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The late autumn wind that buffeted Shaw was woven with a cruel foreshadowing of winter. She turned her back to it as she stood on top of an apartment building in midtown, but that only made the hair that had escaped her increasingly beleaguered ponytail float ethereally in the air as if she were underwater. The sun was a saffron explosion of light low on the Hudson and it reminded Shaw that the remains of the day were now just scraps and that she was no closer to figuring out their newest number’s details then she had been that morning. Oddly when she tried to refocus on the minutia of the case it eluded her, running away like beaded water on an umbrella that fell to the ground anonymously in its holder’s wake.
Shaw attempted to console herself with the thought that her failure was the consequence of the sheer quantity of numbers that they dealt with on a weekly basis. It didn’t work well. There was no denying that the numbers rarely seemed to slow, and when they did it meant something cataclysmically terrible that made everyone wish that they could go back to the usual schedule, but that wasn’t the entire truth of it.
Shaw exhaled her awareness with a heavy and frustrated breath that curled briefly in front of her before being dashed on the breeze. The cold and barren determination of her past had been as regular, and indeed more reliable, than the continued beating of her heart, but now it felt faded. As an unquestioning soldier and assassin she’d grimly and remorselessly ended the lives of others while continually putting her own at risk. She’d been an object, which someone or something pointed at perceived enemies of the United States. Outside of her next drink or lay everything else had seemed ephemeral, and while she was apparently being honest with herself the latter of those had been necessarily scant and fleeting.
Now, as she looked in the far distance at the George Washington, she knew that this confusing and chaotic city was her home. It was a deep and settled knowledge, one which her mind would whirl away from through practiced flightiness, only to settle back to eventually when she put her head down on the same pillow as the night before. Even the recent deck-shuffling of her life and identity that Samaritan had forced upon her couldn’t shake the fact that the sights and sounds of this city were beginning to form deeper and deeper grooves in her as the months and now years spun around. This was the first time in her adult life that she had a home, not a base of operations or command center, but a place of permanency that she could believe in and more importantly wanted to believe in.
It was more than the city of course, the truth that seeped unbidden and unwanted into her thoughts reminded her with a continuous drip-dripping of realization that the bigger part of the change within her was the people that surrounded her. Her old partner Cole, from the days of thoughtless terrorist assassinations, had been the first time that she’d felt the pull of a partnership. The suddenness of his death was like an echo reverberating from the chaotic and random world around her, and it had unmoored her from what she believed was the temporary insanity of developing an emotional connection within that capricious turbulence. It was a bittersweet irony that she had been immediately delivered into the hands of two men who claimed to be able to help her while standing in the middle of a cemetery.
The romantic altruism of their promised offer had raised her hackles and caused her to slink back into the shadows of the city with a deliberateness that was well practiced. Duplicitousness had been the watchword of her existence, both in her own actions towards others and in their actions towards her. She was not someone who felt deeply or sometimes at all, but the constant hammering of falsity and lies into her life effaced her ability to take anything at face value. Every person and every conversation was a game, a puzzle that with certain correct actions could be won. She imagined the perplexing promises offered to her by Reese and Finch as a fortress in her mind that she laid siege to with numerous tactically cunning actions, but which ultimately broke in hesitant confusion right at their moments of triumph. It had been, she realized in retrospect, an intermingling of the openness of the offer and something deep within her that wished for something other than to be a trigger someone in Washington pulled. For the first time she allowed herself to want something different, something good and whole, and in doing so broke from her past completely.
It was with a rueful smirk into the now fading light of dusk that Shaw thought about the strange sense of relief and familiarity that had warmed her during her first meeting with Root in that hotel room. Within the maelstrom of events that had flung her around after her partner’s death, watching a sweetly timid woman turn into a grinning torturer, particularly one who seemed to retain an oddly transmuted sense of that prior sweetness, was like a pocket of calm in that storm. The woman was a dangerous puzzle replete with confusing contradictions, difficult to discern motives, and a spinning moral compass. She was then, in fact, the exact kind of objective she’d been tasked to target and decipher as a soldier and assassin.
Almost immediately the complexities Root had flashed during their first meeting were joined by further ones that concerned her connection with the Machine and its guardians. In the past, after decoding her motivations, Shaw would have simply put a bullet in her head and moved on to the next target without further thought. Instead she’d lowered her aim in that warehouse and put Root on the ground with one to the shoulder, saving her life instead of taking it. It was against her instincts, the ones that had kept her alive through a never ending series of dangerous missions, but flanked by Reese and exposed to the earnestness of Finch it was a decision she made without regret.
In retrospect perhaps that was when the distractions that nibbled at the edges of her concentration had truly begun. She had allowed Root to live and in doing so created a runaway no brakes collision course with a series of diversions that found her wherever she was, whether walking down the street or sleeping in her apartment. The puzzle that Root initially presented only seemed to deepen in its inscrutableness and in so doing further allured Shaw as it fed her curiosity with breadcrumbs of perplexity alternated with small moments of understanding. Root was a globe-trotting assassin and masochist like Shaw, but those commonalities were dashed by Root’s eager suggestiveness and fanatical devotion to an artificial intelligence, both of which were foreign to her.
