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The Hudson was grey today. It flowed past him as he sat on a park bench; the soup of a city too frantic and full to care about the flavor of what it was creating. It somehow suited his mood: black suit, grey shirt, greying hair, grey soul… Damn, he was being self-indulgent today. He should be out there, moving, feeding his fist to some low life or trailing a number or cleaning his guns… anything but sinking into existentialist angst in the park. That was just so average.
The wind changed and he smiled to himself. He’s getting better at this, he thought.
“Lionel.”
The cop gave up his pretense and started to trudge through the fallen leaves until he stopped next to the park bench.
“How did you know?”
“Old Spice.” Reese murmured. “You were upwind.”
Lionel made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat.
“What brings you to the river, detective?”
“Answer yer damn phone. That’s what. I got real work to be doing ya know…”
Reese turned and arched an eyebrow. The detective’s mouth thinned to an irritated slash.
“Mommy’s been lookin’ all over for ya. When he couldn’t raise you on yer cell, he called me, like I got nothing better to do than pass messages between you guys.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience, Lionel.” But the smile on his face said that he couldn't care less.
“Whatever, just do me a favor and call him or somethin’. I’m pretty sure that his brain should be focusing on something other than your whereabouts. ‘Sides, doesn’t he have a car? Why do I gotta fight midtown traffic to lo-jack yer ass? It’s gonna take me forty-five minutes to get back up to the station house…” Lionel walked away without a goodbye and Reese wondered how long it would be until the detective stopped wearing cologne.
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Reese stopped in front of a surveillance camera six blocks out from the library and stared upwards for a full minute. Today was not the day to push his buttons and if Finch was half as smart as he thought he was, he should know that already.
Reese was under no illusion that there was much about him that Finch couldn’t figure out if he tried. It was just a question of whether the blacked out lines of his life were worth Finch’s curiosity or not. There was one thing that Reese wanted Finch to uncover but it was also the secret in which he felt Finch would be the least interested. But today that didn’t matter - that disappointment was buried under a tractor-trailer of remorse that ruled him. Even if Finch pulled it free from the rest of his mess, Reese would never be able to move past it. There are some things for which no atonement is possible.
“Seven texts, three voicemails, and one portly detective. I thought I had the day off, Finch. What is so important?”
He was at the far end of the floor but was barely speaking above a whisper. The library was like church and he knew that Finch could hear every word and the anger that rippled underneath.
“It’s a little foolish to think that you can disappear in a city as sophisticatedly surveiled as New York, Mr. Reese. Although I did lose you for about twenty-five minutes around two-fifteen today, you were never really gone.”
“So, why send Fusco, then? Why not just come yourself?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to get shot.” Finch turned his whole upper body to face Reese.
“But it was okay if I shot Fusco…”
Finch waved the comment away and tapped something into his keyboard. “You wouldn’t have shot Lionel. He’s the feral dog that you’ve half trained by feeding him. You are developing a soft spot for the detective.”
“And I don’t have a soft spot for you.” Reese said it flatly and hid the sudden constriction that closed around him.
Finch looked back for a moment and then adjusted his glasses before re-focusing on his screens.
“I’d appreciate you answering my original question, Finch. What is so important?”
“Sit.” Finch didn’t look at him.
Reese walked behind Finch’s chair and took in the trimmed line of his hair that was almost perfectly parallel to the collar of his crisp maroon shirt. He had paired it with the soft grey checked suit that seemed almost too blasé to exist in Finch’s wardrobe. Although the effect of the deep maroon peeking out between the subtle grey lines and Finch’s pale complexion was close to a shout in a quiet room. Reese lowered himself to the chair beside Finch’s and focused on the man’s vest. He let his mind wander to the buttons, how they might feel between his fingers, how closely they held to Finch’s chest. He wondered how long he could stretch out releasing them from each eyelet, and then he tried to imagine Finch encased by buttons knowing that dozens would have to be liberated before Finch came into contact with the world… that only thin strands of cotton held them in place… and they could be so easily ripped from their moorings…
“Here. Eat.”
