So I got bored during Spanish class and I started writing this... And it sort of spiraled into something more. And honestly, who wants to do precalc homework? I'm working on this instead.
I've been in a sort of funk due to 4x11 for the past week, so I'm writing my own piece of angst (because honestly, there aren't enough).
Probably AU for 4x12. I don't know yet.
This fic won't be happy. I'm not sure how it'll end yet, but at most, it won't be sad. But definitely not happy (unless something really, really good happens sometime in the next episodes and I'm uplifted or something). I actually plan to finish this, though (but don't I say that every time?).
Rated T for mild swearing + violence + general angst. I don't really do the hardcore romance thing.
I don't own Person of Interest: if I did, 4x11 wouldn't have ended the same way.
T+0 HOURS... ANALOG INTERFACE
She can't believe what she's seeing.
Because, no, She would have thought of that. She thought of everything (but a small part of Root knows that the tiny intricacies of human actions make the number of possible outcomes infinite).
But as the scene in front of her plays out in slow motion and she finds herself clutching the bars that separate her from Shaw, she knows the Machine hadn't predicted this outcome. She never would have sacrificed one of her own (would she, to save the world?). She hadn't predicted Samaritan's operatives arriving early; She couldn't have realized Shaw would come (and somehow, a small part of that makes her proud).
Shaw.
ShawShawShawnoshecan'tdothat.
Her blood sprays into the air, her body convulsing from multiple gunshots (and Root wishes she was there in her stead because it was supposed to be her who got hurt during this war, but goddamnit if Shaw wasn't giving them a hell of a fight).
Root screams.
The elevator doors are closing and she's being pulled away and nosheneedstogosaveher.
Statistics are whispered into her head, but she ignores them.
She tries to go back, but her field of vision is becoming smaller and smaller and no Shaw has fallen and she's being held back and she can't get away.
And when the elevator doors clang shut just as Martine points her gun at Shaw, she stops.
She stops holding her emotions back with that barricade that made makes them so similar. That makes them so perfect for each other (and the memory of that kiss makes its way through her thoughts but she pushes it back down through that wall because that's one emotion she doesn't want to face). Sure, Root puts up a flirty facade most of the time. However, her real emotions are hidden behind a wall in her mind, one she built a long time ago when she was still called Samantha Groves just as a young girl named Sameen Shaw had built one after a car accident-both long ago, but both events that changed their lives forever.
Sure, together they would have been a four-alarm fire in an oil refinery, but both were their own fires as well.
PROBABILITY OF ADMIN SURVIVAL: 43.01%
PROBABILITY OF PRIMARY ASSET SURVIVAL: 29.58%
PROBABILITY OF SECONDARY ASSET SURVIVAL: 0.000076%
PROBABILITY OF SECONDARY ASSET SURVIVAL: 49.22%
PROBABILITY OF ANALOG INTERFACE SURVIVAL: 36.45%
T+0 HOURS... ADMIN
Harold doesn't know what to do.
Ordinarily, he has some inkling of a plan; some idea of what he could do to salvage a situation. But he knows what it's like to lose someone you love (and he has no doubt that's what Root had for Shaw) and the idea of facing Samantha Groves at the moment scares him. He knows what she was like before she started listening to the Machine, before she became entrenched in this game of life and death. If she blames the Machine for Shaw's death...
But he knows he has to. He has to pull her back, keep her away. Keep her from hurting herself more (after all, once upon a time he had loved a woman named Grace, and he had needed a purpose to pull him back to the world). Keep her sole purpose in life from becoming revenge (after all, he very well knows what happened to Reese after Jessica Arndt was killed, and he would prefer the same didn't happen to Root). Despite their rocky past, he's developed quite a liking for Samantha Groves. She's become part of their team, their family. Just as Shaw had-no, he can't think of Shaw, he has to stay focused on the situation at hand.
Reese's wound is getting worse; Fusco is trying to keep him awake and at least somewhat alert. The elevator rises slowly to an uncertain destination-one where havoc has been wreaked by the war between two gods. Samaritan's operatives could be racing them to the top, or they could have given up. He doesn't know.
And that scares him.
Ordinarily, at this time, Root would chime in with the number of Samaritan operatives who would be waiting outside of their door; she would present them with a plan of action. She, Shaw, and Reese would get ready with their guns.
But they have none of those things now.
Reese is barely breathing.
Shaw is down in that basement, and the probability of her being alive is rapidly decreasing.
Root is in a catatonic state on the floor, silently weeping.
So when the elevator doors open, Harold Finch doesn't know what to expect.
PROBABILITY OF ADMIN SURVIVAL: 32.66%
PROBABILITY OF PRIMARY ASSET SURVIVAL: 16.43%
PROBABILITY OF SECONDARY ASSET SURVIVAL: 0.0000092%
PROBABILITY OF SECONDARY ASSET SURVIVAL: 37.86%
PROBABILITY OF ANALOG INTERFACE SURVIVAL: 25.78%
Was that OOC? I don't know. I've never written angst before (and really, I've only tried writing one other POI story, which I abandoned after two chapters; I think the only character I did justice to in that story was Shaw). Especially Finch. Finch was hard to write, and I'm afraid he came off too flighty. Also I had no idea what he calls Root in his mind-Miss Groves sounded off, but so did Root, to some extent. So I alternated between Samantha Groves and Root.
R&R and make this girl very happy (and glad she procrastinated on precalc)?
Next update soon, hopefully!