Chapter Text
In the dark place into which John Reese descends when he snaps into battle mode, there isn’t room for conscious thought.
There’s nothing except what he can sense. He is a body, not a mind. The mind slows him down. In the field, overthinking can kill you. Instead, his mind goes still.
Everything is still.
No conscious thoughts to crowd out the sensory stimuli flickering through his nerve endings to his brain and filtering back out as muscle impulses.
Hear a sound. Step. Turn. Fire.
Catch a movement behind the van. Step. Turn. Turn again. Fire.
He senses Root at his side. She’s as highly-attuned as he is, even without the Machine. They’ve never talked about it – fighting, that is; their dark and bloody histories - the way he sometimes did with Shaw, but he thinks Root goes to her own kind of still place. She too is good at following orders. She too knows how to flip her own switch and go quiet so she doesn’t miss a –
Step. Turn. Fire.
Just lines of code flying back and forth along synapses and nerve endings between his body and his brain.
Thoughts get in the way.
Emotions get in the way.
Which is why John can’t turn around.
He’s a step or two in front of Root, covering the front and their right flank. She takes the left and rear. They don’t discuss this, there isn’t time for a plan, there’s just the way John takes a step out in front and she responds instinctively to cover his blind spot.
And Harold.
And the briefcase he's holding.
There’s gunfire all around them, and smoke in the streets that makes it difficult to see. John senses Harold’s fear without having to be told, without Harold speaking a single word. His conscious brain is deep down in the still place, but his nostrils flicker at the sharp tang of Harold’s sweat and his ears detect the shallow rapidity of his breathing.
The briefcase Harold grips with white knuckles contains one kind of Machine, but John is a machine too. A lifetime of training has rewired his brain and heart and sense of self to make him the perfect tool for strategic violence. He had been traveling down those same well-worn tracks for years until everything began to deteriorate – until the cracks in the armor began to show – and while most days he considers that he's more or less put himself back together, there have been new weak spots that he can’t repair.
Jessica was first. Then Carter. Then Shaw. And there’s Root, of course, still not really a friend but a comrade he’s grateful for. Fusco. Zoe. Bear.
Cracks in his armor, people he isn’t supposed to care about but does.
System vulnerabilities.
Bad code.
This is why he steps forward and lets Root fall back to cover Finch.
He can paper over the biggest crack – the one that runs all the way down to the marrow of his bones, like a fault line running through the earth – for a little while at a time, when he needs to; but it’s easier to trust his instincts, to stay sharp, to keep Finch safe, if Finch is behind him.
It’s best this way, when Finch can see John – can take shelter behind his body, can feel protected; can believe, even if such a belief is futile, that John is an iron wall – but John cannot see Finch.
He can hear and sense and smell him, he can detect the vibrations of his movements, but he does not have to look into his eyes.
Because there is always a risk of failure.
There is always a thing that can go wrong.
Miracles, disasters. Surprises, plot twists, acts of God. Things that cannot be predicted.
John is a machine in human flesh and one day that flesh will fail and he will step in front of a bullet for Harold Finch and go down. He doesn’t mind this. He has always known it.
But it’s easier to bear when he’s not looking at Harold’s face.
It’s easier to think of himself as just a hand wielding a gun. A body made of stone. A force, a thing.
Not a man.
John Reese cannot be a man right now.
He cannot be a living person with a beating heart, who fears things, who wants things. That way danger lies. How can he be a machine programmed to die, if needed, for his master, if he remembers that there are things in this world he would miss if he left them behind?
John is ready to die for Harold Finch. He always has been.
He’d just prefer not to see the look on his face when he does.
* * * * *
Root covers him in an effortless 360 as he reloads. They’re good together. It’s not like it was with Shaw (though in fairness, she’d probably say the same; no, she definitely would. She could not have less of a desire to kiss John Reese if he were a poisonous snake) but they make it work, and it’s nearly seamless.
Nearly.
But Harold stumbles over the body of a fallen Samaritan agent on the ground, and the briefcase drops from his hand.
And this, of course, is the thing that was always going to go wrong, the glitch in the code. No Machine watching out for them now, nothing She can do from inside that sleek black rectangle sliding across blood-soaked cement away from Finch’s grasp. Shaw knows him better than Root does, Shaw would have anticipated his movement and adjusted to cover his flank, but Root doesn’t. Root dives for the briefcase, which means she doesn’t see the shooter on top of the van or the rifle he’s aiming at Finch.
It's like choreography, the way John raises his gun as he dives into the line of fire, one smooth fluid motion. Graceful and clean, like ballet. He takes out the shooter, and for half a second - before the hot red pain slices through his side - he thinks it's all going to be okay.
He realizes very quickly that it isn't.
But he stays calm. As his vision begins to blur and darken and he feels the terrible thing begin to happen, he allows himself to stay inside that still quiet place.
Sounds fade.
He can hear Finch hyperventilating from somewhere behind him. Root screams his name, but dully, as though she’s underwater. He tries to smile at her, to let her know it’s all right. He can see, as his body sinks to the ground, that she has the briefcase in her hands.
Good girl, he thinks. Root will take care of Harold, she will keep him safe, they will rebuild the Machine and they’ll bring Shaw home and they’ll find a way to take down Samaritan. The sun will rise tomorrow, the world will keep spinning, and John has taken them as far as he can.
