#rootcaused

one arm’s tucked under her jacket, and the other uses a blunted fork to stab at the hunk of beef bleeding into its side of fries. salt spills onto the counter. (the waitress looks scared — two dark eyes and a blood-letted pallor glare from across the room, and shaw rips a corner of meat off with her teeth. the simulation will reset. fear’s a manufactured response, like the chewed gristle sticking between her molars and the glower of headlights through the diner’s window.)

she’s joined, shortly after, by two heeled boots and a leather jacket that feels so close, yet so reservedly far from what she remembers. hey sweetie. simulation six thousand, seven hundred and forty three.

she makes it sound simple, like they don’t fumble around in the shadows cast by every camera and piece of tech with an electronic pulse in new york, but when it comes down to it - that’s... root. (she picks the worst moments to remind her that there’s more to life than the next number, or the next glitch in the system that propels them further into the subway and further away from the spotlight. she tells shaw she’s got a nice ass when she’s ducking away from a .45. she tells her her arms are like a greek god’s when she’s hauling ass through a ceiling vent and pulling herself up by her fingers. it’s inappropriate, and so goddamn totally root.)

and sometimes, it’s not inappropriate. sometimes, it’s late nights staring out at the manhattan bridge. sometimes, it’s a bottle of wine and a few stitches over dinner. sometimes, she leans into that stupid romantic thread that’s threatening to pull her apart if they keep this up. 

                  and where’s the fun in that?

root is blonde now. one kidney down, and a dozen more scars than the last time they saw each other, but it looks right. when asked why she came back, the machine doesn’t take shape in her mouth, and the numbers go out of the window. 

grace and francesca gellar live beyond their means. or at least beyond root and sha.w’s. finch provides them with enough for them to get going, and there’s an old dusty medical license in the back of sha.w’s desk that works just about well enough for the machine to copy. but the real tragedy with suburban lesbians is that despite trying their absolute hardest, bed death is a real phenomenon and there’s a sure-fire truth that one of them is cheating on the other. get in with the one-percenters and take them down from the inside out. new number. new problem.

it goes as well as expected. root is root, inside and out, and though she puts on the southern twang that irritates the mere shell of shaw’s ears, root bleeds through the character and every last thing that could be wrong simply is. 

         “this the part where you drug me and cuff me to a radiator?”   it’s not the first time you’ve felt cold steel against the back of your head, and you’re sure that, in your line of work, it won’t be the last. but you’ve become good with cuffs - you’ve been picking locks since you were eight and the low whistle of the pipes gives you nothing but the home turf advantage.

( the penthouse is modest in the loosest sense of the word ––––– shaw had given her free license to choose what she wanted, whether it was a high rise in midtown or a condo on the upper east side or a townhouse in brooklyn, and most of them get the swipe left until they find the penthouse. it’s closer to the loft than root would like but she knows the three story thing doesn’t exactly suit shaw; spacious without being EMPTY, far enough above the city to keep them out of the noise but close enough that the balcony doesn’t feel wasted, and a view to die for. it’s perfect.

       or, at least, root thinks so. shaw mostly just stands in the living room and prods at theexpensive looking furniture while root zips from room to room with the realtor. do whatever you want, root. they buy it on the spot. )

but now they live here. three weeks of adjustments and coming and going and the occasional disagreement (fight) about what goes where; BELOW, somebody honks a horn and yells out their driver window. root watches the hustle of the night quietly and doesn’t realise she’s not alone until sameen’s voice travels by on the cool october breeze.

        “  you know all my secrets.  “     root says it with a smile and leans further into her arms, enjoying the way time passes below them; do any of them have even the slightest clue what has passed them by? what almost came to be? the pain and fear and fighting, the constant running, a god silently on their side? sameen stands next to her, straight backed rather than slouched and nudges her. come on.

