(all that i know is) i'm still breathing
written for tumblr's person of interest appreciation week 2016 day 5: favourite quote
"everyone dies alone. but if you mean something to someone…if you help someone or love someone, and even a single person remembers you…then maybe you never really die at all."
the first time the machine speaks to lionel, she does so in carter's voice.
lionel snatches the earpiece from his ear and throws it across the bullpen with a force that surprises him. it smacks against the opposite wall and clatters, broken, to the ground. blind to the looks he's getting, lionel grabs his coat and storms outside. by the time he makes it to the park across from the precinct, he's shaking, with rage and something else.
his phone buzzes. just a text, thankfully. I'M SORRY. he collapses on one of the benches outside the park. he and carter had sat right here countless times, discussing cases and family and nothing at all. he can't think of that now.
his phone buzzes again, another text. I THOUGHT YOU WOULD WANT TO HEAR HER VOICE.
lionel breathes deep, deep, deep.
he does, that's the problem. what he wouldn't give to have just one more mundane conversation with carter, but he wants to talk to her. he doesn't want to talk to a computer that's stolen her voice, who never even really knew her. that's just too much for one person to bear.
the next time the machine tries it, it's in john's dark and sarcastic tone. lionel's not exactly expecting it, but he's also not entirely surprised. and there's something about the machine using john, who had never minded being used, that doesn't turn lionel's stomach in the same way carter's voice had.
still. lionel doesn't destroy the earpiece this time. he calmly takes it out and places it on his desk. "no," he says firmly. his phone buzzes. OKAY.
the third time the machine speaks to him, root's voice is clear and bright in his ear. it still makes his chest clench, to listen to his friend as if she's just on the other end of the line. but root had been a humble disciple of the machines even before he'd met her, and he thinks she would have liked nothing more than to be the voice of her god.
he leaves the earpiece in this time. "thank you," root says.
shaw had never said goodbye, to any of the people she'd lost.
finch had told her about carter as he gulped down slow, agonized breaths. she'd known about root from the look on john's face when he'd turned to her. and she had heard about reese from the machine, in root's voice, sounding sad and sympathetic as if she'd known him.
she'd never had the chance with joss or root, but john had tried to say goodbye. he must have known, even then, that he wouldn't be coming back. he'd smiled timorously at shaw and she'd turned away.
but he'd known, hadn't he? they'd all known, how much she cared, how much they meant to her. they had to. her people had never pushed her to be someone she wasn't: carter had stood up for her, john had stood resolute and comforting beside her, and root had loved her with everything she had.
they'd known. and surely goodbyes aren't all that important when the rest of the time was meaningful anyway.
in italy they drink coffee like it's water. harold has never had a taste for the stuff. but he frequents little local cafes regularly now; the scent of the brew is thick in the small spaces and it reminds him of john, who had always smelt of it in the mornings. sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he imagines john is still there, sauntering over to him with his trademark smirk and a takeaway cup in each hand.
harold doesn't think he'll ever learn to appreciate coffee, but now every morning he raises the bitter drink to his mouth in some mutation of a toast and swallows it down, heavy on his tongue.
for john.
shaw gets a tattoo, after. it stretches across her forearm in a single line: 'four alarm fire,' written in root's careful script. the machine had found the sample for her, and shaw had felt it fitting.
some days are harder than others.
shaw has her dog, and her mission, and a humanised computer in her ear that is 85% root. most of the time, that's enough. but shaw had never realised just how much she would miss the smell of root's hair or that distinct sparkle in her eyes that always preceded root doing something batshit crazy; she had never realised the importance of human touch.
on those days, shaw looks down at the words on her arm and feels strong again.
lionel liked working with john because he had been something of a friend before, and because he'd known and loved joss carter too.
john hadn't needed to push lionel on the partner he had who'd died, because he already knew that loss far too well. john understood when sometimes lionel got quiet. he understood the days when lionel needed to avoid the food truck he and carter had always visited, or the park where they had eaten lunch. he understood when lionel needed the opposite, when he needed to be exactly where she had been, when he needed to sit and think and remember her, or when he needed to talk about her, loudly and confidently, so that even years later she wouldn't be forgotten. lionel understood it for john too, knew with just a glance exactly when joss crossed his mind. they rarely ever talked about this silent agreement, but they understood.
