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kinglivv · 4 years

Text

Just Noise in the System

Root X Shaw

Summary: Root finally opens up to Shaw about Hanna.

Warnings: Childhood trauma, murder

A/N: This isn't my usual content so probably none of my followers are interested, but I heard somewhere that this is Shootweek20 (not 100% sure if it is, but still), and I wanted to do something for it seeing as I write fics now. Person of Interest is my all time favourite show, even more so than Doctor Who. It's influenced my life in so many ways, and Root and Shaw were the reason I first started questioning my sexuality and the reason I later came to accept it. I felt I owe them at least one fic :)

"Who's that?"

Root flinches when she feels Shaw's hand on her shoulder. She's sat on the sofa in their apartment, laptop open on the coffee table in front of her. Usually, she would lean into the touch, affection from her girlfriend being so rare. Today however, she's too busy staring at the picture in her hand to pay much attention.

It's an old photo - slightly faded and crinkling at the corners, the edges dirty from years of handling. It looks like it's from the 90s, picturing two school girls standing next to eachother in a library. One's brunette, staring at the camera with a grin on her face and school bag in hand. The other one's younger and blonde, looking up at the other one with an admiration on her freckled face.

"It's me and my friend, Hanna, when we were little." Root replies softly.

Shaw raises an eyebrow, and hops over the back of the sofa, settling down into Root's right-hand side. (She never sits on her left - she knows Root can't hear her). Both her and Root barely talked about their childhoods, them being equally filled with trauma. This seemed to be one of the rare occasions one of them brought it up, and she was interested.

"That you?" She asks, pointing at the tall brunette girl. Root shakes her head, curls bouncing.

"Nope," She points to the blonde girl. "That's me."

"You were a blonde?" Shaw grins, leaning her head on her shoulder. "Little Root was cute."

"It was just Sam Groves back then," Root hums, smiling slightly. "I was 12 in this."

"Sam?" Shaw asks. "Is that why you call me Sam?"

"Partly," Root smiles. "But also because it's adorable and it suits you."

"Shut up," Shaw rolls her eyes. "Why are you looking at it?"

"Today marks almost 30 years since Hanna was kidnapped and killed."

Shaw fell silent, glancing up at Root's face. She had heard Reese and Finch mention Hanna in passing before, but she had never pressed Root about it. She hadn't felt capable of taking on the emotional toll of someone else's childhood trauma, let alone her own.

"What happened?" She asked softly, lacing their hands together.

"She went missing one night, from the library in our home town," Root replied, squeezing Shaw's hand, her eyes not leaving the photo. "We'd been on the computers together, and then she had gone to check out her books. She went out the door, got into someone's car... and then she was gone."

"Someone took her?" Shaw asked carefully.

"Yeah," Root replied.

"They ever find out who did it?"

Root huffs a laugh. "I saw who was in the car." Shaw looked up sharply as she continued. "I told the librarian, even called 911 but no one believed me. The man in the car was really important in Bishop - he'd done a lot of good things for the town, so no one believed the daughter of the local alcoholic."

"John and Harold mentioned it once or twice, but I never really knew what happened." Shaw said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be, Sameen - I got my revenge. Had him gunned down in a parking lot 10 years later, made up to look like a drug deal gone wrong."

Shaw almost smiled at that. She wouldn't expect anything less.

It's then that she looks up at the laptop on the table and sees there's a picture of a book on the screen, surrounded by various tabs of code.

" 'Flowers for Algernon' ?" She read off of the cover.

"The book Hanna checked out that night," Root replied. "I send a copy to the librarian every year on the anniversary of her death. Just a little reminder of how she didn't believe me and let a murderer walk."

Shaw doesn't know how to respond to that. It was moments like these that she remembered what Root truly was, what she was capable of. Hell, it was only a few years ago that Root was a hacker assasin for hire, killing people in cold blood and making a fortune in the process. Although the machine had changed her, bits of her past still peaked through occasionally.

"Reese and Carter were the ones who found out what happened to her."

"Really?"

"Yep," Root puts the photo down and turns to face Shaw properly, their knees knocking together. "When I kidnapped Harold the first time around, they were both looking for me and accidentally solved the murder in the process. They thought Hanna was me!" She huffed a laugh. "They went all the way to my home town and spoke to the librarian. Turns out Hanna had been buried under their patio the whole time."

Shaw bites her lip, sitting back and looking out of the window. There's something tugging on her heart, but she's not sure what it is. She wished she could feel things the way Root did - wished she could understand even a tiny bit of what she had gone through.

"Do you ever wonder how we would have been if these sorts of things hadn't happened to us?" The Persian asks suddenly. "If my parents hadn't died, if Hanna wasn't taken and you didn't have to run away?"

"Yeah," Root sighs. "But I'm happy with the way my life turned out, even if it was tough. I never would have learned about the machine. Never would have met you."

"Yeah," Shaw smiles one of her rare, genuine smiles. "Maybe our lives aren't so bad after all."

Suddenly Bear appears, pushing his nose into Shaw's lap and Root breaks into a grin. Photo abandoned on the table, she leans down to ruffle his fur.

"Bear!" She greets him and he woofs in response. "Come on, sweetie. Time to take him a walk."

And just like that, she's off to grab her leather jacket, conversation forgotten.

#root x shaw #root #sameen shaw #samantha groves #john reese #harold finch #lionel fusco #joss carter #person of interest #the machine #root and shaw #amy acker #sarah shahi #fix it fic #fic writing #doctor who fanfic #doctor who #shootweek20

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