FanFic in Da House ...
Okay. So here's the deal. I'd love to blame this fanfic to Person of Interest winning the People's Choice award for Best New TV Show so as to make myself look all prescient and shit, but the simple truth is, this bitch has been torturing me night and day since Number's Crunch aired. It's gone from 23 pages, down to 9 pages, up to 18 pages, and finally settled in right around 13.25 pages. It has changed so much I cannot recognize my original story in the final product but for the opening hook, which has remained maddeningly constant throughout. Hopefully, all this gutting and re-stuffing and gutting and re-stuffing and gutting has been worth it, molding something from nothing that I won't have an overwhelming urge to either gut or re-stuff again tomorrow.
So here ya go. A lil somethin-somethin from the show that owns me at the moment. I'm not entirely sold on the title, so if y'all see potential, feel free to pony up your suggestions. And as always, feedback and reaction, whether good or bad, is always welcome and appreciated.
Title: Until Tomorrow Then
Author: dodger_winslow
Pairing/Characters: Gen. Reese. Finch. Mentions of Carter and Fusco.
Rating: Um ... PG13 for mild to moderate potty mouth?
Summary: There were times-usually times that involved starlight and binoculars-that Reese wondered exactly where Finch stopped and his machine began. There were other times-usually times that involved alcohol and extreme exhaustion-that he pondered the possibility that Finch was the machine and the machine was Finch. And yet other times when he neither wondered nor pondered anything, but rather knew, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Finch was the most human man he’d ever known.
Warnings: Numbers Crunch. You gotta have seen Numbers Crunch. And also, it would probably help with the story, too.
Word Count: 6400ish
A/N: The episodic dialog, rather obviously, is not written by me.
Until Tomorrow Then
The bullet hit Reese hard and low, spun him around and put him down like a well-placed rabbit punch. He returned fire-more reflex than intention-not in the direction of the sniper, but rather in the direction of the man who controlled the sniper.
Snow.
Later, he’d say he spent the rest of his rounds taking out the SUV’s headlights. That he’d done what he did to nullify Snow’s advantage, give himself a better chance at survival by covering the field of play in darkness. But the truth is, that’s not the truth.
The truth is, were he to tell the truth, which he rarely did: he was shooting at Carter.
He was shooting at Carter-shooting at Detective Carter-as she stood by The Agency SUV and looked at him like he was some kind of first-class fool not to have seen this coming.
And she was right. He should have seen it coming. But he didn’t, so he expended three of his last four rounds looking for payback. Wasting precious ammo shooting at treacherous shadows until, through a combination of poor marksmanship and fortunate happenstance, one of those bullets smashed the last remaining headlight, creating darkness out of light and opening the door to options he hadn’t, to that point in time, actually considered.
Options like retreat.
It was somewhere around then-when, exactly, he wasn’t sure; time could be a tricky thing to track once you’ve been shot and while someone is still shooting at you; it stalls and jumps and generally spins in, on, and around itself until what happened when, or in what order, or before, or after, becomes one big muddle of “yeah, so that happened” and nothing else really matters-that the second bullet hit him.
Hit him hard, drilling into the meat of his thigh until it hit bone.
Hit but didn’t break, he noted almost incidentally. Hit the femur but didn’t snap it like a twig, or blow a hole out the back of his leg the size of a small gopher, or disintegrate everything between hip and knee into one big mash of blood and bone paste. So all things considered, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, if for no other reason than because it didn’t cripple him in any of the ways it could have, had it been a different bullet. A different load, a different jacket. A different weapon. A different shooter.
He’d like to have considered all that a good piece of bad luck (or a bad piece of good luck), but he knew better. Knew the worst that could happen already had. Not that he was a pessimist so much as he was a realist. Because really. What use would he be to them crippled? What use would he be to them dead? If Snow had wanted him either, he’d be both. So since he wasn’t, it seemed only logical to assume luck didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
And it didn’t.
But for Reese’s poor marksmanship and Snow’s failure to protect the integrity of his sniper’s field of vision, this was a textbook, Agency hard-target takedown. A core shot first. Instant incapacitation. Call it the shock-and-awe of high-risk control tactics: when done properly, even a volatile target could be neutralized with minimal risk of high-casualty retaliation.
And John Reese was nothing if not a volatile target.
But he was also evidently a high value one … high enough value that The Agency wasn’t ready to write him off just yet. They’d spent a lot of money making Reese the man he used to be, and they wanted him back, not dead, which made Snow’s mission one of retrieval, not execution.
Not entirely unexpected, given how things had gone down. After all, Agency snipers weren’t trained to miss their targets: not by inches, and certainly not by yards.
The shooter, whoever he was, hit exactly what he was aiming for. He placed the bullet carefully-missed the stomach, but hit the abdominal cavity-to minimize the risk of accidental exsanguination while insuring against the possibility of extended flight. Even a ghost like Reese couldn’t vanish off the grid with a bullet lodged in his gut, and in the realm of effective penalty clauses for failure to comply with an invitation to come in from the cold, sepsis was in the top two.
Possibly the top one.
So core shot first. Center mass. Then once the target is down, once he’s cut off from his long term escape options, an extremity shot makes short work of more immediate forms of resistance. A leg is optimum-limits the target’s mobility in the short run, literally-but a shoulder will do in a pinch. The important thing is to introduce pain to the biological insult of shock. Introduce a lot of pain. Introduce an overwhelming amount of pain. And introduce it in such a way as to invalidate the survival advantage of the target’s biological defenses fronting a second, interest-deferred, fight-or-flight loan courtesy of his already over-drawn resources.
Live now, pay later: it was a biological investment strategy that worked to the advantage of the prey, not the predator. It was why a man could lose a leg to a shark and never know he was one foot short of a pair until he made landfall; why a soldier could take three bullets center mass and still carry a buddy to safety before keeling over himself.
But while the delay-pay plan of shock-trauma gave prey the decided advantage in a sprint-off, a smart predator could nullify that advantage by optimizing his attack strategy. Deliver the more potentially lethal blow first. Then, once the body’s instinctive “let’s ignore this for now” vouchers were spent, deliver a second, less catastrophic but more painful blow to a non-lethal location. Constitutionally incapable of re-allocating resources from a more serious wound to a lesser one, the prey’s survival instincts now work against him, rendering the shock-trauma advantage moot and making pain not only a player, but the player. The trump card. The deciding factor in who lives and who dies-or who escapes and who doesn’t-based not on how badly they are hurt, but rather on how much they hurt.
Which is why pain matters, and how a smart predator uses pain to his advantage to execute a hard-target takedown of a man no one in his right mind would classify as “prey.”
And also why Reese absorbed the sniper’s first bullet with relatively little immediate response beyond falling but nearly blacked out when the second bullet slammed into his thigh and lit him up from the inside out, turning his nerves to ash and rattling his bones in his skin like loose coins in an tin can. He swore vehemently, fired off one more shot in the direction of Carter and hit the SUV’s headlight instead.
Darkness fell, heretofore unconsidered opportunities presented themselves for consideration, and Reese took advantage of both. He clawed his way to his feet, scramble-lurched across the roof parking lot with the heel of one hand shoved against a shirt already sticky with blood. Training and adrenaline gave him an edge over pain that would have kept a less motivated man down. Instinct and experience extracted details of the surrounding landscape from his subconscious and used them to build a mental map of potential exits.
He found the door to the roof-access stairwell in the East corner by touch. Eased it open just enough to slip through, then pulled it closed behind him. The stairwell was starkly industrial. Grey cinderblock walls and painted metal railings. The fire ax that should have been stored on the uppermost landing was gone. Stolen, maybe. There was no fire hose either, only a rusting metal wheel on which it was once stored, and that was bolted down, immovable and unhelpful. Leaning into the wall for balance, Reese considered the problem of how to block the door. How to jamb it shut with nothing but good looks and kind words.
He considered it for several seconds longer than too long. Stymied. Disoriented. Sweating and freezing at the same time. Breathing. His gut ached like a bad tooth, but it was manageable. His leg, on the other hand, was napalm and fire from knee to hip. He couldn’t think through the pain. Couldn’t think around it. Couldn’t think over it.
Couldn’t think period.
