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st_aurafinaTitle: Alone Together
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating: Teen
Words: 2367
Characters/Pairings: Root/Shaw, Harold/John, Root & Harold & John
Warnings/Content: Loneliness, Hugs, Everyone Needs A Hug, Even the Machine
Notes: Set around the early eps of Season 5. Written for the 2019 Exchange of Interest, for![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
satanicnightjar. Thank you to my beta, lilacsigil.
Summary: Root is so alone it hurts all of them.
Also at the Archive
It starts long after their new identities feel old and worn, after Shaw is gone, when Samaritan is so close on their heels that it feels like the station is the only place where it's safe to breathe. Root is so alone that it hurts all of them.
Harold comes in one evening to find John sitting on a camp bed with Root curled up asleep in his lap. Her hands are folded up into herself against her chest, and John's arm is wrapped around her to hold her close. Root's feet are bare, pressed to the cloth of John's pants. John covers them with one large palm to keep them warm. He rests his chin on her hair and he calmly watches Harold approach with a worried expression, then gives Harold a little shake of the head. Harold nods his understanding and goes into the train to work.
He loses track of how long John sits there, holding Root asleep in his lap. It's obvious the Machine is complicit in this act, since the cochlear implant must be silent for Root to stay sleeping. Living and working in close quarters has given Harold the perhaps unwanted opportunity to learn everyone's personal habits, which is how he knows that Root is a light sleeper at the best of times. Since Shaw disappeared, sleep has been even more precarious for Root. She seems to go for days without it – buoyed up by caffeine and, Harold discovers when he finds an empty bottle of Adderall at the bottom of a trash basket, stronger stimulants – until her body gives up and falls asleep on the spot. Harold has found her asleep in odd places, curled into an uncomfortable plastic train seat, at the keyboard with her phone, and once, standing upright leaning against the train carriage. This sleep now, pressed to John's body, seems more solid and Harold hopes it gives her some reprieve. Harold knows from personal experience how soundly he sleeps when John is close.
After what must be hours, during which John hasn't moved an inch, Harold pulls himself awkwardly out of the computer chair and makes tea. He refreshes the coffee in the pot while he's at it, and pours John a mugful. Then because Root seems to be stirring at last, Harold tears open one of the sachets of Belgian hot chocolate and tips it into the mug with a cartoon Ada Lovelace on the front.
He carries all three cups over, passes one to John and sits down beside him, hip to hip. John doesn't have a spare arm to throw around his shoulder but he tips his head to touch Harold's briefly.
When Root wakes up, it's with a soft noise quite disparate from her usual sarcasm or out-and-out disagreement. She draws her legs in closer, bending her knees and curling her toes where they rest on John's thigh while she blinks at Harold, frowning.
"Here," says Harold and passes her the mug. "It's still quite hot."
Root opens her mouth to say something scathing, but her head tilts to the left in a small twitch that means the Machine has given her a directive. "Thank you," she says instead and sips the hot drink with her palms wrapped around the mug.
Harold stands up and finds her slippers. Her feet, long and narrow against John's thigh, still look cold.
---
It's been a long night for Harold, with only John and Fusco available to work a difficult number. There's a lot to stay on top of: keeping the number safe without straying into one of Samaritan's hot spots, without breaking John's cover, without revealing too much to an increasingly suspicious Fusco. It takes a toll on Harold's concentration, especially in the cold of the subway station. When the number is safe and John has made it back to the precinct, Harold finally permits himself to leave the carriage and stumble to one of the narrow beds. The fact that he's grateful when Bear throws himself onto the bed beside him is telling. Harold needs to take better care of himself, or there's going to be a mistake of the sort that gets people killed. He shuts his eyes just for a few moments, knowing he'll be sorry if he falls asleep like this, still dressed, cold and probably hungry. He doesn't want to wake up sore and sorry, but he's just so tired.
He wakes surprisingly warm, with Root's forehead only inches from his face. Root is curled up along his body under a heavy wool blanket, the scratchy grey kind John picks up from army surplus stores then ends up bleeding all over and throwing away. Bear lies across their feet, chin on his front legs, watching the two of them while he breathes heavy doggy sighs of comfort.
Harold shifts, arranges the pillow so Root has at least half, and bunches up a little closer to the wall so that she's not at risk of falling out. Root looks cross when she sleeps, as if something is evading her and she's contemplating hunting it down and tearing it to pieces. Harold watches her for a while, thinking about the time Root put a gun to his side and walked him away from John and the Machine and the city he loves.
