Chapter Text
All I’m Asking
“F**k, Reese—get over here. I need you right now.”
“Well, gosh, Shaw—this is so sudden,” John said. “All you had to do was ask me nice.” His voice was casual, teasing, but there was nothing casual about the expression in his eyes, and he was moving through the clearing very fast. Good grief, the big lug could book it when he wanted to, even if he was half as big as a ferry boat.
“Aw, screw off,” Shaw gritted, but there was relief beneath the snort of derision.
John stepped up beside them and took in the situation—Finch pale as a ghost in some sort of thin prison jumpsuit, wearing Shaw’s jacket, but even with the hood up you could see the thick line of clotted blood running from his temple. Shaw was freezing in the bitter cold, too, but she had all 115 pounds wrapped around Harold like a vise.
“I’d say he’s down almost a pint,” she muttered, “and he’s trying to go into shock.”
“I’m not trying,” Harold said peevishly, shivering in the frigid air. “You didn’t exactly give me time to pack my toothbrush.”
“Everybody’s a critic,” John said lightly.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry the rescue didn’t come with an itinerary,” she grumbled back, but there was something of a smile in her voice. Harold was tough, in his own way, and hearing him grouse back at her convinced her that she wasn’t going to lose him. It gave them a moment’s respite of dark humor—enough to draw a breath but not quite enough to breathe.
John shouldered out of his topcoat and draped it over Shaw. She opened her mouth, ready with a string of expletives, but John grabbed her arm—not gently. “This isn’t a contest. I’m wearing a suit and a vest—put on the damn coat, Shaw.”
Meekly (for Shaw, that is) she shouldered into it, then clamped herself around her employer. John hadn’t been idle—he knelt and got a look at Finch’s pupils, making the older man flinch away from the light—then knelt and grabbed for where Finch’s ankle would be. He was more relieved than he could say to find that Finch was wearing shoes—whose shoes, John didn’t know, but he at least wasn’t barefoot. The temperature outside was no joke, and at least he had something between him and the ground.
“Where’s Root?” Shaw said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “And where’s Lionel with the f**king town car?”
“Don’t know and don’t know,” John said. His eyes had never stopped scanning the horizon except for that brief peek into Finch’s eyes. “But we can’t stay here and wait for the cavalry. We’ve got a whole army of hostiles between us and the hole we cut in the fence—if they haven’t found it. We have to move.” He looked at Shaw and thrust his chin at Finch’s head. “We’ve got to get him somewhere warm.”
“I’m ambulatory, Mr. Reese,” Finch said, but his reedy voice was snatched away by the howling wind.
“If, by ambulatory, you mean you need an ambulance,” Shaw said, “then I agree with you.” But she was hauling him against her to steady him, and then John plowed in like a tank, put one arm around both of them and swept them along across the snow-covered ground. It was slow-going. Visibility was practically nil, and Finch was willing but unsteady. Shaw took the coat off and draped it around Harold’s shoulder. John watched with approval, then stripped off his suit coat and gave it to her. The look she gave him said she would eviscerate him—verbally and maybe otherwise—later, but she put the coat on. Even in shirt sleeves, John was like a nuclear plant, radiating heat. Steam rolled off him in waves and was whisked away by the frigid wind. Nuclear plant or not, even he couldn’t stand this type of cold for
long, but they didn’t have long anyway—one way or another.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring a change of clothes,” Shaw said as they stumbled. “It didn’t occur to me they would take your clothes.”
“Yeah, I should have thrown in a couple of bearskins,” John muttered, tweaking Shaw for her caveman remark from earlier.
“I think they were concerned about tracking devises,” Finch added. “They’re getting smarter.”
“Eh, maybe,” Shaw conceded. “But their shooting hasn’t improved,” Shaw said. She put her arms around Finch as they maneuvered and checked her jacket pockets for spare ammo. She’d used a lot of it inside the old prison where Finch had been held and might need more if they had to shoot it out instead of sneak out.
“Small mercies. But still not smart enough. Good thing they didn’t check your molars, Harold,” John said.
