Work Text:
You can do no wrong
In my eyes.
Hearing damage by Thom Yorke
***
You’ve been out for a stroll, stretching your compromised muscles and getting fresh air in your system. You’d wanted to take Bear with you because, you found, walking him in the afternoon wouldn't be an option. You sense it when the day promises to end in you collapsing on your bed to indulge in a hollow, unsatisfying sleep. Today is the day.
He’d ignored you, strode towards Miss Groves and nuzzled at her knees, earning a delightful guffaw. You forgave Bear’s poor manners and smiled. The two have started to build a rapport, and as of today, there is nothing that could bring you more mirth and relief. The dark side of your psyche says Miss Groves will be urgently needing an emotional support dog soon enough. You haven’t the slimmest idea what that means. You don’t care to guess. It’s a dull, baseless hunch. You shove it down your conscious and resume on your merry way down the street.
A phone booth rings.
This is, without fail, the routine moment you let yourself be soaked in shame. You’re exhausted all the time, you’ve been working and saving and preventing for weeks with no breaks. You’d prayed you’d have this day. You don’t. Duty calls. Duty to care about someone. Again. Each time there’s no way to ascertain whether your caring will pay off. When it does, it’s healing. When it doesn’t, you want to kill yourself.
You answer the call, expecting the usual encryptions and patterns of speech you taught It. What you get is far from usual.
This is the first time the Machine has contacted you like this beyond the purpose of providing numbers. In Miss Groves’ own words, It understands your distrust in It and admits fault as to how It behaved when you had just began fine tuning Its capabilities and comprehension of morality. It is no secret what the Machine represents and symbolizes and reminds of. Once a labor of love, It killed Nathan and then you. But if you think hard enough, you’ll realize your hands were on the steering wheel the entire time. The code that is her fundament was written (or, Miss Groves would chime in, composed) by you.
You could say that you hate the Machine. In reality, that’s just a roundabout way of saying that you hate yourself. Right now you hate It somewhat less. Right now you’re willing to bow before It because It tells you:
HELP ROOT. NEEDS YOU.
She is unscathed physically. She’s opted to spend the day in your subway hideout with Bear and your geeky gadgets to keep her entertained. Could It mean she is not well mentally?
She isn’t, of course. Not one of your associates is, to be transparent. The Machine is silent about them, however. Will Miss Groves try to hurt herself? It’s not like her: she treats her body and her soul as vessels for the Machine, the means for her to fulfill Its divine designs. Everyone has their limits, you suppose, and you’re halfway to hanging up when you hear more:
TODAY. DATE.
That doesn’t help one bit. You don’t care and memorize the words anyway since there is one thing you can begrudgingly concede to; your creation, the way it’s truly meant to be, never minces words. When It says or warns, it’s with good reason.
You pray it’s not too good in this case.
***
You see a book on her nightstand. You’re not one for eavesdropping or inspecting without clearance (the irony! it stings), but you cannot keep your grace about you this time, not with the Machine’s words on your mind. You read its title and its author, and then it happens to you. Something that hasn’t occurred in a long time: you feel the sorrow of another the way you would your own.
Flowers for Algernon, it reads, Daniel Keyes.
You are so sorry and have no clue where to stack this useless sorry, where to hide it, which corner to choose. You’re split in half. You are yourself a half of one entity; the other half—the one that is your sustenance, the half that maintains a perfectly jolly mood in the face of horrors from Hell—is in pieces now, and you possess no better plan than to follow suit.
A certain truth shatters you: she’s had no reprieve. You’ve had yours, haven’t you? You’ve had the birds and the rust-bitten wrenches and the idle evenings in your father’s dusty garage and the lemonade he used to make you for aiding him yet another time. And don’t dare forget the four years of heavenly bliss you shared with Grace.
What has she had?
Her mother was ailed, immobile and unable to care for a daughter. Her first love was kidnapped and raped and killed (to this day you’re not sure in which order), found only recently by John. The first love, a phenomenon so tender and fragile and beautiful in its immaturity! You wouldn’t have survived what she has.
No breathing room, no happiness squeezed in between. You were right, after all. Some people don’t get even four days. You desperately wish she weren’t one of those people.
“TODAY. DATE,” said your creation.
