#silveroakleaf

“Sameen?”She kept her voice low; she didn’t want to startle her.

Shawclenched her hands into fists, her shoulders tightening. After a fewseconds she let out a long breath and her hands fell back open at hersides.

Roottied the sash on her bathrobe as she walked over to join Shaw at thewindow, making sure her footsteps were loud enough to be heard. Shawdidn’t even glance at her when she stood next to her.

Shetried to follow Shaw’s line of vision, see what it was she was sofocused on. The building across from them was completely dark and thestreet below was empty, not even a taxi rolling by. Whatever Shaw sawout there was hidden from Root.

“It’sall wrong,” Shaw said into the silence.

“What’swrong, sweetie?” 

She wanted to reach out, touch her, but she didn’tthink it would help; possibly quite the opposite. Before Samaritan,all the little touches and caresses had been a game between them:Shaw had pretended to be annoyed by them and Root had pretended theywere only meant as a tease, nothing more.

“What’swrong?” Shaw asked, incredulity in her voice. “Samaritanhas us all hiding and unable to make a move, I’m a time-bombwaiting to go off, and none of us has even the beginnings of a plan.”

Therewas an undercurrent of anger in her words, but Root knew it wasn’taimed at her.

“Itwasn’t…none of this was supposed to happen this way,” Rootsaid. She wished she had something more reassuring to say, but eventhe Machine seemed lost these days.

Shawgave a half-choked laugh.

“Yeah,no kidding.”

“But–”Root forced a half-smile onto her face and moved forward to lean onthe wall next to the window so Shaw could see her face. “–when hasanything with the two of us ever gone as planned?”

Shawlooked at her finally, eyes dark and hollow.

Rootdredged up her most cheerful tone and continued.

“Imean this all started when I was supposed to torture you forinformation, and your friends at the ISA broke up our fun. Then youshot me, I kidnapped you, you punched me, I saved your life, yousaved mine, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Somethingthat might have been the ghost of a smile twitched at the edge ofShaw’s lips.

“Didn’tplan on not dying that day,” she said and shook her head slightly.“Or any day after that.”

Rootdidn’t need to ask to know what day she meant; the kiss in thestock exchange had been a goodbye. Some treacherous part of herwanted to ask if Shaw regretted surviving, but it would have been acruel question so she kept it to herself.

“Youshould try to get some sleep,” she said. She didn’t want to sendShaw any further down her dark spiral of thoughts.

Shereached out (slow enough that Shaw would have time to step away ifshe wanted to) and loosely grasped one of Shaw’s arms, tugging hergently back towards the bed. She was surprised when Shaw followed herwithout any resistance. And she was even more surprised that when shesat down on the edge of the bed Shaw moved to stand in front of her,staring down at her with an unreadable expression on her face.

“Doesn’tit worry you?” Shaw asked. “That they could still be in my head?That I could turn on all of you?”

Eventhough it was dark enough that she couldn’t see Shaw’s eyesclearly, she still felt pinned to the spot by them.

“No.”It wasn’t an answer she had to think about.

“Itshould.”

Shawraised her hand and touched Root’s cheek lightly, hesitantly. Likeshe wasn’t sure she was doing it correctly. Root raised her ownhand to cover Shaw’s. She closed her eyes and pressed into thecontact as the knowledge that Shaw was hereand alivesettled on her once again. Every time she thought she’d finallyreally understood that Shaw was back it hit her all over again,squeezed the breath out of her.

“Reesetold me you tried to turn yourself over to Samaritan,” Shaw said,her tone still flat. “Tried to get it to take you to me.”

Rootnodded, afraid that if she opened her eyes or spoke it would breakthe spell and Shaw would pull her hand away.

“Gottabe the worst plan I’ve ever heard.”

Ithadn’t been very well thought-out, Root admitted to herself. She’djust been so impatient, especially since the Machine had given her away to send Shaw a message. How could she go back to waiting afterthat?

“IfI’d been Reese I would’ve drugged your dumb ass and handcuffedyou to a bench in the subway.”

Rootchuckled lightly.

“Turnaboutis fair play?” she asked, breaking her silence.

“Somethinglike that.”

Shawfinally pulled her hand away and Root opened her eyes to look up ather. She didn’t know how to classify the expression on Shaw’sface. It was one she’d never seen before the stock exchangehappened, but showed up all too frequently now. On someone else shemight have coined it as fear, but Shaw didn’t get afraid.

Inevitability,she thought. Like Shaw was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Hey,”she said, softly. She reached up and wrapped her hands around Shaw’sforearms, keeping her grasp loose enough that Shaw could escapeeasily. “I’m not going anywhere now.”

