As a child she'd often dreamt of a moment like this, being a thread in the tapestry of a bustling major metropolis. She often dreamt of things beyond dust covered roads that led to nowhere. It was a dream she shared with a cherished childhood friend, her only friend. Someone she assumed would be a constant fixture in her life forever. There in lay the fallacy of childish dreams. No one ever tells you how threads have a tendency to unspool and unravel until they become untethered and eventually are left dangling from the edge of an abyss with only the promise of darkness. And absolutely nothing lasts forever.
She thought she would have learned her lesson by now but it would seem that history was doomed to repeat itself and by some small measure doomed her in the process. It wasn't very often she felt like the powerless, twelve year old girl shackled to a system that failed her that she once was, however, the events of the past several weeks have made her keenly aware of the fact that she could never truly rid herself of Samantha Groves. Even though she had been Root far longer than she was ever Sam Groves, Sam always seemed to find a way to weigh her down like an albatross around her neck and refused to go gently into the light. She told herself it's merely a survival instinct and nothing more than that but she knew it was just a lie she told herself when the fear threatened to overwhelm her. It's in those moments when she would take solace her God's reassuring voice whispering to her. But even her God couldn't save her from the poison that Sam Groves poured into her ear in the wake of Shaw's absence.
Root sat and stared out into the world in front of her. The park was a sea of happy, shiny people enjoying the bright, mild spring day. She thought about how completely ignorant they were of what it lurked beneath the surface of their tragically ordinary lives. A small laugh filled with more derision than mirth escaped her lips. She both pitied and envied them their ignorance as she herself had recently become acutely aware of her own grievous errors. The knowledge of those fatal errors continued to eat away at her and now she'd become nothing more than a buffet of desperation and rage.
It was all supposed to be a game. That was the first mistake, never underestimate your opponent. It wasn't often that she met someone who could pique her interest enough to warrant her attention or effort so Root was intrigued by Sameen Shaw's ISA file the moment she read it. And had it not been for the fact she was engaged in a more important endeavor at the time, she would have been more leisurely in her pursuit of Agent Shaw. And as fate would have it, she would have some time to do exactly that, though, just not in the way she had planned.
It was supposed to be just a bit of fun. She liked to get a rise out of the stoic yet volatile ex-government assassin in any manner she could which mostly consisted of her taking a cue from their initial meeting. That is to say Root engaged Shaw in a dance with steps choreographed by the give and take that comes with testing boundaries. Shaw was dark and dangerous in a way that Root found familiar yet different. Shaw was a complex system composed of intricately wired circuits and elegant code with the most beautiful hardware she had ever laid eyes on. It was no wonder that Root was dying to get the chance to crack her open to see just exactly what it was that made her tick.
There was a spark of something between them in those precious few moments of their very first encounter and that spark ignited a slow burning fire inside of her. What had previously been cold and hollow had miraculously become warm and complete. Root was particularly gifted in the art of the con and it just never occurred to her that she would on day fall victim to her own machinations. That was her second mistake, never fall for the mark.
Many had accused her of extreme arrogance, an accusation she summarily dismissed just as she dismissed the ants that scurried about this planet like the bad code they were. It was easy to be ambivalent and cavalier about things when you held yourself above everyone else, after all she was the right hand of God. Why shouldn't she be arrogant? She was the chosen herald of the God who was to usher in a new age, a better one. She never wavered in her stalwart belief in the plan that The Machine had for the world, it never occurred to her to question it or Her. And so she embraced every task The Machine set before her with utter and complete devotion as any supplicant would. She faced a trial by fire and proved herself worthy of the mantle bestowed upon her. Only things didn't exactly pan out the way they were supposed to thanks a fly in the proverbial ointment, Samaritan.
The truth of the matter was she wasn't even remotely above all the other so-called ants. Like them, she too was nothing more than a pawn in a game of Gods. Having knowledge of that too was just salt for an already gaping wound that will likely never heal. After all she had given, all that she sacrificed, none of it amounted to anything but the prolonging of the inevitable, Samaritan's ultimate domination. Nothing any of them did mattered in the end because they would all probably end up dead, and this stupid world would continue to spin on its axis and nothing they did would have mattered. Not. One. Damn. Bit. And as she sat there contemplating all of it she realized it was her own hubris and blind devotion that led her to this park bench, hurt, desolate, and very much abandoned. This was her last and most fatal mistake, forgetting how to be alone.