It occurred to him with the startling clarity of a spiritual epiphany that, in his current condition, he possessed neither the physical nor mental resources to get creative. The best course of action, the only course of action, was the most direct one. Move. So he moved. Pushed off the wall, staggered to the stairs and grabbed for the handrail.
He had to navigate each step carefully. Place his feet with specific precision before shifting his weight to follow. His progress was slow and painful, but at least it was progress. And the farther he got from the roof the better. With any luck, they were still searching the lot, clearing it car by car, assuming he’d corner up there like a wounded animal, stick to the shadows, put his back to a defensible position and dig in for the duration. Logistically speaking, it made more sense to make a stand, try to pick them off one by one in the darkness, than it did to make a run for it on a bad leg with a hole in his gut.
Reese prided himself on being unpredictable in that regard. Saved his ass more than once that his natural instinct was to do the opposite of whatever might be logically expected.
But unpredictability only went so far. Sooner or later, they’d clear the roof, start working their way down the structure itself. Snow’s instinct would be to think he’d stick to the lots, use the parked cars for cover, which is why he was in the stairwell, doing exactly the opposite. But the search would spread to the stairwells eventually, and once it did, his six became vulnerable to attrition at the whim of his pursuers.
A bullet to the back, or from above, and it was over. Without question, a piss-poor tactical position to be in, but he wasn’t wholly defenseless. He still had the nine mil, and he had the advantage of experience.
Snow had three years tenure on him with The Agency and a Ph.D. in mind games, but Reese had a masters degree in survival, and he’d earned it the hard way: on the front lines, engaging the enemy in urban warfare. Crumbling stairwells constituted a home field advantage for him, and being shot at and shooting back was, more often than not, his idea of a good time.
And it wasn’t his first rodeo, either, being ambushed by friendly fire to the end of engaging in a game of hide-and-seek with potentially lethal consequences. It wasn’t even his first experience with being ambushed by a woman he’d thought he could trust, only to find out he couldn’t.
A quiet beep startled Reese out of his own head. Jarred him back to reality from the bitter ruminations of betrayals past.
Finch, he thought. And that thought was like a whisper of hope in the darkness. He lifted a hand to his ear with an effort. Touched the activation node on his earbud and said, “Hey, Harold.”
“John.” Finch’s voice was terse. Anxious. “I’ve been trying to call you.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been kinda busy.”
“Where are you?” Finch demanded. It was the obvious question … obvious from anyone who hadn’t created a super secret spy machine to render that very question irrelevant for the vast majority of the country’s population.
“In a parking structure,” Reese said. He took a moment to catch his breath, then added, “It’s not looking good.”
He meant it more as a mission update than a request for backup. A head’s up to Finch that the day had gone from feel-good victory to pear-shaped FUBAR in less than fifteen minutes flat, and because it had, things weren’t likely to end any way except badly. And he needed to warn Finch about Carter, too. Warn him that they couldn’t trust her; that he’d been a first class fool to ever think they could.
But Finch beat him to the punch. “Carter sold you out,” he announced. “They got to her.”
Reese smiled in spite of himself. Good ole Finch. Always on the ball, even in retrospect. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice coarse with the effort it was becoming to speak. “They’re clever like that.”
And it was true. They were clever. And Carter was vulnerable.
She wasn’t an operative; she was a cop. A good cop. A clean cop. An arbiter of societal compliance as much as Reese was an arbiter of societal non-compliance. On a very basic level, they were flip sides of the same coin, believers in many of the same things despite the obvious differences in how they pursued those beliefs.
Honor. Patriotism. Duty. And the greatest of these is Duty.
Some people did the job; some people lived it. She was the latter, as he had once been, and The Agency no doubt used that against her the same way they’d used it against him.
“I wanted to say thank you, Harold,” Reese said suddenly. “You gave me a second chance.”
“It’s not over, John,” Finch returned. “I’m close. Just get to the ground floor.”
“No,” Reese said. “You stay away. Don’t risk it.”
And Finch hung up on him, saying nothing.
***
He knew before he saw the car that Finch was coming for him. Knew, before he staggered through the street-level fire door and grabbed a guard rail to keep from falling, his body failing him closer to collapse with every step but his will diving him onward, out into the darkness in search of a man he’d told to leave him, that Finch was coming.
It’s good to see you’re still alive, Snow had told him on the parking structure’s roof. I’m surprised to see you in New York though. Thought you’d get yourself a cabin in the woods somewhere. Montana maybe.
It was Snow’s way of telling him they’d found his fallback position. That they’d tracked his safe house down even though he’d bought the property through enough dummy corporations and false fronts to mitigate his paper trail to little more than breadcrumbs in the ether. But they’d found it nonetheless, and Snow wanted to make sure he knew it. Make sure he knew he was alone in the world, with nothing and no one left to run to, and no safe haven waiting at the end of the road for him if he tried.
But Snow was wrong. The cabin in Montana wasn’t his fallback plan any more. Harold Finch was his fallback plan now. And Harold Finch was coming for him.
***
Finch arrived in a luxury four-door that cost more than most men make in a year. He slammed the car over speed bumps and curbs to get close, indifferent to the damage he did to both, focused only on the man staggering through the parking garage’s fire door, body hunched in pain, skin as white as ice and eyes searching the darkness with the desperate faith of a man who had nowhere left to run.
“John,” Finch murmured.
Reese looked up. Focused on him as if he could see right through the reflective film on the car’s tinted windows. It was impossible, of course, but Reese’s eyes said differently. They said he could see what others couldn’t, what others didn’t, and Harold Finch believed it.
He opened the car door, struggled awkwardly to his feet and started for Reese even as Reese, in turn, started for him.
***
Finch arrived on the scene like Clint Eastwood in a city bus. His sleek, black, luxury sedan near foundered itself on half a dozen speed deterrents negotiated at full speed in the Mexican jumping bean gait of a tricked-out lowrider. The car was still hopping some when it slammed to a halt a hard throw from where Reese stood, watching the show in a shocky stun.
Finch surprised him occasion. Finch amazed him as a matter of course.
Reese let go of the bloody railing to which he clung, pushed out into the distance between them with the determined faith of a man down to his last chamber in a game of Russian roulette.
Finch threw the sedan’s door open. Struggled to free himself from the vehicle’s not-standard, ultra-fine deluxe, not-as-adjustable-as-it-claims, superbucket ass-cradling leather seat; then fought his way to his feet, lurched into motion and headed straight for Reese with the gimping half-run of a broken toy with rust for joints, his expression set in the rigid lines and harsh angles of ferocious determination, his body wracked awkward by the speed at which he was moving.
When Finch got close, Reese reached out for him, felt an irrational rush of gratitude as the smaller man grabbed his wrist and shoved a shoulder up under his arm. “I’ve got you, John,” Finch said, taking the brunt of Reese’s weight onto his own stiff, off-kilter frame as he spoke. Then, “We have to go.” He placed a hand on Reese’s back, laid it flat between the shoulder blades and used it for both stability and leverage to pressure their combined weight into motion.
Reese moved slowly, haltingly, huffing in pain and growing whiter by the step. Finch kept them moving in a productive direction, took as much of the burden on as he was able. They’d nearly made it to the car when the stairwell door slammed open, and Carter stepped into the open, shouting, “Hold it!” in a tone that promised lethal consequences for failure to comply.
They stopped. Finch met her gaze across the hunch of Reese’s compromised posture, saw her recognize him, saw her logical mind reject the incongruity of her recognition. As they say, who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes? It took a moment, but in the end, her lying eyes won.
“You,” she said.
And Finch waited, unsure how to respond to that. Unsure whether or not to respond at all. He had no idea what to say. No inkling how to persuade a woman who’d betrayed them to such catastrophic consequences to change her mind now, to lower her gun and let them walk away, leaving her to explain their escape to the strangers she’d chosen over men who saved her life.
This was more Reese’s area of expertise. His people skills were far superior to Finch’s, and he had the velvet voice of a hooded cobra, as deadly as it was mesmerizing.
Reese shifted under Finch’s hand. He turned his head slightly, as if to face her, but the motion aborted itself, his shoulders trembling with the cost of simply trying.