         “  –––––  i’m a natural blonde.  “    she laughs a little, conspiratorial.     “  when i was a kid, i had this – awful dirty blonde hair. i hated it. my mom used to say it looked like dishwater. so i started dying it when i was sixteen and never really stopped until. y’know.  “  

            (  a bullet, a three month coma and a kidney removal changes your priorities.  )

it takes a change like this for shaw to realise just how little she owns, let alone how little she’s attached to the space she’s in -- the bed’s comfortable enough. big enough for the both of them ( and shaw’s adamant about her own space -- until she’s tired enough. then root’s colder than she is and shaw takes advantage of that when she curls around her side and presses a hand against her lower stomach. ) 

she’s glad she left root to sort it -- less so when there are boxes upon boxes of decorative shit to unload because she can’t possibly do without a purple shag rug and a lava lamp on each side of the bed -- but she’s glad nonetheless. especially when they drag two chairs out ( shaw’d happily sit against the concrete, but root tells her off every time she even considers it ) onto the balcony and stare out at the city. it’s big. too big to really comprehend what they’d stopped, and what root gained from stopping a complete technological armageddon ( another few bullet wounds, collapsed veins and a tolerance for sedatives ).

it comes from nowhere -- tell me a secret. it comes from when root tells her she stays out of her business -- the machine doesn’t tell her about shaw because she doesn’t ask. ( i don’t peek. ) but she’s takes a swig from the wine bottle and passes it back over when she does. they’re standing now -- root wants to appreciate the quiet and the lights, and shaw thinks it’s stupid, but follows her out anyway.

       “ your mom’s wrong. ”       and a bitch, she thinks, but holds it between her teeth -- not only does it have no weight in the conversation, but shaw knows it’s a step too far into bounds she’s never been. not about to start.

meme.

the current weather in bali is 79 degrees with a 73% chance of precipitation coordinates for analogue interface base are 27.576064,-97.796474 current flight DLJ48 with an estimated arrival time of 21:54 travelling a 5,341km distance at 39,000 ft is currently 1 hour and 14 minutes away from its destination the current time in hangzhou, china, is 01:39:12 with a population of 6241971 yellowstone lake is 390 metres deep with an irregular shape covering 352.2 kilometres squared over 16 miles with hot springs ranging from 86 to 212 degrees------

she doesn’t hear it. the machine spits and hisses in root’s ear without relent and jams figure after figure and statistic after statistic into her eardrum and slams hard and fast with more than what root can understand. but she’s managing, as much as possible, but every day shaw sees her, the patches under her eyes grow darker, and the twitching in her hands seems to grow more and more noticeable. (she’s struggling. shaw knows her well enough to figure that out. she keeps talking to me -- i can’t keep up, i don’t know what she’s trying to tell me. shaw’s on one side of the prison and root’s on the other. shaw keeps her fists clenched and her teeth gritted while she looks at you like she’s about to bite and draw blood, but root -- root’s not exactly cut out for this kind of environment.) 

they sit now, not together, but not apart, staring out to the yard with a width between them on the bench. shaw isn’t the best at this kind of thing -- the whole buck up your ideas, kid, and stop being a little bitch because she’s not sure if it is that kind of thing. (she’s never known how to deal with root. she annoyed her to begin with. pretty sure she still annoys her now. but she’s used to the inappropriate flirts, the i’d even let you rail me in a prison jumpsuits and that hint of just being an ass for the sake of being an ass behind her eyes, but it’s not there. nor are the jokes. or the flirts. just the lacklustre that’s prison, yo.)

that’s prison, yo, and it’s sucking the life out of her friend. (friend, huh? weird how that happens. seems like if you annoy someone for long enough, they’re gonna give in.)

“not gonna crack on me, right? our number needs our help. i need you to keep it together.”

her head turns slightly -- not enough to raise suspicion, but enough so she can glance at her from the side and still know how the fuck to keep her composure.

         “you trust her, right?”    of course she does. the machine is a god, and root’s her herald. her disciple. her prophet. the machine gives one sliver of data and root follows it to the end of the earth and within an inch of her life. you trust her. so trust her.

meme.

she winks, clicks her teeth, and bumps against shaw’s hip before she swipes the mug from her hand and saunters back toward the kitchen sink. god made me this way for a reason, bro. god made some kind of cocktail of personality disorder on top of paranoia, misanthropy and the belief that a higher being has a circuit board and an interface to talk to.

(shaw doesn’t busy herself in figuring out just what’s going on inside her head, the same way root doesn’t question the way she looks at the world. guess they both have their hangups.)

root checks out her ass and touches over the sliver of skin exposed when her shirt rides up. (shaw reaches up for coffee mugs and then refuses to put them on a lower shelf when she has to hook her middle finger around the handle and drag it out on her tiptoes. root uses that as an excuse to touch her, and pats her ass playfully at the same time.)