Author's Note: Hey there! I really enjoyed writing this, and I figured if I was having fun, maybe someone else might too! Hope you enjoy reading this, and if you wanna make a girl happy, leave me a little comment once you're done. And if you're a busy lady or a busy gent, I get it! Have a nice day, everybody :)

Root's boot soles pounded into the pavement. She tore across the street. Headlights flowed over her black coat and brown hair. Cars hissed to a stop and the drivers pounded their horns, but Root kept running after him. She pursued her target into a dark alleyway drenched with the smell of piss and metal, and she thought she had him when he came to a ragged halt in front of a chain link fence. A smirk stretched along Root's face. Her gun rose up to eye level. The trigger was halfway in when there was a loud shove behind her. In the darkness, she hadn't even seen that there was a door leading out into the alley. Two men hopped through it, shoulders stiff, arms out to their sides. Before Root could do anything, she was surrounded. The man she had been chasing was stalking towards her now; she was the hunted. She saw a metallic flash in the meager lighting and knew that he had a knife in his hand. Well, she thought, feeling her pulse accelerate. This complicates things.

She jerked her left elbow back, making contact with some part of one of the goons' bodies. Her right arm pointed her gun out again and she pulled the trigger as fast as she could, but a burly hand latched onto her bicep from behind and made her shot go askew. Her heart rate tripled. She felt her chest thrumming with anxiety, and though she couldn't see much, she could feel everything: the hard, unforgiving contact of the ground against her back as she was thrown down, the vibrations of the men's laughs against her braille skin, and the red-hot impact of a bludgeoning fist against her face.

Root saw black and red and the reflection of the moon in a wet spot on the ground that smelled like gasoline. She kicked out, jerked her limbs this way and that to avoid being restrained. She knew that if these three men got as far as holding her down, she was done for. No back up was coming. Once she actually hit something she found the opportunity to point the gun in her hand just by twisting her wrist off the ground. She fired three times and, according to a sudden outcry, hit someone. There was a brief cessation of battering. It felt like Root's kicked-in abdomen was going to burst. There was one man still holding onto her, his leg holding her down while he raised one arm to punch her. Root twisted her head away, but the movement put her left shoulder squarely under the man's falling fist. She screamed against the pain. It came down like a sledgehammer. Panic flaring, she swung her free arm with all of her strength and terror, and she dug her gun into the side of his head.

Root's brain was telling her to scramble away, but all she could do was roll onto her knees then rise unsteadily onto her feet. She staggered a few feet away, bracing her back against the alleyway wall, and shot the man she had just whipped. And then she shot them once more each for good measure.

She wasted no time in patting down the three dying men. "Where's the flash drive?" she barked, her voice hoarse and raw, like the wound forming on her face. His only response was to cough blood at her, dotting Root's bruised skin with flecks of red. She pushed his face away with the point of her gun and continued to check his pockets. She felt a small object, cool and smooth, and despite it all she tilted her head to the side in her coy, happy way and smiled to herself.

She tried to take a deep breath but it felt like her lungs were trying to break through her rib cage. Her breath grated against her pain, and she suddenly had to stagger back over to the wall to hold herself up. One hand clutched at her abdomen where she had been kicked several times. Her heart quivered in her chest. In the back of her mind she noted the feeling of warm blood drizzling from her nose, but she was too panicked by her buckling legs. She had to get out of the alleyway, she had to find her way to some safe place before she collapsed. Root hobbled out of the alleyway, still holding onto the corner of the building for support. She looked around the street for a familiar blinking red light or a payphone, anything to remind her that she was not alone.

And then she heard Her voice, and Root smiled before she even knew what The Machine was saying.

Root had almost forgotten that she enjoyed the simple things. Apparently it took multiple near-death experiences to get a girl to appreciate life's little luxuries, like the delicate wisp of steam billowing up from her cup of tea cradling her chin; the feeling of a paperback in her fingers. But Root wasn't one to idle; it had taken a direct command from The Machine to get its most dedicated operative to recuperate. "Romeo, ampersand, Romeo. Romeo, ampersand, Romeo." The first thing Root had was stare up at the nearest video camera and say in a syrupy tone, "Sweet of you to worry, but I'd feel better if I had something productive to do." But The Machine gave her the same command. Root couldn't gauge whether The Machine was telling Root to back off for her own good or because Root might start doing shoddy work in her condition— or, well, continue to.