You didn’t figure it then. You have now. Again, a fraction of you wishes you hadn’t. It would have been wrong, of course. When one half is bleeding, the other should not be ignorant to that suffering. You despise ignorance in all forms anyway.
“Oh, Harry,” you hear and turn around to meet your bleeding half. Just what would compel her to bleed in silence? “Didn’t know I’d be having esteemed guests. I would have tidied, you know.”
You look at the space with a broader eye. Indeed, it is messy and it is completely her. Her mannerisms have informed the shabby interior design. You expected nothing else.
Miss Groves steps towards you with a spring in her walk, her eyes gleaming with a familiar mischief that is her default. For one moment you leap to an insane conclusion that she’s about to heartily embrace you, but it cannot be. It isn’t. She stops halfway and shoots a glance at your hand. Your fingers squeeze the cursed volume tighter.
Her eyes are still familiar but in the worst way you could have imagined. The same expression they held when you confessed you knew of her invisible grief for your God. The God you don’t believe in, the God that is her blood and her bones.
“How did you—” Miss Groves creates distance between your bodies. It is the last thing she needs. You are two when you’re not with each other, but you are one when united. Can’t she see her misery isn’t only hers? Her head sways as her body betrays her; she’s shaking. “I should have hidden it somewhere…”
Not much will lift her spirits today or this upcoming week in general. She will look not for something new but for something old. She will scrutinize her surroundings and accept them for not what they are; but reject them for what they can’t become. And you will feel it. It will radiate and rub off. In some twisted, strange way, you consider that an honor. The possibility to share in this hurt, if wallow a little.
“It asked me on your behalf, Miss Groves. It asked me to stay beside you today.”
She lights up the slightest bit, then something blows at her. She fades like a lonely candle on a birthday cake. “Well, She… I hoped She wouldn’t.”
“I’m glad It did.”
The smile she bestows upon you is weak and something like see-through and wooden. But she’s never wooden. She’s the most animated person you’ve ever known, Grace comes second.
It all becomes too much at once: the dust and the ashes that replace the gleam of her teary eyes, the rigid posture and the defensive pose; and all the spiritual ways in which she resembles your fiancée. It seems that of all the things you’d wanted to do, being a husband was the one that tipped off the universe and made it conspire against you. It is merely a figure of speech, obviously, because your precious half related once, “infinite and chaotic and cold; and there has never been a plan.” And so bitter she was, so beaten down as she said in despaired reverence, “at least not until now.” It was her way of expressing admiration for your work, a coping mechanism of sorts. When she was in ruins, she remembered what you did. You did it because you were you, you did it for the greater good and for humanity and just the tiniest portion for your own hubris. But she always thought you did it for her. Not because of. But for. She thought, she still thinks you saved her.
This fact is beyond your understanding. However, knowledge is the most powerful asset and you wield it like no other. You intend to use it to its fullest potential.
“Let’s go, Miss Groves.”
She’s meek. “Where to?”
“Somewhere peaceful.”
You both need some peace, and you’re better off together in search of it.
***
Miss Shaw likes to eat here.
You didn’t think to consider what kind of food Miss Groves favored. You knew then, and that interesting revelation made absolute sense, that she would be satisfied as long as the establishment was to do with Sameen.
Miss Groves is far from shy; she constantly bends the realm of comfortable with her “subtle” flirting and primitive teasing. And Miss Shaw is not obtuse (the last word to describe her, really), but you’ve harbored a notion that she doesn’t yet realize the implications, at least not fully. The gravity of what Root does for her, how Root looks at her and talks of her—one doesn’t pass that by.
“I think she already knows,” you’d said. And by God, do you mean it. You want to mean it.
You mention that there’s a steak on the menu that instigated Miss Shaw to doubt her sanity and even forget about Bear for a brief moment. Miss Groves smiles, still wooden but soaked wood this time. Today’s definition of improvement is a loose one.
She sees through your intentions and doesn’t fight your care. Perhaps she’s remembered that she’s not her own person anymore. It stopped being black and white Lord knows how long ago. Her identity is no longer singular; it is now tied with other people: with you, Sameen and even (in ways so intricate and mesmerizing and human) John. Take that away or try to deny it, you’re set to fail.
