Chapter Text
The machine sends out a very special number to Root and Shaw, a little over two years after they defeated Samaritan. They have settled into their new lives, with a new house and their old job, in a new building, with new coworkers and employees. Root’s new office, shiny and modern 60 floors above the streets of Manhattan, Shaw’s own gym three floors below her, with a dozen new recruits to train in between missions, and their two dogs to come home to every night. They still work the numbers, but with a little less secrecy and a little more help. It’s a better life either of them ever expected to end up with.
There’s a sense of normalcy in heading to that building every morning with a proper job to do without having to fear for their lives every time they walk out the door. It look a while for them to loosen up and relax into the routine, but once they found a rhythm, it actually proved to be fun, in a weird, domestic sort of way.
Their home life has turned into something that used to be a foreign concept to both of them. Shaw would have called it gross, Root her biggest nightmare, but now that they’re living it, it’s… pretty good. They have their nice, co-owned town house in upper west side, decent-looking expensive furniture, and their dogs to keep the place warm and cozy. It’s not exactly like something’s missing.
But the machine sends them a number on a bright morning in May, in the form of an address, and stresses the importance that Root and Shaw have to investigate this one together, as soon as possible.
Shaw doesn’t think anything is different than usual, despite the strange format of the number, but it’s not the first time the machine has switched up the way she presents her new numbers to them. Root, however, seems a little annoyed with her, prompting her to tell her more while they’re on their way over to the neglected apartment block in west Queens, but the machine doesn’t seem to budge. No information until they get there, just how Shaw prefers it. She doesn’t complain when the machine makes sure everybody is well prepared before they start their missions, but nothing beats some good old fashioned recon.
The building the machine has led them to is old and dusty. Layers of paint crumbling off the walls and half of the floor tiles are cracked, along with the windows in the stairwells. Shaw wouldn’t have minded living there years ago, but now that she’s used to a cleaner, safer and warmer environment, she doesn’t wanna spend much more time here than necessary. She heads up first, checking the stairwell for possible threats, but there’s no one there. She tells Root to follow, but doesn’t move her hand off the gun in her waistband.
It’s noisy in the halls, loud music erupts from behind apartment doors, covering up sounds of people laughing, screaming and doing other things Shaw would rather not visualize in this moment. The apartment they’re headed to is the last on the left of the fifth floor. Shaw stands left of the door, Root on the right.
“Do we knock?” Shaw asks.
Root looks down in annoyance, waiting for the machine to give her an answer. Shaw looks around, noticing there are no cameras in the hall.
“No. Door’s open.”
Shaw looks at the knob. Duh. She would have seen the lock was broken off if she’d bothered to look. Damn know-it-all machine is weakening her observatory instincts.
She finally takes her gun out and holds it by her side when she carefully pushes the door open.
“Anybody home?” she asks, raising her voice slightly.
No answer.
“She says there is,” Root says from behind Shaw, pulling out her gun too.
Shaw moves into the dark, stale room. The curtains are closed and the lights are off. Her eyes have to adjust, but she can tell there’s no one in the living room. There’s some pieces of basic furniture and not much else in the decorative aspect, but it looks quite normal to Shaw. She rounds a corner to the kitchen, where for some reason the tap is running softly, and broken glass is on the floor, next to…
“Well if this is him, I’d say we’re too late.”
Root shuffles into the kitchen too and Shaw points out the body on the floor. It’s a young man from what she can tell, and there’s a dried up pool of blood by his head.
“And not by a little, either.” Shaw scrunches her nose. “Smells like the poor sucker’s been here at least a day or two.”
“Ugh,” Root groans, covering her nose with her jacket sleeve. “She says not to stop looking. I’ll take the doors to the left, you take the right.”
Shaw nods, and pulls out of the kitchen, making for the little hallway with her gun still pointed forward. She doesn’t know what they’re looking for, exactly. It doesn’t look like anyone has been here since the guy died, and if there were more people here, chances are high they’re not very lively anymore either.
It’s not really a surprise when she opens the door to a bedroom and finds a woman on the floor with a similar wound to the head.
“Another body here,” she calls out to let Root know.
