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When Root rises from the dead two years after Team Machine defeats Samaritan, it is surprisingly easy falling back into a routine. Root, once recovered for her time on the run, resumes her work tracking down relevant numbers for the Machine, occasionally traveling to work with DC’s team, Boston’s team—even the one in Hong Kong.
Shaw, meanwhile, remains in New York, leading Fusco and Bear on their quest to bring justice to the irrelevants—saving one life at a time, just as they used to. It’s a comfortable routine, Shaw finds, mixed in with the spontaneity of Root appearing in her apartment on days off from saving the world. It’s almost like the last two years hadn’t happened.
Almost.
Almost, because Root rarely had nightmares before she 'died'. Almost, because her inappropriate quips and shit-eating smirks are far less frequent. Almost, because her face is scarred from an incident while they were apart.
When Shaw first saw the faded pink streak running through the entire right side of her face, cutting through her eyelid and lips, she had started to fuss over it.
Did it cut your cornea? Is your eye okay?
What were you cut with? You could have gotten tetanus if it wasn’t a clean blade…
Who did it? We can track them down, if you want.
But Root was evasive, which was unlike her when it came from getting medical attention—or, any attention, really—from Shaw. She pushed her brown curls farther over the side of her face, shielding the mark as much as she could, and changed the subject to Shaw’s haircut, which had been shaved underneath after a bet lost to Fusco about a year prior. The joke was on him, though, because she ended up quite fond of the style.
So they didn’t talk about it, and most of the time, they passed each other like ships in the night on their respective missions for the Machine. It takes over a month following Root’s return to fieldwork for Shaw to come back to her apartment and find her sprawled out on her beat up couch with some old horror movie playing on the TV.
“Hey, sweetie,” Root says sleepily as she peers towards the door. Even from her horizontal position, she manages to gaze at Shaw with elevator eyes as she notes, “It’s good to see you.”
“You, too,” Shaw responds.
“Done for the day?”
“Fusco just arrested our number,” she answers as she shrugs off her sweatshirt and grabs a bottle of beer from the fridge. “I’ve got the night off.”
“I like the sound of that.”
Shaw grins with a roll of her eyes at Root’s suggestive tone as she uncaps her bottle against the edge of her counter. After taking a swig, she strides over to the couch and lowers the volume on the TV, where some bleach-blonde 28-year-old trying to pass for a teenager is shrieking at the top of her lungs. She places her bottle down next to the remote on the coffee table as she kneels onto the couch, wasting no time in leaning forward to press her lips against Root’s, who sighs in contentment and grins too much for Shaw to catch anything but teeth. The scar on her face stretches upwards as Root’s lips part, and Shaw finds herself staring at it, close to her for the first time in weeks, trying to update her memory of Root’s face. She runs her fingers across it, feeling the uneven bumps of the healed cut.
Root jolts backwards suddenly as though hit with an electric shock, and she turns the scarred side her head away from Shaw’s touch as she demands, “Stop.”
“What is it?” she asks, sitting back onto her heels on her own cushion of the couch. Shaw can’t remember a single time that Root had turned down her affection. After all, this is the woman who flirts in the middle of a shootout. “Does it still hurt? I thought you said you kept it from getting infected…”
“It’s not that,” she interrupts quickly. “I just…”
“What?” Shaw prompts her when she fades off.
“I don’t like it,” she whispers, struggling to find the right words for the vague sentence. She pulls herself into a seated position next to Shaw before continuing slowly, "I don’t… I don’t want you looking at it, or touching it.”
“The scar? Why not?”
“It’s stupid,” she mutters. “I’ve got plenty of scars; we both do. And I’ve never cared about being pretty, but…” she trails off with a halfhearted shrug, grinning spuriously with wide brown eyes, bright with tears that won't yet fall.
“You don’t think I still find you attractive?” Shaw realizes, almost smiling at the absurdity of that implication.
Almost.
“Root…” she starts, trying and failing to find the right thing to say.
So instead of saying anything, Shaw pushes the stray locks of hair behind Root’s ear. Slowly, giving her time to object, she leans forward, gently pressing her lips against the top of her scar, just above her eyebrow. She moves her lips downwards, from her cheekbone, to her cheek, and ending on her lips. She lingers there and Root kisses her back. Shaw feels the wetness of Root’s spilled tears as she gingerly grips her face with her own scarred and callused hands.
“You are breathtakingly beautiful,” she promises as she pulls away, tipping Root’s chin up to meet her gaze. “And no amount of scars could make me think anything different.”