Title: Forgetting is Easier
Author: NiennaTru
Summary: "John opened his eyes in darkness. There was a brief moment of disorientation before he remembered." Season one missing moment fic. Takes place immediately before "Flesh and Blood." Companion piece to 'Wait for Me."
Author's Notes: I've always wanted to know the real reason John was late coming to the library at the beginning of 1x19 (since I sincerely doubt it was an actual yoga class running long). Pondering the possibilities led to the creation of this story. The dream sequence at the beginning is set on a boat because of what John tells Jessica in the extended pilot. The title of this story is taken from Charlie Winston's song, She Went Quietly. The cruel irony of the lyric "forgetting is easier" seemed to fit the John/Jessica relationship. The dialogue at the end is quoted from 1x19 "Flesh and Blood."
Disclaimer: I own nothing, nor do I make money from this.
The boat rocks in a peaceful rhythm, creaking softly as waves gently break against it, a serene lullaby. Clouds drift through a cobalt sky as the sails above ripple and crack in the wind.
Tilting his head back to better take in the warmth of the sun above, he closes his eyes. It is peaceful here.
He hears the unmistakable sound of her footfalls on the wooden deck behind him and smiles in anticipation.
There is a soft touch on his back. He turns then and moves without thought, taking her in his arms. She breathes deeply against him, relaxing into his embrace.
Speaking his name she pulls back just enough to look up into his face. In her eyes he sees only the extraordinary love and kindness that he remembers. Her hands find his and their fingers intertwine.
"You waited for me." There is awe in his voice.
She smiles as she tells him, "I promised I would."
John opened his eyes in darkness. There was a brief moment of disorientation before he remembered. Adrenaline flooded his system then, and his heart began to hammer in his chest. Running shaking hands over his face, he took a shuddering breath, and tried to ride out the disconcerting shift from dream to reality.
Glancing at the clock beside him, he grimaced at the time. Daylight was still hours away. He rolled over in bed and picked up his phone, knowing as he did so that it was a useless gesture. He had never slept through an alarm, much less a message from Finch. Touching the screen, he checked anyway. Nothing.
Taking another breath, which was a little steadier this time, he awkwardly shifted in the bed to stand up. As the blanket fell away, he shivered in the room's chill. He didn't need to cross to the far wall and read the thermostat to know the heat wasn't working. Not that it mattered anyway. He'd stayed here long enough. It was time to move on.
Wide awake, he began to pace the room, restless and anxious, moving from bed to bathroom, to kitchenette, and back to the bed in a continuous circle. He stopped to turn on the television, switching it to a twenty-four hour news station. The T.V. was old, and its picture shifted in and out of focus, but he had no intention of sitting to watch it anyway. He continued pacing as the news moved in quick succession from one story to the next: a riot in Greece; a missing child in Utah; a murdered woman in Florida. The light from the television bathed the room in an eerie glow. He'd hoped the noise would be a distraction, but his hands continued to shake.
Turning to the bed, he stripped the linens and threw them in a pile by the door before moving to the kitchenette. He'd picked up the usual bottle of bleach, rags, and bucket before checking into this room. Pouring a liberal amount of bleach into the bucket, he filled it with hot water and started to wipe down the hard surfaces of the room. He'd barely spent time here—he hadn't even bothered to stock the kitchen with food—but the practice was by now a deeply ingrained habit.
Concentrating on the task at hand, he scrubbed down the kitchenette—probably giving it a better cleaning than it'd seen in years—before moving across the room to the rather shabby dresser sitting against the far wall. He hadn't used it at all, but he cleaned it anyway, briskly wiping a rag over its surface. There was a phone and lamp on the bedside table, and he briefly wiped these down, and then washed the table as well. He stopped momentarily to survey the room, making sure he'd missed nothing. Water dripped from the rag onto his bare feet. He spared them a fleeting glance before moving on to the bathroom.