Carter’s expression flexed with indecision. It was more than Finch dared hope for: that she’d even consider letting them go. He held his breath, waiting, the rattle of Reese’s increasingly labored inhale-exhale electrifying in the strained silence.
She had to see how close to collapse Reese was. How badly hurt: his body clenched in on itself, his skin waxy with sweat and his shirt stained to the wet texture of blood. She had to see that, and it had to matter to her. It had to.
She decided. “Get him out of here,” she said, replacing her gun in its holster. She stepped to Reese’s side, took his weight from Finch then lifted her chin, ordering him off like some lackey to be assigned a lesser task. You drive. She guided Reese to the door. Manhandled him into position before changing her grip, easing him down into expensive leather.
Reese look up at her as she finished. He blinked, disoriented. Focused on her eyes and remembered. His lip curled. Contempt flickered in his eyes like fire.
Carter took a step back, not in fear, but in recognition. She glanced at Finch over the roof of the car between them. He watched her fight the power of her own doubt. Saw her struggling to follow through on what she’d started.
“Go,” she said finally. She closed the door, and he went.
***
The black sedan hip-hopped its way out of the parking structure’s driveway, pulled away from the curb and bolted up the causeway. It merged with northbound traffic the way an all-pro linebacker merges with a rookie quarterback. Midnight commuters yielded the right of way in a bitch-and-moan of horns and curses.
Finch glanced at the reflection in the rearview mirror. “John?” he said. “Can you hear me, John?”
Of course I can hear you, Harold, Reese thought. But he said nothing. His body was past the point of responding. Only his eyes were capable of speaking now. Only his eyes, capable of acknowledging Finch’s intense anxiety, of offering back a minimalist comfort in the form of a slow blink, a laborious tracking from nothing to something. He focused first on the reflection in the mirror, then past that reflection to the sea of firefly taillights blinking messages of intent in the darkness beyond.
“Stay with me, John,” Finch said. “We’re very close. I phoned ahead. They’re ready for you. Waiting.” It was a lie, but it was a good lie.
Because his eyes were on Reese rather than the road ahead, Finch didn’t notice how fast they came up on a slow-moving Audi, didn’t register the impending danger of rear-ending the dottering old beetle-bug at a speed that would have killed them all.
Reese licked his lips. Drew a slow, painful breath. And spoke.
“Eyes on the road, Harold,” he whispered.
Finch’s attention jumped back to the road. A man with slower reflexes would have been fucked, but Finch grew up on video games the way other boys did on sports. And he’d never stopped. His glory days were yesterday. His fast-twitch muscle response was excellent, as was his hand-eye coordination. He put them both to good use, swerving hard, sluing the black sedan around the Audi in a gut-wrenching S-curve of alternating momentum. Behind him, Reese groaned. The evasion worked, but it threw them dangerous close to a semi. They came within inches-within fractions of an inch-of sideswiping the cab before Finch regained control of the wheel, lined them out to a sustainable trajectory and eased them back into their own lane.
Clear of the brake-shrieking logjam he’d created in his wake, Finch shifted his gaze back to the reflection in the rearview mirror. Reese’s eyes were closed; his features, lax under waxy-white flesh sheened to a dull satin with sweat and pain.
“John,” Finch said.
It sounded like a benediction in the otherwise quiet car. Sounded like the last line of a good book, or the last word in an argument that had gone on too long. It sounded like the end to Reese; and he embraced it as such, falling away from the distant whisper of his handler’s voice into a muted fugue of peaceful oblivion.
***
Reese awoke three days later to an antiseptic unfamiliar.
He opened his eyes, squinted against the immolating bright of a white-walled room washed luminescent by the overpowering wattage of the mid-day sun. Cut into the far wall like a nook into a Parisian grotto, a window wearing curtains more fashionably suited to rest and relaxation than to recovery looked out over precisely manicured grounds: the very picture postcard of a wish-you-were-here-but-kind-of-glad-you’re-not resort.
The room itself was bigger than most penthouse suites. Other than a smattering of expensive furniture and half a dozen monitors of the medical persuasion, it was empty but for he and Finch.
Harold.
The smaller man sat like he was sitting shiva on a corpse, his body rigidly proper in a straight-back chair set back-to-wall across an impressive expanse of beautifully maintained hardwood floor. The chair itself looked uncomfortable-Harold looked uncomfortable-but even so, he was sleeping. Sleeping hard, by the look of it, his hands folded in his lap and his school teacher spectacles slipped low on his nose; his habitually pinched expression unguarded in a way Reese had never seen it.
He looked younger than he normally did. Less … antiseptically unfamiliar to the baser emotions that defined other men human. It wasn’t a particularly fair thought, nor a particularly flattering one, but it was accurate to the way Reese saw him: a man apart from his own humanity.
Harold Finch was unique. He was isolated, from himself as well as others. He was the exception that proved the rule. An island. A rock. Someone, something, wholly different from the rest of them. Not an automaton-far from an automaton, in fact-he was nonetheless a ferociously intellectual construct with too much money and a poor sense of personal style; mechanically precise enough in his daily rituals, in how he organized the world to suit his whims, that he came off as distant and aseptic … somehow cleaner than the rest of them, though not necessarily better (and certainly not happier) for it.
There were times-usually times that involved starlight and binoculars-that Reese wondered exactly where Finch stopped and his machine began. There were other times-usually times that involved alcohol and extreme exhaustion-that he pondered the possibility that Finch was the machine and the machine was Finch. And yet other times when he neither wondered nor pondered anything, but rather knew, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Finch was the most human man he’d ever known.
Pinocchio personified, Reese thought. And that made him smile, if not externally, then internally, where he often smiled at the very particularly peculiar way Harold Finch had of expressing his very particularly peculiar brand of humanity.
Because he was awake, and because he didn’t actively feel like he’d been set on fire and thrown off a cliff, Reese decided to push his luck. He shifted cautiously in the elevated bed, testing the boundaries of his pain meds until he found their perimeter. It was much closer to base camp than he would have liked. Much closer in the “take two steps and you’ve crossed it” vein. Any movement beyond blinking proved out a poor idea. Barring the masochistic pursuit of that poor idea, however, he felt somewhat better than he expected. His gut ached just enough to keep him from doing something stupid. His leg was numb enough to suspect a local piggyback on the systemic pain management protocols, and bandaged heavily enough to keep a squad of mummies in high style for months. There was an IV in his left arm and a central line taped to his collarbone. That seemed a little overkill to him, but who was he to judge? A double-pronged oxygen feed was playing mustache on his upper lip, but the absence of a stomach tube boded well on the subject of sepsis. There was a heart monitor tracking his potential for unexpected arrest in quiet beeps, and both a self-help Demerol pump and a machine whose purpose he didn’t recognize stood at the ready nearby.
He cleared his throat to see if it hurt (it did), then said, “Harold,” more as a test of vocal chord integrity than out of any true desire for company.
Finch opened his eyes. He straightened marginally-if that was even possible, straight as he was already sitting-and said the first stupid thing Reese had ever heard him say: “You’re awake.”
“Apparently,” Reese agreed, studying the room around him in a little more detail, noting the hardwood floor again and wondered absently how they managed to get bloodstains out of something like that. There were other amenities, too-a plethora of them, in fact, although most, while still elegant in their unaffected simplicity, were a bit more functional than hand-oiled hardwood buffed to a showroom shine.
A private facility he decided. Isolated. Pricey. Discrete. A paparazzi refuge for papered addicts on the mend, most likely. Or maybe a nuthouse for the silver spoon set. He’d seen an Agency “facility” once that would have put a five-star hotel to shame in a room-by-room comparison. This place had the same feel to it: secrecy at a price … that price being well beyond anything normal people would ever think to make in a lifetime, but still within the Pentagon’s annual budget for paperclips and pencil sharpeners.
“Nice digs,” Reese noted.
“You’re safe here,” Finch said. He struggled to a stand as he spoke. “I made certain of it.”
“I’d expect nothing less from you, Harold.”
Reese’s response seemed to please Finch. It drew him a step closer, but only a step. Standing in a wash of revealing sunlight, Finch hesitated, became awkward again. Uncertain, almost as if he’d realized some mistake made in having emerging from the shadows along the wall, having voluntarily stepped out of the fringes of what could be seen, but usually wasn’t, and into the open.
