18th December, 2014

Shaw woke up on the hard carpeted floor of her apartment to quiet swearing. Root had removed the sling and was trying to tug a shirt - one of Shaw' shirts - over her head. Shaw stood up, throwing her sheets back onto her bed, and pulled the shirt back off where it was caught on Root's head.

"Button down would have got you out of here without waking me up," Shaw said, matter-of-factly. She produced a button down and held out the sleeve for the arm that was already a rainbow of bruises, then dropped it. "If you're not going to wear the sling, I can tape you up for a bit of support. I was serious about it coming back out - your ligaments are still stretched out and until they tighten back up your shoulder could dislocate again."

"Then can you tape me, please?" Shaw looked over at the alarm clock.

"Yeah, I got time. Sit down, and pull that out of the way unless you want it stuck to you." On her way to get the first aid kit from the kitchen, Shaw snapped the shoulder strap of Root's bra lightly. Shaw came back with some tape, and Root obligingly moved the strap, giving Shaw a view straight down the cup. "Uh... actually it's fine where it was."

"Never expected a doctor to be such a prude," Root said cajolingly.

"Not a doctor," Shaw said through gritted teeth. She cut off a couple of strips of tape and secured the shoulder socket.

"That starts burning or itching, you soak it in baby oil and get it off your skin, ok?" Shaw asked, examining her handiwork.

"I still have patching that needs to be done, and you still owe me a favour," Root said. "Tonight?"

"I would have thought me playing triage would have paid you back," Shaw sniped, rolling the tape back up and fitting it back in her kit.

"It's not for me; not really," Root said, and Shaw knew that was true; it was Root asking, but it was Finch's Machine, it was the means to keep them safe, to keep them working, to keep the American people of the City of New York safe. But still, Shaw hadn't had a decent night's sleep in a while.

"Right after work, and I'm done by 11."

"It'll take days at that rate," Root started, then let herself drift off, smiling up at Shaw. "Deal," Root said, standing. "Now, help me with my shirt?"

"My shirt," Shaw grumbled, but she drew the sleeve up carefully over Root's injured shoulder nonetheless.

18th December, 2017

"She hacked the school camera system, on Christmas, so you could sneak in and give me presents," Gen said. Shaw turned around, slipping her finger in her mouth as she'd sliced herself while cutting the onions. Gen watched her, and finally, Shaw nodded.

"Stuff like that was childsplay to her," Shaw said quietly. "It was what she loved."

"Not really childsplay. I found it tricky," Gen said. "But I was able to reverse engineer what she'd done eventually."

Shaw shook her head. Of course Gen would copy Root.

Gen's head tilted to the side. Kid was always curious about something.

"You miss her, don't you?" Gen asked, and Shaw rubbed an old wound, one Root had given her that hadn't healed right but curled beautifully around her shoulder, almost like it was intentional.

"I miss her like I miss an intestinal parasite," Shaw scoffed, and Gen's eyes widened. "I mean, I guess so. It was nice to have someone else that just... got it, you know?" It occurs to Shaw then that the only living person who even remotely 'got her' was in the room. Reese had; they were from the same cloth really, but John had so many feelings that Shaw always felt projected upon.

"You were friends?" Gen asked. Shaw turned back to chopping vegetables, Gen watching her across the kitchen counter.

"Sometimes. It was complicated. She used to be a bad guy, ambushed me a few times but she never beat me for the fun of it." Shaw put the onions on to start the Ghormeh Sabzi.

"And then?"

"Well, she... she kept doing bad things, just for good reasons instead. And Gen, if the school finds out you've been hacking their cameras..."

"They won't," Gen said smugly.

"Why would you even want to take the cameras down? Are you sneaking out?" Shaw was suddenly concerned, but Gen laughed.

"No, I go to the kitchen and get a chocolate pudding, then I hole up in the library before an exam."

"You are such a nerd," Shaw snorted. "But just as well. If I find you've been sneaking out for nefarious purposes..."

"I know. I get bored sometimes. Everything in that place has an answer, except for my questions. I want to go outside of those parameters, do something no one else has done. Like your friend, with the consoles."

"Oh, that wasn't new. People had been using them as supercomputers for ages," Shaw said absently, stirring the onions.

"But she hacked the Playstation network so doctors could do research," Gen said, sounding excited.

"That's not why she did it, but she'd be glad they use it. She always did like doctors." With that, Shaw added the meat to the pot. "We just brown this ok? Like my mother taught me."

18 December, 2014

Shaw was never in a good mood after a day behind the makeup counter, and Finch could feel her simmering rage before she even entered the subway.

"Let's get this over with. What do you need doing?" Shaw asked Root.

"These ones," Root pointed to a haphazard pile of consoles, "need to have their OS checked and, if necessary, downgraded. Version 3.2.0 is the last version that will work. Anything higher, put over there," Root pointed to a corner. "These ones," Root said, pointing to neat lines of consoles, "were running the right firmware and have our OS installed. They are ready to replace any failed consoles. I'd rather we start with those. And those ones over there," Root said, pointing to a sad stack in a corner, "are pretty much toast. I'll need them taken apart to see what I can salvage. At this point it might be easier to grab another fresh batch but there's no guarantees that they'll be any better than these." Root sighed. "The hardware is mostly obsolete, and it's been used for years by gamers, who are never kind to hardware." Root sighed again and looked at Shaw. "There are no guarantees," Root said again, slowly, eyes dropping to Shaw's lips. "Once we've replaced as many as we can, I need to run an update on the cluster backend."

"Root, I don't know how to do any of that."

"I can show you how to pull apart a PlayStation, and you know how to replace a console, we've all done it. Just switch out the ones with the YLOD tonight and we'll get fancy tomorrow night."

"I am not spending tomorrow night in the subway again. No offense, Finch," Shaw called.

"Oh, none taken," Finch called back, Bear on his feet watching Shaw wistfully but knowing he had to stay with Finch; he had a habit of getting underfoot whenever someone picked up machinery. For a highly intelligent, highly trained animal, sometimes he could be a big dumb dog.

"Tomorrow night, and the next night and we should be done. It would be faster if I could..." Root moved her shoulder, then hissed with pain.

"I can do tomorrow night, but not the next one," Shaw said, and refused to elaborate. "Don't mind if we work through Christmas."

Root sighed. "Then we get as much done as we can tonight. Read out the macs to me before you switch them out, please," and with that, Root sat at the desk in the subway carriage, watching Shaw swap out consoles and tapping away at the keyboard.

Notes:

My shoulder came out in solidarity with Root this afternoon, which is quite sweet but also not useful when driving a manual vehicle.