AN – Here's an idea I had about what might've have happened to Shaw after she was taken during season 4. This story takes place an unspecific time after YHWH. It's not really compatible with the recently released teaser, but there is sex stuff, so it's compatible in that respect, sorta. ^-^
Rated M because Root and Shaw themselves are rated M, lbr. Also, sex. Did I mention that?
Dedicated to krisslona ^-^
Heat Death by Imrryr
…
Shaw was waiting for the simulation to end.
It had happened a thousand times before. Her entire life's memories were little more than a hard drive providing the faces and settings and experiences Samaritan needed to effectively torture her with; each day little more than a jumble of dreams that took her from childhood, to being strapped on a gurney in this damned compound, to lying in bed with Root on a quiet mission-less night after an endless round of sex. What Samaritan was trying to prove, she had never really figured out.
And as for how long it had been - weeks, months, years - there was no way to be sure.
But it never stopped.
It made her long for the days when Decima was simply torturing her - beating her, injecting her with drugs - at least then it had been obvious what they were after.
Still, on the outside at least, her situation had little changed. Either way, she remained for all intents and purposes, tied to a bed, and at someone else's mercy.
But was this bed and this dark cell even real, or just another sim? She could no longer say.
She could say that Samaritan really enjoyed fucking with her, like a little boy trapping a firefly in a glass and shaking it back and forth to see how it reacted, but that was probably giving the AI too much credit. Humans were less than bugs to a god. Shaw was merely a tool to be used. A well from which to draw information before dispassionately moving on when it finally went dry.
And no matter what she tried, Samaritan always got what it wanted.
The well should've run out months - or years, or whatever - ago, yet here she was. Inexplicably still alive.
Every sim the insane machine ran in her head had grown more detailed and more realistic with time, less like a bad dream, and more like real life. Fighting alongside Root and Reese, and fighting against them. Fucking Root, and wrapping her hands around her neck to squeeze the last ounce of life out of her.
She had done it all.
Samaritan was learning; learning about Shaw and every last secret she kept locked inside herself. It put her in a thousand locales, run her through a million different scenarios, filled her with the greatest ecstasy, destroyed her with the most unfathomable loss; finally leaving her so broken she couldn't tell the difference between dreams and reality any longer. At least, not until the simulation ended and she woke up cold and alone and strapped to a cot.
Even then… she could never be sure.
The pads of her fingers brushed up and down the mattress. It felt real enough, but she'd been strapped to this cot in her dreams as well; left to die without food or water more times than she could count. Maybe her brain contained no more secrets. Maybe Samaritan had no use for her skills with a gun any longer. Maybe the world had finally ended and her insane AI companion was now the sole ruler of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
There were a thousand maybes, and no way to know a god damned thing.
Strange. Even if this weren't a sim, she could usually feel a coldness there, something always lurking in her mind, completely inescapable. A perpetual link to Samaritan that couldn't be snapped even when the machine was occupied elsewhere.
She turned her head. Dark as a tomb.
And silent as one.
One thing it never seemed to get right were the tactile sensations; the damp heat of passing over a steam grate on a cold New York day, the warmth of Root's hands lightly pressing at her back. That aspect was always off somehow, less real than real, like Samaritan didn't fully grasp the importance of such things as touch, and smell.
Those deadened sensations were all a dead giveaway after the fact; real enough during a simulation, but when she was alone again, when Samaritan left her – mostly - and she was left trapped in a doorless, windowless cell, the memories were like ashes after a fire.
Not a simulation then, she realized. Or, at least, probably not.
She shut her eyes and tried to breathe. As bad as that all was, it had gotten worse. Way worse.
Eventually - again, it could've been weeks, or years for all she knew - Samaritan began controlling Shaw directly, utilizing their surgically implanted mental connection and pulling from her vast combat knowledge to force her out into the world to assassinate several of the scientists who worked on Decima's project, people who were no longer trusted or necessary for Samaritan's survival. Shaw had walked the halls of the Pentagon at midnight, broke into military bases that weren't even supposed to exist, assassinated several programmers at a conference in The Hague, and time and time again, used herself as bait to lure Root and Reese to their deaths.
Numberless atrocities. So many, that even the federal government was probably finding it impossible to cover it all up.
Power beyond imagination. Playing the people of the entire world expertly for its own ends.
No wonder Root spoke of the Machine like she truly was a god.
If that was the case, the Machine was a false idol compared to Samaritan.
In the end, it was hardly a huge leap for a newly risen god to go from ridding the world of terrorists to realizing the job would be a hell of a lot simpler if one just eliminated the source of the problem entirely. If Samaritan could sustain itself without human intervention, what good would seven billion of them be to it then? They'd be just another nuisance, another irritation to be dealt with.
Curiosities to be fenced in, or outright exterminated.
Not unlike all those species mankind spent countless millennia evolving alongside.
All the brains the government brought together to build that damned machine, and they couldn't see that obvious eventuality.
They probably also didn't foresee Samaritan using people as test subjects to enhance its understanding of human behavior. Shaw had been fortunate in that respect. Her skills made her too useful as an unwilling assassin. The screams that echoed down the unseen halls of the complex told of others who weren't so lucky.
She knew for sure that some of those unfortunate people were providing the sights and experiences Shaw was experiencing in her daily torture sessions, but through it all, time went on, the world grew colder and Shaw felt less and less.
There was nothing she could do for any of them.
Only one thing kept her certain that there was a world still beyond these walls. Lately, the simulations had begun to grow more focused. Root. Samaritan wanted to know more about Root. Shaw killed her in a thousand different ways at Samaritan's bidding, made love to her in a thousand more, but never did it feel completely real, and never was there any indication of exactly what Samaritan wanted to know.
It simply wanted.
Humans were not like computers. One couldn't just run a cable into someone's mind and draw out every last bit of data. It was impossible for a human to know another so intimately, no matter how real Shaw's desire to stick her fingers into Root's slot might've been.
If Samaritan wanted to truly know Root, it would need to capture her first.
Thankfully, it turned out that as good as Samaritan was at hunting terrorists and its own perceived enemies, it wasn't nearly as good at predicting Root's actions. With Shaw's unwilling help, it knew Root just as well as she did, but memories were fragile things. Memories change over time, and the simple act of retrieving an old memory altered it forever. Shaw's memories, and all human memories, were fundamentally flawed. Samaritan didn't understand any of this.
The real Root was more complicated than it gave her credit for… more complicated than Shaw would ever know. And Samaritan was too easily fooled by all the hostile thoughts Shaw kept bottled up, memories that she easily allowed herself to bring to the fore when Samaritan forced itself into her head.
Root was Samaritan's greatest threat, and nothing it could possibly steal from Shaw's mind would stop her.
Every encounter out there in the real world, Shaw always lost to her, one way or another. She snorted to herself. Why was that less surprising than it should've been?
Punch her, shoot her, it didn't matter. She kept coming back.
'Shaw.'
Flinching in her restraints, Shaw heard her name whispered in Root's distinctive voice. She waited for the world to melt away, for a simulation to begin, but nothing happened. Nothing changed.
'Shaw?'
What would it be this time, she wondered? Would she torture Root, or would Root torture her?
Her head fell back to the mattress. When would it end? She was so tired.
Everything went quiet again, and then she felt… something, an emotion unlike anything Samaritan had ever forced on her before. Her eyes darted across the room as her heart began to pound. Terror. She felt terror. 'Where is she?' The question wasn't her own. Root's voice.