"We've come a very long way," he says while she sleeps. At the end of the bed, Bear cocks an ear in his direction but doesn't move otherwise. "It wasn't easy, and I suppose it's fair to say that it's not much easier now. But I am glad to know her."
Over in the train carriage, he sees monitors flickering, and the blue lights of the game consoles winking on and off as the Machine processes data and shifts the energy load around her network. He wonders if he was talking to the Machine or about the Machine, and then he decides that it doesn't matter, and he closes his eyes again.
---
Root's worst times are in the middle of the night, but when you live in a subway station, the middle of the night is a slippery concept, happening at all sorts of hours. Harold comes back from a hideous day as Professor Whistler to find it's the middle of the night at six thirty in the evening.
Root is huddled beside the Machine's console racks, her head resting on the lowest shelf. She's wearing the pyjama pants she woke up in, and a faded USMC sweatshirt that finishes two inches above her navel and hangs loose on her arms. Her wrists protrude from the too-short sleeves, and her fingers are intertwined, holding her knees to her chest. She's whispering something to the Machine. Harold can't hear the words, but it's definitely a two-way conversation.
Harold puts his briefcase down on the row of subway seats and sits down on the one closest to her bare feet. It's warm in the carriage, even with the work they've all done on the overheating issue. "Any luck today?"
Root looks up at him with a rueful smile. She has huge shadows under her eyes, which are red-rimmed either from fatigue or despair. "Haven't you heard? No news is good news, Harry."
Every time he asks after Ms. Shaw, Harold is amazed at the disappointment he feels. Hope is confusing and painful and it resolutely will not go away. Right now, he's not sure whether that's a good thing or not.
He checks his watch, eyes the monitor on the other side of the carriage to check that John is on his way home, his day done at the Precinct. Then he kicks off his own shoes, and gingerly folds himself up so he's sitting on the floor of the carriage with Root. Professor Whistler's suits aren't as good as Mr Finch's. He's okay with this.
Opposite him, Root regards him solemnly. He shuffles on his behind so that they're sitting side by side. He rests his head against a console and closes his eyes, breathes the familiar smell of hot plastic and exhaust, and lets the blue lights flicker against his eyelids. After a while, Root's hand finds his, and their fingers twist together. Harold imagines a circuit completing, current running from the Machine to Root, from Root to Harold, from Harold back to the Machine. For the first time, he's not jealous that the Machine talks to Root and not to him. He wrote her first lines of code, after all. She may write her own now, but he knew her at the very start.
"If there's a way, the Machine will find her," he says to Root. And to the Machine, he says, "If there's a way, she will find you."
They sit there for a long time, until Harold feels that his body is humming at the same frequency as the Machine, and that they're all machines working in different ways towards the same goal.
The subway access door opens, and Harold hears the tick of claws across the concrete, followed by John's steady footsteps.
"Anyone home?" John says.
Harold smiles at Root, and puts up a hand above the bottom of the window frame so that John can see where they are. "In here!"
"We're about to be covered in spit," he warns Root.
Root snorts. "Oh, I've gotten used to your companion animal drooling everywhere by now, Harry. "
Harold gives her a mock-stern look. He won't let himself be nettled by Root's little digs. He's genuinely surprised at how much he missed them in the past months.
John appears at the carriage holding plastic bags. "I bought Thai," he says as he comes through the door. "Are we eating in here?"
Bear wriggles past him, delighted to find some of his favourite people at an easily accessible height, and as Harold predicted, he goes straight for their faces, licking them wherever he can get through their upraised hands, and thrashing his tail furiously. Harold pushes him off but gently and scruffs his ears instead. Root puts her arm around Bear's belly and presses her cheek to his flank with a sigh.
Unlike Bear who has little concern for the weird things his humans do, John is more concerned with why they're both huddling on the ground beside the gaming terminals. Harold watches John's automatic threat assessment: a quick visual check for danger or apparent injury. Then he picks up on their linked fingers, and he smiles, that blink-and-you-miss-it twitch at the corner of the mouth that is normally reserved for Harold alone. He puts the takeout on Harold's desk, high enough that Bear can't snag it easily, and far enough away from the monitors that there won't be a terrible disaster. Then, with surprising dexterity for someone his size, he folds downwards into the small space between Harold and the side of the carriage. His knees are practically on his chin, but he fits.
It's just lucky John is graceful and flexible, Harold thinks. Then Root shuffles herself backwards, making room for Harold, and Harold can shift along so John can be comfortable too. John uncurls his legs and leans his head on Harold's shoulder. Root's fingers finds Harold's again, and Harold loops his own arm through John's. This connected, the three of them sit together in silence with the Machine at their backs, disturbed only by the gentle whirr of cooling fans and the occasional rustle as Bear investigates what has changed during his day at work.