besides, lionel had figured if there was some sort of afterlife, carter would totally get a kick out of the two of them bumbling around together, at lionel's (useless) attempts to teach the man in the suit to be a cop.
but another partner? one who had no place in that history? one who didn't understand that everything lionel did and had become was because of her, for her? no, he wasn't ready for that. he doubts he'll ever quite be ready for that.
for the first time shaw hears the machine not in root's voice but in john's. but it's coming from the speakers in her place, not her earpiece, and bear's ears prick immediately and he takes off towards the sound.
shaw finds him sitting right in front of the speaker. the machine stutters off whatever it was saying. bear lets out a piteous whine at the loss of his master's voice and looks to shaw as if she can explain.
"well, you can't stop now," shaw says.
after a pause, john's voice starts up again. "hi, boy. how are you? who's a good boy?" the words are meaningless; it's the tone and the person bear needs. the person is never coming back and nothing is going to change that but the machine keeps talking at least. shaw sits on the floor next to bear and eventually he settles, laying his head in her lap as she strokes through his thick fur. john's voice continues, soothing her as well, until bear is asleep.
"that was cruel," shaw says, anger thrumming through her for the first time in a while. "don't do that again."
the machine doesn't reply. shaw hopes she understands. she stays on the floor with bear and hopes they'll all be okay soon.
lionel walks into the precinct on his first day back and almost immediately turns around and walks right back out. he hadn't been prepared for how viscerally the once again empty desk across from his would hit him. he feels sick.
john hadn't kept much at his desk. there was the department-issued computer and a couple of case files. nothing personal. but one of the case files is still sitting open, as if john had just left for a cup of coffee and would be back soon. if only lionel didn't know better. if only lionel hadn't gotten attached. he remembers this is how it was after carter, too, though the carefully placed personal effects she kept had made it even worse.
lionel steadies himself and takes the few halting steps to stand in front of john's desk, joss' desk. he should make sure there's nothing incriminating hidden there before maintenance comes to clear it off. the drawers are all empty, typical of john, except the last. lionel's breath catches in his throat.
in the bottom drawer is the hideously ugly doll camera john had given him all those years ago. lionel had thrown it out months ago in a fit of anger at the man's secrets. he'd regretted it soon after but by then it was gone. but it seems john was even more sentimental than lionel had given him credit for, and he'd fished it out of the trash.
the doll is grotesque, it really is, but it had meant something to all of them. lionel sits in john's chair, joss' chair, and remembers to breathe.
in the week that shaw had spent with root, between her escape and root's death, she had slept every night with root's long skinny arms wrapped tightly around her and the cold of root's nose pressed up against the back of her neck. it should have made shaw feel trapped. since childhood, she had shared beds with people out of necessity, but never, never of choice. but root, of course, root was different and shaw slept soundly through every night.
bear isn't a bad substitute, really. he's big and fluffy and he smells pretty good most of the time. he even likes to press his cold doggy nose up against shaw, just like root had. but he's not too good at being the big spoon.
it certainly is a strange, strange new world, where sameen shaw, of all things, misses being cuddled.
lionel decides that he owes it to john to give him a good send-off. john was a terrible cop but he was a damn good person. he doesn't deserve to be forgotten, with the only people to remember him a formerly corrupt cop, a tiny sociopath and a recluse who'd disappeared.
so lionel works at fabricating a story where detective john riley died a hero.
trouble is lionel is kind of terrible at computers. luckily, it seems there's an invisible hand guiding him and making the hard parts seem easy.
"thank you," lionel says to the air.
