mother-finch:

(Hey, not sure if you’re a continuation of the previous ask, or a separate thing? Regardless I wrote this to tack onto that one, but decided if you are separate, you should have yours answered separate. There is, though, wayyyy more information on the grieving/acknowledgement factor in my previous ask if you want to read that as well.)

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In reference to acknowledging her death, that’s in the previous ask with the Machine and the team’s determination to finish the mission. They put their 110% effort into getting what Root always wanted. I think that’s the way they come to terms with this, and for a group of people who have no true identity outside of the world and no real way to share their feelings with the world, this is their grand gesture. Their ode to Root.

Root did not die alone.

I firmly believe that Root did not die alone. I mean, technically, if you want to point out that no one was there at the exact second of her last breath… maybe? The Machine is always in her ear, the Machine was even back to talking at that point and warned Root about the sniper. In her final moments, the Machine was at her side. I can’t speak for a scene that they didn’t show, but if I had to guess, I don’t think the Machine left Root with radio static.

Additionally, and the point that I’m getting at, dying alone really means to die with no one. Root had a team of people. When I see dying alone, I think Citizen Kane. A man who died without anyone in his life to remember and cherish him. At his death, he had the understanding that there was no one there for him in a sense of love, not a sense of physical proximity. When Root died, she was on good terms with Harold, good terms with John, good terms with Fusco, good terms with Shaw, and good terms with the Machine. She and Harold rarely saw eye-to-eye as they were in the final moments in the car, and John and Fusco are like the big brothers that she knows care about her despite any teasing or hard outer exterior. And she had Shaw, alive and well, back from being captured and with not only the promise of maybe someday, but the understanding that, while they weren’t a “couple” so to speak, they were something. They were something that Shaw cared about. And that always good enough for Root.

Root was alone the majority of her life. But I will never believe, for one second, that she died alone. She died knowing that there were people out there who cared, and who were doing everything they could to fight for her cause, and that she would be remembered beyond that ambulance or that hospital bed. There’s a difference between lonely and alone, and after joining the team, Root was never alone.