Root has never been one to wake up slowly. Even as a child, the second her brain came out of sleep she was firing on all cylinders, ready to get up and go. This time is no different, and she opens her eyes, frowning as she discovers darkness. The power is back on she knows, because she can hear the low level hum that is ever present in a city, especially one the size of New York. Her next thought is that maybe there's something over her face; she's spent a certain amount of time in blindfolds in her time, both for jobs and for… recreational purposes, so she reaches up, intending to brush the offending object away.
Her horror as she realises that there isn't anything there is unlike anything she's ever known. Control and her syringes and scalpels couldn't have come close to the terror that runs through her body, dumping adrenaline and causing her to sit up with a start, frantically rubbing at her eyes in an attempt to make them work again. It takes her a second to register pain as well, on the top half of her face and a lot like a very bad sunburn. Suddenly a pair of hands are there, gentle enough but with an iron grip and pulling her hands away.
"Don't," says Shaw. She releases one of Root's arms and turns the other over, fiddling with something that Root finally realises is an IV. She hadn't even felt it pull in her haste to figure out what was wrong with her eyes.
"Shaw? Where am I? Where is she?" Root is almost hyperventilating with anxiety.
"You're safe, Root. And I'm not sure where she isn't, at this point, but what else is new. She's there though. You can't hear her?" Something touches the hair by her right ear and Root flinches violently, brushing at it. "Shit, sorry, that was me," Shaw says. "Guess the explosion must've knocked out the electronics in that earpiece. We can get you a new one."
Shaw's hand disappears and Root hears her moving away, then back. "Gonna put this in your left ear." The machine is talking before the ear bud is even settled, and at least now Root has a bit of an idea of her surroundings, though the absolute darkness is still terrifying.
"How long was I out?" Shaw answers 'six days' at the same time as the Machine gives her a similar response.
"Oops, you were probably asking her, huh?"
"Am I going to stay blind?" This time nobody answers her. "Somebody answer me here."
"I… We aren't sure." Shaw sounds troubled. "Technically you shouldn't even be here Root. To be honest, I thought you'd be knocking on the Pearly gates or taking over running Hell by now. That explosion threw you a good six hundred yards. Ya know, you're supposed to wait until you're out of range before blowing shit up. At least, that's what they preach in the Marines."
"I didn't have time. I thought it would kill me, not leave me like this." There are tears welling in Root's eyes, and she tries to brush at them angrily before Shaw once again stops her hands. "Let go," Root says, pulling.
"Look, if your eyes aren't completely FUBAR you need to let them heal. The more you rub them the more damage you'll do. So try not to touch them." Shaw lets go of Root's hands for the second time, and then places a box of tissues in them.
"Harold?" Root asks quietly, trying to find some way to distract herself.
"He's fine. The same can't be said for Collier or Greer though, they're dead. Control got away, more's the pity."
Root tries to swing her legs over the side of the bed and barks her knee against something, a table, maybe. "Ow!"
"What the… where the Hell do you think you're going?" Shaw demands, hands against Root's shoulders and trying to press her back down onto the bed.
"Leave me alone, let me go," Root insists, brushing at the other woman's hands. "I don't want your help. You should have just let me die."
"Well I didn't. And I'm not going to. If you don't settle down I will sedate your ass though. Don't frigging test me." Shaw swings Root's legs back up onto the bed.
"She'll be my eyes, at least enough to keep me from getting run over in the street. You don't need to look after me. You got Harold back, you got what you wanted, so let me leave. I'm not your prisoner and I'm sure as Hell not going to be much help here."
"Is that what you think? That we're just helping you because we feel like we owe you something? Jesus, I thought Harold said you lectured him about teamwork. You should know better." Shaw is genuinely pissed off.
"Right," replies Root, incredulously. "I'm sure John and Harold are just full of the warm fuzzies about having me around. Though it probably feels good to know I won't be causing them more trouble in the future."