She hadn't been on her A-game, that much Root could admit without feeling ashamed of herself, but she knew that to stop there would be dishonest by omission. In the week since Control interrogated Root, The Machine had her running around the streets of New York stealing, blue-jacking, and fighting one person or another. Root was successful with each mission, but she was never quite fast enough to avoid the extra scrapes her operations dealt her. Matter of fact, her lip pulsated painfully when she brought her teacup up to her mouth. She winced, setting the hot drink back down on her table. The pain made her feel a sudden heaviness in her hematoma-marred shoulders. Root set her book down tent-style. She no longer had the energy to read or process anything that wasn't directly triggering her fight-or-flight instincts. The Machine had been unspecific about how much time Root should alot to rest, but "resting" only made Root feel worse. Having a purpose at her heels like hot coals was the only thing keeping her from shutting down. But she had to admit that kind of relentlessness would eventually run her into the ground, and so Root found herself sitting in Donnie's Teatopia, resting her head against the cool drizzly window, fighting the urge to fall asleep...


Shaw laced her fingers together and stretched them far out in front of her, rewarding her and Reese with the peppery sound of her knuckles cracking. She flexed her neck left and right. "Feels good to kick ass," she affirmed, bouncing her weight from foot to foot. Reese side-eyed her buoyancy. He only ever saw Shaw that way after she kicked someone's ass in a particularly spectacular way. He made a small catch-me-if-you-can sort of smile. She pretended not to notice.

Impatiently, she asked, "And where's the lunch you promised?"

"Right," Reese said. He turned his body barely five degrees towards Shaw. "Lionel's catering."

Shaw narrowed her eyes. "Lionel? Really? He has better taste in clothes than food, and we both know..." Her words fizzed out as the aforementioned detective made his appearance. He was marching down the sidewalk with a brown bag swinging in his paw. Shaw noticed a smudge on the lapel of his suit that wasn't there before. He had a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

"You keep nagging me about my lack of cultural exposure, well, here you go." He dug a hand into the bag and produced a long pudgy mass wrapped in tin foil. "Beef burrito."

Shaw's head swung forward incredulously, but she snatched the warm food item out of his hands. Unwrapping it, she muttered, "Really, Fusco, this is your idea of being worldly? Look, this isn't even— this is just a shit pile of baked beans and unidentifiable meat wrapped in a tortilla." Fusco's eyebrows went slanted and his mouth sank into a grimace, but Shaw was already turned around and walking down the street. She liked a good burrito like any reasonable carnivore, but Lionel had just handed her the inedible, bleeding Edsel of all Tex-Mex.

Fusco shook his head, then held the greasy bag out to Reese. Instead of uttering his refusal out loud, Reese just focused his eyes on Shaw, who had just chucked the collapsing brown mass into a nearby trash can.

It was cold in the city, and the wind that day whipped between the buildings with extra indignation. Shaw wanted to stick her cold, greasy hands in her pockets but knew better. Instead, they chilled and cracked at her sides. She kept her eyes out for a place where she could boost some napkins without there being a cashier to guilt trip her into buying something, but Shaw had apparently set off down the one street in New York that wasn't lined with food carts. Eventually, she came upon some hipstery tea shop, Donnie's Teatopia. And when she looked in the window something other than napkins caught her eye, and she knew suddenly that it could be no coincidence.

She saw Root sitting inside at a booth. Her brown hair was cascading out the bottom of her knitted hat, head leaning against a window befogged at the corners by frost. She had a dullness to her eyes that Shaw had never seen before, had never even suspected Root was able to possess; after all, The Machine's pet had an extraordinarily— and infuriatingly— unbreakable spirit. More concerning was the fact that Root hadn't even noticed Shaw walk into Donnie's Teatopia, and that Root visibly jumped when Shaw sat down across from her.

"Root," Shaw grunted, part greeting, part warning, mostly just an acknowledgment that something must be wrong. She clawed out a napkin from the dispenser at Root's table. "What is it now?" She mashed her hand into the greyish napkin and then crumpled it up in her hand.

The winter light pooling in through the window had a thick shimmering quality to it. It settled coldly on Root's skin, which Shaw noted looked paler than usual. There were purple-red bags under those eyes that were lacking their usual amber glimmer. But then, after Root focused her vision on the operative across the table from her, a small spark of liveliness returned to her features as she bent her lips into a smirk.

"If you wanted to get a coffee with me, you could've just asked," Root joked in her sickening, saccharine way. Shaw's brow twitched in annoyance.

"It's tea."

