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Maybe it’s the high-pitched whine that announces her arrival.
Maybe it’s the moment when her little fist punches out and strikes their doctor clean across the cheek.
Hell, maybe it’s how Shaw vehemently denies that she ever gripped Root’s hand during labor.
Maybe it’s all of the above, but all Root really knows for certain is that she’s absolutely, one-thousand percent in love the second she sees Parisa’s chubby, reddened face. Probably even before then. Probably she started falling that night Shaw huffed into the subway with a pregnancy test in tow. And continued through that one early morning when they lay barely awake in Shaw’s bed and she whispered the nameParisa before drifting off.
There was the lunchtime shopping trip a couple months ago where Root cooed over some delightful border paper depicting cartoony computers, while Shaw insisted they get the set covered with race cars. Root talked her into buying both.
And now, she reclines in a cushy, high-backed chair at Shaw’s bedside, in Harold’s safehouse, with Parisa wrapped tightly in a deep green blanket and tucked in her arms, and Root’s heart swells more than she could have ever imagined possible.
From across the room, Reese quirks his dumb half-smile at her, at them, a finger of scotch clutched in his hand. He still doesn’t show emotion very well, even after months of therapy that she knows he’s been attending regularly, but the softening at the corners of his eyes reveal just how affected he is by all of this.
Next to her, Shaw snores lightly, something Root’s known for a while that she only does when she sleeps on her back. Root feels herself melting impossibly more every time her gaze drifts over to the bed, to the easy rise and fall of Shaw’s chest.
She feels a tug on her hair and glances down to see Parisa trying to grasp her tiny fist around locks that sift through each attempt. Root shifts her own grip, then wrangles Parisa’s hands in one of her own and ducks her head to press a gentle kiss to them. Her movements draw a squeak of contentment, and Root’s lips pull into a peaceful smile.
Distantly, she hears gentle tapping of a keyboard, and knows Harold is hard at work on pulling info on their latest number. She knows that their respite will be brief, and she’ll have to return Parisa to her bassinet and step back out into a dangerous world. Their bubble will shatter.
But for right now, Root steeps herself in the comfort of family. Of friendship.
Of love.