He stood where he was for several seconds, still and silent. Hiding in plain sight Finch had called it once. And he would know: he was a master of the art form … far more adept at vanishing in his own stillness than even a trained sniper like Reese.
“You’re doing well, the doctors tell me,” Finch announced when the silence became too much for him. “They’re very pleased with your progress.
“Good to know,” Reese allowed.
“They anticipate a full recovery,” Finch added.
“I’ll do my best not to disappoint them.”
“I’m sure you will.”
And the conversation stalled again. Hung between them like a shared burden neither of them particularly wanted to assume as his own.
“It will take time, of course,” Finch offered.
“It always does,” Reese agreed.
Another stall. In an effort to be fair, Reese took the lead this time, inclined his head at the chair in which Finch had been sitting and asked, “You spent the night?”
“Three nights,” Finch corrected. When Reese arched an eyebrow in surprise, he looked embarrassed to have said it. “I thought it only right to stay until you were out of danger,” he qualified.
Reese’s mouth twitched at the corner. “You were worried about me,” he said. He was teasing. And not. “That’s nice.”
“I’m your employer,” Finch returned levelly. “The paperwork requires me to be thorough.”
Reese smiled at that. “Not sure my insurance covers this place, Harold,” he said. “In fact, I think my medical coverage may have lapsed. Somewhere around 2008.”
“And you’re dead,” Finch observed dryly. “From what I understand, most policies consider that a pre-existing condition.”
“In my case, they’d be right,” Reese agreed.
The conversation stalled again, and the third time was the charm for Finch. “Well. Since you’re better now, I’ll leave you to your rest. Get well soon, Mister Reese … with the emphasis on soon.”
“So we’re back to Mister Reese now, are we?” Reese challenged.
Finch inclined his head just enough to concede the point. “John,” he corrected.
He turned to leave, was half way out the door before Reese stopped him by saying, simply, “Harold.”
Finch stopped. Turned, but not completely. “Yes?”
“Thank you for coming for me.”
Finch did turn then. He turned and stood in the doorway, his expression at once grateful and vaguely shamed. “I’m sorry I was late.”
“You came,” Reese answered. “That’s what matters. Although next time, when I say don’t risk it, don’t risk it.”
“I am not your employee, Mister Reese,” Finch reminded him.
The formality was intended this time. A joke of sorts. “For the best, I suppose," Reese said. "I'm not much for paperwork, and my benefits suck.”
Finch took a step forward. Re-entered the room as if he intended to cross it, but didn’t. “I am sorry I didn't see this coming,” he repeated.
"No way you could know. You're not psychic."
“But the predictive variables were there. I was well aware of Detective Carter's potential for ... cooperation with other law enforcement agencies, self initiated or otherwise. Cooperation that could prove detrimental to us, should she fail to fully disclose said cooperation. But I didn’t factor that into the equation. I should have, but I didn't, and that’s my error, John. My oversight. And you suffered for it. And for that, I am truly sorry.”
Reese’s voice was quiet when he spoke, but there was no mistaking the quality of his tone: all cobra, no velvet. "You're not the one who needs to be sorry," he said.
“Carter regrets it, too,” Finch said. "I saw as much in her eyes."
“Not yet,” Reese said. "But some day."
Finch took another step forward. “She let us leave. If she hadn’t, this would have turned out very differently.”
Reese’s expression didn’t so much as twitch when he said, “Probably not the smartest choice she made that night. When you sell someone out, you should probably go ahead and see it through to the end. Changing horses mid-stream can be a very dangerous thing to do.”
“I don’t think she knew they’d shoot you.”
“She would have, if she’d asked,” Reese said.
Another step. “She’s a cop. We both knew she’d arrest you if she got the chance.”
“She didn’t arrest me.” He left the rest unspoken.
“I think she thought she was doing the right thing,” Finch insisted. “Doing her duty. As you said, your old employers can be clever that way.”
“Don’t defend her, Harold,” Reese said, his voice dark. Warning.
“I’m not defending her. Carter betrayed you. I understand that. And you’re angry, as you have every right to be. But she also saved your life. That has to count for something.”
“Do you?” Reese asked.
Finch hesitated, thrown. “Do I what?”
“Understand?”
Finch stiffened. He drew his shoulders up, stood more rigidly than his normal rigid. “Do I understand betrayal, John?” he said quietly. Their gazes locked. Neither of them ceded ground by looking away. “Yes,” Finch said finally. “I think I do understand betrayal. You’re not the only one who’s suffered, John. You’re not the only one who’s been sold out by someone who thought they were doing the right thing at the time.”
“And how did you react, Harold? How did you respond to someone you trusted selling you out to your enemies?”
Finch looked away. Looked down. He stayed silent for a long moment, then said, “Fusco betrayed you, and your response to him was to tell him not to do it again.”
“Fusco’s an asset,” Reese returned sharply. “That’s what assets do. That’s what you pay them to do: betray people. That’s why you call them assets, not allies.”
“But Fusco didn’t betray the people you assigned him to,” Finch pointed out. “He betrayed you. He tried to kill you. Twice.”
“The second time was my fault. I pushed him too hard. Cornered him up without options. Took for granted that he’d trust me to protect him before I’d given him any reason to trust me to do much but jamb him up and walk away. It was a miscalculation on my part. A failure of ego. I didn’t think he’d have the spine to snap back, and I was enjoying punishing him for his sins too much to catch the signs when his instinct for self preservation jumped the fence.”
“So there were extenuating circumstances to consider,” Finch summarized.
“He could have killed me while I was neutralizing his butt buddies,” Reese said. “Or if not killed me, at least hurt me. But he didn’t. He didn’t even try. I gave him every reason to think I’d put him in a hole for what he’d done once I’d finished with his compadres, but he drew a line on his level of participation and stuck to it. He sold me out because I’d cornered him into doing it. But even with his life hanging in the balance, he wasn’t willing to help them kill me.”
“And that has to count for something,” Finch said.
Reese snorted. Shook his head. “Not the same thing, Harold,” he said.
“She made a mistake,” Finch said. “We all make mistakes, John.”
“I trusted her, and she betrayed me,” Reese returned quietly. “Which makes her mistake letting me go.”
“You’d rather she turn you over to Snow?”
“No. I like it when they make mistakes.”
“It wasn’t a mistake to save your life. It was a choice. She made a choice to let you go, John. And because she did, you’re still alive.”
“If she hadn’t betrayed me, my life wouldn’t have needed saving.”
Finch sighed. He shook his head. Looked away again and said nothing.
“I’m tired, Harold,” Reese said suddenly. And he was. Tired. Exhausted. He leaned back in his bed and closed his eyes. “I think maybe I should rest now.”
“As you wish.” Finch stepped away from the bed. “I’ll come again tomorrow, if you like.”
“Will you bring flowers?” Reese asked.
And this time, it was Finch who smiled. Really smiled, if not externally, then internally, where he often smiled at the cagily compassionate way John Reese had of expressing his very cagey, compassionate brand of humanity.
“If you like.”
“Daisies,” Reese said without opening his eyes.
“Interesting,” Finch noted. “I would have taken you for a dandelion man.”
Reese chuckled. Winced. Chuckled again. “Don’t do that. It hurts.”
“Until tomorrow,” Finch said. He walked away. Made it to the door again before Reese stopped him with a question.
“Why are you defending her, Harold?” he asked.
“Because I understand betrayal, John,” Finch answered quietly. “I understand its cost and its consequences from both sides of the mirror. And perhaps more importantly, I understand mistakes. I understand what it’s like to do something you can never make right. To think you’re justified in the choices you make, to think you’re right in the choices you make, only to learn that what you’ve done is not only wrong, it is untenable. It is unforgivable.”
“So no particular reason,” Reese said. His eyes were still closed. He spoke to the ceiling instead of Finch.
“No particular reason,” Finch agreed.
“Okay. Until tomorrow then.”
“Until tomorrow.” Finch said.
He stood in the doorway until Reese slept again. Stood there until long after the other man had slipped away to a healing darkness; then stood there for several minutes more, just to be sure.
