Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Person of Interest.


She looks exactly like Fred, only completely different. Not Illyria, different with the blue hair and inhuman body but different still in a way that completely unmistakable. Her eyes are sharper like she can see into your mind and knows exactly how to destroy you. Her smile is nothing like Fred's, it looks like it, but it has a harsh undertone that makes him stop short.

However, her smile isn't aimed at him and before he knows it she is shooting at something behind him. He turns to face the threat to see that someone has followed him to New York where he had been picking up a powerful artifact and has apparently decided he was better off dead than getting it. How rather unexpected.

She puts her hand on his arm and pulls him in a direction but doesn't turn to check to see if he's actually going, instead, she's still shooting at the guys firing at the two of them. So very like Illyria but with Fred's eyes and face and here he thought he had come to New York to escape even if just for a brief period having to deal with Illyria. She pushes him into going another direction but at this point, he's hardly paying attention to anything but the gunfire or her face, Fred's face. He's pushed again but he catches the smile on her face like she happy to be there narrowly missing bullets eviscerating their insides, very Illyria like and for a second he wonders if Illyria followed him and has changed herself to look like Fred. But it's not her fighting style, he realizes, especially after they retreat into a building and around the corner from their would-be killers.

"I could really use some backup," she says. To him? Does she want his help? Only it doesn't really seem like she speaking to him...even though he's the only one there. Only apparently he's not because not much later there's grunting coming from around the corner and then a man he's never seen walks into the room. Fred seems to know him and smiles at him.

The two apparently help people and they put him in a safe house when they figure out that if someone wants him dead they're probably not going to stop at just one attempt. The man is apparently out there looking for his would-be killers or attempting something to get them to stop what they are trying to do.

The woman on the other hand...introduces herself as Root. Not Fred, not Illyria but Root. He wonders if fate had cursed him even as he cannot take his eyes off the women who didn't seem to recognize him in the slightest. She had saved his life, but it appeared it was something that she routinely did and he was no different than any of the others she had offered her services in the past. The women-Root was paying him no attention and instead appeared to be trying to hack something with enough focus that either she didn't notice his stare or didn't care.

It only makes him miss Fred more, the woman looks just like Fred like that. In fact, if he ignores everything that he learned he can almost see her as Fred. In fact, with a little effort, the strong women who saved him is now his Fred...his dear Fred.

For a little while, he can pretend. Pretend that this is Fred and that no time has passed.