“Nothing here,” Root replies. They meet back in the hallway and move on to the next doors.
Shaw finds the bathroom, with ugly green tiles, but relatively clean, and no dead bodies in sight. She does spot a pair of tiny socks on the pile of laundry in the corner, and an open pack of diapers under the sink, before Root calls out again.
“Shaw… In here.”
Shaw puts her gun back in her waistband before joining Root in the last room. Root is standing with her gun hanging by her side, staring motionlessly at the crib under the window.
In there, a half-naked baby with curly black hair stares back at her with wide eyes. But it doesn’t make a sound, and it doesn’t move, either. It smells even worse in here than it did in the kitchen and the bedroom, this time unmistakably of feces.
“Shit,” Shaw says. She moves over to the crib to have a closer look and make sure the baby is alive. It makes a little hiccup sound when Shaw reaches for it. It blinks up at Shaw and frowns, the big brown eyes tearing up slightly. “Uh, hi.”
She wriggles a hand under the baby’s back and rolls her onto her side to establish what she had already suspected, revealing a full diaper and finally getting a real reaction out of the baby’s throat. It squeals weakly.
“Across the hall,” Shaw orders Root, like this is business as usual. “Get a bath running.”
Root hesitates for a second, but turns around quickly and Shaw hears the tap turning on seconds later as she turns back to the kid. She lifts it out of the crib carefully. There’s an urge to clutch it to her chest, hold it tightly, but she resists it, what with the smell of shit still clouding the air around them and all. She keeps the baby at a safe distance while she carries it into the bathroom.
Root is sitting on the edge of the tub, testing the water from the showerhead with her hand.
“Uh, can you take the diaper off?” Shaw asks, holding the baby out in front of Root.
“I-” Root stares at the item in question and scrunches her nose.
“Fine, can you hold it while I take the diaper off?” She tries not to shake the baby with her impatient arms. Root stands up and puts her hands over Shaw’s under the baby’s armpits. Shaw fiddles with the diaper and eventually manages to get it off without making too much more of a mess, and dumps it in the little garbage bin in the corner.
“Well, it’s a girl,” Shaw says without much joy in her tone. She catches Root pout a little at the announcement. She doesn’t make any other type of movement to get the baby into the tub, so Shaw takes her from Root’s hands again and lowers her to the stream of the showerhead to rinse her off.
It takes a minute, but Root jumps back into action when Shaw looks at the last of the poop on the baby’s back questioningly, and hands her a hopefully clean washcloth from a cabinet. The baby whines softly when Shaw rubs her clean gently, holding her up between her arm and her shoulder. There’s soft red blotches on the skin that was most dirty, and judging from the lazy kicking of tiny legs, it hurts being touched there.
“She needs food,” Shaw states, thinking ahead. “Uh, formula? I don’t know. They should have something in the kitchen, I guess.” Authority leaks into her voice, and Root seems to catch on, because she nods, looks nervously at the baby one more time and then leaves the bathroom.
Shaw dries the baby off quickly, but she doesn’t feel much for setting her down somewhere naked, underfed, and exhausted, so she carries her back into the nursery to at least find her some clothes. She doesn’t find much better than a boring white shirt and a pair of tiny leggings and decides it’s gonna have to do for now. A microwave dings right when the baby is all clean and dressed.
Root returns with a little bottle, and Shaw holds the kid up while Root holds the bottle in place at her mouth. She drinks eagerly, immediately seeming to regain energy.
“How old do you think she is?” Root asks, finally relaxing a little bit. Shaw can only guess why she seemed so upset earlier, but she seems to be getting her mind back to the matter at hand.
“A couple of months? Year, maybe?” Shaw guesses. She treated some kids during her residency, but she’s no expert on babies. The kid gulps down a particularly big sip with a yelping sound and starts to cough. Shaw gently pats her back until she calms down enough to continue drinking. “Machine know anything?”
“Nothing. She’s not in any data bases. She’s guessing the parents were illegal, scared to get deported if they registered her.”
“Might have something to do with their current status,” Shaw says quietly, nodding back into the rest of the apartment.
