"Harold," Root said cheerfully, plopping herself down into the seat opposite him. "How delightful to see you again."
He visibly flinched, then swivelled to look at her. "Ms Groves, to what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked stiffly. His eyes darted around, as if worried mayhem was about to erupt in the middle of the crowded restaurant.
There had been a time - a time not so long ago - when she had been lost where that might have been a valid concern. Not now, though. The Machine cared too much, even for the fallen, to ever order her to do something like that.
Root placed one hand on her chest, theatrically. "I can't just visit an old friend in New York?" She batted her eyelashes at him. "And we are friends now, aren't we, Harold? After all I *did* rescue you from those ungrateful governmental types." Her smile turned sharp. "And let's just say that they weren't nearly as polite as you were when they had me in custody." She picked up a glass of water and sipped, in part to prove to herself that she could.
It was over a week later and intermittent shakes still hadn't stopped completely.
It had been a price worth paying - of course it had been, even counting the loss of hearing in one ear - but. Still. The loss of control was disturbing. More than disturbing. How could she serve a perfect intelligence with such an imperfect body?
"I'm sorry if you suffered," he said. "Truly. But, by your own logic, you wouldn't have done it without the intervention of the Machine."
"She did guide my hand," Root agreed.
Harold sighed. "Can you really call what you did a favour to me or anyone else there if you wouldn't have lifted a finger to help us without being commanded to do so?"
"Touché, Harold" Root said, in the one of voice that might accompany her ruffling hand through his hair.
"So," he said. "Now that we've established that you've willingly relinquished your moral agency, I repeat: To what do I owe the pleasure?"
The waiter approached their table. "Have you decided what you're going to have?"
Root happily took advantage of the distraction. "Oh, Harold can order for me," Root said, with only a trace of a smirk. "He's always *so* good at that, aren't you?"
Harold, almost without a pause, reeled off two orders and the waiter disappeared.
Root raised an eyebrow. "That second dish was a little high in meat, wasn't it? Don't you care about my health anymore now that I'm not your prisoner?"
"I thought there was a good chance that you'd leave after you did what you came to do - and before eating the meal - so I picked something that Bear might enjoy. So?" he asked.
"You've got me all wrong, Harold. I thought we could enjoy a meal together," she said. "Just like old times," she added, and he stiffened a gratifying amount, before looking around, as if expecting to see someone slump over their meal. She did reach forward this time, touching his hand gently. "Relax. I'm here off the clock, so to speak." She smiled sharply. "Apparently, She believes in healthy work-life balance."
He froze momentarily then refocused his attention on her. "If you're not here at the Machine's behest, then why are you here?"
"Is it so impossible to believe that I might just have been in town and decided to visit an old friend?"
"Quite frankly, Ms Groves, yes. We have been many things to each other, but friends have not been one of them. And, unless you hid it exceedingly well, you didn't find our discourse in the library *that* stimulating."
"Why would She apologise?" she asked abruptly.
Harold's gaze focused to the right and over her shoulder, and she realised that her hand had started rubbing at her ear again. She jerked a little, then clamped her traitorous appendage firmly around the glass of water in front of her.
"Just how impolite were they?" he asked, and she hated the pity that she could see in his eyes.
She smiled brightly, and hated even more that she could feel how false it must look. "I'm sure you can get the likely details from Shaw or Reese."
"I'm truly sorry, Ms Groves," he said. "If there's anything…" He was cut off by the return of the waiter, who laid their food out in front of them.
Root hadn't been so grateful for an interruption by a waiter in some time.
"You never did answer my question," she noted after the waiter had disappeared again. "Why would She apologise?" she prompted when he looked blank. "Really, the least you could do is pay a little attention, Harold."
"What was the circumstance?"
"During the… impoliteness."
"It's a common heuristic that an apology follows actions that incidentally cause damage to someone."
She rolled her eyes at Harold. "Please, Harold. I think we can dispense with the fiction that She isn't sapient. If She apologised to me, then She *meant* to apologise to me."
"If we assume that that is indeed the case - something which I have not yet conceded - then I would hope that the Machine would regret your torture."
The white noise from her dead ear flared. "It wasn't torture, Harold. It was *necessary*."
He paused, looking at her closely. "How was it necessary?"
"If it happened, then it was the best course of action available at the time." She noticed that her hands were shaking again, and she gripped her knife and fork so hard that her fingers turned white. "You don't apologise for doing the right thing, Harold."
He leaned a little away from her, maintaining eye contact with her all the while. "What, exactly, is it you want me to tell you, Ms Groves?"
She wanted him to tell her why. Why She might feel the need to apologise to her. Why he still looked at her as if she was broken. Why he hadn't been able to bend his pride enough to listen to her, to Her, when they'd had the chance to avoid…
Instead all she did was give him a wide and thin smile and say, "Nothing I can imagine you having any answers to," she said, rose to her feet and walked away from the table.
