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The morning light filters through Brian's apartment like accusatory fingers, illuminating dust motes that dance in the air—each one a tiny monument to his failures. He stands motionless in the center of his living room, surrounded by the evidence of Rachel's betrayal: drawers yanked open, their contents spilled across the hardwood floor like entrails; his vinyl collection scattered, sleeves torn, precious albums that took years to collect now reduced to casualties in his sister's search for his secrets.
The NZT pills sit mockingly on his record player stand, their presence a brand against his skin. He reaches for them with shaking hands, the familiar weight of the bottle both salvation and damnation. The plastic is cool against his palm, but it burns him worse than any fire could. She found them. His sister—his person, his constant, the one who'd picked him up from countless failed auditions, who'd lied to their parents about his whereabouts during his darkest months, who'd believed in his music when everyone else called it a hobby—she violated the one sacred space he'd maintained in this chaos.
Brian's reflection stares back at him from the darkened television screen: hollow cheeks, eyes bloodshot and rimmed with red, hair that hasn't seen a proper cut in months. He looks like the rock star he never became, all sharp angles and desperation. The leather jacket hanging on the back of his chair seems to mock him with its emptiness, a ghost of who he pretended to be when he first started taking NZT. He'd been so sure then—so certain that this was his ticket to everything he'd ever wanted. Instead, it became his elegy for the man he used to be, the one who still believed in simple dreams and honest work.
His phone buzzes. A text from his mother: *( ✉ → sms ) I raised you better than this. You're cut off until you get help. Rachel was right to tell us.*
The words blur together, swimming in his vision until they become meaningless symbols of his family's abandonment. Rachel was right. Rachel, who'd slept with Ike—sweet, dependable Ike who smells like cedar and safety, who always knows exactly where to stand during their walks to minimize Brian's exposure to potential threats, who pretends not to notice when Brian's hands shake too hard to button his shirt. Ike, who'd looked at him with those earnest brown eyes and promised he wasn't going anywhere, even as he was sliding into bed with Brian's sister.
The betrayal cuts deeper than a blade. It's surgical, precise, and designed to extract maximum damage. Brian's chest feels like it's caving inward, his ribcage collapsing under the weight of too many revelations. He sinks to his knees among the scattered albums, his fingers tracing the cracked spine of Dark Side of the Moon—the first record Rachel ever bought him, back when they were still allies in their war against their parents' expectations.
"She was supposed to be different," he whispers to the empty room, his voice cracking like an adolescent's. "She was supposed to be mine."
The NZT bottle trembles in his grip. He could take one—just one—and the clarity would return. He'd be able to see all the angles, plot his escape from this maze of broken trust and fractured loyalties. But even as the thought forms, he knows it's a lie. The pills aren't his salvation anymore; they're his prison. Every dose takes him further from the man his sister used to love, deeper into the territory of secrets and shadows that cost him everything that ever mattered. His guitar leans against the wall, untouched for weeks. The strings are probably dead by now, but he can't bring himself to check.
Music used to be his escape, his way of translating the chaos in his head into something beautiful. Now it feels like a foreign language, one he's forgotten how to speak. He wonders if this is what dying feels like—not dramatic or cinematic, but slow and quiet, like a song fading out instead of ending.
The memory hits him like a physical blow:
Rebecca, standing in Naz's office, her voice steady and professional as she requested a new handler.
"Agent Harris believes that Mr. Finch requires a different approach to his... unique situation." The words echo in his mind, each syllable a small death.
They'd been through so much together—her belief in him when everyone else saw a screw-up, her patience during his learning curve, her trust when he'd proven himself capable.
And now she was done with him, too, handing him off like a defective product.
Brian crawls toward his bedroom, his limbs heavy with the weight of accumulated betrayals. His bed is unmade, sheets twisted from restless nights spent chasing sleep that never quite caught him. The pillow still holds the impression of his head, but it feels like evidence now—proof that someone used to live here, someone who believed in things like loyalty and family and the possibility of redemption.
His phone buzzes again. This time it's from Mike: *( ✉ → sms ) Got the NZT. Thanks for the assist.*
Even this feels like a betrayal, though Brian can't articulate why. Mike getting his NZT should feel like victory—proof that their side is winning this shadow war. Instead, it feels like another nail in the coffin of Brian's usefulness. They're all moving forward without him: Rebecca with her new handler, Mike with his access to the drug that defines Brian's existence, Rachel with her new lover, and his mother with her righteous fury. Everyone has somewhere to go, someone to be—everyone except him. He pulls a duffel bag from under his bed, the canvas stiff with disuse.
Inside are the remnants of his old life: a faded band t-shirt from his first gig (if three songs at a campus coffee shop counts as a gig), a harmonica he bought during his blues phase, a Polaroid of him and Rachel at Coney Island, their faces young and hopeful and utterly unaware of the ways they'd eventually destroy each other. He adds these artifacts to the bag, as if he's curating a museum of his own failure.
Canada. Piper. The words feel foreign in his mouth, like speaking a language he learned from a book. But they're the only direction he has left, the only path that doesn't lead back to this apartment and these betrayals. Maybe Piper will see him as more than a tool. Perhaps she'll remember the man he used to be before NZT turned him into a weapon in other people's wars. Maybe, in the frozen north, he can finally write the elegy for Brian Finch that no one else seems willing to compose.
He scrawls a note on the back of a pizza receipt: Thanks for everything. Sorry for the mess. -B
It's inadequate, but anything longer would require explanations he's not ready to give. How do you apologize for being a disappointment? How do you thank someone for keeping you alive when you can't decide if living is worth the effort? The door handle feels cold under his palm, metallic and final. Beyond it lies the hallway, then the stairs, then the city that swallowed his dreams and regurgitated this hollow version of himself. He could walk away from all of it—the FBI, the NZT, the constant threat of death and betrayal. He could disappear into the vastness of Canada, become someone new, someone who doesn't carry the weight of so many broken promises.