"he was my friend, too," the machine says in root's voice. lionel's not entirely sure which of them she's talking about. he supposes it doesn't much matter, now.
sometimes in her spare time shaw goes to a shooting range. it's cathartic; afterwards, her mind is clear and her limbs loose.
for a long time after carter died, shaw kept her nano tucked away in its case, the memory of joss gushing over it too fresh for the physical reminder. they had planned to go out to the range together once but hadn't found the time before it had been too late.
today shaw shoots the nano again for the first time in years. she places perfect shots in the target's head, gut and each knee. as she goes for the heart, she remembers carter was shot square in the chest, and she has to turn away to breathe.
slowly, shaw works on thinking of carter how she lived, to erase the image of how she died. she remembers carter laughing, and the way she relaxed when she danced. she remembers the slender column of carter's brown throat and how she had smirked and cocked her head at shaw as she punched laskey. she remembers carter strong and brave and determined and honest and so awfully kind.
sometimes shaw wonders whether carter would be proud of her, if she could see how shaw is carrying on the mission, how she's trying so hard to do good, even though she is very alone now.
finally, shaw turns back to the target. she is utterly steady as she aims and hits the heart perfectly. she knows carter would be proud of that, at any rate.
lee goes through a period of having fruit loops for breakfast in the mornings.
lionel laughs and laughs and laughs.
it's the same every morning, until lee gets sick of his bizarre father and moves on to something else. it's not banana nut crunch. lionel thinks that really shouldn't hurt as much as it does.
lionel is offered a promotion a week after everything went down. he's not entirely sure if he's properly earned it or if the machine pulled some electronic strings to get it for him, but either way he snaps it up. he doesn't want to leave the eighth – the memories here are so visceral, he can turn a corner and immediately just see john standing by the copier or joss' bright smile across their desks, as if their ghosts still linger here – but he doesn't want to sit at the desk he's been at for years and face someone else all over again either.
on the back wall in his new office, lieutenant fusco proudly hangs a picture of joss carter and a picture of john riley, their names clearly emblazed below their equally commanding stares. underneath that, he pins articles on the takedown of HR, on carter's heroism, and the tiny piece printed about the blaze of glory detective riley had apparently gone out in. on his desk he keeps the photo of lee, personal and just for him, but carter and riley face outward so that anyone who enters this room notices them, so that they can know the faces of the people who made lionel who he is today, the people who are gone now but who did such good while they were still here that the least they deserve is to not be forgotten.
lionel is content here, watching out over the precinct from his tiny space, his friends always looking over him. he doesn't have grand plans for moving up the career ladder, doesn't need to be rich or well known. he needs to be here, in this place where john put him, where he first met joss carter, where he finally decided to be something other than filth.
life moves forward, lionel knows, but it burns somewhere within him that only a few years on carter's name is never spoken aloud, that riley's will soon follow. people move on, and lionel is, but he never wants to leave his friends behind, he never wants there to come a time when no one can remember who joss carter or john riley were, what they accomplished. he wants, more than anything, to honour their legacy.
harold stands in the confraternity of st roch, small amongst the golden opulence of the sala dell'albergo, and thinks of root. he is held captive by tintoretto's 'crucifixion' that stretches over an entire wall. while the other figures in the painting seem full of frantic movement, high above harold christ is still, his head bent forward in a calm sort of acceptance.
harold imagines this must have been how root was, in her last moments. while he had been desperate for her, while he hopes doctors had worked desperately over her, he thinks she must have been calm. he thinks she would have approached death the way she approached everything else in her life: with a determination and acceptance that harold had never understood, with total faith in her god that she would look after her, even in death.
he wonders, though, if root was ever scared. as the story goes, even christ had his moment of doubt, in the garden the night before his death. out of fear, he had prayed and prayed and prayed, until an angel had been sent down to give him strength. harold wonders if root ever had that conversation with the machine. he wonders what root's god might have said to her. though none of them had been with her at the end, he hopes that, whatever it was, it was enough.
shaw gets in contact with zoe morgan. she doesn't want to, she really doesn't want to – most of the time shaw is able to separate her life into distinct parts, and zoe belongs in the past, in another life – but she needs information and this is the only way to get it. they meet over drinks in a bar far too much like the one they had sat with carter in, and zoe is so friendly and happy and effusive that shaw almost feels bad about how stiffly she holds herself, how she barely touches her drink, how little she offers.
but she can't. it's too much. zoe belongs to the part of her life that shaw had shared with carter and john and root. she doesn't belong in this new life where shaw is alone.
"do you want to get out of here?" zoe asks once their business is done. "maybe find a club?"