"Ms Groves," she heard Harold call after her, and paused, turning to look at him because… she wasn't quite sure why. "I just wanted to wish you luck," he said. But his face had still had far too much of pity in it, and it wasn't as though she needed any kind of benediction from him anyway.
"Thank you, Harold. I'll treasure that sentiment, truly," she said, smiling sweetly, then left.
The money Samantha received from Osiris was enough that she could start to think about things she'd never contemplated before. Like potentially being able to buy those medicines for her mother that had simply not been an option.
The payoff wasn't enough by itself, of course. She needed a continuing stream of money. The first necessity was her own computer and a modem. The facilities at the school were all well and good, but if she was going to dabble in illegalities, she really needed a little privacy. Luckily, by common agreement, her room at home was sacrosanct, so she didn't have to explain to her mother how she was affording her latest electronic acquisitions.
Getting involved in the electronic black market wasn't as hard as Samantha might have thought. The first thing she did was hack into any local company of decent size that might be of interest, and sort them into either the potential customer or the potential provider column. Or, in some cases, both. She then did her best to act like a good little capitalist and connect customers and providers - or, more accurately, to find a market for information she gleaned from servers. Not under her real name, of course, that would have just been foolish. So she used the handle 'Root', which appealed to her sense of whimsy.
For a while, life was good. She managed to make enough money to make her mother's life easier and make their house a little nicer. And, at school, whilst she was still picked on by many of the students, when they didn't want something from her, she spent as much time as she could with Ms Chotai, helping her with the network for credit. She'd even managed to find some scholarships for Samantha, through a mixture of hard work and connections, as long as Samantha could keep up her grades. And Samantha would have done anything for her.
Then the government came calling. Someone had noticed the sudden increase in outgoings - far more than could be explained through disability - and wanted to know where the money was coming from. Her mother, of course, knew nothing - Samantha had told her they were getting the drugs through a mixture of signing up for medical trials and a new charity - but that didn't stop the accusations. Or the threat of criminal proceedings.
In a panic, Samantha flew to the only other adult she trusted - Ms Chotai. Ms Chotai listened with a stunned expression as Samantha told her everything. Well, a lot. She'd only detailed the greyer of her projects, and combined that with emphasis of the ill health of her mother.
Ms Chotai had been sympathetic to her plight, but ultimately useless. What could a high school teacher do, especially keeping within the law? And *she* wasn't desperate, *she* didn't have anything to lose, apart from the disappointment of seeing a promising student fail. Ultimately, though Ms Chotai claimed that she liked Samantha, she wouldn't do anything for her.
So Samantha turned to someone who would. Her earliest client, and the only one who she knew for sure was already aware of her offline identity. She'd approached Mr Dyer, and told him bluntly that if she or her mother was arrested, they *would* plea bargain. And that if anything happened to them, both the Sheriff's department and Deckard Electronics would get very interesting deliveries.
But since Osiris was a well-respected local employer, surely there was some good word they could put in for her. Maybe involving some help with her accounts.
It hadn't taken long at all for Mr Dyer to agree.
Samantha learned a couple of valuable lessons from this. No matter what people liked to claim, friendship was a weak and fragile thing, nothing that could be relied on. And that the best way of avoiding prison is to make sure that the people in power have a vested interest in making sure you stay out of it.
Root knocked on Shaw's apartment door, unable to help a smile from spilling onto her face. She wasn't normally one to indulge in alcohol much, but She had given her instructions to spend this day relaxing, and after the talk with Harold, the idea had just proved too tempting.
And then one idea led to another, and soon she was here, standing in front of Shaw's door, several drinks and the memory of what had happened last time she was here buzzing pleasantly through her head.
And anything would have been better than the thoughts that had been there after lunch.
Shaw opened the door sharply, with a raised eyebrow. "Got a job?" she asked.
Root's smile widened. "Surprise" she said and shucked off her coat, revealing that she was dressed only in ribbons. It had taken her over an hour, but the thought of what Shaw's expression would be had been so, so worth it.
Shaw looked at her for several seconds, completely blank faced.
Well, maybe not that expression. "Don't you like your present?" she asked, sobering a little.
"Yeah," Shaw said. "No," and shut her door again.
Root stared at the closed door, anticipation turning to dust. Shaw had said one time only, but she hadn't really…
She had just wanted to *relax* with someone and Shaw…
She'd thought that she could do that with Shaw.
She'd misread the situation, again. Obviously. Well, she wasn't going to stay somewhere she wasn't wanted. Her hands were shaking so badly, it took her two attempts to pick up her coat and put it on.
