When she wakes up again, she is in a room she doesn't recognize, and for a moment she panics, the memories of waking up from Samaritan's simulations still fresh on her mind. She hears the beeping of a monitor nearby, remembers that with Samaritan there wasn't one, and she takes a deep breath, willing the panic to subside as she takes in the room, which is definitely too nice to be a hospital or a prison. When she tries to move, her body feels heavy and numb and she notices the telltale scratchiness in her throat of having been intubated.
John is sitting in a chair nearby, and handles her a glass of ice chips when he sees she's awake. "Welcome back," he says with a small smile.
"How long?" Shaw manages to rasp out.
"Almost two days," John replies, and when she frowns, he adds, "the bullet nicked your appendix. You bleed out quite a bit before we got you to a doctor. Speaking of which —"
A woman enters the room and smiles at John as he leaves before heading straight to Shaw without another word. She checks her vitals, and asks her a barrage of questions about how she's feeling, and then she starts checking the wound on her side and proceeds to explain in detail the mess a stupid ricochet made.
By the time the doctor is done poking and probing and is telling her the treatment she's on, Shaw's struggling to keep her eyes open.
"Rest," the doctor tells her, patting her arm. "Everything's looking good, so I'll lower the pain meds dosage a bit. Tomorrow you will be able to stay awake for a bit longer."
Shaw nods and thinks fleetingly of Root and not being able to visit her if she's asleep, and then she doesn't think anymore.
She wakes up to the Bear entering her room and running straight to her bedside, where he rests his head gently until he sees she's awake and starts whining and pushing his snout against her hand. "Hello, boy," she tells him with a tired smile, her voice scratchy from sleep.
Finch follows close behind. "How are you feeling Miss Shaw?" he asks as he walks closer to the bed.
"Getting more and more tired of answering that question," she says, lacking the usual bite as she smiles and pets Bear.
"I'll take that as good news," he replies good-humoredly.
Finch sits in the nearby chair and watches as she plays with Bear, but it's not long before he starts to fidget nervously. "I spoke with Miss Grooves," he says smiling, a hesitant but happy smile that Shaw cannot remember the last time she saw on his face. "She requested that I bring you this," he adds, standing up and setting softly on the side of the bed not occupied by Bear the suitcase with all the simulation gear.
Shaw stares at it but doesn't say anything. "The Machine gave her access to your chart, but I believe she would be reassured if you were to visit her if you are able." Finch doesn't add anything else when she doesn't answer, just sits back on the chair and takes out his laptop and starts typing away.
Shaw plays a very tame version of catch with Bear, and finds herself looking back and forth to the suitcase on the bed. It's distracting in a way she hadn't expected, the urge to go to the simulation, to see Root, and not for the first time she wonders when exactly this became so — necessary.
When Finch leaves, she puts the suitcase inside the drawer of the bedside table, and adamantly tries and fails not to think of it while she attempts to fall asleep. Sleep eludes her despite the drugs still on her system and the overall tiredness from doing nothing that only being bedridden can bring. She ends up getting it out and setting it up well into the night, telling herself that she's doing it to get it over with more than anything else.
The moment she comes into the simulation Root is there, looking happy and worried at the same time and pulling Shaw into a crushing hug. "Shaw," Root whispers, and something in the way she says it makes Shaw hug her back.
"Ouch. Why the hell am I hurt here too?"
"It's one of those things that are loaded subconsciously," Root says ruefully. "Plus, that way you won't overdo it in here." She moves her hand towards Shaw's side and lifts up her t-shirt just enough to inspect the wound.
"I'm really glad you are okay," Root adds more seriously, using her index finger to trace the tight skin around the stitches. Shaw's breath hitches, and suddenly she can't remember why she spent so long avoiding Root's touch in here.
When Root looks up from the wound, she finds Shaw looking straight at her, pupils dilated and looking serious, and the beginnings of a smirk appear on her face. Something clenches in Shaw's stomach, and whatever this is, it feels as real as it ever did and so Shaw takes a small step and kisses her, tentative and careful in a way she would not have anticipated.
Root responds almost immediately, her lips soft and insistent over hers, moving a hand gently to cup Shaw's head and then kissing her harder, wasting no time in opening her mouth to deepen the kiss.
Thousands of simulations in Samaritan and it never felt quite like this.
One of Shaw's hands moves to Root's nape, tangles into her hair as she licks into her mouth, suddenly wanting everything Root has to offer. She pulls her as close as she can, ventures a hand under Root's shirt as she drags her teeth across her lower lip, biting it lightly before soothing it with her tongue until she feels Root shudder, a groan catching in her throat.
Root's hands start roaming, moving across Shaw's back teasingly, going lower and squeezing her ass in a deliberate way that would make Shaw roll her eyes and shake her head if whatever Root's currently doing with her tongue didn't have her so distracted.
