Person of Interest Fic: Stand-down
Title: Stand-down
Author: radioshack84
Characters: Reese, Finch
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for 1x08
Word Count: ~7,000
Summary: Being too worn out to shake like a leaf for an hour and vomit bile into a toilet stained with much worse didn’t make his nerves any less raw, and talking never helped, but John owed his friend at least an attempt. (Whumpy, extended-ending to 1x08 - "Foe".)
“You need to know this is right? I’ll tell you one last time before it gets complicated. This is right. The threat is real. Your country needs you...one last thing, you don’t have any old friends. You see them, you don’t know them. We’re walking in the dark here, understand?”
...
“They said, ‘Your country needs you.’ For my country, I left my country and killed wherever they sent me...you are a soldier, like me. They took everything I had, but part of me survived.”
Reese left Ulrich Kohl’s body slumped on the park bench. He secured his weapon, Kohl’s too. He did a quick visual inspection of the scene. By the time the police arrived to misidentify the body as that of Wallace Negel he was gone, moving swiftly out of the park and into the night with the words of an ex-CIA partner and an ex-Stasi operative rattling around in his head like a bag of spent shell-casings.
Kohl was right: he was a soldier, even now. The military and the CIA had broken him, scraped out his humanity, his individuality, and shoved their own ideals and directives back in, all in the name of ‘the greater good’. His country had needed him, all right. Needed him to commit murders they couldn’t officially sanction, needed him to endure torture to avoid giving up secrets that might shed light on those and other atrocities, and he’d done it all willingly enough, if not always quietly. Stanton had constantly griped about his agonizing over right and wrong, but when he’d been given the opportunity to leave he’d stuck around. At the time, he supposed he’d needed a little pain in his life. The thing he hadn’t counted on was building a tolerance to that pain, a tolerance that came to include the pain he inflicted on others.
By the time he’d realized the danger of the numbness he was existing in, it had been too late. He’d nearly lost his life getting away, Jess had lost hers, and he’d wound up here, building a new tolerance, a new kind of numb through a bottle of booze, trying to finish the job the CIA had started. It would have worked, too, but was interrupted by a different job and an odd man with a computer system who needed him. Sometimes that need still involved killing, sometimes enduring torture. The difference was that he was no longer quite so numb to it all.
He was deeply troubled that he'd had to shoot Kohl, especially in front of the man's daughter, but he’d been left with little choice. Anja and Kohl’s other teammates shouldn’t have given him up to save themselves, but that didn’t mean they deserved to die, either. A replay of the scene in the park joined Kohl's and Stanton’s monologues in his mind, and Reese could see the horrified look on Marie’s face, on Anja’s, feel the trigger beneath his finger, the recoil from the shot. He winced in memory of the pain the gun’s jolt had caused and reached to massage his right arm. Kohl had known his craft well. Reese’s elbow was on fire, the discomfort radiating down to his fingertips and all the way up into his shoulder and neck, just as Ulrich had promised.
As an added bonus, the headache that had been present when he'd woken up tied to the chair had never had a chance to abate. With the help of the interrogation it was fully into migraine status now, and the streetlights felt like needles themselves, stabbing at his optic nerves until he had to squint in order to see. Reese headed for the library because it was close, and used the side entrance even though Finch wouldn’t approve--it didn’t provide enough cover.
John was inclined to agree, but no one was around to see him and a belated lecture seemed preferable to the immediate one he was sure to receive if he came in the usual way. He still wasn’t accustomed to having someone express concern over his well-being--it was ingrained behavior. He walked in the dark, he fended for himself. Alone was sanctuary, security. No one to betray him, no one to get killed because they’d gotten too close to him and the agendas of his ever-present Agency shadows. Alone was instinct, still strong enough in the face of his present distress to overcome any subconscious desire he may have had for someone to complain to about his shitty day. He knew Harold was somewhere in the building, but knowing was enough. He wouldn't bother him.
At least the library hallway was cool and dim, Reese reflected as he walked through it in a daze. It served to calm his headache slightly, and he managed to gather enough energy to make it up the back staircase. He discarded his suit jacket haphazardly on the first piece of furniture he came to--maybe it was a chair, maybe not--and ducked into a pitch black alcove. He couldn’t see anything inside, but that was just as well. His arm, neck, and head were killing him and he was dizzy and growing nauseous from the pain. Three unsteady steps brought him to the couch he’d obtained a few weeks earlier, and he carefully curled his body onto it. He’d rest for a few minutes and then swipe some pain pills from the first aid kit in the bathroom across the hall. Finch could lecture him in the morning.
-----
Finch frowned at the small monitor inside the server rack, puzzled. The system had been throwing errors for the past half hour, indicating imminent RAID failure across multiple hard disks, but the diagnostics he'd performed refuted that evidence. Still, he'd always preferred added redundancy to data loss and he exited the room, making his way to where he stored his collection of replacement hardware. He selected several new hard drives as well as a package of data cables and was soon on his way back.
Harold couldn't say why, but as he came up on one of the corridor junctions he hesitated. The area was mostly in shadow due to the late hour so it wasn't anything that he could make out visually, but something seemed off. He moved a few feet down the perpendicular hallway, allowing his eyes to adjust to the lower light, and noticed a familiar suit jacket strewn carelessly half-on, half-off of a small table. He hesitated again. The use of the library's side entrance had set off a security alert while he'd been busy chasing hardware ghosts, but after confirming via camera feed that the interloper was his wayward employee, Finch had returned his attention to his work without further thought. That would be the prudent course of action to take now, as well. For all of Harold's assertions about being a private person, John was at least equivalent. If he was here, in the corner of the library Finch knew he'd taken to using when he wanted solitude whilst remaining nearby, Harold was inclined to leave him be. Memories of the prior week came to mind, though, and he sighed in resignation. A quick look, then, nothing more. If John was asleep, there'd be no harm done. If he was brooding in the darkness and was upset by the intrusion, Harold had an alibi: this corridor led to the server room too. He would simply apologize and continue on to the task at hand.
Mind made up, he started forward, setting his armload of parts on the table and re-arranging Reese's jacket so it wouldn't complete its journey to the floor. He approached the adjacent alcove quietly, squinting into the murky shadows. The corridor was too dim to do much to illuminate the space, and he could only make out basic shapes. Finch knew there was a lamp inside, next to the couch, but Reese would certainly not appreciate being awakened in such a manner if he were there--which, after a moment's further study, Finch concluded he was not. It was also doubtful that John had ventured into the stacks, as he wasn't partial to Westerns and that was the only variety of book available in this section. Perplexed, Harold backed away from the alcove and reached to pick up his equipment, ready to chalk his detour up to paranoia, when he heard a quiet thud from the direction of the bathroom across the way.
He paused and waited. Two minutes turned to four, then ten. No one emerged, but Finch heard several more nondescript noises from within. It had to be Reese. Reluctant to interrupt but still plagued by the uneasy feeling that had brought him there in the first place, Finch prepared himself to face an angry employee, crossed the hall, and pushed the door open. The lights were off inside, save for the tiny vanity light above the sink, but the sound of retching was unmistakable, as were the shiny black shoes sticking out from beneath one of the stall doors. Sighing, Harold pulled several paper towels from the dispenser and wet them under the faucet. He limped closer, but stayed outside the partially-open door. "Mr. Reese?"
A sound between a groan and a growl answered him, followed by more heaving. After a time, the spell gradually eased up and fabric rustled as John shifted position. The toilet flushed.
"What are you doing here, Harold?" Reese asked softly, hoarsely.
Finch took that as his cue and nudged the stall door aside, passing the damp paper towels to the other man. Reese took them and wiped his face and mouth with a shaking hand, but stayed leaning against the partition and looking at Finch expectantly. Apparently it hadn't been a rhetorical question. "I was conducting some server maintenance, and I was on my way to repair the problem when I noticed you were back. I thought I'd check in, but when you didn't come out of here..." Finch shrugged.
"This isn't a very direct route to the server room," Reese observed.
Finch had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Of course John would pick up on that fact, even in his present state. "Call it a hunch, then, Mr. Reese. A good one, I might add. I thought you were going to avoid Mr. Wong's Gyros & More after finding out in such glorious detail what the 'and more' stood for last weekend."
