Chapter Text
They both take an hour off from work to take Zara to her doctor’s appointment the next week. There’s nothing wrong with her, but they figure she’s due for a checkup since the last one. They slip back into the roles of the caseworker and the foster parent, and since the baby is happy and healthy, the doctor doesn’t question it any further.
Shaw has to do most of the talking, since Root isn’t supposed to know as much as her, and she tells the doctor about the almost nightly outbursts. The doctor asks a few questions about Zara’s sleeping schedule, her eating habits and her reactions to physical affection. She nods, noting that all of that seems okay. She suggests that it might be nightmares, likely replaying experiences from before she was rescued, but since the kid shows no symptoms of serious trauma, the doctor advices Shaw to keep doing what she already does and give it a few more weeks to see if it passes.
Other than that, Zara is good to go. She happily claps her hands when Shaw picks her up. She chats in gibberish all the way back to the car, and then falls asleep in her car seat. Root drops Shaw off at the office and drives home, spending the rest of the afternoon trying to make Zara aware of Dora the Explorer, much to her own irritation, and working on the code for the surveillance system at the office.
She makes pasta with basil and chicken for dinner and a fresh vegetable and potato blend for Zara, which she swallows down with more eagerness than Root has ever seen even Shaw eat with. She either really loves zucchini, or she was just very hungry.
Shaw gets home, and they eat the pasta at the counter with a glass of wine and beer respectively, because it’s Friday and that’s a good enough excuse. Zara lies on her blanket on the floor between the kitchen and the living room area. She’s surrounded by dogs and toys, but she’s busier testing out all the sounds her she can make with her lips than playing with anything.
“Good pasta,” Shaw says. She grunts in satisfaction to verify her statement.
“Thanks.” Root smiles over at her.
They discuss the minor details about the part of the day they spent apart as they eat.
“So,” Shaw starts, when they’ve both finished their last bite. “I guess we need to talk.” Her eyes are calm and pointed on Zara.
Root nods. They’ve been dancing around this conversation for too long, and they both know it’s getting ridiculous now. They should have had it the moment they decided to take the child home. But every time Root so much as thinks about this, it makes her nervous and she honestly doesn’t know what to say.
“Have you ever thought about kids?” Shaw asks. She pricks at the label of her beer bottle with her fork.
“Well of course not,” Root sighs. “Then again I also never thought about owning a house and sharing it with my long term partner. Or running a company designed to help people out of trouble. Or dogs. Or living a stable, fairly safe life in general.”
Shaw huffs a laugh. “When did we turn into those people?”
“No idea.” They hadn’t exactly planned any of this. Every move they made to get here just felt like a logical next step at the time. Neither of them ever stopped to reflect on their decisions. But the dogs, the house and the company, those were pretty safe bets, where if something went wrong, no one else would be harmed but them. It’s a whole different story now that another human life is involved.
“I just…” Root starts. She stares at her plate, looking for a way to put her thoughts into words. “I never thought about it until last month. I never expected I would ever get to this point where I even wanted to have a child near me. And I’ve… lived with that in mind, you know. That I would never have to account for anyone else. I’ve done so many bad, selfish things because it was never gonna affect anyone but me. But then now there’s you, and…” She sighs again. She doesn’t like talking about this. They’ve had a similar conversation before, the only time she ever told Shaw that she deserved better than a selfish, homicidal sadist for a partner, but Shaw had cut her off at that. She told her that even if she was nothing but those three things, Shaw could make that choice for herself just fine. Root doesn’t want to spiral back to that right now, so she just stops talking and waits for Shaw to steer the conversation back to the point.
“Well,” Shaw says. She’s making that face she does when she’s about to pick her words carefully. “I think it’s safe to say that’s in the past now.”
“I’ve killed people, Shaw,” Root whispers, in case the baby understands or remembers it. She tries and fails to sound like it doesn’t bother her.
“So have I,” Shaw says with her normal volume.
“It’s different. You’ve only killed to save people. Everything you’ve ever done was to save people. You’re the most well-intentioned person I’ve ever met.”
