Chapter Text
Root’s not in the best of moods that day. He can tell from the morning, from noticing Shaw with her, even as she hasn’t spoken to him yet, or come into a room with him. John notes to himself to be diligent in deference, the possibility for getting through the day with a a warning shock or two and maybe a few stripes and that’s not particularly bad for a day, really.
It wouldn’t have been.
They’re in the main room when Root finally does come in, John reading at the table, Harold intent on the computers. John slides off his chair, kneels down, doesn’t raise his eyes. Good form, prompt reaction - even his protocol teacher, known for severity, still a vivid memory in his mind for it, might have given him full marks. (Whatever her mood, Root is strict about protocol. Shaw isn’t; John’s pretty sure he could respond to her walking in by standing on his head and facing the opposite direction, and she wouldn’t so much as shock him.) Harold - Gaia, Harold hadn’t seen Root that morning, and John hadn’t told him, how could he have been that thoughtless-. Harold doesn’t react, absorbed in whatever his screens show him. Root walks toward him, John’s body is tense everywhere with wanting to do something, but he’s across the room, no way to draw Harold’s attention that wouldn’t draw Root’s more.
John knows Harold well enough to read the moment when the nonreaction goes from the engrossment in which he might, on some level, have not quite noticed, to realization, to paralysis. Turn around, Harold, John finds himself almost begging silently, because computers are Root’s work, her corner in the world, even on such a day she might be moved to empathy, might forgive a few seconds’ hesitation, give a warning and have it ended. But Harold, his fingers on the keyboard suddenly almost still, tight and shaking, faces his screen like he’s tethered, like Root is a predator who might overlook him if only he doesn’t move.
Root stops a few feet away.
“Good morning, Harold.” On a kinder day, it might have been an invitation to another chance - respond correctly, accept the warning, and on from there. (John knows, entirely, that however he might dread the next minutes or what follows, Root is a more merciful executrix than many, forbearing with Harold’s particularities as many wouldn’t be. Still finds himself thanking Gaia, some nights, some days, that Harold had never met Kara, that they weren’t with someone like her). But it isn’t, now, and John knows Harold knows it isn’t.
A woman, John has been told, would be able to feel Root’s power, if it’s gathered, if it acts. John can’t, but he knows Harold’s body; can tell beyond doubt, however much he wants to pray it could be otherwise, that Harold doesn’t turn his chair. Root turns it, not touching, and then Harold’s facing Root, trembling in that suppressed way that still reminds John there’s years of Harold’s past he knows nothing of.
“You’re much too comfortable in that chair. Get up.”John winces at the allusion that’s all too clear, but at last, at least, the involution seems to break. Harold stands, eyes down as his head can’t be, pushes the chair back and away. And John knows his cue, when he hears it.
Forehead to the ground, pitch his voice so she’ll still hear him. John knows by now that his pleas will not be welcomingly received, will get him nothing but his own punishment. Doesn’t care. If the most he can do is to split Root’s attention, then he’ll do that, and be fortunate for it.
“If my executrix might be gracious-” He doesn’t get past six words today. Cut off by the shock, not severe but substantial, like a kick in the gut.
“John, the item in your pocket, take it out and put it on.” John kneels up to find the gag, fits it into his mouth, waits for the flick of power with which Root fastens it.
“Bring me items 9 and 11 from the drawer.” For a moment, John has reason to be glad for the gag. 11’s a strap, 9’s a rubber paddle - could that not be overly severe, he might have said, it was only a few moments after all. And if he’s due a discussion of what ‘severe’ means, he’d rather have it not in front of Harold. Instead, he presses his head to the floor again, makes his body a silent plea. He didn’t mean it, it’s not insolence, it’s only- Root shocks him again, still momentary but with more force behind it - might have knocked him over, maybe, had he been standing. “That means now, John.”