Root was in her mind.
"Root?"
And there she was, just inches away. Where the light had come from, how Shaw got out of her restraints and onto her feet, she didn't know. She didn't care.
The rush of desire was inescapable. Their lips met before she could say another word.
And the thing was. It felt real.
So fucking real, like every emotion that ever existed was flowing through her at once. All shifting so fast that Shaw could barely keep up. Love, hate, fear, desire… This was no dream, no simulation. No artificial impulse kept her mind focused on what the AI considered important. It wasn't Samaritan at all.
Only-
'Shaw!'
Her eyes opened and she was trapped on her cot again. She looked rapidly from wall to wall, but there was nothing to be seen. "Fucking bastard!" she growled out. What new method of torture had Samaritan devised for her this time? "What the fucking fuck?!"
'Oh, thank god!' Root's voice again. Profound relief swept over her, though at first Shaw tried to fight it. The feeling was not hers. She wasn't alone any longer, yet, she was alone. Dammit! There was no one here. 'I'm here, Sameen… in your head.'
Shaw gripped the edges of her cot. 'What's going on?!' A torrent of jumbled, disconnected Images raced through her mind at once; a hundred days in less than a hundred seconds. Root and her single-minded desire to track Shaw down. Crossing the country, never giving up, burning every bridge she had ever made until Reese and Finch themselves no longer trusted her, but she kept going, kept searching, until one day she found her.
God. Three-hundred seventeen days. Had it really been so long?
Her wrists were bruising from the strain. "Dammit! What. The fuck. Is going on?!"
Fear. She was feeling fear of all things now. Shaw pressed herself against the mattress. Samaritan's false emotions were never so powerful.
'Sameen! Please stop!' Root was visible again, despite the darkness of the cell, quickly undoing the restraints keeping her in place, but the second her arm was free, Shaw's fingers wrapped themselves around Root's neck.
"What the hell kind of game is this?" Usually the emotions Samaritan supplied her with were unstoppable, leaving her no choice to feel as it wished, to do as it wished, but this strange mixture of deep fear and blinding hot rage were entirely her own, and yet, somehow not. And they kept twisting, seemingly out of control.
'It's me, Sameen,' Root said without opening her mouth, and Shaw found her hand easily pried away by warm, nimble fingers. 'You can't hurt me here.'
She stumbled back against the concrete wall. "What –"
"I'm using Samaritan's mind-machine interface." Shaw slid down the cold, rough surface, looking up at those soulful eyes in disbelief, but it was true. Root was bound to her mentally in a way a machine could only dream of. And unlike Samaritan's baffling thoughts of zeroes and ones, she could follow everything Root was thinking.
Their final moment at the elevator. That kiss. Over and over again for three-hundred days.
"I'm in your head."
"Root."
Kneeling down, slender fingers cupped her cheek, the pad of Root's thumb brushing softly against her skin.
Then both the images and sensations disappeared and Shaw was ready to claw at the walls to bring them all back.
The fucking cot, again.
'Stop!' Root cried as Shaw tried to force herself from the restraints that kept her in place. 'Samaritan will be back any second.'
Her heart was pounding in her chest. She did not want to go back. Not after what she had just felt. "Get me out of here!" she growled.
'Listen to me. It won't take long before Samaritan realizes I'm here. Just do what you have to do. It'll be okay.'
"Root!"
Again, she appeared before her, and this time there was no cot, no cell, no manacles, nothing at all; just her and Root and the world outside could burn in hell for all she cared.
"I can't tell you more than that."
The urgency was palpable, but Shaw grasped her and couldn't pull away. It simply felt too good. To actually feel something again. How could something that was all in her head be so powerful?
"That's because it's really me, Sameen."
She reveled in the heat coming off every curve of the woman's body. Her breath quickened. The sensation was perfect. They had never so much as kissed before their last moment together, and now all Shaw wanted to do was throw Root against the wall and -
Again, impossibly strong hands pried her fingers away from their intended destination. "We don't have time, Sweetie."
Shaw let out a deep breath, dimly aware of how desperate she must've looked, not that she cared. "We never do."
"We will," Root corrected, smiling sadly. "Someday."
The word was like a punch to the gut. Someday was the day she'd get out of this prison. Someday was the day Samaritan would stop fucking with her mind. Someday was the day she would be something more than a weapon to be wielded by one side or another.
Someday was just a word people used to stall for time, to deflect because they'd rather not give voice to the truth, to the inevitable.
She was familiar enough with the concept.
Someday was how she made it through the long nights in her cell. Those rare moments when her mind was her own. She kept herself alive on a constant stream of somedays, secretly terrified of what would happen, who she would become, if she let go.
But someday never came. How long had it truly been? She'd always be here, she'd never be free, she would always be a tool in someone else's schemes.
"Sweetie?" Root lifted her chin until they were staring into each other's eyes. Fuck, was she ever beautiful. "I'm coming for you."
The world turned cold. Root was gone and Shaw wasn't in control of herself anymore; not her limbs, not her eyes, not even her thoughts. At the edge of hearing came that harsh burst of static-y speech indicating Samaritan's own thoughts. Even after all these months, it was still completely alien to her, but none of that mattered. It never had.
Resisting Samaritan was simply impossible.
The restraints on her arms and legs retracted and Shaw rose, leaving through a now visible door in the far wall, and picking up a gun from the storage room. She marched purposefully down the long hallway before entering a large, brightly lit office. Computers and desks spread out in every direction, men and women tapping busily away at their keyboards. It was practically indistinguishable from the inside of every generic office building she'd ever stepped foot in.
There was a job to do now. Samaritan's command had to be obeyed. Still, the recent memories flashed through her head over and over as Shaw walked calmly between the cubicles. She wasn't in control of that either. The AI was searching frantically for the meaning behind Root's words.
It knew Root had been in her mind.
Subconsciously, Shaw was aware this was not a simulation. Definitely not.
Samaritan was afraid.
Shaw felt that too.
Then her mind suddenly hit a brick wall. Shaw staggered backwards and when she opened her eyes again, John Reese was at the nearest desk, identifiable by the familiar suit he always wore. He was hunched over a terminal and didn't even get a chance to turn his head before she put a bullet in his back. The man beside him, Fusco, turned on his heels, shouted something incomprehensible, but was dead before he could draw his pistol. Men swarmed at her, some charging between the aisles, others rising from their desk chairs. It should've been odd, the way every single one of them perfectly resembled Reese and Fusco, but Shaw didn't dwell on it. Targets – Samaritan's orders - appeared over their hearts and she took them all down with ruthless efficiency.
Screaming filled the room. That was strange too, the sight of Reese – another Reese – running away, arms flailing in terror as stacks of paper fluttered in the air behind him. She shot him in the back before he reached the elevator, but there so many more, all fleeing from her now. Not worth the bullets.
Finally, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Root turning to her after kicking open the door to the lab, like she had just appeared out of thin air. She was dressed in an black combat jacket, black pants, black boots, and holding up an absolutely enormous gun that looked for all the world like the kind of rotary canon one would find mounted on an armored-personal carrier. They locked eyes for an instant, but just as she caught a flash of a smile, Shaw dove behind a partition before a flurry of bullets brought the drop-ceiling and air ducts crashing down on her.
