Days had turned into weeks, weeks into months, it all blurred together like a mandala made up solely of the insipid colours of North Dakota snow and sludge. The snowflakes came down in a thick heavy dusting as she drove back from the police station, head lamps lighting up the pitch-dark roads back to their little slice of suburbia.
The lights were on in the master bedroom as she pulled into the driveway and it was an unusual sign. Normally, Root went to her pretend job and lived her pretend life and came home to their pretend baby, fed her and put her to sleep under the roof of their pretend house, worked a little with George on getting them back to New York and then passed out asleep before Shaw finally came home and gave up avoiding them all for another day.
She was greeted to the sounds of tiny howling squeals that drifted from somewhere upstairs and the sight of George hunched up attempting to sleep with a blanket wrapped around him on the sofa where she normally slept.
"Hey, Freckles, what the hell do you think you're doing?" she kicked off her boots and glared at him through the hallway.
"The baby is sick. Root took the day off work but the noise is keeping me awake." he shrugged and sat up. "Came down here to catch some sleep."
"Tough shit, move now. That's my spot." she growled like a territorial animal.
"If you want any chance of going home, I need to be well rested so I can—"
"So you can do what exactly? Sit around jacking it off to hentai porn all day while we're at work?" she crossed her arms, "Move. Now."
"So I can figure out how to hack the mainframe and hard-code Samaritan so we can all get out of here alive." he stared her down, "Aren't you supposed to be like a doctor or something?"
"Once upon a time."
"She's not doing great…"
"Root can handle the baby." Sameen sighed and rubbed her brow.
"I wasn't talking about the baby. I mean, the baby is sick, but Root is all kinds of messed up about it." his voice tapered off quietly and he looked away from Sameen's predator-like stare. "Maybe you should go and check it out."
Shaw rolled her eyes and climbed the stairs in a perfectly cool manner. She didn't scramble up each stair, didn't call Root's name, didn't rush to her side and promise to fix whatever it was that was wrong. Instead she walked across the corridor towards the deafening sound of tiny squeals, knocked the bedroom door and waited patiently.
"Root, you in there?" Shaw said awkwardly.
There was no reply and so she let herself in to the battleground. Tiny clothes littered the bedroom floor along with all kinds of baby-paraphernalia; mainly bottles and pacifiers and spit-up rags. Root sat in the rocking chair in the corner where the wall met the window, rocking and humming with a swaddled lump in her arms that she hushed tenderly.
"Root?" Shaw cleared her throat and stepped towards her. "You need back up?" she eyed the baby in their ward.
"No, I can handle this." she scolded her quickly before humming once more.
Her hair was wrapped in a bun and she sat in her pyjamas, tending to a thankless little screaming terror who would never recognise her devotion: much like the Machine in that regard and the thought made Sameen smirk.
"Let me take a look at her." Shaw rolled her eyes and reached out for the baby with deft hands.
"I said no!" Root's voice shook and she hunched her body around the swaddled infant protectively. She was wild eyed, looking the sociopath up and down with a deep glare.
Normally Shaw would roll her eyes, normally she would shrug it off, normally she'd be thankful for the sanctioned opportunity to flee back to a safe distance from the child. But that was entirely the trouble when it came to Samantha Groves. She inspired the absolutely abnormal.
"It's okay." Shaw swallowed and tried to pacify her, "Whatever it is that's going on with you. It's okay." she nodded over the shrieking sound of the howling baby.
"I can do this." Root gritted her teeth and clawed back a pained whimper that she wouldn't let wet her cheeks.
"I know," Shaw nodded and stepped closer. "But you know the upside of us being trapped in some cesspit in North Dakota?"
"Enlighten me." Root bit and pulled the baby up to her shoulder, rubbing her back with a thumb that tended to it's ministrations with the utmost gentleness.
"We're in it together." Shaw swallowed and was finally close enough to reach out and wrap her hands around the baby's chubby little tummy. "There, see?" she swallowed and gently pried the baby out of Root's arms. "I'm just going to take a look at her…"
Shaw cradled the baby with her head in the nook of her elbow and sat down on the edge of the bed. It was strange how naturally it happened, without forethought or preparation.
