Root stood on the parking ramp by the jet for so long that by the time the maintenance crews asked her to leave, she had a fine pink sunburn on the backs of her exposed neck and arms. She huffed, exhausted; between the travel, the sobbing and the heat she was drained, and wanted nothing more than to shower, sleep, and wake up pretending that the past 24 hours had been nothing more than a horrid dream. Without having anywhere else to go, she gathered her bag (and the burger off the ground, and what little of her composure she could muster) and took off for the subway.
Shaw was, predictably, absent by the time she finally arrived. Root glanced into the her (their) makeshift bedroom and saw that Bear was sleeping at the foot of her (their) bed but Shaw herself was nowhere to be found. Her cellphone sat haphazardly on the edge of the dresser, but her worn running shoes were missing, as was her iPod; in her typical fashion, Shaw appeared to be dealing with her emotions in the one way she knew how. Finch, just as predictably, was typing away on his computer and barely acknowledged the intrusion until noticing who was behind it.
"Welcome back Miss Groves", he said from behind his monitors without looking up. "I must say I was... surprised to hear of your early return. I take it the mission went well?"
He seemed intent to ignore the fact that Shaw had undoubtedly come through the subway at some point earlier in a hurricane of anger, and she was herself in no hurry to question him on it, or to be questioned about it. Root dropped the flash drive she had prepared for him onto his desk in lieu of a response; it contained the majority of the information she had pilfered from Javier's private computer (save for a few interesting tidbits she decided to keep to herself... for the time being), including the schematics for the entire server system as well as a list of possible locations for the kill switch she had compiled on the flight back. If anyone could sort through all it to find their coveted needle in a haystack, it was Finch. The hacker herself might be able to lend a hand, but it wouldn't be tonight. Or tomorrow. Maybe not even that week.
(Root could certainly lend a much needed hand, but was in no state of mind at the time to do anything of the sort.
She was sore. It seemed to her that nearly her entire body ached, still healing in one way or the other. Her foot and arm throbbed from being without their respective supports for the past day. The muscles of her abdomen were terribly tense, readjusting poorly, it seemed, to extended periods of sitting or standing, or to movement in general. Her head was pounding, surely due to the terrible morning she'd had so far, and her neck stung where her jacket rubbed against the fresh sunburn there.
To top it all off, the bruises that Javier had left seemed to radiate, not allowing her to do what she wished and forget about their existence all together. Her chest was in a constant state of restriction, but not due to the scar tissue, the lingering damage, the pacemaker...
No, it was because she couldn't get the look on Shaw's face out of her head. How quickly the other woman had gone from happy to see Root step off that plane - the happiest Root had seen her in recent memory by far - to wishing that she had stayed in Brazil instead.)
If Finch did actually ask her any questions, Root didn't hear them. She dragged herself to the bathroom - much improved now, with modern amenities not at all limited to a fully functioning bathtub - and stripped without even bothering to close the door. If Finch had protests, which he surely did, they also fell in deaf ears. Once the bathtub was full, the water scorching (but not quite hot enough, in Root's personal opinion), the hacker slowly lowered herself into it. Without hesitation she dunked her head under. She enjoyed the way it muted the world; under the water she couldn't see or hear, could only feel the slight tingling of the hot water on her overtired and sensitive skin.
From the depths - under for almost too long, her lungs burning - the sound of her name travelled through the cotton in her ears. Once she opened her eyes, the watery figure of Shaw could be made. Root came up, sputtering. Shaw was in running shorts and a hoodie, chest still heaving and a fine sheen of sweat across her forehead. Root could hear the music blasting through the headphones that were dragging carelessly on the floor, still attached to her iPod. With her arms crossed, she glared down at Root.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"Taking a bath", she responded, as if it explained everything.
They locked eyes, but it barely lasted a moment before Shaw's roamed downward. Not in the appreciative way Root was getting used to, not at all with that predatory glint she so loved to see. Instead Shaw's dark eyes seemed even darker as they darted from bruise to bruise, from hickey to bite mark to the indentations of fingernails on her hips. With an unabashedness she did not feel, Root sat up straight. She resisted the urge to cover herself, but eyed the towel across the room intently. If Shaw noticed Root looking at it she ignored the other woman completely.
"So. It looks like you and your 'contact' got along well then."
It wasn't poised at all like a question. To Root's dismay, Shaw didn't even sound half as angry as she had at the airport just a couple of hours ago. She sounded tired, so tired, and not at all related to the run she had just returned from. She sounded like a woman defeated, and it tore at the hacker in a way she was wholly unfamiliar with, and unprepared for. All it did was fuel Root's own anger - she wanted Shaw to be mad at her. She wanted Shaw to rant and rave and yell and hit her even, to express outwardly all of the turmoil Root herself felt inwardly. But instead what she got was the strongest woman she had ever known looking exhausted, for the first time actually looking her size.