But as he pulls the door open, the world tilts violently sideways. His stomach lurches like he's on a carnival ride designed by someone who hates joy. The hallway spins, colors bleeding together into a nauseating kaleidoscope. His knees buckle, and he's falling, falling, the duffel bag slipping from his nerveless fingers as the ground rushes up to meet him.
The impact never comes.
Instead, he's horizontal suddenly, as if someone edited out the moment between standing and lying down. The ceiling of his apartment stares down at him, familiar water stains forming islands in the plaster. A voice drifts through the air—weather report, something about an incoming storm system. Then another voice, closer, familiar in a way that makes his chest tight.
"Finch? Brian, can you hear me?"
Mike. But not the Mike who just texted him about NZT. This Mike sounds... different. Younger? No, that's not it. More concerned, less stoic. Brian tries to respond, but his mouth feels full of cotton, his tongue thick and useless.
"He doesn't have a fever," Mike is saying, and Brian can picture him perfectly: arms crossed, weight shifted to one foot, that particular frown that means he's calculating probabilities and worst-case scenarios. "Says his stomach hurts, and he's seeing spots."
"What's the matter, Finch?" Ike's voice now; warm with genuine worry.
Brian's eyes focus slowly, revealing a scene that makes his brain hurt. He's on his couch, not the floor. A blanket covers him—one he threw away months ago after spilling coffee on it. Mike stands by the kitchen counter, phone in hand, while Ike kneels beside him, one hand steady on Brian's shoulder. The apartment is... wrong. Too clean, too intact. No evidence of Rachel's rampage, no scattered albums or violated drawers.
"What the fuck?" The words come out slurred, his mouth not quite cooperating.
The vertigo hits again, a wave of nausea so intense he barely has time to lean forward before he's vomiting on his own lap. The acrid smell fills his nostrils, and he wants to cry—not from the humiliation, but from the impossibility of it all.
"Aw, shit!" Mike's voice carries that particular note of resigned disgust Brian knows so well.
The sound of footsteps, running water, the rustle of paper towels. Ike's hands are on him now, supporting his weight, keeping him upright.
"Easy, Brian. I've got you."
Brian leans into the touch, desperate for something real in this hallucination or memory or whatever impossible thing this is. Ike smells like he always does—cedar and soap and something indefinably safe. If this is a trip, he'll ride it out. If it's some NZT-induced flashback, he'll use it. And if, by some miracle of damaged neurons and temporal displacement, he's actually traveled back to November third, to the day the CIA kidnapped him and destroyed his last illusion of safety...
"Thanks, Daryl." The name slips out without conscious thought, and Brian watches Mike freeze mid-cleanup.
"I was wondering if you knew our real names." Mike's voice carries a note of something—surprise? Amusement? It's hard to tell with him.
Brian manages to focus on Ike's face, searching for signs of guilt or knowledge of future betrayals. But Ike just looks concerned, the same way he looked when Brian had food poisoning in Queens, or when he got concussed during that botched arrest in Chinatown. This is the Ike who became his favorite bodyguard through the accumulation of small kindnesses, the one who never made him feel like a burden, even when he was definitely being one.
"Of course," Brian answers, still leaning against Ike's solid warmth. "Mike and Ike. Daryl and Jason. I prefer the candy names."
Mike makes a sound that might be a laugh—difficult to tell with him. "Alright. We'll tell the team you're sick."
The words hit like ice water. This moment—he remembers this. The sick day that wasn't just a sick day. The CIA, their questions, and their taser that felt like being struck by lightning. The way his muscles had seized, the way his teeth had cracked together, the way he'd bitten his tongue and tasted copper for days afterward. If this is real, if he's somehow back here, he can change everything. He can avoid the kidnapping, avoid the torture, avoid the slow erosion of trust that led to Rebecca's betrayal, Rachel's investigation, and his mother's judgment.
"Wait!" The word comes out sharper than intended.
Both men look at him—Mike with that calculating stare, Ike with patient concern. This is before Ike and Rachel, before the secrets and the lies and the way everything got complicated. This is when they were still just his bodyguards, when their relationship was defined by proximity rather than history.
"I don't like being sick by myself." The words are valid, even if they're not the whole truth. "Will you stay with me, Ike?"
He can feel Ike's hesitation, can practically hear the mental calculations: protocol versus human kindness, professional distance versus the fact that Brian looks like death warmed over. The apartment is a disaster—empty takeout containers on the coffee table, laundry spilling from the hamper, the general chaos of someone too busy saving the world to maintain basic adult functionality.
"At your apartment?" Brian amends, sensing victory. "Please?"
Ike's sigh is familiar, the sound of a man constantly compromising his better judgment. "Sure, Brian. Gather what you need, and we'll stop at the supermarket for medicine and soup on the way."
"You're the best, Jason." Brian means it more than he should, more than is probably appropriate.
But Ike just smiles—that small, genuine smile that never quite reaches his eyes but still makes Brian feel like maybe he's not entirely alone in this war he's fighting. As Mike disappears into the kitchen to finish cleaning, Brian allows himself to sink deeper into Ike's support. This is before everything went wrong, before trust became currency and loyalty became negotiable. This was when he still had choices, when the future was a road that branched in multiple directions rather than a straight line to inevitable destruction.
He closes his eyes and breathes in cedar and safety and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he can write a different ending to this elegy.