The kiss becomes messier. Shaw starts to walk Root backwards, trying to get somewhere — anywhere, where the height difference will not be such a pain in the ass. Root's hands move to her waist then, settle on her wound a little too hard, and Shaw's breath catches unexpectedly in a decidedly not-fun way.
Root stops kissing her and rests her forehead against Shaw's, breathing heavily, their noses bumping softly. "As fun as this is, we should stop."
"I'm fine," Shaw replies, her breathing just the tiniest bit more labored than it should, and they are still close enough that she can almost feel Root's smile in response. "The doc said no strenuous activities for at least a week," she replies ruefully.
"But that's not here." It sounds whiny even to her own ears, needy in a way she would usually avoid like the plague.
"We have time, Sameen," Root says, and somehow it doesn't feel like a platitude. Root drops a quick peck on her lips before pulling away and leading her by the hand towards the room she used as a bedroom.
"I'm getting mixed signals here," Shaw finally says when Root starts pulling back the comforter of the bed.
"You still need sleep, sweetie," Root says, "and I'd rather you don't leave just yet."
Shaw is about to tell her that she doesn't do sleepovers, but all that comes out is a yawn, long and unexpected. Root grins delighted and Shaw can only scowl in response. "Not a word," she warns, and settles on the bed.
Root doesn't say anything as she lays down next to her on the bed, facing her. When Shaw finally drifts off to sleep, Root's still awake and smiling peacefully at her and the last thing Shaw remembers is feeling Root gently placing her hand on hers in the middle of the bed.
After Shaw wakes up from the gunshot wound and the surgery, she ends up spending almost another five days in the safe house under observation.
The first time she is able to stay awake for more than half an hour, Finch asks her very politely to consider following the doctor's recommendations, while John stares at her from where he's leaning on the door frame, his arms crossed and his eyebrows raised, and something that looks very much like a dare on his face.
She reluctantly agrees after Finch promises to leave Bear with her everyday, and the relief on their faces even though unexpected, it's not necessarily unwelcome.
By the third day, Shaw's starting to regret both her acquiescence to stay and not having kicked harder the number responsible for her current predicament when she had the chance. The bland diet the doctor has her on does nothing to improve her mood, even though John tries to return the favor by smuggling her small bites of stuff that actually taste of something now and then.
She spends her time alternating between trying to find something watchable on the TV, playing with Bear or playing cards with John or Fusco whenever they come by. Finch does not play cards, but in her boredom he convinces her to play a round of Scrabble. Shaw falls asleep halfway through it and Finch does not suggest it again.
None of it distracts her for long, and despite their good intentions, by the end of the day she's mostly wishing for them to leave her alone.
When they do, she goes into the simulation.
Root still doesn't let her do anything more strenuous than Finch would but she happens to be much better than any of the guys at keeping her entertained. It helps that they get to leave the subway. With whatever powers Root has in the simulation — something similar to root access, she tells Shaw once, amused and proud — she takes them out and about and by the time they make it back to the subway, Shaw is usually exhausted and doesn't need much prompting for falling asleep in the simulation.
Waking up in the simulation it is disconcerting at first, the conflicting memories of where she actually is confusing at best. Root is always there, thought, smiling softly at her from the other side of the bed or from a chair nearby tapping away on a laptop. It's reassuring — and that in itself stopped being worrying a long time ago —, but still, Shaw's hand never fails to move to the skin under her ear in search of a scar or a bump. Root never says anything about it, just says a quiet "good morning" or John's ETA with breakfast.
She never stays long after that, the domesticity of it all uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
When John enters the room with breakfast and finds her putting things back into the suitcase, he raises and eyebrow and gives her half a smile, but he's smart enough not to say anything about it.
The first night that Shaw goes to sleep in her apartment — with a stern recommendation of taking it easy for a few days— she hesitates.
In the safe house, boredom was the perfect excuse to spend more time in the simulation, a way of getting out of the house without actually leaving. Exhaustion and having nothing better to do outside were enough reason to stay there to sleep.
She brings the suitcase from the safe house with her, and puts it back in the same place she has for the past few months. She's aware of it in a way she hasn't in months, not since the beginning and it brings a knot to her stomach that has nothing to do with her healing wound.
Going in now… it feels like a decision. Of what exactly she's not sure, but it's enough to get her pacing until she decides to try to distract herself with the whiskey John brought her to celebrate her new scar and a football match. She ends up falling asleep on the couch with the TV on, only to wake up at four in the morning to a sore back and a sorer neck. She shuffles to bed then, where she falls into a fitful sleep.
The next morning the soreness is still there, and the feeling of having done something wrong by not going into the simulation hasn't gone away.
