A/N - This is my first Person of Interest fanfic. The title is a reference to Hamlet's soliloquy on the pros and cons of suicide. If you like, please leave me a review.
To Be
It had been two months since he'd returned to the city, empty and purposeless. Two months of sleeping on benches, drinking cheap whiskey for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and doing his best to disappear. New York was a good place for it. So many people crammed together like sardines; they had to either ignore each other or eat each other alive, and he'd always been good at blending in anyway. But it still wasn't enough. Everyone else might have stopped noticing him, but he was acutely, painfully aware of himself.
Every morning as he woke and looked up at the sky, the question he'd asked Peter Arndt only half rhetorically echoed back to him. "When you find that one person who connects you to the world, you become something different. When you lose that person, what do you become then?" For a while he thought he didn't have an answer. Then he realized that was the answer. Nothing. Without her, he was nothing. Who knew that nothing could hurt worse than bullets?
Bullets. He'd started thinking about them as soon as he finished taking care of Peter. He'd dumped all his traceable, government issue hardware, but he'd kept one bullet. It wouldn't be hard to find a gun to fire it in a city riddled with gangs and drug dealers. Something held him back at first. Fear of the unknown, or maybe just survival instinct. Whatever it was, its grip loosened day by day, bottle by bottle, until finally after two months his mind was made up.
He boarded a train at random and waited for a stop that would put him in easy reach of a gun and a quiet place where no misguided do-gooder would try to save him from himself. The gun came in reach before the train even stopped, tucked in the waistband of a punk with dreadlocks. In the front of his pants - a great way to get your junk shot off. He was about to go rescue the kid from this health hazard when the car doors opened and another group of kids came in. A rival gang from the way everybody tensed up. There were a few moments of posturing, and then Dreadlocks and his friends left.
He settled back into his corner and half closed his eyes. None of the newcomers were carrying. He'd have to wait for another opportunity.
"Every little punk is carrying now, Anton," one of the kids said. "That's why your father wanted us to take the car home."
Anton, who seemed to be in charge, shrugged unconcernedly. "Relax. We'll pick up new hardware next week. Restore a little order." He looked around the car, searching for something to alleviate his boredom, and noticed the slumped figure in the corner. He brightened up. "Besides, when we take the car, we don't get to meet new friends. Like this guy."
He didn't react as Anton moved in. Maybe if he just pretended to be asleep, the kid would lose interest and let him be invisible again.
No such luck. Anton noticed the empty bottle poking out of the pocket of the ragged coat and grabbed it. But before he could pull his hand back, a grip of steel crushed his wrist.
He lifted his head and looked into the kid's eyes.
Anton flinched away from that look. The rusting remains of his disused common sense were probably shouting hoarsely that he should run like hell from that look, but instead he tried to stare it down.
He released the kid's wrist. He didn't need that bottle anymore anyway. He'd drunk enough to keep him numb for the rest of his life.
But Anton couldn't leave it at that. He'd shown fear. Now he had to do something tough to save face in front of his crew. He shook the bottle, the whiskey sloshing inside. "You didn't bring enough for the group? Do we need to teach you about sharing?" The others followed Anton's lead and closed in.
Something broke inside him. Until that moment, he hadn't known there was anything left unbroken, but there it was. One tiny, intact corner of his pride that whispered, "How dare he? He thinks he's bad? He thinks he knows something about inflicting pain? Let's show him what real pain is."
He moved without thinking, letting instinct and muscle memory carry him. Pull like this, hit here, twist that. It took less than a minute to put them all on the floor, groaning and crying. Then the dizziness hit him. It had been too long since he'd eaten real food or slept more than an hour or two a night. His body might refuse to die from the abuse, but it could certainly complain.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and spun, ready for another attacker, but it was only a train guard.
"Are you okay, sir?" he asked.
"Fine." His voice sounded strange. When was the last time he'd spoken aloud? He couldn't remember. It didn't matter anyway. He just wanted everyone to ignore him again so he could find a quiet place to eat his last bullet.
But when the train stopped, cops came aboard. They arrested Anton and his friends, but they seemed uncertain what to do with the remarkably uninjured "victim". In the end they asked him to come down to the station for questioning. He went. There were plenty of guns in a police station.
Half an hour later he was sitting in a room that was part interrogation room and part office. They'd given him water, and the dizziness had passed, but so had the numbness of the alcohol. There was a TV, presumably for playing security camera footage. He could see his reflection in the dark screen. It was unrecognizable. The clean cut, clear eyed soldier was gone. In his place was a walking corpse.
The door opened and a woman came in. She had military posture, but a kind face. She gave him a little smile and said, "You know you could have done me a favor and let those guys land a few more punches."
He didn't answer. What could he say? I don't really care if I look like the attacker because I'm planning to kill myself tonight?
"Question for you," she said, folding her arms. "Looking at the security tape from the train, I'd say you spent some time in the service."
He didn't bother to deny it.
"But," she went on, perching on the edge of the table, "you don't learn to fight like that in the regular army. So what were you? Special Forces? Delta?"
He shrugged.
She got up, went over to the water cooler, and filled another cup. "I'm Carter," she said, setting it down next to him. "You didn't give us a name yet."
He looked at her and was surprised by what he saw in her face. She was doing her job, of course, getting all the information for her report, but she also cared. It had been a long time, years, since anyone had cared about who he was. All that seemed to matter was what he could do. He was an asset or a threat. But she looked at him and saw just a person. He found himself wanting to give her an answer, but he didn't have one. All his established aliases were burned. He settled for turning the questioning back on her. "Seems like the only time you need a name these days is when you're in trouble," he said. "Am I in trouble?"
"You tell me," she said. "You're the one living on the street."
He sighed and took a sip of the water. His first thought was, Not for much longer. But something strange was happening. The longer he talked to this woman, the less empty he felt. His hand no longer itched for a gun or a bottle. For the first time in two months, he wanted to know what happened next.
She misinterpreted the sigh. "Yeah," she said. "Making that transition back can be tough." Her tone said she spoke from personal experience which confirmed what he suspected the minute she walked into the room. She'd been military too. "Lot of guys I knew got lost, needed a little help. Do you need some help?"
Again her genuine concern took him by surprise. He wondered if she would care so much if she knew the things he'd done.
As though she'd read his mind, she said, "Of course, some guys had seen and done so many evil things, they felt like they needed the punishment. Does that sound more like your story?"
He looked away. Truthfully, that wasn't it at all. He'd done some bad things, but there'd always been good reasons. The only thing he regretted was the one he hadn't done.
She picked up the empty cup without touching the outside where he'd left his fingerprints. "Excuse me a moment," she said.
He felt disappointment as the door closed behind her. He'd enjoyed talking to her, even if she'd done most of the talking. Now he was going to have to leave before she got those fingerprint results. He looked at the clock on the wall. It was just after two in the morning. There was still time to find that gun before sunrise. He pulled the bullet out of his pocket and looked at it. It was still very inviting, but suddenly he imagined Carter hearing the report. A John Doe found in an alley with a bullet in his head. He imagined her seeing a picture of his dead body. It would hurt her. A caring heart was a rare thing in this world. Causing it pain would be nothing less than a sin. He had enough sins on his conscience. He would wait a little longer. Just until she'd forgotten about him. The bullet would still be there tomorrow.