Bear comes back soon, quieted by the mood in the carriage, and settles himself against their legs. There's something very grounding about a warm dog's belly pressed to one's socks, thinks Harold. Something of the cave, really: warmth, friends and protection. And a God of sorts watching over them. The gravity of that realisation is nicely offset by the prosaic smell of warm, happy dog and cooling Thai food.
"There is room," Root says, perhaps in response to the Machine. "She'll fit in here beside me. As soon as we find her."
John slips his arm around Harold's shoulder, and when Harold looks to the left, he can see Root has tipped her head so it touches John's fingers. The little creases between Root's eyebrows have lessened, and Harold hopes that tonight will be one with solid sleep.
"Shaw's out there," John says into the silence. "All we have to do is hold together long enough to pull her in, give her a place to land."
"Gravity is inevitable," says Harold. "She will find her way here."
Root smiles dreamily and says, "Crashing home like a meteor."
It's not the most comforting metaphor, Harold thinks, but then Root has never been one for comfortable situations. His hip starts to ache a little, but he sits there a little longer, warm and quiet, thinking of Ms. Shaw roaring towards them with all of her strength.
Then he squeezes Root's hand and makes to stand up, only to find his legs are numb and uncooperative. "Ah," he says. "I may have made a grave miscalculation."
John laughs to himself, then easily stands and steps over them. He offers the two of them a hand each. Root unfolds like a concertina even though she's been there for some hours. The carefree attitude of the young and uninjured, Harold thinks, as he heaves hard against John. It hurts, but he has John to land against, and John to hold him steady while the pain ebbs. John kisses the top of his head, since it's right there in front of him, then, when Harold is stable, John grabs the bag of takeout and goes to find plates.
Harold touches the console nearest to him before he leaves the carriage. "She will get through," he says. "We are all going to make sure of that." He tells himself it is just anthropomorphism, but the pattern of blinking blue and red lights seem to synchronise briefly into a wave from top to bottom. Perhaps Harold is just too tired to see reason, but it feels like an embrace. Whatever the cause, it makes him smile as he goes to stake a claim on John's takeout.
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating: Teen
Words: 2367
Characters/Pairings: Root/Shaw, Harold/John, Root & Harold & John
Warnings/Content: Loneliness, Hugs, Everyone Needs A Hug, Even the Machine
Notes: Set around the early eps of Season 5. Written for the 2019 Exchange of Interest, for
lilacsigil. Summary: Root is so alone it hurts all of them.
Also at the Archive
It starts long after their new identities feel old and worn, after Shaw is gone, when Samaritan is so close on their heels that it feels like the station is the only place where it's safe to breathe. Root is so alone that it hurts all of them.
Harold comes in one evening to find John sitting on a camp bed with Root curled up asleep in his lap. Her hands are folded up into herself against her chest, and John's arm is wrapped around her to hold her close. Root's feet are bare, pressed to the cloth of John's pants. John covers them with one large palm to keep them warm. He rests his chin on her hair and he calmly watches Harold approach with a worried expression, then gives Harold a little shake of the head. Harold nods his understanding and goes into the train to work.
He loses track of how long John sits there, holding Root asleep in his lap. It's obvious the Machine is complicit in this act, since the cochlear implant must be silent for Root to stay sleeping. Living and working in close quarters has given Harold the perhaps unwanted opportunity to learn everyone's personal habits, which is how he knows that Root is a light sleeper at the best of times. Since Shaw disappeared, sleep has been even more precarious for Root. She seems to go for days without it – buoyed up by caffeine and, Harold discovers when he finds an empty bottle of Adderall at the bottom of a trash basket, stronger stimulants – until her body gives up and falls asleep on the spot. Harold has found her asleep in odd places, curled into an uncomfortable plastic train seat, at the keyboard with her phone, and once, standing upright leaning against the train carriage. This sleep now, pressed to John's body, seems more solid and Harold hopes it gives her some reprieve. Harold knows from personal experience how soundly he sleeps when John is close.
After what must be hours, during which John hasn't moved an inch, Harold pulls himself awkwardly out of the computer chair and makes tea. He refreshes the coffee in the pot while he's at it, and pours John a mugful. Then because Root seems to be stirring at last, Harold tears open one of the sachets of Belgian hot chocolate and tips it into the mug with a cartoon Ada Lovelace on the front.
