Chapter Text
The nightmare began the same every night.
Shaw watched it from the outside, smothered in her suppressed screams. She knew what would happen, how the story would end. She tried to warn them, the versions of Root and herself on the other side of the glass she was trapped behind, but her lungs were full of water and her jaw was clamped shut and the silence just grew heavier with each strangled heartbeat that fought its way out in her heaving chest. There was no stopping it. It just played on like a horror movie.
“I’m not leaving you again!” Root’s voice broke through the reverberating gunfire.
“Get him out of here now or I’ll shoot you myself! Go, go!” Shaw yelled back. She watched as Root reluctantly scrambled into the car, her eyes pleading and desperate in that vastly ephemeral moment where Harold and The Machine and the mission didn’t exist and they were the only two shapes in the system, the only two chords in the symphony, but they both knew that stolen fragment of time was all it would ever be – nothing more than a shattered gaze in a fleeting moment.
Shaw would never be able to forget that final beseeching glance. She tried to tell Root to stay, but her voice didn’t work, her lips didn’t move. There was a fire in her throat where her screams should’ve been. Stay here with me, Root, Shaw willed with every thought in her head and every nerve in her body until her skin was itching and her brain was melting and her eyes were trying to crawl back down into her skull instead of watching helplessly as Root steered the car unwittingly towards her own death.
She never stayed.
Shaw was outnumbered and alone, but that only made it a fair fight. She took out the remainder of the agents, and as she curled her finger around the trigger in her final shot, she couldn’t help but feel the shadow of a memory brush against her fingertips. The cold metal hadn’t reminded her of Root’s gentle touch, but the power underneath it had the same surge of comfort. When the cavalry arrived, Shaw took in the sea of destruction she’d been swimming through, and as the boys paddled out to meet her in the depths, she thought for a moment she might finally understand why people’s eyes glistened when they spoke about home.
Home could be chaos; it could be violence. It could be the thing that made a lullaby out of the mayhem.
They say home is where the heart is, but what are you supposed to do when home is buried under eight feet of dirt with a bullet in her chest?
Maybe you really can’t go home again.
Or maybe her heart was already in that unmarked grave too.
She knew what was supposed to happen next. The Machine would direct them to the crime scene and Lionel would talk to the officers to try and piece together a story neither of them would ever see the whole picture of. Shaw remembered every piece of yellow tape, each gunshot in the car, the exact pattern of the blood stain in the driver’s seat. She remembered going with John because action and revenge were things she understood; she wasn’t cut out for pacing a hospital waiting room. She never considered the possibility that Root might not make it out of surgery; at least, not until it was too late.
If she ever regretted one thing in her life, it was letting Root die alone – letting Root die at all.
After all, she’s the one that told her to get into that car.
Shaw watched on silently, helplessly – but something was different.
The Machine sent them to an address just a few blocks away. They pulled up to the abandoned house just as Jeff Blackwell pushed the door open, sniper rifle in tow. The car hadn’t even come to a complete stop before Shaw leaped from the passenger seat to sprint up the stairs after him. She tackled him just before he took his shot, just as a silver car blanketed in bullet holes raced down the street. She could see Root’s chestnut hair fluttering through the open window as she guided the car to the safe house.
Alive.
Shaw woke up to the sound of her own strangled breaths.
She’d saved Root every night for 5 months, in dozens of different ways, always stronger or faster or smarter than the last. She always saved her. Not when it mattered of course, but every night after that. In every nightmare. Although, Shaw wasn’t sure anymore if she was falling asleep into a nightmare, or waking up into one.
Sometimes she thought none of it was real at all.
***
Shaw had to admit, the newest bunch of trainees weren’t quite as pathetic as the last. The Machine had been sending them to her in groups of 5 every 6 weeks like clockwork. She wasn’t sure why The Machine was finally building an army now that the war was over.
She didn’t ask.
She hadn’t spoken to The Machine directly in nearly 3 months. She’d been bothering Shaw since they took Samaritan down to find a new partner, suggesting recruits that showed the most promise in each bunch. Shaw reminded Her she worked better alone. Then one Saturday morning, Shaw awoke to a heavy knock at her apartment door and she pushed an empty bottle of bourbon out of her bed when she swung her legs around to stumble towards the noise. She reeked of alcohol and bad decisions and she wasn’t sure if she was just hungover or still drunk but when the found a tall, chiseled, blue-eyed man in a suit informing her monotonously that he was supposed to be her new partner, she crashed her knuckles into the base of his nose so hard she wasn’t sure if the crack that broke out into the hallway was from his face or her fingers. She told The Machine to fuck off that day and had only gotten calls from payphones, save for the occasional text, ever since. Even from the payphone, She still spoke in her voice.
Sometimes Shaw was tempted to give in, late at night when Bear’s breathing went soft and the silence became unbearable. She’d picked up the ear piece from the drawer on Root’s side of the bed so many times, it was almost a habit now, thinking about putting it in just to hear her voice again, but she never did. If Shaw was anything, she was resilient.
Despite her refusal to speak with Her directly, however, She had still refrained from choosing a new Analog Interface. Shaw never asked about it; she knew why. Root. Maybe The Machine took more than just her voice, Shaw thought.
Maybe She took her stubborn, unwavering commitment to Shaw too.
She had been working with the newest bunch of recruits for 2 weeks. She spent less time wanting to kill them than any of the previous groups, so she supposed that was a good sign. Good for them at least.