Harold will find another John Reese. John Reeses are a dime a dozen. Harold will survive.
In the distant underwater place where he can still hear Root calling, another voice bursts in - two, rather; one human and one canine - and through the blinding pain in his abdomen which is slowly beginning to soften and fade, John wants to laugh.
Fusco and Bear. Right on time.
He wants to make a joke to Fusco about showing up fashionably late to the party. He wants to say, “Always gotta make an entrance, don’t you, Fusco?” just so he can provoke his partner into making that teeth-grittingly irritated face. He tries to speak, but of course nothing comes out of his mouth except the warm metallic taste of blood.
It’s okay, though. John isn’t worried.
Fusco and Bear hold off the Samaritan agents alongside Root for long enough that John can finally allow himself to close his eyes and sink down into the still dark place - because Fusco got Harold in the car.
Harold is safe.
“You did good, John,” he hears Carter say – he can’t see her, his vision’s so dark now that he doesn’t know if his eyes are closed or open, but he can hear her clear as a bell. “You’re a good soldier.” She’s not underwater like the others, she’s right here beside him, just like she was the last time, and the last thought in his mind before everything goes dark is gratitude.
He did good.
He was a good soldier.
And it’s like he told her that night in the freezing car – this was always where he was meant to be.
His path was always meant to end right here, amidst chaos and gunfire and screaming. He took the bullet so they could get Finch in the car - along with the Machine.
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
The words float past him in the darkness and he wonders for a moment where he's heard them before before it comes to him.
Carter's funeral.
She's right beside him. She's right here. She won't leave until it's over. She promised.
John has fought the good fight. He has finished the race.
He has kept the faith.
He has done what he always intended to do – die to save Harold Finch’s life – and he’s been granted the only wish he had left in the world:
That the last thing his eyes saw before they closed forever would not be the look of desperate anguish on Harold’s face.
Goodbye, he says silently.
There are other things it’s too late to say, but it doesn’t matter now. Words were never his strong suit anyway. He’d said them the only way he’d ever learned how – by stepping in front of the bullet.
He has never spoken it aloud, and now he never will, but Harold Finch will know.
* * * * *
It’s sweet and dark down there, in the calm still place inside John Reese, and for the first time in longer than he can remember he feels safe. There’s nothing left to be afraid of, when you’re about to be dead. Chaos and noise and light and sound and thought fade away to nothing, even the pain disappears. You simply let go. You sink to the bottom of the ocean inside you and then everything is silent.
John lies still on dark, wet pavement, bullet casings and dark puddles all around him. A scarlet stain blossoms on his crisp white shirt, oddly beautiful, like a great red rose bursting into bloom. A great many things happen at the same time, but John knows nothing about any of them. He neither sees nor hears the ambulance. He’s entirely unaware of hands lifting him off the ground amidst the revival of gunfire, as Fusco’s backup arrives. Heigh ho, the cavalry. It’s a grand scene, John would have enjoyed it, but he misses the whole thing.
He doesn’t know about the Machine’s distress call either, but then, at this moment, none of them do. Harold and Root will see the emails, later, they will find the instructions they were sent and they will know what to do. But as the red rose blooms wider and wider on John’s snow-white chest, he has no idea about the abandoned warehouse in Queens, in the heart of the shadow map, where salvation is slowly making its way.
They’re coming to help.
Every rescued number.
Everyone the Machine has saved.
They follow the directions that were texted to their cell phones and they read and reread the perplexing message over again.
“You have all been saved for a purpose. The one that saved you needs you now.”
So here they are, a citizen army of Irrelevants, on buses and trains and in the back of taxis and on bikes and driving their SUV’s, converging from all over the city onto one single point.
This was the Machine’s last stand, before shutting herself down to prevent Samaritan from taking control. She protected the irrelevant numbers. Samaritan would never know these people were connected to each other, or to Harold and the Machine, which meant they were the team’s last best hope. And Harold would lead them - an army of irrelevant numbers, from schoolteachers to dentists to software designers - to take down Samaritan.
All of these things are happening at the same time, but they no longer matter to John Reese, down here in the quiet darkness.
Finally, he can lay his burden down - the one he’s been carrying for years, ever since the first time Harold passed him in the hallway and his hand brushed the back of John’s by accident and sent an electric shock through his body.
That was when John knew, suddenly and horrifyingly and without a shadow of a doubt, that the greatest danger to his mission was no longer the Brotherhood, or Elias, or even Samaritan. It was the soft half-smile when his footstep startled Harold at his computer and he looked up to say “Good morning, Mr. Reese.” It was the dazzling lightning-quickness of his conversation, leaping from subject to subject, brilliant about everything. It was the way it felt to watch him at the ballet or the art museum or the cinema – to watch Finch watch something that fascinated him, the way his face lit up and the pitch of his voice rose with enthusiasm. It was the companionable silence between them when they took Bear out for a stroll or ate dinner together while they worked. It was the incandescent Harold-ness of him, the spark of that extraordinary mind peering out curiously at you from behind owlish glasses.
So there are two dangers. There’s the thing that happens to him when Harold’s hand brushes against his, which takes all the strength in his body to carefully swallow down whenever they’re in the same room, and which has only grown more agonizing with time. But then there’s the far worse second thing: the fear of all the ways this new, terrifying weakness could cause something terrible to happen. The fear of distraction. Of losing focus. Of looking into Harold Finch’s eyes and seeing something there that causes him to hesitate when he most needs to be decisive, to flip the switch back on and make him feel things when he needs to stay inside that battle-ready stillness.