Reese sucked in a breath and watched as Finch pulled take-out containers from a bag next to his feet. He pushed a container across the desk at Reese, ducking his eyes for a moment before returning to his screens.
“I’m not hungry.” Reese didn’t know what this was about and he didn’t like not knowing.
“It’s from that noodle place that you’re so fond of. The one that uses too much salt. I felt myself becoming dehydrated just carrying the bag.”
“Finch…”
“Its probably still warm.”
Reese watched the data from Finch’s screens mirror itself across his glasses. He appeared absorbed but Reese knew better. Some times you had to play along in order to gain further intel, especially with cagey people, and Finch rarely chose a straight line toward any destination when a crooked one was available. Reese truly wasn’t hungry but the oyster sauce smelled great and there were worse ways to get answers. He reached down into the take-out bag for the chopsticks when a hand surrounded his, pulled the paper-wrapped disposables away and replaced them with elegant ivory-coloured ones inlaid with ebony grooves at the tips.
“How you eat is as important as what you eat. I’ll let the sodium feast slide but you will not eat with a pair of number two pencils.”
Reese felt chastened. He tried not to think about how many people he’d maimed or killed with sharpened pencils…
“You’re not eating?” He said after a few minutes of silence and around a mouthful of noodles.
“No, I’ve already eaten. But you haven’t had anything since six-thirteen this morning, so I figured that you’d need something.”
Reese jammed the chopsticks into the take-out box and pushed it away from him. It was frustrating to live in a fishbowl and even more so when your partner reminded you of it constantly. It seemed unfair and ironic that one of the most private people Reese had ever met was the person who consistently tried to peel away his privacy. He wondered if it occurred to Finch to feel bad about this, or if he just lumped it into the awesome burden of creating the Machine in the first place.
“Out with it, Finch.”
Finch’s fingers stilled over the keyboard but the endless, shifting data still flickered across his lenses.
“You couldn’t have saved her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t know with absolute certainty that gravity won’t reverse itself tomorrow morning either.” Finch turned in his chair to stare Reese down. “But I can reasonably assume that it won’t, and I can make the same assumption about Jessica.”
“I killed her.”
“John, you did not-” Finch’s voice rose and he stopped himself, took a breath and smoothed his hands along the surface of his desk. “You did not kill her. Her husband did that, and this obsessional guilt that you carry around…”
“Made me the perfect mark for you.”
Finch went very still and held Reese’s gaze. Later, Reese would consider how much fortitude it took to manage that while staring down both barrels of his inconsolable rage with his finger itching along the trigger.
“She made choices. We all make choices. It is the amalgam of those decisions that sets us on a path. No one decision can alter a life…”
“That’s what we do every day, Finch: alter outcomes by forcing someone to make a different choice.” Reese’s voice was getting lower and quieter and more dangerous.
“That’s different.”
Reese smiled in a way that suggested that he wasn’t fooled by Finch’s shell game.
“It is different. We are the shield that deflects the bullet and gives someone a split second to make another choice.”
“I don’t believe in second chances.”
Finch stared at Reese as if he had suddenly sprouted horns, as if everything that he thought he knew about his partner was an artfully conceived lie. Then he marshaled his features and leaned forward in his chair.
“Maybe you just don’t believe in them today.”
Reese went very still and thought about the implications of noodles; he’d never killed anyone with take-out before and part of him was intrigued by the challenge.
“Why do some of us deserve a second chance while others don’t?” He whispered to the boxes. “And who are we to determine that?”
Reese heard Finch’s chair creak a little, then that statement was punctuated by a tiny sigh.
“You know the answers to those questions, Mr. Reese.”
