Note : Written for Shoot week. Prompt : Shaw finds out about Hanna.
This is set right after my other story "Gen plays matchmaker". Therefore, you can consider it as part 3 of a series I'd call "Gen ships Root and Shaw" even if Gen isn't in it. It may be possible to understand this story even if you haven't read the first two parts, but I'd still highly recommand to read them.
There was a flash of warm light and then it was dark and cold everywhere. Root began to panic. She tried to run but she couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything, and it felt as if she was in an infinity of darkness. She tried to scream, but not a single sound came out of her mouth.
Then the whispers started and she wished the silence would have lasted. It was oppressing, she could feel the air thicken around her as if the voices were giving weight to the air and Root's chest tightened so much it hurt.
Even if she knew it was useless, she stopped trying to run and screamed, eyes closed and hands pressing on her ears, but the whispers grew louder and louder and now they were starting to make sense, understandable words and sentences resounding everywhere. There were mocking voices, reproachful voices, sad voices, and each and every one of them was telling truths she didn't want to hear, truths she would have rather forgotten, but she couldn't because the voices were always here to remind her.
"You're going to lose her."
"Why didn't you do something, anything ?"
"Murder."
"Danger."
"You're useless."
"You're nobody."
They grew louder again, until Root thought her head would explode and she yelled at them, her eyes crying despite herself. She wished she could die and make it all stop, she knew what was going to happen and she didn't want to live that once again.
"Go away. Please go away, WHY WON'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE ?!"
The voices all mixed together and it was now a roar, filling the space around her and seeping inside herself, and Root knew what it was going to say, she knew what she was going to see and live again. She fell to her knees as the roar turned into the words she didn't want to hear.
"You weren't there and she died. You're a failure. You let her walk to her murderer and you didn't do anything. You don't deserve to be here when she's not anymore."
A light appeared somewhere in front of her and she got up again, running to it as if her life depended on it. Hanna was into this light, smiling the way she was the day she went out of that door for the last time. Root tried to yell, to warn her, to tell her not to go, but there wasn't a sound getting out of her mouth anymore. She wanted to grab her friend, make her stay, but the more she ran, the more Hanna seemed to move away and Root finally fell to her knees again, crying her eyes out as the voices turned silent.
Eventually Hanna faded into the light which turned red, and Root couldn't help but watch in horror as a crimson veil fell everywhere around her, replacing the darkness. Images started to play on it, pieces of pictures and films making no sense, but the only thing she could see was her friend being caught and she remembered how she had felt when Hanna hadn't returned, the worry and the remorse and the hurt overwhelming her, and just like every other time she realized how much the memory was still vivid in her, how much it would never leave her alone because she didn't deserve peace.
She clamped her eyes shut, she didn't want to see anything anymore, but the voices took over and it was more than she could handle.
Root yelled her friend's name in despair, wishing everything was different and she had acted that day instead of just watching.
She felt pain building up in her chest again and she tried to press against it but felt an obstacle in her hands' way. She clutched at it and opened her eyes to see a blurred shape bent over her. The voices were everywhere now, but one of them stood out to say her name and for once the tone wasn't as cold as the others'. Root realized it was probably the shape's one and she begged, sobbing uncontrollably, as if she could go back and rewrite history, as if everything hadn't happened years ago, as if everything could be different.
"Please help me, my friend, I have to find her, she's going to get killed, help me, please just help me, please, please, please", she started panting and her whole body was now shaking since she was unable to control herself anymore.
"Root", the shape said again.
"I need to find Hanna before it's too late", she hiccupped, the voices now so loud that she thought her head would explode soon.
"Root, wake up."
The shape shook her and she fought it off, realizing it was probably as mean as the voices despite its less aggressive tone, until it changed tactics and slapped her, causing Root to blink.
Root opened her eyes and her brain tried to process the changes in her surroundings. She was in a small compartment and Shaw was bent over her, annoyance with a very well-hidden hint of worry showing on her face.
Root's erratic breath calmed down a bit at the sight of Shaw but she still wasn't fully awoken and it took her time to realize that this had all just been a nightmare.
She then became aware of how sweaty she was, of the covers on the ground instead of on the bunk, of the trail of tears she could still feel on her cheek, and finally of her hands still gripping, or more exactly crushing Shaw's wrists.
