I won't run, the guilt is mine

[ornithologist]

WHO: Harold Finch & established CR
WHEN: Forward dated post-mission
WHERE: Around Etraya
WHAT: Harold canon updates to post-series and has a bit of a time. Closed starters below. There will be an open post for him after these are sorted through!
NOTES\WARNINGS: This whole post and all threads are full of descriptions of grieving and suicidal thoughts & ideation.

After it happens, after he recovers his memories of how everything fell apart, Harold questions his grip on reality. It would be appropriate if after all this time he finally met his limit. John is dead and Root is dead and Elias is dead and-- the Machine is dead-- and Grace is alive, but what right does he have to see her, how can he get a happy ending when he's the one who deserves it the least--

He's in the library they abandoned long ago and there's traces of his life here with John all around him. Rationally, intellectually, he knows where he is. This is Etraya. He can reread their text conversations, few though they were, and reassure himself that this is real and that this is happening. But there's no one here. It's eerie, everyone away on the mission; it's like Harold is in some kind of bizarre tortuous stasis. He's here but no one else is, survivor's guilt made manifest in its natural apotheosis.

He finds the remnants of all the projects he'd been working on so steadily what must've been a day ago, electronic pieces strewn around and multiple computers chugging test code, and stares at them. They seem so pointless now. Meaningless. Harold struggles to find an ounce of caring in his soul, for anyone, for anything. Surveillance? A covert encrypted network?

What does it matter? He's utterly alone.

Harold can't stay there. The numbness is getting increasingly punctured every time he finds something John left behind: washed dishes from making him dinner, a suit jacket left over the back of a chair, and then Bear himself. He has to leave the library or risk feeling things again and that's a tidal wave whose potential aftermath frightens him.

Mutely, he leashes Bear and heads out, and for hours he wanders the empty streets of Etraya, wondering how much longer he has to endure existence.

Comments

[cactusy]

Figures.

[Shaw says, combining a derisive snort with a softening facial expression. No more angry eyes here.]

Can she actually cook?

[A pause.]

Could she, I mean?

[ornithologist]

[ Harold notices the tense correction and feels it keenly as someone still finding himself struggling with the same thing. Not just for Root, who he's had a bit more time to get accustomed to losing, but for John and the Machine. ]

I really haven't the faintest idea, [ he says frankly, mouth quirking with a hint of humor. ] She said something about soup, but I was a bit distracted by the fact that she'd drugged the wedding photographer.

[cactusy]

[Shaw groans, the way she might if Root were doing something spectacularly ridiculous right in front of her at this very moment, and dramatically drops her head into her hands. Please continue, Finch.]

[ornithologist]

[ His whole demeanor softens subtly, something coiled up and harsh in him relaxing just a bit. He's never gotten to do this kind of shared mourning before, has he? Not with any of the lives who'd mattered to him. Harold had made things that way himself, purposefully -- no one else knew about his father's death; Grace never knew Nathan, and so forth -- so he really has no one else to blame, but it feels remarkable, a fresh discovery.

Encouraged, he goes on readily. ] We did actually need the photographer's pictures, [ Harold acknowledges, ] though how this devolved into her rescuing the woman on horseback and me badly singing in an Irish accent, I'll never know.

[cactusy]

Did you have to sing to distract a bad guy? Was it a last-ditch effort to let her get away on the horse?

[She's just barely stopping herself from requesting that he badly sing for her in an Irish accent; please appreciate her restraint, Harold.]

[ornithologist]

[ Disgruntled, ] I had to sing because I obtained an invitation by pretending to be a long-estranged Irish uncle to the groom. It was a rather exclusive event.

Unbeknownst to me, he had a family reputation as a remarkable singer.

[ There is no chance on this planet that Harold would be indulging such a request, so it's just as well. ]

[cactusy]

No wonder you never come out on missions. Sounds like the Machine was playing jokes on you; she's never made me sing once.

[The "she" isn't really consistent, especially not without Root's all-too-human, all-too-feminine voice in her ear. But when it does slip out, it's completely natural.]

[ornithologist]

[ Harold flip-flops himself on the pronouns, though he's getting more comfortable with she after his days spent with Root's voice in his ear and their difficult exchanges. ]

I walked myself into that one, [ he says dryly. ] The Machine always lets us make our own mistakes.