"Sometimes I forget how sharp you are, Sameen," the hacker sent back, her smirk breaking into a self-satisfied grin, "but never for long." She dared a wink, and when Shaw gave her a whip-like sneer, Root had to look away to control her laugh. It was never hard for her to get a reaction out of Shaw. Shaw watched the amusement bubble up in Root's throat and escape in three light giggles— and there, again, was the sparkle in her eyes. Root almost looked like her normal self, just anemic and injured.

Shaw looked out the window at anything else.

"Seriously, Root. What's going on?" Root sobered up, speculative eyes trained on Shaw. "There's no such thing as coincidences." There was a pause, and then Root gave a small laugh that was more relieved than mischievous. Her eyes cast down to the table as her two hands went to cradle her steaming cup of tea, sleeves pulled over her fingers. She went to sip the warm drink, carefully this time, and she managed to avoid aggravating her bruised lip. The warm steam felt good on her face. She held the cup under her chin while she spoke.

"Well, if you didn't receive any instructions from Her to come find me, then this really is just a..." She gave her head a jaunty tilt. "Happy coincidence." She smiled, because she knew Shaw wouldn't call it that. "I'm just taking a break, Shaw." Shaw said nothing, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms over her navel. Maybe she'd believe her.

Her eyes flicked around the area. The tea place was dimly lit, almost excessively so; she wondered if the owners were going for a nice ambiance or if they were just trying to cut back on their electrical bill. There was a dark iron furnace against the wall behind Root's seat, belching out warm air that Shaw could feel a little too intensely on her cheeks. At least a dozen people were in the room, half of them coupled up with somebody with whom they spoke, laughed, took photos with. Shaw watched one clean and pearly couple cradle together as the man reached his arm up to point his phone down at him and his girl. She watched them plaster on their picture smiles.

Shaw's eyes fell on the book on Root's table. The Rainy Day Anthology of American Short Stories. She wondered which one Root was reading, and then reminded herself that it was unimportant. She probably wouldn't know it, anyway. And if she was dumb enough to ask, she was sure Root would find some way to produce an obnoxious innuendo— because it was Root, after all— and then proceed to never shut up about it.

They made brief eye contact, and she saw the corner of the hacker's mouth twitch downwards. Root looked down at her book, and all of a sudden her expression folded in on itself in a grave, contemplative way. Her lips separated just a little bit as her eyes went to no place in particular while some occupying thought wracked her mind. Then, Root scooped up the book and pulled it under the table onto her lap just to get it out of view, out of her thoughts.

Shaw squirmed. She didn't like feeling like she had perpetrated Root's discomfort. Shaw thought briefly about saying something to lighten the mood— Reading something saucy, Root?— but she knew that would only be digging a hole for herself. Besides, Root was quick to recover, already straightening out her posture and giving Sameen that impish smile a little too perfectly for it to be harmless.

Shaw went on the offensive. "So this is what you do in your free time." She pointed her chin towards the general quiet bustle of the café and all the sedate normalcy it embodied, keeping her eyes on Root for her reaction. Root shrugged— and hissed in pain. One small wrinkle showed itself between her eyebrows. She was stiff for a moment, then settled back against the booth. She let her head loll back, staring up at the hanging snowball lights. Shaw glimpsed the cords of Root's neck, drawn tightly like a bow.
"I don't usually have free time," she pointed out, "and right now I have a few too many restrictions to enjoy myself the way I normally would." The tiredness slipped away from her countenance for a moment, replaced by a smirk. She tilted her head to look Shaw in the eye. Shaw saw the simper and knew Root had to be stopped. "Of course, you could always help entertain me—"

"Alright," Shaw interrupted immediately, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling. She shook her head back and forth.

"Alright?" Root parroted, eyebrows raised facetiously, taking great joy in turning the other woman's words around on her. Shaw narrowed her eyes at Root.

"'Alright' as in 'shut up.'" Root was still smiling, so Shaw pressed on. "What happened to your face?" Her eyes scrolled around the pale brunette's features. There was a plum shadow about her lower lip, twin-like to to her tired eyes, and a small red split as well. Root's coat concealed any other bodily injuries, but Shaw hadn't missed Root's earlier discomfort.

Root tried to smile the matter away. "Couple tokens from work. You know how it goes." She took a sip from her tea, not interested in the drink itself really, just the warmth and the distraction. Shaw knew Root must have gotten more than just a couple of nicks and bruises here and there if it was inhibiting her normal attitude: chipper and unbearably overzealous.