“She doesn’t know. She had a hunch from the feeds of the traffic cam across the street and wanted us to check it out.”
“We should look around for something just in case. Something with a name or date of birth on it.”
Root nods. Then she looks down at the baby and, for the first time, smiles.
“She’s cute,” she says, with a soft grin.
Shaw looks up at her in surprise.
“What?” Root says defensively. “That’s the point of babies, right? Otherwise who cares?”
Shaw huffs a laugh. She’s probably right.
They get up when the baby’s stomach is full enough for her to start rejecting the bottle and reaching her little hands out for Root’s hair instead. Shaw searches the nursery, while Root heads back into the bedroom to check the nightstands for a diary or something. There’s no name on any of the kid’s few belongings, no record of her on the bookshelf in the hall, no passports or licenses in the living room drawers. Root doesn’t come out with anything of use either. She searches the man’s body in the kitchen while Shaw holds the baby out of view. He only has a couple of dollars in his pocket.
“Let’s just get her out of here,” Shaw suggests. “We’ll call Fusco and Dani to clean up this mess.”
“Where do we take her?” Root asks, looking at Shaw holding the baby to her chest with an expression Shaw doesn’t really know what to make of.
“The hospital, for starters. Kid hasn’t cried since we got here, that can’t be good.”
Shaw gets Root to hold the baby in the passenger’s seat while Shaw drives. The machine figures out a way to forge some sort of document for the kid, gives Root a brand new identity as a child protective services caseworker, and enrolls Shaw as a foster parent, leaving them with a plausible excuse to be walking around the city with an orphaned baby in their arms.
Root’s new title gives her clearance to many things, and they get helped by a doctor a few minutes after they check into the ER. The baby gets examined by a nice doctor, who handles her gently and simply accepts that they don’t know most of the answers to her questions. During the whole examination, the kid only stops staring at Root and Shaw to blink. She doesn’t cry until Shaw points out the irritated spots on her back and the doctor touches them.
Root is the first one to put a comforting hand on the girl’s head. Shaw looks up at Root and grins to tease her for getting caught caring. The kid however, starts to struggle against the doctor’s touches and reaches her little hands out to them. Shaw rolls her eyes at herself for caving first, and picking her up from the table.
The doctor prescribes an ointment to soothe the pain. She explains that judging by the kid’s length, development and teeth, she estimates her to be around 8 months old. Her reflexes seem alright, and despite the lack of crying she appears to be properly aware of her surroundings. She can’t say much about any possible psychological issues at this age, but suggests it’s probably best for her to stay in a stable household for now.
Shaw knows Root wants to ask if they shouldn’t just hand her over to actual child protective services. She kind of wants to ask the same thing, but there’s something about the way the baby is clutching at her shirt as they walk back to the car that stops her. She’s not sure if the machine is giving Root more direct advice or if Root is letting Shaw take charge of this situation, but she doesn’t object when Shaw notes they’re gonna have to take her home now.
“I’ll drive,” Root says, her eyes gliding over the baby’s hold of Shaw.
Neither of them has much to say on the drive. The baby softly coos into Shaw’s neck as she falls asleep. She doesn’t wake up when they stop at a supermarket to buy more diapers and formula. They probably need to buy some more stuff if they’re really gonna keep the kid around for longer than today, but they can figure that out later. She just needs to sleep somewhere warm and comfortable now.
Bear and Rose come to the door as soon as they get in, wagging their tails with interest for the new guest. Shaw would be all for proper introductions if the kid wasn’t asleep so peacefully, so it’s gonna have to wait. They head upstairs and put the baby down on their bed, which should be big enough to prevent her from falling out. And despite having access to what’s essentially the most advanced baby monitor in the world, neither of them feels tempted to leave the room after the little girl has curled up in the middle of their sheets. The bed suddenly seems too big and empty with just her in it.
Suddenly, Root bursts into a quiet laugh. “When I woke up this morning I didn’t think we would have a baby by noon.”
“It’s just for a little while,” Shaw says. “Just following doctor’s orders. We’ll find her a better place.”
“Yeah,” Root says. “Still, though. Not how I thought I was gonna spend the day.”