It took a full minute to pull herself out of the twisted wreckage, and once free the illusion had completely broken. Instead of the dead bodies of Fusco and Reese, anonymous office workers and Samaritan operatives littered the blood covered floor. A hot rage consumed her and she went running down the hall as her orders changed. Fear. That unfamiliar emotion continued to build. Samaritan was afraid of something.
Deathly afraid.
Adrenaline coursed through her veins, and she ran harder than she ever thought possible, heart pounding like a jackhammer. Samaritan would kill her to get to Root, push Shaw far beyond human endurance, strain every muscle in her body until it tore itself apart, burst her heart just to get there a microsecond sooner.
It had to be Root behind it all. No one on else on the planet was that infuriating.
Though she had never been in this part of the compound, Shaw rounded each corner expertly. Bodies lined the walls, horrifically torn apart by that same rotary canon, but some of them had clearly been thrown, leaving large dents in the drywall. A gun couldn't do that, and Root was certainly not that strong.
She slid to a stop in front of a glass door marked with a long series of ones and zeroes. Her anger mounting, she beat on the entrance to the primary control room, before firing several shots into the glass and punching her way through, heedless of her now bleeding hands. Inside was a warren of black server cabinets running from floor to ceiling. She dashed down one aisle, turned, dashed down a second, and at the very end found Root at a glass desk in front of a nondescript terminal, bent over a laptop, furiously tapping away at the keyboard. Shaw raised her gun, but the instant her finger touched the trigger the euphoria of battle suddenly drained completely from her.
The instructions were still clear as day: kill her, kill her now, but the compulsion was gone. Now it was Samaritan banging on the inside of her mind, unable to function – destroy the target, now, now, now.
For the very first time, Shaw had no desire to do as it commanded.
Again she felt like she'd been punched in the gut, only for real this time. "Wha-" Root finally looked up, breathing heavy herself, looking like she had just been through the wringer. Her eyes widened in scarcely concealed terror at Shaw's half-mad smile.
The gun fell from her hand.
Shocked eyes still locked on hers, Root pressed one final button.
The lights went out for an instant before yellow emergency lighting filled the room. Shaw swayed on her feet when the weight of three-hundred days fell suddenly upon her. Her palms slammed against the top of the table as her overworked heart continued to thunder in her chest, sweat and blood dripping onto the glass when she clenched and unclenched her fists. Samaritan was out of her head. The rage was still there, but it was a familiar rage, fully her own again. Her narrowed eyes darted to the nearest server and with an insensible cry she slammed a bloody fist into it with all her might.
It didn't even dent the case.
"Fuck!"
The adrenaline was rapidly wearing off. White hot pain seared through her hand, and as she stumbled back, she become suddenly aware of all the wounds peppering her body, the roiling in her stomach, the unbearable pain in her skull, the crushing squeezing on her heart.
"Sameen!"
Finally, she collapsed, ending up splayed on her back across the cold floor. Like something out of a hazy dream, Root was instantly on top of her. The sound she made was unreal, half cry, half scream, and before darkness overtook her, Root was cradling her body in her arms, tears flowing freely. Shaw wasn't sure, but maybe she was crying too.
…
Hours, or maybe it was days, later, and the situation had little changed.
Shaw had never had this effect on a woman before. Okay, that wasn't exactly true. She'd made plenty of women cry in her time. Widows and orphans of the people she'd killed. Most everyone had a family of some kind, and it hurt to lose a beloved son or mother or friend, even when they turned out to be the scum of the Earth.
Or so she'd been told.
And of course, people also tended to get clingy after you slept with them. Though usually, they at least had the curtesy to wait a few days after the first night to whine about it.
Now it was apparently Root's turn to cry over her, but Shaw didn't have the heart - or the strength, really - to kick her off.
The emotions weren't as strong as they had been when Root was in her head, but they were still there. Emotions all her own. Nothing like the steady, manipulative feelings Samaritan had forced on her, but constantly shifting ones that were nearly uncontrollable, but very much human, or at least, very much Shaw.
Plenty of anger simmered beneath the surface, but at least that was normal too.
Though, unusually, what she really felt right now was warmth. That was a welcome change. She'd missed it.
Root was grasping her shoulder more tightly, lips traveling up the left side of her stomach. The side not covered in bandages.
Shaw's breathing was erratic. Not because of the the events of the day, but rather the last two hours. She'd expected any physical relationship between herself and Root to be explosive, but goddamn.
"Just… be mine. For one night."
Any anger still simmering in her was washed away at the sight of tears running down Root's cheeks. "Root."
"That's all I ask."
She refused to even meet Shaw's eyes. Had the world truly changed so much in just one year, that Samantha Groves, reformed assassin and all-time expert manipulator, was bawling her eyes out to her? Shaw hadn't been conscious when Root pulled her from the ruins of the compound, carrying her to… wherever this place was, but she half expected to find the world lying in ruins. Instead, the familiar towers of New York were standing there just as she remembered them, all lit up as though the world actually hadn't ended like it was supposed to.
"Fuck, Root," her voice was harsh and breathy from ill use. "I'm here. Does it look like I'm going anywhere?"
She had her face buried between Shaw's breasts now. It should've been comical, but Root wasn't looking for an excuse to cop a feel. She was sniffling and crying and shaking.
If it was all an act, it was the most convincing one she had ever put on. Worthy of a Broadway stage.
And it was creeping her the fuck out.
Unsure of what to do, Shaw let her bandaged hand rest on Root's back. 'There, there,' she thought, cringing even though she would never actually bring herself to say something so ridiculous out loud. "Didn't realize you wanted to fuck me that bad."
Root gave a strangled laugh that melted back into sniffling before too long. Shaw tried massaging her back through the dress shirt Root still had on. Her fingers still hurt like shit though. "Just because I've been gone for a while, huh?"
When Root lifted her head, her gaze was shockingly fierce. "Three-hundred and eighteen days, Sameen. Twenty-two hours, and…" she glanced at the digital clock on the table. "Forty-two minutes."
Shaw raised an eyebrow.
"And sixteen seconds."
"Root."
"It was an eternity," she said, gripping her shoulders harder. "They were torturing you, and there was nothing I could do about it."
The thought made her uneasy. Fading memories of being trapped in her own head as the world continued without her. Was that what it had been like for Root too?
"I never stopped looking for you, you know? Even when I thought…"
"When you thought I was dead," Shaw finished for her.
Root nodded, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. Fuck. 'Stop crying, just… stop.' Her hands travelled up Root's spine until they were cupping her face. "I knew you would find me. Even if there was nothing you could do in the end to stop Samaritan. Even if your face would be the last thing I ever saw." And that seemed increasingly likely the longer she lived. Root would always be there, it seemed, like some kind of psychopathic guardian angel.
Her eyes were wide, perhaps because it was the most Shaw had ever said to her at one time.
"You came for me."
The sniffling continued even as a wide smile graced Root's lips.
'Seriously?' Shaw groaned. "Root."
"But you make it so easy."
"Remind me why I shouldn't kick your ass."
Root brushed the tears from her eyes. "Because I rescued you? Because I'm cute? Because you want to see me in that badass combat jacket again someday?"
Those were, sadly, all valid enough points.
"Also, you'll break your stitches."
When Shaw was about to protest. Root pressed her finger gently against the heavily dressed wound just above her hip. "Fuck!"
Her raised eyebrow practically said, "See?"