But there were other ways to relax. She hadn't needed to do any good old fashioned hacking in some time. And she had a list of targets from her freelance days - former employers for the most part - that even the sainted *Harold* couldn't complain about if she made their lives… a little more interesting.
Mind made up, she whirled away to pick up a laptop and find a good place to crack some cybersecurity from.
Humanity - as ever - was *highly* over-rated.
Root stepped out of the alleyway just after Shaw had passed it by. "Hello there, good-looking," she breathed down the back of Shaw's neck, smirking and letting her voice carry that fact.
Shaw froze, then spun around, one hand already on the grip of her gun, the other arm raised so as to allow her elbow to pass straight through the air Root's head had been occupying a second ago. "Root," she said flatly, not quite pointing a gun at her, but not exactly relinquishing her hold either.
"Been missing me?" Root asked.
"Not that I'd noticed," Shaw said. "Stalking me now?"
It was Root's turn to freeze, just for a split second, before widening her smirk even further. "Don't worry, you're not that important. I *do* have higher priorities. Which is why I need your help now."
Shaw relaxed into a slouch, her hand slipping off her gun. "Yeah?" she said, regaining her usual (minimal) levels of animation.
After She'd told her to work with Shaw again, Root had told herself that it didn't matter, that whatever had occurred had just been a mistake, on Root's part. Just another all-too-human fallibility. And, well, it had been. But telling herself that, didn't stop it *hurting* seeing how relieved Shaw was that Root wasn't approaching her as a person, not just another job.
But it didn't matter. She had been entrusted with a task, and Root would die before letting Her down.
And, maybe, if she prayed really hard, She could help her stop being so very, very mortal.
Was this the lesson she had been supposed to learn?
"Ever stolen a truck before?" she asked, her smile fixed firmly in place.
"It's happened once or twice."
"Time for a walk down memory lane, then," Root said, then turned to walk away.
"How are you?" Shaw asked.
Root stopped, looked back, tilting her good ear towards her, just to make sure that she'd heard correctly. "Oh honey," she said with the most cutting smile she could manage, "I didn't think you *cared*."
Shaw took a half-step back, her face utterly blank. "I don't. Just…" she paused, then added, "Need to know. For the mission. Finch said that your hands intermittently shook when he saw you."
Root bit back her first response, that Shaw could have found that out first hand if… if. It would be as good as admitting that she *cared*. "Then you don't need to worry," she said instead. "And you don't need to know. It's all accounted for. It's all part of Her plan."
Something about Shaw's expression changed, became more human. More stubborn. "Prefer to check that out myself."
Root sighed. "Then we can talk en route," she said. "It's nothing, really. Your friend Control just injected me sequentially with an amphetamine and a sedative." She listed off the names She gave her through her earpiece. "The effects just took a little time to subside." She held out her hands in front of her. "All good now."
"That all?"
Something inside Root *snapped* and she came abruptly to a halt, turning to look at her. "I'm sure that all you need to know." Despite her best efforts, her hands repeatedly clenched and relaxed by her sides. "You've made it very clear that you don't care outside of the mission, so you don't get to hear anything else. Do you understand?" To her horror, she could feel tears starting to form in her eyes.
Just a simple case of PTSD, she told herself. Delayed effects from her experience. Just natural.
It would fade.
And she wouldn't let it affect the mission. All she had to do was place her fate in Her hands.
It was already all calculated.
It didn't stop her feeling uncomfortably naked in front of Shaw, though.
Shaw looked at her a moment, then her gaze flinched away. "Please," she said eventually, quietly.
Root took a deep breath, then broke out into a giggle. Shaw had admitted to something that might almost be considered a weakness and... and how did Shaw *do* this to her? "Your old boss apparently has surgical aspirations of her own." She turned her right side, her deaf side, towards Shaw, and pulled her ear forwards. "She decided to conduct an impromptu stapedectomy on my right ear."
Shaw didn't say anything, just stepped forward and conducted a gentle examination. "The incision is healing well," she said. "There's nothing I can do for your hearing."
"Really not why you're here," Root said, stepping away and giving her a smile. For a moment, Shaw almost looked… apologetic? For a moment, Root's heart lurched, just a little, before she remembered. She had promised herself that she definitely wasn't going to go there again. She forced her smile into something with teeth. "As much as I *love* your examinations," she added, almost purring the words.
Shaw stiffened, and whatever the expression had been, it was replaced by irritation. "Weren't we supposed to be hijacking a truck?" she asked, stepping away from Root herself.
"Come this way," she said. "I *do* hope the car I procured lives up to you high standards…" she said, smirking a little.
Shaw looked at her as if expecting a trap.
"If you're good," Root said. "I'll even let you drive."
Shaw gave out a laugh. "You really think I'm going to give you the option?"
"You're so hot when you insist on taking control," she said, just to make Shaw glower at her a little, and inch a little further away.
This, *this* Root can handle.