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Tears blurred her eyes, making it difficult for Root to see as she stumbled over the rubble littering the ground. Her toe caught a particularly large rock and she tripped over, landing face first, barely having the time to send her arms out to brace herself for the impact.
She felt her skin scraping against the hard ground, leaving it stinging. But she didn’t care. Numb to the pain, Root climbed to her feet and continued on her trek, unsure, exactly, of where she was going.
She had no guidance now. No Machine in her ear to tell her where to go. Root was alone now more than ever and she wasn’t sure what that made her. Because how could she go on without the Machine?
Root had no answer to that and she continued on blindly.
More wary now of what was beneath her feet, Root kept her eyes on the ground. It was the black Italian loafers that she saw first, the tailored suit that she recognised. John Reese himself looked unrecognisable; his lifeless eyes and pale skin, the little of it she could see in between all the blood.
Root swallowed and looked away, determined to keep going and not looking at the other body behind him. She didn’t need to look to know who it was. There was only one person in the world John Reese would defend with his life.
Smoke still lingered, dark and grey and stifling, making Root choke as she moved further into the subway station. She wondered why. Why she was so determined to find what she already knew to be true. What she had failed to stop. But she couldn’t make herself go back, only forwards, her feet propelling her like she had no control over them anymore.
It was in the armoury that Root found her and she wanted to laugh, because where else would Sameen Shaw be in her last moments of life?
She looked like she had put up a good fight and Root felt a little proud of that. Proud that Shaw had taken out some of Samaritan’s guys before the final fatal shot had hit her. Dropping to her knees, Root choked out a sob as her hand reached out, feeling Shaw’s still warm skin beneath her fingertips. She cursed herself for not getting her sooner, for not stopping this from happening. The rational, logical side of her knew that she would only be lying on the ground dead too if she had been here. All her old survival instincts screamed at her that this was a good thing, but Root couldn’t see the point.
What was the point of surviving if there was nothing worth surviving for?
“I’m sorry,” Root whispered, tears flowing freely down her cheeks as she stroked the hair back from Shaw’s face so she could see her better. It wasn’t a gesture Root would have dared using if Shaw had still been breathing. “Thanks for the memories,” she mumbled, pressing her lips to Shaw’s forehead lightly, remembering all those stolen moments, all those times when Root thought it would be the last. She had made them count. Every single one of them, and she often wondered if Shaw had felt that desperation in Root’s touch.
Now she would never know.
After what felt like hours, Root climbed to her feet and left the subway station behind.
She wasn’t sure where she was going.
One thing she did know; she was going to hit Samaritan where it hurt. For as long and as hard as she could. Until the very bitter end.