“I confess,” Finch wheezed. “I thought that was an unnecessary precaution.” He stumbled again and they caught him, eyes meeting worriedly over his head.
“Good thing Root’s more stubborn than you are,” Shaw said.
“I don’t know if stubborn is the right word,” Finch murmured. “I prefer to think of it as strongly principled.”
It was on the tip of Shaw’s tongue to make a sharp retort and tell Finch to can it and concentrate on moving his ass, but John’s hand squeezed her elbow and she quieted. Finch was fighting in his own way, pretending he was a pain in the tuchus—which he was—instead of a burden. They came into a dense patch of trees rimed with frost, but the wind wasn’t reaching as badly here, and they stopped to rest a minute.
“Strongly principled, huh?” Shaw said. She could see that the gash was bleeding freely again and wished she had something to use to staunch it. Harold saw her look and smiled. He looked exhausted and pale.
“I’ll bet you wish I had my pocket square right about now,” he said, and Shaw leaned forward and gave him a sharp hug.
“I am never making fun of your pocket squares again,” she insisted. “So, you better not die on us out here.”
“I’ll do my best, Ms. Shaw,” Harold said.
John stepped in again, gathering them both against his bulk and bulldozing them all forward.
“Good to hear, Finch. That’s all we’re asking.”
*****
“Geez—it’s like a sauna in here,” Lionel complained. He had opened his collar and was wiping his face with a none-too-clean handkerchief as they barreled down the road.
“It’s very nice,” Finch murmured. His voice was thin and pale, like he was, but he was warm now, and Shaw was using a tube of superglue found in the glove compartment to close the gash in his head.
“It’s the same stuff they use for surgical glue,” she muttered. “I swear.” She was straddling Finch in the back seat of the car, with John wedged on Harold’s right, radiating heat and the smell of testosterone. Root was no doubt behind them in her commandeered car, keeping track of their pursuers with their own radio.
“I swear, I’m gonna be ten pounds lighter when we get back,” Fusco groused.
“So maybe keep driving when you drop us off. Four or five hours should do it,” Shaw shot back.
“Oh yeah? That’s the appreciation I get for saving your bacon?”
“Bacon,” murmured Finch longingly, and John opened his eyes fully and looked at Shaw, then at Lionel in the rearview mirror. Lionel shrugged.
“Sure thing,” Lionel said. “How’s Glasses doing back there?”
“He’ll live,” Shaw said. “He’s got a concussion and a bump or two, but he’s stopped bleeding thanks to yours truly and that rat’s nest of a glove compartment you’ve got.” She reached over and patted the cop on his curls.
“Hey—don’t you get that stuff in my hair,” he snapped, but he was pleased. Shaw wasn’t big on touching—she was more of a break-your-bones-if-you-look-at-me gal—but she had been glad to see him screech up with the big car. She admired her handiwork on her employer’s improvised stitching once more, than flopped back into the seat on the other side of Finch. With John taking up two-thirds of the back seat, and her leaning toward the middle, Finch was effectively cocooned between them. He was getting warm—if they could keep him awake until they got home, they were going to be okay.
*****
Going through the drive-in had been a surreal experience for all of them. It became more surreal when Shaw climbed over the backseat and practically into Lionel’s lap to argue with the moron behind the glass. After that, their food arrived in record time, hot and piping, and they tore into the bags like a wolf pack after a kill.
John and Shaw took turns holding food for Finch. John wrapped an arm around Finch’s shoulder and held the bacon-double monstrosity in easy reach while Shaw supplied French fries.
“No—I don’t want ketchup,” Finch said firmly. “Don’t they have honey-mustard?” John took a moment to be grateful Finch felt strong enough to be opinionated.
“They have something called honey-mustard….” Shaw said.
“We got buffalo dip up here,” Fusco offered.”
“I’ll just bet you do,” Shaw muttered, then stuffed the ketchup-laden fries into her own mouth and used both hands to peel open a package labelled “honey-mustard sauce.”