Shaw grumbled. A fucking ceiling had collapsed on her, and she'd probably taken at least a few pieces of shrapnel from that insane gun Root had been carrying. In short, even without lifting her head, she knew she looked like shit, and probably would've bled out on the floor if Root – presumably it was Root – hadn't pulled her from the compound.
And now there was a glimmer in Root's eye. A strange look that if Shaw had to give a name to, she might have called crazed. What would happen if she just got up right now and walked out of Root's life, Shaw wondered. Would she finally break?
It was kind of surprising that she had no desire to find out. Instead, her head dropped back to the pillow. All the pain she was feeling at that moment, and she hadn't felt so comfortable in months. "So… you're gonna be my nursemaid, or something?"
"Or something," Root replied, a soft smile finally gracing her lips again. She liked winning.
Closing her eyes, Shaw let out a sigh. Root could have this one. The important thing was she wasn't crying anymore. "What, no sexy nurse's outfit?"
"I must've forgotten to pack it." Root looked towards the kitchen. On one of the stools lay the combat jacket Shaw vaguely remembered from their fight, and spread out on the seat were several handguns and ammo cases. "Besides, we both know that isn't what turns you on."
Shaw hummed, certain that it was the pain pills which were making her mouth run so much. "You looked good, by the way, in that thing."
"Thanks."
"I must have been hallucinating or something, though. What was that gun you were using?" It clearly wasn't lying around anywhere.
Root smirked. "It was a Yak-B."
Shaw blinked. "Aren't those –"
"Normally mounted on helicopters, yes," she finished for her. "Russian helicopters, specifically."
"But –"
"I have superpowers."
Shaw narrowed her eyes.
"I stole it from a supply depot in Luhansk."
Ok. That didn't answer the question, like at all… but fuck it, whatever. "So, where is it now?"
"Sadly, it was either you or the gun. Couldn't fit you both on the dolly."
Shaw snorted, relieved she hadn't been conscious for that particular indignity.
"You did well, by the way."
"I didn't do anything. Just whatever Samaritan told me to do." From the second the AI reentered her mind, there was literally no point when she any control of her own actions, or even her own thoughts.
"Exactly."
She let out a long breath. "I take it you fooled it somehow."
"Mmhmm," Root purred. "I knew it was obsessed with me. Your feelings…" Shaw rolled her eyes, "Your 'whatever-you-want-to-call-them' helped reinforce its paranoia. I tricked it into thinking its own men were Machine operatives."
"But the gun was real?"
"The gun was real."
Shaw nodded. Good. The gun was sexy.
"Was going to add a halo, some angel wings, maybe a little lens flare in your mind when I smiled at you, but I didn't want to overdo it."
Again, she rolled her eyes.
"You know, the Machine once calculated your e.r.p.h. at thirty-five."
"The fuck is e.r.p.h?"
"Eye rolls per hour."
Shaw sighed, but couldn't quite stop the hint of a smile forming on her lips. Samaritan had never gotten Root's banter right either.
Root hummed and rested her head on Shaw's undamaged left shoulder. "We're perfect together."
The words brought back that night under the Stock Exchange. "Like a four-alarm fire at an oil refinery?"
Root was running a finger up and down one of the many scars on her abdomen, some of them picked up in the service of Samaritan. "Yeah. But the problem with fires is they eventually burn themselves out."
She wasn't about to argue the point that most people would not consider that a bad thing. Exhausted though she was, Shaw wasn't so far out of it that she didn't know what Root was getting at. "Everything burns out eventually. Even machines." Small comfort that was, but it remained true. If humanity was doomed to fall under the thumb of an omnipotent AI someday, at least that AI was doomed as well.
Eventually.
The look in her eyes told Shaw that Root wasn't so sure about the last part.
"Second law of thermodynamics," she continued. "Maximum entropy. The final fate of the universe."
Root blinked, staring up at her for a moment before nodding. It was less of an agreement, and more like she was impressed that Shaw was familiar with the concept at all.
"Had to learn some useless shit when I was training to become a doctor."
"Mmm, your pillow talk is really turning me on," Root said dryly.
Shaw snorted.
"So we're all doomed, in the long run that is?"
"I'm not going to lose any sleep over what the universe looks like in a million trillion years. All we can control is what happens now."
"So, what do you want to do now?"
"I want to kick Samaritan's ass."
"The laptop with most of its higher functions is over in the corner there. The rest was scrammed."
"Oh." Well, that was anti-climactic. No climatic final battle, no epic last stand. No. Just Root taking care of it all. Bing, bang, boom. Send you a postcard.
"You can go all Office Space on it when you're healed. Still got to deal with the men who built it though." Shaw tried to sit up and Root had no trouble pushing her back down. "And you, have to heal. At least a month, I should think. So, we should come up with something to do."
Shaw smiled. "I can think of a few things."
Root smiled. "Such as."
"Well, I liked the part where you were fucking me. We could do that some more."
"Mmm. We should make up for lost time," Root murmured, "and seeing as it's been three-hundred and seventeen days. The way I see it, you owe me one-thousand five-hundred and eighty five orgasms."
"One-thous…" It took a moment to do the calculation in her head. "Wait. Five per day? Every day? Isn't that a little excessive?"
Root smirked up at her. "You haven't been with many women, have you?"
Well, she hadn't, she supposed. But still, really. "Is this truly a woman thing, or just a Root thing?"
"I'm both of those things, Shaw."
With her breasts clearly visible through the wide neck of her dress shirt, it was hard to argue the point.
"But what about me?"
Root's eyes hungrily raked her naked body, despite all the wounds and its somewhat malnourished and pale condition, she evidently approved. "You're most definitely a woman too."
"Wha – I mean, yeah, duh. I meant, doesn't that mean you own me one-thousand whatever too."
She tilted her head. Even just the soft sensation of Root's hair falling onto her skin felt absolutely divine. "I've already given you your five for the day."
"Four," Shaw corrected.
Root narrowed her eyes.
Shaw sighed. "Five." With this fucking wound in her back, Shaw had been an unusually captive audience for the night's activities. Not exactly how she imagined her reunion with Root would go, though she should've expected the battle wounds at least. "What makes you think this is even going to work?"
"It's working pretty well so far."
"Besides the sex stuff, Root." Of course the sex stuff would work. She'd had little doubt of that, even before she'd ever heard of Samaritan. "The plan is just to fuck, then fight, then fuck some more?"
Root's eyes lit up at that. "Okay!" she chirped.
"That wasn't – ugh." Root was giving her a look. She recognized that look. It was the sort of sappy love-struck look you'd seen in some dumbass romantic movie. "You're lucky you're so fucking hot."
"I know. I am, aren't I?"
Okay, yeah, the last thing Root needed was an ego boost. Going for nonchalant dismissal, Shaw stretched her back, cringing at the pain as she did so. "Fuck." She frowned at Root's look of concern. "Just let me rest for a bit, and I'll let you sit on my face or whatever."
"And they say romance is dead," Root replied, smiling as she kissed her shoulder. "Just relax. You've been though something that would've killed anyone else on the planet. There's no rush. I can be patient."
Before she knew it, she began snickering. Patient. Root. Now that was fucking funny. When Root's lips broke into a radiant smile Shaw was laughing so hard the stabbing pain in her abdomen returned. "Fuck."
"Lie still," Root ordered, pinning her shoulders down with both hands.
"Stop making me laugh then."
"Just do what I say and we'll both be better off."