Shawfinally did pull away, turning around so Root couldn’t see her faceanymore.

“Gonnatry to get a little sleep,” Shaw said brusquely.

“Okay.”

Rootwatched as she walked around the bed and crawled under the covers onher side, lying stiffly on her back, eyes open and staring at theceiling. She got back in as well and curled up on her side, facingaway from Shaw. Maybe it would help Shaw relax if she didn’t feellike Root was staring at her the whole time.

Shecouldn’t fall back asleep, though, and she could tell by Shaw’sbreathing that she was still awake as well. They’d done thisbefore, both stayed awake and silent the entire night on opposite sides on the bed, so it came asa complete shock when Shaw rolled over towards her, pressed the backof her head between Root’s shoulder-blades, and tentatively placed her hand on her hip.

“Okay?”Shaw asked quietly, voice muffled against Root’s back.

Anentire list of horrible innuendos spun through Root’s mind, wereexamined, and discarded. Instead she brushed her hand over Shaw’sonce and wriggled back a little more into the curve of her body.

Shaw’sbreathing evened out a few minutes later, but Root stayed awake,reveling in the feel of Shaw’s breaths against her back, the warmthof her hand on her hip.

___________________________

“Harold’sin trouble.”

Shawhad seen that look in Root’s eyes before, on the day when Martine hadalmost killed her in the department store.

“Trouble?”she asked.

Rootshoved a gun into the back of her pants and motioned for Shaw tohurry up.

“TheMachine just gave me his number. I’ve got to go to him. Now.”

Shawwatched her from where she sat at the top of the bed. She knew sheshould be already on her feet, arming herself to face off againstSamaritan again (because she wasn’t delusional enough to imaginethat Finch’s number coming up meant anything short of a fullSamaritan attack), but her legs didn’t want to move.

Shewasn’t afraid (on the contrary she was itching to shoot someone,preferably someone who worked for Samaritan, but she wasn’t goingto be too picky), but there was a prickling of uneasiness in her thatwas holding her back.

Herphone buzzed on the nightstand and she picked it up and opened thetext message she’d received. She stared blankly at the screen whileRoot continued to zip around the apartment and nag at her.

“Iunderstand if you don’t want to come along,” Root said as shefished her shoes off the floor. “You can stay here until I’mback.”

Rootwas completely focused on pulling her shoes on, one foot up on achair as she zipped up her boot. She didn’t hear Shaw slip upbehind her and had no time to fight back when Shaw shoved the needleinto the side of her neck and pushed down the plunger.

Shecaught Root before she hit the floor and carried her over to the bed.She was already out cold and all Shaw could do was stare down at herand try to figure out why she’d just done that.

“Root?”It was Reese on the comms.

“Root’sindisposed right now, Reese. I’m on my way.”

“Indisposed?What’s going on, Shaw?” He sounded suspicious and she reallycouldn’t blame him.

“I’llexplain later. I’m leaving now.” She killed the call.

Shecuffed Root’s hand to the bed even though she knew it wouldn’thold her for long. Turnabout was fair play, after all.

“Hopeyou know what you’re doing,” Shaw said, looking down at her phoneand that text the Machine had sent her. 

She trusted Root to be ableto handle herself in a fight, but if the Machine was worried, theremust be a good reason. After all, it was never wrong. Root could bemad at both of them later. 

And anyway Shaw hadn’t been the one to put a syringe full of tranquilizers in the drawer of the nightstand. If she counted both times Root had tased her and the one drugging incident then Shaw still held the dubious moral high ground here.

Shebarely spared a glance at Root as she hurried to arm herself and rushoff to rescue Finch, but she looked back once before she shut thedoor behind her.

Noneof this was supposed to have happened. She wasn’t Reese with hishero complex, always ready to die for someone else, but she’d livedwith the understanding that death was always a possibility for her.

Shewas supposed to have died in the Marines, in the ISA, on a missionfor the Machine, in the stock exchange, in the Samaritan facility.She wasn’t supposed to be alive. And she certainly wasn’tsupposed to care about anyone else being alive.

Shewasn’t supposed to care at all.