It feels like heaven to set those weights down and step away from them. It’s so lovely to lay down and let death have you. Dying is so easy, compared to living, thinks John dimly, and he wonders why so much of human existence is shaped by its fear of this. Dying is a dark gentle river carrying you downstream towards the sea, wrapped in a warm embrace, silent and still. Living is harsh and loud and bright and it hurts, everything about it hurts, from the blinding white light piercing through your clenched eyelids to the searing knife-sharp pain in the side of your abdomen that slices through the calm darkness and brings a cacophony of sensations with it, from the smell of stale coffee to the sound of Bear’s footsteps, and . . .
“John.”
. . .
“John.”
. . .
“John.”
. . .
He took a deep, wheezing breath.
“Is he awake?” he heard Root exclaim, with a warm, genuine concern that surprised him - though not half as much as what happened next.
“About fucking time,” said a dry, approving voice from beside him – a voice he’d thought he’d never hear again. “Told Finch you were too stubborn to die. Shame about that suit though. You know he’s just gonna stick it on your tab.”
“Shaw,” he croaked, the sound coming out in a rush of breath that was scarcely a word. His lips were cracked and dry, and the dull throb of a bruise on his jaw made it difficult to form words. He opened his eyes part way against the screaming brightness of fluorescent white light, and sure enough, there was her face.
“What’s up, Sleeping Beauty?” she said around a mouthful of sandwich, grinning widely. “Miss me?”
John closed his eyes, the snow-white light refracting through the bright sting of tears.
* * * * *
He slept awhile longer, and when he woke again his eyes worked a little better, and his body was more willing to obey him, so he could sit up and listen and speak. Shaw was there still – with Bear, who hadn’t left her side, and with Root standing guard. They were in an abandoned hospital in Connecticut, Root explained, where Fusco had driven John from the scene of the shootout with Samaritan. That had apparently been a month ago. While John was here, unconscious, Root and Harold had set to work rebuilding the Machine in a new safe house, and though it was only partially operational, it had managed to lead Root to Shaw.
The safe house really was safe, Root assured John, reading the panic in his eyes. They’d had to do things the old-fashioned way, of course, calling in favors from the army of Irrelevants to borrow cars and cash and phones, in order to get their hands on a set of new forged identities. But it had worked. Samaritan was still looking for them, their respite would not hold forever, but there was a better-than-average chance it would hold long enough for Root and Harold to revive the Machine. They had tended to John, too, it turned out. There were doctors and nurses and physical therapists among the many numbers Reese and Finch had saved, and so to keep John Reese off the grid while he recovered, Finch had assembled a small army of volunteer medical personnel to tend to him.
“Finch,” John croaked suddenly, realizing for the first time that he wasn’t there, and a look passed between Root and Shaw that he couldn’t decipher.
“Crappy timing,” said Shaw. “He’s been here day and night for weeks and was turning into a zombie so we finally forced him to go home and actually like see his own bed for once.”
“It’s very sweet,” said Root gaily. “He sits right there, where Sameen’s sitting, and he sleeps in that chair. In case you woke up, so you’d be the first person he saw.”
Oh no, whispers a horrified voice inside of John, staring down in his mind at the two heavy burdens he thought he had finally lain to rest, and realizing he would be forced to pick them back up again. Even the joy of seeing Shaw back amongst them, her feet propped casually up on his hospital bed as she swigged from a no-doubt-contraband beer and leaned down from time to time to scratch Bear behind the ears, could not silence his panic.
Harold, with his bad leg and stiff back, sleeping upright in a hospital chair for three weeks so that John would see his face the moment he opened his eyes.
You should have let me die, he thought desperately, and pressed his eyes closed again.
* * * * *
Root called Finch to tell him John had woken up, and he ran every red light to get there.
He rushed into the room as though he had sprinted all the way, eyes shining and cheeks flushed, murmuring “Oh, thank God” as his hand clutched John’s with the desperate gratitude of a drowning man reaching for ballast. “Mr. Reese. We feared we might have lost you,” he said fervently. “I am so very happy we were all proved wrong.”
Harold’s raw, naked joy to see him again was excruciating, his affectionate touch even more so. John felt his entire self sink downwards under the weight of the burdens he had hoped, by now to be free of.
Danger, he thought.
But it began to seem, as the days wore on, as though perhaps all his worry had been for nothing.
After that first initial flurry of emotion, Finch retreated inwardly, stiff and quiet and awkward and perhaps the faintest bit cold. He still traded off shifts at the hospital with Root and Shaw, but he stared at his laptop the whole time and made only the most desultory conversation with John, with the doctors and nurses, or anyone who wasn’t Root – and even that was only if they were working.
Maybe this was good, thought John. For both of them. Maybe the near-disaster had forced them both to realize they had badly lost focus and that a little distance was needed for everyone to see the job more clearly. It wasn’t the same, of course; Finch hadn’t lost focus the way John had, Finch was comfortably immune to the electric shock of their hands touching, so it wasn’t as though they were in the same boat here. But Harold was fond of John, attached to him, and perhaps he had decided – as John had – that you couldn’t fight a war if you were looking only at the man beside you and not the one in front of you holding the gun.