"Hi," she whispered down and ran her finger around Miller's neck, "You're a little swollen." she hummed and examined her a little closer. "And a little congested." she noted at the sound of wheezy sobs from her tiny chest.
"Do we need to go to the hospital?" Root nearly chewed her fingers off.
"No." Shaw said and peered up at her with a stony facade. "She has a mean cold, but a cold none the less."
"She hasn't stopped crying for… for hours." Root shook her head and her hands were shaky. "I kept thinking: she's in pain and it's all my fault." she blinked away little tears.
"Okay, well, mystery solved." Shaw sighed, "Go get me a warm wet cloth."
"What?"
"Just do it." she rolled her eyes and carried the baby deftly in one arm to the other side of the bed. She plumped up pillows and cursed under her breath whilst Miller made long mewing sounds from her spot in Shaw's elbow.
…
There was a silence that felled the house. Absolute and reverent. The only thing that disturbed it was the wheezy breathy snores of the baby fast asleep on Shaw's chest.
"I hate kids." Shaw shuddered quietly and stared straight ahead of herself as the diapered baby slept with a cheek pressed against the space between her collarbones with a hot wet cloth pressed to her back loosening the mucus off her lungs.
"Motherhood suites you." Root teased through a sloping smile with an elbow dug into the mattress.
"Next time I'm getting a motel for the night."
"You're free to leave any time." Root gestured for the door but Shaw kept her ground on the bed and simply closed her eyes.
"If you think for a second I'm risking waking this baby—"
"Miller." Root interrupted her with a deep and longing stare. "Stop emotionally distancing yourself like she's not a real person. She is - albeit very tiny." she conceded the last part and ran her thumb over all five of the snowdrop toes on her foot.
"I'm a sociopath; I don't need to emotionally distance myself from anything."
"You were in a Samaritan torture camp for nine months and you never broke once. Now, you're lying here with a baby asleep on your chest and you haven't even noticed you've been rubbing her back for the last forty-five minutes. You're a pretty bad sociopath."
Shaw quickly pulled her hand off the child's back and hid it beside her like she could take it back. "We could be here for a long time, Root. We're talking years of deep-cover. You can't get too attached to this kid…"
"Too late." Root barely mouthed as she stared adoringly at the little girl.
"Don't make that face." Shaw shuddered. "I always imagined you being a cat kind of person, definitely not kids."
"You clearly have me pegged all wrong." Root curled up and there was a dampness to her.
"You going to tell me what that was all about earlier?"
"Are you going to tell me why you've been ignoring me since you came back from South Africa?" Root shrugged it off and tucked her feet beneath herself.
"Let's just say I'm still getting acquainted with reality." she swallowed and the baby on top of her chest wrinkled her nose and sneezed before settling back down into something that resembled sleep. "Gross." she whispered with a scrunched up face and wiped down the snot from her shoulder. "And you? What's your deal?"
"I had a baby, once." Root said without hesitation and glanced away, she looked at the ceiling and the floor and everything in between that wasn't Sameen and chewed her lip. "Long time ago." she forced a little smile and looked back at her.
"Shit." Shaw blinked and found herself at a loss.
"Yeah." Root nodded in agreement and rolled on her back until she was staring at the ceiling. "Shit."
"What happened?"
"Teenage girl on the run, growing up underground, crashing on sofas were I could? I was lonely… and stupid." she shook her head and blinked, "I was sixteen and met this guy. His name was Billy but his friends called him Viper." she rolled her eyes at the nickname, as if she could go back in time and lecture her younger-self on things you can only learn from experience from guys who called themselves nicknames like Viper. "He was older, much older, worked in a computer hardware store and drove a beat up wrangler that his dad bought him." she smirked.
"Sounds like a real classic romance, Root."
"It was... until it wasn't; nine months later I was curled up in a gas station bathroom going into labour with a black eye and two cracked ribs that didn't get there from bumping into a door and Viper had skipped town."