Setting the bucket and rag on the linoleum, he turned to the door and grabbed the duffel bag hanging from the doorknob. It was a bolt bag, one of the many he had hidden throughout the city. Inside were toiletries, a change of clothes, running shoes, a fake ID, cash, and a weapon. Lying atop everything was the suit he'd been wearing yesterday—completely ruined.
He moved to the sink, grabbing the toothbrush and toothpaste from the bag as he did so and began to brush his teeth. As he bent down to drop the bag on the floor, he felt a twinge in his ribs. Turning back to the mirror, he pulled up his shirt to check the damage beneath. The bruise extended along his left side, across his ribs and reached around to his back. Various scrapes and abrasions dotted the landscape of his skin as well. It made for a rather colorful display, he thought with dark humor, and pulled his shirt back down. All courtesy of their last number.
Marcus White, eighteen years old, lived in the Bronx and worked in Manhattan for a delivery service. White was basically a good kid, though recently he'd gotten involved with the wrong people, a common enough story. Marcus had agreed to help his new "friends" move items around the city, which was easy enough for him to do since he already worked as a courier. He needed the extra money to save for college and, as he'd later explained to Reese, the man who had approached him seemed reputable enough. Only later did he realize that he'd placed his trust in the wrong people. The items he was moving around the city were actually stolen. At that point things went from bad to worse for Marcus, because he'd let on that he knew the operation was illegal. This, of course, made him a liability, and as a result, Finch had received his number from the Machine.
All things considered the case had ended well. Fusco had a friend in the DA's office and called in a favor. The DA had been willing to offer community service in exchange for the kid's cooperation—mainly, the names of the people heading the ring. White had been cagey from the start, however, and, because he was utterly convinced that he was going to be killed if he said anything, had ended up making a run for it. A lengthy chase across several city blocks in rush-hour traffic had resulted. And although John had finally caught up with the kid and talked him into cooperating, he'd also managed to get in the way of a car in the process. The vehicle hadn't been moving fast, and he was fairly certain that nothing was broken—he'd carefully skated over the details when Finch asked him about it later—but it was definitely not his best moment.
He'd dropped his coat off at a dry cleaner he'd used in the past. They offered same-day and next-day service—for an added charge of course—and the woman who worked there also did alterations and repairs. She'd raised her eyebrows at the damage done to the coat, but refrained from commenting, simply telling him she'd have it ready for pick-up in the morning. The suit he'd been wearing was a total loss—jacket and pants were torn in various places and covered in a mixture of tar, dirt, and his own blood. He'd taken the suit off last night and immediately stuffed it into his duffel bag, knowing it was ruined.
Spitting toothpaste into the sink and rinsing his mouth, he tossed the toothbrush back into the bolt bag and began a wipe down of the bathroom. The room was tiny, however, and cleaning it took minutes.
John again glanced at the clock on the bedside table and sighed. Cleaning had kept him moving, kept his thoughts occupied in safe territory, but there were still hours of silence and inactivity looming ahead. Something that felt very much like panic stirred in his mind at the thought. Making a decision he opened the duffel bag, pulled out the change of clothes inside, and dressed quickly, stashing the ID and cash in his pocket and hiding the handgun in the waistband of his pants. Gathering his things he stepped out into the hall and made his way toward the stairwell.
He dumped the bedding into a washer already running in the basement facility before slipping out of the building. Three streets over, he found a dumpster packed with what looked and smelled like a mixture of rotting food and the contents of a litter box. Tossing the bag and its contents into the garage, he walked away, satisfied that he'd erased all evidence of his stay in the room he'd just vacated.
The night was bitterly cold. He'd started the run at an easy pace, partly to give himself time to warm up, and partly because he knew that jogging on icy sidewalks was a great way to fall on your ass. He'd settled into a rhythm fairly quickly, however, and had been sure of his footing ever since. He felt somewhat more composed now that he was outside. His hands had stopped shaking anyway. "Fresh air, open sky, and exercise…all three will do wonders for you." He could almost hear his father's voice speaking the oft-repeated phrase. He'd been fond of extolling the virtues of physical exercise to his son, especially on mornings when John would rather have slept late.
