A Helping Hand
December 11th
Lionel was startled awake by the sound of his phone ringing. He was certain it was on silent when he went to sleep. He reached over to answer it.
“Hello?” His voice was thick with sleep.
“Sorry to bother you so early, detective, but I need your help.”
He checked the screen. The blinding display read 1:58AM. It was so typical of Root to call in the middle of night with some silly request. That lunatic probably dropped some body that needed to be cleaned--
A wave of sadness hit him when he realized that he was wrong. It surprised him that after all these months, he still had moments before the reality of her death sunk in. He sat up slowly and rubbed his face with his hand.
“No way Shaw is okay with you sounding like that.”
“Sameen has asked me one hundred and five times to switch to a non vocal communication method.”
“Gee, I wonder where you get the stubbornness from.”
“As you know, I can approximate Root's personality with an accuracy of 99--”
“Yeah yeah,” he waved his hand in front of him, “ninety-nine point something. I know. You call for a reason, Big Sister?”
“Shaw needs your help.”
>
Fusco was dressed and out the door within minutes. The drive to the cemetery doesn't take long either. The Machine was vague regarding the situation he was running in to, just that Shaw was in some kind of distress. He didn't really need Her to elaborate.
It felt like a stone had been dropped into his stomach when he saw her.
Shaw was easy to spot in the sea of white snow. Her black clad form sat on her knees before what could only be Root's gravestone.
He came up behind her and waited a moment. Based on the snow covering her legs and shoulders, she had been out here a while. It was at least 5oF, she was probably freezing. Fusco also noticed the butt of her gun sticking out of the snow beside her. He was scared to think about what that meant.
“A bit cold to be hanging around outside, don't you think?”
She didn't respond. Truthfully he didn't expect her to. He touched her shoulder to get her attention. It was soaking wet.
“Hey,” he reached for her bicep to help encourage her to stand up. To his surprise, she didn't resist. He searched her face, her eyes were a complete void; vacant and unfocused. Her pink nose stood out against her dark skin. She simply looked forward, as if she was in a trance. “Let's get you out of here.”
She didn't move, but spoke after several seconds. “Do you know what the last thing I said to her was?” Her voice was low and scratchy, clearly unused in the past several hours.
“Shaw...”
“Something like... 'get out of here or I'll shoot you'.” She said the words slowly and shook her head, reaching up to touch behind her ear. She sighed after a moment.
Clearly the months were weighing heavily on her. Although he thought she had progressed once Samaritan was defeated, it seemed like she took a few steps back after the dust settled.
Lionel had never seen her quite so broken.
“This simulation sucks,” she whispered. The words lacked the same bite as when she said it to Reese.
“I know it does,” in truth, he didn't really know. He got very few details regarding what Samaritan had done to Shaw, but at this point he just needed to help her away from here. “Come on, Sameen.”
He held her arm and led her away from their friend's resting place.