She let go slowly, unsure of what the other woman's reaction would be, and forced herself to take deep breaths. Her nightmare had been terrifying and so real that she still wasn't fully back to reality.
Root's memory of where she was and why she was here started to come back, and she finally allowed herself to relax a bit the tension she hadn't even realized she had in her muscles until now.
Shaw was carefully watching her, now leant back against the wall, analyzing all of her reactions.
"Sorry. Did I wake you up ?" Root asked when she couldn't stand the meaningful silence anymore, and she hated how hoarse and weak her voice sounded.
"I would have had to be dead not to hear you. And I'm not even sure it would have been enough", Shaw deadpanned.
Root pulled a face and leant over the edge of the bed to get her covers back.
"Sorry", she repeated.
"Wanna tell me what this was all about ?"
"It was just a stupid nightmare", the hacker answered with a weak smile, and Shaw wondered which one of them she was trying to convince of that.
"Who is Hanna ?"
Root froze, her hands letting go the covers she was trying to spread correctly over her again, and Shaw was now absolutely sure it hadn't been just a stupid nightmare.
"Root ?" she asked again when the hacker refused to meet her eyes. "Are you all right ?" she added after some seconds of silence, her voice softening up a little.
Shaw saw them then, the tears that Root was holding back but that were still watering her eyes, and she realized she didn't really know how to handle the situation.
She took the easy way out a few moments of silence later, letting anger get the upper hand over concern. Anger was something she knew, something she could rely on. She deliberately ignored the hacker's obvious hurt and discomfort, hissing at her instead, ignoring that little voice in her head telling her she would only make it worse for Root by pretending she didn't care.
"You don't want to talk to me ? Fine. But I'd better finish my night this time or you might end up hurt badly", she snapped while getting back to her own bunk.
Root managed to wait until Shaw was out of sight to free her tears and let them run down her cheeks, unable to hold them back anymore. She felt embarrassed and ashamed, knowing that Shaw had seen her like that, crying and struggling and yelling and… She couldn't believe she had said Hanna's name out loud. I made it much more difficult to pretend that this was nothing more than some random nightmare now. Because it wasn't random. It was something she was constantly living with ever since her friend disappeared.
The dreams had started when Hanna hadn't come back, and soon they had turned into nightmares. The scenario was always the same, only the staging changed, and each and every time she would wake up sweating, feeling a pain in her chest and guilty as hell, because she had let Hanna go in that car and she hadn't done anything, and it was too late to change that.
The nightmares had lasted for months, slowly killing her every damn night. As she grew up they became less and less frequent though, until they were almost gone. But nothing's ever gone forever when it's about a mistake you made and have to live with, she had realized as they had come back to haunt her several months ago.
They had stayed occasional at first, when Root could still pretend that she wasn't scared by the prospect of Samaritan coming online. But it had soon become obvious that it was a danger to them all, that it was a danger to Shaw whose impressive skills wouldn't be enough to save her if she got caught this time, and that it was inevitable. She had done her best to protect them, to make them stay safe, but she had had to part ways with Shaw and it was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do. In her mind it had been her only friend walking away from her again, her only friend since Hanna and Root couldn't be here to protect her if something went south. She couldn't help but think about everything that could go wrong, how she could lose Shaw just like she had lost Hanna because she was powerless again, and that's when the nightmares had become more and more regular. Now they were haunting her almost every night and Root was exhausted, having to cope with them at night and her awfully boring job during the day, with the Machine rarely talking to her because it was too dangerous. She was nervously worn out and on the edge of breaking down, but she couldn't allow this to happen, she had to stay strong in this war against Samaritan, she thought for what felt the millionth time in a few months.
Root's tears finally stopped and she calmed down a bit, relaxing to the sound of Shaw's regular breath above her. It made her doze off eventually.
She was in a dimly lit endless tunnel this time. The voices were there, whispering things she couldn't understand, and she clenched her fists, pushing her nails into the palms of her hands to force herself to stay calm. She wanted to wake up but found out she couldn't, just like any other time she had tried, she had no control over her real body when she was in a nightmare.