Reese grimaced and looked like he was going to be sick again. "I was interrogated by Kohl," he said at last. "Needles, and not the kind containing truth serum." He went on to explain in broad strokes what had transpired that evening before his arrival at the park, but left out select details regarding the minutiae of Kohl's tactics.
Even so, it didn’t take long for Finch to deduce the full story. "How bad is the pain?" Harold asked without preamble, eliciting a look of distaste from his employee, but he noted that it wasn't directed at him. He also noted that John’s only answer to the question was a non-committal shrug and that he was taking care not to bend his right arm. Stepping forward, Finch held out his right hand. When John reached for it awkwardly with his left, leaving his right limp at his side, Harold raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. "That's what I thought," he said, and offered his opposite hand instead, ignoring Reese's scowl as he helped him up.
'Up' was evidently not the greatest idea, though, because John quickly grabbed onto the doorframe of the stall for support. He managed not to collapse back to the floor, but only just. "Give me your good arm," Harold ordered, prompting another look of displeasure, but Reese complied. With an effort, Finch kept the taller man standing just long enough to get him across the hall. He knew better than most the toll pain could take on a person, but John had to really be hurting if it was making him this weak. Finch carefully lowered his trembling charge onto the couch and switched on the lamp just in time to see John lunge for the wastebasket.
It was an uncoordinated move born of desperation, and Reese landed on his knees on the floor, momentum and gravity continuing to carry his upper body forward. He made a grab for the edge of the trash can, missed, and would've ended up flat on his face had Finch not caught hold of his shoulders from behind. "Easy, John," Harold murmured, guiding him a little to the left, squarely over the wastebasket, as the heaving began anew.
Reese normally would have been embarrassed by the level of concern in the older man's voice, by the fact that Finch’s hands were literally all that was holding him up, but he was too preoccupied by his body's repeated attempts to eject his stomach lining. He grabbed for the trash can again, clinging to it as another wave of spasms hit. It turned out to be the last, but also the worst, and a small moan of mixed discomfort and relief escaped as it finally dissipated. He was too spent to catch his breath, let alone move, and after a time he felt Harold extricate the trash can from his embrace and gently ease him back to lean against the couch. His head thumped softly onto the seat cushion behind it, and he vaguely wondered why the room was spinning so much.
"John? John." Finch's palm on his clammy forehead startled him and he blinked, trying to focus on his friend's worried face. "I'm going to get you some water and some ice for your arm. Stay here until I get back, okay?"
But it wasn't okay. He was lightheaded, he was panting slightly, and in about another minute he was going to be dumpster diving again if he didn’t pass out first. It occurred to him that he knew why, too. "It's...poisoning," he blurted.
Finch gave him an exasperated look and shook his head. "Honestly, Mr. Reese, you and I are going to have a discussion about your dietary choices when you're feeling better."
John swallowed thickly and took as deep a breath as he could manage. "Not food poisoning, Finch. Poisoning. Cyanide. Kohl must not have...cleaned the needles well enough in between."
Disapproval morphed instantly into alarm on Finch's face. "Dear Lord...I'll call 911."
"It's too late."
"No, John. We'll get you to a hospital, you'll be all right." As he talked, Finch reached for his phone and started to dial.
Summoning the last of his strength, Reese clumsily grabbed Finch’s arm to get his attention, inadvertently knocking the phone from his hand in the process. “My jacket...antidote.”
Finch's already-wide eyes opened a bit further in comprehension and he struggled to his feet, heading for the hallway without question. He returned with the jacket and began frantically pulling items from the pockets. Among them were a glass vial containing a powdery substance, a small pouch of saline solution, a length of clear tubing, and a package of related attachments. No wonder the jacket had felt unusually heavy when he'd picked it up before. The question was, what was he supposed to do with all of it? Finch’s eyes darted in worry-induced confusion between the objects he’d laid out on the floor. "Mr. Reese, you may not have seen a need for instructions when obtaining these, but I certainly would not object to a hint," he commented. Worry edged toward panic when he received no response. "John!" Harold’s sharp exclamation and a few firm taps to the side of Reese's face got the man’s eyes open again, but his gaze was glassy and unfocused. "Stay awake a bit longer while I administer the antidote."
Reese blinked slowly and presented his good arm to Finch, his head falling slightly to the side as his breathing grew ever faster and more erratic, but he said nothing. Harold bit his lip, realizing that he was on his own, and he guided John's arm back to the floor. Snagging his phone from where it had fallen, he started punching keys on the keyboard as a surge of adrenaline took over. While he was loathe to rely on the Internet for life or death medical advice, in this instance he made an exception, and less than a minute later was following a diagram for reconstituting hydroxocobalamin powder into solution. The diagram also showed how to connect the tubing to the vial, but it didn't say anything about connecting the other end to a person.
As he sloshed the vial in a circular motion, mixing the contents, he surveyed the remaining objects. A rubber strip and a packet of needles seemed the most likely answer. Finch cringed inwardly at the thought. He had no idea how to properly stick someone with a needle, and he had no choice but to learn. John's eyes had slid closed again, his breathing had grown impossibly shallow, and from time to time his body twitched involuntarily. They were out of time. Harold almost hoped John wasn't conscious as he reached for his arm. With no scissors at hand, he located the seam of Reese's shirt sleeve and tugged as hard as he could. A satisfying rip was his reward and he repeated the action once more, then studied the newly-exposed crook of Reese's elbow as though it were a chess board. Logic and strategy did apply, just not in the traditional sense. He grabbed the rubber strip from the floor and tied it around Reese's bicep, then gripped his elbow, trying to visually locate his mark. It would have worked better if Reese hadn't growled and viciously wrenched his arm away.
-----
From the moment he realized it was cyanide in his system, John's mind was his enemy. As he'd told Kohl, he had experience with poisons, cyanide being no exception. He knew what it did to the body: the how, the why, and the how long. In this instance, he'd only been exposed to a tiny amount. That, along with the chemical makeup of his tissues and the fact that the needle hadn't delivered the poison directly into his bloodstream had conspired to delay fatal absorption, but judging from his symptoms it wouldn't be long now. He couldn't see straight, was drawing more and more breaths with less and less effect, and could no longer get his muscles to obey him. By the time Finch got back with the antidote, panic was setting in, even if he had no strength to outwardly display it.
His lungs were insatiable, and kept ordering the next inhale before he'd exhaled the last. His eyes had slipped closed at some point, and he fought for calm even as he fought for air. He heard Finch talking, but couldn't decipher any of it through the rushing sound in his ears. He thought he'd heard his name, but it was the hand smacking the side of his face repeatedly that made his heart lurch in his chest and caused him to drag his eyelids open.
"Stay awake...administer the antidote."
Reese tried to comply, held out his arm for the injection, but his head dropped to the side, Harold's face sliding out of his field of vision, and he waited for a needle-stick that never came. From there, things didn’t improve. Breathing was useless, so he stopped trying, and followed the sparks flitting in front of his eyes until they coalesced into one bright, hot landscape, also devoid of air. It took him a moment to place, until Kara Stanton's annoyed face materialized in front of him.
France. A vineyard, in mid-summer. No shade, unusually-scorching temperatures, and he was stuck playing cat-and-mouse with psychopaths when he could barely even move.
"Dammit, Reese, I warned you about this! Five times! I thought you were smart enough to follow the safety protocol."
"I did follow the damned protocol, to the letter," he ground out, glaring at her through squinted eyes from where he was sprawled half-sitting against the hedge wall. "You're telling me you...would've decontaminated...after having half a glass of water spilled on your shirt?"
Kara huffed out a breath, as close as she came to conceding a point, and moved to crouch beside him, grabbing his arm. "Injection's done, and we're out of time." She yanked the needle out roughly, at the wrong angle, and stuffed the packaging of the antidote into the hedge before hauling Reese to his feet. "Let's move, dumbass."
He hadn't made it three steps when he stumbled and fell back to the ground. A boot to his stomach flipped him onto his back, and a fist connected with his face, setting off a new flare of sparks in front of his eyes. When his vision cleared, he was no longer in the vineyard, but a dingy room not dissimilar to a cellar. This, too, was familiar, and he tried to get up, but found that he couldn't. He was tied to a chair, and Stanton stood in front of him, another needle in hand.