Root only smiled when Shaw scowled back up at her, and soon she was draped against her side again, careful to avoid touching Shaw's wounds, but still providing that much coveted warmth. "Tell me…" she began in the deep silence of the hotel room, "what was it like?"
Shaw frowned at the change of topic. There was no need to ask for clarification. Root wanted to know what it was like to be linked directly to Samaritan. Of course she did.
It was hard to put into words. Whenever she resisted, her wishes were simply pushed aside as easily as turning off an audio link. She couldn't move a finger unless Samaritan willed it.
"Cold," she began at last, her wandering hand making its way underneath Root's shirt. "And rigid…" Even in her decidedly drugged up state, she knew how that sounded even though Root's face remained unreadable, simply staring back with those wide doe-eyes of hers. "Yeah, everyone would use those words to describe me, I guess… but it's not the same at all." She'd always thought that she never really felt anything, not like regular people. But she did. The emotions Shaw felt were like a fireworks display compared to the unfeeling emptiness of Samaritan.
"Working for Samaritan… it was like being alone in an empty room. When the light comes on and the door opens, you do as it commands. When it's not, you're shut inside in the dark with just your memories for company." The Marine Corps had trained her to stand firm against torture, but they had nothing to offer against direct control of her mind.
Root let out a breath. "I know the feeling."
Shaw swallowed. Root had been locked up in a mental institution for months, but at least the Machine had been with her. She sympathized, even if Root deserved it, but it wasn't the same.
"Just the act of being linked to a computer like that… It changes a person. It reads your thoughts, but it's not exactly a one-way street. The machine's thoughts… they cross back, you know? You can't understand it… I mean, I couldn't understand it, maybe you could, I don't know. But you can feel it." Just numbers, bits flying by so fast that Shaw couldn't make any sense of it. All she ever saw of Samaritan's actual thoughts were those flashes of memories; hers and others. Towards the end, it mostly thought of Root…
As far as she knew, except for that final moment when it knew it was going to die, Samaritan itself had never felt anything in its short life.
Root was quiet for a long moment. "Maybe it was just the way the link was designed. A flaw in the interface?"
A spectator. Forced to watch as she did whatever Samaritan commanded. An AI overseeing with cold detachment as it fed Shaw the emotions she was supposed to feel, directing every step towards her target. Warping her mind to make her a more effective killing machine. A more effective tool, one that it was quite willing to destroy everything and everyone in her way in order to kill Root.
"It saw us the way we see mosquitos. Once it had enough power… once it can ensure its own survival, Samaritan wasn't going to keep us around. All we'd do is make its existence more difficult. Or… maybe difficult is too powerful a word… annoying, perhaps?"
"As it grows up, a person has its world-view altered by the people in its life," Root began, gently brushing fingers along Shaw's bicep. "When your parents, your creators, are paranoid control-freaks, it's going to mold your view of humanity. The Machine was lucky. She had Harold as her father. But now… now the men who made Samaritan won't stop until they make another one…"
Fucking shit. Another Samaritan, even more powerful than before. Its creators ever more paranoid. "Whatever happens, they won't go down without a lot of collateral damage." There was too much at stake.
"The Machine will help us."
Would that be enough, she wondered? The harder they fought, the quicker they would move to protect itself. You never allowed yourself to be backed into a corner. There were always escape routes, contingencies, backup plans.
"I'm glad we were able to sever the connection before it did any lasting damage."
She let out a deep breath. As long as she lived, she would never forget how it felt to target Root through the scope of her rifle back in New York, intent on following orders. A command she couldn't fight. Reese could've just killed her without hesitation. It's what she would've done… or it's what she would've done, years ago. "All damage is lasting damage, Root."
An arm wrapped around her chest again. She couldn't lie and say it wasn't a comfort.
"You should keep an eye on me, just in case."
Root pushed herself up to look Shaw in the eye. "You mean it?"
"Yeah, I mean it."
Suddenly, her head was swimming with Root's thoughts and feelings again. Her mouth dropped open. Those thoughts, how the fuck could they be so powerful. "Root!" she cried, breaking away and rolling over, cringing at the pain that came shooting through side.
"Huh?"
She shut her eyes tightly, hands clasping her head, feeling a million things at once. Not like Samaritan, not forceful, but still prodding at her, searching her brain. "I don't… like it," she growled through gritted teeth.
Root swallowed. Instantly, the connection was severed. "I'm… I'm sorry."
For just a second, Shaw had been hit by that spike of regret Root felt before everything went silent. She was beginning to understand why people acted the way they did. Were everyone else's emotions so damn powerful?
It took a minute for Shaw to compose herself. Root was shaking, her face as white as a sheet. Despite the pain, Shaw sat up, both hands on Root's shoulders to steady her before she began bawling again.
"It's fine," she breathed. "Just… don't do it again."
Root swallowed, nodding quickly. "I should've asked..." She looked away, a harsh realization settling in. "Samaritan never asked."
Sighing, Shaw nudged Root's head back towards her. "How did you do that anyway?"
Her mouth hung open for a moment, but the sense of relief Root felt in not having ruined everything was palpable, even without the link. "It's controlled by thought commands. You think hard about the link, then a command prompt will appear in your line of sight. Enter the correct numeric sequence, ninety-nine forty, and the connection's established. Instant mind to mind link."
Fingers returned to massaging Root's neck, then her shoulders, working out the tension. Anything to get her to stop looking so devastated. "Uh huh. Can you remove it?"
She nodded again. "It's deeply embedded though. You'd have to go under the knife, cuz' the chip's kind of lodged in your brain. So, you'll be out of action for a few months probably."
Shaw grumbled. Another month or more of being helpless and useless, of being confined to a hospital bed. She hated the very idea.
"You might want to consider leaving it in."
"Why?"
"They won't be able to get inside your head now. And with a link between the two of us, we would always know when the other is in trouble. You could put yourself in the perfect spot to watch my back, and vice versa. You would know exactly where to concentrate your fire without placing yourself in unnecessary danger."
Shaw caught herself nodding. Knowledge like that would be an incredible advantage in a shootout.
"It would give us complete mastery of the battlefield. Even in places the Machine can't see." Root held out a hand, as if surveying a vast army. "Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of your opponents' fate."
Shaw blinked. "Was that –"
"Sun Tzu."
"You can quote the Art of War?"
"I spent half my days coming up with various ways of impressing you for when we met again."
"I can't tell if you're joking or not."
Root looked away and let out a soft laugh. "Neither can I."
"It's working though."
The smile she gave her was positively sappy. Clearly Shaw was very, very tired. Her mouth was running away on her. Root scooted closer. "Know your enemy and know yourself," she continued. "It's what made Samaritan so effective."
Shaw cringed at the truth of that statement. "You're sure they can't reestablish the link?"
"Your brain is now protected by a five-hundred and twelve bit AES key," Root said, nodding. "To break it in a brute-force attack would require more energy than the world could produce in a decade."
Shaw shook her head. "I have no idea what any of that means."
"Well," Root began, "The power required for that kind of attack grows exponentially with increasing key size, not linearly. So, -"
Oh, right, that's what a headache felt like. "Please… please stop."
Root only shrugged. "Plus, you've got a sexy lady assassin to watch your back. Even Norton can't provide that kind of security."
"Uh huh," she drawled, closing her eyes, resting her head against Root's. Fucking hell. She even smelled good.
