Limbo
Jezyk
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers for Numbers Crunch 01X10
AN: For my fans, please note this is a Person of Interest fic. Don't want you to get confused!
Six weeks. Six long, quiet weeks. She considered adding lonely as well, but some part of her said that just wasn't possible.
But the rest of her said it was hardly impossible.
Hell, she'd seen a man who'd just been shot repeatedly stand up and find his way down seven flights of stairs. She'd barely been able to stand the pain of the bullets her vest took; she couldn't imagine the pain John Reese must have been feeling.
She doubted he was feeling much pain anymore. Smart, well-trained, confident, and more determined than anyone she'd ever met – yes, he was all those things, but he was also human. She'd seen the blood; she'd seen the pain he'd refused to voice written clearly across his face when she helped him into his car. Without immediate treatment in a hospital, she knew there was very little chance the man had survived a whole hour beyond when she'd seen him last.
And the six weeks of perfectly normal life without any strange, omnipotent phone calls or shadowy figures slinking away since then also indicated a decided lack of Reese in her life. She honestly wasn't sure how she felt about that. She was glad the damn CIA bastards were long gone. She was glad her captain was perfectly satisfied with her recent work. She was glad she was able to arrive on the scene and figure out what had happened without someone derailing a straight forward murder investigation into something far more complicated and a hell of a lot less familiar.
Still, she couldn't deny the fact that she'd felt safer knowing he was looking out for her. He'd certainly had ample opportunities to kill her or ruin her career. He'd obviously had no ill intentions toward her. With the lack of many people in her life about whom she could make such a statement, she realized it was loneliness. Their little cat-and-mouse game had been reassuring somehow.
She would have arrested him without hesitating even after he'd saved her life, but her instincts told her now that he had been a friend.
And perhaps the reason she was sitting in the dimly lit bar nursing a glass of whiskey was that she was mourning his death. No hospital would have taken a patient with multiple gunshot wounds and not called it in. She'd carefully checked, called all of them repeatedly, hoping, praying for some indication that he'd survived. There hadn't been any John Doe's turning up in the morgue that matched his description either.
She shook her head and stared at the slowly melting ice in her glass, trying to work through her thoughts. Even if he had been all those things she'd been told by the CIA, even if he was a bad man, even if he was dangerous to society as a whole, she didn't feel right with the way she'd betrayed him. He'd managed to hide from them for years until she led them right to him; shit they hadn't even known he was still alive until she'd gotten involved. She'd never been a rat; she never would have given him up had she known what they were planning. She'd honestly expected he'd be arrested, taken into custody, tried for his crimes, whatever sort of justice there was for men who didn't actually exist.
It had been stupid and naïve of her to think that, unfortunately that realization had only dawned on her after the fact, as she watched him scrambling to shoot out the headlights on the truck. Being ambushed and shot to death by someone who claimed to be his best friend was the only sort of justice that man was going to get. No wonder he didn't trust people.
She didn't like that she'd been a part of it.
Marc – his name was the only piece of information she had on the guy who was obviously every bit as dangerous as Reese – had confused her by revealing that Reese trusted her. Looking back on it, she knew how badly she'd been taken. The pictures of Reese's "victims," the story of how he'd trusted, then murdered, his handler. They may well have made the entire thing up. She was a detective. She was a soldier. She should have known better.
Instead she had blood on her hands. Maybe. Maybe not. Because if there was one man who could have survived without medical treatment, it was Reese.
A thick hand wrapped about a beer bottle appeared in her narrowed field of vision, annoyingly close to her glass. "I've never seen you here. Figured you didn't drink, Carter."
"I don't. Not much, anyway." She looked up, finding her partner's inquisitive face studying hers.
He leaned against the bar and nodded at the barkeep for a fresh one. "You been kind of quiet recently. Everything ok?"
He knew the story, part of it anyway, simply because he'd been well-aware of the search for Reese that had ended so abruptly. He didn't know she was there to drown her sorrows over the possible loss of a man she probably trusted more than the fellow cop she was facing.
The whiskey had loosened her tongue though, and she found herself saying more than she'd intended. "I'd just like to know what happened to him. Do I need to keep looking for him? Or is he in the East River?" Luckily, she stopped before she wondered aloud whether he might forgive her.
Fusco's face clouded, the way it always seemed to at the mention of Reese, and then he offered a shrug. "Doubt you'll ever know for sure. Probably better he's gone. Less work." He grabbed his replacement beer and turned away, evidently not all that interested in the discussion or her mood.
It was just as well since she didn't want to talk. She couldn't talk, not until she could figure everything out. She'd always been steadfast and honest; she did what she was told and followed the rules. But the game had changed on her. Following the rules made her feel dirty all of a sudden. And should she discover John Reese sitting on her front stoop, she couldn't swear that she'd arrest him.
She wanted to hate the man for having turned her unfailing sense of right and wrong on its head, but she didn't. Nodding at the bartender, she hoped another whiskey would help make sense of things.
An hour later found her staring at the barely touched whiskey. She didn't want it; she'd just wanted to not think for a while. Alcohol only made her contemplative and so consuming anymore wouldn't help matters. She thought about going home, checking on Taylor, trying to pretend she wasn't preoccupied. She feared how long she'd have to live with the uncertainty, the wondering, the guilt. She wanted her life to go back to the way it had been before she'd met Reese. Things seemed so simple then.
"For you."
She looked up at the gruff barkeep, scowling. "I haven't even touched this one yet."
He shrugged and nodded down the bar. "It's from the gentleman."
Rolling her eyes, she pushed it away. "No, thank you." Getting hit on by a drunk coworker was the only thing she was less in the mood for than ruminating on the fate of John Reese.
"Whatever you say, ma'am."
He was back a moment later, his face appearing somehow less amused with the situation than she felt. "He said he insists." He left the drink there, walking away and leaving the argument to be settled between the patrons.
Looking up was only going to encourage her suitor to engage her, so she kept her eyes stubbornly locked on the bar. But something tugged at her mind, her instincts, her something. She stared at the fresh whiskey, immediately identifying the feeling as hope while trying to deny it at the same time.
It was, after all, completely irrational to hope that a man she'd screwed over was sitting ten feet away and trying to buy her a drink.
And yet, in those moments, her heart raced and her breathing quickened and she felt the weight lift off her shoulders. It was crazy, yes, but it was the best she'd felt in months, years maybe.
She turned then, her eyes searching, finding nothing. No one. There was no one else sitting at the bar and the other patrons were spread out in groups. No one was looking her way. No one was paying her any attention.
The whine of hinges caught her attention and her head whirled the other way, not quite catching a glimpse of a man leaving, just a long shadow as he passed through the door. She gave chase, flying across the room, yanking the heavy door open, running onto the sidewalk.
In the middle of New York City, she was surrounded by people. They rushed past her, unconcerned with the way she turned back and forth, hoping to catch a glimpse, already knowing she'd lost her chance.
With a heavy sigh, she turned toward home.
Maybe she'd have better luck someday.
Until then, she'd just have to wonder.