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Before Reese was arrested by Donnelly, and interrogated by Carter, then released and rearrested by Donnelly along with Carter this time, who were both handcuffed in the back of Donnelly's SUV which was promptly hit broadside by a truck at Stanton's direction, injected with a sedative so Stanton could dress him in her ever popular bomb vest which helped to coerce him into committing a series of felonies, along with Snow, so that she could infect the DOD with the Mother of all computer viruses, before leaving him to die in a manner that would forever unite him with the universe -- life was pretty good for Reese and Carter. (Shadow Box, Prisoner's Dilemma, Dead Reckoning).
John and Joss had a wonderfully comfortable, trusting, and efficient working relationship, which Carter fondly referred to as "whatever this is." (Till Death Do Us Part). They survived a temporary breakup (Baby Blue), went on a business trip together (Bad Code), enjoyed each other's company during several stake outs (High Road, Till Death Do Us Part), and even committed a multiple kidnapping. (Till Death Do Us Part).
They talked about marriage,
Reese: "How do two people go from being in love to wanting each other dead?" Carter: "Being in love is one thing, being married a whole different animal. Those vows change everything." (Till Death Do Us Part)
and babies,
Reese: "I'm teaching her to go undercover. She's a natural", (Baby Blue)
children,
Reese: "... I got to ask you, what's going on with Lionel?" Carter: "What do you mean?" Reese: "No reason." Carter: "I'll keep an eye on him." Reese: "Thanks." (COD).
and the bigger picture,
Carter: "I was thinking ... There was someone else behind the scenes. Someone who hired a team of assassins, who knew a bill would pass in state government weeks before it did. Someone who could use 300 million to finance a personal war. Reese: "What's this?" Carter: "The bigger picture."' Elias: "Hello, John. It's been a long time." (Risk).
He saved her life. She saved his. He saved her son. And for all future time she would be grateful and committed to him and the team. (Get Carter, Flesh and Blood, Number Crunch, Contingency, Flesh and Blood).
How did this unlikely partnership come about? How did an ex-military interrogator, lawyer ("passed the bar in '04") and uncorrupted police detective come to work with an ex-military assassin turned vigilante?
Carter and Reese met at the Eighth Precinct on September 17, 2011 at 5:04 in the morning. (According to eabevella's timeline. Day 3546 for the Machine). It was an ordinary case for Carter, delivered to her by a transit cop -- a survivor of a brutal attack by Anton and his crew. However, the bum, later to be known as Reese, survived a little too well, and Carter became very curious about this man and who he used to be.
Reese, formerly known as the bum, saw this initial meeting with Carter as an unexpected opportunity to finally be released from his misery. It would be as routine as breathing for Detective Carter to lift his prints from his near empty plastic cup and enter them into the police database. Most of the information on him would be redacted, he knew, but the wheels would be put in motion and his former employer would hunt him down quite literally. All that would be left would be the waiting. That Reese totally ignored his previous opportunity to end his life, is ironic and enlightening. Had he allowed Anton and his crew to beat him to death, which was their intent, there would be no waiting. It would be finished, but then so would their story. Besides, the instinct for survival and training are hard to overcome. (Pilot).
Carter began her subtle form of interrogation by attempting to build a rapport with Reese. She complimented his fighting style, made a guess at which elite military group he might have been in, asked him if he needed a little help readjusting to civilian life because, after all, he was living on the street. But the most significant thing she did was to get him a second plastic cup of water and set it down next to him.
Reese, for his part, recognized her interrogation technique right away. It's probably one he had used himself, during his other life. He smirked at her, under that beard, as he set down that plastic cup with his fingerprints on it, and without breaking eye contact, deliberately picked up the second cup and drank from it. He said next to nothing during their entire meeting. Reese understood the game.
Carter didn't care. She got what she was after, the key to his identity. After casually and carefully picking up his cup, she replayed the video of Reese defending himself on the subway. Her expression changed. Her voice hardened. Then, she told Reese what she thought.
Carter: "Of course, some guys I knew, they did so many evil things, they felt like they needed the punishment. Does that sound more like your story?"
His smirk changed to a grim stare. Reese couldn't even look at her. She had discovered and said out loud, with no help from him, his inner secret. Carter, from Reese's point of view, responded to him with appropriate derisive disdain. This discovery of what he is and what he has done, though never explicitly stated, set Detective Carter apart from everyone else. It made her special and captivating to him.
Fate is quite the enigma. No one really knows which way it is going to flow. Reese thought he had been handed the perfect form of suicide. Instead, Fate intervened, again, and brought him to the feet of Finch, an enigma himself, who gave to Reese a job and a purpose, the means and a reason to live. Finch and Fate gifted Reese with a second chance.