"This is officially the worst story ever." Shaw sneered and swallowed. She did her best to hide any facet of emotion, she did it so well she even tricked herself for a moment, but then Root's throat quivered and her hand flexed back and forth into a little fist and Shaw felt a sickness rise up in her chest at the thought of anyone ever hurting a hair on her head. "What happened?" Shaw finally pried after a moment of silence.
"Nothing." Root shrugged and discretely dried her eyes.
"What the hell do you mean nothing?"
"I mean nothing." she said again but more firmer this time. "I didn't— she didn't—" she tried to get the words out but they burned up in her throat, even after all these years. "She didn't make it."
"Root…" Shaw said softly and reached her hand across the vast space of mattress that separated them.
"They found me in time." Root nodded and reassured herself more than anything. "Breach birth, lost a lot of blood, the owner thought I was in there shooting drugs when he finally called the cops." she chuckled at the gnawing indignance of it. "But the cord…" she licked her lips and her cheeks were wet, "You see the cord was wrapped—"
"Shh," Sameen said softly and caught her cheek with the pads of her fingers. "I know." she nodded and kept her hand pressed into her jaw until fat dewey tear drops ran down Root's cheek and through the webs of her fingers. "You must have been in bad shape." she said quietly to herself and shook her head a little, trying desperately not to gag on the thought of her curled up on a bathroom floor with a baby that wouldn't cry.
"What's a torn uterine wall between friends." Root bit her mouth and tried her very best to sniff back all of it into the depths of the void that was cradled in her gut.
"This really does explain so much about you." Shaw shook her head.
"Well, I'm glad to have unravelled an enigma for you, Sweetie." she whispered with a bitterness.
"I died thousands of times." Shaw blurted and ground her jaw. "You were there, every time."
"What?"
"When I was captured… they put me through these simulations to try and brainwash me. I remember every one of them and every time I died… protecting you."
The baby nuzzled it's face deeper into Shaw's collar bone, wrinkling it's nose, making tiny gurgles and clenching its eyes. Shaw was masterful, she hushed and stroked the bits of curly hair on her head and patted her butt and the test passed quickly and they were victorious this round.
"Why would you do something like that?" Root swallowed and joined in, stroking Miller's back until her hand briefly grazed against Shaw's.
Shaw closed her eyes and sighed, "Well," she breathed and reinforced her resolve, "You just wouldn't stop bugging me." she half smiled and forced her mouth back into a straight line.
"Always full of surprises, Sameen."
"Uh-huh."
"What are we gonna do if we are stuck here for years?"
Shaw stiffened for a moment and bit her mouth, her fingers flexed as if they couldn't quite grasp the idea and the lacuna in her gut where wayward ideas of peace went home to die bubbled and gnawed at her.
"We'll make it work." Shaw looked her in the eye and nodded.
Quietly, without a single word, Root slipped her hand into Shaw's and inched a little closer across the empty space that separated them until her nose scraped against the little scar on her shoulder and her leg hooked the sociopath's hip. There was a resistance at first, a quiet protest that came in the form of stiff shoulders and a tense jaw that ground and rubbed against itself like two tectonic plates holding back an earthquake. Root closed her eyes and slowly felt it relax and dissipate through them both.
"Think you could sleep like this, Sweetie?" Root tried with lazy eyes and a sloping smile.
"I'm not a freakin' chaise lounge." she looked between the wheezing baby that was starfished on her chest and the psychopath nuzzled into her shoulder and tried her absolute hardest to keep up her angry pretense. "If you steal my side of the quilt I'll kill you and make it look like an accident." she grunted and pulled a thin bit of quilt up to her waist and just over the baby's back.
"That's my girl." Root smiled and nuzzled a little closer with a yawn.
Sameen laid there awake and barely blinking for the best part of an hour. Long after Root began to gently snore and the baby on her chest wheezed away too as if they slept in a synergetic rhythm. Miller's cheek was warm against her chest and amidst the absolute stillness of night Shaw felt her little heartbeat flutter against her skin.
Though she would never admit it, not to anyone or any artificial intelligence, she hiked up the quilt and tucked it around Root's shoulders and brushed a piece of hair out of her face before closing her eyes with a deep exhausted sigh.
