Story: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Fandom: Person of Interest
Characters: Reese
Rating: PG-13
A/N: I feel it's more a character study than a story.
He did not tell Finch why he had to go away for a couple of days. After the torture, he needed rest. He'd forgotten that he wasn't as young as he used to be, and though his body knew the feeling of pain well, he didn't rebound back the same way. And he needed time to reflect, to refocus, instead of thinking of Jessica, about her, and how she knew so much about him when he knew so little about her.
He knew there was more to her than met the eye, and the mystery had captured him.
He refocused his thoughts. He had only thought of her because she was a powerful memory, the best way to refocus during a painful session - something that you have feelings for, but if they force you to talk, they will understand absolutely nothing.
He understood Cole, he'd been a spy too.
He knew the trick of buying a plot and burying whatever you wanted there. He'd done that more than once. Nobody dared dig up the plot because you didn't want to disturb the dead. Most cultures believed that.
He knew how to fire a rocket launcher, a sniper rifle, and numerous other weapons. Sometimes he thought of a pistol as an extension of his own arm. Finch knew about more than just being a computer tech. He had to have been a veteran or knew someone who had been one. The business partner perhaps? He had learned Finch's favorite way of tea, but he had not learned anything about the person Finch had lost. It didn't seem like a woman to him, Finch just used that with the people they were trying to help because it made him seem more human, perhaps?
He thought Reese had lost one, he never had to know there was more. He didn't need to know. That was the way with people in the spy business. You went on a need to know basis, know too much about either partner and you run the risk of getting burned.
Reese didn't have to know everything about Finch, it's just the man was so damned secretive it was maddening.
He knew the urge to burn everyone that had burned you - but it never turned out properly. The person you loved never came back no matter how many you killed over them.
He knew the interrogation tricks. And he knew how to fight them, how to throw his enemy off. After all, the needles were nothing compared to the sixteen hours of electrocution in Afghanistan. That was as bad as it could possibly get, pretty much hell itself. Didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell.
Nobody knew better than Reese that a name is only that - a name. A title, a piece of paper, a record. No, the scars were what defined him more than anyone else.