Reese only spoke once in that time. Just short of sleep, he said, “Harold?”
And Finch answered him: “Yes.”
“Just checking,” Reese said. And he slept.
And Finch waited. Continued to wait. Waited until he was certain-absolutely certain-that Reese was asleep. Well and truly asleep. And he returned to the room. Sat in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. And waited.
*
So here ya go. A lil somethin-somethin from the show that owns me at the moment. I'm not entirely sold on the title, so if y'all see potential, feel free to pony up your suggestions. And as always, feedback and reaction, whether good or bad, is always welcome and appreciated.
Title: Until Tomorrow Then
Author: dodger_winslow
Pairing/Characters: Gen. Reese. Finch. Mentions of Carter and Fusco.
Rating: Um ... PG13 for mild to moderate potty mouth?
Summary: There were times-usually times that involved starlight and binoculars-that Reese wondered exactly where Finch stopped and his machine began. There were other times-usually times that involved alcohol and extreme exhaustion-that he pondered the possibility that Finch was the machine and the machine was Finch. And yet other times when he neither wondered nor pondered anything, but rather knew, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Finch was the most human man he’d ever known.
Warnings: Numbers Crunch. You gotta have seen Numbers Crunch. And also, it would probably help with the story, too.
Word Count: 6400ish
A/N: The episodic dialog, rather obviously, is not written by me.
Until Tomorrow Then
The bullet hit Reese hard and low, spun him around and put him down like a well-placed rabbit punch. He returned fire-more reflex than intention-not in the direction of the sniper, but rather in the direction of the man who controlled the sniper.
Snow.
Later, he’d say he spent the rest of his rounds taking out the SUV’s headlights. That he’d done what he did to nullify Snow’s advantage, give himself a better chance at survival by covering the field of play in darkness. But the truth is, that’s not the truth.
The truth is, were he to tell the truth, which he rarely did: he was shooting at Carter.
He was shooting at Carter-shooting at Detective Carter-as she stood by The Agency SUV and looked at him like he was some kind of first-class fool not to have seen this coming.
And she was right. He should have seen it coming. But he didn’t, so he expended three of his last four rounds looking for payback. Wasting precious ammo shooting at treacherous shadows until, through a combination of poor marksmanship and fortunate happenstance, one of those bullets smashed the last remaining headlight, creating darkness out of light and opening the door to options he hadn’t, to that point in time, actually considered.
Options like retreat.
It was somewhere around then-when, exactly, he wasn’t sure; time could be a tricky thing to track once you’ve been shot and while someone is still shooting at you; it stalls and jumps and generally spins in, on, and around itself until what happened when, or in what order, or before, or after, becomes one big muddle of “yeah, so that happened” and nothing else really matters-that the second bullet hit him.
Hit him hard, drilling into the meat of his thigh until it hit bone.
Hit but didn’t break, he noted almost incidentally. Hit the femur but didn’t snap it like a twig, or blow a hole out the back of his leg the size of a small gopher, or disintegrate everything between hip and knee into one big mash of blood and bone paste. So all things considered, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, if for no other reason than because it didn’t cripple him in any of the ways it could have, had it been a different bullet. A different load, a different jacket. A different weapon. A different shooter.
He’d like to have considered all that a good piece of bad luck (or a bad piece of good luck), but he knew better. Knew the worst that could happen already had. Not that he was a pessimist so much as he was a realist. Because really. What use would he be to them crippled? What use would he be to them dead? If Snow had wanted him either, he’d be both. So since he wasn’t, it seemed only logical to assume luck didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
And it didn’t.
But for Reese’s poor marksmanship and Snow’s failure to protect the integrity of his sniper’s field of vision, this was a textbook, Agency hard-target takedown. A core shot first. Instant incapacitation. Call it the shock-and-awe of high-risk control tactics: when done properly, even a volatile target could be neutralized with minimal risk of high-casualty retaliation.
And John Reese was nothing if not a volatile target.
But he was also evidently a high value one … high enough value that The Agency wasn’t ready to write him off just yet. They’d spent a lot of money making Reese the man he used to be, and they wanted him back, not dead, which made Snow’s mission one of retrieval, not execution.
Not entirely unexpected, given how things had gone down. After all, Agency snipers weren’t trained to miss their targets: not by inches, and certainly not by yards.
The shooter, whoever he was, hit exactly what he was aiming for. He placed the bullet carefully-missed the stomach, but hit the abdominal cavity-to minimize the risk of accidental exsanguination while insuring against the possibility of extended flight. Even a ghost like Reese couldn’t vanish off the grid with a bullet lodged in his gut, and in the realm of effective penalty clauses for failure to comply with an invitation to come in from the cold, sepsis was in the top two.
Possibly the top one.
So core shot first. Center mass. Then once the target is down, once he’s cut off from his long term escape options, an extremity shot makes short work of more immediate forms of resistance. A leg is optimum-limits the target’s mobility in the short run, literally-but a shoulder will do in a pinch. The important thing is to introduce pain to the biological insult of shock. Introduce a lot of pain. Introduce an overwhelming amount of pain. And introduce it in such a way as to invalidate the survival advantage of the target’s biological defenses fronting a second, interest-deferred, fight-or-flight loan courtesy of his already over-drawn resources.
Live now, pay later: it was a biological investment strategy that worked to the advantage of the prey, not the predator. It was why a man could lose a leg to a shark and never know he was one foot short of a pair until he made landfall; why a soldier could take three bullets center mass and still carry a buddy to safety before keeling over himself.
But while the delay-pay plan of shock-trauma gave prey the decided advantage in a sprint-off, a smart predator could nullify that advantage by optimizing his attack strategy. Deliver the more potentially lethal blow first. Then, once the body’s instinctive “let’s ignore this for now” vouchers were spent, deliver a second, less catastrophic but more painful blow to a non-lethal location. Constitutionally incapable of re-allocating resources from a more serious wound to a lesser one, the prey’s survival instincts now work against him, rendering the shock-trauma advantage moot and making pain not only a player, but the player. The trump card. The deciding factor in who lives and who dies-or who escapes and who doesn’t-based not on how badly they are hurt, but rather on how much they hurt.
Which is why pain matters, and how a smart predator uses pain to his advantage to execute a hard-target takedown of a man no one in his right mind would classify as “prey.”
And also why Reese absorbed the sniper’s first bullet with relatively little immediate response beyond falling but nearly blacked out when the second bullet slammed into his thigh and lit him up from the inside out, turning his nerves to ash and rattling his bones in his skin like loose coins in an tin can. He swore vehemently, fired off one more shot in the direction of Carter and hit the SUV’s headlight instead.
Darkness fell, heretofore unconsidered opportunities presented themselves for consideration, and Reese took advantage of both. He clawed his way to his feet, scramble-lurched across the roof parking lot with the heel of one hand shoved against a shirt already sticky with blood. Training and adrenaline gave him an edge over pain that would have kept a less motivated man down. Instinct and experience extracted details of the surrounding landscape from his subconscious and used them to build a mental map of potential exits.
He found the door to the roof-access stairwell in the East corner by touch. Eased it open just enough to slip through, then pulled it closed behind him. The stairwell was starkly industrial. Grey cinderblock walls and painted metal railings. The fire ax that should have been stored on the uppermost landing was gone. Stolen, maybe. There was no fire hose either, only a rusting metal wheel on which it was once stored, and that was bolted down, immovable and unhelpful. Leaning into the wall for balance, Reese considered the problem of how to block the door. How to jamb it shut with nothing but good looks and kind words.
He considered it for several seconds longer than too long. Stymied. Disoriented. Sweating and freezing at the same time. Breathing. His gut ached like a bad tooth, but it was manageable. His leg, on the other hand, was napalm and fire from knee to hip. He couldn’t think through the pain. Couldn’t think around it. Couldn’t think over it.
Couldn’t think period.
It occurred to him with the startling clarity of a spiritual epiphany that, in his current condition, he possessed neither the physical nor mental resources to get creative. The best course of action, the only course of action, was the most direct one. Move. So he moved. Pushed off the wall, staggered to the stairs and grabbed for the handrail.