Shaw huffs a laugh and looks away. You’d think with Root praising her face and ass every minute of the day she’d have learned how to take a compliment by now, but she still gets all awkward when Root shows admiration for her personality.
“Don’t we balance each other out that way then?” she says, smiling smugly around the rim of her beer bottle. “I’m not saying it’ll be perfect all the time. Just… from a hypothetical viewpoint, we… wouldn’t suck that much at this.”
“Your hypothesis is lying on our living room floor,” Root comments dryly.
“That’s my point. We both know that kid isn’t going anywhere at this point. It’s not just about us anymore. You heard what the doctor said about those nightmares, God knows what’ll happen to her if her new parents leave her behind too.”
Root swallows hard and bites her lip. Shaw just referred to her and herself as ‘parents’ and it’s making her stomach crawl. She knew it was coming from a mile away, yet she can’t remember the last time she felt so uncomfortable.
“Look,” Shaw starts. She’s staring at her empty plate, making it easy for Root to avoid eye contact. “This isn’t how I thought we’d end up either. But I think you know the machine gave us her number for a reason.”
“I’ve been afraid to ask her,” Root admits. “But I figured as much.”
She would have expected Shaw to be a bit angrier about this. The machine meddling in their personal business always hits a special nerve with Shaw. But she doesn’t seem angry at all.
Root however, feels a low pull in her chest at the thought of the machine making this choice for her, when they never so much as touched the topic of family, let alone starting one of her own. They talked about her and Shaw’s relationship, and the machine must have compared them to other people with similar lives, and decided that something was missing.
But on the other hand, the machine never told them what to do after they found the baby. She never told them anything but an address, and everything that happened from that point on, had been on Root and Shaw alone. They could have dropped her off at an orphanage immediately, but instead they chose to take her home with them. All the machine did was give them a nudge.
“Root.” Shaw touches her arm, just under her elbow. “Talk to me.”
“What am I supposed to say, Shaw? We’re already doing this, there’s nothing I can say to change that.”
“Just tell me every doubt you have now. It hasn’t been set in stone yet.”
“I don’t know how to do this. My childhood wasn’t ideal and I just don’t know how this is supposed to go. I don’t know any kids and I’ve never had an example of decent parenting.” Shaw is the only person Root has ever opened up to about her childhood, but she still doesn’t like talking about it. She likes to keep the past in the past and not look back on it. She remembers the vulnerability of the girl she was before she became Root all too well and she hates going back to that place.
“You were doing just fine before you started overthinking it just now. You’re not your mother, Root,” Shaw says. “And you’re not alone.”
Root blinks away some tears as she thinks about that last part. Maybe her mother couldn’t be what she needed because she didn’t have any help. Not even the shitty boyfriends she brought home from time to time would help her out, and in all fairness, Root wouldn’t have let them.
There’s something else she has been thinking about for a while. She doesn’t wanna tell Shaw at all, because she knows it’s stupid and it doesn’t make sense. But Shaw wants to hear everything that’s on her mind, and maybe all she needs is to hear Shaw agree that it’s bullshit.
“My mother used to say gay people raising kids was the most vile form of child abuse.”
Shaw looks up at that, suddenly done avoiding eye contact. “That’s real rich coming from a woman who drank herself to hell every day to have her daughter clean up the mess she left behind.”
“I know.” Root looks down at Zara, who has rolled herself onto her stomach and is chewing one of her rubber booklets. “But… I can’t help but think, what if we screw her up?”
“Root, come on, you know that’s bullshit.”
“I know! I know, and I love when other gay couples have kids! One happy family closer to overthrowing the heteronormative patriarchy! But you asked what was on my mind and this is part of it, okay?”
“Yeah, it’s okay.” Shaw rests her head on her hand. She waits for a moment, looking for the right words. “You didn’t have a dad growing up. Neither did I for the latter part.”
“Yeah and look how we turned out. No offense.”
“None taken. Although, in the end we turned out pretty great.” Shaw pokes Root in the stomach, making her smile. “Look, from what I’ve learned, parenting is a two man job. Or two women job in this case. Point is, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a tough job, and it’s a lot easier when two people carry the weight together. It doesn’t matter what gender said people are.”