Unbeknownst to Reese at the time, Fate had also given him another unusual but very practical gift-- the means to regain, at least partially, through Detective Carter, that part of himself he lost because of Kara's systematic cruelty and Snow's neglect. His fascination and admiration for Detective Carter would prove to be very valuable to him as Reese watches, protects and befriends her.
Poor Carter. Her only living witness against Anton and his crew was swept away that early morning by an unknown someone's attorney. And after researching Reese's fingerprints, she realized an "angel of death" went with him. Still, Carter did gain something or someone. She gained a stalker. Or more precisely, an admirer, a protector, a "guardian angel" in Reese. One of the CIA's most elite, most effective, and highly intelligent "angels of death" became a "guardian angel" to Carter. That's practically transcendental and very romantic, in a platonic sort of way.
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Almost immediately, after Finch convinced Reese that he wasn't a "bored rich guy", that there really were good people in desperate need of help from both of them and all their skills combined, Reese began to follow Carter. (Pilot, Get Carter). He discovered along the way that his admiration of her was well founded. Carter had a reputation of being, not only a good detective, but an honest and uncorrupted one.
Fusco: "All I know is, right now, you've pissed off real police, my friend. She's not gonna stop till she's got you." (Judgement).
Carter had rules, principles, she believed in due process, fair play and followed the law. All she really wanted to do was to protect people. Carter epitomized everything Reese thought he had lost while working for the CIA, the "boy-scout" side of himself that Kara damaged so severely.
Reese, being the interactive sort of guy that he is, didn't just watch Carter and follow her around. He made contact with her, too, in a variety of ways. Reese wrapped up cases for her, quite effectively, with duct tape, and left them for her all over the city, including any evidence that he found. (Pilot, Judgement). If there were bad guys to be corralled, he would ask Finch to send an anonymous tip to her of where they might be. (Witness). After awhile, he simply called her himself. (Get Carter, Number Crunch). He engaged in bait and switch, as well.
Reese: "You have been asking a lot of questions about me. It's time we sat down face to face."
Instead of meeting her, he left an orphaned girl on her doorstep, so to speak, wrapped in his suit jacket, so there would be no mistaking who entrusted the child into her care. (Ghost). Reese also saved her life and just for good measure, he ran it up the "chain of command", all the way to Elias, that Carter was protected by him, which everyone concerned wisely took seriously. (Get Carter). Reese had found a way to work with Carter, even if it was only one way.
This blossoming, yet convoluted and confusing partnership was intriguing to Carter, too. After the robbery of the Police Evidence Lockup, (Mission Creep), Carter discovered a Mil Spec radio on the ground. There was a look of expectation and even excitement on her face when she realized she might be able to talk with Reese via the radio. Of course, when she did make contact, Carter was all business.
Carter: "You're playing a dangerous game and I'm not sure I understand why ... Sooner or later, I lock you up or find you bleedin' out somewhere." Reese: "I will take my chances." Very prophetic.
Carter asked Reese the question "Why?" more than once.
"Why are you following me? ... Why are you helping me?" (Get Carter) and "Why me?" (Legacy).
Her questions are quite valid. To her knowledge, she had done nothing to earn all of this attention and assistance. She had met this man, this "Man in the Suit", only once under ordinary circumstances, well, ordinary to her, and he wasn't in a suit. She didn't even know what he looked like until much later. (Number Crunch, Legacy). The overgrown beard and hair masked his face fairly well. She didn't even have a name for him until Very much later. (Baby Blue). She called him "you" and "there you are" for quite some time.
The reasons he gave her, eventually, in answer to her question "Why?", were as brief as they were cryptic.
Reese: "Because your moral compass is pointed in the right direction. And because I'm tired of you chasing me." (Legacy).
But the reasons he gave Finch were poignant and direct.
Reese: "We got into this to stop bad things from happening to good people. Carter's been doing that her whole life. She's not just another number, Finch. Some people the world can't afford to lose." (Get Carter).
Of course, if Reese really was concerned about Carter chasing him, he would have stopped leaving perpetrators for her to find. He would have sent them all to Fusco.
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In the Tale of the Monkey's Paw tragedy occurred because a wish was granted that was not made carefully. In the tale of Reese and Carter a tragedy also occurred for a similar reason. His fingerprints, that Reese allowed Carter to capture and subsequently enter into the system, brought about a logical response. Special Agent Mark Snow came to "clean up" what had been left undone in Ordos. That Reese now had a job, a purpose and an unofficial partner in Carter, who embodied all that Reese thought he had lost, was of little consequence. He wished for death all those many weeks ago and Death came to claim him.
