A/N: Hope you all entered 2015 with your right foot! And again, thank you to everyone who has been favouriting and leaving reviews on this story.

From her lying position on the backseat, Root couldn't see where they were when the machine first told them to stop, but Shaw could. A pharmacy and a small liquor store.

"You should thank Her for being so thoughtful." Shaw smiled at Root. "I'll be right back." She said as she opened the car's door and got out, tugging the gun on the waistband of her jeans and covering it with her shirt and jacket. As she passed throw Claire's shattered window, she pointed a firm finger right to the girl's nose, reminding her not to try anything stupid.

Shaw didn't take longer than she needed to get all the medical equipment, saline solution, painkillers and antibiotics necessary to treat Root and to buy some food and water from the liquor store, but for Root it seemed like she was taking hours. She could feel the blood slowly flowing through her fingers as she tried her best to put pressure on the wound like Shaw had told her a dozen times before. She noticed Claire then, she could only see the back of her head and her neck through the gap between the seat and the headrest, the younger woman's head trapped in a low ponytail, much like how Shaw liked to use it.

"I know you think everything you're doing is for a good and greater purpose. But I don't think you have seen the full picture, Claire." Root said with effort, the drops of sweat rolling down her forehead and temples. "We're not the bad guys."

Claire turned her head slightly enough to be able to see Root's bleeding body from the side of her eye.

"So you have the right purpose, is that it?" Claire asked, cynically.

Root chuckled, regretting it as fast as she started when an agonizing pain flowed from the wound to every nerve in her body. "I understand you don't believe me, but everything that has been told to you is not quite as black and white as it was put."

"Why should I believe you?"

Root closed her eyes as she thought about the Machine, a tired grin in her lips.

"It's not in me that I expect you to believe in."

Shaw arrived second later, a bunch of bags in her hands that she shoved in the car's trunk before sitting by Root's side in the backseat, bringing two pills and a bottle of water in her hand.

"Here, take this." She placed the pills between Root's lips and helped her drink a few gulps of water, her hand gently over Root's jawbone. Root enjoyed the soothing feeling of Shaw's hand in her face and that of the fresh water going down her throat.

"Turn on the engine, Claire, we need to keep moving." Root said, after she had drunk half of the bottle of water.

Shivers and sweat were starting to overwhelm Root. She was glad the Machine finally whispered in her implant that they had arrived. She couldn't manage to say nothing more than the instructions the Machine communicated whilst Shaw took her and Claire inside the small house they were supposed to hide in. She was weak and she hurt. When Shaw laid her body down across the sofa, she felt no relief. Her eyes settled weakly on the opposite side of what she guessed was the house's living room, to where Claire was cuffed to a radiator by the wall. Root could sense Shaw walking around her, grabbing and ripping bags and packets. Her eyes drifted back to Shaw's when the woman kneeled in front of her, cutting her bloody shirt off with a pair of scissors, exposing her torso. She could hear Shaw talking, but it was getting harder to stay focused on her words, she felt so tired and she wanted to shut her eyes close, but for some weird reason Shaw kept telling her to keep them open.

"Root, hey, look at me." Shaw said as she dug a needle in Root's arm and hung the isotonic solution bag in a coat stand she found in the house, the drops entering her veins slowly through the catheter. Root did as she was told, she looked at Shaw, at her pouty lips, at the strands of hair that fell freely on each side of her face, at her beautiful features, at how beautiful she was. Even the tears of sweat that had started to form in Shaw's forehead seemed perfect. She was about to say something flirty and push Shaw into their usual innuendos, but even for that she felt too tired, the words falling to somewhere deep, to where her entire conscience seemed to be drifting as the seconds past.

"This will hurt like hell, but I have to do it, okay? Try to stay still." Shaw said and Root nodded. She didn't think anything could hurt more that she was feeling right now, though.

She felt Shaw pour a fresh liquid in her belly, it stung a bit as it came in contact with the shot wound, but it wasn't that bad, it was actually quite nice. But suddenly Shaw stopped pouring that fresh liquid, and scrubbed her abdomen with something else, a pad damp with a not so nice liquid, and the stinging feeling increase exponentially. Only then Root understood that the first had been water and the second probably alcohol. She closed her eyes shut as the harsh stings succumbed. But something told her this wasn't yet Shaw's definition of hurt like hell.

And she was right, a few seconds later the pain she felt was excruciating. Her eyes shot up to look for the cause of such intense pain, finding Shaw hands slipping tweezers inside her wound. She grabbed Shaw's sleeve, pulling it so toughly that the junction of the sleeve with the rest of the fabric of Shaw's shirt ripped apart. Her legs twisting in agony.

"Root, you can grip my arm, but you have to stay as still as possible." Shaw said once, repeating it until Root grabbed her upper arm with one hand and stilled her legs. As Shaw kept moving the tweezers inside of her to try to find the bullet, Root screamed loudly until her throat felt sore, her black fingernails digging in Shaw's arm. Shaw clenched her jaws shut as Root's nails slit her skin, but she tried to ignore it, concentrating on the task at hand.

"Sam, p-please!" Root cried, her eyes meeting Shaw's for an instant, begging the other woman to stop.

"Hey, don't you trust me?" Shaw asked, managing to give her a reassuring smile. She was sure Shaw's choice of words hadn't been random as she remembered the times she herself asked Shaw to trust her. Root nodded, bringing her other hand to her own mouth and biting it hard.

Finally she saw Shaw take a small piece of metal from inside of her and thought that her torture was over, but then she noticed Shaw shaking her head and cursing. The bullet was indeed fragmented. What Shaw had manage to take out was just one of its pieces.

When the medical instrument found her insides again, Root felt her stomach turn with the pain. She only had time to turn her upper body slightly to the side of the couch and vomit on the floor. Shaw's hands steadied her before continuing the awful torture. But Root couldn't take it anymore. She acknowledged her own brain trying to protect her, pushing her into unconsciousness, and she let it, allowing herself to be engulfed by its shadows.