He had to navigate each step carefully. Place his feet with specific precision before shifting his weight to follow. His progress was slow and painful, but at least it was progress. And the farther he got from the roof the better. With any luck, they were still searching the lot, clearing it car by car, assuming he’d corner up there like a wounded animal, stick to the shadows, put his back to a defensible position and dig in for the duration. Logistically speaking, it made more sense to make a stand, try to pick them off one by one in the darkness, than it did to make a run for it on a bad leg with a hole in his gut.
Reese prided himself on being unpredictable in that regard. Saved his ass more than once that his natural instinct was to do the opposite of whatever might be logically expected.
But unpredictability only went so far. Sooner or later, they’d clear the roof, start working their way down the structure itself. Snow’s instinct would be to think he’d stick to the lots, use the parked cars for cover, which is why he was in the stairwell, doing exactly the opposite. But the search would spread to the stairwells eventually, and once it did, his six became vulnerable to attrition at the whim of his pursuers.
A bullet to the back, or from above, and it was over. Without question, a piss-poor tactical position to be in, but he wasn’t wholly defenseless. He still had the nine mil, and he had the advantage of experience.
Snow had three years tenure on him with The Agency and a Ph.D. in mind games, but Reese had a masters degree in survival, and he’d earned it the hard way: on the front lines, engaging the enemy in urban warfare. Crumbling stairwells constituted a home field advantage for him, and being shot at and shooting back was, more often than not, his idea of a good time.
And it wasn’t his first rodeo, either, being ambushed by friendly fire to the end of engaging in a game of hide-and-seek with potentially lethal consequences. It wasn’t even his first experience with being ambushed by a woman he’d thought he could trust, only to find out he couldn’t.
A quiet beep startled Reese out of his own head. Jarred him back to reality from the bitter ruminations of betrayals past.
Finch, he thought. And that thought was like a whisper of hope in the darkness. He lifted a hand to his ear with an effort. Touched the activation node on his earbud and said, “Hey, Harold.”
“John.” Finch’s voice was terse. Anxious. “I’ve been trying to call you.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been kinda busy.”
“Where are you?” Finch demanded. It was the obvious question … obvious from anyone who hadn’t created a super secret spy machine to render that very question irrelevant for the vast majority of the country’s population.
“In a parking structure,” Reese said. He took a moment to catch his breath, then added, “It’s not looking good.”
He meant it more as a mission update than a request for backup. A head’s up to Finch that the day had gone from feel-good victory to pear-shaped FUBAR in less than fifteen minutes flat, and because it had, things weren’t likely to end any way except badly. And he needed to warn Finch about Carter, too. Warn him that they couldn’t trust her; that he’d been a first class fool to ever think they could.
But Finch beat him to the punch. “Carter sold you out,” he announced. “They got to her.”
Reese smiled in spite of himself. Good ole Finch. Always on the ball, even in retrospect. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice coarse with the effort it was becoming to speak. “They’re clever like that.”
And it was true. They were clever. And Carter was vulnerable.
She wasn’t an operative; she was a cop. A good cop. A clean cop. An arbiter of societal compliance as much as Reese was an arbiter of societal non-compliance. On a very basic level, they were flip sides of the same coin, believers in many of the same things despite the obvious differences in how they pursued those beliefs.
Honor. Patriotism. Duty. And the greatest of these is Duty.
Some people did the job; some people lived it. She was the latter, as he had once been, and The Agency no doubt used that against her the same way they’d used it against him.
“I wanted to say thank you, Harold,” Reese said suddenly. “You gave me a second chance.”
“It’s not over, John,” Finch returned. “I’m close. Just get to the ground floor.”
“No,” Reese said. “You stay away. Don’t risk it.”
And Finch hung up on him, saying nothing.
***
He knew before he saw the car that Finch was coming for him. Knew, before he staggered through the street-level fire door and grabbed a guard rail to keep from falling, his body failing him closer to collapse with every step but his will diving him onward, out into the darkness in search of a man he’d told to leave him, that Finch was coming.
It’s good to see you’re still alive, Snow had told him on the parking structure’s roof. I’m surprised to see you in New York though. Thought you’d get yourself a cabin in the woods somewhere. Montana maybe.
It was Snow’s way of telling him they’d found his fallback position. That they’d tracked his safe house down even though he’d bought the property through enough dummy corporations and false fronts to mitigate his paper trail to little more than breadcrumbs in the ether. But they’d found it nonetheless, and Snow wanted to make sure he knew it. Make sure he knew he was alone in the world, with nothing and no one left to run to, and no safe haven waiting at the end of the road for him if he tried.
But Snow was wrong. The cabin in Montana wasn’t his fallback plan any more. Harold Finch was his fallback plan now. And Harold Finch was coming for him.
***
Finch arrived in a luxury four-door that cost more than most men make in a year. He slammed the car over speed bumps and curbs to get close, indifferent to the damage he did to both, focused only on the man staggering through the parking garage’s fire door, body hunched in pain, skin as white as ice and eyes searching the darkness with the desperate faith of a man who had nowhere left to run.
“John,” Finch murmured.
Reese looked up. Focused on him as if he could see right through the reflective film on the car’s tinted windows. It was impossible, of course, but Reese’s eyes said differently. They said he could see what others couldn’t, what others didn’t, and Harold Finch believed it.
He opened the car door, struggled awkwardly to his feet and started for Reese even as Reese, in turn, started for him.
***
Finch arrived on the scene like Clint Eastwood in a city bus. His sleek, black, luxury sedan near foundered itself on half a dozen speed deterrents negotiated at full speed in the Mexican jumping bean gait of a tricked-out lowrider. The car was still hopping some when it slammed to a halt a hard throw from where Reese stood, watching the show in a shocky stun.
Finch surprised him occasion. Finch amazed him as a matter of course.
Reese let go of the bloody railing to which he clung, pushed out into the distance between them with the determined faith of a man down to his last chamber in a game of Russian roulette.
Finch threw the sedan’s door open. Struggled to free himself from the vehicle’s not-standard, ultra-fine deluxe, not-as-adjustable-as-it-claims, superbucket ass-cradling leather seat; then fought his way to his feet, lurched into motion and headed straight for Reese with the gimping half-run of a broken toy with rust for joints, his expression set in the rigid lines and harsh angles of ferocious determination, his body wracked awkward by the speed at which he was moving.
When Finch got close, Reese reached out for him, felt an irrational rush of gratitude as the smaller man grabbed his wrist and shoved a shoulder up under his arm. “I’ve got you, John,” Finch said, taking the brunt of Reese’s weight onto his own stiff, off-kilter frame as he spoke. Then, “We have to go.” He placed a hand on Reese’s back, laid it flat between the shoulder blades and used it for both stability and leverage to pressure their combined weight into motion.
Reese moved slowly, haltingly, huffing in pain and growing whiter by the step. Finch kept them moving in a productive direction, took as much of the burden on as he was able. They’d nearly made it to the car when the stairwell door slammed open, and Carter stepped into the open, shouting, “Hold it!” in a tone that promised lethal consequences for failure to comply.
They stopped. Finch met her gaze across the hunch of Reese’s compromised posture, saw her recognize him, saw her logical mind reject the incongruity of her recognition. As they say, who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes? It took a moment, but in the end, her lying eyes won.
“You,” she said.
And Finch waited, unsure how to respond to that. Unsure whether or not to respond at all. He had no idea what to say. No inkling how to persuade a woman who’d betrayed them to such catastrophic consequences to change her mind now, to lower her gun and let them walk away, leaving her to explain their escape to the strangers she’d chosen over men who saved her life.
This was more Reese’s area of expertise. His people skills were far superior to Finch’s, and he had the velvet voice of a hooded cobra, as deadly as it was mesmerizing.
Reese shifted under Finch’s hand. He turned his head slightly, as if to face her, but the motion aborted itself, his shoulders trembling with the cost of simply trying.
Carter’s expression flexed with indecision. It was more than Finch dared hope for: that she’d even consider letting them go. He held his breath, waiting, the rattle of Reese’s increasingly labored inhale-exhale electrifying in the strained silence.
She had to see how close to collapse Reese was. How badly hurt: his body clenched in on itself, his skin waxy with sweat and his shirt stained to the wet texture of blood. She had to see that, and it had to matter to her. It had to.