She orders the steak. It arrives. So does your dish, but it doesn’t matter. The clock is ticking, and you both hear it because you’re both waiting, sitting surrounded by loud eggshells.
“So,” she forces joy into her voice. You’d rather she cried. “That makes it, what… twenty three years? Time is a funny currency.”
You’ve nothing meaningful to say, so you resort to silence; a clever strategy not many people care to master. Miss Groves begins to cut the steak cautiously and with sophistication. Nothing like Sameen, who took it between her teeth and ate as if she hadn’t been fed for years. Such remarkable contrast is endearing, you admit.
She abandons the fork and the knife, grabs the nearest handkerchief. Dabs at her eyes and scoffs. Like a child. Maybe that’s what she is for today and for tomorrow, too. You’re no stranger to how trauma works. You feel no judgement. You’re not predisposed to judge at all. Does she know it? She must. She’s safe with you, whatever “safe” has come to mean over the years.
“Yes, I do believe it’s been more than twenty.”
“The number of years is older than I was when—” she laughs. You’d still rather she cried.
“You’re a sharp-minded woman, Miss Groves, and you need not hear it from me. Laws of time mean nothing in this case.”
You wish they did, but that would defeat all purpose. Time swallows our loved ones but not the love we feel. And it is for this reason that art exists. Otherwise Grace wouldn’t have pursued painting. You wouldn’t have chased down a piece of work by her favorite artist. You wouldn’t have fallen for her at all. And Miss Groves wouldn’t own the only thing that’s left of Hannah’s tether to this Earth, Keyes’ book.
She imagines herself humiliated, you can tell. You are appalled that she dares think about herself within these terms. But, yes, you’re no stranger to how trauma work. So when she tells you she’s sick of regressing in age on every April, 15 of her life, you reach out and touch her hand, leave your own to rest against her trembling palm. She closes her eyes, and there they are, the long-anticipated tears. Suddenly you cannot for the life of you remember why you’d rather she had cried just minutes earlier. Suddenly it’s the dumbest idea you’ve had the audacity to entertain. This is (subjectively, arguably, but in this present moment truly) the worst thing you’ve witnessed in your life.
You tolerate this because this instant is bigger than you and your empathetic nature.
She entrusts you the single thing she’s denied so far: her nakedness. Her vulnerability. You’re no saint, you're far from it (though she and John will fight you about it in an enticing unison), but you be damned if you neglect this pure, holy thing she has placed upon your hands.
Miss Groves tells you of the nightmare that visited her last night, your fingers still caressing her skin. She lets the tears run and her voice become hoarse and watery. She lets herself stutter, forget precision and be the opposite of concise. You’ve never seen her this chaotic and wild. The vision was simple: she saw Hannah. No plotlines, no decorations. She saw her crippled and killed again and again. She couldn’t help because she was mute and trapped inside an aquarium. Pathetic fish, Miss Groves remarks.
“I woke up silent because I’ve taught myself not to scream over the years.” You’d rather she screamed any damn time she pleased. “I fed Bear. He wouldn’t leave my side.” Good boy, you want to say to him. You will.
Then she saw another. It was worse, she offers, worse than any nightmare she’s ever had. It was the kind of dream that you would want to turn into reality. Being left with a ghost of something unattainable is much more depressing than living through one's personal hell. You get that.
Miss Groves saw Hannah once again, roughly the age she would be today had she lived. The image of her face against a white backdrop, lips tugged in a small smile. You don’t know the way it hurts, and that’s considered a blessing. You may be insane, but you want to know. You want to know every gritty detail if that means your beloved other half will feel noticed and seen.
“I look at little girls her age,” she whispers, defeated, belittled, shrunken. A genius hacker, a prodigy, a friend and a comrade, but right now a child who was starved of love and regard. A child who was ignored and shut down. “I want all of them dead sometimes. But even more I want dead every child that lived longer than her.” She giggles in blinding hysteria. The sound kills humanity within you. “I want to tear them apart myself.”
You never catch yourself musing about Nathan as if he had not been killed on the ferry. You don’t let yourself do that. And you don’t feel much desire because these fantasies erase what you have and share with others in present day. It must be so because Nathan was a man in his prime when he died. Hannah wasn’t even a fully developed teenager. A preteen, someone who hadn’t yet tasted the ripeness and complexity of life.