"I didn't tell him anything, Kara. Shooting me up with truth serum won't change that. You're wasting your time."
"You're a traitor. I'm going to prove it, and then I'm going to call Mark and see how he'd like me to retire you. Hopefully he’s not in any sort of hurry." She leaned down and grabbed his arm.
Letting out a snarl, he head-butted her and wound up on the floor, still tied to the chair, head throbbing where he'd hit it against the concrete.
"John? John, this isn’t truth serum, it's an antidote. You've been poisoned."
"Don't...accuse me of lying and then...lie to me, Kara!" Reese shouted...tried to shout. What actually came out sounded like a raspy whisper at best, and then all the air was gone again, but he kept struggling against the hand hanging on to his elbow.
"John, please. I'm not lying to you. You need this to survive. Let me help you."
Help? Instinctively, he stilled, relaxed his arm. The cellar remained a constant apparition around him, but he knew the voice speaking to him wasn't Kara's. This voice was imploring, rational, had offered to help without sneering in disgust for having to. Distantly, he felt a brief, sharp pain in his arm and his muscles twitched, one set of memories signaling him to pull away while another told him it was all right. It helped that the rational voice told him that, too, and then kept talking, attempting to lead him back from the edge.
-----
It had taken Finch four tries to get the needle in, but John didn’t seem to notice any but the last. Harold just thanked the stars above that something he’d said had gotten through to the man. The demons Reese carried were powerful, and he had no doubt that John would’ve fought them--and him--literally to his last breath had he been allowed. He just hoped it wasn’t too little, too late as it stood. John’s immediate mental battle appeared over, but Finch had a feeling that the physical one had only begun.
He hung the antidote solution from the lampshade, made sure the drip was running at its best possible rate, and gingerly lowered himself to the floor next to his friend, continuing to speak words of encouragement even though he had no idea if he was being heard. Reese was eerily silent and still aside from his labored breathing and the occasional involuntary jerk of an arm or a leg. Concerned that the needle might become dislodged since he’d had no tape to secure it with, Finch eased John’s arm into his lap and held it steady with one hand, the other coming to rest over Reese’s wrist, where he could just feel the too-rapid pulse. It was weak, but at that moment it was also the strongest form of reassurance.
He didn’t know how long he sat that way, in suspended animation, waiting, listening to John’s struggle for air and the pounding of adrenaline through his own veins. It felt like hours, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since there was still a steady stream of red fluid entering Reese’s arm and the website had predicted at least a quarter of an hour for the injection to complete. Glancing upward at the vial, Finch estimated it to be about half empty when Reese inhaled sharply, sat straight, and immediately started coughing. It sounded shallow and painful and John sagged backward after, lacking the strength to hold himself up. If not for his eyes remaining open, Harold might’ve thought he was unconscious again. “John, are you with me?” he asked tentatively, and was somewhat surprised and quite relieved when his companion actually turned his head and looked at him.
“Y-ye...” Reese attempted, more an exhale of air than an actual affirmative.
Finch lightly squeezed the wrist he was holding. “Don’t try to talk. Just breathe, in and out. In and out.” Harold kept repeating the mantra, even though it occurred to him that Reese knew full well the procedure for breathing and would likely be annoyed at any implication to the contrary. John didn’t seem bothered, though, and by the time the injection was finished, he’d closed his eyes, some of the tension had left his features, and his breathing had measurably evened. In short, he looked terrible. His face was flushed and covered in a thin sheen of perspiration, and Finch hadn’t thought it possible for a person to melt into any surface quite the way John had managed to with the floor. The complete lack of muscle tone was unnerving, but he was so relieved to see Reese’s chest rising and falling in a continuous rhythm that he decided it didn’t matter.
As soon as he was certain that every usable portion of the antidote had passed through the tubing, Harold reached down, carefully slid the needle from Reese’s skin, and pressed his silk handkerchief against the small amount of blood that welled up. John didn’t flinch or react at all, and Finch suspected that he’d fallen asleep, despite what he’d read about the injection making that somewhat difficult. Checking his pulse once more and finding it acceptable, or at least no longer alarmingly-faint, Finch began the slow and uncomfortable process of unfolding himself from the floor and hurried to fetch the first-aid kit and some other items.
In the time he was gone, Reese didn't move. Finch shook his head in dismay as he took that first, non-hurried opportunity to study his employee. It was this part of the job that made him question all of it. Usually, the argument was solidly in favor of serving the needs of the many--it was why he and Nathan had created The Machine in the first place--but Harold didn’t often see the aftermath of the many unless it was in a news article. He heard the aftermath of the numbers on a fairly regular basis through his phone speaker, but only rarely saw it in person, and most of the time was miles away behind his computer screen, success or failure, which allowed him to distance himself when things went badly.
Up close, he only ever saw the true, broken and battered aftermath of one: this man in front of him, who he’d come to consider a friend, despite their brief and often-awkward acquaintance. This man, who had already endured far more than his fair share of pain, torture, and poison in his life.
Who was he to put John in the position to endure more of the same? Finch didn’t have an answer, and wasn’t yet ready to listen to the one his conscience was suggesting, so he ignored his inner voice as he stooped down next to Reese--at least until he noticed the dark splotch on the side of John’s shirt collar. Pushing the material aside, he gasped, realizing that the stain was blood and that it had come from the numerous puncture marks that dotted Reese’s neck near where it met his collarbone. “John, what in the world...” Harold started, his sense of dread building as his eyes tracked to a similar stain halfway down Reese’s sleeve. The answer was plain, though: needles, just as John had said.
Again, the difference between hearing and seeing, between strangers and friends, Finch thought darkly. He released the collar and sat back, considering how to proceed.
-----
Oxygen deprivation was an interesting thing. It could stretch minutes into hours while it was draining strength and life. It could steal consciousness, turning those same hours into seconds, time passing without notice. It could erase memories and jumble existing ones.
John Reese experienced each of these states while occupying a worn rug in Finch’s library. He woke up gasping the first time, his lungs starving and on fire, his body not under his own control. After that, he wavered between complete darkness and the struggle to get his eyes open. He had no idea how he’d gotten to the library or what had happened to him, only that Finch was there during his most successful attempts to focus, and that at present he was almost certainly hallucinating: there was no way that Harold was running a warm, damp cloth gently across his face and neck. That scenario was unimaginable in every context. He couldn’t even bring the man tea without raising suspicion, and yet he blinked several times without success in clearing the ludicrous image from his eyes. The washcloth was blue, and it traversed his forehead once more before trailing down to the side of his neck. When it dipped below his collar, Reese tensed involuntarily, hissing at the pain that erupted there and proceeded to engulf his entire shoulder. “What the hell, Finch?” he growled quietly.
Harold immediately pulled his hands away. “My apologies, Mr. Reese. It seems those punctures are rather more painful than I suspected.”
“Punctures?” John asked in confusion, but already his brain was supplying the missing details. Needles. Shooting Kohl in front of Maria and Anja in the park. The library. Cyanide poisoning. France. The antidote. Kara. Finch. Reese’s head was spinning from the bombardment of images and he was sure some of them were from his past, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out which ones, and that worried him greatly.
“John, breathe,” Finch commanded, making Reese realize he hadn’t been, and a low sound of discomfort rumbled in the back of his throat as the throbbing in his neck and head increased momentarily with the new rush of blood and oxygen. Finch resumed his ministrations without a word, this time avoiding the injured area, and Reese didn’t stop him, giving in to the small amount of relief. It wasn’t enough to allow him to slip back into oblivion, though, so he used the remnants of pain to drag himself toward alertness.
“What happened?” he asked, voice cracking. His throat was drier than Afghanistan on a summer day.
“You were poisoned,” Finch answered, not bothering to elaborate. Setting aside the cloth, he picked up a bottle of water. “Do you think you can drink a little of this? You should get some fluids back into you.”
Reese nodded, but barely managed to quench his throat before his stomach protested. He turned his head away.
“Are you still nauseous?”