She was angry, yes, maybe as angry as Shaw. But she wasn't about to let the other woman continue without at least giving her her own chance to speak. To explain. To try to reach common ground. To make her understand.
"Will you at least let me explain? Don't I get that chance? Or are you just going to throw more food at me and storm off without letting me say anything at all?"
Shaw sat heavily on the toilet adjacent to the tub. Root waited, breath caught, as the other woman kicked her Nike's and socks off in a fluid motion then twisted to dangle her feet in the water just above the hacker's own.
"Well I'm here, aren't I?"
Suddenly how exhausted Root herself was hit her with its full force; she let out the breath she had been holding and gestured for Shaw to pass her the towel. She did, tossing it over the hacker's head.
"I can't say I'm not surprised", Root said quietly as she stood and quickly toweled off her hair.
She didn't bother with fixing it, instead just putting it up in a loose pile on the top of her head using the hair tie on her wrist then seating herself on the edge of the tub, next to Shaw's dangling feet. With a gentle hand, Root gently dragged a finger up one of the other woman's exposed shins. Shaw tensed at the touch but didn't jerk away - whether it was because she was simply enjoying the hot water on her sore feet or something else, however, Root couldn't tell. But she counted it as a small victory.
"I wanted to tell you. As soon as I figured out what Her plan was, I wanted to tell you. But by the time I did, it was too late, I was already in his apartm-"
"If you're looking for an apology for what happened at the airport", Shaw interrupted, "or understanding, or forgiveness, or anything from me, keep looking. At least until you explain this to me. Explain to me exactly how the fuck you went that long without knowing what the plan was."
Root had to laugh a little bitterly at that. When had she ever been shown the full picture before it was too late for her to argue? She used to enjoy it - enjoy figuring out the puzzle, enjoy the game, enjoy not having to think for herself. She had put her faith in her new-found God long before Team Machine had ever entered her mind, while sitting in a psychiatric hospital at that same team's insistence, long before anyone mattered to her but herself and her God, and that trust in something else had made her life so much easier to navigate. But now... well, now she had more than just herself to consider. Now she had Shaw.
"I had no idea, Shaw. I never know what Her plan for me is before it's time to act, you know that. By the time She let me see the full picture, it was too late. It was either follow through, or lose the only chance we might have to deal Samaritan a serious blow."
"And there was no other way?" Shaw pulled her feet out of the bathtub, sloshing water over the side. Root noticed for the first time that the door was finally closed. "You just had to sleep with this contact to get this information? Why not taze him, why not knock him out, why not just break into his apartment and take what you needed? Why did you have to fuck him to get to his computer?"
With every word, Shaw's voice was louder and louder, and by the time she ended she was yelling, breathing heavily as she stared Root down and waited for a response.
In the distance, Finch could be heard shuffling up the stairs and undoubtedly far away from whatever was about to happen. Absently, both women realized that they had thought he had left already... they were too caught up in the intensity of the moment to feel any embarrassment just yet.
There's the anger I was waiting for, Root thought. Though it didn't bring her any of the relief she thought it would. If anything, all the anger she felt had finally transferred to Shaw while Shaw's own exhaustion seemed to be seeping into Root's bones and adding itself to the hacker's own.
"What was it", Shaw seethed, "that was so fucking important that you let your stupid computer talk you into having sex with him?"
The silence between them became thick. Root wasn't sure she could explain herself in all actuality, not really, not without starting from the beginning and giving Shaw a new way to look at it - at that moment all Shaw could see was the surface. And Root didn't blame her, because anger tended to blind people... but as rightfully angry as Shaw was, there was still another side to this story. She just had to help her see it.
"When Harold freed the Machine, he gave Her the ability - and for the first time, the need - to protect Herself. Her code changed every single day since then, adding and deleting parts to try to make Herself better. And to keep Herself alive. When Samaritan came online, we all got added to that preservation instinct. I don't agree with what I did, with what She asked me to do, and I can promise you that there is absolutely no way I could bring myself to even consider it again, no matter what She asks of me... But..."
"Samaritan is getting smarter", Root continued quietly, so quietly at first that Shaw had to lean forward to hear her. "After the warehouse, Jeremy, Martine, the damage we did, that you did, that I did... it learned. It got smarter. It's harder for Her to help us, harder for Her to keep us alive. Harder for Her to stay alive. It's even harder for Her to help me maintain a cover now, because Samaritan learned from its mistakes, and now it notices more than just names and faces. It looks at patterns, it analyzes accents, it maps and remembers established routes, and speech rates, and posture, shoe size, preferences, eating habits... If I want to be able to do anything at all outside the shadow map, I have to actually become that person now. That FBI agent, that radio host, that psychiatrist, that baker, that nanny... that clumsy tourist type that a certain Décima operative can't seem to resist. Do you really think I wanted it to happen? After everything we've been through, do you really think I want anyone else to touch me? Do you really think I waited all this time to have you just to push you side for some awful Brazilian in a cheesy yellow shirt?"