The food seemed to revive them all, especially Finch, who had adjusted better than expected to the indignity of being fed. Even if he’d felt like it, his arms were trapped, warm and toasty, by his sides and he couldn’t summon the energy to move them.
“Geez, Finch—didn’t they feed you?” John said, as Harold looked expectantedly for another bacon-double sandwich when the first was gone. Obediently, John peeled the wrapper from another one and held it handy.
Finch tried to shrug and swallowed slowly. “They were looking for information,” he said quietly. “I was afraid of what they might have put in it.”
“It’s lucky they didn’t know who you were.”
“You should be very afraid of what’s in this so-called honey-mustard,” Shaw interjected darkly. She held up another bouquet of fries and waited for Finch to eat them. When he did, she wiped his face with a napkin.
John tried to keep his eyes from popping out of his head. He wished he’d had a camera, just to capture that look of worried affection on Shaw’s face, or Finch’s willing acceptance of having his face wiped. Shaw was the only one of them who could get away with that, and Finch was the only one she gave that look to—the only one who deserved that look, no doubt. John knew better than to be caught noticing, so he turned and stared out the window as the streets rushed by.
*****
Raving about lunatics, Lionel dropped them off in a dark stretch of Chinatown, then drove away, but only because they made him.
“This isn’t exactly inconspicuous,” Shaw muttered. “We don’t look like Mom and Dad and Little Johnny out for a night of family fun.”
“I’ve had worse nights out,” Reese said, just to be a prick.
But that was what John did when he was covering: he made stupid wise-ass remarks to deflect away from what he might really be thinking, like some comic-book superhero. For a moment, Shaw saw the cover of a comic book in her head, “The Big Lug” in a huge, blood-spattered font, and some stupid spandex-clad muscleman with a cartoon version of John’s head. It made her mouth twist in bitter amusement. Getting Harold down these stairs wasn’t going to be a piece of cake, and doing it unnoticed made it more difficult. They might be free of Samaritan’s electronic eyes and ears, but Samaritan had a whole army of eyes and ears—and guns and bombs and who-the-hell-knew what else—so this had to look…normal.
She turned and looked at John’s back as he scanned the street, and Harold’s obvious prison garb. She looked like anyone, like no one, although if anyone had sprayed her with luminol she’d glow like a comet. Shaw studied John’s back for a minute. He looked like what he was—ex-Special Forces, but in “real life,” people usually bought the cop routine. People often see what they expect to see….
“Let’s take this party down a level,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.” She shot Reese a look when he turned, and he made a miniscule nod with his head.
“Okay,” he said. Shaw led the way and he clamped one long arm across Finch’s chest and half-carried him down the steps.
*****
Shaw didn’t stand with them. Nobody stood with them. A detective with a prisoner on the subway didn’t invite chit-chat. It also didn’t invite the kind of notice it would garner in, say, Nebraska. People in the Big Apple pride themselves on being unflappable. Nobody flapped.
The subway came and people came off, people got on. Not a lot of people, though, so it made sense that the crowd gave them a wide berth. Once they were in the comparative warmth of the subway, they’d had to reclaim their own clothes. In the faded cotton jumpsuit, Finch looked nothing like himself. He looked bedraggled, caught, beaten by life and completely anonymous. He had made no protest—indeed, he had gone very quiet—until Shaw rumpled his hair to add to the disheveled effect. Even then, he only gave her a wounded look that worried her more than anything he might have said.
Shaw waited until the last possible second—ostensibly texting on her phone—then looked up and ran for the doors, sliding into the nearest booth and sitting down as though oblivious to the other two occupants of the subway car. Everyone else had chosen another car, except for the man passed out and half-slumped in the very end.
“Two stops,” Shaw muttered, sotto voce. “Almost there.”
*****
She hopped off the car, still “texting” on her phone—actually reading Root’s texts as they came fast and furious—and walked off without a backward glance. Detective Riley stood slowly and seemed to pull his reluctant prisoner off with him. In truth, John had a death grip on the loose fabric between Finch’s shoulder, passing his assistance off as manhandling.