"First, Harold's been here with you every day whenever I couldn't, and John's been standing guard like you were his first born or something. Second, I wouldn't give a shit if they didn't want you here, because it's not their call. I'm the one with the most medical training, so I get to make the decision. And third… Warm fuzzies?" Shaw's tone is skeptical, and Root really wishes she could see the expression on the other woman's face.
"It's a thing," Root defends. "That warm tickly feeling in your chest when you see something cute like a puppy."
"I must've been absent the day that issued that emotion," Shaw replies. Then after a second she adds "Along with most of them."
Root looks as lost as Shaw has ever seen her, more even than the time she lost contact with the Machine and simultaneously had a bullet put through her shoulder by Shaw. The look on her face does funny things to Shaw's insides, which is maybe why she decides to offer her an olive branch. "Look, behave for a few minutes while I take your vitals and I'll let you get up and walk around."
"Do I really have a choice?" The despair in the statement is palpable. Root stays still while Shaw spends a couple of minutes taking her pulse and listening to her chest with a stethoscope. Any other time she'd make a comment about Shaw finding any excuse at all to get into her clothes, except flirting is the farthest thing from her mind. She wonders if Shaw has figured out exactly why she was so over the top in the first place.
Yes, she likes the other woman, but she was also using the comments as a challenge, one that she knew Shaw couldn't back away from. Root pushed, hoping Shaw would push back, keeping Root at arm's length. It was supposed to make it easier for Shaw when Root died. That plan is obviously toast. Even blind, Root can feel the tenderness in Shaw's hands that says she's upset that Root was hurt, that she wasn't able to stop it.
"How can I be her eyes and ears if I have no eyes and only one ear myself?" The question is mostly rhetorical. But again, she gets two different answers.
The first answer is from the Machine, a sentence made from a dozen different conversations, but nonetheless feeling like nothing so much as a severe scolding. Root can't help but draw a connection to, of all things, the second Transformers movie when Bumblebee is giving Sam hell about wanting to go it alone. The gist of the message is that Root is more than just an asset to the Machine, that she's being ridiculous in assuming that that is the only reason the Machine talks to her, and that if she wants to sulk she can because the Machine has more than enough patience to wait until she digs her head out of her ass.
Shaw is starting to learn the facial expressions that signal the Machine talking to Root and waits until it appears that Root's God has shut up before speaking. "If she's finished giving you shit now, it's my turn. Here's a fact you probably don't want to hear Root, but fuck it. I'm going to say it anyway. You aren't a machine. You aren't a computer. You, like all the rest of us, are a fragile human. You annoy the crap out of people a lot of the time but are nevertheless relevant to this team. We need you with us. Harold can't do everything, and the Machine only speaks directly to you. The extra time I gain when you give me info instead of Harold having to dig it out has saved my life more than once."
"There are a lot of people in this world that have disabilities. You can either sulk about the fact that something was taken away, or you can be grateful you were born in a time when computers come with ease of access options, where you can get a keyboard with Braille on it and still be a part of this fight." Shaw pauses for a second, then sighs at the tears that are starting again in Root's eyes. "I'm sorry you were hurt. I wish I could have stopped it. Somehow, despite pissing me off and tasing me and drugging me and generally being a pain in my ass, I've ended up liking you. If you don't believe it ask John. I called you my friend when I was talking to Hersh, and trust me, that isn't something that I do easily."
Root closes her eyes for a second, a reflex action even though they aren't sending her any information anyway. A couple of deep breaths later she opens them again, and if they can't see anymore, they still communicate quite well. Determination has replaced the hopelessness, at least for now.
"Get me a computer."
Title is a quote from Helen Keller, seemed particularly appropriate given the subject of the fic. This is mostly in the desperate hope that they don't kill off Root in the season finale. Joss Whedon instilled the fear in me that no character is safe, and I just got used to having Amy Acker on tv every week again...
I don't own them...