Eventually the light appeared at one end of the tunnel, just like she expected. But this time it wasn't Hanna who was slowly disappearing in it, it was Gen and Root didn't panic. Gen was safe, the Machine had made sure of this, and the surveillance cameras that had spotted the kid with Shaw and her had mysteriously lost their footage for the day.
Then the light dimmed a tad and Root saw what was behind it. Gen was slowly heading toward huge metallic jaws that the kid didn't seem to see and that were snapping shut regularly, but it was just a dream, she reminded herself, just a dream, the kid was safe.
Then the whispers melted into one sugary voice, laughing mockingly at her and making her shiver. Root could feel that something was off, but she didn't know what, until the laughter stopped and the voice whispered a truth with obvious malicious delight.
"But she didn't meet just with you…"
Then it all became obvious and Root wondered how she hadn't realized it before, how she hadn't understood that Gen had probably met with Harold and the big lug to set Shaw and her together in this train. Becoming aware of the danger the kid was now irreparably in started a gut reaction in Root, fear overwhelming her as Gen went into the metallic mouth and she screamed the kid's name, losing control of herself, her whole body shaking as she closed her eyes not to see the jaws snapping shut, swallowing Gen in front of her.
Root jumped and her forehead hit the bottom of the top bunk, stopping her cry short. Struggling to find her cell phone under her pillow, she didn't notice Shaw who was once again leant against the wall and watching her with an indecipherable face.
It was 3 in the morning but she didn't care, she couldn't think straight anyway. She went into her call history and found Gen's number from last evening, when the kid had called again to tell them that they had tickets for a back ride too. She dialled it but the kid's phone was obviously turned off because she went straight to voicemail.
Root hung up and let her arm fall to the side, struggling not to have a panic attack again. Gen was safe for now, she knew it, the kid would be safe until Samaritan found out for one of them. She forced herself to take deep breaths, pushing her head back in her pillow and staring into space.
"Now you're going to tell me what the hell is happening, Root."
She startled as she recognized Shaw's voice and turned her head to the left, blinking as she took in the sight of the other woman. She didn't know what to answer so she stayed silent, wondering why and how Shaw's voice had come out so angry and soft at the same time.
The smaller woman let out a small annoyed sigh and Root looked away.
"Why did you scream Gen's name ?"
The hacker closed her eyes as flashes of her nightmare came back to dance in front of her, ghosts of a invention of her mind which she couldn't stop thinking about.
"If the kid's in danger, I wanna know it", Shaw warned through gritted teeth.
But Root found herself unable to answer and tears started streaming down her cheeks again as she closed her eyes. She realized that she was losing absolutely all that was left of her self-control and she was scared that if she opened her mouth, she wouldn't be able to hold back the flow that was dying to come out.
"Root", Shaw just said when she realized her only answer would be silence.
And the hacker didn't know what made her crack up, if it was the mix of annoyance and concern in Shaw's voice, or the lack of harshness in it, or if she just couldn't hold everything back anymore, or if it was all of this at the same time, but she felt something snap inside her and rambling sentences started to get out of her mouth while she sobbed uncontrollably.
"She was my friend, my only friend… She was my friend and I let her go, she walked away and never came back… I didn't say or do anything when she went into the damn car, I went to play that stupid game and I won again… She wanted to make it to Oregon and I had already done it so many times but I did it again instead of saying something…" Root cried and she was twelve years old again, reliving that day in the library and the awful ones that had followed, when she had realized that her friend wouldn't come back.
Shaw tried to piece the story back together as she watched Root sob. She had wanted to know who Hanna was to assess if it was a weakness for the hacker and if it could raise a problem in the future, but now she didn't want to know and wished she had never asked. She had learned how to handle the usual Root, the flirty and charismatic and crazy one, but now the hacker was breaking down in front of her and Shaw didn't know what to do with that because she didn't do feelings, she didn't want anything to do with that, yet she stood here and didn't move while Root was revealing her deepest and best hidden secret, the one she had never told anyone apart from Mrs Russell and the 911 operator until now. Because she had seen Hanna get into the car and hadn't done anything, and she could never forgive herself for that.