This is horrendous. Heinous. Inhuman, against all that is human. This is heartless and cruel and pure evil and unacceptable and whoever let such a thing slide?!
You blink. The murder of Denton Weeks or Alicia Corvin or the business partners of Cyrus Wells now imply a tremendous amount of reason. You don’t excuse these actions and never will, but you’re finally as close to unraveling Miss Groves as you ever were. You distinctly remember wondering, when she took you away and started on and on about selfishness and bad code and design, just what had to go wrong for a person to realize themselves in the way Miss Groves had then. Your personal assessment of her was poor and rushed, defined by the dread of watching Mister Weeks fade away. You claimed she was done for. You claimed she turned out a monster.
Little did you know that she was still turning out. She has now, with full completion. You’ve seen it, striking and disarming and about the most wondrous event you’ve been privy to. She’s blossomed, become healthier and less intense and hammered by all this love she has to give. Once upon a time there was nobody that would reciprocate or simply receive it. Isn’t that a nightmare, being lovely and realizing the world is not that?
And isn’t she a hero for, at her very heart, having remained lovely still?
“I assume you’ve been conjuring up alternate scenarios in your head,” you say finally without putting on an act of understanding. You don’t and never really will. “I know you would have much preferred them to any other reality you've lived so far.”
She’s been reading Keyes in memory of Hannah, it’s apparent. But you’re curious whether it’s more than that. Whether it’s an attempt to transcend timelines and become Sam Groves the nerdy kid in class for at least another day.
“Yes.” Miss Groves tries to give you a smile that is not lifeless and a white lie. “I'd give up everything to live there. But—” she tilts her head playfully, a stark contrast to her demeanor, and even shoots a smirk, though a fatigued one, like she’s a terminal patient tired of dying. “—had it not happened the way it did, I wouldn't have met you.”
This woman, she—
It can’t be. People are not like that. Humans are not like that!
But she is, and what does that make her?
You could have dreamed her.
Her smile is full of tears unwept, confessions unsaid, curses muted in the night. It is not wooden, but you’d foolishly rather it were. Laughter is preparing in her throat, bubbling like an angry concoction. You’re not sure what she finds funny. You’re not sure this laughter has anything to do with humor. She’s breaking down again. You lock eyes and you see inside hers, so dark and wet, that she’s glad of breaking in this way. It can’t be. It’s not possible. It’s insane and beyond and entirely like her. Because she’s exceptional.
You rush with a response to keep from bawling out your livelihood. “Oh, you don't have to—”
“It's true.” She crosses her arms on her chest with summoned nonchalance. “I wouldn't have found my way to you and Her.”
Like you’re the final destination of her life. Like this is where she’s meant to be. Her best friend and first love—what is left of her, to be exact—is decomposing six feet under, yet she’s sitting before you in her last love’s favorite diner, ardently arguing you’re the most wonderful thing that has happened to her. Arguing she’s lucky for it.
It can’t be right, but she makes it so.
You take out of your pocket a pretty, baby blue cloth and primly clean your glasses. “I doubt we'll ever be compensation enough.”
Miss Groves sniffs adorably. “Of course you won't. There is no competing with the dead, is there? But, all things considered, I think I've done well for myself. Mom would be something like proud.”
A scent of sugary, sweet perfume explodes inside your mind at the mention of her mother. “What astounds me about you, Miss Groves, is your faith in what you do. It borders on reckless at times, but it does the job.”
“I had to come a long way, right?” She’s gone sardonic. You don’t like it. “Many things had been done for no real reason that I didn't know I would one day regret.”
“I will not pretend to understand your struggle, but it seems obvious to me that you've recovered faster than one could dream. One usually dreams of recovering in the first place.”
Miss Groves perks at that. You imagine that if she were a dog, her ears would pop up comically.
“You may think of yourself as someone beneath, but that is not the truth at all. You are noble.” Her nobility manifests in mad, unrecognizable ways, but it exists and prevails. It shines on through multiple layers of old, crusty filth. “And strong-willed. I’ll say… stronger than me.”
She bats her eyelashes and gasps theatrically. “Than you? My, my, Harold! You have a way with flattery.”