His blood was spilled, a lot of it. He suffered, and almost died. And yet, this "angel of death" turned "guardian angel" and vigilante, shot only at the headlights of the vehicle that brought the messenger of Death to him. Reese shot out the headlights so that he might escape into the darkness.
Carter witnessed it all. She watched the man who had saved her life, her virtual partner, gunned down in a parking lot, in the dark, without provocation. It was Carter who had made that particular moment possible. Reese had called Carter to let her know where she might find the assassins she had been looking for. Carter thanked Reese for saving her life. The next call she made, after a small hesitation, was to Snow.
One school of thought would suggest that Carter was ungrateful; that it was an awful, terrible thing that she did. This thought process completely forgets, there is no gratitude in the law. And Carter was all about the law. It was protocol for her to contact Snow. That was why Reese did not blame her. Carter did her job. And Reese admired and respected her for that. Reese continues to admire and respect this quality in others.
As an example, in "Dead Reckoning" when Reese and Snow were overpowering the guards on the top floor of the DOD building, Snow was going to kill one of them. Reese stopped him.
Reese: "They're just doing their job. And I don't know them", meaning Reese realized the guards efforts were not personal.
It was unfortunate that Carter used information that Reese had given her to bring Snow to him. Bad things happened to everyone. Reese was bleeding internally, Carter was stunned and disillusioned, and Snow, well he had just made a bigger mess out of a mess he was supposed to clean up.
As unfortunate as that moment was, some good came out of it. Carter learned that Snow lied. She learned that Snow was unprincipled, had no sense of due process or fair play, and he followed his own agenda and not the law. When Carter saw Finch helping Reese, she stopped. Carter recognized Finch. Not as Finch, of course, but as Burdett, the witness in the Police Evidence Lockup robbery. (Mission Creep). She had talked with him, knew something about him, had made an opinion concerning him. She realized her lone vigilante had a partner. That was the moment when Carter bent the law, for the first time. That was the moment when Carter determined that Snow and his sniper were worse than the vigilante and his partner. And Carter let Finch and Reese go. (Number Crunch).
Consider what might have happened if Carter had detained them. Snow and Evans would have caught up to them soon after. Would Snow have taken Reese into custody and gotten him medical help? Probably not. It was not his style. Snow was the cleaner for the CIA, according to Donnelly. No one knew they were in the hospital parking lot and Snow wanted Reese dead.
Evans: "You didn't get me anything?" Snow: "Coffee is for closers. I got you a clear shot at Reese and you whiffed." Evans: "I wasn't aiming to kill. You said you wanted to question him about Ordos." Snow: "If possible. Secondary objective." (Super).
Most likely Snow would have killed Reese and Finch and Carter, and possibly Evans. Snow would have "sealed the room."
Reese lived. Finch saw to that. A surgeon trapped in a lesser position was enticed to save him. There was a lot of fallout from this incident and a death. Carter was under suspicion by her department and Snow. She was being followed. Finch was so mad at her he could barely look at her let alone speak to her. Reese was recovering which hampered his work. And the virtual partnership that Reese had with Carter died.
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When one door closes, a window usually opens. As unlikely as it seems, it was Finch that opened a window for Carter. It was Finch that invited her into their world, by throwing her into the "deep end". He gave her an opportunity to save a number. Unfortunately for Finch, Carter did not behave as he had expected. Oh, she saved the number, all right, but instead of leaving Reese and Finch alone to "do what they do", Carter wanted more. Carter wanted in on their project. It appears that Finch did not understand Carter as well as he thought. He did not anticipate that the allure of saving an innocent would be so compelling to her. (Super).
Reese was happy to give her more. He was delighted to meet her at the Lyric Diner, after making sure she wasn't followed and there were no extraneous bodies waiting to make his acquaintance by way of handcuffs. It was their second meeting face to face. Reese was smiling. She, on the other hand, was still looking for a card that expressed the sentiment, "Sorry I got you shot".
Carter wanted to help, within her rules, of course. Reese explained, she could either have her rules or she could save a life. Well, she had to try. He warned her.
Reese: "Once you go down that road, there's no looking back." (Legacy).
It's possible Detective Carter did not fully grasp the meaning of the warning that he gave her or how life altering vigilantism could be. Reese handed her a slip of paper with a young ladies name on it. This was the beginning of their partnership, their actual partnership, as opposed to their previous virtual one. As he was leaving, Reese gave her a burner phone, properly cloned and bugged. He now had direct contact with her and she with him. (Legacy).