Early rising and daily running were both practices of Army life that his father retained long after his discharge. Henry Wells wanted to share his love of running with his son, though John had never taken to the activity with anything like his father's enthusiasm. Both men would make several laps around the expansive pond that sat on the outskirts of their farm before heading back to the house. Breakfast would be waiting for them when they returned, the smell of coffee, bacon, and eggs mingling in the air as music filtered in from the stereo in the family room. Monica Wells had an immense collection of records, and her tastes varied. Selections from Motown, Harry Mancini, Frank Sinatra, Chopin, Stravinsky, Miles Davis, and the Beatles were all intermingled on her record shelves.
Evenings on the farm were usually quiet. His father, exhausted from work that sometimes began long before the sun rose and ended long after sunset, spent most evenings in his favorite recliner, reading well-worn copies of Joseph Conrad, C.S. Forrester, and Jonathan Swift. Some nights, however, he joined his son outside, shooting hoops alongside him, or simply watching while John practiced.
In those days John had had dreams of basketball scholarships and a possible professional career in the sport. He was good—very good, in fact, but an injury in his senior year ended the dream. At seventeen, it was the worst disappointment of his life. The damage had been bad enough to require several months of physical therapy, and it was there that he'd first met her. She'd known even then that she wanted to care for people, to help them, and so she'd started volunteering at the hospital as a candy striper.
Depressed and discouraged after a particularly difficult session with the physical therapist, he hadn't noticed her presence as she watched him from the other side of the room. When the therapist left to give him some time alone, she'd crossed the room to introduce herself. As she took his hand in her own, he'd felt a warmth, a lightening within himself. She'd smiled at him then and he couldn't help but respond.
Jessica…
His breath hitched sharply as the familiar pain lanced through him. He stopped running and stood, unmoving, on the sidewalk.
A bus was making its way down the street, empty save for an elderly man sitting in the back, his skin a sickly yellow under the harsh overhead lights of the bus. The man shifted in his seat and looked out the window, briefly making eye contact. Something inside John clenched with pity.
He tilted his head back to look at the sky. He missed being able to see the stars. The wind had picked up a little, and the temperature seemed to have dropped. In spite of the fact that his shirt was now sticking to him in sweat and his legs were burning with exertion, his ears and nose felt frozen. Glancing at his hands he saw that his fingers were red and swollen. It crossed his mind that running in the freezing cold had been a spectacularly dumb idea, whatever his father believed. But then, he knew that drinking until he blacked out was no longer a viable option.
The dreams had always been difficult to endure—even in an alcoholic haze they'd been bad—but more recently he'd enjoyed a respite of sorts. Sheer exhaustion—mental and physical—had stilled his mind enough to allow him relatively dreamless sleep…most nights, anyway…
His heart, already pumping hard in exertion, accelerated its rhythm. Checking for cars, he crossed the street and turned a corner, continuing the run.
He'd hated himself for making the choice to leave her, to re-enlist after 9/11, yet even now, he didn't know that he could have made a different choice. He'd been given certain skills, certain abilities. He was able to protect people, and so he had to protect them. To do anything less would have been wrong. He'd hoped for more with Jessica, had hoped for future possibilities, but he couldn't ask her to wait for him while he was away. He couldn't ask her to hold onto him when everyday there was a very real possibility he would be killed. It hardly seemed fair or right. He hadn't wanted to hurt her.
But on that day, in the hotel room with Jessica, he'd seen so clearly the life they could have together. He'd wanted that life—wanted her—more than anything else.
He clenched his jaw in frustration as his mind raced, picking at old wounds, futilely searching for the solution to a problem that was now long past solving. In spite of the burning in his legs and his lungs, and the pain flaring in his ribs, he pushed himself to run faster.