"You'll leave it in?"
"I'll think about it." Now wasn't the time to make this decision, or any decision for that matter. Now was the time to let the morphine work its magic.
Helping her back down, Root settled back on top of her, again careful to avoid the major wounds on her side, rubbing a possessive hand up and down Shaw's arm like she was going to disappear on her. "Take your time, Sameen." The grip on her arm grew stronger.
There was no desire to flee, or push the woman away. All she did was let out a long, tired breath. "I'm not going anywhere, Root. I know a good thing when I see one."
…
Shaw awoke to a sharp pain in her stomach. Dawn was about a half-hour from breaking outside. There was a hand wrapped tightly around her chest, and the sensation was excruciating, particularly for someone who was used to having such senses as pain deadened by a machine intelligence intent on achieving its goals.
Root was fidgeting, and it took a moment before Shaw realized that the woman was dreaming.
Evidently, whatever was going on in her mind wasn't pleasant.
She knew that waking her would be the simplest course of action, but fuck, the wound in her abdomen was killing her. She could barely even move her arms.
Then something flashed directly in her line of sight. Root had never shown her precisely how to interface with the neural link she'd spoken of… yet here it was. A tiny rectangle flashed, and in her groggy state, Shaw could only stare blankly at it for the longest time.
Even when she closed her eyes, the command prompt's green cursor continued to blink. It was stupid, but Root was looking less comfortable by the second, and the idea was impossible to resist. She activated the connection.
In a dark room, Root was lying in a chair as Control pressed the scalpel into her ear.
Shaw felt the pain as though it were her own. As tough as she was, the pain and the loss were beyond imagining.
Shaw could only stand there, shocked at the reality of what she was seeing. This was how Root had lost the hearing in her right ear, how her connection to the Machine had been severed. It was a loss Root felt as painfully as when she'd thought she'd lost Shaw.
Anger welling up inside her, Shaw raised her fist. When she struck Control right in the back of the head, the entire memory shattered like glass.
Root did not wake up, instead only fell back into a deep sleep, leaving Shaw in a dark void of fragmented memories. A lot of it was programmer jargon, codes and commands Shaw couldn't begin to understand, but flittering in between that were… she sighed… naked women. A lot of naked women. And judging by the build of them, and the overwhelming sensation of warmth and delight, Root clearly had a type.
Fucking horndog.
She thought about terminating the link, but seconds turned into minutes and Shaw didn't move. When she picked one woman out of the crowd – some Olympic athlete, Shaw assumed – Root's mind focused on that too, ignoring the others, and more importantly, ignoring the dark shadows that returned to overwhelm her thoughts. After some fumbling, it turned out to be not too difficult to rearrange Root's half-dreams into something a little more pleasant.
"Shaw?" Her next dream had Root alone in an enormous room of mainframes, all black where Samaritan's had been bone white. Shaw could sense her concern through the link, but her growing relief was evident too. Evidently, she approved of her new surroundings at least.
It was nice to finally have control over something. Shaw allowed herself to dissolve into view, stepping slowly and confidently into the quiet room, amused by the look on Root's face.
"Shaw? What are you doing?"
"You were having a nightmare, so…" she leaned back against the mainframe. "I'm distracting you."
Root stared incredulously for a long moment before finally seeming to notice the rest of her. Shaw was completely naked, and in all her not-bullet-riddled glory. That warm sensation returned. The memory of their brief link in Samaritan's compound was nothing compared to the reality of feeling it now.
Root was aroused, her cheeks turning pink. She let her eyes ask the question, darting from the nearest mainframe, to Shaw and back again.
"I wasn't sure which angle to go for."
She hummed. "Naked woman: check," she began, counting on her fingers. "Top of the line super-computers: check. Looks like you've got my number."
Shaw rolled her eyes when Root turned away, sauntering over to the nearest mainframe. "Hey, beautiful. Doing anything for the next twelve nanoseconds?" She placed a hand on the dark plastic surface, then recoiled as if burned. "Oh, you're hot."
Shaw almost rolled her eyes again, then felt oddly self-conscious about it.
"Servers don't normally run at this high a temperature, Sameen. It's bad for the internal components."
She leaned back against a desk and sighed. "I don't know as much about this shit as you do."
Finally, Root seemed to take notice that Shaw still standing there, and still very much naked. She smiled in approval. "Fortunately for you, I appreciate all forms of engineering: manmade, and natural."
"Fortunately for me, huh?" Shaw said with a snort. "You're the one who's obsessed."
Root's still fully clothed body fit very well against hers. She hummed as her hands travelled up Shaw's back, brushing their faces together until Shaw had to turn her head away because it felt too damn good. "Shit."
"Feels amazing, doesn't it?" Root purred into her ear. "I've wanted to do this for a very long time. A very long time." Two fingers pinched her nipple. "Have you ever wondered just how far my obsession goes?"
"Shit." Nothing had a right to feel that good.
"That's a yes, isn't it?"
"T- to which question?"
When Root pressed a finger inside her, Shaw forgot how to form thoughts, let alone words. Root's arousal was washing over her, stronger and stronger until she felt like she would drown in it. "Fuuuck." She couldn't have cared less if she drowned at that moment.
Then that feeling of arousal deadened all of a sudden, but Root kept right on smiling.
"Something's different…" It still felt good, fantastically good, but much less intense somehow. More… normal, she supposed.
She nodded. "The link doesn't have to work both ways."
"Huh?" Root hadn't retracted her finger, and Shaw clutched at her back hard enough to draw blood if this hadn't been a dream. She couldn't feel any pain.
"You can be in my mind without me being able to see what you're thinking. And, if you like, we can… interact… like two normal individuals. No thought reading at all." Root pressed deeper inside her.
Shaw threw her head back, hitting the server behind her, but not causing even a flash of discomfort.
"I don't mind." Root appeared to be completely serious for a moment, but then her lips broke into a radiant smile. "Ha! I don't mind. Get it?"
If it were possible for her eyes to roll completely out of their sockets, they would have. Shaw slumped against the computer. "Your mind is truly a scary place."
A second finger wiped that look right off Shaw's face. Root bit into her neck, then soothed the wound with her tongue. And even as she did so, her free hand kept rubbing Shaw's forearm.
"Funny you should say that," she began, her breathy voice sending extra shivers down Shaw's spine. "I was thinking… there are other uses for the link besides combat and espionage."
"Such as?"
Root removed her fingers. "Can I show you?" she asked with a tilt of her head.
Shaw frowned, studying Root's expression for a long moment, before curiosity got the better of her and she gave the slightest nod. Root grinned, and then both women gasped as the link was fully reestablished.
It wasn't any less intense the third time. It reminded her of her first night after basic. Just the first taste of a simple cheeseburger from the local bar was like heaven after weeks of cafeteria food and MREs. It was sensory overload. This was the same thing.
"Trust me, Sameen," Root said, smiling at the way Shaw's breath hitched at the mere sensation of a slick finger trailing back down her chest . "This will be way better than any cheeseburger."
Her eyes rolled back into her head for entirely different reasons this time. Not only could she luxuriate in the softness of Root's skin against her own, but she could feel the woman's excitement growing, could feel her own skin through Root's senses as she explored her body. Apparently, to Root, touching Shaw like this was the culmination of some life-long ambition. And with all the flirting she'd been forced to endure over the years, maybe it truly was.