“I don’t remember it being this bad last time," Reese said with a grimace. "Of course in France no one used me as a pincushion, either...” he trailed off, noticing that Finch’s lips had drawn into a thin line, and that he looked a bit pale as he turned to clean the blood from the other set of punctures. John might’ve paled a little himself at the renewed pain that coursed through his arm at the touch of the cloth, but he didn’t give any other indication. Finch seemed to be having enough difficulty with the situation as it was.
“You can probably avoid irrigating the area,” he advised softly, “any remaining traces of poison are likely too small to matter at this point.”
“I had thought the same, Mr. Reese, but these wounds still need to be disinfected properly. I don’t think the floor is the best place for it, though.”
“I’m not sure I’ve got much of a choice, unless you’ve been doing some weight training that I’m not aware of.”
“There’s always a choice, Mr. Reese, and my back has made mine for me. I need to be...in any position other than this one,” Finch said haltingly, his expression pained as he used the arm of the couch to get to his feet, “and you need to be lying down, so how about we help each other? Standing probably isn’t the greatest thing for you at present, but if you can make it halfway I think it will do.”
Halfway was all the further John made it, too. In helping him onto the couch, Finch had no idea how close he’d come to losing the battle with gravity and ending up pinned to the floor by a heap of ex-CIA agent. Even after sitting down again, it was all John could do to remain conscious while Harold slipped his ruined white shirt carefully from his shoulders and down his arms. He heard the soft thud as it joined the pile of medical debris on the floor, and then Harold pushed, pulled, and nudged him until he was resting on his back. His eyes slid closed in a perfect imitation of the ragdoll he currently felt like, but snapped back open again when Finch jostled his arm a bit too much. That’s when he noticed the open bottle of disinfectant the other man was holding.
“This is going to hurt,” Harold warned apologetically, and poured.
John did pass out then, although he didn’t realize it at first because the pain was still there when he came to. Finch’s alarmed repetition of his name was what put two and two together, but all he could manage was a groan in response, which at least got Finch to stop shouting long enough for him to form an actual sentence. “Harold, don’t ever do that again,” he mumbled, hoping his words sounded at least half as menacing as he’d intended. Even moving his jaw hurt.
“My honest hope is that I never have to,” Finch answered in a curiously-clipped tone. He’d produced a chair from somewhere and had pulled it close next to the couch, Reese noticed, as Harold carefully took hold of his arm once again and proceeded to loosely bandage his elbow, before taping gauze over the side of his neck and applying ice to both. It was done just as gently as before, but with a certain air of efficiency that anyone other than Reese likely wouldn’t have picked up on. An outsider would also have attributed the frown on Finch’s face to mere concentration, but John knew better. Harold wasn’t as difficult to read as he liked to think, and right now he was positively seething. What Reese was having trouble working out in his present state was why. He’d thought about apologizing for the events of the evening, as things had gotten a little...tense...but Finch understood the reality of their work as well as he did so he’d figured there was little point.
Too tired to ponder it further and too edgy to deal with a silent, fuming Harold, Reese finally asked, “What’s wrong?”
Finch’s grip tightened almost imperceptibly on the folded blanket he’d retrieved from the back of the couch, and he sat down again, turning his non-glare of rage on Reese. “You say that as though nothing should be.”
It was John’s turn to frown. “If this is about what happened in the park tonight...what would you have had me do? Let Kohl shoot Anja?”
“That’s not the issue.”
John sighed, “Then what is, Harold? I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment.”
“Precisely!” Finch exclaimed hotly, finally letting the emotion be what it was. “How can you...you’re so calm...you were tortured for heaven’s sake! Poisoned! You very nearly died and you don’t see anything wrong with that?!” As quickly as the outburst had come it was over, and Finch fell silent, his eyes dropping somewhat-abashedly to stare at the blanket in his lap.
Reese took a deep breath and let it out again, not surprised when it hitched slightly. Finch was right: he was too calm. It was a facade he'd perfected through years of training, so much so that it had become an automatic defense mechanism, employed in times of crisis to distance himself from chaos and pain. Back here in reality, though, he was wrecked. He suspected if his body would’ve had anything left to give, he’d have already succumbed to the trembling-and-cold-sweat phase of coming down, the one he was usually able to keep at bay until he’d reached the privacy of whatever cheap motel room he was calling home that night. Being too worn out to shake like a leaf for an hour and vomit bile into a toilet stained with much worse didn’t make his nerves any less raw, though, and talking never helped, but John owed his friend at least an attempt. “I won’t pretend it was pleasant, Harold, but this sort of thing does happen. It’s the risk you assume when becoming an operative, a soldier.”
“But you’re not a soldier anymore.”
“You always are, Finch,” Reese said, shaking his head wryly, his gaze turning distant as he looked at the ceiling. “Always. You can never go back. That’s one of the first things they take from you: the ability to go back, to pretend it never happened. Once they have that much of you, it’s already too late. You’ll let them take the rest, often willingly.” A small shiver rippled through him--from the effects of the poison or exhaustion, he wasn’t sure--and he closed his eyes momentarily, willing away the tremors. It didn’t entirely work.
“Even soldiers need to take a break once in awhile,” Finch said, not as angry, but still adamant. “Stand-down, I believe it’s called.”
“I thought you said the numbers would never stop coming.” When Finch didn’t answer, Reese looked at him and was surprised at the conflict he found on the other man’s face. “Harold?”
“You’re right of course,” Finch said, his own mask of indifference quickly slipping back into place, “but there hasn’t been another just yet, and I do have several contingencies prepared, in case one or both of us is ever unable to respond.”
“What sort of contingencies?”
Finch sighed. “The sort that you’re not to concern yourself with tonight, John. Rest. Consider yourself on stand-down, at least until you get checked over by a doctor tomorrow.”
"Is that one of those things I have a choice in?" Reese asked flatly.
Startled by the sudden morose tone, Finch paused and considered his response for a moment. "As I said, Mr. Reese, there's always a choice, but in this instance I would encourage you to consider your health a priority over your work...which I hope you know you also have a choice in, should you so desire." Finch stood and finally relaxed his grip on the blanket he'd been strangling for the better part of ten minutes, spreading it over his friend. John just kept staring at the ceiling, looking as shell-shocked as Harold had ever seen him.
Giving him some space, Finch took a few minutes and moved about the small room, removing the detritus of the evening to the wastebasket and fetching an empty wastebasket from the hallway in case lingering nausea proved to be an issue. He picked up Reese’s suit jacket from the floor and retrieved the phone from its pocket, setting it on the table beside the couch, before hanging the jacket over the back of the chair he’d recently vacated. “John?” he asked quietly. “Are you going to be able to sleep, or do you need something for pain?”
“Me and narcotics really aren’t a good idea tonight,” Reese said wearily, the dark tone in his voice suggesting that he was speaking from experience.
Harold nodded to himself in understanding. There had been nights following the accident where he'd wished he could skip his own pain pills, but drugged encounters with old ghosts had still been preferable to withdrawal pain, if only by a thin margin. He didn't imagine the same held true for Reese, though. Humming thoughtfully, he said, “I’ll be right back.”
-----
Finch limped down the corridor and placed his tea next to his laptop on a table before peering into the alcove where he'd spent the better part of the night watching over Reese. John had accepted prescription-strength ibuprofen in lieu of stronger painkillers, and it had taken the edge off, but he'd still woken several times, disoriented and anxious, even if both of them had pretended otherwise. Now, though, he seemed to have finally calmed--real calm this time, and Harold let him be, seating himself at the table just outside.
He pulled up the window containing the beginnings of the algorithm he'd been mentally coding throughout the night, and was soon deeply engrossed in his work. If this idea was correct, the code could form a basis for a far more efficient recursion method. Harold quickly input two more functions, and was busy formulating a test case when an alert flashed at the bottom of the screen. Absently adjusting his glasses, he clicked on it.
[[Disk repair successful. RAID status: recovering.]]
Finch's eyes narrowed and shifted to the stack of hard drives on the table just to the right of his laptop--the hard drives he'd never gotten a chance to install the night before. He read the alert again, before searching out the security camera in the corner of the room. A hint of a smile formed on his lips and he resumed typing.