John rises to go to the drawer (when they’d been in one place long enough to unpack, Kara had hung hers on the wall. John will admit he appreciates the alternative, and not only for Harold’s sake). He kneels again to present them. Has enough time, before resuming his prone position, to see the thicker wires crawling out of Root’s sleeves to wind around the handles of the tools he’d given her. (It’s an appropriate position for him to take, at these times, penitent while he waits his turn. It also hides his eyes. Harold prefers it, when John doesn’t look.)
“Harold,” says Root. And John doesn’t really need to look, though. He knows what he’s not seeing, knows what part of his table Harold keeps carefully clear, the shaped pillow in the drawer under that’s permitted to support his hips, his upper body, head, how his fly has buttons and not a zipper and he unfastens them one by one. How he tries to let the table and the pillow take his weight, clenches his hands on the edge.
But it’s the sound that he can’t escape. The paddle against skin, so loud when it hits directly - Root has as good aim with her power as the best of disciplinarians have with their hands; doesn’t misjudge, doesn’t miss. John wonders if Shaw can hear from wherever she is, or if she’s not even in the building now. The wet gasps Harold makes, suppressed, almost strangled, like he’s desperate to take the beating in silence, squeezes the sound but it escapes in pieces between his fingers. (John is torn, always, between the knowledge that it’s barely audible, that he doesn’t always hear it, knows it so well only by memory. And the absolute impression that the sound has filled the room, bears down on him with a weight like the deepest bell in a tower, shakes through the walls and floor and into his bones).
He couldn’t miss it though, when the first sound changes. Louder through the air, different on impact - it’ll be over soon , John can think. (Sometimes he’s fit into the middle - glad, to think he might give Harold a reprieve, still entertaining likely futile hope of tiring Root’s power on his body, less left over at the end to resume. But surely she would have summoned him by now, were it that.)
“John.” He’s not been told to kneel up, but he knows she can tell that he attends - to her voice, to the sudden pause in the rhythm. (Harold’s voice, soft sobbing now, almost constant, remains. But John can’t let it have all of him, now. Over soon- ). “You know where the restraints are. Bring them to me.” Please no . John hasn’t needed to be restrained for a beating since before coming here; what he’s earned now is not such an outlier. Not for him, then. John doesn’t move, still, wonders if he could turn his thoughts into emotions she might read. Surely it’s been enough, surely there’s no need . “Also 6,” Root adds. John almost flinches at her voice before he parses it, that it is her voice and not a shock. “You can place it on your table. At the moment.” 6 is a cane, on the table means it’s for him, at the moment means the next time it won’t be. If a shock is the waymarker of losing patience, this is the limit. John stands up, goes to the chest of drawers again.
She doesn’t take them from him, when he offers them. The cane’s on the table; Harold had screamed once, under it, like John had only heard him under Gaia’s power. Maybe it’s better, even, for Harold, that this be John, and not Root’s power binding him down. John stands again.
Harold shakes under his hands. His legs, where John fastens them to the table’s. His whole body when John gets up, finds Harold’s wrists above his hands’ death grip on the table edge. He’s sobbing still, quietly. Whispers something not in English, clearly not to John. Probably not to Root. Won’t look at John. ( I’m sorry , John tries to say, with his touch where he can’t any other way. I tried, I swear . It’s not near enough).
Delaying is a risk. John might have waited, for a warning shock, but they could be past warnings, now. He goes back to his place, is preempted, again, by Root.
“Chair.” John himself has a fairly basic zipper. Leans over the arm of the chair, partially watches Root’s wire drag the cane across the table and off, towards him. (He knows the theory of it perfectly well - the way Root’s physical technopathy can work as telekinesis if she uses it right; how a limited pattern to follow can ‘loop’ telekinesis, achieve tasks that would be exhausting if seen as independent motions. It’s still weird to see , not power but a physical tool literally hanging in air, the wire wrapped around the handle like an invisible wielder’s hand. (Not invisible of course, but across the room Root watches him, the power he cannot feel held in her hands, deciding when the pattern starts again)).