Hey guys! I'm new to this fandom and actually just caught up with the entire series over the holiday break, and after seeing the latest episode I was itching to write my own fic about how the next episode could somehow turn out. I actually haven't written in a couple years so bear with me if its complete garbage. Reviews are appreciated, I'd like to know your thoughts on how I've done or whether or not I've done something wrong! I strongly encourage you to listen to Sharon Van Etten's Love More while reading this, because I feel it matches the tone of the scene perfectly, at least in my head. Warning: this can be interpreted as slight Carter/Reese because I ship them so hard it's embarrassing. :)

She didn't know what the right move was.

Carter had always prided herself on her sense of right and wrong. The world wasn't black and white, far from it, but as her mother used to say, Joss was gifted with the ability to sort through most of it. It wasn't a difficult decision to keep Taylor when she found she was unexpectedly pregnant in her last year of college. She knew that going back to the force after making it through law school was what she truly wanted all those years ago. Even as an intelligence officer in Iraq, the sense of duty she'd had for her country kept her own emotions about certain procedures from interfering with the directive. But now, standing in front of the glass window of the room holding John Reese, Carter felt as though she was going in blind.

Finch had told her everything was handled, or would be. That John would be walking out of the prison within forty-eight hours. But did that come with a price? Would his identity remain intact? Carter didn't think John would find a freedom where his past was fodder for small talk at FBI headquarters very freeing at all.

"Detective Carter?"

Joss turned at the sound of Agent Donnelly's voice. He was standing near the door to the outer hallway. They had moved the four prisoners down to a concealed underground structure for the interrogations, and the area was damp and dark, lit only by flickering lamps lining the walls. There was no cell service, and even if there had been, Carter doubts Finch would have a get-out-of-jail-free-card for when your NYPD asset is directed to interrogate the same man she'd been working with for months. "Are you ready?"

Donnelly was giving her a smile, but Carter wasn't sure if it was meant to be reassuring. As of late Donnelly was getting more and more desperate, fraught with the knowledge that the man he had been hunting for so long was so close. Frankly, Joss thought his own desperation was preventing him from questioning why she wasn't particularly overjoyed about this turn of events.

Carter pursed her lips and nodded back, and Donnelly yelled a command to someone in the corridor and shut the door. John was hunched over in his chair, his face hidden. From behind the window Joss couldn't see his eyes and wished she was able to read him better. A hint of reassurance from those steel grey eyes and she might feel in control again. Like they'd get out of this and he'd go back to surprising her by slipping out of the shadows at the most inopportune moments. She didn't think she could go back to being Detective Joss Carter, honest and unfulfilled cop, again.

She took a deep breath and stepped through the door into the room. His head didn't move from its position, and Joss shifted to take the seat in front of him at the steel table. The chair was cold and unyielding, and she clenched her fist upon seeing the sharp angles his arms formed as they descended behind the chair, pulled taut in handcuffs. Joss had the keys on her belt, she could uncuff him right now, she could take his hand and walk with him out this door. They just wouldn't make it very far.

"My name is Detective Carter. Although, if it's you we're looking for, you already know that." The steadiness of her voice surprised her, almost as much as what she was saying.

Slowly, his head rose until he was making eye contact with her. She was looking at a ghost, his face and neck grimy from the conditions he was being kept in, his eyes bloodshot from the lack of sleep, but his stare was no less powerful than the first time she'd seen him at the precinct.

"Do the handcuffs hurt?" she asked, and this time her voice betrayed some of her concern. Confusion ran rampant in her, and even more so when she found herself standing to uncuff him. She half-expected half the Bureau to run in and restrain her but continued moving towards him. At the back of her mind she knew that whatever she did with John she'd have to continue with the other prisoners, but couldn't bring herself to care. Bending down behind John's seat, she slipped her hand past his forearm and down into his palm, pressing gently. This was all the reassurance she could give for now.

Returning to her seat, Joss saw that his expression remained stoic but the angry red of his wrists was enough to get her to relax. He had needed that. She bit the inside of her cheek and opened the case folder she has brought in to prevent her from bursting out with questions about what they should do or if he was okay. She doubts the latter would be answered with the truth anyways.

As Joss asks questions and is answered with the expected silence, she can take some comfort in the knowledge that when she's here with him, he's not in a cold cell or being shoved around by guards and agents alike. It's only when she standing to leave that he speaks, voice unmarred by the events of the last couple of days. "Detective?"

She turns to face him, and there it is. The reassurance she needs comes when the corner of his mouth turns up a fraction of an inch to ask, "Aren't you going to handcuff me?"

She wills herself not to smile back and instead shakes her head, nodding towards the window where Donnelly should be. "Call me crazy but I don't think you'll try anything."

And with that she leaves, fending off Donnelly's confusion with some bullshit excuse about gaining the prisoner's trust and heading towards the next interrogation room.

This feeling she has can't be called relief, but it's something close to it.