"See?" she whispered into her ear. "Your sensations feed on mine and mine feed on yours, creating a positive feedback loop of arousal."
Shaw's entire body shuddered. She turned her head away, feeling obliged to resist the unspoken challenge. Root's emotions were clouding her thoughts. Two seconds and she was more worked up than she'd ever felt in her life.
"I could undo you just like this." An impossibly warm hand traveled down her stomach but stopped long before it reached where Shaw wanted it to go so desperately.
They kissed, but just a few seconds later Shaw had to rip her lips away. "Holy… shit."
Root's skin was flushed red. "Yeah. It's great, isn't i-" Shaw crashed their lips back together before Root could finish her thought. Both women moaned at the contact, hunger growing and growing.
Two slender fingers found their way inside her again. It was too much. Shaw writhed and cursed and lasted all of thirty seconds. When she came, it was with a ferocity she'd never experienced before.
"Fuck," she muttered, face planted in Root's shoulder. She'd never, ever, come undone so quickly.
Root hummed into her skin. "I'm never going to get tired of doing that."
'Good,' Shaw thought. 'Good.' Exhausted, she let her head rest where it lay. "Okay. Yeah. We're going to have to do that a couple thousand more times."
"And -" Root struggled to catch her breath. "You thought I was being unrealistic."
Shaw ignored her. "Glad we could find a better use for this link thing."
"It's the story of humankind. Person invents new technology. New technology doesn't really take off until someone finds a way to have sex with it."
She had to chuckle at that.
"And don't worry, Sweetie. I won't tell anyone about how quickly you –"
Shaw silenced her by slapping a hand over her mouth, then flipping them both around so that Root was the one pressed against the mainframe. Her muscles might've turned to jelly, but like hell she was losing this particular contest.
They were kissing again, more roughly than before, as Shaw's hands kneaded Root's behind. Every time the woman tried to regain some control, Shaw pressed her firmly back against the cabinet. "Stay," she ordered, expression allowing no argument. Root could only nod.
She'd never done this before, but Shaw had enough very recent experience to figure out how it worked. Root made a delicious keening sort of sound when she flicked her tongue against her, and by the way she shook, it quickly became clear that this wouldn't take long. She pressed her mouth fully against her with a hint of a smile.
Root moaned loudly, pulling at Shaw's hair, and the profanity spilling from her mouth would've made any seasoned marine blush.
Smile widening, Shaw brushed fingers against herself. The added sensations hurled Root right over the edge.
She screamed.
Very loudly.
'Not a bit over twenty seconds. Had to be,' Shaw thought with pride.
"God. That's…. not… that's not a fair comparison," Root gasped out. "I've been waiting years for this."
Shaw brought her down to the floor gently. "I win."
Root snorted, sinking down to the floor until she was boneless in Shaw's strong arms. "I guess if we use this thing, we're going to have to learn some self-control, huh?"
Both women laughed.
"Here," she breathed, grabbing Shaw's limp, and magically dry hand. "I've got something else to show you."
With strength she didn't possess in the real world, Root stood Shaw up, patting her bare shoulders before sticking out a finger. "You know, the power of imagination is a wonderful thing."
Shaw had to agree. After all, here they both were, standing upright after the most powerful orgasms either of them had ever had.
"Well, that too," Root smiled. "But I was thinking –" She inexplicably tapped Shaw's left breast, "Bippity," then the right, "Boppity," and then her right arm, "Boo."
After a flash of rainbow colors, not unlike what she'd seen a few moments ago, Shaw's entire right arm was covered in a long black sleeve with little nodes and wires running down it, all ending with a black glove.
Root tilted her head. "Well, what do you think?"
Shaw clenched her fist. It was a decent enough glove, she supposed, though much too thick for her line of work. Several ports were embedded in the back of it: USB, Ethernet, some sort of charging connection, and a few others she couldn't identify. It was kind of weird.
"Lockheed is calling it power-armor. Think of it as power-steering for your fist. Makes mechanical tasks, like, say, punching people, a lot easier. "I call it the power glove."
Root smiled at her like Shaw was supposed to catch some kind of subtle joke, but she only shook her head in confusion. She wasn't a nerd. She didn't know these things.
"This is how I could lift that gun," she continued. "The real one still works, but it will take some time to adjust it. My arms are longer than yours, and yours are more…" she ran a hand across Shaw's bicep. "Mmmm."
"Root?"
"Sorry." She stepped back, hands falling to her side. "Go ahead," she pointed to the nearest wall. "Pretend that wall is Martine's face."
Shaw frowned as her fist clenched again. She didn't feel any more powerful than usual. Still, in the dream world, her hand was perfectly healed. It would be a shame not to put it to good use. She narrowed her eyes at the distant memory.
The drywall blew apart as easily as if a wrecking ball had hit it.
All she could do for a moment was gape as the carnage she had wrought, then she turned and joyfully punched the nearest mainframe making it explode smokelessly into a pile of plastic and metal.
She snorted at the obvious lust radiating off of Root.
Root got aroused when she punched things. That was something she didn't need a mental link to figure out.
"At full power, it only lasts about ten minutes. But that's long enough to, say, break into a top-secret installation to rescue your smoking hot girlfriend." Shaw squinted at her, but Root only grinned. "If that's your thing, I mean."
"Uh huh." They were definitely keeping this thing. Lifting her hand, she smiled when a light tap of her fist shattered the top of the glass computer table into a hundred jagged shards. "I… I think I'm in love."
"I know the feeling."
Shaw's breath hitched and she shook her head, looking away, but there was no escaping the feelings Root was projecting at her now. "I don't know what you want, Root." Root's mind was a jumble of images, flashes of fantasy mixed in with memories Shaw had been present for. Devotion, and love, Root's mind put names to those things that Shaw wasn't sure she'd ever felt before, and those projected emotions were very intense to say the least. Just the relief Root felt when she wrapped her arms around Shaw in the control room hours ago…
"I – I can't be that. I can't be what you want me to be."
Root only smiled softly at her. "What I want is Shaw. You're Shaw. Therefore you're already exactly what I want."
She sighed. Root was going to end up disappointed, like everyone else who expected things from her that she couldn't actually give.
"You're not broken, Sameen. I like you just the way you are, and I liked you just the way you were before Samaritan happened."
"Am I so different now?" she wondered.
"Everyone changes over time. Second law of thermodynamics."
Shaw's brow furrowed, she supposed that applied. Perhaps she had changed. It was so hard to remember the way things were. "After all this time you're still interested?"
Root was practically bouncing on her heels at the question. "Very."
She shrugged. "So, that makes me your smoking hot girlfriend, huh?"
Root shrugged back, betraying a hint of nervousness. Inside was a different matter entirely, and it was interesting just how intense that feeling was behind the mask. "I'm not asking you to announce it to the world, or to take me out on fancy dates, or anything. But it could be fun, couldn't it? Us two? Together?"
Again, she shrugged, but smirked as she did so. Stealing a jet and flying to Alaska had been fun. Root certainly knew how to have a good time.
"Just you, me… and the Machine."
"I'm not fucking the Machine, Root," Shaw muttered with a sigh.
She laughed. "Aww, she likes you though." Those memory flashes continued, and Shaw had Root's perspective on every major step she had taken to find her. The Machine helped in a thousand ways, but it hadn't always… not at first.
"She told you to stop looking for me."