[ The story trails off, Harold thinking of what else he could add; the humor evaporates as his heart twists in grief. The dinner they'd had together at that wedding was the last time he and Root and John were all together, the last piece of calm, before they'd both died. ]

... She asked me to dance at the reception. I miss her, [ Harold admits, staring down at the chewed-on slipper in his hands. ]

[cactusy]

[Shaw is overly aware of her own breathing: the steady in-and-out, the soft rise and fall of her chest. The way it doesn't quicken, or hitch, or do anything else that would indicate sadness or missing. You always thought there was something wrong with you because you don't feel things the way other people do, the Machine had said. But she always felt that was what made you beautiful.]

I do, too.

[She says, because Root wouldn't mind her claiming the feeling even without the emotional markers.]

The Machine told me that I reminded her of an arrow. A straight line.

[ornithologist]

[ Harold doesn't mind her claiming the feeling, either. If he can come to accept the Machine's personhood, it's no struggle at all to accept Shaw's right to claim emotional experiences. ]

The Machine spoke to you? [ he asks, somehow faintly surprised. It makes sense, but he'd been so wrapped up in getting ICE-9, in fixing his mistakes, that he hadn't thought about what the experience would be like for his teammates. She must have been using Root's voice then, too. How strange for Shaw.

Then what she said registers, and Harold adds, bemused, ] I think I'm missing the context for that conversation.

[cactusy]

So am I.

[She mutters, hunching into herself a little - honestly, with the way Root's talk about Schrödinger and patterns and shapes had largely gone over her head, she'd sort of assumed that Harold would have gotten it automatically. She certainly doesn't feel qualified to explain it, at least not in any metaphysical way.]

Just, uh-- I'm simple and straight-forward, I guess. Point A to Point B.

[ornithologist]

[ After the initial bafflement and hearing Shaw doesn't have any real idea either, he does start thinking about it, inevitably. He has had a lot of conversations with Root over the past year and he's started to understand her way of thinking more. ]

Knowing Root, saying you're straightforward might be... well, too straightforward. In mathematics, an arrow is often used to indicate a logical implication, [ Harold offers. ] If A is true, therefore B is true, sort of thing.

[ His expression softens. ] Perhaps your existence is proof enough that something else must also be true.

[cactusy]

[She blinks, surprised, and her shoulders lose a little of their tension as she studies him.]

Something else like--?

[ornithologist]

[ He hesitates. Who knows with Root? It's just speculation on his part, but Shaw seems interested, so... ]

Well... I don't like to put words in her mouth. I know she was often lonely, so perhaps just proof that she wasn't alone. Or it could be that your existence proves it's worth caring for others, worth saving them. She was adamant on that point by the end.

[ Which was a real turn of character for her from Harold's perspective. ]

Or maybe all of those things, or none of them.

[cactusy]

I wish I'd asked her. When she first brought it up, she was going on about Schrödinger and quantum physics during a gunfight, but, uh...

[She shrugs.]

I dunno. I just miss her, too.

[ornithologist]

[ Harold has to think that one through, pulled into the intellectual puzzle as always. He and Root differed slightly in their intellectual interests, but they overlapped enough... Hmm. She was always just more poetic than him. ]

Schrödinger was famous for redefining how we understand the position of electrons. He said they couldn't be measured as physical objects but by the shape they leave behind. We only know the truth of things based on the impact they have.

[ He shrugs, stiff and awkward with the motion, then smiles sadly. ]

Of course you miss her. I always will. [ Rueful, ] I've never had anyone challenge me so much. [ Intellectually and morally both, and she was absolutely relentless about it. ]

[cactusy]

Have you cried over her?

[Harold has never struck her as a crier; she won't be surprised if the answer is no. But she's asking because she's hoping it's yes: Root deserves to have someone mourn her in that way.]

[ornithologist]

... Not properly.

[ He's been too numb. He thinks he will, sometime.

He grows remote, resolute -- almost cold. ] But I promised to kill Samaritan for her. And I did.

[ From Harold, this means ten times the emotional impact that crying would. ]

[cactusy]

[Shaw nods, once; it doesn't change her opinion that Root deserves some shed tears, but on the whole, that is absolutely an even better tribute.]

Yeah. Thanks for that.

[ornithologist]

... I'm sorry, Sameen. For how long it took.

[ It's an achingly sincere apology; Harold can't meet her eyes. The chewed slipper twists in his hands and he feels every death, every loss, acutely. All because of his inaction. He hadn't listened to Root earlier, and she'd died because of it.