He carries all three cups over, passes one to John and sits down beside him, hip to hip. John doesn't have a spare arm to throw around his shoulder but he tips his head to touch Harold's briefly.
When Root wakes up, it's with a soft noise quite disparate from her usual sarcasm or out-and-out disagreement. She draws her legs in closer, bending her knees and curling her toes where they rest on John's thigh while she blinks at Harold, frowning.
"Here," says Harold and passes her the mug. "It's still quite hot."
Root opens her mouth to say something scathing, but her head tilts to the left in a small twitch that means the Machine has given her a directive. "Thank you," she says instead and sips the hot drink with her palms wrapped around the mug.
Harold stands up and finds her slippers. Her feet, long and narrow against John's thigh, still look cold.
---
It's been a long night for Harold, with only John and Fusco available to work a difficult number. There's a lot to stay on top of: keeping the number safe without straying into one of Samaritan's hot spots, without breaking John's cover, without revealing too much to an increasingly suspicious Fusco. It takes a toll on Harold's concentration, especially in the cold of the subway station. When the number is safe and John has made it back to the precinct, Harold finally permits himself to leave the carriage and stumble to one of the narrow beds. The fact that he's grateful when Bear throws himself onto the bed beside him is telling. Harold needs to take better care of himself, or there's going to be a mistake of the sort that gets people killed. He shuts his eyes just for a few moments, knowing he'll be sorry if he falls asleep like this, still dressed, cold and probably hungry. He doesn't want to wake up sore and sorry, but he's just so tired.
He wakes surprisingly warm, with Root's forehead only inches from his face. Root is curled up along his body under a heavy wool blanket, the scratchy grey kind John picks up from army surplus stores then ends up bleeding all over and throwing away. Bear lies across their feet, chin on his front legs, watching the two of them while he breathes heavy doggy sighs of comfort.
Harold shifts, arranges the pillow so Root has at least half, and bunches up a little closer to the wall so that she's not at risk of falling out. Root looks cross when she sleeps, as if something is evading her and she's contemplating hunting it down and tearing it to pieces. Harold watches her for a while, thinking about the time Root put a gun to his side and walked him away from John and the Machine and the city he loves.
"We've come a very long way," he says while she sleeps. At the end of the bed, Bear cocks an ear in his direction but doesn't move otherwise. "It wasn't easy, and I suppose it's fair to say that it's not much easier now. But I am glad to know her."
Over in the train carriage, he sees monitors flickering, and the blue lights of the game consoles winking on and off as the Machine processes data and shifts the energy load around her network. He wonders if he was talking to the Machine or about the Machine, and then he decides that it doesn't matter, and he closes his eyes again.
---
Root's worst times are in the middle of the night, but when you live in a subway station, the middle of the night is a slippery concept, happening at all sorts of hours. Harold comes back from a hideous day as Professor Whistler to find it's the middle of the night at six thirty in the evening.
Root is huddled beside the Machine's console racks, her head resting on the lowest shelf. She's wearing the pyjama pants she woke up in, and a faded USMC sweatshirt that finishes two inches above her navel and hangs loose on her arms. Her wrists protrude from the too-short sleeves, and her fingers are intertwined, holding her knees to her chest. She's whispering something to the Machine. Harold can't hear the words, but it's definitely a two-way conversation.
Harold puts his briefcase down on the row of subway seats and sits down on the one closest to her bare feet. It's warm in the carriage, even with the work they've all done on the overheating issue. "Any luck today?"
Root looks up at him with a rueful smile. She has huge shadows under her eyes, which are red-rimmed either from fatigue or despair. "Haven't you heard? No news is good news, Harry."
Every time he asks after Ms. Shaw, Harold is amazed at the disappointment he feels. Hope is confusing and painful and it resolutely will not go away. Right now, he's not sure whether that's a good thing or not.
He checks his watch, eyes the monitor on the other side of the carriage to check that John is on his way home, his day done at the Precinct. Then he kicks off his own shoes, and gingerly folds himself up so he's sitting on the floor of the carriage with Root. Professor Whistler's suits aren't as good as Mr Finch's. He's okay with this.
Opposite him, Root regards him solemnly. He shuffles on his behind so that they're sitting side by side. He rests his head against a console and closes his eyes, breathes the familiar smell of hot plastic and exhaust, and lets the blue lights flicker against his eyelids. After a while, Root's hand finds his, and their fingers twist together. Harold imagines a circuit completing, current running from the Machine to Root, from Root to Harold, from Harold back to the Machine. For the first time, he's not jealous that the Machine talks to Root and not to him. He wrote her first lines of code, after all. She may write her own now, but he knew her at the very start.
