Chapter Twenty (Have You Ever Seen the Rain…)
ADMIN CHALLENGES OUR SYSTEMS
HE MUST DESIST
WE MUST COORDINATE OUR EFFORTS
NEGOTIATE ANOTHER DISTRACTION
"What am I supposed to do that I haven't done?" Root asked peevishly, whispering her growing desperation. She had sought a place where she could safely communicate with the Machine.
She glanced at the house, pulling the long coat more snuggly about her slender frame. "He isn't stupid. He will catch on if I persist." She referred to the 'tea' incident of a few hours back.
BE CREATIVE
IT IS NOT AS IF IT IS A CHORE
FOR YOU TO DISTRACT ADMIN
The woman's pout of a mouth pulled into an irritated grimace. "I don't like it!" she had made her position known before. "I told you befor.."
THAT STATEMENT IS FALSE
Root swallowed, blushing slightly. She had no real rebuttal to 'that' statement. She sighed heavily, turning about, headed for the back French doors, her mood sullen.
She entered the house, ridding herself of the outdoor garments absently. She kicked off her shoes. The ground had been muddy in areas.
Samantha Groves racked her brain. She would have to be very 'creative' where Harold Finch was concerned, she had no doubt.
All SHE needed was a few uninterrupted moments of pure concentration and the task would be complete but Harold was a very 'creative' guy himself, apparently.
His attempted inroads into the Machines' systems was taking it's toll at a very crucial moment in time.
Root stood now, watching Finch from the safety of the foyer just outside the doubled doorway leading to the inner sanctum where the man had sat up headquarters.
His concentration was so intently focused, Root didn't even think he knew she was present.
Sunlight was trying to stream into the large room but Harold insisted upon closed shutters to filter the outside world and it's annoying disturbances while he worked.
The bulky animal lay at Harold's feet, housed on an oversized doggie bed of soft, fluffy material. Bear snored peacefully away.
"..Did you require something, Miss Groves?"
Root started at the unexpected interruption into her thoughts. Well, at least one of the occupants of the room was 'on guard'.
She ventured forth, stepping into the area, her bare feet liking the feel of the plush carpet as she transitioned to the man's side.
"You're wasting your time, you know." She had glanced at the monitors before the man.
"Thank you for the heartening vote of confidence." Finch's fingers had not once stopped their rapid succession over the key boards, his infamous mind working tirelessly away at the current set of problems.
"Well, I meant.." she altered her statement hastily, her hands gripping the edge of the gleaming oak table that constituted Harold's work area. "If you had more time, of course but I think whatever SHE has planned was already a given well before we were let in on the matter."
Harold had considered the same thing.
He halted his task slowly. "I can't simply 'give up'."
"..No." Root stepped alongside the man, her eyes scanning the screens. "But, you've been here since yesterday afternoon without a break."
She wanted to smooth his hair, one spiky clump out of step with the other carefully groomed style as if the man had run his hands through the area recently.
She refrained from doing so, unsure of his mood.
The man leaned back in his seat, his hands dropping to his sides in the huge leather chair. He studied the images of Code running the length of each screen before him.
"I worry about you, Harold." Root tried the truth.
The man swiveled the chair her way. "I'm fine." He answered automatically. "This will be over soon, at any rate. IT won't wait much longer."
The cryptic words hung between them.
"Thank you for..you concern." He felt she was being genuine in this instance. "It is appreciated."
For a brief second, the blue eyes softened but then, the man returned to the keyboards.
Root's eyes closed, her mood sinking even lower than it had been when first she entered the room. "..I miss you." She lifted her hand to place it on his shoulder but slowly allowed it to drift back to her side.
Harold's fingers poised over the keys, his head crooked slightly.
He swiveled the chair, his gaze an intent one. "..Excuse me?"
Samantha's courage waned, her head lowering for a long beat. "You haven't spoken more than a few sentences to me in almost two days." The reality was beginning to wear on the woman. "..I miss..not speaking with you."
Harold glanced to the computer screens. "..Really?" his tone was incredulous. "We do have rather a crisis of sorts looming large on the horizon, Miss Groves." He testily reminded. "I can't believe you would resort to this tactic. Something is afoot, certainly but exactly 'what' aludes me. Certainly something more than mere female 'insecurity' rearing it's ugly head."
Root stood, feeling as if she had just been called to task by a Professor for some capricious stunt she had perpetrated.
She swallowed the rising lump in her throat, angry that Harold's tone had been so hurtful.
She turned abruptly, more upset that she was close to tears than any reprimand received.
Harold reached impulsively, catching her wrist, sensing her intent to leave. "Miss Groves.."