He hadn't done what he could have earlier, and Sameen spent almost a year being tortured in the grasp of Samaritan. ]

[cactusy]

It's on all of us, not just you. You're our boss, but working with you is what taught me that following orders is a choice. We could have gone against you--

[She pauses.]

Hell, I could have killed that senator and prevented everything; I had the opportunity. So, yeah, you messed up. But so did we. If this is on our shoulders, then it's on all of ours, not just yours.

[This is sincere too, if less aching. It doesn't matter that he's not meeting her eyes: she watches him steadily all the same.]

[ornithologist]

[ That he taught her following orders is a choice -- he'll keep that and hold it close to himself for as long as he remembers it. But...

He glances up sharply. ]

Killing the Senator wouldn't have prevented anything, [ Harold corrects, drawn in despite himself. He'd just spent so much mental effort miring himself in solving the problem of Samaritan, finally had free dialogue with the Machine for days at a time -- he feels an unusual retrospective clarity. ]

They would have found someone else, another avenue, to push their agenda. The mistakes I've made... go back farther than you know.

[ He's adamant about that, but he sounds calm, at peace with that acceptance. He's sad, he grieves so much more than just the recent deaths, but he's not distraught; he can feel the parameters of loss like mapping out the contours of a mountain with topography, marking the edges but unable to appreciate the full breadth from this vantage alone. ]

We share responsibility, it's true. [ He isn't egotistical; Harold realizes he had a greater role to play than anyone else, but it wasn't as if he was some scheming mastermind. He did always defer to individual choice, to agency. ] But for the part I played in what you suffered, I want you to know that I'm sorry. I never intended that. And I want you to know that I count you as one of my closest friends.

[ Having so many of them die on him recently has left Harold wanting, acutely, to tell those that are left what they mean to him. ]

[cactusy]

And I want you to know that I don't regret the fact that you made the Machine.

[It's the only long-ago "mistake" that she can think of. She wouldn't be surprised if there's more to it than just that, and she doesn't think he really regrets the Machine's existence, but she also suspects that anything he could be thinking of is tied in to that one crazy, complicated, monumental decision.

She crosses her arms more tightly around herself.]

And for what it's worth, if I could go back and undo what happened at the stock market, I wouldn't. It had to be me, and I'm fine with that.

[ornithologist]

[ It's extremely kind of her, in that way Shaw is where the tone doesn't match the content at all. Harold, being someone who now thinks of a computer as a full being with personhood and a grasp on caring, who had grown to love the Machine slowly, day by day, impossibly, doesn't find it difficult to look past her tone. ]

I don't regret that I made the Machine, [ he says somberly. That's not a trivial statement; it's something he'd wrestled with so hard and so long, and only the Machine herself reassuring him that the people he knew, the people he loved, are all better off for it ... that's what had eventually compelled him to make peace with his decision and his years of effort to make it. Harold would like to think knowing it was the only force powerful enough to stop Samaritan's inevitable rise would be enough to extinguish his regret, but that only leaves a hollow, echoing acceptance behind. Knowing John, Shaw, Root, Fusco -- knowing they were all better off -- that left a warmth in the hollowness, an ember he can nurture. ]

And I won't insult you by suggesting you didn't know the possible consequences when you decided to sacrifice yourself for us. [ That's what it was, and this new Harold is blunter, sharpened to a point in some places that had been soft and rounded before. ]

I'm not looking for you to comfort me, Sameen. Others keep paying the price for my mistakes -- I could have done more to stop Samaritan all along, and I didn't. What I did at the end was possible from the beginning. Because I didn't, you were captured, Root died... [ In a brittle tone: ] John died.

I won't make that mistake again. I'm saying that I'm sorry because you deserve as much from me as you give.

[cactusy]

[Shaw hadn't thought of what she'd been doing as comforting him, but - maybe it had been, in a way. But it certainly hadn't been blindly done, or done solely for the purpose of making him feel better, and so she feels the urge to do it again here: to tell him, completely truthfully, that she doesn't blame him, that they'd all fucked up in various ways, that the entire situation was too big and too complicated to lay at the feet of any one person. Not foreseeing a completely unpredictable consequence years or even decades in advance is not a personal failing.

But it's not as if he doesn't know that, and she doesn't want to get into a tortuous back-and-forth where she tries to convince him of a logic that he understands, but that his guilt won't let him accept. And though she doesn't have personal experience with guilt, she thinks that maybe it's an okay thing for him to sit with a little. Maybe it's not something to be excised, but something to be worked through.]

Okay.

[She says, knotting her fingers together as she studies him.]

Okay, thanks.