Carter was that visible, tangible expression of all of the rules, all of the laws and a whole lot of procedures. She was uncorrupted and incorruptible, from Reese's view point, anyway. She was that line that he would push and push and push against and sometimes cross over. But always Reese knew where the line was because Carter was the line. Reese held her high upon a pedestal, completely eclipsing her human nature, which would prove to be devastating to their partnership, to each other, and everyone around them.
When Carter said, no,
"We need to call the Sheriff. We need to handle this the right way, John",
Reese stopped and they called in the law so they could legally search the Librarian's house. (Bad Code). And when Carter said, wait,
"Then catch them in the act. Right now all we've got is conspiracy to commit a robbery. And that's from an illegal wire tap",
Reese stopped. Instead of storming into the bar, he planted a burner phone on the would be robbers' truck. (High Road).
Carter was satisfying her need to help people, protect them, save them. She was discovering that the system benefited from a little "outside" help now and then, so that justice might be served. It was romantic, clandestine, mysterious, fulfilling and fun, even if she had to occasionally look the other way as Reese employed a more creative approach to things, such as dumping two squabbling spouses into the trunk of his car. His idea of marriage counseling.
Carter: "Uh, what are you doing?" Reese: "Sometimes you need to break a few eggs to save lives." Carter: "Yeah. Pretty sure that's not the saying." (Till Death Do Us Part).
Carter was learning to think outside of the box of law, to recognize that some rules could be bent or even broken with positive results.
Carter brought more to their partnership than just rules and the law. She is smart, really smart, and experienced in warfare, interrogation and military equipment. (Mission Creep). She had a knack for visualizing the bigger picture, (Risk), something Stanton accused Reese of not possessing. (Dead Reckoning). When Carter aimed her weapon, she did not miss. (Masquerade, God Mode). And Heaven help those who hold a partner of her's at gun point; she will run them down with her car. (Masquerade). Carter is careful, meticulous, and fearless. (2PiR). If it had to be done, no matter how she might try to get out of it, Carter would step up and not back down. (In Extremis, God Mode). She was highly skilled at her job. Between her powers of deduction and information she received from her contacts, Carter would discover the truth, (Many Happy Returns), or reunite a family. (COD). Carter was loyal, dependable and discreet.
Their partnership was working. It was symbiotic in a way, but working well. Carter and Reese were relaxed, unhurried and confident in each other's company, and frequently bantered back and forth, teasing playfully, giving each other a hard time.
Reese: "You're good at this, Carter." Carter: "It's my job. And, I didn't even have to shoot anyone to do it," she says smiling into her cup of coffee. (Legacy).
Carter: "Alright. Look. We have to set some boundaries here." Reese: "Well, sure. If things get hot and heavy with you and Cal, we'll tune out right away." And this he manages to say with a straight face. (Shadow Box).
Reese had not appeared this easy going and relaxed since he shared his company with Jessica in Mexico.
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Then came that moment when Reese realized he was happy. It was such a foreign feeling for him he was almost at a loss to name it. Still, just because he felt happy, didn't mean Reese felt he deserved to be happy. All the evil he had done in the past could not be erased by what good he did now. Reese did not consider himself to be a good man. He thought of himself as the same person Carter had uncovered when they first met. (Pilot). Stanton's words and destructive power were still with him.
Stanton: "... See, you look like the rest of these people. But you're not like them anymore, are you? If they knew what you'd done. You're barely even the same species ... We're not walking in the dark. We are the dark." (Blue Code).
On the evening of that fateful day, Reese intercepted Abby and Cole (the two numbers from Shadow Box), embarking on their explosive adventure. Certainly Finch could have dealt with Chapple (the perpetrator) electronically at some later point, but Reese was there, in the moment, in the field and the charge was already set. Reese was confident that he could assist Abby and Cole in acquiring what they were after and still get them out safely. That Chapple's men were closing off the only exit and that Donnelly was tracking him and Finch by the unique signature of their cell phone communication was of no more significance than any other obstacle he had faced before. If he didn't make it out, no biggie. It would be his past catching up to him. He didn't deserve to be happy anyway. No one else would be affected by his capture. He was all alone and no one was coming to save him. Perhaps in his former life all of that was true. But inside Team Machine, Reese was very, very wrong. (Shadow Box).
Someone did come to save him, in a manner that was completely unexpected and out of character, and his partnership with Detective Carter would be forever changed. (2PiR, Prisoner's Dilemma).