Work Text:
John said, "Harold's alive."
Grace didn't stare at him, or ask questions, or react very much at all. She folded her arms around herself and looked out of the window. After a minute, she said, "I wish you hadn't told me that."
It wasn't accusing, just sad; she sighed and dropped her arms and looked back at him. "I think I need some tea," she said. "Do you want some? Or a drink. You know, I think I want a drink." She turned and went to the small cut-glass and wood bar in the corner, an antique piece, and took out a small glass and a bottle of something.
"You already knew," John said, blankly.
"Oh. Yes." She looked over her shoulder. "Do you want sherry? You probably don't. I think I have some whisky?"
John stared at her. She gave him an uncertain look back, like he was the one acting strange. She poured him a glass of whisky and gave it to him as she walked back. He took it and kept watching her; she took her glass and sat down on the couch and sipped it. "When did you find out?" he said. "Did you spot him?"
"I've seen him in the park a few times," Grace said, "but I wouldn't have noticed him if I hadn't known to look, if that makes sense. He never lets me get very close." She was staring down at her hands. "No, it was just, that whole week after the bombing, after I found his effects, I kept thinking — you know how you don't really believe in something like that right away? Your brain just goes to other things. So I kept thinking, 'Okay. What do I do? Who do I call? What papers do I have to find?' And — " She spread her hands. "There was nothing. There was nothing for me to do.
"Harold's lawyer showed up without a phone call, told me the house was mine. A big insurance payout came. Someone called and told me when the funeral would be. That was it, actually — I remember I hung up the phone and I thought, you know, this is just like that time we took the trip to Paris, it's like the scavenger hunt for my birthday. Everything happened magically all around me, and it was just like that, and I thought, this feels like Harold organized it. And as soon as I thought it, I realized — "
She stopped and smiled, wistful. "I realized that of course, he had."
She stopped talking. She sipped her sherry. She seemed to be fine leaving it there; John had the weird feeling she wouldn't have particularly minded if he'd gotten up and left; she wouldn't have tried to stop him. "If you knew," he said, "why didn't — "
"I almost did," she said. "I called his voicemail, I was going to scream at him, but — " She looked at him. "You work with Harold, don't you."
"Yes," John said.
She studied him; John felt oddly exposed; he couldn't guess what she was seeing, and he didn't know what he was looking at himself. She didn't look like she needed a drink. She looked serene, undisturbed; deep waters.
He'd thought he knew her, understood her: a nice, shy woman who painted and loved Harold. She'd made sense in his head, an inch deep and clear as glass. He'd imagined her demanding to be taken to Harold; he'd imagined her climbing the library stairs, refusing to leave unless Harold went with her. Harold being pulled away for her sake, when nothing else would have moved him. Harold gone with her, somewhere into hiding, somewhere safe. Harold getting to live, to be with her.
She said, "I hope you don't mind my saying so, but I think you're a very violent man."
John flinched. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said harshly. His chest felt hard and tight, a knot of pain in the middle: like a specimen being pinned to a board. Her clear eyes didn't waver.
"I didn't think that," she said. "Harold would never work with you if you weren't a good person. But I think there's a lot of violence in your life. In your work."
"Yes," he said.
She nodded. "And that's Harold's work. It's work he gives you."
John didn't say anything, but it didn't seem he had to. She sighed and looked away.
"Harold never wanted to talk about his work at all, and I didn't want to make him," she said. "But I knew he would tell me if it mattered. If he knew it would make a difference to me. And when I called his number, when I heard his voice on the voicemail, the old message, I realized, that had to be what had happened. Something had gone wrong, and he couldn't be a part of my life anymore. So — so I didn't say anything. I just hung up."
"You didn't care why?" John said.
"Would it make a difference? If he'd really been blown up in a terrorist attack, there wouldn't have been a reason." She shook her head. "For a while, I almost wished I didn't know. The first few months — it was so hard, knowing whatever he was involved in mattered more than me. I mean, I knew it had to be important," she added. "I knew he wasn't wrong. But selfishly, it would have been easier to believe that he was dead.
"But now, it's been long enough, and it makes me glad to know that he's still alive out there, and doing something that matters to him. But I'm sad for him, too. Especially now that I've met you, now I know that there's violence in his life." She quirked her mouth, unhappily. "I suppose I guessed, though. There weren't a lot of things that would have made a difference to me, about being with him. And this way we never had to — we never had to go through that. I got to catch glimpses of him in the park, and he could imagine coming back to me someday."
She looked up at John. "So I wish you hadn't told me," she said. "Because now you'll have to tell him that I know. And he won't be able to imagine that, anymore."