Noneof this was supposed to have happened, but it had.

everyone goes to the safe house sans root who is taking ‘a nap’

shaw stays behind by herself because lbr even if she enjoys shooting people with root she can totally handle them all herself if needs be

i was gonna have her go with finch and elias because then elias has a good chance of surviving since shaw is the fastest shot on the team and crazy on guard at the moment

but...honestly at this point finch is still pretty anti-letting-the-machine-protect-herself and i don’t think that would change without someone dying

so sadly elias dies and i am mad about it but he gets to die a way cooler death probably

think like hersh’s death levels of badass

shaw shows up to rescue finch from the samaritan goons and the whole firefight happens

since there’s no one else to drive off with finch she shoves him under a car and is like remember that time you wandered into the line of fire and reese got shot? maybe don’t do that.

anyway the firefight takes way longer with only her but she’s got an entire fucking car full of guns and nowhere better to be

reese shows up to help her out eventually

finch wanders into the line of fire and reese gets shot and shaw is like omg we JUST talked about this wtf dude

reese is not dead though, bear with me

they all get out of there and fusco gets reese to the hospital and shaw takes finch to the subway

he has to stay in the subway now because his cover is blown

shaw probably makes some snide remark about this because she’s still low-key bitter about that time she got drugged and handcuffed

she goes back to check in on root

root is still KOed but wakes up later that night

boy is she not amused

but since they’re them they end up having mind-blowing sex and promise not to drug/tase each other in the future

which neither of them really means because they’re them

meanwhile reese is like hurt super bad but he’ll live and they bring him to the subway to recover

the whole team is there including fusco because shaw was like the whole team is basically dying maybe we should just fucking tell him what’s going on isn’t that a great idea

reese is being a giant baby about being hurt because he used to be the most dramatic team member until root rudely stole that title from him

root is all like harold everyone is DYING maybe we should fight back?

reese is like you know what i’ve been SHOT and it HURTS maybe she has a point?

he passes out dramatically

finch is like this is a terrible idea

but elias is dead, reese is barely alive, and every single member of the team is arguing for this

even bear

so he agrees if and only if he’s allowed to change the code and put in like a kill switch or some dumb shit

listen, this is not how AI works. but then again the idea that anything could stop the machine from altering her own code however she saw fit is pretty unrealistic so shrug.

my AI rant is a different rant completely

so finch is like there’s this virus called ice-9 but listen guys this is a terrible idea there’s gonna be collateral damage

shaw is like did you not notice the eugenics-happy evil ai like i think that might cause some fucking collateral damage

also remember the part where it tortured me for like 9 months

she is basically 100% done with his moral high-ground

anyway a bunch of the same stuff happens like in the show but the whole team is actually working together now because that makes a lot more sense

i honestly don’t remember a lot of the details of the last three episodes since i only saw them when they aired and mostly pretend they didn’t happen

but shaw gets to shoot greer in the face because after everything that happens she deserves to be the one to do that

root goes and uses ice-9 on samaritan, there’s probably some badass hacking sequence with lots of cg

would also like to point out that probably the only way to really kill an AI that powerful would be to permanently take out the entire internet and all wired devices and destroy any physical server/device/anything that samaritan could have stored a copy of itself on

but whatever

samaritan and the machine wipe each other out

reese and shaw defend the roof because in poi-healing-from-bullets time reese is like 100% a-okay again.

or he just has a  minigun attached to a wheelchair like those dudes in bloodborne

because that would be AWESOME

root and fusco defend the machine in the subway

finch is off having a soliloquy somewhere

maybe he’s still talking to the machine

i don’t even care honestly

everyone lives and the machine comes back to life like a month later

finch has already taken off for italy

and grace is like wtf dude you basically caused me undue emotional distress for years and also lied to me the whole time we were together fuck off

so finch goes back to ny and does something or another with his life, stays friends with reese

reese, shaw, and root still do missions for the machine

who has taken carter’s voice because taking root’s would be weird now and carter was cool and had a good moral code and the machine digs that

reese still thinks it’s kind of weird but he gets over it

at this point it’s harder for me since i’m writing a fic which has an alternate ending and i don’t want to spoil shit from it

but everyone (that i care about) is super happy or at least content

root and shaw bang a lot and also are now bear’s parents

reese decides that there’s more to look forward to than death because come on that was like the whole fucking point until the end of the show

i don’t buy this ‘borrowed time’ bullshit when he spent over half a season getting therapy for his hero complex and also after he went through the aftermath of shaw’s sacrifice and saw what it did to everyone

so he’s chill with living to an old age and finds happiness with someone who isn’t his doctor because that wasn’t cool with me

maybe he and zoe remain fuck buddies instead or something

root and the machine work constantly to stamp out any trace of other AI development

shaw works to train a future generation of team machine

did i mention that shoot bangs a lot and are pretty content with life in general

fusco gets promoted to something or another

i don’t know much about police force ranks

like a captain or something?

i’m going by b99 here

the government rebuilds the isa under someone who will never be as badass as control but does alright

the machine helps them out with numbers still

everyone lives happily ever after with cool guns and dogs and only occasional taser incidents