles, half-lost to oblivion already. "I'll be here in the morning."
Yes, Root thinks, this is more than enough.
For now.