"no," shaw says, too quickly.
shaw had had a good time, the last time. she'd drunk just enough and joked easily with the other women and held onto carter's arm on the dance floor. shaw had never had many friends, and she'd certainly never had female friends, who did things like go dancing together. but for just a little while, when joss had been so welcoming, when they'd gushed over guns as easily as they did shoes, when zoe had been sarcastic and snarky in exactly the way shaw enjoyed…just for a little white, shaw had felt free and happy and like this could be something she was allowed to have.
shaw had had a good time then, and maybe she would again if she went with zoe tonight, but without carter she doesn't want to. it would feel far too wrong, far too unfair, to dance with zoe again when joss is in the ground.
"i'm sorry," shaw offers, which is more than she gives most people.
zoe smiles sadly at her like she understands. "see you around, shaw."
selfishly, shaw sure hopes not.
shaw and fusco go together to clean out john riley's apartment. it feels somewhat like desecration, to invade this space that was entirely john's, that neither of them had ever been invited into before. but if not them it would be someone else's job, and they can't have that.
so solemnly, piece-by-piece, they take this little part of his life apart.
john wasn't too sentimental, thankfully, at least not in regards to his material possessions. his clothes go in bags for charity, rows of smart black suits and bright white shirts. lionel does not feel choked up as he folds them, he doesn't. shaw takes john's guns and the few things of bear's that john had kept here.
it's going okay, until lionel pulls a book off a shelf and two pictures fall out.
the first is of a much younger john in a military uniform and a woman lionel doesn't recognise. he looks happy and unburdened in a way lionel had never known him to be. it almost feels wrong to be looking at the photo, this alien man. lionel hands the photo wordlessly over to shaw. "that's jessica," she says. "she died." when she doesn't offer anything else, he reaches for the second photo, and sucks in a sharp breath.
it's of carter, long before any of them had known her. she's grinning bigger than lionel can remember ever seeing, a young taylor wrapped up in her arms. lionel thinks it almost mirrors the one of john; the simple, carefree happiness contained in each is striking. he can understand why john had chosen this photo of joss to remember her by.
both photos are soft and worn, like they've been handled over and over again. it makes lionel feel terribly sad all of a sudden. "he sure loved her a whole damn lot," he says to shaw as she looks over the second photo.
"don't think he ever told her. poor asshole."
john had drunk way too much one night and told lionel in a broken whisper about his eleventh hour confession. they had never spoken of it again, but lionel had always wondered if joss had known, if she'd felt the same way. he remembers how her voice sometimes got so soft around john, the lengths she'd gone to free him, how she might have tried to die for him if lionel hadn't pulled her away. he thinks she must have. lionel has never really believed in an afterlife, but for his friends who had never quite got their timing right, he likes to imagine they're together again in some way.
in the end they bury the photos, riley's detective shield, and a few other things they don't have the heart to throw out at the headstone finch had arranged. there's no body, of course, but this is something at least; tiny little pieces of the life john had led, the people he had loved.
"what shape would root have been?" shaw asks once.
she's not sure she's really on board with this whole shapes-in-the-universe concept, but it was root's thing, and sometimes she misses root terribly.
the machine doesn't know. root had never told her that.
shaw isn't sure either. something intersecting with shaw's arrow, at least.
the police officer is short, her dark hair pulled back from her round face in a way that should make her look severe but instead, harold thinks, just calls attention to her kind brown eyes. harold is drawn to her and can't quite articulate why.
she's got her hands on her hips like she wants to seem intimidating, but her laughing expression and the way she abandons the stance to reach out to the tiny italian children she's herding across the street belies that initial interpretation.
something achingly familiar stirs in him as he studies the officer's kind smile, the interplay of stern and gentle that she projects.
grace is beside him then, claiming the seat next to him at the little café they've retreated to this afternoon. "what are you looking at?" she asks.
in his previous life, across an ocean, his first instinct would be to evade. but now, in the wake of everything, he wants to tell the truth. harold can't help but smile.
"i had a friend once. a detective. that police officer over there–" he gestures out across the street "–i think she reminds me of her."