Root looks over at her with soft eyes. Shaw has this sweet, shy look in her eyes when she’s being sincere, and Root is so weak for it. Even if she had been talking nonsense, her voice would have been soothing enough to calm Root’s nerves. But it feels like Shaw knows what she’s talking about. She always speaks of her childhood and her parents highly, with a little gleam in her eyes and respect in her voice. And she seems to be certain of this, of Zara. So maybe they can balance each other out. After all, isn’t that what they’ve been doing for the past five years?
“And I’ll be the one to take her to football games and play catch with her in the park if that’s what you’re worried about,” Shaw adds.
Root smiles. Suddenly she can almost picture it.
She looks down at the little girl on the floor. Zara has abandoned her book in favor of chewing a stuffed dinosaur toy while babbling softly to it. Three months ago, Root never would have expected to be thinking about this, but out of these past month and a half with Zara, the most unexpected part has been that she never once thought this baby was gross or annoying, and she actually started to care about her. So far, taking care of a baby had brought nothing but cozy and warm feelings in Root’s chest. Zara has put things in a different light, and given her and Shaw a whole new sense of purpose.
“We’re gonna have to change some things,” Root says.
“Yep,” Shaw agrees. Root glances at her to see that her eyes are trained on the baby too.
“We should move my study to the basement. Next to the gun room.”
“The gun room’s gotta go.”
“What? No. It just needs a better lock, is all.”
“Root.”
“…Fine.”
They bicker some more about safety measures in the house, and then Shaw points out that they have to ensure their own safety at work too. No more dangerous missions, no more spontaneous ambushes without backup, no more fist fights or gun battles that could lead to serious injury. Root sighs and notes that’s gonna take some getting used to. Shaw agrees and suggests maybe they can take turns getting beat up so at least there’s always one of them to keep things normal around the house.
After a while, Zara gets bored of lying on the ground and they take her with them to the couch to discuss things further.
“We need Zoe to take care of some legal stuff.”
“We need to get her a toy that resembles Rose too.”
“Oh god. She’s gonna have to go to school one day.”
“We should paint the study. Turn it into a real nursery.”
“I have to call my mom.”
Root looks up at that, holding onto Zara’s hand. She swallows past something in her throat.
“We’re gonna be a family.”
Shaw looks from Zara to Root and nods with her lips pursed into the cutest smile.
“We sort of were before,” she says, nodding her head to the dogs on the floor. Bear perks his ears and looks up. Rose sighs in her sleep, her nose wriggled into the fur of Bear’s neck.
“From proud dog moms to…” Root starts, and then frowns. “Oh god.”
“Yep. That’s weird.”
Zara lets out a high pitched wail as she raises Root’s hand to her mouth. There doesn’t seem to be a certain message or emotion attached to the sound, and she contently opens her mouth for Root’s fingers.
“Oh no,” Root says, pulling them back. “Here.” She reaches forward to where the pacifier is lying on the coffee table. “Suck on this.”
Zara is happy enough with the replacement to lean against Root’s side and sigh softly. Root puts her arm around her and slips her hand under Zara’s legs to pull her closer. She’s been awake for a pretty long time, Root realizes. She looks at Zara’s little face, adoring the way she’s suckling on the pacifier.
“I think we’ll be fine,” Shaw says, watching the two from the other end of the couch.
Root smiles at her and lifts up her hand towards Shaw. She beckons her to come closer. Shaw grins and scoots over. She doesn’t waste any time before getting her lips on Root’s. She holds Root’s neck to hold her close, but she pulls back when Zara lets out a little noise. Root worries they might have squished her, but instead, she wriggles into the narrow space between them and closes her eyes.
They both watch her. Shaw lays a hand on top of her head softly and strokes through her curls with her thumb. Root looks at the smile on Shaw’s face and the tenderness in her eyes. She kisses her on the cheek and stays there until Shaw turns her face and kisses her back.
Root sighs into it with a smile.
They will be fine.