Author's Note: Obviously, these wonderful characters are not mine. I thank you in advance for any reviews or criticisms.
I sit looking at the nine numbers I hold, jotted down on a scrap of paper in my hand. I don't want to have them there, symbolising a life in my hand. I want to throw it back at the Machine or pass it off to someone else and tear down the city, or the world if necessary, to find my friend, my brother in arms, a man who had saved more than my life, a man who had given me a chance at a new one.
You need a purpose. More specifically, you need a job. He had been right. That day beneath the bridge I had met a peculiar (that impression hadn't changed) and insistent man with too much money and nothing to offer me but a waste of time I could have spent drinking myself into forgetting or building up my courage to finally end it all; I had been lost, broken, but he had given me a direction, a purpose. Perhaps as importantly, though it didn't come naturally to either of us, he had given me someone I could trust; not with the truth about himself or the Machine, I hadn't expected that, but it was the first time in a long time I could trust that someone actually cared whether I lived or died. For so long I had been nothing but an asset, something to be utilised and no one would miss when its usefulness was up, it had surprised me to hear concern for my safety in my employer's voice, place himself in the middle of an armed robbery to warn me of a trap, to learn I wasn't just an asset, I was a person to him.
He has saved my life, many times and in many different ways, but that night when I had been shot as I staggered down the stairs in the parking structure I had warned him away, and I hadn't really expected that he would risk himself and his mission to save me. Perhaps I should have known that a man who devoted his life to saving strangers and nearly got himself blown up earlier that day for one of them would risk everything for someone he knew - to be fair to myself, I had been shot - but when he pulled up into the parking garage and ran as best as he could to support me (no care for the blood that must have spoiled one of his overpriced suits, or the pain supporting my weight must have caused him) I was surprised to realise through the pain-filled fog that I wasn't just a person or employee to him and he not just an employer to me. We both knew we weren't alone, and that someone was coming to save us. We cared whether the other lived or died. We realised we weren't just employer and employee. Friends maybe; something neither of us expected.
As is typical of Finch, he seemed to find this knowledge both welcome and discomfiting, and would jump back and forth between amicability and frigid paranoia, but the cat was out of the bag and while maybe the past was taboo, we started trusting each other with the present.
When he didn't trust me with Sarah Jennings' Number, I was angry because I thought it was because he was afraid I would not be able to keep in check the monster we both knew I was capable of becoming, the monster I am behind my face, and that had been a part of it, but it wasn't all of it, or even the largest part. He had wanted to protect me, from raw wounds made worse, from the memories of painful days not long gone, and from myself. We learned how to trust each other more; me to know he had my good in mind, and Finch to know I could keep the monster in check. I never told Finch or Carter, and I probably never will, that it was because of them I didn't kill Jennings; Jennings wasn't worth that second chance Finch had given me or the disappointment I would see in their gazes. I did what I should have done with Peter Arndt.
When I saw Finch outside of Grace's apartment I knew I wasn't there through my own cleverness; he had left me a trail of breadcrumbs to what he cared about most. He trusted me with what he cared about most. He didn't have to say it, it was written on every part of his face that if something happened to him, he wanted me to watch over her.
Now something had happened to him.
My gaze rests on the paper in my hand. Finch has sacrificed everything he cared about for these Numbers, and every moment he has been ready to sacrifice more. I have known many good and brave men, but Finch is the bravest man I have ever known; for a man who won't carry a weapon and with his limitations, he's walked into and intervened into situations with eyes wide open than most men in perfect condition would dare. Finch is not irrelevant any more than any of these other Numbers, and if I'm going to save more Numbers, I need his voice in my ear. He has to be my first priority purely on the grounds of being able to save Numbers; this job is… difficult, shall we say, as it is.
I offered you a job, Mr. Reese, I never said it would be easy. My head jerks up, the words echoing so clearly in my mind I almost think they've actually just been spoken. He said that when we were working on the first Number, and now they echo around and around in my head. A job. A purpose. Finch's purpose. One Finch had already given his life for.
I can't let his purpose, our purpose, die. I will find a way to save this Number, and the next, and the next, and I will find Finch even if I have to tear apart the criminal underworld limb by limb.
I put my cellphone to my ear, my voice slipping naturally into that particular sardonicism I reserved for one person, "Hello, Lionel, I've got a job for you."
End Note: I may turn this into a drabble, depending on how the second season goes, leading up to Finch's rescue or however it is that Team Machine is reunited.