expiationlogs | one way or another

Can you let me have a crumb of agency in this conversation?

[ Root is scared more than anything, her voice underscored with urgency and intensity. ]

Do I get to be real enough to have feelings?

[Now she does turn to face Root, pulling her legs up so that she can better angle towards her. Her eyes are hollow and dark-rimmed from sleeplessness; her mouth is tight.]

You weren't supposed to be in this conversation at all.

[She says, faint frustration in her voice.]

I didn't want you seeing this.

[She hadn't been planning on tracking her down, on telling her everything, on giving some big dramatic speech before pulling the trigger. She's beyond that now. The simulations are beyond it. If Decima can switch things up, then so can she.]

You think you need to protect me? [ Root scoffs. ] Cute, but please don't. I can handle anything you can throw at me.

[ Even now, scared as she is, Root isn't going to flinch for a second. She has an immaculate ability to face down anything she needs to for as long as it takes, to keep going, ends justifying any means she has to endure. And she needs to face this if Shaw won't. ]

Your double said something interesting to me, [ she goes on, switching tactics deliberately. Using that conversation as a clue, Root wonders if she can jostle Shaw out of this mental rut by telling her things Samaritan, and this A.I., couldn't possibly have put in her mouth. ]

Want to know what it was?

[With her body still facing Root's, she turns her head, looking out over the strange, mismashed, simulated city.]

"Samaritan has a point"? "I helped perpetrate the cover-up that my partner died to expose, and I still don't completely regret it"? "I'll betray the rest of your team eventually, and your little dog, too"?

[Each guess is delivered with the same flat tone.]

I get it. You've been through this thousands of times, and it's all variations on a theme. But this isn't Samaritan.

She tried to turn me against you because she thought I cared more about the Machine than about you. [ Root reaches a hand out and puts it on her leg, trying to draw her attention, her expression quirking into a smile full of remembered grief. ] I know why she'd think that would work. You probably think it, too, right? It should be easy for me. I told myself this is war, and I have to be prepared for whatever that means. The Machine herself told me to give up on you, over and over.

But I couldn't.

[A muscle twitches under Root's touch - not a flinch or a startled reaction, but a random spasm.]

You should've.

[It's the course of action that she knows was the right one: the mission as a whole can't always be compromised for the sake of one individual life. Yes, Harold's influence has taught her of the dangers of taking that line of thinking too far, but her own case had still been clear-cut: she was a soldier, she was a protector, she'd known what she was getting into both when she signed onto the team and when she ran out of that elevator. During the simulations, she'd sometimes indulged in petty impulses: castigating them for not looking hard enough, for giving up on her, for being incompetent enough to need her to rescue them in the first place. That had been satisfying at the time; it had burned off a little steam. But ultimately, it had never been anything more than that. She'd never really believed it.

She does really believe what she's saying now.]

I should've. But I didn't.

[ Didn't is a better word than couldn't, she realizes. It's not like she was held hostage by her feelings; Root has ice-cold control when she wants to. And she'd waffled back and forth, several times, over those ten months. Sometimes she'd listened to Harold, sometimes she'd rationalized with herself that if the Machine was telling her not to it was for a good reason, and then sometimes she found herself staring into a surveillance camera pouring her heart out in desperation.

Ultimately, the way she'd found Shaw in the end was through that ice-cold control, applied the other way: to acceptance of what Sameen means to her. To an understanding that she would sacrifice not just herself but her mission to save her. ]

Even when I thought you were probably dead, I didn't let it go. I made that decision already, Sameen.

[ She can't promise her a lot. They are in a simulation and Root has very little power over whether she continues to be here and continues to be who she is. But-- ]

If you want to reset this, I'm going with you.

No. There's no point to that.

[Her fingers curl into frustrated fists, nails biting into the palm of her gun-free hand.]

You never die because I never let you die; that's how this works.

[Root never dies, except for the one time that she did. Simulation or no, real or not real, that's been one niggling deviation.]

Right. You know how this all goes.

[ She's bitter, frustrated. Root doesn't blame Shaw -- if she's mad, she's mad where it belongs: at Samaritan, at Greer, at Martine and all their cronies -- but she still needs to find some way to get through to her, to break her out of the cycle she's used to. ]

There's no point to any of this. We're in a simulation, right? Who cares if we die? We'll just come back in a week. Have a nice little vacation, make everyone else deal with knock-off Shaw.

[ Root pulls her hand away and retrieves her own gun, her Glock comfortable and familiar in her hand, and her icy control slips into place as she raises it and points it directly at Shaw's forehead. From right next to her.

The safety clicks off. ]

Why don't I do the honors? I'm as good at killing you as you are.

She's still out there.

[Shaw mutters the words, mostly to herself - she'd seen how Root had dispatched hers, but she hasn't been able to manage it. She's gotten close a few times, though ironically, never when the double is present - in the end, it's always the messenger rather than the message that keeps her from getting all the way there. Frank honesty, openness, and acceptance are hard when her brain is screaming It's a Samaritan trick, give them nothing, admit to nothing, that's how they get you. So mostly she just shoots her, over and over again, all while knowing how fruitless it is.

The gun to her head is a relief, in a way, but not for the reason one might think. If her double were here, she wouldn't say so out loud, but since it's just her and Root--]

You've never done this before. I've put a gun to my own head thousands of times, but you've never--

[Her head whips around to look at Root, her forehead jostling the barrel.]

Why?

[ She feels a thrill of victory that she'd done something different, punctured through the droll tedious wall of Shaw believing nothing matters because nothing is real. It's her, it's just her that can do this, Shaw had told her. Throughout this whole mess, Root hasn't ever once pressed Shaw to attack her double. She knows that limit is something Shaw needs respected and she doesn't contest it; she dealt with her doppelganger for her. With that motivation, it was inevitable Root figured out the trick to making her go away.

