A/N:

Disclaimer: Not mine.

The chapters will be shortish because I'm typing them on my cell phone then transferring. They will probably come quicker though.

I was obviously disappointed with the end of "The Crossing" and the killing of Joss Carter. I will always write Carter and Careese stories. I hope you will take those journeys with me.

Summary: Will the Machine offer John Reese a way to go back and save Joss Carter? If so, will the cost be worth it?


He breaks into her house. It is a week after her funeral and the house is still the same. Taylor and his father haven't yet started taking away the pieces of her. Her police uniform hangs in her closet, the creases of every fold ironed to military precision. His fingers brush against it, sending it swaying into her pantsuits and vests. The case of guns hidden under her bed sends him into a memory so strong that he clutches his chest at the deep ache.

"Girl after my own heart," he thinks.

He lies on the bed. The comforter is soft and when he inhales the scent that is so uniquely her reaches his nose. It burns him in a way that leaves him choking back tears.

"I'm sorry, Joss," he whispers.

"When your time is up, it's up."

He hears the echo of her voice, but he knows this is a lie. Sure, he's seen people survive bullets to the head and field amputations with little more than alcohol and a rusty knife, but he's also watched little children succumb to cancer and elderly women with their outstretched palms freeze to death in the cold. Yet, he knows Joss believed her words. Still, he can't help but think she was pushed into her time, and those moments when he is really sober, he feels like he gave a little shove too.

He hasn't been right since she's been gone. It's not like Jessica. That relationship ended with regret, with what could have been. This hurts in a different way. He had summoned his courage and told Joss how he felt. No, this relationship held promise. It was going somewhere and now he feels himself drift into a sea of anger and sadness so intense that he struggles to gasp at air.

He falls asleep in her bed. When he wakes he blinks into the darkness.

And her phone, the burner that rests on her nightstand, begins to ring.

Who would call her and on this phone? His fingers linger above the talk button before he answers.

The mechanical voice of the machine drones out, "18541511192013".


"Do you feel it, Harold?"

Root stares out at Finch. Her fingers grasp the wire barrier between them so tightly that the tips of them are white.

Harold shifts his torso to look at her. It never stops being disconcerting that she is here in his space. "Feel what, Ms. Groves?"

"Ma'am." Her eyes are big now, luminous in the dimming light. Her mouth curls into a sly grin. "She is speaking. She is fixing things. God is correcting your mistake, Harold."


The voice repeats the message and John hurries to rip a sheet of paper from a pad on Carter's stand. John's fingers tremble at the recognition of the last eight digits. They haunt his every breathing moment. They are the numbers of the day Joss died. He pauses. But what do the numbers in front of them mean?


A/N: Sorry non-Americans. We write our dates month/day/year. I know it's not like that everywhere.