This was good.
Distance was good.
He could very nearly convince himself, as the weeks passed and his strength returned and his wounds healed, that he was grateful for this.
Nearly.
Kind of.
Almost.
But what was the worst that could happen, really, if Harold Finch never touched him again?
John had gone a very long time without anyone to touch him, even in friendship, and he could do it again if he had to. He could become that man again, if that was what Finch needed.
If that was the way to keep Finch safe.
He was in the hospital for a total of six weeks, although of course he didn’t remember the first four. Six weeks stuck in a hospital bed, six weeks for his muscles to atrophy and his senses to lose their sharpness. He was a dulled blade now, and he needed his edge back. Harold would need him.
When they finally moved him to the safe house, a cheerful three-bedroom in the suburbs (“Am I on the couch, then?” asked a fuzzy-headed John, trying to do the math and failing until he saw the slightly impish way Root was looking at Shaw and the gruff embarrassed way Shaw was deliberately not looking at Root), Shaw took him in hand for physical therapy and training. He needed to get strong again, she said, and she wasn’t gonna go easy on him. She spent every day kicking his ass – at firearms, hand-to-hand, knife skills, strength training and cardio, everything – until his muscles began to slowly wake up from slumber and remember the purpose they’d been trained for.
Little by little, John Reese became John Reese again, but Harold kept his distance.
He was never unkind, he was as mild and polite as he’d always been, but all the intimacy they’d built up over the past few years had vanished behind a steel wall. He treated John courteously, like a stranger he was pleased to meet, but their hands never brushed by accident and John knew he ought to be relieved but wasn’t.
From time to time Root, accompanied by either Harold or Shaw, ventured back into the shadow side of the city to meet with their contacts and informants. There was no plan of attack against Samaritan yet, no matter how anxious John was to fire a bullet between Greer’s eyes. Right now there was simply the process of waking the Machine back up, and all the complicated technical needs that entailed. It was during one of these trips - after John had spent a month recovering in the safe house - that the thing finally happened.
Root was taking Shaw this time; there was a software programmer whose hard drive they needed, apparently, and he lived in Williamsburg on the second floor above a hipster lesbian bar, so they’d moved into the neighborhood for three days. To "sell the cover," as Shaw insisted, they were also taking Bear. Privately, John suspected it was because she didn't want to admit how much she'd missed him and didn't like being away from him that long, but she denied it. "It's for the cover," she said again. "Lesbians like dogs. Or, wait. Is it cats? Do they like dogs or cats?"
"I don't know," said Root cheerfully. "If I meet one, I'll ask her. By the way, your red bra is still in my purse from last night."
"One of these days I'm gonna murder you for real," muttered Shaw, snatching the bra from Root's hand and stomping off. Root shrugged it off, magnificently casual, and it was the closest John had come to smiling in a long time.
They left around eight in the morning. Root was leery of leaving Harold unprotected, but she was the only one. Harold insisted rather stiffly that he did not need a minder, and John assured Root that his injuries were healing nicely. Shaw concurred. “I know he still looks like shit," she told Root, "but he’s getting better. He hardly embarrassed himself in training at all yesterday.” Finally, Root sighed and relented.
The moment the door closed behind them Harold commenced avoiding John entirely, his nose buried in his computer all day long. He answered politely but briefly when John asked him questions, but showed no indications that he planned to make their three days alone any easier by a return to the comfortable conversation they used to enjoy. “My apologies, Mr. Reese, but I am occupied at the moment,” was the most John got out of him all day. Any time he tried to say more, Harold rebuffed him as politely but thoroughly as if a door had slammed shut.
At a loss, he went upstairs to his bedroom and called Shaw.
“Jesus,” she said by way of greeting, “we’ve been gone like four hours. The dog’s fine.”
“That’s not why I called.”
“Awww,” said Shaw fondly. “Root, he misses you.”
“Is that John?” he could hear Root in the background.
“Yeah. I don’t think he trusts me out of his sight with the dog.”
“Because the dog likes you better.”
“I know, I think that’s why.”
“Shaw, listen,” he said. “Have you talked to Finch today?”
Shaw paused. “Finch?” she repeated doubtfully.
“Yeah.”
“Harold Finch?”
“Shaw - “
“Harold Finch who's currently in the house with you? Like twenty feet away? Sitting at his desk?”
“Shaw -”
“He is at his desk, right, he didn’t like run off and disappear or something?”
“Shaw, has he called you?”
“No, he hasn’t called me, why the hell would -”
“Has he - in the last few - has he said anything about me?” John asked, hating himself for how it sounded, for the ghost of a tremor in his voice. Shaw responded with an incredulous snort.
“Christ,” she sighed irritably. “No, he hasn’t, but I can put a note in his Trapper Keeper at recess.”
“This isn't a joke, Shaw,” he said, and there was something in his voice that finally silenced her, took all the flip sarcasm out of her tone. She paused, and waited, letting him go on. “He hasn't spoken to me,” John said, and it was a little more naked than he’d meant to sound but he couldn’t quite keep his voice steady. “I’m worried, Shaw. He’s acting really strange. He can hardly look at me.”
“Course he can't,” said Shaw simply, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and then maddeningly refused to elaborate further.
“Everything okay?” he could hear Root ask in the background.
“He says Harold's acting weird.”