A derelict building loomed ahead, yellow tape marked with the word 'Caution' surrounding it and blocking the street. A bulldozer and other equipment were parked in the adjacent lot. He imagined work to demolish the ruined structure would begin soon. By the end of the day there would be nothing left. He spotted a narrow gap between the derelict building and the one adjacent to it. The glow from the nearby streetlights barely penetrated the space between the two buildings, but seeing that it was the only available option to him, he turned into the gap and continued running.
Certain knowledge and certain experiences could never be forgotten. Some parts of life infected you, changed you, settled down deep and transformed you. By the time he'd seen Jessica in the airport he'd known that firsthand. He'd known the terrible feeling he would later describe to Megan Tillman, that the best part of him was gone, had been ripped away. He'd had no illusions about what he was, about what he'd become in the intervening years since he and Jessica had been together. There was a darkness within him that was both repulsive and terrifying. And in the years following their meeting, he'd only sunk further into those depths. It was something of which he was profoundly ashamed.
She'd asked him to fight for them, to make her a promise, to give her hope for a future with him. His stomach clenched at the remembered words, at her faith in him, and his own damning silence. He had thought that by letting things remain unsaid and by staying away he was offering her the possibility of something precious, something that would remain whole and undamaged. He'd thought his sacrifice would ensure her happiness.
But it had all gone wrong. He'd been incredibly naïve and his mistake had cost Jessica her life. In some kind of horrible, twisted irony his words to her in the airport had been a horrifying self-fulfilling prophecy. In the end, she had been alone. No one had come to save her. He hadn't come to save her. In the end, he hadn't given her anything precious, whole, or undamaged. In the end, in walking away from her, in remaining silent, in doing nothing…he'd killed her.
In the dark expanse in which he was running, he skidded across a patch of black ice, and felt his feet slide out from underneath him. He fell to the ground and did not get up.
The asphalt was cold beneath him. He was lying on his back, unsure of how long he'd lain that way. The cold seeping through his clothes told him it had been a while.
His ribs throbbed and his head stung—he'd hit it on something when he'd fallen—but the manic flow of thoughts had stopped. He lay on the frozen pavement and breathed, watching the white clouds of his breath dissipate and blow away in the wind.
Far above him a sparrow landed on the scaffolding attached to the building scheduled for demolition. The bird ruffled its feathers and began to chirp, a surprisingly loud sound in the enclosed space. John watched it for some time as it sang, hopping from one rung to the next. He found himself wondering why the bird was alone and to whom it called.
He suddenly realized what the bird's presence indicated and sat up with some difficulty, finding that the majority of his body was numb from the cold. He staggered a little as he stood, shivering violently, and glanced at the narrow strip of sky discernible between the buildings. Shades of purple and red were faintly visible. He began to walk.
It was yet another nameless hotel, booked under a false identity and paid for in cash. The room was smaller than the last one, a difficult feat to say the least, but he hardly cared. The shower was clean and the water was hot. He'd stopped on the way to the hotel in order to pick up another of his hidden bolt bags, but it remained sitting, unopened on the floor. The thought of digging through it to look for soap or shampoo had seemed too great of an effort. He felt utterly drained as he leaned against the shower wall, shivering as the scorching water streamed over his chilled body.
The hot water hadn't yet run out when he heard his phone chime. With some reluctance, he turned the water off, and stepped out of the shower. Sore muscles throbbed, and his eyes burned with fatigue. The shower had been nowhere near long enough. He was still cold, and felt as if he were covered in sweat and grime. Walking to the bed, he began to dry himself, hardly noticing the twinge of pain as the towel scraped against the abrasions on his ribs. He picked up his phone, seeing that a message from Finch had appeared. They had a new number. Drawing a breath, he grabbed the bolt bag from the floor where he'd dropped it and began to get ready.
"Bit of a late start, Mr. Reese," Finch greeted as John walked into the library. "You forget to set your alarm?"
"Had my yoga class," he replied, his gaze shifting between the board and his employer.
Finch looked doubtful. "Well, I hope you've gotten in touch with your chi, because it seems we have a big day ahead of us."