She decided. “Get him out of here,” she said, replacing her gun in its holster. She stepped to Reese’s side, took his weight from Finch then lifted her chin, ordering him off like some lackey to be assigned a lesser task. You drive. She guided Reese to the door. Manhandled him into position before changing her grip, easing him down into expensive leather.
Reese look up at her as she finished. He blinked, disoriented. Focused on her eyes and remembered. His lip curled. Contempt flickered in his eyes like fire.
Carter took a step back, not in fear, but in recognition. She glanced at Finch over the roof of the car between them. He watched her fight the power of her own doubt. Saw her struggling to follow through on what she’d started.
“Go,” she said finally. She closed the door, and he went.
***
The black sedan hip-hopped its way out of the parking structure’s driveway, pulled away from the curb and bolted up the causeway. It merged with northbound traffic the way an all-pro linebacker merges with a rookie quarterback. Midnight commuters yielded the right of way in a bitch-and-moan of horns and curses.
Finch glanced at the reflection in the rearview mirror. “John?” he said. “Can you hear me, John?”
Of course I can hear you, Harold, Reese thought. But he said nothing. His body was past the point of responding. Only his eyes were capable of speaking now. Only his eyes, capable of acknowledging Finch’s intense anxiety, of offering back a minimalist comfort in the form of a slow blink, a laborious tracking from nothing to something. He focused first on the reflection in the mirror, then past that reflection to the sea of firefly taillights blinking messages of intent in the darkness beyond.
“Stay with me, John,” Finch said. “We’re very close. I phoned ahead. They’re ready for you. Waiting.” It was a lie, but it was a good lie.
Because his eyes were on Reese rather than the road ahead, Finch didn’t notice how fast they came up on a slow-moving Audi, didn’t register the impending danger of rear-ending the dottering old beetle-bug at a speed that would have killed them all.
Reese licked his lips. Drew a slow, painful breath. And spoke.
“Eyes on the road, Harold,” he whispered.
Finch’s attention jumped back to the road. A man with slower reflexes would have been fucked, but Finch grew up on video games the way other boys did on sports. And he’d never stopped. His glory days were yesterday. His fast-twitch muscle response was excellent, as was his hand-eye coordination. He put them both to good use, swerving hard, sluing the black sedan around the Audi in a gut-wrenching S-curve of alternating momentum. Behind him, Reese groaned. The evasion worked, but it threw them dangerous close to a semi. They came within inches-within fractions of an inch-of sideswiping the cab before Finch regained control of the wheel, lined them out to a sustainable trajectory and eased them back into their own lane.
Clear of the brake-shrieking logjam he’d created in his wake, Finch shifted his gaze back to the reflection in the rearview mirror. Reese’s eyes were closed; his features, lax under waxy-white flesh sheened to a dull satin with sweat and pain.
“John,” Finch said.
It sounded like a benediction in the otherwise quiet car. Sounded like the last line of a good book, or the last word in an argument that had gone on too long. It sounded like the end to Reese; and he embraced it as such, falling away from the distant whisper of his handler’s voice into a muted fugue of peaceful oblivion.
***
Reese awoke three days later to an antiseptic unfamiliar.
He opened his eyes, squinted against the immolating bright of a white-walled room washed luminescent by the overpowering wattage of the mid-day sun. Cut into the far wall like a nook into a Parisian grotto, a window wearing curtains more fashionably suited to rest and relaxation than to recovery looked out over precisely manicured grounds: the very picture postcard of a wish-you-were-here-but-kind-of-glad-you’re-not resort.
The room itself was bigger than most penthouse suites. Other than a smattering of expensive furniture and half a dozen monitors of the medical persuasion, it was empty but for he and Finch.
Harold.
The smaller man sat like he was sitting shiva on a corpse, his body rigidly proper in a straight-back chair set back-to-wall across an impressive expanse of beautifully maintained hardwood floor. The chair itself looked uncomfortable-Harold looked uncomfortable-but even so, he was sleeping. Sleeping hard, by the look of it, his hands folded in his lap and his school teacher spectacles slipped low on his nose; his habitually pinched expression unguarded in a way Reese had never seen it.
He looked younger than he normally did. Less … antiseptically unfamiliar to the baser emotions that defined other men human. It wasn’t a particularly fair thought, nor a particularly flattering one, but it was accurate to the way Reese saw him: a man apart from his own humanity.
Harold Finch was unique. He was isolated, from himself as well as others. He was the exception that proved the rule. An island. A rock. Someone, something, wholly different from the rest of them. Not an automaton-far from an automaton, in fact-he was nonetheless a ferociously intellectual construct with too much money and a poor sense of personal style; mechanically precise enough in his daily rituals, in how he organized the world to suit his whims, that he came off as distant and aseptic … somehow cleaner than the rest of them, though not necessarily better (and certainly not happier) for it.
There were times-usually times that involved starlight and binoculars-that Reese wondered exactly where Finch stopped and his machine began. There were other times-usually times that involved alcohol and extreme exhaustion-that he pondered the possibility that Finch was the machine and the machine was Finch. And yet other times when he neither wondered nor pondered anything, but rather knew, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Finch was the most human man he’d ever known.
Pinocchio personified, Reese thought. And that made him smile, if not externally, then internally, where he often smiled at the very particularly peculiar way Harold Finch had of expressing his very particularly peculiar brand of humanity.
Because he was awake, and because he didn’t actively feel like he’d been set on fire and thrown off a cliff, Reese decided to push his luck. He shifted cautiously in the elevated bed, testing the boundaries of his pain meds until he found their perimeter. It was much closer to base camp than he would have liked. Much closer in the “take two steps and you’ve crossed it” vein. Any movement beyond blinking proved out a poor idea. Barring the masochistic pursuit of that poor idea, however, he felt somewhat better than he expected. His gut ached just enough to keep him from doing something stupid. His leg was numb enough to suspect a local piggyback on the systemic pain management protocols, and bandaged heavily enough to keep a squad of mummies in high style for months. There was an IV in his left arm and a central line taped to his collarbone. That seemed a little overkill to him, but who was he to judge? A double-pronged oxygen feed was playing mustache on his upper lip, but the absence of a stomach tube boded well on the subject of sepsis. There was a heart monitor tracking his potential for unexpected arrest in quiet beeps, and both a self-help Demerol pump and a machine whose purpose he didn’t recognize stood at the ready nearby.
He cleared his throat to see if it hurt (it did), then said, “Harold,” more as a test of vocal chord integrity than out of any true desire for company.
Finch opened his eyes. He straightened marginally-if that was even possible, straight as he was already sitting-and said the first stupid thing Reese had ever heard him say: “You’re awake.”
“Apparently,” Reese agreed, studying the room around him in a little more detail, noting the hardwood floor again and wondered absently how they managed to get bloodstains out of something like that. There were other amenities, too-a plethora of them, in fact, although most, while still elegant in their unaffected simplicity, were a bit more functional than hand-oiled hardwood buffed to a showroom shine.
A private facility he decided. Isolated. Pricey. Discrete. A paparazzi refuge for papered addicts on the mend, most likely. Or maybe a nuthouse for the silver spoon set. He’d seen an Agency “facility” once that would have put a five-star hotel to shame in a room-by-room comparison. This place had the same feel to it: secrecy at a price … that price being well beyond anything normal people would ever think to make in a lifetime, but still within the Pentagon’s annual budget for paperclips and pencil sharpeners.
“Nice digs,” Reese noted.
“You’re safe here,” Finch said. He struggled to a stand as he spoke. “I made certain of it.”
“I’d expect nothing less from you, Harold.”
Reese’s response seemed to please Finch. It drew him a step closer, but only a step. Standing in a wash of revealing sunlight, Finch hesitated, became awkward again. Uncertain, almost as if he’d realized some mistake made in having emerging from the shadows along the wall, having voluntarily stepped out of the fringes of what could be seen, but usually wasn’t, and into the open.
He stood where he was for several seconds, still and silent. Hiding in plain sight Finch had called it once. And he would know: he was a master of the art form … far more adept at vanishing in his own stillness than even a trained sniper like Reese.