"what was she like?" grace is so earnest; he loves her dearly for it.
he thinks of joss carter, of the fearless and compassionate and noble detective who had come to mean so much more to him than he could ever have imagined. it feels good to remember her so brilliantly alive. "oh," he says, "she was wonderful."
lionel winds up in this hospital again. it's his own damn fault this time; he'd failed to properly clear the alley before hurrying in and suddenly he'd been on the ground with a bullet in his side. shaw is there when he wakes, hunched and unmoving in a chair by the window, a gun over her knee. her trademark scowl is very firmly in place, but lionel wonders if she's wearing it more to hide that she's worried than because she's actually irritated. it's awfully sweet, anyway, that she's here, that she's apparently kept vigil by his side.
still, lionel can't help but think of the last time he was in this position. shaw's presence is in such contrast to how upbeat root had been when she entered lionel's room, how she'd joked and tried to cheer him out of his dour mood. she'd been in constant motion, exactly how she had always been, but her focus had been entirely on lionel, on making sure he was okay. even the new identities she had offered him, though misguided and kind of creepy, had been root's way of saying he mattered to her.
an IAB agent had once assured lionel that there was no one who gave a crap about him. he'd been proven wrong then, and time and time again since. lionel doesn't think he's ever done anything good enough to get so lucky, to have had so many people who were willing to sit by his bedside, to stick their neck out for him, to have had so many people who cared.
it's lonely now, with so many of them gone, but when shaw cocks her head at him and says, "hey lionel, let's not do this again, okay?", it's still so much more than he ever could have imagined.
the machine gives shaw the number of leon tao. she tells her, laughingly, that he's a repeat customer. she tells her, with a fondness that shaw never would have expected, that he's the reason they have bear.
so shaw pulls leon out of the drug den he's found himself in – well, actually, bear does the pulling – and she's walking away, job well done, when leon calls out, "hey, that's john's dog!"
stupidly, shaw stops long enough for leon to jog up to them. "why do you have the big man's dog?"
"he's dead." tact has never been shaw's thing, and she doesn't want to be doing this. it's okay when john is someone for shaw to remember but she doesn't want to talk about him with someone else.
"oh." leon's face falls and he reaches out to bear as if for comfort.
"sorry." she's not, really. she wants to leave.
leon, finally, straightens and observes her curiously. "looks like you're doing his job pretty well. he'd be proud."
if shaw were a weaker person she wouldn't be able to control the smile that wants to form. as it is, she scowls instead. "he'd be really mad if you died too after everything he's done for you. maybe you should work on staying out of trouble for good this time."
"yeah, yeah. i'll do that, yeah." leon starts backing away, then he turns and he's gone.
finally, shaw lets the smile come.
fusco and shaw meet, a year after the end, at the park by the water. lionel's smile is tight and shaw's is more of a grimace but it's good, to be here together, standing shoulder to shoulder with bear pressed between them. there is the sound of an uneven gait shuffling across the grass towards them and then harold is there, too, his hand warm on shaw's shoulder. he leans down to say a quiet hello to bear who looks up at him like he's asking where his master has been this whole time; if only harold could explain, if only the dog could understand just how painful being back in new york is, how the memories are everywhere in this city, how much that hurts.
in another life, harold had dragged a drunken, angry john reese here and offered him a second chance, a new beginning, and hadn't known he would take it but had stood there after he'd left and hoped; later, they had sat here side by side as partners, as friends. in another life, joss had brought lionel here for a lunch one lazy friday afternoon and he can still remember the clarity of her laugh as it rang through the fresh spring air, how she'd grinned at him like he meant something to her. in another life, root had led shaw here, back to her friends, and when she'd hesitated, root had turned toward her and smiled like she understood, like it was okay, like shaw was finally safe again.
the ghosts of the people they've lost are present here, in the quiet stillness of this little park. root, john reese, and joss carter...they're all gone, but somehow they feel close now, with three people who loved them gathered in remembrance. lionel, sameen and harold stand in silent vigil for their fallen friends, unmoving, surrounded by memories and reflections, until the sun begins its descent below the horizon. harold peels away first, melting into the growing darkness without a word, as if he had never even been there in the first place. then lionel, with a nod at shaw and a quick squeeze of her hand, trudges noisily back to his car. sameen stays just a little while longer, until finally she too picks up bear's lead and turns away.
"come on, boy, let's go home."
end