Author: radioshack84
Characters: Reese, Finch
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for 1x08
Word Count: ~7,000
Summary: Being too worn out to shake like a leaf for an hour and vomit bile into a toilet stained with much worse didn’t make his nerves any less raw, and talking never helped, but John owed his friend at least an attempt. (Whumpy, extended-ending to 1x08 - "Foe".)
“You need to know this is right? I’ll tell you one last time before it gets complicated. This is right. The threat is real. Your country needs you...one last thing, you don’t have any old friends. You see them, you don’t know them. We’re walking in the dark here, understand?”
...
“They said, ‘Your country needs you.’ For my country, I left my country and killed wherever they sent me...you are a soldier, like me. They took everything I had, but part of me survived.”
Reese left Ulrich Kohl’s body slumped on the park bench. He secured his weapon, Kohl’s too. He did a quick visual inspection of the scene. By the time the police arrived to misidentify the body as that of Wallace Negel he was gone, moving swiftly out of the park and into the night with the words of an ex-CIA partner and an ex-Stasi operative rattling around in his head like a bag of spent shell-casings.
Kohl was right: he was a soldier, even now. The military and the CIA had broken him, scraped out his humanity, his individuality, and shoved their own ideals and directives back in, all in the name of ‘the greater good’. His country had needed him, all right. Needed him to commit murders they couldn’t officially sanction, needed him to endure torture to avoid giving up secrets that might shed light on those and other atrocities, and he’d done it all willingly enough, if not always quietly. Stanton had constantly griped about his agonizing over right and wrong, but when he’d been given the opportunity to leave he’d stuck around. At the time, he supposed he’d needed a little pain in his life. The thing he hadn’t counted on was building a tolerance to that pain, a tolerance that came to include the pain he inflicted on others.
By the time he’d realized the danger of the numbness he was existing in, it had been too late. He’d nearly lost his life getting away, Jess had lost hers, and he’d wound up here, building a new tolerance, a new kind of numb through a bottle of booze, trying to finish the job the CIA had started. It would have worked, too, but was interrupted by a different job and an odd man with a computer system who needed him. Sometimes that need still involved killing, sometimes enduring torture. The difference was that he was no longer quite so numb to it all.
He was deeply troubled that he'd had to shoot Kohl, especially in front of the man's daughter, but he’d been left with little choice. Anja and Kohl’s other teammates shouldn’t have given him up to save themselves, but that didn’t mean they deserved to die, either. A replay of the scene in the park joined Kohl's and Stanton’s monologues in his mind, and Reese could see the horrified look on Marie’s face, on Anja’s, feel the trigger beneath his finger, the recoil from the shot. He winced in memory of the pain the gun’s jolt had caused and reached to massage his right arm. Kohl had known his craft well. Reese’s elbow was on fire, the discomfort radiating down to his fingertips and all the way up into his shoulder and neck, just as Ulrich had promised.
As an added bonus, the headache that had been present when he'd woken up tied to the chair had never had a chance to abate. With the help of the interrogation it was fully into migraine status now, and the streetlights felt like needles themselves, stabbing at his optic nerves until he had to squint in order to see. Reese headed for the library because it was close, and used the side entrance even though Finch wouldn’t approve--it didn’t provide enough cover.
John was inclined to agree, but no one was around to see him and a belated lecture seemed preferable to the immediate one he was sure to receive if he came in the usual way. He still wasn’t accustomed to having someone express concern over his well-being--it was ingrained behavior. He walked in the dark, he fended for himself. Alone was sanctuary, security. No one to betray him, no one to get killed because they’d gotten too close to him and the agendas of his ever-present Agency shadows. Alone was instinct, still strong enough in the face of his present distress to overcome any subconscious desire he may have had for someone to complain to about his shitty day. He knew Harold was somewhere in the building, but knowing was enough. He wouldn't bother him.
At least the library hallway was cool and dim, Reese reflected as he walked through it in a daze. It served to calm his headache slightly, and he managed to gather enough energy to make it up the back staircase. He discarded his suit jacket haphazardly on the first piece of furniture he came to--maybe it was a chair, maybe not--and ducked into a pitch black alcove. He couldn’t see anything inside, but that was just as well. His arm, neck, and head were killing him and he was dizzy and growing nauseous from the pain. Three unsteady steps brought him to the couch he’d obtained a few weeks earlier, and he carefully curled his body onto it. He’d rest for a few minutes and then swipe some pain pills from the first aid kit in the bathroom across the hall. Finch could lecture him in the morning.
-----
Finch frowned at the small monitor inside the server rack, puzzled. The system had been throwing errors for the past half hour, indicating imminent RAID failure across multiple hard disks, but the diagnostics he'd performed refuted that evidence. Still, he'd always preferred added redundancy to data loss and he exited the room, making his way to where he stored his collection of replacement hardware. He selected several new hard drives as well as a package of data cables and was soon on his way back.
Harold couldn't say why, but as he came up on one of the corridor junctions he hesitated. The area was mostly in shadow due to the late hour so it wasn't anything that he could make out visually, but something seemed off. He moved a few feet down the perpendicular hallway, allowing his eyes to adjust to the lower light, and noticed a familiar suit jacket strewn carelessly half-on, half-off of a small table. He hesitated again. The use of the library's side entrance had set off a security alert while he'd been busy chasing hardware ghosts, but after confirming via camera feed that the interloper was his wayward employee, Finch had returned his attention to his work without further thought. That would be the prudent course of action to take now, as well. For all of Harold's assertions about being a private person, John was at least equivalent. If he was here, in the corner of the library Finch knew he'd taken to using when he wanted solitude whilst remaining nearby, Harold was inclined to leave him be. Memories of the prior week came to mind, though, and he sighed in resignation. A quick look, then, nothing more. If John was asleep, there'd be no harm done. If he was brooding in the darkness and was upset by the intrusion, Harold had an alibi: this corridor led to the server room too. He would simply apologize and continue on to the task at hand.
Mind made up, he started forward, setting his armload of parts on the table and re-arranging Reese's jacket so it wouldn't complete its journey to the floor. He approached the adjacent alcove quietly, squinting into the murky shadows. The corridor was too dim to do much to illuminate the space, and he could only make out basic shapes. Finch knew there was a lamp inside, next to the couch, but Reese would certainly not appreciate being awakened in such a manner if he were there--which, after a moment's further study, Finch concluded he was not. It was also doubtful that John had ventured into the stacks, as he wasn't partial to Westerns and that was the only variety of book available in this section. Perplexed, Harold backed away from the alcove and reached to pick up his equipment, ready to chalk his detour up to paranoia, when he heard a quiet thud from the direction of the bathroom across the way.
He paused and waited. Two minutes turned to four, then ten. No one emerged, but Finch heard several more nondescript noises from within. It had to be Reese. Reluctant to interrupt but still plagued by the uneasy feeling that had brought him there in the first place, Finch prepared himself to face an angry employee, crossed the hall, and pushed the door open. The lights were off inside, save for the tiny vanity light above the sink, but the sound of retching was unmistakable, as were the shiny black shoes sticking out from beneath one of the stall doors. Sighing, Harold pulled several paper towels from the dispenser and wet them under the faucet. He limped closer, but stayed outside the partially-open door. "Mr. Reese?"
A sound between a groan and a growl answered him, followed by more heaving. After a time, the spell gradually eased up and fabric rustled as John shifted position. The toilet flushed.
"What are you doing here, Harold?" Reese asked softly, hoarsely.
Finch took that as his cue and nudged the stall door aside, passing the damp paper towels to the other man. Reese took them and wiped his face and mouth with a shaking hand, but stayed leaning against the partition and looking at Finch expectantly. Apparently it hadn't been a rhetorical question. "I was conducting some server maintenance, and I was on my way to repair the problem when I noticed you were back. I thought I'd check in, but when you didn't come out of here..." Finch shrugged.
"This isn't a very direct route to the server room," Reese observed.
Finch had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Of course John would pick up on that fact, even in his present state. "Call it a hunch, then, Mr. Reese. A good one, I might add. I thought you were going to avoid Mr. Wong's Gyros & More after finding out in such glorious detail what the 'and more' stood for last weekend."