Her trademark silliness pulls at your heartstrings, and it’s painful. It’s the kind of pain you’d take any day. “Had something like that happened to me, I may very well have created Samaritan, not fought it.”
The proclamation hits Miss Groves like a subway train. The more she chews on it, the more sense it makes to her. In a matter of seconds, it becomes the undeniable truth. “And had you not found me, I would have become its interface.”
You should have deduced that on your own. “Really?”
“You never thought that? It only follows.”
It only follows. It only follows because wherever there is you, she will be there, too.
Your lips stretch out in the silliest, sweetest and yet most modest of grins. “Then we'd have met regardless.”
With the way things once were, this thought alone would be lethally terrifying. It would be enough to cause panic attacks and confirm that your paranoia is utterly logical (you know it isn’t). With the way things are now, the thought burns inside you, little embers scattered around your being, your center, your core. It’s warm because it’s familiar in a way a childhood home is. In that bizarre world, you wouldn’t be yourself, but she would have preserved her otherness, her exceptionality. She would stay right by your side. By the side of your forsaken God, ready to heed Its call.
The absurdity of your reaction is not lost to Root’s perceptiveness. She finds it awfully amusing, about to jump out of her jeans in delight. “Some years ago I would have never guessed that prospect could bring you anything but horror.”
“Well, Miss Groves,” you drawl as your cheeks begin to ache from so much grinning, “things grow.”
They do, indeed. The only prospect that brings you horror now is that of losing her. And then the very probability that in some alternate reality exists a version of you that hasn’t met and never will meet Miss Groves scares you. You don’t know to be without her, and in that, you’ve finally caught up to her. She didn’t know to be without you from the start, day one, Day X. And before she met you, she wasn’t. She learned to be only with you.
And in that, you’ve finally caught up to her.
***
You talked and you talked and you talked. The topics you discussed were of a broad variety, and it doesn’t surprise you in the slightest. One minute it was serious and sad and about Hannah and Trent Russell; another it was about a dream Miss Groves had a few days ago. She rejoiced as she told that Shaw tried to kill her because she became Bear’s favorite person after bribing him with unhealthy snacks. Then it was universe and guilt and individual responsibility and painting. You feel like you’ve touched on everything that’s ever existed.
Your interactions are rich and fulfilling. You wish for them to never end.
You picked up Bear—you’d left him with Miss Shaw prior to heading to the diner because Miss Groves considered it best for him; you didn’t question—and decided to walk him together in Central Park.
The people are many. That should unnerve you, but it doesn’t. Samaritan has too many loyal American subjects to monitor to pay attention to an odd couple with an oddly intelligent dog. You can afford to relax. You keep your bad leg at bay at all times, disregarding the pain in favor of efficiency. Now you fully let go; your pace is twice as slow in result. Miss Groves doesn’t falter. She takes Bear by his leash and walks in front of you, creating a distance small enough for you not to mind.
It's still funny. In the past, too small a distance would have been exactly the thing you would have minded strongly. You almost cackle. Yes, the universe is infinite and chaotic and cold. Yes, it has no plan. But it sure as day has a remarkable sense of humor.
You don’t see, you feel Miss Groves stop. She’s engaging in small talk with a stranger: a middle-aged woman, dark-haired. The woman appears polite and charming, or Root is just that good an actress. At one point she starts cooing to Bear. The woman smiles, exchanges pleasantries and walks past Bear, then past you with a knowing smile. You smile back and hurry to Miss Groves.
“What was that about?”
She snickers into the collar of her leather jacket. “That, um… that was Angela, as I recall. She thought you were my uncle.”
It's hard to render you speechless. Whoever this Angela is, she’s done it. Kudos, you suppose. “And you said?”
“Are you kidding, Harold? Nothing!” She chortles like a little kid. “Uncle Harry. I am so calling you that. I am calling you that forever!”
You deflate. Only half-jokingly, you must note. “Pleasedonot.”
She only laughs, Bear barks in solidarity. So he’s taken sides already. Very well.
You continue walking. This time Miss Groves matches your pace and orders Bear to do the same. You don’t say thank you, but you know that she hears it anyway.
