Harold finds Root in the subway.
"Ms. Groves?"
Harold's timorous voice echoed weakly through the subway. Root sat slumped in Harold's desk chair, her computer long since fallen into dark-screened sleep. The medal refused to move or change no matter how long she stared at it. She had not even twitched since John left, minutes or maybe hours before. Maybe it had been days. There were no windows there, no way to pare hours into minutes into seconds save for the time-ignorant thoughts she could not shake.
"Root?"
His voice was closer then. Root shifted her head in response to his increasingly worried tone. However, she did not meet his eyes, even when he gently settled a fragrant brown paper bag on the desk in front of her.
"Not worried about me eating near your computers, Harold?" Although her question was as tongue-in-cheek as it usually was, her flat tone pulled the punch of delivery.
"I'm more concerned that you're not eating at all."
Root shrugged minutely, casting her gaze onto the grease spots staining the bag.
"I'm not hungry."
"Yet you have to eat."
This brought a spark to Root's eyes, one that finally kicked her gaze to Harold.
"I don't have to do anything."
Harold raised his eyebrows before scooting a chair closer to the desk and perching on its edge. He popped the edges of the paper bag from the staples securing the top and removed the sandwich and fries from within. He smoothed the bag flat beneath the food as he ventured a soft question.
"Has the Machine spoken to you?"
Root studiously ignored the meal in favor of staring vacantly at the bronze medal.
"Yes."
Harold leaned to the side in an attempt to enter her line of sight. His words were quiet, nearly a whisper, but they cast a chill on Root that went beyond the physical.
"You're not alone, Ms. Groves."
She pushed past the feeling and folded her arms over her chest.
"It's Root. My name is Root," she replied stubbornly, still refusing to let any feeling creep into her voice. Statement of the facts was best.
"Root."
Her chosen name did nothing to draw her attention.
"You're not alone."
Root elected to ignore comfort and head straight for the throat of the conversation.
"Do you know how She decided what we should do in that basement?"
Her eyes switched suddenly to Harold's face. He looked surprised at both her words and her sudden attention.
"Of course you do. You designed Her." She allowed a hint of mockery to seep into her voice, a bitterness that had flooded everything she had done and said since Shaw's sacrifice.
"She told me. Every single variation, she told me." Her eyes never left Harold's face, but now it was he who could not look her in the eye. Until finally he could, several long moments later, and his tears caused a hint of her characteristic smirk to quirk her lips.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered.
Root shrugged, as if she did not care at all. As if nothing could hurt her anymore.
"I wanted to hear it. She tried to stop. I wouldn't let Her." She did not mention how many times she had made Her replay the scenarios, over and over again, a hellish music box of could-have-beens that successively lashed bloody stripes across her and wrapped them back up again each horrific time it rewound itself.
"I can't imagine." It was a murmur where Root wanted a shout. A beloved tree had heroically fallen in the forest; she was determined to make sure the crash echoed through the world until they all went deaf and mad with her.
"You just don't want to," she rejoined viciously, her eyes icing cold contact points on Harold's face.
He shook his head and looked down, whether from shame or sadness, she could not tell.
"What will you do next?" he asked quietly after a moment.
Now Root could not remove her gaze from Harold, could not blink, could not unfreeze her face from its horrible, half-smirking mask. She waited until Harold could bring himself to look at her to answer.
"I want to kill everyone."
His face fell more, if that were possible. He was in pain. Good.
"You can't."
She tsked. Narrowed her eyes.
"I know that. But I want to."
Her eyes released Harold's once her point had been made. As soon as that connection was lost, the medal drew her reluctant contemplation like a black hole.
Harold glanced over as well, a little too quick to seize on the medal for it to be a real surprise.
"What's that?" Still soft, as if approaching a dangerous animal.
"Shaw's." Her voice, sharpened on her previous words, was now cutting with deadly force.
"John told you I had it. Don't lie. I always know when you lie." Her body posture was straighter now, her lounging position relaxed rather than boneless. She was becoming Root again, but not the version that Harold had come to trust.
"Are you going to talk me out of going?" she asked sardonically, sweetly. Harold had heard that voice before; he had memorized it in terror during his kidnapping.
"No. I merely recommend that you exercise caution," he volunteered.
"Worried I'll kill her, Harry?" She made her best pout, drawing the desired glimmer of ire from Harold.
"I'm concerned that you'll draw attention to both her and yourself," he said a little more sharply. "Ms. Shaw would not have wanted either of those things."