Reese grimaced and looked like he was going to be sick again. "I was interrogated by Kohl," he said at last. "Needles, and not the kind containing truth serum." He went on to explain in broad strokes what had transpired that evening before his arrival at the park, but left out select details regarding the minutiae of Kohl's tactics.
Even so, it didn’t take long for Finch to deduce the full story. "How bad is the pain?" Harold asked without preamble, eliciting a look of distaste from his employee, but he noted that it wasn't directed at him. He also noted that John’s only answer to the question was a non-committal shrug and that he was taking care not to bend his right arm. Stepping forward, Finch held out his right hand. When John reached for it awkwardly with his left, leaving his right limp at his side, Harold raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. "That's what I thought," he said, and offered his opposite hand instead, ignoring Reese's scowl as he helped him up.
'Up' was evidently not the greatest idea, though, because John quickly grabbed onto the doorframe of the stall for support. He managed not to collapse back to the floor, but only just. "Give me your good arm," Harold ordered, prompting another look of displeasure, but Reese complied. With an effort, Finch kept the taller man standing just long enough to get him across the hall. He knew better than most the toll pain could take on a person, but John had to really be hurting if it was making him this weak. Finch carefully lowered his trembling charge onto the couch and switched on the lamp just in time to see John lunge for the wastebasket.
It was an uncoordinated move born of desperation, and Reese landed on his knees on the floor, momentum and gravity continuing to carry his upper body forward. He made a grab for the edge of the trash can, missed, and would've ended up flat on his face had Finch not caught hold of his shoulders from behind. "Easy, John," Harold murmured, guiding him a little to the left, squarely over the wastebasket, as the heaving began anew.
Reese normally would have been embarrassed by the level of concern in the older man's voice, by the fact that Finch’s hands were literally all that was holding him up, but he was too preoccupied by his body's repeated attempts to eject his stomach lining. He grabbed for the trash can again, clinging to it as another wave of spasms hit. It turned out to be the last, but also the worst, and a small moan of mixed discomfort and relief escaped as it finally dissipated. He was too spent to catch his breath, let alone move, and after a time he felt Harold extricate the trash can from his embrace and gently ease him back to lean against the couch. His head thumped softly onto the seat cushion behind it, and he vaguely wondered why the room was spinning so much.
"John? John." Finch's palm on his clammy forehead startled him and he blinked, trying to focus on his friend's worried face. "I'm going to get you some water and some ice for your arm. Stay here until I get back, okay?"
But it wasn't okay. He was lightheaded, he was panting slightly, and in about another minute he was going to be dumpster diving again if he didn’t pass out first. It occurred to him that he knew why, too. "It's...poisoning," he blurted.
Finch gave him an exasperated look and shook his head. "Honestly, Mr. Reese, you and I are going to have a discussion about your dietary choices when you're feeling better."
John swallowed thickly and took as deep a breath as he could manage. "Not food poisoning, Finch. Poisoning. Cyanide. Kohl must not have...cleaned the needles well enough in between."
Disapproval morphed instantly into alarm on Finch's face. "Dear Lord...I'll call 911."
"It's too late."
"No, John. We'll get you to a hospital, you'll be all right." As he talked, Finch reached for his phone and started to dial.
Summoning the last of his strength, Reese clumsily grabbed Finch’s arm to get his attention, inadvertently knocking the phone from his hand in the process. “My jacket...antidote.”
Finch's already-wide eyes opened a bit further in comprehension and he struggled to his feet, heading for the hallway without question. He returned with the jacket and began frantically pulling items from the pockets. Among them were a glass vial containing a powdery substance, a small pouch of saline solution, a length of clear tubing, and a package of related attachments. No wonder the jacket had felt unusually heavy when he'd picked it up before. The question was, what was he supposed to do with all of it? Finch’s eyes darted in worry-induced confusion between the objects he’d laid out on the floor. "Mr. Reese, you may not have seen a need for instructions when obtaining these, but I certainly would not object to a hint," he commented. Worry edged toward panic when he received no response. "John!" Harold’s sharp exclamation and a few firm taps to the side of Reese's face got the man’s eyes open again, but his gaze was glassy and unfocused. "Stay awake a bit longer while I administer the antidote."
Reese blinked slowly and presented his good arm to Finch, his head falling slightly to the side as his breathing grew ever faster and more erratic, but he said nothing. Harold bit his lip, realizing that he was on his own, and he guided John's arm back to the floor. Snagging his phone from where it had fallen, he started punching keys on the keyboard as a surge of adrenaline took over. While he was loathe to rely on the Internet for life or death medical advice, in this instance he made an exception, and less than a minute later was following a diagram for reconstituting hydroxocobalamin powder into solution. The diagram also showed how to connect the tubing to the vial, but it didn't say anything about connecting the other end to a person.
As he sloshed the vial in a circular motion, mixing the contents, he surveyed the remaining objects. A rubber strip and a packet of needles seemed the most likely answer. Finch cringed inwardly at the thought. He had no idea how to properly stick someone with a needle, and he had no choice but to learn. John's eyes had slid closed again, his breathing had grown impossibly shallow, and from time to time his body twitched involuntarily. They were out of time. Harold almost hoped John wasn't conscious as he reached for his arm. With no scissors at hand, he located the seam of Reese's shirt sleeve and tugged as hard as he could. A satisfying rip was his reward and he repeated the action once more, then studied the newly-exposed crook of Reese's elbow as though it were a chess board. Logic and strategy did apply, just not in the traditional sense. He grabbed the rubber strip from the floor and tied it around Reese's bicep, then gripped his elbow, trying to visually locate his mark. It would have worked better if Reese hadn't growled and viciously wrenched his arm away.
-----
From the moment he realized it was cyanide in his system, John's mind was his enemy. As he'd told Kohl, he had experience with poisons, cyanide being no exception. He knew what it did to the body: the how, the why, and the how long. In this instance, he'd only been exposed to a tiny amount. That, along with the chemical makeup of his tissues and the fact that the needle hadn't delivered the poison directly into his bloodstream had conspired to delay fatal absorption, but judging from his symptoms it wouldn't be long now. He couldn't see straight, was drawing more and more breaths with less and less effect, and could no longer get his muscles to obey him. By the time Finch got back with the antidote, panic was setting in, even if he had no strength to outwardly display it.
His lungs were insatiable, and kept ordering the next inhale before he'd exhaled the last. His eyes had slipped closed at some point, and he fought for calm even as he fought for air. He heard Finch talking, but couldn't decipher any of it through the rushing sound in his ears. He thought he'd heard his name, but it was the hand smacking the side of his face repeatedly that made his heart lurch in his chest and caused him to drag his eyelids open.
"Stay awake...administer the antidote."
Reese tried to comply, held out his arm for the injection, but his head dropped to the side, Harold's face sliding out of his field of vision, and he waited for a needle-stick that never came. From there, things didn’t improve. Breathing was useless, so he stopped trying, and followed the sparks flitting in front of his eyes until they coalesced into one bright, hot landscape, also devoid of air. It took him a moment to place, until Kara Stanton's annoyed face materialized in front of him.
France. A vineyard, in mid-summer. No shade, unusually-scorching temperatures, and he was stuck playing cat-and-mouse with psychopaths when he could barely even move.
"Dammit, Reese, I warned you about this! Five times! I thought you were smart enough to follow the safety protocol."
"I did follow the damned protocol, to the letter," he ground out, glaring at her through squinted eyes from where he was sprawled half-sitting against the hedge wall. "You're telling me you...would've decontaminated...after having half a glass of water spilled on your shirt?"
Kara huffed out a breath, as close as she came to conceding a point, and moved to crouch beside him, grabbing his arm. "Injection's done, and we're out of time." She yanked the needle out roughly, at the wrong angle, and stuffed the packaging of the antidote into the hedge before hauling Reese to his feet. "Let's move, dumbass."
He hadn't made it three steps when he stumbled and fell back to the ground. A boot to his stomach flipped him onto his back, and a fist connected with his face, setting off a new flare of sparks in front of his eyes. When his vision cleared, he was no longer in the vineyard, but a dingy room not dissimilar to a cellar. This, too, was familiar, and he tried to get up, but found that he couldn't. He was tied to a chair, and Stanton stood in front of him, another needle in hand.