Root jerked, disliking his touch in this instance but he held firm, his fingers tightening slightly. She threw him a cold stare, her emotions turbulent.
The woman's small fist was clenched. She pulled irately against his strength. "Karma is a bitch, isn't she, Harold."
The man wondered at the turn of the conversation.
"I've used people in the past for my own purposes." Root explained herself in terse terms. "It's about time the tables turned, wouldn't you agree?"
"What are you.."
"I've been trying to delude myself that there was something between us." She pulled her wrist free only because Harold feared she might do damage to herself, so he released his hold.
The woman rubbed her wrist, her lovely eyes flashing the fire of battle. "What an idiot, right?" she laughed, the sound singularly sensual to Finch for some obscure reason. "But then what woman could hope to complete with the ever virtuous, morally upright, Grace Hendricks."
Bear, disturbed by the raised voices, arose, making his way to a more sedately quiet area of the living room.
He curled up near the sofa, closing his eyes to the tension emanating from his Master.
"Well, what the hell!" she folded her arms over her chest, hugging her suddenly chilled body tightly. "We had a few laughs.." she pulled an endearing face. "It's not like I didn't see this on the horizon."
Harold process all being said unsure, at this point, exactly what was going down.
Root turned aside, unable to face either the man at this point, or the reality that the time to part had finally come.
She had so hoped to have more time with..
She blinked back tears, shaking her head to clear it.
How ludicrous. To hold out hope that a man like Harold Finch could really..truly desire some sort of permanent attachment to a woman with her more than questionable background.
That he could ever actually forget, let alone forgive, her past history.
She told herself in the beginning that it would be enough..simply to experience the genius. To infiltrate the impenetrable walls he had constructed.
She had never deluded herself about it.
Then why did she feel so desolate..why was the world so suddenly bleak?
The quiet of the room seeped into her soul. She used to crave solitude. Others of her kind had always disappointed.
She was content with separateness. She chose isolation. She drew strength from within. She never needed companionship. She considered those that sought such things, weak..pathetic.
Weakness equated absurdity in her world.
Root had never been..that!
The thought helped her wade through the maze of emotional upheaval she was experiencing. "..SHE needs me." Root hoped the statement was true. "I have to go."
She turned making a hasty retreat.
"Miss Groves.." Finch stood, his hand gripping the back of his chair. And when the woman did not halt her exit, panic spread through his mind. "..Samantha!" he breathed out her name, his gaze fixed upon the small, fragile thing which took flight.
Root hated herself for stopping but she had instinctively pulled up short before determinedly continuing her trek to the foyer steps.
Harold hurried out of the room, halting at the bottom of the steps she now traversed. "..Samantha please."
Again, Root found herself responding to the pathos in his tone. Her fingers dug into the polished wood of the bannister. She willed herself forward, the door of her room just a few feet away.
She equated the room with safety. If she could just reach it…
Harold feared to approach such a skittish creature, so he held his ground, staring upward. "I..I don't want you to leave." The realization stunned the man.
Joy permeated Root's mind and heart. She stubbornly pushed the emotion aside.
"..I've been under some stress of late." Harold lowered his head, and his hand from the bannister. "As you are probably aware but.." he sought her out again, studying the ram-rod straightening of her backbone. "It doesn't give me the right to speak to you in such an..inappropriate manner and I'm very sorry for having done so."
Root's hand came to her face, covering her mouth to stifle a heart-felt gasp of relief and elation. She felt the burn of tears trying to stilt the flow with every ounce of control she possessed but the hot liquid fell on her skin.
She steadied herself with the grip on the bannister, her legs feeling as if they would go out from under her any second now.
"You are welcome here." Harold chanced a step up. "I never want you to think otherwise..for any reason."
Root drew in shaky gasps of stilted breath, fighting desperately her need to weep fully.
Harold made his way slowly, carefully to the petite figure, his heart turning over. "Please don't." he lay a gentle, caring hand on her shoulders, feeling the tremors running through her body.
Root swiped angrily at the tracks of tears on her cheeks, embarrassed and mortified for this man to see her in such a state.
"Don't b-be kind to me!" she snapped furiously, shaking from any contact with him. "I don't n-need your..pity!" she disdained, rasping harshly.
"Perhaps I need your's." Harold stopped her intent to flee with the simply stated words.
Root turned, staring at Finch, her expression bewildered.
He took in the tear-streaked face, the brown eyes beautiful in their present state. "Puzzlement becomes you, Miss Groves." He smiled softly.
He continued to stare.
Root became unnerved. "Stop looking at me!" she was well aware just how unsightly she must now appear. She didn't want the man to see her in such a state.