Root grabbed a fry and twirled it in between her fingers. She poked it in Harold's direction, then popped it into her mouth before she spoke.
"Why do you do that, Harry?" she asked reproachfully.
His expression was bewildered.
"Do what?"
Root continued popping fries into her mouth between sentences. She did not register the taste, but her words coupled with a simulation of normality were a sure equation for Harold's discomfort.
"Use our last names," she specified. "You don't have to answer, I know why you do it. I just wanted to know if you knew," she pondered sweetly.
"Knew what?" He always pronounced the 'h' in 'what' when he was upset.
Root shrugged and pulled an uncaring face.
"That you use our last names so it can't hurt you when we die."
Harold's expression was full of hurt and shock, as if the metaphorical punch to the stomach were actually a bullet to the chest.
"But he's always Nathan to you, isn't he?" Root mused, staring up at the ceiling as she swiveled her chair back and forth. "Nathan and Grace. But always Mr. Reese, Ms. Groves. Ms. Shaw." She let the chair drift to a halt. "We're pieces to you."
"That's not true." He managed to speak, but his voice was strained.
"Isn't it?" The question was asked as if rhetorical, but was mostly meant to inflame and anger to the point that Harold might leave.
"No." The word was forceful. It was working.
"Whatever you need to tell yourself so you can sleep at night, Harry. As much as you always thought I was a monster, at least I haven't made my entire life a lie."
Once again, Root could not look away. She had seen so many men crumble to dust at her words. This was the first time she felt the crumbling within herself too, a wearing-away of the newly-built scaffolding protecting her half-constructed empathy. The dust trickled up her windpipe against nature's laws of gravity and mixed with bile to choke her.
"You're well aware that that is unfair." Harold was curious, probing; he had found her out.
"Stop," she croaked. She cleared her throat harshly. Everything was too damned hard.
"Stop what?" He leaned in closer, placed a hand on the arm of her chair.
She rolled back violently. She glared at Harold from lowered eyes and rasped her answer.
"Stop comforting me. Stop caring," she ordered. Then a touch of whine entered her words, and Harold's face became more pained than it had before. "Be angry, Harold. Say what you've been dying to say. I'm a liar! I've made my life a lie, and it's my fault it ended this way!" Her voice had risen over the sprinting sentences, until she was nearly shouting. "Say it!"
The echoes in the subway died away, replaced by Harold's soft words. Despite their low volume, they still had a bit of spine to them.
"It has not ended, and it is not your fault."
Root was clenching her eyes against the tearful reprieve to her body's drought. It was self-enforced, heralded in by the screaming beep of an industrial elevator reaching its destination.
"Goddamn you."
Harold laid his hand on Root's.
"I suspect God already has." The introspective words brought Root's tearful gaze to Harold.
"No, She hasn't," she insisted. "We did it ourselves. And Shaw paid for our sins." She was shrill and tinny in her own ears, a hateful voice that seemed fitting to what she thought of herself.
"Ms. Shaw made her choices." Though he meant to reassure, Root threw off Harold's hand and raised her head defiantly.
"Her name is Sameen." He looked at her with a pity she could not bear. "Say her name." Anger was better than nothing; it was Shaw's motto, but Root was certain the other woman would not have minded if Root put it on and wore it for a while.
"Sameen made her choices." Harold refused to respond to her anger, no matter what she said. Root felt her eyes turn helpless, so she looked away. "She would not appreciate your attempts to blame yourself."
Root chuckled mirthlessly.
"She'd shoot me." Then, a quiet confession: "I wish she had."
Harold said nothing, and Root braced herself with both hands against the desk. The tears made their unwanted return to her eyes, leaking out and putting salt in her mouth. She imagined them washing away the last traces of Shaw's lips on hers, and the steady drip became a stream.
"I thought it would be me. I wish it had been me."
She did not dare to look at Harold; every simulation in the world could predict the pain and vulnerability in his expression. She settled for sitting there; two people, not quite together and not quite alone, crying in the shadows.
"I know."
Root's hand sought out Harold's and gripped it tightly. They did not speak again.
I was going to go straight to Root finding Gen, but I felt I needed something to transition her to that point. I realized belatedly that she's working through the stages of grief. This chapter details her depression, for which I apologize. I'll try to have the last chapter up in the next few days. Thanks for reading! Comments always appreciated :)
[This chapter was written to/partially inspired by "Strings" by MS MR]