Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest.
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Author's notes: This is my version of how Reese gets persuaded to come back.
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Acknowledgments: Thanks again to my awesome beta scully1138! All remaining mistakes are all my own.
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Erebus - Ancient Greek, meaning "deep darkness"
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The cell door slid shut behind him - the lock fastening with a resounding click. Reese eyed the sparsely furnished tight space with indifference. He had certainly spent his nights in worse places, and being locked up after his little brawl with his designated watcher actually saved him the trouble of finding a place to crash for the night. As uninviting and uncomfortable as the cell's bare metal bunk looked, Reese doubted that the place he most likely would have ended up in instead would have had anything close to a cot to sleep on ... or a roof.
He tossed his leather jacket on the foot-end of the bunk and slowly lowered himself onto its cool surface. John probed a tender spot on his left eyebrow and was satisfied that his fingers came away blood free. He had to give it to the Detective - he packed quite a punch. His split lip was certainly going to smart for a while, especially the next time his lips touched the rim of a glass of whiskey. And that was the problem. He was by far not drunk enough yet to utterly pass out - which by now was the only way to escape his memories - and with them his grief and anger.
He propped his elbows on his knees and rubbed his forehead with both his hands, trying to massage away the headache that was already announcing the way he was going to feel as soon as the inevitable hangover got a grip on his body. Resting his head in his hands, John closed his eyes and did his best to think about absolutely nothing.
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Reese heard the door to the small town Sheriff's station's cell block - if one could call it that - open and the steps of a single man coming down the hall. He didn't have to look up to know that it was Lionel Fusco who had stopped in front of his cell, but straightened nevertheless. Still, he refused to look at the man and opted to stare at the wall across the room instead. There was nothing Reese had to say to the Detective, although he knew that his silent treatment would hardly deter the other man.
"You know," Fusco said, after taking in the sight of the Bane of his Existence securely locked up inside the prison cell, "I have always imagined what you would look like behind bars. It's a shame I didn't bring my camera."
John's head turned ever so slightly - enough to shoot the Detective a withering look and take some satisfaction at the black eye that was still in the process of fully developing on the other man's face.
Fusco stuck his hands through the bars, leaned his forearms on the crossbar and clasped his hands loosely in front of him. He sighed. "You are lucky. I spoke to the Sheriff and as a courtesy from one professional to another he agreed not to press any charges on drunk and disorderly conduct." Lionel paused, waiting for a reaction from the ex-op, who apparently found staring at the bricks that made up the opposite wall more interesting. Slightly irritated by Reese's continued stubbornness, Lionel continued in a slight huff. "I also declined to press any assault charges against you."
"As far as I remember," John spoke softly and turned his head to again fix the portly man outside the bars with a glare, "you were the one who started the fight by throwing me out of the door."
One corner of Fusco's mouth twitched into a self-content smirk and he shrugged. "Well, who's he gonna believe? Me - the cop - or the guy who smells like a liquor store?"
Reese's expression darkened as he wondered - and not for the first time that night - when exactly Fusco had lost his fear of him. Silently he grabbed his jacket, got onto his feet and walked in the direction of the sliding door. At least now he could continue with his intent of drinking himself into oblivion. He stopped in front of the door and stared at Lionel, who made no move to open it. "Lionel," John rasped, his tone a mixture of exasperation and threat. He was so not in the mood. "Open the door."
Lionel took a step back and removed his hands out of the reach of John Reese. He tilted his head to the side, as he dauntlessly returned John's glare. "Oh, you are not going anywhere tonight." Fusco explained, dead serious. "I asked the Sheriff to help out my friend in need ... who's been through a rough time lately and fell off wagon. He agreed to keep you overnight so you can sober up without any temptation."
Lionel was well aware that the metal bars of the cell were the only thing between himself and certain and painful death as he watched the lines around Reese's mouth harden and his eyes blaze with hatred. Without a word John turned around, tossed his jacket back onto the bunk with a little too much force and sat down on his previous spot.
"You are welcome, by the way," Lionel called after John's back. "I suggest you use the time to think about what I said earlier." Without sparing the sulking man another glance, Lionel turned around and left. If he was going to be ignored for the rest of the night, he might as well be ignored tucked in within the warm comforter down at the roadside hotel. Tomorrow was going to be another day. In Lionel's mind he owed John Reese and he'd be damned before he gave up on the man. After all, Reese had pointed it out once before - Lionel was nothing but loyal.
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Even though Reese had tried not to fall asleep, his body - as a testament to his still weakened state - had had different ideas. Sometime during the night he had fallen into a fitful sleep - dreaming of ringing pay phones and blood - that left him more drained than rested upon being woken up by the heavy cell door sliding back the next morning.
He swung his legs over the side of the bunk, and rubbed his hands over his bloodshot eyes. The headache that had announced itself the evening before was in full force now and the aftertaste of whisky mixed with blood had left a putrid taste in his mouth.
"Your friend is here to pick you up," an unsympathetic voice John didn't recognize said from the cell's entrance. Reese snorted softly. Considering that he had gotten pretty close to strangling Lionel the day before and entertained various ideas on how to get rid of the man's body during the night in this cell, calling him his friend might be stretching it a little. Fusco probably thought he'd been doing Reese a favor, but John didn't need any favors. He just wanted to be left alone.
Reese silently followed the uniformed officer out of the cell block and winced at the brightness of the new day and the loud and shrill ringing of phones. For a small town police station it sure seemed to be pretty busy. Fusco was waiting for him on the other side of the counter. With his hands in the pockets of his dark leather jacket and a hopeful-yet-slightly-nervous expression on his face the Detective looked disgustingly well-rested - a stark contrast to John's wrinkled appearance. John felt the Detective's eyes on him as he collected and signed for his few personal belongings. By the time Reese was stalking past Fusco without so much as a greeting, the hopeful look on the latter's face had been replaced by a frown. "What? No 'good morning'?"
