Chapter Text
The last thing that Root can remember actively paying attention to in middle school science class was a lesson on how every animal has a vital place in the ecosystem. Every creature has its niche, said Mrs. Harper, and without it being there, the whole system would collapse. Forests wouldn’t thrive without insects that feed on decaying wood, humans need bacteria in their gut to help digest food, and even deer populations depend on wolves to keep their numbers in check. It was a delicate balance, she said, and it was the responsibility of all of them to help maintain it.
Twelve years old, increasingly uncertain of her own sexuality, and nursing a burgeoning misanthropic streak that was about to come into full bloom, all Root had known for sure was that whatever niche she was meant to fill, she wouldn’t find it in Bishop, Texas.
Hanna had sat beside her during that lesson. She was older than Root, but the school was small, and their grades shared several classes. They had shared some joke or another on their way out the door, exchanged a smile and a wave, and agreed to meet at the library after school.
The next morning, Hanna was gone. In the days that followed, Root was left to wonder what kind of system she was trapped in that found it necessary to have so many roles filled by murderers and their enablers, so many vital functions in society taken over by such useless humans that found it impossible to even find a particular license plate in a town of three thousand people. The kind of system that found it necessary to let Trent Russell abduct and rape and kill a fourteen year old girl and provide him cover in the form of a librarian with a crush was one that Root knew was fundamentally unstable, and yet everywhere she looked, everywhere she dug, all she found was more and more evidence of its reach.
Using the library computers to finalize the bank transfers that ensured Trent Russell’s eventual death, eyeing the newly-married Barbara Russell from over her monitor as she hit ‘enter,’ felt like justice. Justice, and something more.
Something that fit.
After a few years of going to class just enough to keep the truant officers from calling and making everything even worse, the local government went fully digital. Root gave herself a diploma, several new names, and a new job. Money was easier to come by, her mother more easily taken care of - and she never really seemed to take notice of the fact that her sixteen year old daughter was home all day instead of in school, working on a computer that they shouldn’t have been able to afford, and disappearing in the middle of the night more often than not. She had no set schedule, although once Corpus Christi finally got a Fox affiliate that her mother’s old television could receive, Root did make a point of staying in during airings of The X-Files.
She lived on the internet, she could get on the VHS mailing lists. But her address was never predictable, and she knew better than to put her mother’s address on a forum somewhere.
By the time her mother died a few years later, Root had amassed a small fortune and a large body count, and the casket had scarcely been buried before Root left town. She had a job in Vermont, a stockbroker whose insider tips had cost someone millions. She marveled sometimes, at the underlying contempt with which most people held others. It never seemed to take much to drive her clients to call her - she had a vast list of traitors, adulterers, jealous business partners, lobbyists, politicians, and diplomats in her past, all people who wanted someone gone, something stolen, and were willing to pay someone else to get it done. Root figured maybe those kinds of people and her kind of people served in their own little ecosystem, meant only for each other to feed on and destroy.
She wondered what Mrs. Harper would have to say about the niche she had found.
Root wakes up to the Machine chattering in her ear, consciousness rapidly chasing away the last vestiges of her dream. She had been some tentacled creature conducting a siege on a seaside city, taking over the water and sewage pipe network to infiltrate all the buildings. She blinks against the light filtering in through the gap in the curtains and rolls to her side, finding the other half of the bed empty but sounds reassuringly begin to filter into her good ear from the kitchen.
The last image of her dream tentacles popping out of an air duct fades away and she makes a face at herself, sitting up and listening to the Machine repeat the message.
“When’s my flight?”
Two hours, comes the reply in her ear, and the Machine fills her in on all the necessary details as she showers, dresses, and packs a few clothes into a duffel bag. A semi-relevant number in Colombia has surfaced, with potential links to the last vestiges of Samaritan. It shouldn’t take more than a few days to neutralize the threat, but there is a critical time factor.
She stuffs her favorite socks into the bag alongside a few choice weapons, and finally emerges from the bedroom where she’s greeted by the smell of something she can’t identify. She’s never been great at placing smells, and she’s over a decade behind on learning the smells of breakfast. Chemicals, she can handle. Strawberry pancakes versus blueberry muffins, not so much.
Whatever it is, it smells delicious, and she drops the duffel bag by the couch and rounds the corner to the kitchen, where Shaw is sitting at the island in the middle of the room.
Shaw looks up at her from her plate, mouth half full of what turns out to be pancakes with little dark chunks in them. “The hell are you doing up this early?”
Root steps closer and her suspicion is confirmed - the dark chunks are chocolate chips. “She needs me in Bogatá,” she says, smiling at both Shaw and her plate. It’s hard to remember the last time anyone knew her well enough to know what passes for her usual schedule, let alone note any deviation from that for her sporadic days off - her mother was never awake when she went to school, and never commented on her activities. Hanna might have, ages ago, but… well. It’s been a while.