Shaw supposed she should enjoy Root's more subdued behavior, but she was surprised to find that she didn't. Actually, she was discomforted by the fact that that there was something else wrong with Root, something she couldn't specifically identify. She knew, at least, that it was mental, maybe even emotional, and more importantly, she knew she'd rather not be responsible for mending those wounds. Or any of Root's wounds, she reminded herself.

But she had to admit that Root was important to the war against Decima. She mulled over how she could most comfortably go about ensuring The Machine's favorite puppet was performing at peak efficiency. Meanwhile, a silence settled over them, and Root felt the need to break it. "Worried about me, Shaw?" she asked, falling back on her tried and true lighten-up-the-mood-by-provoking-Shaw strategy.

"No," Shaw replied instantly, but then: "but I am concerned about how we're going to beat Samaritan if you don't stop getting the shit beaten out of you." She paused, wondering if that was too blunt. She allowed a short pause to gauge Root's reaction. There was none. "What happened?"

Root thought about giving a vague answer, but she didn't want to risk Shaw's ire. Normally she'd have fun with it, but she suddenly felt too exhausted to play. She sighed through her nares, resting her against the cool glass. Her hat shifted. Shaw watched as Root's pale hand quickly snapped up to her right ear to pull it back over her implant. "Well, at the crack of dawn this morning there were three thugs when I expected one." Shaw gave her a critical look, knowing that alone wouldn't be enough to stop anyone in Finch's little team, spurring Root to quickly add in her own defense, "I was still recovering from an earlier injury, alright?"

Shaw paused, realizing. "The stapedectomy." She watched Root's eyes go narrow, like she was squinting to make out the meaning of something. She chewed the bottom of a pink lip.

"The torture," Root corrected after a moment of silence, and she kept her eyes far away from Shaw's. "I've been completely exhausted. I haven't really felt awake since it happened. Going through the motions and what-not."

Root's eyelids were gradually slipping farther down her tourmaline eyes, and her lips just barely hung open. Shaw leaned forward, right hand on the table. "Root?" The dozing hacker blinked a half dozen times then refocused her vision on Shaw. She found genuine concern coloring the operative's face, and although Root suddenly felt intensely groggy, she couldn't help but feel charmed at the same time. She smiled across the table, perplexing Shaw with her constantly shifting mood. "Come on, you lunatic," she muttered in her disinterested, overcast way. "Let's get you home. Wherever that is." She stood up and shifted out from behind the table, but then she crossed her arms at Root as if to say, But I'm not gonna hold your hand.

Root gave a wistful twinkle of a laugh. "Texas," she said fondly, thinking of her mother's home in Bishop. She wondered how the new family might have changed the place. When she stood up, she tucked her hands in the pockets of her coat and bumped Shaw's arm with her own. She scooped her neck down a bit to get closer to eye level with Sameen and confided with an effervescent smile, "But you can just walk me back to my hotel."

They stepped out into the raw air. The wind was so cold that it felt sharp against their skin. Shaw sank her head between her stiff, raised shoulders, and Root thought she looked a bit like a turtle retreating into its shell. If that turtle was a pretty woman, anyway. And perpetually scowling.

"So what have you been up to?" Root queried casually as they set off down the sidewalk. She liked to pretend they were just two people ambling through the city, maybe even tourists who were just glad to be privileged enough to see the world. But Root didn't go anywhere just for fun anymore. Hell, even her "me time" at Donnie's was just another one of The Machine's orders. But it entertained her, maybe even a little too much, to envision her and Shaw leading different lives.

"Helping Reese and Finch with a number," Shaw replied. "Well, three numbers. One ordered hits on the other two, some girls barely out of college."

"They're starting young," Root remarked, more concerned than joking.

Shaw chuckled to herself. "You're one to talk, Little Miss Sunshine. Didn't you hank a bank or something when you were, like, ten?"

Root's eyes twinkled while a smile took over her face. "I was a little older than that," she objected, feigning offense. Shaw shook her head, amused. "Besides, it was for a good cause. What did your numbers get themselves into?"

Root was surprised to see Shaw's face darken at the question. It took the hacker a moment to name the expression since she didn't see Shaw's version of it much: sympathy. And it was mixed with a familiar one, too: anger. "They were just trying to put themselves through school," Shaw clipped. "Neither of them came from any money. The guy who ordered the hit said he'd pay if he could— videotape them. Regularly." Her upper lip was bent, disgusted.

Root was confused for just a second, and then she understood. "Sick fuck," she muttered, hands tightening into fists inside her coat. "I'm guessing they wanted out."