Root took the deepest breath she could considering how much she was sobbing to try and calm down a bit. She remembered then what Shaw's last question had been, how she hadn't asked about Hanna but about Gen. And Root wondered why, why she had thought that finding people to care for after all these years would be a good idea, why she hadn't learnt after Hanna that caring about people did eventually always hurt, why she had gotten so attached to Gen in so little time, why she was now letting people get to her, but she couldn't answer any of those questions and she just cursed herself, wishing everything was different and she wasn't the one responsible for the safety of the people she was afraid to lose.
"Gen had contacts with Harold and the big lug", Root finally answered to Shaw. "She had with us too but the Machine erased the footage, yet it's too late to do so for the cameras that could have spotted her with Harold or Reese. Now if Samaritan ever figures out who we are, she'll be in danger too", she whispered and hated how broken and desperate her voice sounded.
A long silence fell in the compartment and Root felt a pang of remorse, wondering why she had said all this in the first place, not even talking about the fact that she had said it to Shaw, who not only hated to talk about feelings but was also the one person in the world that she didn't want to lose, that she couldn't afford to lose. She wondered how she could have been so stupid, especially after how great last night with her had been, she wondered why she felt so hurt just by the silence around her, she wondered why she always had to ruin everything, until eventually Shaw started talking and Root didn't have the courage to meet her eyes.
It took Shaw forever to answer because she didn't know what to say, she didn't even know what she was supposed to say. Root had given her a poisoned gift by opening her heart to her. She tried to understand why the hacker was so hurt by her friend's death even so many years after and it took her time to process everything, objectively analyzing what she had heard, because it wasn't obvious to her at all at first.
Eventually she thought she had come to a plausible explanation, when she guessed that not only did Root miss her friend but that she felt guilty too, and Shaw couldn't understand why because Root hadn't done anything wrong herself. She couldn't have predicted what was going to happen, maybe she could have guessed but she was just a child, and now she had to stop being crossed with herself for that.
Shaw thought about backing off just like she had done earlier this night but found out she couldn't. Even if she didn't understand what the hacker was feeling, she did understand how hard it must have been for Root to say all this, and now she knew she had to say something. Not so long ago she wouldn't have cared if she hurt the other woman even more by staying silent and not ever commenting on what had happened, but things had evolved and now Shaw remembered the feel of Root's skin against her own the previous night, remembered how easy and obvious it had been and realized that she cared. She cared if she hurt the other woman or not, she cared if the hacker was mentally stable or not – and not only because of how dangerous this might turn out in the war against Samaritan, she cared because it was Root.
"We'll protect Gen", Shaw said eventually and was herself surprised by how obviously soft her voice came out. "You can't keep her away from us anyway. Hell, she tracked Finch and Reese down !" she exclaimed and a few seconds of silence elapsed as she struggled to find what else to say. "As for Hanna… You couldn't have known", she shrugged.
Root finally turned her head to look at Shaw. She nodded slightly, knowing that this was the closest to a thanks that the other woman would ever accept, amazed that the answer she had got hadn't involved any kind of yelling, annoyance, roll of the eyes, anger or whatever else she had expected.
"Now sleep", Shaw scowled but Root could see that the expression was partly forced. "And if this time you wake me up again, I'm properly killing you", she added while getting back up to her bunk.
Seeing how eager Shaw was to pretend that nothing had happened, that she hadn't heard anything nor acted all soft on Root made the hacker chuckle. Nothing had really changed, Shaw was still Shaw and Root knew that everything that had happened in that train would stay in that train. Truth be known, Root was relieved. She wasn't any more comfortable about having talked about Hanna than Shaw was about having heard it. But having said out loud what had burdened her for so many years had freed her of a weight and suddenly her chuckle turned into an uncontrollable, half-hysterical laugh at Shaw's forced reaction. It lasted for a while, washing away the tension that had built up in her in the course of the night.
"I hope you know you're crazy", Shaw muttered when Root finally calmed down.
The normalcy of such a remark made the hacker smile and it was obvious in her voice when she answered, not even trying to hide her grin.
"Good night, Sam."
Root heard an annoyed sigh and could only imagine the roll of the eyes that went with it, and after that the silence came back in the small compartment.
She realized that she had fallen asleep only the following morning, when she woke up.
And this time, there hadn't been a nightmare to haunt her.