They made it around the corner and behind the candy machine, which was already open for them, then stopped. John loosened his grip and slipped his arm down around Finch’s waist. Finch made a noise that probably would have been a groan in a less principled man, but when Shaw put herself under his other arm, he took a deep breath and tried to put one foot in front of the other. He almost made it, consciousness slipping away as the Machine came into view.
*****
“I’ve never held up a bank before,” Root said, coming around the corner. “I mean, not in this identity.”
Two startled faces turned toward her as she bustled in with two large bags.
“You…what?”
“Relax,” Root said. “It was a blood bank.”
John looked at Shaw and she looked back at him, at a loss. Hard to tell, with Root.
They had carried Finch the rest of the way in, nestled him down on his mattress on the floor and Sameen was checking him over for injuries. Feeling in the way, John had gone in search of hot water and a clean washcloth. Getting water in the pipes had not been an issue.
Getting hot water in the pipes had take some finagling, but they had proven themselves nothing if not inventive. John had come back with a makeshift bowl of clean, hot water and a washrag and laid them at Finch’s feet. Sameen nodded her thanks and began to clean the blood away from the cut on his temple.
When Root laid the bags on the floor and pulled out two honest-to-goodness type O bags of blood, John had a sudden urge to laugh. He didn’t. He didn’t feel safe enough to laugh—he was better off clamped down on everything until he knew what the hell had happened and who he needed to break in half because of it.
Root took the blood over to Shaw, then returned for the bags, dragging them over to where Shaw knelt. In the bags, Shaw found what she needed to start the transfusion.
“Get my blankets, John,” Root said. “We need to keep him warm.”
John hastened to comply, dragging a pile of soft fabric off Root’s own mattress and bringing it over to drop beside Finch’s bed. Shaw looked at him standing there, miserable and inert, and took pity.
“Get over here and sit down,” she demanded. “You look like hell and you’re like a damn furnace.” She handed him the two bags of blood and he took them blankly. They were cool to the touch, apparently fresh out of the fridge. Holy plasma, Batman—Root really had held up a blood bank. “Sit down over there”—she indicated a spot on other side of the cot— “and radiate heat.”
John did as he was told. Sitting down felt pretty nice, as it happened. He watched Sameen work, watched the needle thread its way into the vein on the back of Harold’s hand. He looked closer and realized Harold’s knuckles were scuffed up—defensive wounds. Way to go, Harold, he thought, and smiled.
Root saw the smile and gave Shaw a funny look, but John was willing to explain.
“Check out his hands,” he said. “Somebody’s probably got a shiner.”
“Huh. Or a bloody nose.”
“Our Harry’s pretty tough,” Root said loyally. She smoothed Finch’s hair around the cut. It was dirty and needed washing, but it fell back into its usual pattern readily.
“Should he be sleeping?” John asked. (Should I be sleeping? Sitting was so nice….) “Looked like he had a concussion.”
“He does. Yeah—it’s fine,” Shaw said. “As long as we watch him and wake him every two hours to check on him.”
“I’ll take the first watch,” Reese said. He slumped against the wall, holding the bags of blood, and stretched his legs out.
“Dibs,” said Shaw.
John looked at her, uncomprehending.
“Dibs,” Shaw said. “I already called dibs on the first watch.” She saw him open his mouth, ready to fight her, to fight the world, to do right by Finch. “You have to take the second watch.”
“Fine,” John said.
Root had gotten up and padded away, but she came back, Bear at her heels, with something in her hand and knelt at the foot of Harold’s cot. As John and Sameen watched, she rolled a pair of “Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar” socks over Finch’s feet.
“He’s gonna kill you,” John murmured. Bear heard John’s voice and walked over to plunk down next to him, his chin on John’s knee. “Good boy,” John said absently, stroking his neck.
“No, he’s not,” said Root. “He’s going to be too busy yelling at Baby Girl here for putting superglue in his hair.”
He couldn’t help it. John started to smile. The smile turned into a chuckle, and finally into a laugh. A very reserved, Reese-like laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.
“Go to sleep, John,” Shaw said airily. “I’ll wake you for the next shift.”
“Okay,” said John, and let himself go.