Chapter Text
The first time Shaw meets her, Sameen is ten years old and her father has just died. She’s sitting in the lobby of the hospital, waiting to go home after being given a (miraculously) clean bill of health, as her newly widowed mother talks to doctors and policemen and fills out forms and does what mothers do. Wrapped in a blanket, Sameen steadily works her way through a sandwich from the hospital’s cafeteria. It’s disappointing. (The sandwich.) She feels her brow furrow and the corners of her mouth pull downward slightly, seemingly of their own accord. She finishes the sandwich down to the last crumbs, but she still feels so empty. Maybe she’ll ask for another one.
But before she can even get up to make her way over to the nurse at the front desk, a woman sits down on the chair beside her, fresh sandwich (from a Chinatown deli, still warm) in one hand and a cup of hot chocolate in the other. “Hi,” the woman says gently. She looks forward rather than at Shaw, only barely glancing at the little girl out of the corner of her eye. “You’re Sam, right?” Sameen just stares at her. Well, stares at the sandwich in her hand. “I’m Root.” Shaw turns away from Root and looks back out into the room.
Neither of them says anything for a while. It’s almost companionable, the way they sit next to each other, not looking at one another or talking at all, but just watching the frantic bustle of the hospital as it passes in front of them. It shouldn’t be, Shaw thinks idly. She doesn’t feel scared, but it’s not because she doesn’t know any better. She’s not stupid; she’s old enough to know that if a strange lady comes up to you and she knows your name and she’s holding out a treat, you’re supposed to run in the opposite direction. But Sameen just really doesn’t feel like doing that, she’s not sure why. So she just sits and tries not to let the smell of toasted bread and molten cheese coming from the paper bag on Root’s lap make her more hungry than she already is. She’s been ravenous ever since they pulled her out of that car. She feels like she’ll still be hungry no matter how much she eats, like she’ll still be hungry for the rest of her life and she’ll never feel full again. It can’t have been more than a few hours, but she thinks she might already be forgetting what it was like to not feel this hungry. She wonders if it’s possible for her insides to digest themselves if they’re empty enough.
Root balances the sandwich and the drink on the armrest between them, looking over at Shaw properly for the first time. She looks so small, just a frizzy little head sticking out from a bundle of scratchy grey wool. “You’re waiting for your mom, right?” Root asks without expecting an answer. “I’m waiting for someone, too.”
To anyone else Sameen would look like she’s zoned out, just staring into space, but as Root speaks she can see Shaw’s head turn almost imperceptibly toward her. Root looks back down at her hands in her own lap and smiles slightly to herself.
“Well are you gonna eat that?” Sameen looks up at Root for a second, eyes round and imploring and almost solemnly serious, before she tilts her chin back down but keeps staring intently at the sandwich out of the corner of her eye.
Caught off guard, Root can’t stop herself from blurting out, “You trust me??” The earnestness in her own voice grates at her.
“Well, if you were gonna abduct me you prolly would have done it by now,” Sameen says matter-of-factly, as if considering scenarios of her own abduction was a totally unremarkable pastime for a ten-year-old. “So?” Shaw continues impatiently. It takes a second for Root to get what she’s talking about.
Root can feel her eyes begin to well up, but she’s smiling as she nudges the paper deli bag slightly toward Sameen, who unceremoniously grabs it and starts unwrapping the sandwich inside.
Root wants to say something, wants to tug at the edges of the blanket where it’s sliding off Shaw’s shoulders and wrap it tightly around her, wants to tell her that the EMT she overheard talking about her earlier tonight was wrong (and a fucking asshole), wants protect this perfect little girl from all the shit the world is going to throw at her. Wants to save Sameen from all the shit that will happen because of her, because of Root, because Root failed her more than the world ever did. She wants to tell Sameen that if she ever meets a woman named Root again (when she meets Root again), she should run and not look back.
But no words come. So Root waits and Shaw eats.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” she says finally.
“Yeah.” Shaw shrugs, just a tiny movement between bites.
“It’s okay, you know,” Root almost whispers. “It’s not wrong.” Somehow her voice seems even smaller than Sameen’s. Shaw stops chewing.
“You’re allowed to be…” Root can’t find the right words. “…hungry.”
A beat.
“No.” Sameen says simply before she resumes chewing.
The defeat, the finality, in that one word is deafening to Root. Shaw’s only ten years old and already… Root feels a familiar anger bubble up deep in her chest, but she knows by now where that anger stems from. She’s here, and she’s utterly helpless, just like she always has been, always will be. What’s the point of being able to time travel if there’s never anything she can do to change things? What’s the point of omniscience if all she can ever do is watch?
Root chews on her lip and looks upward, as if waiting for someone to tell her what to say. But She doesn’t exist here, not yet, not in 1993, so Root swallows and briefly closes her eyes.
“Sameen?” Root turns her body in the chair to face Shaw for the first time. “Trust me. It is- you are. Okay.” She knows it means nothing, knows these words are all the wrong ones.
Sameen reaches across the armrest for the cup of hot chocolate.