“As compared to what?” said Root dryly, and Shaw snorted.
“Don't know, he didn't say.”
“Weird can mean a lot of things,” Root observed.
“Yeah, I think he knows that.”
“Harry’s got a lot on his plate right now. Tell John to go easy.”
“You wanna talk to him?” Shaw fired back irritably.
“Not particularly,” said Root.
Shaw sighed. “Look, I'm in the car and we're like five minutes away from - left here, Root. Yeah, and then the next right - sorry. Look. You gotta talk to him yourself. We gave you idiots three days, if you can't sort it out in that amount of time, then honest to God, John, I don’t know what to tell you.”
John was startled. “What are you -”
“Team doesn't work if you two don't work, Reese,” said Shaw flatly, “and you know it. You boys gotta fix this ‘cause you’re driving us all crazy.”
“Shaw, what - “
“See you on Tuesday,” she said, and hung up.
John sat for a long time, staring down at his phone, trying to puzzle out what Shaw had meant. Finally, he gave up, and decided to go find something to do to keep himself from going insane. So he fell back on his old standby and sat down to clean his guns at the kitchen table. Then he cleaned Shaw’s. Then, figuring he might as well take advantage of this rare burst of camaraderie while it lasted, he also cleaned Root’s. Then he made dinner. Then he ate it. Then he watched the news for awhile. Then he switched off the television.
In all that time, Harold had not spoken to him. He had not even turned around. He had gotten up once for tea and once for the bathroom and in both cases had taken the most circuitous route possible to avoid John’s chair.
John watched him for a long moment. From his vantage point at the kitchen table, he could see through the darkened entryway into the living room, where Harold sat at a vast messy desk, staring intently at the computer. He took him in – the narrow shoulders with their faint slope, the shape of his skull beneath his close-cropped hair, the faint pinstripe in the wool of his gray jacket (even inside the house, Harold dressed as though he were going to work), the way his hands fidgeted in his lap . . .
And then the penny dropped.
“Keyboard clicks,” said John, his voice harsh and abrupt in the stillness.
“I beg your pardon?” said Harold, palpably startled by the sudden intrusion of sound, as though he’d entirely forgotten John was there.
“That’s what’s missing,” said John. “That’s why it’s been too quiet all day.”
“Mr. Reese, if you don’t mind, I am extremely – “
“You’re not working,” he snapped, rising from the kitchen table and stepping through the low arch into the living room, “You haven’t touched the keyboard. You’re just sitting there, looking at the screen. Avoiding me.”
“I assure you, that is –“
“Harold,” John cut him off, the name scraping raw against his throat, and Harold froze.
It was silent for a long time before John spoke again, quieter this time, his voice heavy and sad. “Why can’t you look at me?” he asked simply, and he watched Harold’s shoulders collapse in his chair.
“Mr. Reese,” he began after a far-too-long pause – he still hadn’t turned around – then cleared his throat and began again. “I understand that you may well be . . . that is to say, all things considered, I began to feel it prudent to reexamine – or, to put it another way, the increased risk – no, perhaps ‘risk’ is the wrong word. Under the circumstances, let us say, I felt that – “
“Harold,” John interrupted him harshly. “I miss you.”
The entire world stopped spinning as the words left his mouth.
The second John heard what he’d said, he wished he could take it back. This was too raw, too naked, too much. He had drawn these lines so carefully, he had always stayed on the proper side of them, and was it so wrong after all to crave a bit of harmless touch from time to time, a hand on the shoulder, a pleasant evening of lively conversation and good food, the way it had been before? Companionship. Connection. A friend.
Surely that was permitted, wasn’t it? He was allowed to ask for that. That was what he meant to say.
But that wasn’t what he'd said.
And Harold knew it.
For a long, long time, nobody moved. John stood helplessly in the middle of the living room floor, trapped between staying and going, while Harold sat at the computer he wasn’t really using, frozen in indecision about whether or not to turn around.
About thirty seconds later, the problem was solved for them.
Later, they would learn it had simply been a car backfiring in the street. It had been nothing. They were safe. But the sound ripped through the silence and flipped a switch inside John’s body, and the old John Reese came roaring back to life as though his strength had never faded even for a moment. In one swift movement - graceful and fluid again, like ballet, he hadn't lost it - he drew his gun and pulled Harold onto the floor behind the sofa, shielding him with his body. Even in the heat of his heightened battle-senses, he’d done it carefully and gently, always precisely attuned to the needs of Harold’s body and its old wounds.
They lay like that for a long time, John’s body pinning Harold’s down into the soft carpet. John felt a heart beating and couldn’t, for a moment, determine whose it was. Harold was breathing hard, his eyes dark with fear as he stared at John – but dark with something else too, something John was afraid to name in case he was wrong.
Dimly, in the back of his mind, there was a rueful part of himself that thought – At least it got him to look at me.
After ten minutes with no further sounds, John pulled Harold carefully to his feet and pushed him up against the wall of the kitchen entryway, far from the windows, and drew his gun to investigate. He returned shortly with the full story, obtained from a cluster of equally startled neighbors, gathered in the street to yell at the man whose car had woken everyone from sleep.
“False alarm,” said John gruffly, holstering his gun. He knew there was nothing to be embarrassed of, he’d done everything right. But something had stirred up a restlessness in him, a tense discomfort that made him decide it wasn’t worth it, after all, to hash this all out tonight.