“Need a hand?” Shaw’s eyes flick over to the stove, where a lone covered plate is sitting, the steam on the underside of the cover obscuring the food underneath. Root moves to it and discovers two nearly perfectly circular pancakes stacked atop one another.
Warmth escapes from the cover and fills her lungs. “You know I’d love a hand from you, sweetie,” she says, catching the tail end of Shaw’s eyeroll as she turns around, plate in hand. “But you’re going to be working with the boys this week.”
Shaw looks between Root and the plate in her hand, squinting a little. Root just quirks an eyebrow at her in response as she settles on the bar stool across from her and grabs a fork - Shaw has long since stopped bothering to protest that these plates are meant for leftovers for herself, and they both know it.
There’s a language to be found in food with Shaw, one that Root is getting better at deciphering. For the better part of two decades, dinner was takeout or something from the freezer if she spent long enough in one place to warrant going shopping. Breakfast was coffee, maybe an apple, maybe something resembling an actual meal if she was lucky and had an early start at a shop near her target. Now, though, it’s pancakes and waffles and eggs and sausage and toast with jam that they make together from time to time - Shaw’s mother used to, on occasion, and when a woman at a farmer’s market foisted a bunch of peaches off on Shaw as a thank you, she showed Root her maman’s old method like it wasn’t a big deal. But when she spread some on a slice of toast and handed it to Root, watching out of the corner of her eye as she took a bite, Root understood the gesture for what it was: meeting Shaw’s family, and being welcome in it.
“When do you leave?” Shaw has finished off her pancakes in the time it’s taken Root to get through half of one, and she pushes the syrup closer to Root as she moves to put her plate in the dishwasher and clean up the batter-covered dishes in the sink.
“As soon as I’m done with this,” Root says around a mouthful of pancake. She watches the muscles of Shaw’s back dance through her tank top as she scrubs at the mixing bowl for a few moments, then turns her attention back to her food. It really is delicious, which isn’t much of a surprise anymore. “You’ll be getting a call from Harry soon. You get to tail an astronomer today.”
The last of the dishes drops into the drying rack and Shaw turns to face Root, leaning against the counter and drying her hands with a towel. “I should go shower then. You gonna be gone by the time I’m done?”
“Probably.”
Shaw hums in acknowledgment, tossing the hand towel aside. She draws closer to Root and tugs at her arm just as Root takes another bite of pancake, and when Root turns her lips are met with Shaw’s. The kiss lingers for a long moment even despite the mouthful of food keeping them from deepening it, warmth settling comfortably throughout Root’s limbs. Shaw’s tongue darts out to catch a stray bead of syrup on Root’s lip as she pulls away, and it’s with a small, crooked smile that Shaw tips her head back, indicating the corner of the room. “There’s fresh grenades in the fridge if you want any.”
At Root’s nod, Shaw heads around the other side of the island, moving through to the rest of the apartment. Root finishes chewing and swallows, clearing her throat. “Can I borrow your nano?”
Shaw stops in her tracks and turns around, narrowing her eyes at Root, who merely cuts off another slice of her last pancake and guides it delicately into her mouth. “Fine,” she says after a long moment, looking stern with her arms crossed over her chest. “But I want it back in one piece this time. None of that ‘a goon took it apart because I let him think he had the upper hand’ shit again, got it?”
“Scout’s honor,” Root says, holding her hand up in an obscene version of the scouting salute. Shaw shakes her head but Root can see the ghost of a smile as she turns away and enters the master bedroom, shutting the bathroom door behind her.
Root’s eyes linger on the closed door, smiling as she finishes off the last of her breakfast. The bar stool scrapes against the floor when she pushes herself away from the island and drops her plate and fork into the sink. She’s in the middle of picking out a few grenades from the fridge when she hears the bathroom door yank open.
“And put your shit in the dishwasher for once,” Shaw calls out to her from across the apartment, voice raised over the noise of the shower. “It’s right there, act like a civilized human being and take the two seconds to do it.”
The door closes again and Root’s eyes dart between the fridge in front of her and the sink to her left, the dishwasher sitting innocuously between them. She squints at the plate in the sink and wonders if Shaw and the Machine have some sort of tattle-telling pact about her kitchen habits. It would serve her right, she supposes, for having the Machine tell her when Shaw moves her stray computer parts.
Root grabs an armful of grenades and drops them on the counter, closing the fridge with a nudge of her hip. She hums to herself as she moves the offending plate and marvels at what her life has become: homemade breakfasts, saving lives at the behest of an artificial superintelligence, nagging about the right way to handle dirty dishes. This is her niche now, it seems.
All things considered, she thinks she likes this one better.