Root will use whatever tool is available to her to help Shaw. Anything at all. ]

Because you need to know what happens, right?

[ The intensity doesn't lessen, but something in her softens. Root with full compassion and love and understanding offering to pull the trigger for her, pressing the muzzle gently to her skin. ]

I told you. Whatever you want to do, I'm behind you.

[ And she will be right behind her. ]

No.

[With a quick, sudden move, she snaps a hand up, making a grab for the gun.]

Root, get out of here; let me handle this.

[ Either everything matters or nothing matters. Root had said that to Harold once, and she still believes it. She comes down on the side of everything matters these days, but it hadn't always been that way, and hey, if Shaw needs her to test the other side of that coin for her, she can do that. She can do anything. She can close her eyes and walk across a ledge waiting for the wind to take her, she can consciously agree to trepanning rather than give up her god, she can tell Harold to shut up and let her keep driving, she can be a hundred people on a hundred different days, she can do more than kill, she can save--

And sometimes killing, or dying, is the same thing as saving.

Root always has two guns. She lets Shaw make the grab for the one against her head and pulls out the other. She doesn't waste any breath. The gun goes off at her cheekbone, firing up into her eye and through her brain, as painless and fast as she can make it under the circumstances. She's an assassin; she knows how to kill fast and efficient, on instinct. Shaw has barely started to crumple before Root turns the gun around and makes the same shot, same angle, on herself.

She doesn't want to see it, doesn't want to say goodbye, because she believes that this is not the end at all.

It leaves a bloody, macabre, gothic scene on the roof of the building, two women killed with the same gun, slumped against each other up against the edge, teetering but not falling over. ]

[Shaw wakes up in her preferred sleeping position: with her back to Root, their bodies touching, but with her front side clear and her arms unimpeded. She does not get up. She doesn't even move. She waits until she hears the cadence of Root's breathing change, indicating that she's waking, too. And then, purposefully echoing a long-ago conversation, she says:]

Two guns?

[Her hand casts around blindly, seeking Root's fingers.]

Kinda lame.

Mmmm.

[ Root rolls over and presses her face into the bare skin of Shaw's back. It's still a new enough sensation that she smiles in her sleep, automatically. She's not totally with it yet -- not fully alive.

Her hand finds Shaw's and laces together. ]

But hot, right? [ she murmurs blearily. For just this moment, she's unusually out of it, unusually vulnerable. ]

Did you shoot yourself after?

[ Her fingers squeeze Root's in anticipation of the answer that she knows is coming. ]

[ She presses a kiss to her back. ]

Of course, sweetie. I told you we're testing this together. And here we are.

[ She kind of... loves it. Feels her heart constrict with the fierceness of the feeling about how much she loves her. Still smiling, eyes closed, face pressed against her back, she mumbles: ]

I'd do anything for you. Anything.

I wish you hadn't done that.

[ But she shifts backwards as she says it, pressing closer. ]

Root. What else did you do while they had me?

Too bad, [ she mutters fuzzily, smile widening at the feeling of Shaw pushing closer against her. ] Get used to it.

[ She yawns uncontrollably, feeling life seeping back into her limbs. Ow. Ouch. Everything seems... off. But Shaw, Shaw is her constant, she can feel her against her, and it's nothing like a rock -- rocks change, they erode, the composition shifts over epochs -- but this is the immutable force of gravity pulling her in the same direction, always. Always. ]

What did you think I was doing? Pining for my lost love? Not really my style.

I figured you'd be running missions. Helping the Machine.

[ Her hand stills in Root's, but maintains its grip. ]

I did do that.

[ She really did. Root did a lot of that. Ten months was a long time for Shaw, but it was a long time for Root, too, suppressing her fear and grief and rage to do her job. ]

But you know, [ she wakes up a bit, blinking her eyes open, ] the Machine cares about you, too. She said she failed you.

[ Her grip on her hand tightens painfully hard. ]

That's how I got her. She couldn't keep saying no to me when she cared about you, too.

[She knows that Root had looked for her; hadn't given up on her. The Morse Code message she'd gotten through had been proof enough of that. And she is grateful for it - if Root had simply given her up for dead and moved on, she knows that she would be dead right now. But it's a relief, too, to hear that she also hadn't given up on the mission, regardless of the way Harold had intimated that she'd had a difficult time during your absence, Miss Shaw.]

Okay.

[She can accept all of those things. But.]

What else did you do?

[ Look, it means a lot to her that the Machine cares about Shaw. It means everything to her, really, in a certain way. But Root accepts that that wasn't what Shaw was looking for.

They're in bed together and she's starting to wake up and even though she has a pounding headache, Root won't miss an opportunity. She cuddles up against Shaw and squirms higher so she can whisper directly into her ear, nose buried in her hair, voice low and sultry. ]

I snapped the neck of the woman who shot you.

Yeah? I wondered why Martine never came by my hospital prison cell to gloat.

[Shaw tilts her head, giving Root better access to her neck, and murmurs:]

I shot the guy who killed you. Neck-snapping's a nice touch, though; maybe I should've gone with that.

I love your sweet nothings. You always know just what to say.

[ It warms her. She hadn't imagined how Shaw would handle her death, hadn't had a whole lot of time here before she showed up to wonder about it -- but a revenge kill seems absolutely right. Root is still who she is, and she likes hearing it, feels something settle inside her that that loose end was closed.

Rather than explain snapping Martine's neck was a matter of opportunity instead of preference, Root levers herself up on one elbow and tugs Shaw's shoulder back toward her to have her lay flat on the bed beside her, so she can see her face. ]

You back with me now?

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cw: suicide

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[spongebob voice] one week later

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cw: suicide

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