“You’re doing well, the doctors tell me,” Finch announced when the silence became too much for him. “They’re very pleased with your progress.
“Good to know,” Reese allowed.
“They anticipate a full recovery,” Finch added.
“I’ll do my best not to disappoint them.”
“I’m sure you will.”
And the conversation stalled again. Hung between them like a shared burden neither of them particularly wanted to assume as his own.
“It will take time, of course,” Finch offered.
“It always does,” Reese agreed.
Another stall. In an effort to be fair, Reese took the lead this time, inclined his head at the chair in which Finch had been sitting and asked, “You spent the night?”
“Three nights,” Finch corrected. When Reese arched an eyebrow in surprise, he looked embarrassed to have said it. “I thought it only right to stay until you were out of danger,” he qualified.
Reese’s mouth twitched at the corner. “You were worried about me,” he said. He was teasing. And not. “That’s nice.”
“I’m your employer,” Finch returned levelly. “The paperwork requires me to be thorough.”
Reese smiled at that. “Not sure my insurance covers this place, Harold,” he said. “In fact, I think my medical coverage may have lapsed. Somewhere around 2008.”
“And you’re dead,” Finch observed dryly. “From what I understand, most policies consider that a pre-existing condition.”
“In my case, they’d be right,” Reese agreed.
The conversation stalled again, and the third time was the charm for Finch. “Well. Since you’re better now, I’ll leave you to your rest. Get well soon, Mister Reese … with the emphasis on soon.”
“So we’re back to Mister Reese now, are we?” Reese challenged.
Finch inclined his head just enough to concede the point. “John,” he corrected.
He turned to leave, was half way out the door before Reese stopped him by saying, simply, “Harold.”
Finch stopped. Turned, but not completely. “Yes?”
“Thank you for coming for me.”
Finch did turn then. He turned and stood in the doorway, his expression at once grateful and vaguely shamed. “I’m sorry I was late.”
“You came,” Reese answered. “That’s what matters. Although next time, when I say don’t risk it, don’t risk it.”
“I am not your employee, Mister Reese,” Finch reminded him.
The formality was intended this time. A joke of sorts. “For the best, I suppose," Reese said. "I'm not much for paperwork, and my benefits suck.”
Finch took a step forward. Re-entered the room as if he intended to cross it, but didn’t. “I am sorry I didn't see this coming,” he repeated.
"No way you could know. You're not psychic."
“But the predictive variables were there. I was well aware of Detective Carter's potential for ... cooperation with other law enforcement agencies, self initiated or otherwise. Cooperation that could prove detrimental to us, should she fail to fully disclose said cooperation. But I didn’t factor that into the equation. I should have, but I didn't, and that’s my error, John. My oversight. And you suffered for it. And for that, I am truly sorry.”
Reese’s voice was quiet when he spoke, but there was no mistaking the quality of his tone: all cobra, no velvet. "You're not the one who needs to be sorry," he said.
“Carter regrets it, too,” Finch said. "I saw as much in her eyes."
“Not yet,” Reese said. "But some day."
Finch took another step forward. “She let us leave. If she hadn’t, this would have turned out very differently.”
Reese’s expression didn’t so much as twitch when he said, “Probably not the smartest choice she made that night. When you sell someone out, you should probably go ahead and see it through to the end. Changing horses mid-stream can be a very dangerous thing to do.”
“I don’t think she knew they’d shoot you.”
“She would have, if she’d asked,” Reese said.
Another step. “She’s a cop. We both knew she’d arrest you if she got the chance.”
“She didn’t arrest me.” He left the rest unspoken.
“I think she thought she was doing the right thing,” Finch insisted. “Doing her duty. As you said, your old employers can be clever that way.”
“Don’t defend her, Harold,” Reese said, his voice dark. Warning.
“I’m not defending her. Carter betrayed you. I understand that. And you’re angry, as you have every right to be. But she also saved your life. That has to count for something.”
“Do you?” Reese asked.
Finch hesitated, thrown. “Do I what?”
“Understand?”
Finch stiffened. He drew his shoulders up, stood more rigidly than his normal rigid. “Do I understand betrayal, John?” he said quietly. Their gazes locked. Neither of them ceded ground by looking away. “Yes,” Finch said finally. “I think I do understand betrayal. You’re not the only one who’s suffered, John. You’re not the only one who’s been sold out by someone who thought they were doing the right thing at the time.”
“And how did you react, Harold? How did you respond to someone you trusted selling you out to your enemies?”
Finch looked away. Looked down. He stayed silent for a long moment, then said, “Fusco betrayed you, and your response to him was to tell him not to do it again.”
“Fusco’s an asset,” Reese returned sharply. “That’s what assets do. That’s what you pay them to do: betray people. That’s why you call them assets, not allies.”
“But Fusco didn’t betray the people you assigned him to,” Finch pointed out. “He betrayed you. He tried to kill you. Twice.”
“The second time was my fault. I pushed him too hard. Cornered him up without options. Took for granted that he’d trust me to protect him before I’d given him any reason to trust me to do much but jamb him up and walk away. It was a miscalculation on my part. A failure of ego. I didn’t think he’d have the spine to snap back, and I was enjoying punishing him for his sins too much to catch the signs when his instinct for self preservation jumped the fence.”
“So there were extenuating circumstances to consider,” Finch summarized.
“He could have killed me while I was neutralizing his butt buddies,” Reese said. “Or if not killed me, at least hurt me. But he didn’t. He didn’t even try. I gave him every reason to think I’d put him in a hole for what he’d done once I’d finished with his compadres, but he drew a line on his level of participation and stuck to it. He sold me out because I’d cornered him into doing it. But even with his life hanging in the balance, he wasn’t willing to help them kill me.”
“And that has to count for something,” Finch said.
Reese snorted. Shook his head. “Not the same thing, Harold,” he said.
“She made a mistake,” Finch said. “We all make mistakes, John.”
“I trusted her, and she betrayed me,” Reese returned quietly. “Which makes her mistake letting me go.”
“You’d rather she turn you over to Snow?”
“No. I like it when they make mistakes.”
“It wasn’t a mistake to save your life. It was a choice. She made a choice to let you go, John. And because she did, you’re still alive.”
“If she hadn’t betrayed me, my life wouldn’t have needed saving.”
Finch sighed. He shook his head. Looked away again and said nothing.
“I’m tired, Harold,” Reese said suddenly. And he was. Tired. Exhausted. He leaned back in his bed and closed his eyes. “I think maybe I should rest now.”
“As you wish.” Finch stepped away from the bed. “I’ll come again tomorrow, if you like.”
“Will you bring flowers?” Reese asked.
And this time, it was Finch who smiled. Really smiled, if not externally, then internally, where he often smiled at the cagily compassionate way John Reese had of expressing his very cagey, compassionate brand of humanity.
“If you like.”
“Daisies,” Reese said without opening his eyes.
“Interesting,” Finch noted. “I would have taken you for a dandelion man.”
Reese chuckled. Winced. Chuckled again. “Don’t do that. It hurts.”
“Until tomorrow,” Finch said. He walked away. Made it to the door again before Reese stopped him with a question.
“Why are you defending her, Harold?” he asked.
“Because I understand betrayal, John,” Finch answered quietly. “I understand its cost and its consequences from both sides of the mirror. And perhaps more importantly, I understand mistakes. I understand what it’s like to do something you can never make right. To think you’re justified in the choices you make, to think you’re right in the choices you make, only to learn that what you’ve done is not only wrong, it is untenable. It is unforgivable.”
“So no particular reason,” Reese said. His eyes were still closed. He spoke to the ceiling instead of Finch.
“No particular reason,” Finch agreed.
“Okay. Until tomorrow then.”
“Until tomorrow.” Finch said.
He stood in the doorway until Reese slept again. Stood there until long after the other man had slipped away to a healing darkness; then stood there for several minutes more, just to be sure.
Reese only spoke once in that time. Just short of sleep, he said, “Harold?”
And Finch answered him: “Yes.”
“Just checking,” Reese said. And he slept.
And Finch waited. Continued to wait. Waited until he was certain-absolutely certain-that Reese was asleep. Well and truly asleep. And he returned to the room. Sat in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. And waited.
*