She put down her glass, empty, and stood up. John stood with her. She looked up at him. "Will you please tell Harold that I love him, and I hope he's well?" She gave him one last fragile smile, and then she turned and left the room. He stood there alone in the middle of the quiet, sunny living room, and listened to her go upstairs and close a door.
#
The library was dark when he got back. The sun had gone down, but Harold hadn't turned on the lights; he was sitting at the computer desk, deep in his chair, unmoving; flickering screens threw green light on his face.
John stopped by the desk. "I'm sorry," he said, harshly.
Harold lifted two fingers, let them drop back to the arm of the chair. After a moment he said, "It's best, sometimes, to lance a wound."
John sat down on the couch. His hands were shaking; he folded them together in his lap. He'd imagined Jessica, saying, I'll wait for you, fierce devotion; but then, no one who recoiled from violence would ever have loved him.
"John," Harold said abruptly, "I hope you'll remember that Grace doesn't know you, of course. She would never have said it if she had; she wouldn't have wanted to hurt you."
"It's not like she was wrong," John said.
They sat in silence; numbers scrolled away on Harold's screens.
"Why did you tell her?" Harold said.
John looked down at his hands. But he owed Harold an explanation. Owed Harold — a lot more than that. "I thought — I thought you should have a chance. To be with the person you love. I thought you could go away with her."
"And you would continue working with the numbers, alone," Harold said.
"Yeah," John said.
"Did you believe that I would do that?"
John swallowed. "If it was the only way to keep her safe."
"I see," Harold said. He still hadn't looked around at John. "An interesting method of sending me away."
"That wasn't — "
"Wasn't it?" Harold raised a hand to forestall him. "If you'll forgive me, we'll discuss it another time. At the moment — at the moment, I think I'd like to be alone."
John's throat was tight. He snapped his fingers at Bear and stood up. "Harold — " he said, and stopped; there wasn't any point in saying anything. Harold knew how to find him. He bent and clipped the leash to Bear's collar and went out with him, into the dark.
#
A new number came in the next day; Harold called him in. They didn't speak of Grace again. John went to the park a few times after that, hours when Harold had often gone; Harold was never there. He saw Grace a few times, through the trees, carrying her easel. She didn't change her routine, but then, nothing had changed for her. She'd known all along.
The third time John saw her, he followed her all the way to the embankment; he stood at a distance and watched her set up her easel and start painting: smooth clean lines, simplicity, beauty, while people and their lives flowed all around her, never touching her. All the people that the Machine watched, the river full of numbers, the people they saved, the people Harold saved; and he was angry, shaking with anger; he stalked across the path and came next to her easel. She looked up at him with mild surprise and put down her brush.
"He'd go with you," John said harshly. "He wouldn't — he wouldn't make you live in danger, he wouldn't make you live with violence. He'd leave — "
"Oh," Grace said, blinking at him. "Oh, you love him. I didn't realize."
John flinched from her and left, walking fast, losing himself in the crowd; he walked and kept walking until he ran out of island. He sat on a bench on the ferry pier, staring at the Statue of Liberty and the pitch black water. He had nowhere to go.
He'd been there for almost half an hour when Harold limped up and sat down next to him.
"I did wonder for a moment if you'd done it on purpose," Harold said, after a few moments. "But of course, selfishness has never been your besetting sin." He paused and added, "Cowardice has never been mine."
"No," John said. His heart was pounding, frantic, terrified. He shut his eyes as Harold put his hand on his neck and gently turned his head. Harold's mouth was warm and sweet and soft, kissing him, taking everything John had to give and asking for more. John shuddered desperately. Harold broke the kiss and cupped his cheek. He kissed John again briefly, then took his hand and stood, drawing him up.
John went with him. Harold led him into the warren of Battery Park City, to a tall anonymous cookie-cutter high rise, past an incurious doorman. There was an apartment, a bedroom, a bed. Harold drew the curtains and undressed him in the dark, gently but without mercy, and took off his own clothes. John lay down and closed his eyes, so scared he could barely breathe; he couldn't speak.
Harold made love to him slowly, thoroughly; with his hands, his mouth, his cock, taking and taking. John came early on with a shuddering rush, spilling over Harold's fingers, and abruptly pushed Harold over and sucked him to completion, hard and fast. Harold kissed him afterwards and said gently, "That doesn't mean we're going to stop now, John," and kept going, refusing to let him run away even that far. He opened John up with fingers and tongue and worked him with them for nearly an hour, until Harold was hard again.
Harold worked into him, slowly, by degrees, too solid and too impossible not to believe in, and John said, strangled, "Harold — oh God. Harold," and finally grabbed on to him, gripped his hand and came again, shaking. And he was still scared; he was still as scared as he'd ever been in his entire life, but he clung to Harold anyway and kissed him back at last, known, knowing.
# End