She stretches the soreness away, her muscles feeling slow and tired after more than a week of very limited activity. She goes for a short run and meets Fusco briefly to pick up Bear. They spend the afternoon in the park, playing fetch and just lounging around and after being cooped up in the safe house for almost a week, Shaw enjoys it more than she would have predicted.
When she goes back home, the feelings of unease return, a different kind of restlessness she is not used to; the longer it goes on, the more pissed off she gets.
Shaw sleeps in her bed that night, and even though she tosses and turns well into the night, she doesn't touch the simulation gear.
—
On the third day after she is released, Shaw finally convinces Finch to let her do something useful again, and goes to the subway to help with the two numbers the Machine has just spit out. She's strictly on desk duty, but she'll take it over another day of doing mostly nothing.
As the day goes by, she gets more and more frustrated, the numbers not enough of a distraction from this side of things.
The lack of sleep doesn't help, and even though Finch brings her a sandwich from the deli she likes for lunch, every nook and corner in the subway are reminders of Root and the simulation. She doesn't understand what's changed, why it feels different now when she went days without entering the simulation before, and it only makes her grumpier.
John approaches her when she returns from walking Bear, and from the look she sees Finch giving them as he hides in the subway car, she's guessing she's not going to like whatever he's going to say. His grimace when he reaches her all but confirms it. "Here," he says, thrusting a carton box into her hands.
"What's this?" she asks suspiciously.
"Root's things," he replies, clearly uncomfortable. "She put some stuff in her room. Before," he adds unnecessarily.
Shaw scowls. She's about to tell him where the nearest trash can is, when she remembers Root in the safe house, holding her hand and telling her that she finally felt like she belonged. Something twists and turns in Shaw's stomach at the idea of throwing it all away without a second thought, and with another glare at John she says, "Fine."
On the subway on her way home, she takes a look inside the box.
Its contents are unexpected in a way she's come to expect only from Root. She finds a couple of t-shirts, black nail polish and a number of trinkets she doesn't dare to guess what they are for, and underneath it all, a pair of familiar-looking bunny slippers. It takes her a moment to realize they are identical to the ones she's caught Bear chewing more than once, and it pulls at something inside her.
She goes through the rest of it, shaking her head and smiling more often than not, and suddenly she really, really wants to see Root and tell her how ridiculous she thinks she is.
When she arrives home, she goes immediately for the simulation gear. The setup feels familiar in a way she never thought it'd be back when Finch gave it to her, when it was too much like Samaritan all over again.
Root stands up from the bench where she was sitting when Shaw comes in, leaves the tablet on her hands on it and approaches her, something that looks a lot like apprehension in her eyes.
"Hello, sweetie."
"You are ridiculous, you know that?" Shaw says smiling fondly, and just with that, Shaw takes two steps, grabs Root by the head and kisses her, hard and demanding. It takes Root a moment to react, but then she's kissing Shaw back and pulling her closer. Root groans into her mouth, and it's all the encouragement Shaw needs to start walking again until she has Root pinned against the subway car.
She kisses Root harder, licks into her mouth and nips her lower lip as Root tangles her hands in her hair and runs her fingernails down her neck. Shaw moves to Root's neck, leaves a trail of kisses until she reaches the spot that makes Root's breath hitch, licks and bites and sucks until she draws a groan out of her and Root's hands tighten on her hair almost painfully.
When Shaw moves back to kissing her again, Root grabs her head and stops her. "Sameen," she starts, flushed and eager, and Shaw can see she has something meaningful on the tip of her tongue. "No talking," Shaw says cutting her off softly, not ready to whatever Root was going to say.
Root murmurs, "Yes, ma'am," against her mouth and then they are kissing again. While Shaw busies herself with pulling Root's shirt from her pants, Root's hands roam the expanse of her back. Suddenly with a flick, Shaw feels the clasp of her bra open. She raises an eyebrow at Root and finds her flushed, breathing hard and smiling wickedly, and God — she has missed this.
Shaw doesn't waste any time, with one hand pulls Root's mouth to hers again while the other goes for her pants, undoing the button and the zipper deftly and lowering them just enough to get her hand inside. She finds Root soaking wet, and she feels herself clench in response. "Jesus, Root," she says, her voice husky.
"Not quite," Root quips, and Shaw laugh turns into a moan as Root manages to get a thigh between her legs and presses against her.
She had forgotten how good they were at this.
When Shaw opens her eyes, Root is smirking for all she's worth, still pressing her thigh rhythmically against her and reaching with her hands towards her breasts, sliding under the t-shirt and under the unhooked bra, kneading and pinching in all the right ways. Shaw moves the hand inside Root's pants, strokes her once, twice, before sliding inside her and curling her fingers just so, and the smirk becomes something else, hungrier and out for blood.
It's not long before she feels Root clenching around her, swallows her moans as she kisses her messily. She's already ridiculously close herself, and so when Root catches her breath and turns them around and falls to her knees bringing Shaw's pants down with her, she doesn't protest, too far gone to be embarrassed by how eager she is for whatever Root wants to do to her.