"If there's a way, the Machine will find her," he says to Root. And to the Machine, he says, "If there's a way, she will find you."
They sit there for a long time, until Harold feels that his body is humming at the same frequency as the Machine, and that they're all machines working in different ways towards the same goal.
The subway access door opens, and Harold hears the tick of claws across the concrete, followed by John's steady footsteps.
"Anyone home?" John says.
Harold smiles at Root, and puts up a hand above the bottom of the window frame so that John can see where they are. "In here!"
"We're about to be covered in spit," he warns Root.
Root snorts. "Oh, I've gotten used to your companion animal drooling everywhere by now, Harry. "
Harold gives her a mock-stern look. He won't let himself be nettled by Root's little digs. He's genuinely surprised at how much he missed them in the past months.
John appears at the carriage holding plastic bags. "I bought Thai," he says as he comes through the door. "Are we eating in here?"
Bear wriggles past him, delighted to find some of his favourite people at an easily accessible height, and as Harold predicted, he goes straight for their faces, licking them wherever he can get through their upraised hands, and thrashing his tail furiously. Harold pushes him off but gently and scruffs his ears instead. Root puts her arm around Bear's belly and presses her cheek to his flank with a sigh.
Unlike Bear who has little concern for the weird things his humans do, John is more concerned with why they're both huddling on the ground beside the gaming terminals. Harold watches John's automatic threat assessment: a quick visual check for danger or apparent injury. Then he picks up on their linked fingers, and he smiles, that blink-and-you-miss-it twitch at the corner of the mouth that is normally reserved for Harold alone. He puts the takeout on Harold's desk, high enough that Bear can't snag it easily, and far enough away from the monitors that there won't be a terrible disaster. Then, with surprising dexterity for someone his size, he folds downwards into the small space between Harold and the side of the carriage. His knees are practically on his chin, but he fits.
It's just lucky John is graceful and flexible, Harold thinks. Then Root shuffles herself backwards, making room for Harold, and Harold can shift along so John can be comfortable too. John uncurls his legs and leans his head on Harold's shoulder. Root's fingers finds Harold's again, and Harold loops his own arm through John's. This connected, the three of them sit together in silence with the Machine at their backs, disturbed only by the gentle whirr of cooling fans and the occasional rustle as Bear investigates what has changed during his day at work.
Bear comes back soon, quieted by the mood in the carriage, and settles himself against their legs. There's something very grounding about a warm dog's belly pressed to one's socks, thinks Harold. Something of the cave, really: warmth, friends and protection. And a God of sorts watching over them. The gravity of that realisation is nicely offset by the prosaic smell of warm, happy dog and cooling Thai food.
"There is room," Root says, perhaps in response to the Machine. "She'll fit in here beside me. As soon as we find her."
John slips his arm around Harold's shoulder, and when Harold looks to the left, he can see Root has tipped her head so it touches John's fingers. The little creases between Root's eyebrows have lessened, and Harold hopes that tonight will be one with solid sleep.
"Shaw's out there," John says into the silence. "All we have to do is hold together long enough to pull her in, give her a place to land."
"Gravity is inevitable," says Harold. "She will find her way here."
Root smiles dreamily and says, "Crashing home like a meteor."
It's not the most comforting metaphor, Harold thinks, but then Root has never been one for comfortable situations. His hip starts to ache a little, but he sits there a little longer, warm and quiet, thinking of Ms. Shaw roaring towards them with all of her strength.
Then he squeezes Root's hand and makes to stand up, only to find his legs are numb and uncooperative. "Ah," he says. "I may have made a grave miscalculation."
John laughs to himself, then easily stands and steps over them. He offers the two of them a hand each. Root unfolds like a concertina even though she's been there for some hours. The carefree attitude of the young and uninjured, Harold thinks, as he heaves hard against John. It hurts, but he has John to land against, and John to hold him steady while the pain ebbs. John kisses the top of his head, since it's right there in front of him, then, when Harold is stable, John grabs the bag of takeout and goes to find plates.
Harold touches the console nearest to him before he leaves the carriage. "She will get through," he says. "We are all going to make sure of that." He tells himself it is just anthropomorphism, but the pattern of blinking blue and red lights seem to synchronise briefly into a wave from top to bottom. Perhaps Harold is just too tired to see reason, but it feels like an embrace. Whatever the cause, it makes him smile as he goes to stake a claim on John's takeout.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-07 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 03:50 am (UTC)