
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1010757.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Person_of_Interest_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Root/Vine
  Character:
      Root_(Person_of_Interest), Vine_-_Character, Hanna_Frey
  Additional Tags:
      Torture, Murder, spree_killing, Revenge, girls_gotta_stick_together,
      sometimes_root_overreacts, it's_okay_vine_does_it_too
  Series:
      Part 5 of Root_and_Vine
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-10-20 Words: 1476
****** deeper than the ordinary soul ******
by TigerKat
Summary
     The first time Vine is hurt, Root kills thirteen people.
     Please see explicit trigger warnings in notes.
Notes
     Betaed by subluxate the Amazing and Awesome.
     Trigger warnings include implied CSA, an implied rape attempt (that
     doesn't go very far at all), mention of murder attempts on children,
     strangulation, some really weird psychological issues with death and
     depersonalization (seriously, I have no idea what's up with them),
     PTSD flashbacks, some patriarchal bullshit, and Root does a whole
     lotta fairly graphic torturing and killing. Please read with care!
The first time Vine is hurt, Root kills thirteen people.
--
She can't help it, really. They've gone six years together without a scratch on
either one of them, six years and two dead men and Vine, beautiful, blood on
her hands and contentment in her face. Root doesn't enjoy killing people, but
she does enjoy that serenity, Vine deep asleep in their bed with one arm curved
daintily over her head, delicate and deadly.
She'll kill, and happily too, if the rewards are sufficient. That reward, she
thinks, is worth the world.
--
sam didn't sleep the days hanna was missing but stayed up staring at the moon
and a good thing too because hanna came to her, staggering, hands and knees
shredded and thighs bloody, neck red-ringed breath harsh eyes dead
she put her shoulder under hanna's arm, wrapped her hands and knees in
bandages, did what she could for everything else, and oh she wished she could
take hanna to the hospital but she knew now what they'd do, she knew they
couldn't be trusted
she did her best
hanna died anyway
so did sam
--
He put his hands around her neck and squeezed. Of course Vine hurt him. Root is
surprised she didn't kill him.
Well, that's all for the better, because now Root can.
--
Vine comes home to her with blood on her hands and her eyes empty, and for a
moment Root can't breathe, she's so frightened. It's just like the day Hanna
came to Sam, dying as she walked, and Root chokes on the memory. She won't lose
Vine. She can't. She is Vine and Vine is her and she can't lose Vine.
And then Vine gasps, sobbing in air, clinging to her, whimpering her name,
Root, Root, Root.
"I'm here," she says, curling her fingers through Vine's hair, catching Vine's
tears with her thumbs and her mouth. "I'm here. I'm here."
--
her mother would say the cops the hospital the firefighters even but sam knew,
she knew they wouldn't listen, they wouldn't believe, they never believed and
they'd make it all hanna's fault for being hurt, for dying and they'd make it
all sam's fault for knowing, for seeing, for telling when no one wanted her to
so she took care of hanna, brought her food and water and bandages and creams,
spent every night next to her telling her the truth "i'm here hanna i'm here
i'm here" and every night hanna didn't say anything she died a little more
until there was nothing left but the diamond-hard core of her, the pieces that
loved hanna and loved the code and hated the world and all the people in it,
the base of her, the root of her
and one night vine opened her eyes and said "hanna died"
and root said "i know, so did sam, i'm here anyway"
and vine said "so am i"
--
It was supposed to be easy. There was a man alive who people wanted dead; Vine
would kill him and Root would frame some idiot for it, and in return, three
million dollars. Simple. Root sat down with her computers and laid her
foundations, while Vine put on her pretty blue dress and her lovely silver
sandals, silver bracelets and silver earrings, a silver gun snugged close to
her thigh and a silver-handled knife between her breasts. He didn't have a
chance, Root thought happily, and kissed Vine goodbye, lipstick smudging red
over her mouth.
--
Vine calms after a while, enough to tell her story, her face still pressed into
Root's stomach, her arms still twined around her waist. "He saw the knife," she
says, her breath warm against Root's naval. "He tried to kill me."
She doesn't need to say more. The fading handprints on her neck, the flushing
bruises say it all.