Shaw huffs a laugh too. Then they stand side by side, looking down at the infant on their bed. It feels strange, to have this bundle of responsibility lying in their private space, but her face is so small and peaceful that it seems right, in a way Shaw never thought she would feel. She expected it to feel like a bigger deal than it does.
“She doesn’t have a name,” Root says quietly, breaking Shaw’s train of thought. “She needs a name.”
Shaw nods. One glance at Root’s face is enough to know she has a lot of feelings about the matter. There’s something sad in her tone and her eyes look… sad. In the sympathetic way, Shaw presumes.
“We’ll think of something to call her,” Shaw says. The thought of giving the kid a name to carry for the rest of her life suddenly seems a little drastic, like it’s not their place. And it’s not like she really doesn’t have a name, they just don’t know what it is.
“She doesn’t have anything,” Root states. “We need to buy her things.”
“Yeah,” Shaw agrees. “We can order some stuff, right?”
Root nods, but she doesn’t move. Shaw hums in a tone implies she’ll be right back, and heads to the study across the hall from the bedroom. She takes one of Root’s laptops and brings it back to the bedroom, where she sits down on the bed and waits for Root to join her. She opens the laptop and isn’t all too surprised when the machine starts pulling up websites to baby stores and pages with things they’re gonna need for sure. Like a crib and some simple looking clothes.
Shaw leaves Root in charge of picking things, only objecting when her horrifying styling choices are going absolutely too far. Root refuses to add a simple travel crib to the cart and picks a decent wooden crib instead. They can’t decide on cute onesies, so they pick seven of them, along with five more leggings and shirts with animal patterns. They’re a little clueless in the toy department, but neither of them hesitates for a second when they find a stuffed animal in the shape of a shepherd dog. It’s probably supposed to resemble a German, but it looks enough like Bear to make it into the shopping cart. They add a rattle and a couple more soft toys before placing the order.
Shaw looks over her shoulder at the baby, and Root follows her gaze.
“It’ll be okay,” Shaw says, not sure if she’s telling the baby or Root.
Root leans in then, and kisses Shaw for the first time since they left the house this morning. It’s not much more than that, their hands still leaning on the bed. But it’s soft and warm, and all the tension that Shaw hadn’t even noticed was riling up in her fades away. Shaw didn’t think she needed a reassurance, but that’s what the kiss gives her anyway.
They break apart when Fusco calls them on the commlink to tell them the case is being taken care of. All they told him was that child protective services had come to pick up a kid and found the bodies there. He doesn’t have to know child protective services is them, and that the kid in question is currently asleep on their bed. The story didn’t even make that much sense, but they left it up to him to figure out what to tell his coworkers.
They sit on the bed for another hour, softly discussing names. Root likes more posh and old fashioned names like Olivia and Violet, but at the same time is conflicted about the origins of them. She feels like they should respect the girl’s own origins and give her a Spanish name. Shaw doesn’t care too much as long as it sounds cool and not like a grandma’s name. They don’t settle on anything before the kid wakes up and starts crying. She stops almost as soon as she sees Root and Shaw sitting near her.
When she’s properly awake, they take her back downstairs. Maybe letting two above medium sized dogs meet her on her first day away from home isn’t in her best interest, but the dogs can be calm on command, and they don’t really have a choice. They all share the house for now.
Bear is the first one to be brave and approach the newcomer, who’s safely wrapped in Shaw’s arms and dangling her legs above the ground at knee height. He sniffs her face and refrains from licking her. The baby’s eyes are wide, but she doesn’t seem to be scared. In fact, she’s reaching her hands to his snout. Root is watching the scene closely, but neither the dog nor the kid give any reason to intervene.
Rose follows, with a little more trouble to contain her enthusiasm. Root holds her back by her collar a little bit to keep her from jumping or licking, or doing anything else that would scare the kid, but the wild movements of the dog’s tail only make her laugh. She gets a hand on the dog’s ear and squeezes it, and luckily Rose doesn’t really seem to be upset with it.
“They’re doing better than I expected,” Root says, with a smile I her voice.
“They’re good dogs,” Shaw says with a proud grin.