Shaw nodded. "But they couldn't go to the police, so Reese left Detective Riley behind and we sorted things out with the hitmen."

They checked for cars, then crossed the street.

"And the two girls?" Root asked.

"Safehouses. And Finch told them he'd cover their tuition."

Shaw smiled. It felt good to see good come out of work she had done. With Control, it was always about killing before someone else could, sparing the American people a lot of suffering but technically leaving things just as they were before. There was no meeting the families she and her partner had personally saved and seeing that they were glad to still be alive. Granted, Shaw wasn't big on being caretaker to a bunch of overemotional would-be victims, and she didn't do her job just so she could pat herself on the back every night. But she had to admit that it felt great to help build a future for someone who really needed. In addition to snuffing out a worthless lowlife.

Root picked up on the subtle changes in Shaw's demeanor: the way her eyes softened just a little bit, how she dipped her head down when she smiled. The taller woman couldn't help but feel happy for Shaw and, for some reason, felt a sort of pride for her as well. "Attagirl, Sameen," she praised. "Harry and Johnny Boy seem to be rubbing off on you." Shaw looked up at her, trying halfheartedly to disguise her previous expression with unamused deadpan. "But don't worry. You've still got your misanthropic charm." Shaw laughed, pleased with Root's remark for once. Or maybe she was just in a forgiving mood. Root couldn't tell, but she didn't care much either. She just liked to see Shaw's reserved little smiles.

"Think I can get Finch to give me Golden Boy of the Month?"

Root laughed at the joke and leaned towards her copmanion's ear like she was about to share some scandalous intel. "No," she whispered, and Shaw's neck flushed with goose bumps. The shorter woman scolded herself for still not being entirely resistant to Root's little jabs. "But if you wanted a reward, you could've just asked me."

Shaw came to a stop. Busy New Yorkers rushed around her like a river running over rocks, completely unconcerned with the going-ons of the little fish so long as it kept flowing downstream. "I'm not gonna walk you home if you keep talking like that," Sameen warned. Root wondered what it would take to get her to play along someday.

"We're here, actually." Root looked up the length of the Park South hotel. Its maroon brick upper half sat atop cheap-looking white pillars. More importantly, it was an inconspicuous establishment, and it was owned by people who had an especially earnest respect for guests' privacy, which Root appreciated. Her spare P320 and Glock 42 sitting on her bed didn't like to be walked in on. "I've got a hot bath and a martini with my name on it," Root sang. R&R didn't seem so bad to her when she was too exhausted to walk any farther. "I might even be able to sleep if I have enough of them."

Shaw had pointed her toes to leave, but something invisible held her back a moment. She gnawed at her lip while she debated if she should say what she felt compelled to, or if she should just take her leave in silence.

Several years ago, Shaw had been where Root currently stood: her first torture, or rather, the first torture actually inflicted onto her. The man next to her in the dark, dank cellar broke— he hadn't even lasted half an hour— and when the torturers disposed of his body they decided they were bored and wouldn't let Shaw's go to waste. And so the cutting and bludgeoning persisted for nine more hours.

Sameen's chest inflated as she took a deep breath, then sank when she let out a depressurizing sigh. "Look, Root." She forced herself to gaze straight into the hacker's now quizzical brown eyes. There was a mournfulness to Sameen's sudden severity, and Root was both unsettled and intrigued. Shaw's mouth hung open as she tried to discern what to say and what not to say. She hadn't really thought that far, and besides, she never knew how people would take the things she said. She shook her head, frustrated, and glared up at the grey sky.

Root knew the merciful thing to do would be to tell Shaw that it was okay, that she didn't have to say whatever it was she was trying to say if she couldn't figure out how. But Root desperately wanted to hear whatever it was that caught in Shaw's mouth. She decided she would compromise. She reached out, first to grab Shaw's hand— a reflex, but she decided against it and opted to tape Shaw's right arm with the back of her right hand. "Hey," she said, her confusion permeating her voice in a tenuous drawl. She waited for Shaw to look at her, and then she asked, "Would it be easier to do this with drinks in our hands?" She tried to thaw out the tension of whatever was going on in Shaw's mind with an innocent smile; no flirtation, just patience. "I'll buy."

Shaw just wanted to forget about it and leave Root to her own devices. I patched myself together all by myself when it happened to me. She can do it, too, she thought. But Shaw actually knew better. And she liked the idea of free alcohol.

"You had me at drinks," she said, smirking.