"I didn't tell him anything, Kara. Shooting me up with truth serum won't change that. You're wasting your time."
"You're a traitor. I'm going to prove it, and then I'm going to call Mark and see how he'd like me to retire you. Hopefully he’s not in any sort of hurry." She leaned down and grabbed his arm.
Letting out a snarl, he head-butted her and wound up on the floor, still tied to the chair, head throbbing where he'd hit it against the concrete.
"John? John, this isn’t truth serum, it's an antidote. You've been poisoned."
"Don't...accuse me of lying and then...lie to me, Kara!" Reese shouted...tried to shout. What actually came out sounded like a raspy whisper at best, and then all the air was gone again, but he kept struggling against the hand hanging on to his elbow.
"John, please. I'm not lying to you. You need this to survive. Let me help you."
Help? Instinctively, he stilled, relaxed his arm. The cellar remained a constant apparition around him, but he knew the voice speaking to him wasn't Kara's. This voice was imploring, rational, had offered to help without sneering in disgust for having to. Distantly, he felt a brief, sharp pain in his arm and his muscles twitched, one set of memories signaling him to pull away while another told him it was all right. It helped that the rational voice told him that, too, and then kept talking, attempting to lead him back from the edge.
-----
It had taken Finch four tries to get the needle in, but John didn’t seem to notice any but the last. Harold just thanked the stars above that something he’d said had gotten through to the man. The demons Reese carried were powerful, and he had no doubt that John would’ve fought them--and him--literally to his last breath had he been allowed. He just hoped it wasn’t too little, too late as it stood. John’s immediate mental battle appeared over, but Finch had a feeling that the physical one had only begun.
He hung the antidote solution from the lampshade, made sure the drip was running at its best possible rate, and gingerly lowered himself to the floor next to his friend, continuing to speak words of encouragement even though he had no idea if he was being heard. Reese was eerily silent and still aside from his labored breathing and the occasional involuntary jerk of an arm or a leg. Concerned that the needle might become dislodged since he’d had no tape to secure it with, Finch eased John’s arm into his lap and held it steady with one hand, the other coming to rest over Reese’s wrist, where he could just feel the too-rapid pulse. It was weak, but at that moment it was also the strongest form of reassurance.
He didn’t know how long he sat that way, in suspended animation, waiting, listening to John’s struggle for air and the pounding of adrenaline through his own veins. It felt like hours, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since there was still a steady stream of red fluid entering Reese’s arm and the website had predicted at least a quarter of an hour for the injection to complete. Glancing upward at the vial, Finch estimated it to be about half empty when Reese inhaled sharply, sat straight, and immediately started coughing. It sounded shallow and painful and John sagged backward after, lacking the strength to hold himself up. If not for his eyes remaining open, Harold might’ve thought he was unconscious again. “John, are you with me?” he asked tentatively, and was somewhat surprised and quite relieved when his companion actually turned his head and looked at him.
“Y-ye...” Reese attempted, more an exhale of air than an actual affirmative.
Finch lightly squeezed the wrist he was holding. “Don’t try to talk. Just breathe, in and out. In and out.” Harold kept repeating the mantra, even though it occurred to him that Reese knew full well the procedure for breathing and would likely be annoyed at any implication to the contrary. John didn’t seem bothered, though, and by the time the injection was finished, he’d closed his eyes, some of the tension had left his features, and his breathing had measurably evened. In short, he looked terrible. His face was flushed and covered in a thin sheen of perspiration, and Finch hadn’t thought it possible for a person to melt into any surface quite the way John had managed to with the floor. The complete lack of muscle tone was unnerving, but he was so relieved to see Reese’s chest rising and falling in a continuous rhythm that he decided it didn’t matter.
As soon as he was certain that every usable portion of the antidote had passed through the tubing, Harold reached down, carefully slid the needle from Reese’s skin, and pressed his silk handkerchief against the small amount of blood that welled up. John didn’t flinch or react at all, and Finch suspected that he’d fallen asleep, despite what he’d read about the injection making that somewhat difficult. Checking his pulse once more and finding it acceptable, or at least no longer alarmingly-faint, Finch began the slow and uncomfortable process of unfolding himself from the floor and hurried to fetch the first-aid kit and some other items.
In the time he was gone, Reese didn't move. Finch shook his head in dismay as he took that first, non-hurried opportunity to study his employee. It was this part of the job that made him question all of it. Usually, the argument was solidly in favor of serving the needs of the many--it was why he and Nathan had created The Machine in the first place--but Harold didn’t often see the aftermath of the many unless it was in a news article. He heard the aftermath of the numbers on a fairly regular basis through his phone speaker, but only rarely saw it in person, and most of the time was miles away behind his computer screen, success or failure, which allowed him to distance himself when things went badly.
Up close, he only ever saw the true, broken and battered aftermath of one: this man in front of him, who he’d come to consider a friend, despite their brief and often-awkward acquaintance. This man, who had already endured far more than his fair share of pain, torture, and poison in his life.
Who was he to put John in the position to endure more of the same? Finch didn’t have an answer, and wasn’t yet ready to listen to the one his conscience was suggesting, so he ignored his inner voice as he stooped down next to Reese--at least until he noticed the dark splotch on the side of John’s shirt collar. Pushing the material aside, he gasped, realizing that the stain was blood and that it had come from the numerous puncture marks that dotted Reese’s neck near where it met his collarbone. “John, what in the world...” Harold started, his sense of dread building as his eyes tracked to a similar stain halfway down Reese’s sleeve. The answer was plain, though: needles, just as John had said.
Again, the difference between hearing and seeing, between strangers and friends, Finch thought darkly. He released the collar and sat back, considering how to proceed.
-----
Oxygen deprivation was an interesting thing. It could stretch minutes into hours while it was draining strength and life. It could steal consciousness, turning those same hours into seconds, time passing without notice. It could erase memories and jumble existing ones.
John Reese experienced each of these states while occupying a worn rug in Finch’s library. He woke up gasping the first time, his lungs starving and on fire, his body not under his own control. After that, he wavered between complete darkness and the struggle to get his eyes open. He had no idea how he’d gotten to the library or what had happened to him, only that Finch was there during his most successful attempts to focus, and that at present he was almost certainly hallucinating: there was no way that Harold was running a warm, damp cloth gently across his face and neck. That scenario was unimaginable in every context. He couldn’t even bring the man tea without raising suspicion, and yet he blinked several times without success in clearing the ludicrous image from his eyes. The washcloth was blue, and it traversed his forehead once more before trailing down to the side of his neck. When it dipped below his collar, Reese tensed involuntarily, hissing at the pain that erupted there and proceeded to engulf his entire shoulder. “What the hell, Finch?” he growled quietly.
Harold immediately pulled his hands away. “My apologies, Mr. Reese. It seems those punctures are rather more painful than I suspected.”
“Punctures?” John asked in confusion, but already his brain was supplying the missing details. Needles. Shooting Kohl in front of Maria and Anja in the park. The library. Cyanide poisoning. France. The antidote. Kara. Finch. Reese’s head was spinning from the bombardment of images and he was sure some of them were from his past, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out which ones, and that worried him greatly.
“John, breathe,” Finch commanded, making Reese realize he hadn’t been, and a low sound of discomfort rumbled in the back of his throat as the throbbing in his neck and head increased momentarily with the new rush of blood and oxygen. Finch resumed his ministrations without a word, this time avoiding the injured area, and Reese didn’t stop him, giving in to the small amount of relief. It wasn’t enough to allow him to slip back into oblivion, though, so he used the remnants of pain to drag himself toward alertness.
“What happened?” he asked, voice cracking. His throat was drier than Afghanistan on a summer day.
“You were poisoned,” Finch answered, not bothering to elaborate. Setting aside the cloth, he picked up a bottle of water. “Do you think you can drink a little of this? You should get some fluids back into you.”
Reese nodded, but barely managed to quench his throat before his stomach protested. He turned his head away.
“Are you still nauseous?”