He did know. The Machine determined who mattered and who didn’t, and the Machine was Finch’s creation. So, in a way, it was a detached, emotionless extension of Finch who was subbing in for God watching the butterfly effects of their decisions shatter out across life as they knew it. And some didn’t deserve a second chance - Jessica didn’t deserve a second chance - because Finch hadn’t discovered Reese yet. And the galling irony was that Reese was now in the business of second chances because of the one choice he could never alter.
But that wasn’t everything. He was there because of Finch for more than one reason. Jessica’s memory fueled him, but Finch compelled him. Finch’s influence was a continuum while Jessica receded into the distance behind Reese. In a real sense, Reese was there not only because of Finch, but for him as well, as a continuing act of gratitude for the opportunity to change who he was. His chest tightened again at that thought. He wanted to seize that chance so badly that it tasted like blood in his mouth; perhaps it wasn’t such a shock that he had come to feel so strongly for Finch as a result. But Finch had made his own choices to get to this room with Reese. And just as quickly as he had filled himself with Finch, he let the idea of the man drain from him again.
“What about Grace?”
Reese felt Finch focus on him intensely.
“Its too late for me.” In more ways than one. “But Grace is out there, alive. The only thing that is keeping you from her is your paranoid fatalism.”
He looked at Finch then and caught him in an ungoverned expression. His eyes seemed lost, searching behind the glasses that still flickered with random results from the Machine. His mouth hung open for a second and then he recovered himself, lips tamping down on whatever was just about to slip from them. Finch looked away and Reese felt like the naked, brutal instrument that he was. He’d meant what he said, but could’ve kept it to himself. He could have hidden the way it drained him of all colour better. Finch didn’t need that part of Reese’s redacted life illuminated.
“Thank you for the noodles, Finch.” Reese rose and laid a hand along Finch’s shoulder as he passed. “And the second chance, no matter how useless it may be.”
Finch’s hand shot out and clasped Reese’s holding it in place.
“You’re right - I could’ve revealed myself to Grace. We could’ve run and we might have managed to be happy together like that.”
Finch had turned away slightly so that Reese could only rely on his voice.
“But the real reason is that I found something new and unexpected that drives me forward and I cannot ignore that. I have been given a choice: to live as a shadow of my former self, or to seize the opportunity that stands before me.”
Finch’s fingers tightened on Reese’s hand fractionally.
“As much as I miss Grace, I can’t regret the decision that led me to do this work… that led me to you, John. To be with you.”
Reese stood still held in stasis by Finch’s hand pressing into his until the skin turned pale. He wasn’t looking at Reese; he was looking down and away at some imaginary point on the floor and Reese found himself focusing on Finch’s sideburns as he tried to release his chest from the bands that had suddenly clamped around it. A moment later Finch’s hand slid away and across his chest coming to rest on his thigh. He never looked up and his expression never shifted. Reese fought over what to do next. What he wanted was to turn Finch towards him and crush that intellect under his lips until it became soft and pliant and utterly aware of what it had wrought in him. He wanted Harold to see John, and for him to know what a tremendous act of faith that was. He wanted to unbutton that goddamned vest…
But Reese wouldn’t do any of that. He was accustomed to being sure of his choices and right now he couldn’t see beyond the fact that if he reached for Finch now, he was stepping away from the memory of Jessica, and that struck him as intensely disloyal. Her memory had propelled him, pushed him into redline territory for years, and had allowed him to function if not exactly survive. If he let her fade, what had those years really meant? What if Finch became more than she ever was? He realized that he wasn’t ready to find out, not today at least - not with Jessica’s ghost standing next to him. But if he could have saved this moment, he would have folded it into something tiny and solid, and carried it with him in his jacket pressed against his chest. So, he walked behind Finch, letting the tip of his finger brush Finch’s neck where it peeked from beneath his collar, and scooped up the tremble it produced to be placed next to his paper memory.
“Call me when we have a new number.” Wait for me.
“I will.” Finch’s voice was softer than he’d ever heard it before.