Mondays and Fridays were sparring days, but Shaw hated those days the most. She had to hold back, pause to teach and correct, avoid moves that caused serious damage – which all her best moves did. Sparring days were when she missed John the most; John never held back with her and she never had to against him. There was a trust there. When he swung, he trusted she’d block it. She missed handing out cold beers after a good match instead of passing around ice packs and ibuprofen to the whiny kids The Machine had somehow deemed as assets.
She supposed every army needed a few pawns.
Milo Raushka was the youngest in the group at 29. He’d been discharged from the Air Force after serving his time and had briefly worked as a police officer in D.C. before budget cuts took his job. He was easily the most promising one in the group, but even so, Shaw knew she could still kill him 17 different ways with both arms tied her behind her back before he even had a chance to flinch.
It was a comforting thought.
They’d been on the mats for 20 minutes and she was pleased to only have to pause to correct his movements twice. He was no John Reese, but he handled himself alright. Shaw’s heart was pounding with adrenaline, sweat dripping down into her mouth. She could taste the salt. It took more willpower than she realized she had to keep from unleashing herself on him completely. She felt like she was fighting harder against herself than she was against him. Every punch she let him block, every swing she slowed down, every movement she made obvious; she almost considering cutting the sparring session short before she knocked the kid out on impulse.
“Good, but don’t leave your face open like that,” She instructed when he took a wide swing at her but left himself unguarded. He nodded in acknowledgment and repeated the move, this time following her coaching. Quick learner, Shaw thought to herself before she kicked his knees and watched him drop to the ground with a huff. But not quick enough.
She started walking off the mat to pick her next sparring partner when Milo made the worst mistake he’d ever made.
“Wait, Sam, can we go just one more time?” He pushed himself up from the gym floor and sauntered forward towards her. She froze in her spot, every muscle in her body tensing up in a raging fire that bellowed in her chest and her gut for just a moment before it exploded. She spun around to face him, her eyes black and hollow and framing the flames whipping through her. Milo only had enough time to furrow his brows in confusion before she had his shirt twisted through her fingers. He was at almost a full foot taller than her, but that didn’t make her any less intimidating.
“You wanna go again, okay,” she nodded, her voice a low, raspy growl, as she pulled him in so close her nose brushed against his jaw line. She faintly remembered John once telling her to count to ten before she reacted out of anger. She didn’t even try. It just kept playing through her head again and again – Sam, Sam, Sam, in Milo’s voice instead of hers – and she couldn’t stop the volcanic eruption of anger even if she wanted to. And she didn’t.
Sam. She grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him down, slamming her knee into his jaw so hard she felt the crunch in her kneecap. He stumbled backwards, clutching his face with one hand, swinging blindly at her with the other.
Sam. She easily dodged his futile attempts to hold her back, catching one of his flailing arms in the air and twisting it behind his back until his shoulder popped. She used the moment to punch him in the left kidney with the force of her whole body.
Sam. She forced him back to the ground with a swift kick to the back of his knees. He caught himself with his hands, falling in a near pushup position. He tried to lift himself back up, spurting out blood onto the mat underneath him, but his arms were wobbly and Shaw didn’t give him the chance.
Sam. She slammed her bare foot into the soft part of his stomach with as much force as she could muster. His body collapsed face first into the mat. She kicked him again for good measure; his body rolling over the mat like a rag doll.
Sam. She grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling his head up forcefully, his eyes were pleading with hers, searching for some hint of humanity in there, but he found nothing. Her eyes were hollow, just a shallow nothingness – the physical embodiment of rage. They say your eyes are the windows to your soul, but he could’ve sworn hers were closed off and boarded up. Or maybe there was just no soul in there to see. He didn't know she had only just found hers when it died with a phone call.
Sam. She pushed her knee into his throat, slamming her fist into his face despite her split knuckles. Sam, Sam, Sam, she heard the voice with each punch, causing her to just hit him harder and harder. There was nothing but the roar of an angry ocean in her ears. She couldn’t hear the rest of the recruits begging her stop, or see them backing away in fear of having her fury turned on them. She just saw red.
“Sam.” But this time, it was her voice, echoing through the room. She stopped mid punch, letting her arm fall to her side at the sound of Root’s voice. It wasn’t exactly Root’s voice, Shaw thought that .4% felt like much more than it was, but it was enough to pull her back into reality.
“Stop,” She commanded simply. Shaw looked down at the bloody mess beneath her, at the terrified recruits standing around her. She felt nothing. Milo’s eyes were closed and his body was limp. She wasn’t even sure when it was exactly that he slipped out of consciousness. She stood up, wiping her bloody knuckles on her sweat-soaked tank top. They stung, but she didn’t notice. She pinpointed the intercom system in the gym as the origin of Her voice.
“Sweetie, you can’t – ” she cut Her off mid-sentence, pulling a gun out of her bag and unloading it on the speaker system.
“Same time tomorrow,” Shaw monotonously informed the shuddering recruits huddled together in the corner. She didn’t turn around to face them. She grabbed her bag and walked out the gym door without looking back.
She went back to her apartment and never thought about Milo again. She never bothered to check if he was okay and frankly, she didn’t care. He shouldn’t have called her Sam; only one person was allowed to get away with that.
And she couldn't call Shaw anything anymore.