Lionel sighed and shot a suffering look heavenwards and made to follow the wayward Reese outside. When Fusco caught up with the man, John's long strides had already taken him down the flight of stairs and almost past the two police cruisers parked outside.
"Hey! Where do you think you are going?"
"In the direction opposite to yours, Lionel," Reese said annoyed and without stopping or turning around.
"You know what?" Fusco felt anger rise from deep within and this time he chose not to push it back down again. "I've had it," he spat. "I don't know what you think you are doing, but know this: you are a disgrace to Carter's memory."
Reese spun around and grabbed Fusco by the collar of his jacket so fast that the Detective's brain hardly had time to process what was happening. Next thing Lionel knew his back collided with the hood of one of the parked cruises and the air was knocked out of his lungs. Reese's hard and merciless face was mere inches from Fusco's as he pressed the smaller man down on the metal surface. "You don't know anything," John sneered.
"Yeah?" Fusco stared daringly back at the angry man towering over him - not even thinking of backing down. "I know that Carter would never have given up. That when Beecher got killed, she vowed to bring whoever was responsible to justice ... when she got demoted down to beat she didn't stick her head in the sand. No, she got even more determined to bring those bastards down. And I know for sure that if she could see the pity party you are throwing yourself she'd be the first to personally kick your sorry ass all the way back to New York and tell you to pull your head out of your ass and go back to work!"
They stared at each other - the muscles in Reese jaws flexing. "I'm done," John said with a rawness and finality to his voice that should have left no arguments. With one final shove he let go of Fusco and turned around to leave.
"You know, Carter wouldn't have agreed to work with you if she hadn't thought you were doing good," Fusco called after Reese, however his words were figuratively bouncing of the man's back. He had to go in for the kill - now or never. "What about Finch, huh?" he yelled. "You are going to just let him die, too?"
Reese stopped, but refused to turn around.
"I haven't been able to reach him or your wonder-twin in over ten hours and we both know that that is not like him." Fusco paused, breathing heavily. "Something's gone wrong."
John closed his eyes tightly. He hadn't been lying when he said he was done. He was done being the Machine's puppet. For two years he'd been doing anything the Machine had asked of him - running around risking his own life for total strangers - because the Machine had said they were in danger. When Carter - the most honest and upright person John had ever met - died in his arms after saving his life, the ringing pay phone across the intersection only cruelly intensified the feeling of hurt and betrayal Reese had felt at the Machine's failure to save someone he cared about.
He remembered Harold's shocked and helpless expression as he stood - frozen to the spot - in the middle of the street. John remembered looking at Finch while he still was cradling Carter's lifeless body in his arms - silently asking and not understanding how this could have happened. Right before his eyes Harold's shock had morphed into guilt.
When he had woken up at Harold's safehouse, he couldn't bare looking at Finch. Although the older man had been clearly pleased that his employee was on the mend, his demeanor still betrayed the guilt he felt - his eyes asking for a forgiveness that John just could not give him. Not yet - and maybe never - and that's why he had had to leave.
Something's gone wrong. Fusco's words echoed in John's head.
You knew that was going to happen sooner or later. The voice inside Reese's mind that he had been ignoring ever since he left New York - drowning it out with copious amounts of alcohol - chimed up.
And Reese knew that even with the current bad blood between them, if something happened to Finch because John hadn't been there to protect him he would not be able to forgive himself.
Reese turned and looked at Fusco, whose growing frustration was clearly written on his features. There was, however, desperation and also something akin to hope on the loyal cop's face. For the first time John actually allowed himself to realize that they all had lost a friend. And that they - that he - could not afford to lose another.
"So, you gonna help?" Fusco asked hopefully. They indeed needed help and the best source of information of what had happened to Finch and Shaw was the last thing John ever wanted to have contact with again. Grinding his jaws together Reese knew he had no choice - the longer they waited the chances of finding Finch and Shaw still alive were growing slimmer and slimmer.
Even though John had to admit that initially the thrill of the investigation - of putting the pieces of the puzzles behind the numbers together - had been exciting and fun he now was tired of playing that game. It was time to change the rules.
He let his eyes roam over the Sheriff's station's parking lot until they came upon a device that he had been trying to avoid over the last couple of days. "Wait here," he told Fusco and walked past the bewildered Detective until he was standing right underneath the object of his interest. With an enormous sense of Déjà-vu John stared up at the lens of the surveillance camera overlooking the station's parking lot. "We need to talk," Reese said tersely.
"What the -" Fusco started to inquire but shut up at an aggressive sign of John's hand.
John - who hadn't taken his eyes off the camera - continued to speak as a single red LED above the camera's lens began to blink. "I'm not ready to forgive what happened, but I'm not going to let another person I care about die because of you. You want something from me ... you tell me ... no more wasting time with riddles. You will tell me what I want to know ... and you are going to help me find Finch. Do you understand?"
Reese continued to stare unrelentingly at the inanimate object and ignored Fusco's question of who the hell he was talking to. After ten seconds, which felt like hours, one of the two pay phones on the wall beside the entrance to the Sheriff's station started to ring. Giving the camera one more hard look Reese walked up the couple of stairs and grabbed the earpiece of the ringing phone. He held it up to his ear - the knuckles of his hand turning white at the death grip he had around the piece of dark plastic - and waited. There was only random noise over the line until a familiar computerized voice broke the silence.
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"Can. You. Hear. Me."
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Thank you for reading!