Root tries to tease her a little, bites and suck on her inner thighs until she draws a groan out of Shaw. "Root, please," she says, tangling a hand in her hair and pulling, not really caring how needy she sounds.
Root just chuckles, and before Shaw can complain again she's there, her mouth on her clit and her fingers deep inside her. It draws a sound from deep within her, a high pitched whine she'll deny ever making and she swears she feels Root's smile against her.
Shaw comes hard and fast and at some point her legs decide they no longer feel like supporting her weight. She slides down less than gracefully and ends up half straddling Root, who is wearing the smuggest look Shaw has seen in recent history. She would try to wipe it off if it weren't so well-deserved. She settles for kissing her lazily, too spent for anything else.
At some point they get rid of their remaining clothes and make it to the bed, pleasantly exhausted and feeling the rush of endorphins kicking in.
She feels Root staring intently at her and Shaw remembers the last few days. "I'm… sorry I haven't been around these last few days," she says awkwardly, not really used to apologies of any kind and feeling as inadequate as she ever does.
"Sameen…" Root starts, then stops, seemingly unsure of what to say next. "You don't have to come here every day if you don't want to," she says, and there's something vulnerable in the way she says it that tugs at something inside Shaw.
"I mean, you can if you feel like it. You could even stay the nights." Shaw doesn't say anything in reply, and Root takes it as a sign to keep talking. "You seem to sleep better here. Your brain activity is the same — and the Machine could arrange it so you are out of the simulation when you wake up, if you prefer." She says the last part in a rush, nervous in a way Shaw has rarely seen in her.
Shaw thinks back on the mornings she woke up here while she was in the safe house, and how Root noticed every time her hand rubbed the skin below her ear right after waking up. She had always been good at noticing stuff.
When she doesn't say anything in reply Root takes a deep breath and adds gently, "I just — I'm good with whatever you want, Sameen."
Root smiles, and somehow there's no trace of the disappointment Shaw has seen before in other people when they finally realized that she couldn't give them what they wanted, and in that moment Shaw feels stupidly lucky, her chest full of something she doesn't have a name for.
She tangles her hand in Root's hair and kisses her, brief and hard, and when she pulls back, she says, "Okay."
Root beams at her, and leaves her hand on Shaw's back, stroking lazily back and forth until Shaw falls asleep.
It's not all smooth sailing, but they make it work.
Shaw stops thinking so much about what it means or doesn't mean to go into the simulation, and the simulation becomes home within home. Root starts communicating more with Shaw outside the machine and the transition becomes smoother. She sends her annoying texts in the same way she once did, and at some point she figures out — her or the Machine, Shaw's never sure who thinks what — that she can project the simulation environment on a screen, and so Shaw starts getting video calls too.
It becomes useful when she is away on a mission for the Machine and on more than one occasion, to keep a conversation going when she leaves the simulation to eat. Shaw just props up the computer or her phone in front of her as she eats. She figures it's not that different from what people in long distance relationships do and when she happens to mention the thought out loud to Root she spends hours trying to wipe the smile from Root's face.
She still needs space every once in a while.
There are times when Root's gasping in her ear, her fingers deep into her and the scent of sex thick and heady around them, that Shaw cannot believe this is anything but 100% real. Other times, she'll wake up outside the simulation and find no trace of the bite mark Root made on her neck the night before, and when she gets back home, tired and grumpy after a long day, she hesitates, rubs the skin under her ear and wonders if she's just indulging herself, escaping to a reality where she does not have to deal with the fact that Root's dead.
Sometimes, she avoids the simulation for days at a time and ignores the texts Root sends her on the phone until John or Finch — or Fusco on one terribly embarrassing occasion — corner her and start delivering the messages instead, much to everyone's embarrassment.
Most of the time the pushing works — Root always knew when to push from the start — and she tries to ignore the relief she sees in Root's eyes when she returns, how she kisses her a little bit harder and holds on to her for a little bit longer. Shaw doesn't feel guilty at the fact that if she really wanted to leave, Root would not be in a position to follow, but it leaves her unsettled, aware of it in a way that's new and not exactly comfortable.
And maybe sometimes she still misses the way Root would just pop up out of nowhere with a bad pick up line and a crazy plan, but every once in a while she will get these cryptic messages with a time and a place in different ways. From a text to her phone to a suspicious ad in one of the digital billboards in Times Square just as she's keeping tabs on a number there.
The place always turns out to be her apartment — much to Root's amusement and Shaw's exasperation — but Root always manages to deliver on the crazy plans part. And if afterwards, Shaw's the one that holds onto Root a little bit tighter, Root is smart enough not to mention it.
It's far from normal, but they never were going to be anyway.