She seems not calm, but calmer. The shadows of her past still haunt her, trailing after her this very minute. All the things she has and hasn’t done, all the people she has and hasn’t affected with her mistaken arrogance. You’re not presumptuous enough to hope you’ll rid of her longing, her sorrow, her shame. But you’re here to relieve it and make being human a bit more bearable. That is valuable. Moreover, she’s sincerely content in that. She asks for nothing more because to her, there is no such thing as more than the essence of you. You’re her sole gauge, you have the monopoly to shape the world around her. You triumph that you were raised not just by any man, but by your father. A person of any other upbringing would see this exclusive opportunity as power, and power is red and ruthless. Hungry. You see it as a gift.
You’ve been her gauge since she first laid her eyes upon your code, your serenade, as she liked to put it. You were her gauge even when you behaved hostilely and abruptly, gave her the cold shoulder. Your treatment of her was more than justified in the beginning (you’d go as far as to consider it kindness), but after a certain instant, it shrunk and was distillated into pure spite. Even then. Even then she saw you for your best while you examined her surgically, seeing the worst. It didn’t last for long. You despise ignorance in all forms, after all.
You need her to feel safe with you. It looks to you as though she does. You’ve antagonized her, ostracized her and put in both metaphorical and very much real cages. You’ve dressed her in a device that delivered electric shock to her extremities. And yet it looks to you as though she does.
If you let your mind stray, you’ll be surrounded by endless questions and eventually spiral into madness. Questions along the lines of “What do you know which I don’t that makes it possible to have faith?” and “Why did you choose me?” and “Why are you here and ready to stay until the very end?”
You could always ask Miss Groves, of course. Where to start? The options are too numerous. You’re better off not starting. Just as you decide to bury the idea, you find you needn’t start at all. Maybe it’s because you are her and she is you. Maybe it’s because, weirdly, her answer is closely linked to the date of April, 15.
She stops, you stop. Bear curls around her legs and huffs in relaxation. She looks down at him, in her eyes the kind of gentleness one reserves for holding a butterfly between their fingertips.
She wraps the leash around her clenched fist. “There is a clear reason why I've stood by you all these years. When you called me obsessed and out of it and a danger, which, I agree, I was. And it's not just my belief in your Machine or in you. It's one simple, straightforward fact with no sentimentality behind it.”
You’re waiting, holding your breath. You’ll suffocate and faint if that’s what it takes.
Miss Groves pats Bear tenderly, and that reminds her of something. Someone. “If you and Shaw and the Big Lug had been there all these twenty three years ago, you would have helped her. Hannah. You would have listened to me. Nobody listened. But you would have. You do.”
She is correct. You listen carefully, and though that doesn’t mean you see eye to eye all the time, you try to consider. It doesn’t mean you’re not firm and convicted in your truths, but you bend a little here and there. It won’t kill you, not with her.
The way her eyes shine at you, for you, liberates you. “Miss Groves—”
“And you listened today.” Her voice wavers, full of water once again. “I don't know how. I don't know why.”
She may be clueless about the former, but she well knows the latter; it's simply not in her to pass up an opportunity to sound both dramatic and unscripted. She has to know. How else could it be? It is imperative, it's almost her duty to acknowledge what you are to each other. She told you that before the both of you were ever equipped to hear it, accept it and live with it:
“I am the best friend, the best partner you'll ever have.”
She was right on the money. She was hurt, resentful, vilified, traumatized, blind with fanaticism—and she was right. You were only some of those things and possessed a clear mind—and you hit and missed.
Her observation was ingenious because it withstood the test of time. She said then what the universe had meant to save for later. She shared a prophecy, laid forward a path you now walk in her company. But she did not mention the most important thing: why.
Why it was her and not Nathan or Grace or John or anybody else the world was ready to offer as a sacrifice.
It is her and nobody but because of the change she's had to go through. A torturous metamorphosis was her salvation. Old skin piling up at her feet like wrinkled clothes, burning as she shed the last of it.
Yes, it was ingenious, what she said. Only she made one miniscule mistake, and neither of you, especially not you, suspected that. It was what it was, but it should have been:
“I will become...”
Bear has grown tired of sitting still. He drags Miss Groves along via his leash because a squirrel caught his attention. You've got only three things to say as you watch her breathlessly laugh at Bear’s clumsiness and haste.
She had been right.
She has become.
And you don’t know to be without her.