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At first, Shaw thinks she’s forgotten. That Lambert was right when he said the simulations had overwritten her real memories. When Root brings her to her safe house and says “There’s only the one bed. Guess we’ll just have to share.” That crooked smile is something Shaw knows well. (And god, did she ever miss it.)
But the way the light falls across Root’s face, the shadows in the little lines and creases around her mouth, that seems – different. New, maybe. She knows it’s not another simulation. Here with Root, for this moment at least, she is certain. The woman in front of her is so very real, so Root, that she knows in some undefinable way that this is reality.
Root notices her staring a little too long, and the smile drops a bit. The play of shadows and light across her face shifts into another pattern that is at once both intimately familiar and unrecognizable. “Guess we will,” Shaw says with a hint of challenge in her voice, and Root’s mischievous smile is back in full force.
Shaw resolves to remember this. To commit to memory every little detail about Root that she can. To take back what Samaritan stole from her.
Though Shaw won’t admit it, she’s also missed Root’s atrocious sense of appropriate timing and her shameless flirting. To try to reassure her by telling her they’re just information, to use that same metaphysical bullshit to make a joke about checking out her ass, and to do it all in the middle of a gunfight is such an undeniably Root thing to do. She feels that momentary certainty again, and wonders if Root understands how much this really helps her.
She might feel a little turned on too, because of the way Root says darlin’, and because she really does make that two guns at once thing look hot.
She purposefully tries to avoid situations that get too close to the simulations. But sometimes they sneak up on her.
The first day after Root’s release from the hospital following her brush with death, they’re at the park with Bear. Shaw’s playing fetch with him, while Root is blatantly staring at her and not even pretending to hide it. Shaw insisted she’d be fine with just her hoodie, and doesn’t even notice she’s shivering until she sees Root taking off her jacket out of the corner of her eye.
She freezes for just a moment. Then Root slips the jacket around her shoulders and it’s nothing at all like the simulations.
The jacket is warm in a way the simulated versions never were, Root’s body heat still clinging to it. It surrounds Shaw, along with the subtle scent of the leather and Root’s shampoo.
Shaw turns around to face Root, pulling the jacket a little tighter around herself as she does.
Root looks warm and inviting in her bulky sweater and long scarf. The tip of her nose and her cheeks are a rosy pink. Wisps of her hair, painted an almost reddish-gold colour by the late afternoon sun, are blowing across her face in the light breeze.
When she lifts her hand up and stokes her thumb along Shaw’s jawline, something clicks in her mind. Though the action is familiar, the sensation is somehow not. Root has done this many times, both before Shaw’s capture and after her return. Yet it feels to Shaw as if she is experiencing the full range of sensations of Root tracing the slightly roughened pad of her thumb over her skin for the very first time.
She never could contain in her memories – and Samaritan could never fully, properly simulate – the totality of Root. She can remember perfectly every moment that’s passed between them, know Root as well as she knows anyone, but that still can’t encompass it all. There is just so much that Shaw could never hope to hold on to it all. The tiny things that she never missed in their absence, but become so obvious when she sees them. The multitude of little details and nuances and quirks that together make up Root’s shape.
And she realizes that she doesn’t want to. When she looks at Root, or feels her touch, it gives her context. For just a moment, Root draws a bright, clear line defining reality. This is her safe place. Not a fixed point where she can hide away, but the dynamic moving target that is Root.
Like a one time pad, Root adds her own little bit of chaos to reality, then passes the message along for Shaw to decode.
This will also, Shaw realizes, help her take back what Samaritan took from her. Not her memories, but the moments with Root and the feeling of safety it tried to use against her. Now that she has the real thing in front of her, the simulated Root pales in comparison.
As Shaw pops her arms into the sleeves of Root’s jacket, she sees Root’s expression shift, hints of confusion and concern creeping in. She’s studying Shaw as usual, and has obviously picked up that she’s been thinking about something. But she doesn’t ask Shaw about it, doesn’t push.
“Maybe there’s another way I could warm you up?” is all Root says, with a devilish little smirk.
Every day the moments when Shaw knows this is real and she’s safe come more and more often, and last longer. They eventually become the default, and the moments when she doubts her reality the exception.
And in those moments of doubt, she finds herself touching the spot behind her ear less, and thinking of Root more. Of Root’s ridiculous bedhead, of her nose scrunched up after Shaw dabbed some of the bright purple paint she chose for their bedroom on her face, of the way she furrows her brow and clenches her jaw when she’s frustrated by an uncooperative computer.
Of the way she groans and sleepily mumbles “What the fuck, Shaw?” when Shaw’s tracing of the pattern of scars across Root’s arm and shoulder and back with her fingers wakes her up.
“If I was an enzyme, I’d be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes,” Root says as they’re walking back to the library, after saving a number from a rogue biotech company.
“Why do I even like you?” Shaw asks, though she laughs and bumps her shoulder into Root’s as she says it. Root, of course, is beaming at Shaw admitting she likes her of her own free will without any prompting.
“My super smooth pickup lines and my cool leather jacket?”
She says it in her normal flirtatious tone, but there’s something about her expression Shaw can’t quite put her finger. Some little subtle difference that lets Shaw know she understands. Not just that Shaw appreciates her pickup lines, but her general chaotic Rootness.
“Yeah, that must be it,” Shaw says sarcastically, but she doesn’t protest when Root slips a hand into her back pocket.