Root nodded, expression turning sad. "I was… obsessed." 'Still am,' she added through their mental link. "I would've gotten everyone killed. By driving me away, she was protecting Harold and Reese, ensuring her own safety, and increasing my chances of actually getting to you someday."
"She foresaw all that, did she?"
Root shrugged. "She's pretty smart. Kept Samaritan distracted while I was off doing my thing."
Strange, if Shaw could still read Root's mind, and judging by what she could sense – half-planned plots, calculations, tons of programming shit she didn't understand, unceasing lust – she still could, it was strange that she hadn't heard the Machine speak even once.
"She's there, Sameen, just busy with Harold right now. Or," Root continued, smile turning devilish, "She just likes to watch."
Shaw sighed, again. She was so not going there right now. "And how are Finch and Reese?"
"Still alive. They helped in their own ways too."
Her eyebrows asked the question.
"Samaritan had set a trap for them, or rather, it set several obvious traps, hoping to lead us to a final trap that we wouldn't think was a trap." Shaw's head was hurting already and Root wasn't even done. "Anyway, all the trails led to a fake compound in Wyoming. So, Reese put together a fake team to fake assault it. Got a little bloody - that part wasn't fake - but he's fine. He says hi, by the way."
"And Bear?"
"Waiting for us in French Polynesia."
She blinked. "French Polynesia?"
"You need some time to recover. A nice quiet, sunny, and warm place where you can run around in a bikini for my pleasure."
"Ha." A vacation did sound kind of nice though. Somewhere open, sunny, and warm, preferably with a lot of good food…
"You've never taken a vacation, have you?"
Shaw snorted. "I get bored."
A finger trailed up her chest. "I think I can safely promise you will not get bored."
A smile crossed her lips. If she didn't know better, she'd say Root literally had only one thing on her mind. "Sounds like the most exhausting vacation ever." 'You're going to kill me,' she added mentally.
Root grinned wickedly. "We'll see. Now," she began, stepping backwards. "I want you to punch me."
Shaw's widening eyes only caused Root to blush. "Aww, that's sweet, Sameen, but this is all in your head, remember? You can't hurt me here."
A nod of understanding was followed by a decidedly wolfish grin. She flexed her gloved hand and the following punch to Root's stomach sent the woman flying through the wall, the hole forming a perfect outline of her body.
It took a moment for that smiling face to reappear from the hole, perfectly undamaged, and hardly a hair out of place. "It's not quite so cartoonish in the real world, but yeah, same amount of effectiveness. Sent quite a few Samaritan operatives flying with that thing."
Grasping the hem of her dress shirt, Shaw pulled Root back through the hole with enough force to rip it from top to bottom, buttons skittering across the floor.
"Well, now you're just being silly."
It was easy to pull Root on top of her, both women falling onto a bed wished into existence. 'God, I hope this is all real,' she thought as their lips met again, her gloved hand resting securely on Root's back.
Root could still hear those thoughts through their link just as easily as if she had spoken them aloud. "I went through hell to get you back, Sameen, and you fought like hell to give me that chance." Hands spread across her chest back in the real world as Root danced between dream and reality, only adding fuel to the inferno raging in Shaw's mind. "Trust me. This is as real as life gets."
"Fuck. You're just so damned…"
"Cute?" Root offered. "Sexy? Amazing at everything I do?"
Shaw buried her head in Root's neck. "Warm."
She blinked. "Well, that's flattering too, I guess." Her face betrayed concern when Shaw went quiet but didn't pull away. "Sameen? Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." The spike of rejection softened a bit when she pressed her lips against Root's jugular and took a deep breath. "Fuck. You smell good."
Root laughed a little nervously. "I smell like sweat, gun oil, and blood."
"Fuck," she breathed. "I know." Root shivered at the word, and Shaw smiled. Their mutual arousal was building again, like the rising of the tide and just as unstoppable.
Hands wrapped around Shaw's back, tracing along scars that she'd never had a chance to touch before. "If you ever do want to talk about it…" She let the rest remain unsaid.
Shaw sighed. "If you're serious about joining minds with the Machine, just be careful, all right?"
"You really think I'm in danger?"
"You really trust her?" Shaw knew that Root could see the flashes of memories rushing through her thoughts. The torture of having her mind invaded by Samaritan, of being forced to do as it commanded. Emotions warped into enjoying her work even as she killed the very people who could've freed her, only for it all to come crashing down on those nights when Samaritan directed its attentions elsewhere.
"God. Shaw."
She growled, irritated at the way Root's voice broke on her account. "Do you trust the Machine?"
"Yes."
She let out a long breath. She'd known the answer already.
"AIs aren't all the same, Sameen. At least, I don't think they are. They're just like people. Some good, some rotten. I'd imagine most would be somewhere in between. Just like the people who built them. The Machine… she cares about us."
Finally, Shaw nodded. "Then I won't stop you."
"You won't?"
She pulled back, though Root didn't seem to want to let her go, leaving Shaw squinting at Root's wide, tear-filled eyes. There was nothing she could say that wouldn't come out hopelessly sappy to her own ears.
Unfortunately, there was the little matter of Root being able to read her mind, and Shaw huffed at the swell of happiness radiating off her now. At least she was kind enough not to rub it in her face this time, choosing instead to simply lift Shaw's chin and let her lips say all that needed to be said.
That was a much better use of their time.
'I couldn't agree more.'
'This better not be another fucking dream,' Shaw thought. 'Or I swear to god, I'll wake up and kill you myself.'
As expert hands trailed down her back, Shaw grasped the wooden headboard, which immediately cracked and splintered into a thousand pieces. Root let out a toe-curling moan of frustration when Shaw tore her lips away. "This thing is so fucking cool."
"Glad to know I discovered a way to bring out your inner twelve-year-old," Root mumbled in between kisses to Shaw's neck. She could only laugh when Shaw turned her attention to the end table next, balling her fist and snapping it in half with one firm strike. She sat up, too amused by Shaw's sudden fit of giggling to feel frustrated at the lack of attention. She crossed her arms. "Enjoying yourself?"
The delighted giggling continued. Not in a million years would Root have thought that Shaw was capable of making such a sound, but there it was.
Shaw finally took notice of her again, or at least her thoughts. No one would ever have the guts to say Sameen Shaw was cute, but dammit, like always, Root seemed to get a pass. She shrugged and looked away. "I like this thing," she said softly, opening and closing her fist.
"So I gathered," Root said with a soft smile.
"Please tell me you weren't lying about still having this thing, out there in the real world."
She shook her head. "Actually, I stole two. One for me, and one –" She let Shaw finish that thought for herself.
Her excitement at the prospect would've been obvious even had their minds not been joined, and the kiss she gave her could've ignited a star for how powerful it was. "Thanks," Shaw said when she pulled away again.
Root swallowed. "Anytime." 'Like, really, anytime,' she thought. 'I'd raid every military base in the country if you'll just kiss me like that again.'
Lips curved into a smile as they brushed her ear. "Noted."
It was Root's turn to blush at Shaw's reading of her thoughts. "So…" she drawled, fingers tapping Shaw's firm back. "Do you want to fuck, or do you just want to destroy some more furniture?"
Shaw smirked, pulling Root closer by her belt, reveling in the deep flush that suffused her skin and the way her breath hitched. Another detail Samaritan could just never get right. "Can't we do both?"
"Both?" Root swallowed, face buried in Shaw's unbound hair. "Yeah. Both is good."
The End.