As the underlying principles and general framework of the Machine were made known to her by unrequested lectures from Finch, Shaw began to understand the outline of Root’s dogmatic nature even if she could never fully comprehend it. Her initial incredulity at Root’s elevation of the Machine to a goddess, a divinity above mankind, had softened and been placed with her assessment of any other religiously devout individual, which was that they wanted something to believe in that made them feel special or that validated their existence. As long as their God wasn’t telling them to kill civilians or blow up buildings then Shaw didn’t care.
With Root’s zealotry subsumed into her greater understanding of religion, Shaw knew that what remained was the genuine heart of the matter. The truth that she understood was the inevitable destination of her meandering thoughts. It was an explanation that had shadowed her for weeks if not months, one that she’d tried to burn away with the glaring intensity of her own willpower and denial. In the beginning she ascribed Root’s suggestiveness, her flirtatious nature, as an aggressive power play. It was an attempt to dominate the conversation with a swaggering smile and a knowing smirk. As the recipient of this tactic numerous times Shaw was unimpressed and accordingly riposted with teeth clenched growls of annoyance that were only partly an act and a haymaker that definitely wasn’t.
The problem was that unlike the fleeting cologne and perfume choked overconfidence of previous aggressors, Root persisted within her life. They were inexorably intertwined though the numbers and the Machine, but even when the case didn’t call for their shared involvement it seemed like Root took it upon herself to impose her presence within Shaw’s life. In response, Shaw had retreated to the familiar ground of cold calculation and evaluation, but found herself increasingly frustrated in her attempts to solve Root and properly ascertain motivations for her actions. It became obvious that Root’s devotion to the Machine meant a haphazard alliance with herself and the others, and that ultimately Root’s goals therein seemed genuine, if not problematically perused. What remained to be explained was why exactly Root kept up with her persistent intrusions and undisguised suggestiveness.
Upon reflection it had become increasingly clear to Shaw over the course of the previous year that while part of Root’s persistence was owed to her natural doggedness and perhaps delight in manipulation, there also was the fact that Shaw had felt herself slowly grow more receptive to Root’s behavior. That was the hardest truth, the one that hitherto Shaw had only fleetingly made eye contact with before quickly averting her gaze in fear that she might start believing it. As time had unspooled and the other elements of Root’s character came into sharper focus, it had meant that the woman’s flirtatious behavior stood nakedly alongside her other understood attributes, namely a similar pleasure seeking in the dangerous and absolute devotion to protect the innocent. It was, she realized in retrospect, a dangerously heady combination and an utterly unique one. Never before had Shaw met someone with whom she shared such close similarities and now they were two bodies locked into an orbit around one another because of their shared crusade. It felt like with every slightly ridiculous escapade and cocksure smile, Root slowly scraped away her resistance and warmed something that had sat cold and unknown deep inside her.
As the last light now ran like ichor over the water and streets, Shaw found herself at the end of both her thoughts and the day. She knew now that it was foolish to deny the effect Root had on her mind and body. The feeling of her lips on Root’s neck as it hummed with a moan echoed in her thoughts and set her mind away from the case at hand and towards further reimagining of their stolen moments together. Every time something like that happened there was a struggle between her old self, the dutiful assassin who felt emotion as a distant echo and this newer self, a person that called a city home, had partners that she trusted and a woman in her life that rushed into the cracks of her defenses with the subtlety of a storm surge. It was no longer much of a contest however, as her past memories of being an assassin paled in comparison to her current situation, with its promises of security, camaraderie, and continued time with Root.
With the full weight of her thoughts and the realizations therein now upon her, Shaw was surprised to find that the burden was not what she had expected. Instead of tightly coiled muscles and a cold blank stare, she felt strangely liberated and hopeful. There were incredible challenges that lay ahead and her own safety was far from assured, but she knew herself and---
“How long are you going to stand on that roof?” A familiar voice sparked to life in her earpiece and jarred Shaw abruptly away from her long train of thought. It sparked a flush of warmth that beat back the brisk autumn breeze.
“How long have you been watching my location Root?” She replied, quickly settling into their game of parrying one question with another.
“Mmmm, a while. I have some information on your number and Finch is out. So…is there something interesting on that rooftop?” The question lingered and Shaw thought she detected an unsettled undertone in it.
“No nothing. What’s the information?” Shaw knew that she didn’t want to discuss her thoughts with Root. They were too raw for that and old habits could still die hard.
“It’s actually quite a lot including hardcopies—
“Just read it to me.” Shaw interrupted with a flat tone of annoyance. It had no effect on Root and she continued as if nothing had happened.
“---so I think it’s best if we meet up and discuss it. I feel like Italian.” Root finished and Shaw could hear the pride in her complete lack of subtlety.
“I—“ Shaw hesitated, that struggle once again within her, but then it quickly calmed. “Fine. That place on 36th in an hour.” She replied, trying to keep her voice calm and free of the small smirk that she felt growing.
“Can’t wait.” Root replied with the same sweetly satisfied air and then Shaw’s earpiece clicked to silence.
Shaw took one last look at the city and then slowly turned to the rooftop exit. She shook her head to clear her thoughts and focus back on the case at hand. However as she strode through the exit she realized that one thought still remained, she couldn’t wait for their meeting either.