“I don’t remember it being this bad last time," Reese said with a grimace. "Of course in France no one used me as a pincushion, either...” he trailed off, noticing that Finch’s lips had drawn into a thin line, and that he looked a bit pale as he turned to clean the blood from the other set of punctures. John might’ve paled a little himself at the renewed pain that coursed through his arm at the touch of the cloth, but he didn’t give any other indication. Finch seemed to be having enough difficulty with the situation as it was.
“You can probably avoid irrigating the area,” he advised softly, “any remaining traces of poison are likely too small to matter at this point.”
“I had thought the same, Mr. Reese, but these wounds still need to be disinfected properly. I don’t think the floor is the best place for it, though.”
“I’m not sure I’ve got much of a choice, unless you’ve been doing some weight training that I’m not aware of.”
“There’s always a choice, Mr. Reese, and my back has made mine for me. I need to be...in any position other than this one,” Finch said haltingly, his expression pained as he used the arm of the couch to get to his feet, “and you need to be lying down, so how about we help each other? Standing probably isn’t the greatest thing for you at present, but if you can make it halfway I think it will do.”
Halfway was all the further John made it, too. In helping him onto the couch, Finch had no idea how close he’d come to losing the battle with gravity and ending up pinned to the floor by a heap of ex-CIA agent. Even after sitting down again, it was all John could do to remain conscious while Harold slipped his ruined white shirt carefully from his shoulders and down his arms. He heard the soft thud as it joined the pile of medical debris on the floor, and then Harold pushed, pulled, and nudged him until he was resting on his back. His eyes slid closed in a perfect imitation of the ragdoll he currently felt like, but snapped back open again when Finch jostled his arm a bit too much. That’s when he noticed the open bottle of disinfectant the other man was holding.
“This is going to hurt,” Harold warned apologetically, and poured.
John did pass out then, although he didn’t realize it at first because the pain was still there when he came to. Finch’s alarmed repetition of his name was what put two and two together, but all he could manage was a groan in response, which at least got Finch to stop shouting long enough for him to form an actual sentence. “Harold, don’t ever do that again,” he mumbled, hoping his words sounded at least half as menacing as he’d intended. Even moving his jaw hurt.
“My honest hope is that I never have to,” Finch answered in a curiously-clipped tone. He’d produced a chair from somewhere and had pulled it close next to the couch, Reese noticed, as Harold carefully took hold of his arm once again and proceeded to loosely bandage his elbow, before taping gauze over the side of his neck and applying ice to both. It was done just as gently as before, but with a certain air of efficiency that anyone other than Reese likely wouldn’t have picked up on. An outsider would also have attributed the frown on Finch’s face to mere concentration, but John knew better. Harold wasn’t as difficult to read as he liked to think, and right now he was positively seething. What Reese was having trouble working out in his present state was why. He’d thought about apologizing for the events of the evening, as things had gotten a little...tense...but Finch understood the reality of their work as well as he did so he’d figured there was little point.
Too tired to ponder it further and too edgy to deal with a silent, fuming Harold, Reese finally asked, “What’s wrong?”
Finch’s grip tightened almost imperceptibly on the folded blanket he’d retrieved from the back of the couch, and he sat down again, turning his non-glare of rage on Reese. “You say that as though nothing should be.”
It was John’s turn to frown. “If this is about what happened in the park tonight...what would you have had me do? Let Kohl shoot Anja?”
“That’s not the issue.”
John sighed, “Then what is, Harold? I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment.”
“Precisely!” Finch exclaimed hotly, finally letting the emotion be what it was. “How can you...you’re so calm...you were tortured for heaven’s sake! Poisoned! You very nearly died and you don’t see anything wrong with that?!” As quickly as the outburst had come it was over, and Finch fell silent, his eyes dropping somewhat-abashedly to stare at the blanket in his lap.
Reese took a deep breath and let it out again, not surprised when it hitched slightly. Finch was right: he was too calm. It was a facade he'd perfected through years of training, so much so that it had become an automatic defense mechanism, employed in times of crisis to distance himself from chaos and pain. Back here in reality, though, he was wrecked. He suspected if his body would’ve had anything left to give, he’d have already succumbed to the trembling-and-cold-sweat phase of coming down, the one he was usually able to keep at bay until he’d reached the privacy of whatever cheap motel room he was calling home that night. Being too worn out to shake like a leaf for an hour and vomit bile into a toilet stained with much worse didn’t make his nerves any less raw, though, and talking never helped, but John owed his friend at least an attempt. “I won’t pretend it was pleasant, Harold, but this sort of thing does happen. It’s the risk you assume when becoming an operative, a soldier.”
“But you’re not a soldier anymore.”
“You always are, Finch,” Reese said, shaking his head wryly, his gaze turning distant as he looked at the ceiling. “Always. You can never go back. That’s one of the first things they take from you: the ability to go back, to pretend it never happened. Once they have that much of you, it’s already too late. You’ll let them take the rest, often willingly.” A small shiver rippled through him--from the effects of the poison or exhaustion, he wasn’t sure--and he closed his eyes momentarily, willing away the tremors. It didn’t entirely work.
“Even soldiers need to take a break once in awhile,” Finch said, not as angry, but still adamant. “Stand-down, I believe it’s called.”
“I thought you said the numbers would never stop coming.” When Finch didn’t answer, Reese looked at him and was surprised at the conflict he found on the other man’s face. “Harold?”
“You’re right of course,” Finch said, his own mask of indifference quickly slipping back into place, “but there hasn’t been another just yet, and I do have several contingencies prepared, in case one or both of us is ever unable to respond.”
“What sort of contingencies?”
Finch sighed. “The sort that you’re not to concern yourself with tonight, John. Rest. Consider yourself on stand-down, at least until you get checked over by a doctor tomorrow.”
"Is that one of those things I have a choice in?" Reese asked flatly.
Startled by the sudden morose tone, Finch paused and considered his response for a moment. "As I said, Mr. Reese, there's always a choice, but in this instance I would encourage you to consider your health a priority over your work...which I hope you know you also have a choice in, should you so desire." Finch stood and finally relaxed his grip on the blanket he'd been strangling for the better part of ten minutes, spreading it over his friend. John just kept staring at the ceiling, looking as shell-shocked as Harold had ever seen him.
Giving him some space, Finch took a few minutes and moved about the small room, removing the detritus of the evening to the wastebasket and fetching an empty wastebasket from the hallway in case lingering nausea proved to be an issue. He picked up Reese’s suit jacket from the floor and retrieved the phone from its pocket, setting it on the table beside the couch, before hanging the jacket over the back of the chair he’d recently vacated. “John?” he asked quietly. “Are you going to be able to sleep, or do you need something for pain?”
“Me and narcotics really aren’t a good idea tonight,” Reese said wearily, the dark tone in his voice suggesting that he was speaking from experience.
Harold nodded to himself in understanding. There had been nights following the accident where he'd wished he could skip his own pain pills, but drugged encounters with old ghosts had still been preferable to withdrawal pain, if only by a thin margin. He didn't imagine the same held true for Reese, though. Humming thoughtfully, he said, “I’ll be right back.”
-----
Finch limped down the corridor and placed his tea next to his laptop on a table before peering into the alcove where he'd spent the better part of the night watching over Reese. John had accepted prescription-strength ibuprofen in lieu of stronger painkillers, and it had taken the edge off, but he'd still woken several times, disoriented and anxious, even if both of them had pretended otherwise. Now, though, he seemed to have finally calmed--real calm this time, and Harold let him be, seating himself at the table just outside.
He pulled up the window containing the beginnings of the algorithm he'd been mentally coding throughout the night, and was soon deeply engrossed in his work. If this idea was correct, the code could form a basis for a far more efficient recursion method. Harold quickly input two more functions, and was busy formulating a test case when an alert flashed at the bottom of the screen. Absently adjusting his glasses, he clicked on it.
[[Disk repair successful. RAID status: recovering.]]
Finch's eyes narrowed and shifted to the stack of hard drives on the table just to the right of his laptop--the hard drives he'd never gotten a chance to install the night before. He read the alert again, before searching out the security camera in the corner of the room. A hint of a smile formed on his lips and he resumed typing.