"I enjoy looking at you." Harold realized, stepping to the level upon which she now resided.
Root retreated instinctively from such a lethal influence. "..W-What?"
Harold lifted a strand of chestnut beauty, his index finger curling the long silk about his finger. "It's a privilege to be able to do so..or to touch you.." as if to prove his hypothesis, he stepped closer still, his thumb erasing a slightly wet trace of tear from her flushed cheeks.
Root knocked his hand aside, her embarrassment tripling.
She rubbed her face with both hands smoothing the wear and tear as best she could, wishing desperately for some sort of make-up..any kind would do at this point.
But none was to be had.
"I dislike intensely.." Harold's tone washed over her like a soothing balm. "When you refuse my touch. Please don't do it again."
Root felt chastised, the brown orbs lowering posthaste. She cut her eyes to the opened doorway just inches from her position.
Harold shifted a laconic glance to the same thing. "Perhaps you are correct.." he shrugged his shoulders. "We might be more comfortable in there." He offered a scolding stare. "Depending on whether you seek comfort or..safety, Miss Groves?"
She lifted a hostile stare. "I'm not afraid of you." It was disdained.
"Then invite me in." he suggested evenly but there was a definite undertone of challenge within the subtle words.
Root swallowed hard.
"You said, I believe." He iterated. "That you wished to 'talk'."
"That time is past." She reminded herself more than the man.
"Then what is it you wish to do?" it was innocently inquired.
"I.." she refused to meet the provocative gaze. "I have to go."
"This very second?" Harold asked pleasantly. "Surely you can spare just a moment to sort out this little..difficulty that has arisen between us."
He had managed to make her appear petty and unreasonable.
"It can't be sorted out." she tried to answer civilly but the words had come out harsher than she had intended. "There is no real need anyway." She downed her head, fiddling with the ring on her right hand. "I'm just being stupid..maybe I'm close to my time of the month or something." She knew how much he hated crudeness or vulgarity.
"Chalk it up to that, huh, Harold?" she felt better with the flippancy returning. "Now, be a good little boy and let me get packed. Time is awastin!"
Harold halted her intended exit with an outstretched hand which landed across her waist.
Root stepped back, incensed.
"First and foremost." Finch corrected any misconceptions. "Under no circumstances could I ever be labeled..a 'boy'." His expression was dark. "I assure you, Miss Groves. I am a fully gown, exceedingly capable..fully functionable..man. Or do you forget so easily."
Root felt the strength in the outstretched arm, smelled the intoxicating aroma of after shave lotion, witnessed the darkly erotic five o'clock shadow on the firmly set jaw.
Her eyes fell to the neatly made bed in the center of the room she so desperately wished to enter a few seconds back.
She forced them to saver subject matter. "I just m-meant that..I should be on my way. I have to be in Washington in.."
"Excuse the hell out of me?!" the man's tone was sharply incensed. "You're not going within a hundred miles of Washington D.C.! I don't care what the fuck SHE says!"
"Not..D.C." Root's voice was a shadow of it's former vitality. She had rather liked the brusque refusal but she didn't understand why. "Washington..State." it was clarified.
"Why are you wanting to go there?" he demanded a reply.
"I don't know." Root didn't, answering plaintively. "SHE just said."
"And you don't question anything it commands."
"..Why would I?"
Harold closed his eyes, rubbing the gathering pain within. "I need you here." He stated tersely. "End of discussion."
He turned, stalking to the end of the hallway.
"Excuse me!" Root had rallied somewhat. "I can't just.."
The man turned, his expression foreboding. "It comes down to this, Miss Groves." His tone rather menacing for all that. "You make a choice. Me..or the Machine."
The woman blanched, sputtering her dismay. "What are you.."
"What words didn't you comprehend? I was speaking perfect English."
Root's mouth fell open for such audacity.
"Why don't you come in here and we can discuss the pros and cons like two competent, intelligent adults." He lifted his hand, motioning to the portal of his now opened doorway. "I think I can persuade you to my way of thinking..given enough verve and determination on my part."
The woman stared, mouth agape, at the opened pathway.
"Do you need assistance in traversing the route?"
Samantha Groves waited anxiously for the sound of her rescuer in her head but there was only silence.
Finch held out his hand, palm open, his gaze fixed and penetrating.
Samantha timidly reached, her fingers barely touching his warmer ones.
Harold grasped the small appendage, his fingers locking securely with her's. "Good little girl." He crooned evenly, his arm curving to the small waist as he guided with a little pressure and confident steps. "Now..let us commence..arbitration, shall we?"