“I’m going to bed,” he growled, pushing brusquely past a startled Finch to make his way up the stairs.
“You died, Mr. Reese,” said a low, gentle voice, and it halted John on the fifth stair more swiftly and surely than anything had ever halted him in his life. He turned to look back down at Finch, who was gazing intently straight at him. “For two point eight minutes in the middle of the surgery,” Finch went on, his voice devastating in its calmness. “When they removed the bullet. You died on the operating table.”
“Guess it didn’t take,” said John, not sure what to do with this and opting for the safe option, to play it off, make a joke, push it far away where he didn’t have to think about it.
Finch did not smile.
“You have always said,” he said to John in a low voice, “that you would give your life for the Machine. For me. I accepted this at the outset as the necessary risk factor of an operation of this magnitude. I simply did not imagine – “ His voice broke off here for a moment, and he appeared to be collecting himself. John took two more steps down the stairs. Harold took two steps back, into the center of the living room. “I did not imagine what it would feel like,” he said softly, “to watch.”
“Harold,” said John helplessly.
“I found it . . . difficult to be near you,” Harold went on, as though John had not spoken. “Ms. Shaw and Ms. Groves were convinced of the likelihood of your survival. They never lost faith. Nor, I believe,” he added, with the ghost of a smile, “did Bear.”
“Fusco gave up on me, huh?” said John, trying for a joke again, but it didn’t land, it just made it worse, Harold couldn’t meet his eyes.
“It was me,” he said. “I was the one. I was the one who was afraid you would not live.”
“I’m right here, Harold,” said John sensibly, coming down the rest of the stairs and reaching Harold in the center of the room in three long strides. “Look at me. Good as new. Couple new bumps and bruises, and the blow to my ego from having my ass handed to me by Shaw every day for a month, but still. We made it. Everybody made it.”
“Mr. Reese, I watched you die for me,” Harold said desperately, “and the thought of enduring that pain again – after all that we – after realizing – “ He stopped abruptly.
John, curious as to the source of Harold’s ever-increasing agitation, stepped a little closer. Harold moved back.
“Mr. Reese, I think it would be best to have this conversation at a slightly safer distance.”
“I don’t know what that means, Finch.”
“You are not an acceptable loss, Mr. Reese!” Harold flung at him suddenly, wildly, the words bursting out of him with a forcefulness that took John completely by surprise. “I entered into this mission knowing that anyone in my life could be placed in danger by the work I do. And so I, I built a life for myself that was small and self-contained. I could not permit anyone to matter to me on a personal level too deep for objectivity. At any time, I might find myself sending them into danger, and I knew it was vital to learn how to grieve and yet move on, to keep the mission alive.”
“You do that, Harold,” said John reassuringly. He reached out a hand, but Harold flinched and pulled away. “You did it with Carter. With Shaw.”
“Not with you,” said Harold abruptly, and John went still.
“What do you mean?” he asked in a low voice, feeling his blood begin to race in his veins, feeling a curious electrical surge pulse through his body, drawing him like gravity closer and closer to Harold, who was pulled back towards him too and could not move away.
“I did nothing,” whispered Harold, as though confessing something shameful. “For weeks. Root worked day and night while I did nothing except sit in the chair beside your bed and attempt in vain to repress the memory of watching you fall to the ground with a bullet in your chest.”
“Harold –“
“I lost my way,” he said plaintively. “I have never lost my way before. Not like this. And I thought – when you woke up, finally, after so long, after I had abandoned all hope, I thought, ‘this time things will be different, this time I will be careful.’ I thought . . . I hoped . . . distance – “
John reached out to him again, and this time Harold did not pull away. He let John rest a hand on his shoulder, solid and strong, and the shadows inside Harold’s eyes began to dissipate at his touch.
“You have stood so many times between danger and me,” whispered Harold. “To protect me. To protect all of us. You are the one who keeps us safe. And yet without the Machine,” he went on, “without its resources, its knowledge – there is nothing I can do to keep you safe. Without it I am nothing.”
“With or without the Machine,” John insisted gently, “you are the first good man I ever knew in my life. With or without the Machine, Harold, I will keep you safe. I’ll die again if I have to,” he added, trying a third time for a moment of levity, but Harold still didn’t take it.
“Please don’t,” he said softly, and then John couldn’t stand it anymore. He cupped Harold’s face in his hands, pulled him close, and bent his head to kiss him.
Harold’s first reaction was an astonishment so great it knocked him physically off-balance. He faltered for a moment where he stood until John’s arms slipped around his back to steady him and back him slowly against the wall. Once there, able to stand upright again, he moved from surprise to confusion, pushing John away in puzzlement as though convinced there had been some kind of a mistake.
“You’re tired, perhaps,” said Harold compassionately. “And you are still recovering from a number of serious wounds.”
“Harold –“
“You are kind, Mr. Reese – you have always been kind – but I cannot ask you to – I have no wish –“ He broke off, shook his head abruptly as if to clear it, then looked back at John with the same mask of polite civility he had work every day for the past month.
As if nothing had changed.
“I believe I will go up to bed,” said Harold flatly. “Goodnight, Mr. Reese.”
John let him get halfway up the stairs before he said it.
“You kissed me back,” he said. “For a moment. Before your brain switched back on again. Before you told yourself it was a bad idea. You kissed me back.”
