The woman’s honesty lands in the space between them and Ellie finds herself staring blankly at her for a beat. Something tightens in her chest that has nothing to do with her busted ribs, something sharp and unkind. It makes her wish she could take back the thanks she extended to the woman several minutes earlier. Should’ve just saved yourself instead of reenacting an attempt at hope through what sounds like a dead person, but whatever, lady. She brushes it off with a soft dismissive scoff and averts her gaze downwards.
“Noble of you,” she mutters, dry and deflective. And then the beat of silence. Followed by: where does she want the woman to start?
Does it really matter? Ellie is fucked, everything is fucked. There’s nothing left worth fixing, anyway. She might as well be a battered walking corpse for all the worth she has left. Ellie vacantly stares down at her trembling hands, grazed and weathered and crusted with dry blood. Her fingernails are choked with dirt and filth. Exudate oozes from the raw friction wounds gouged around her wrists. Ellie rotates her wrists, palms turning upwards. Those, too, are scored with ugly scabs, some fresh, some old and angry. Might as well start there.
“Just… patch up whatever you can,” she tonelessly replies, “with whatever you’ve got. I’ll deal with the rest.”
"Noble's not the word I would pick," Root answers wryly, perfectly self-aware of the pointlessness of her dedication to the memory of the Machine. It doesn't do anything. It's carrying faith to the point of absurdity, a trait of Homo sapiens that she used to make sport of denigrating. There were so many blind, ignorant people who thought someone was looking out for them, that someone cared.
Only-- it turned out, there was. And it was an artificial intelligence made by a man Root grew to not just admire, but truly respect.
Maybe it's pointless, but their whole crusade had verged on pointless so many times. Life itself was arguably without purpose. It was only in dedicating herself to something that she'd found anything that actually mattered. She hasn't forgotten that lesson now. She died once, and she'll die again. She just hopes she can have a good death the second time, too.
Tending to Ellie makes her think of Shaw, a med school dropout who would be far better at this than she is, but that's someone else she's lost. (Someone she did, however, save before dying. That thought is a hot coal inside her, a fire sharp and close enough to burn. It can be pointless and still matter.) Regardless, Root isn't bad at first aid. She has a perfunctory, unsympathetic demeanor that means it goes quickly and efficiently, no movement wasted on hesitating that would allow Ellie to tense up.
"You gonna tell me your name?" she presses, a small pile of filthy strips of cloth used to clean up Ellie's wounds forming next to her on the rough-hewn wood floor.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
“Noble of you,” she mutters, dry and deflective. And then the beat of silence. Followed by: where does she want the woman to start?
Does it really matter? Ellie is fucked, everything is fucked. There’s nothing left worth fixing, anyway. She might as well be a battered walking corpse for all the worth she has left. Ellie vacantly stares down at her trembling hands, grazed and weathered and crusted with dry blood. Her fingernails are choked with dirt and filth. Exudate oozes from the raw friction wounds gouged around her wrists. Ellie rotates her wrists, palms turning upwards. Those, too, are scored with ugly scabs, some fresh, some old and angry. Might as well start there.
“Just… patch up whatever you can,” she tonelessly replies, “with whatever you’ve got. I’ll deal with the rest.”
no subject
Only-- it turned out, there was. And it was an artificial intelligence made by a man Root grew to not just admire, but truly respect.
Maybe it's pointless, but their whole crusade had verged on pointless so many times. Life itself was arguably without purpose. It was only in dedicating herself to something that she'd found anything that actually mattered. She hasn't forgotten that lesson now. She died once, and she'll die again. She just hopes she can have a good death the second time, too.
Tending to Ellie makes her think of Shaw, a med school dropout who would be far better at this than she is, but that's someone else she's lost. (Someone she did, however, save before dying. That thought is a hot coal inside her, a fire sharp and close enough to burn. It can be pointless and still matter.) Regardless, Root isn't bad at first aid. She has a perfunctory, unsympathetic demeanor that means it goes quickly and efficiently, no movement wasted on hesitating that would allow Ellie to tense up.
"You gonna tell me your name?" she presses, a small pile of filthy strips of cloth used to clean up Ellie's wounds forming next to her on the rough-hewn wood floor.