"If Samaritan wins, Sameen, we all lose. We all die. Harold, John, Fusco, me... you.You would die. And if you don't think I would do anything to stop that - including, yes, force myself to sleep with a man I want nothing to do with - then you don't know me at all."
Finally, for the first time since she had entered the bathroom, Shaw relaxed. She let her arms fall to her sides, and let her features soften just enough to let Root know that she had made her point - Shaw may not be happy about it, but it wasn't as if Root was wrong. Put in the same position, with Root's life so perilously on the line, Shaw was certain she would do almost anything. Just a few weeks ago, she basically had.
Root, a relief of her own surging through her, took advantage of Shaw's more slacked posture. The hacker slowly - with the careful motions of one approaching a wild animal - stood from the edge of the tub and moved to sit astride Shaw's thighs. The towel wrapped loosely around her rid up as she did so, and Shaw settled her hands on Root's hips on instinct as she wrapped her arms around the shorter woman's neck. In an uncharacteristically intimate gesture, Shaw buried her face in Root's chest.
"I'm allowed to be angry", she grumbled into the fabric bunched there.
"Yes."
"I'm allowed to hate that you slept with him."
"I never said you weren't. I hate that I slept with him, too."
"Since this... whatever this is, since it started, since I kissed you, I haven't been able to think about anything else. Anyone else but you. And when you came back and I saw what he did to you I... I was so angry. I am so angry. And I'm not angry at you, I don't think. I'm angry at the Machine for putting you in that position. I'm angry at Finch for making the Machine that put you in that position. I'm angry that he touched you like I touch you. I'm angry that he left proof."
Shaw sighed, raising her head to bring their foreheads together. Root closed her eyes and breathed in a moment that was so full of Shaw: of her warm breath on her chilled, damp skin, of the weight of her hands on her hips, of the intoxicating scent of her perfume mixed with sweat and gunpowder.
"Mostly I think I'm just angry that I'm angry about it at all", Shaw murmured. "I know we don't... we're not... we aren't other people. This thing, us, whatever this is, it's something new and all our own and I... fuck, I hate this. I hate this! I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling in general, and that's all I do lately."
Shaw sneered. The hacker sat completely still, still treating Shaw like a skittish animal that could flee at any moment. It wasn't often, it was rare even, that the agent willingly opened up, and Root didn't want to deter her in any way. Regardless of how Shaw herself felt about it, when she expressed herself beautiful things happened.
"Feel. I feel this and that and this and that. But most importantly I feel happy, I think, at least what I think happy is supposed to be. Being with you, doing this, whatever this is... it makes me happy. You make me happy."
If Shaw didn't know any better she would swear she noticed tears in Root's eyes.
"I'm not saying we need to set ground rules, or rules at all." She felt her cheeks get hot, and thankfully Root seemed to return the favor and not notice it as Shaw continued. "Part of what makes this work is that it's so easy, and trying to put a box around it would make it complicated. Our lives are complicated enough."
"How about we just agree to not sleep with other people unless both of us are involved?"
"That sounds like a rule." Root rolled her eyes and Shaw levelled her with a glare. "Don't try to be cute. That is absolutely a rule."
"And rules are for normal people and couples and we aren't either of those things. I get it. What if we call it something else?"
Shaw considered for a moment, looking up at Root. Her brown eyes sparkled with the relief this conversation - however painful it was to have - had brought her, and the agent herself would be lying if it didn't bring a measure of the same to her as well. Shaw was just so angry at the airport, angry at Root and the Machine and Harold and whoever it was that dared to put a mark on something that was hers, that she didn't stop to consider that maybe Root really did just have to do this. She didn't like it - neither of them did, and it would behoove the Machine to not make such requests again if it didn't want to end up a scorched pile of circuit boards in Shaw's apartment - but she understood. However reluctantly. In the end, though, Shaw didn't really think she was ever really angry at Root at all. But whatever that emotion was? She would certainly like to avoid ever feeling it again.
(Volume down or no, it was a miserable feeling to have.)
"How about", she decided on finally as she slid her hands deliberately from atop Root's hips down to her bare thighs, giving them a gentle squeeze, "rules of engagement?"
"Or something like the Geneva Conventions?", Root supplied thoughtfully. "The Shaw Conventions? Rules to ameliorate our not relationship?"
"Sure", Shaw huffed, bringing her forehead against Root's once more, fighting a small smile. In a practiced movement she pulled the towel from the hacker's body - she didn't have time to protest if she wanted to. Which, by the look on her face afterwards, Root had no intention of doing either way. "I can live with that."