“It was a bad idea, Mr. Reese,” said Harold, pausing infinitesimally on the stairs before resuming his climb. “Goodnight.”
* * * * *
Impossible as it was to believe, the next day was worse.
John slept later than he used to – Shaw’s orders, while his body was still recovering – so he rose around nine to see that Harold had already made breakfast, left a pot of fresh coffee for him, and then disappeared. His laptop and his favorite mug were missing from the computer desk, indicating to John that he’d barricaded himself into his room.
“We gave you idiots three days,” Shaw had said. Whatever the hell that meant.
He made breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, and went for a run. He organized the weapons locker in the garage. He tried to read for awhile, but books made him think of Harold, and what was the point of enjoying one of Harold’s books if he couldn’t talk to him about it later? So he threw the book down on the couch.
The sun peaked high in the afternoon sky, then began to slide downwards again, shading the clear cloudless blue with violet, before Harold Finch opened his bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway – where he nearly tripped over John.
“Mr. Reese, what are you doing?” he said, staring down at the man sitting on the floor of the darkened hallway, leaning his head back against the wall.
“I know you’ve got a bathroom in there,” said John, gesturing to the bedroom door, “and your laptop. But I took a chance on you having to leave the room sometime to eat.”
“How long have you been sitting there?”
“Depends,” said John. “What time is it?”
“Five-thirty.”
“Then . . . a pretty long time.”
“Mr. Reese – “
“Shaw says the team doesn’t work if me and you don’t work,” said John, a little helplessly. “And you can’t even look at me.”
Harold paused, his hand in the middle of reaching back towards the bedroom doorknob, as if he’d been considering ways to escape. He looked down at John for a long, silent moment, hesitating, unsure.
“I’m sorry,” said John roughly. “For whatever it was I did.”
“What you did?” asked Harold in confusion.
“For last night,” said John. “And for whatever it was that happened before last night.”
Harold stared. “Mr. Reese, I don’t understand.”
“You’re too angry even to look at me,” said John fiercely, “and I don’t know why.”
“Anger?” said Harold softly, incredulously. “You think – Mr. Reese, how could you possibly – why on earth would I – “
“We used to be friends, Harold,” he said flatly. “We’re not anymore.”
Harold stared down at him for a long time, silent and sad, but he didn’t deny it. Instead, he lowered his body – with considerable effort, navigating around his bad leg – to sit on the floor beside John.
John hadn’t turned on the switch for the hallway lights, so they sat there in the fading light, side by side, and watched through the high window over the stairs as the sun faded below the horizon and cast long shadows on the walls. They sat there without speaking as the world grew dark around them. It was a long, long time before John finally spoke.
“It’s a surprise, when you really think about it,” he said thoughtfully, “how much easier dying is than living. Or at any rate, it was to me.” Harold didn’t say anything, but shifted slightly so he could see, in the dim light of the moon and the streetlamps outside, the dark-and-light movement of shadows across John’s face. “Carter was there,” he went on unexpectedly. “Like she was before. Like she knew. I thought she’d come back for me. And I felt safe in that place, it was the safest place I’d ever been in my life, because there was nothing left for me to be afraid of. Root had the briefcase and Fusco would get you to safety and you’d find another hitter – or you’d get Shaw back – and everything would be all right. I was . . . happy is the wrong word. Peaceful, maybe. At peace.”
"'I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,'" said Harold, almost absentmindedly, and John felt his heart stop beating.
"Yes," was all he could say, devastated at how simply and clearly Harold had always been able to read him.
“That bullet would have struck me if you hadn’t stepped in front of it,” Harold pointed out.
“I know.”
“John,” he asked in a puzzled voice, “did you want to die?”
“I wanted to keep you alive.”
“Forgive me, but that’s not what I asked.”
“I did,” said John honestly. “In that moment? There on the ground? Yeah. I did. I was ready. Once I knew you were safe, I just . . . wanted it to be over as fast as possible. I just hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much, was all.”
“Do you wish you were dead now?” asked Harold, and there was no judgment in his tone, nothing invasive. He simply wanted to know.
“I don’t know anymore, Harold,” said John in a hollow voice, as he looked out the window and watched a point of light move through the stars. Airplane, maybe. He’d always liked flying at night. He felt a pang of envy for all those people, sitting there with their magazines and their headphones and their bags of peanuts, looking out the window at the night sky. People traveling to someplace new, sure, people departing, but also people coming home. Sitting in their airplane seats and drinking their ginger ale as the people they loved, the places they loved, moved irrevocably towards them at thousands of miles per hour. It must be nice, thought John, to be somebody like that. Somebody with at least one fixed point on their compass.
John didn’t have that.
If Harold Finch couldn’t look him in the eye, than John Reese didn’t know which way North was anymore.
“Shaw’s right,” John said flatly. “There’s something broken between us. I broke it. A long time ago. It’s my fault, I thought I could . . . I tried my best to, I don’t know, just push through it. There were things I could do to make it easier -"
“The way you stepped forward during the gunfire,” observed Harold gently. “And allowed Ms. Groves to fall back, next to me.”
Of course, thought John. Of course he knew.
“It’s harder when I can see you,” John found himself admitting. “When I’m watching you to make sure you’re all right. I’m better when I can just . . . look forward.”