"Did you hurt him?" Root asks, stroking Vine's tangled hair.
"I don't know," Vine says.
Root curves an arm over Vine's tense shoulders, feels them relax under her
touch. "Can I hurt him?" she asks.
Vine shudders against her. "Yes," she says. "Please."
--
root is the core of herself, the basic code, all the extraneous bits that were
sam deleted, and vine has been stripped down, leaves clipped, all that was
hanna pruned away
they clung close that night and told each other things, how sam died, how hanna
was murdered, pulling loose code and nearly-severed tendrils back into
themselves, locking into each other, grafting all their broken pieces together
apart they were half a girl at best, but together they were whole, root and
vine, base and branch, one whole person where two girls died
"i'm here," root said again, whispered it into vine's hair
"i'm here," vine echoed back, her mouth moving against root's temple
--
Vine did hurt him. As far as Root can piece together, he put his hands around
her neck, and Vine remembered Hanna, remembered dying. She clawed at his face,
kicked him, bit and scratched, anything to get away.
He told the emergency room doctor that a woman had attacked him when he refused
to sleep with her. Root smiles when she hears that. As if Vine cared for such
silly things.
Vine is sleeping now, her arm curved over her head in one graceful arc. Her
face is peaceful, serene. Root kisses her forehead, and takes the small silver
gun and the silver-handled knife, and goes out.
--
One, the man who hurt Vine. She doesn't kill him, not yet.
Two, three, and four, his friends who watched him hurt Vine and laughed. She
shoots them in the stomach, watches them bleed out, slow. Five, six, seven, the
women accompanying them, who didn't watch but did nothing to stop it. One shot
each in the back of the head, quick and painless—Root understands their fear,
though she will not forgive it.
Eight, nine, ten, the people in the rooms on either side who banged on the
walls and didn't help her. Gunshots through the mouths; they should have said
something. Eleven, the motel worker who heard Vine scream, who watched her run
bleeding, and did nothing. She blinds him, then cuts his throat. Twelve,
thirteen, the cops who took his report, who blamed Vine for this. She cuts
their lying throats too.
And back to one, the man she's left bound in his hotel room.
--
they left two weeks later hand in hand, with backpacks and money and makeup so
vine could pass for eighteen, her eyes were old enough now that no one
questioned it
and root was only twelve but that didn't matter, they told people they were
sisters and no one questioned it, two sisters travelling north sitting side by
side on the bus holding hands, no one thought it was odd
root wondered sometimes whether sam's mother would miss her, whether hanna's
parents would ever know how she died, but vine was there and their hands were
tangled together, and she couldn't really bring herself to care anymore about
anyone who wasn't them
"i'm here," vine said, in a dark stretch of oklahoma
"so am i" root said, and squeezed her hand
--
Root is back in their safehouse by the time Vine wakes, the blood washed away
and the weapons cleaned. Vine stirs and mumbles. Root strokes her hair,
murmurs, "I'm here, Vine, I'm here," until her other half opens her eyes, looks
sleepily up at her.
"Are you here?" Root asks, and she half fears the answer.
"I'm here," Vine replies, and nestles closer, pressing her forehead against
Root's hip. "What happened?"
--
She kills him, eventually. She ties him down and strangles him until he pleads
for breath, then lets him recover and does it again. She cuts off his fingers
one by one—she wants to take the hands he hurt Vine with, but she doesn't want
him to bleed out too soon. She draws neat little lines with the knife,
patterning Vine's scars onto his neck; she slashes his thighs and shreds his
knees and cuts up the heels of his hands. Let him feel what Vine felt. Let him
take her pain.
Root shoots him in the head when she finally does kill him. It's quicker than
he deserves, but she doesn't want to linger.
--
they go to sleep back to back and wake up tangled together, start the day
walking a foot apart and end it pressed together
root's chest rises when vine breathes in, vine grows sleepy when root yawns
there is no one else in the world who matters, no one else but them
"i'm here," one of them says, when the night falls heavy and cruel on their
shoulders
"so am i," the other replies
--
"I'm here," Root croons, curled up beside her Vine. "I'm here."
--
Vine turns in close, presses her face against Root's neck, whispers, "So am I."
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