“Yes,” agreed Harold thoughtfully. “I sometimes feel the same.”
“You wanted distance,” said John. “Last night. That’s what you said. That you cared too much for objectivity.” Harold nodded. “Me too. That’s why the bullet was a relief. Because at least that one, I knew I could stop. The next one I might not be so lucky. You need someone who can protect you.”
“You have always done that,” Harold insisted. “You have never let me down, Mr. Reese. You have never failed me.”
“I can’t protect you from me,” said John desperately. “From my own weaknesses.”
“Everyone has weaknesses, Mr. Reese.”
“I didn’t step in front of the briefcase,” John said, abruptly, out of nowhere, and Harold stared.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“When you fell. When you dropped the briefcase.”
“Ms. Groves retrieved it.”
“But if she hadn’t been there,” said John. “If I’d had to choose.” Harold looked at him then, really looked at him, his kind eyes drawn and tired, and he leaned his own head back against the wall too. “You taught the Machine that all human life was equal,” John reminded him. “That it should never choose to value one life less than another. That’s dangerous, and destructive.”
“Yes,” said Harold.
“But it’s dangerous the other way too,” John pointed out. “Did you warn it about that?”
“Mr. Reese – “
“I would have let it go,” said John in a quietly devastated voice. "That’s why you’re angry. Because I couldn’t save both, and I chose you instead. I don’t value all human life equally, Harold. I value yours more.”
Harold let out a long, shaky breath.
"I'm not angry," he said. "I feel, in fact, very much the same." John looked up at him, startled. “When I believed that we had lost you, I found that notion . . . unbearable. I was unable to go on.” He closed his eyes, then. John watched him. “I am not a man who has ever felt particularly tethered to the world,” Harold went on, struck by the sudden need to attempt to explain himself. “Friends. Relationships. Love. I find myself, more often than not, tempted to avoid such complications. To avoid, as you said, opening oneself up to weakness. And so, as much as I care for this team, as dear as all of you are to me, I was stunned by what I saw in myself as I watched you in that hospital bed. No, more than that. I was afraid. I have known losses before, Mr. Reese. Great ones. I had not thought of myself as a person who formed attachments to people and things I could not live without. And yet I was undone by your loss. When the Machine needed me most, I could not be what it needed. There was room for nothing in my mind except to wonder if you would ever come back to us.”
“I did come back,” John protested, suddenly and inexplicably furious with him. “I’m here. I’ve been here. For a month, Harold. And two weeks in the hospital before that. And nothing,” he said, with a hopeless gesture. “Nothing. Not a word.”
“Under the circumstances, I thought it best – “
“Harold, I can’t do this anymore,” said John wearily. “If you don’t want me the way I want you, just say so. I’m a grown man. I can take it. What I can’t take is the silence.”
“Want me?” said Harold blankly, his eyes wide and staring. He was looking at John with utter astonishment, as if he had never seen him before in his life.
“Yeah,” said John, puzzled.
“What do you mean?” asked Harold, a little desperately. “What can you possibly mean?”
John stared back. “I thought you - Harold, what did you think I was talking about?”
“I believed that we were speaking of – “ Harold broke off. “There has been a variety of intimacy between us,” he tried again, haltingly. “A partnership. Friendship, yes, but also something with a bit more . . . gravity than that. The shared nature of our mission. I understood that you were speaking of a kind of, I suppose, a closeness, an affection, that springs from that. That you have come to, in some small way, care for me. Brothers-in-arms, one might call it. Comradeship.”
"Comradeship," John repeated incredulously, then leaned his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes. He felt a laugh bubble up from inside him, a harsh, unhappy one with no real amusement in it. The irony of it, after everything that had happened.
“Mr. Reese?”
“I literally stepped in front of a bullet to avoid this moment,” he told Harold ruefully. “But you’re going to make me say it out loud anyway.” He exhaled deeply, his shoulders crumpling and sagging forward, and he suddenly looked ten years older and very, very tired.
“I don’t – “
“Harold, I’m in love with you,” said John, his low voice so gruff he sounded almost angry – though whether at Harold, or the situation, or himself, Harold didn’t know.
The silence that followed was awful.
“You’re . . . what?” Harold finally managed to say, timidly.
“Don’t make me say it again,” said John wearily, closing his eyes.
The silence went on for an eternity.
“Your mind and body have been under a considerable degree of strain,” Harold began gently. “Under the circumstances, I understand perfectly why – that is to say, last night, when you – “
And finally, John decided he’d had it.
“This didn’t just happen, Harold,” he snapped. “I’m not high on painkillers. It’s not PTSD. You can’t explain this away as the delusion of a man who died for two minutes on an operating table. This isn’t new. This is what it’s always been.”
“John –“
“I don’t feel this way because I took a bullet to the chest, Harold,” he said roughly, and Harold froze. “I took a bullet to the chest for you because I feel this way.”
Harold looked stricken, his eyes wide and dark and miserable. He stared at John for a long, long time without speaking. Then he struggled to his feet – wincing at the stiffness in his leg but refusing John’s help – and moved away back towards his bedroom door.
“Harold,” pleaded John desperately.
“I am sorry, Mr. Reese,” said Harold, his voice shaky with emotion.
“Please don’t walk away from me.”
“I have no wish to - I simply – I need a moment. I just – I need to – “
But he didn’t finish the sentence before he closed the door behind him.