Promise Me You'll Tell Him….
John delivers Joss' final message to Taylor.
A/N: I'm baaacccckkkkk. Thanks for coming back. I know this took SOOOOOOOO long but I had a serious case of writer's block. Finch did not want to talk about this subject. I had to wait him out until he was ready to say his piece. Also I've rewritten some parts of both chapters 1 and 2. Sorry to make you go back and reread them. It's still a work in progress but I hope to have it complete before POI is back for season 5 and its last 13 eps. I'm hoping to post a chapter a week. Thanks again and sorry for making you wait, and wait and…..
Chapter 1
John woke to the incessant tick, tick, tick of the small silver and black clock on his bedside night table. Though he knew it really didn't, the sound from the clock seemed to get louder and louder every day, especially at night. Each tick of the second hand was a continuous reminder of time he will spend wading through each second, minute, hour, day, week…. At this point he can just barely think about what will happen today. In his mind he knows that time will continue to flow over, around and through him as it has for what's it been now, about 2 months? He fills the days with mindless distractions so he doesn't have to think past the minutes he's currently in. He won't think, can't think about tomorrow, much less the future. How do you think about something that you know no longer exists for you?
Most nights he lays awake - at war with himself - in a pitched battle with sleep. On nights when Morpheus has refused John any place, the promise of the coming day's sameness is dulled by sleep deprivation. On those nights the shapes, nooks, crannies and the 115 cracks in the loft's ceiling, have become his midnight Rorschach's test. The ones in the northeast corner form a sniper behind cover, southwest – an exploding grenade and the one in the center of the ceiling – is a spreading blood stain on a dirty street corner. But as usual his eye is drawn to the shape in the southern part of the ceiling about 3 feet from the large floor to ceiling bank of windows. Day or night, that spot holds his attention when he's at home. And some nights, when the moon is softly beaming through the towering expanse of glass, that crack limned shape seems to glow a gentle gold like the NYPD detective's badge it resembles.
John considers what his midnight Rorschach test would suggest to a psychiatrist. If Finch had a medical plan with a psychiatrist on it John's sure that they would recommend therapy for him. Couple that with his jihad against Simmons and Alonzo Quinn while bleeding out and his instance of going it alone during his recuperation made John certain he would probably be committed by that same psychiatrist with orders of deep, intensive, long term, drug added therapy. But that's not something he would ever really have to worry about since he'd never speak to a psychiatrist even if under the threat of death. The thought of Finch having a medical plan for what they do brought a mirthless smile to John's face. He scoffs at the picture that pops in his mind of Finch doggedly trying to make John see a psychiatrist. Harold Finch, he scoffs and acknowledges he could be almost as stubborn as himself.
John's mind wanders back to the day he left the library the second time, after being shot on that dreadful November night. After the first time, when Finch had found him trying to end Quinn's life in that FBI hotel room and all but bled out from Simmons's inflicted gunshot wounds, Finch had adamantly and, what for him was very vocally, announced that John would be staying at the library with him until John had recovered. Then, John had no choice but to stay since he really couldn't take care of himself. But as soon as he could stand and walk without collapsing, John had left the library. He could not stay there with The Machine just feet away. The Machine, which could seem to help everyone except the most important ones, had shown John it could not be trusted. He couldn't stand to be so close to the answer to why not her and not be able to get the answer, or beat the answer out of it, or fix any of it.
So he had to go. It would have been comical watching the bird of a man trying to stop the monster if it hadn't been so sad. Even as determined as Finch could be, when he stepped in front of John and grabbed his arm to prevent him from leaving and then saw the look in John's eye's, Finch knew that the irresistible force had met the immovable object. Finch dropped his hand and John quietly moved around him and went home to his loft to recuperate in abject misery, alone.
Home. Where was that? Not this city any longer. In the last few months or so, John thought that he had finally got a handle on that concept, that idea of home. With joining the military he had basically all but given up on calling one place home, especially after Jessica had died. When John had met Jessica, the notion that there was a chance that he could stop moving and plan a real future, had started scratching at the door of his mind. Just as he had started to open the door to see what home might look like, 9/11 happened, he re-upped, and Jessica moved on without him.
He had missed his second chance with Jessica the day he unexpectedly ran into her at the airport. She had asked him to ask her to wait for him. Locked behind his teeth and clogging his throat, the words she needed to hear tumbled from his mouth only after she walked away from him, too late for her to hear his love for her. When she had called him just before the mission to Ordos he heard the fear and sadness in her voice. She was in trouble, she needed him. He had been given another chance with her and he was grabbing it. He told her to hold on because he was coming for her. But again he was too late; the mission had taken too long. By the time he got to her she had died; murdered at the hands of her husband. The door was resoundingly shut on the plaintive cries from the idea of settling down, of home. So, John fled as far from "home" as being a special operative with the CIA could take him, never to return again. Or so he thought.
Before losing Jessica, he had loved being in the military. It had appealed to the protective part of his personality and his heart. Even if he no longer had a home, he could at least protect his home country, and those who lived there who still had a home. Mostly it was a great job. John remembered what his friend Bruce used to tell him a million years ago when they were in high school during the requisite 'what do you want to be when you grow up' talks.
"Yo, BK! Did you talk to that recruiter today at the meet and greet?" Bruce huffed out as he ran to catch up with John.
"Naw. I think I'm gonna' look into joining the local PD, ya know," John answered softly as they fell into step with each other.
'To Protect and to Serve'. John liked that motto. He liked helping people, protecting them. John had gotten the nickname of BK, Bully Killer, during high school. He physically hurt whenever he saw someone picking on and terrorizing anyone who couldn't defend themselves. So if he saw something like that going down, he always stepped up and in to stop it, prevent it or end it. His school had no bullies by the time he graduated. And though everyone didn't love John, they certainly did respect him, and some even feared him. The fear part didn't sit well with him, but if it helped to keep people safe, he found he could live with that.
"Come on, man, the local PD?" Bruce scoffed. "There's so much out there in this big wide world to see. There's Japan, Mt. Fuji and girls, Hawaii, the hula and girls, South Carolina, soul food and girls." Bruce said as he ticked the different places he wanted to go off on his fingers and the people he wanted to meet.
He continued, "England-girls, Africa-girls, Canada-girls, France – oui, oui – girls and oh yeah, did I mention bodacious babes with gnarly ta-tas," he smirks "and girls?"
John can't help but smile because his friend is girl crazy and has been since, well ever since they met in the 6th grade. Bruce laughs when he sees John smile.
"Come on, BK. I thought that we were gonna join together and then travel the world? You know, a girl in every port and a port in every girl?" Bruce waggles his eyebrows at John and bumps him with his shoulder.
"Man, that's just skank," John says as he scrunches up his nose in distaste at Bruce's sexist remark.
John liked girls and wanted to have a girlfriend, but he really wasn't one of those guys who went with more than one girl at a time. He just wasn't an operator like that. Even though he had tried pimpin' once, but doing that to girls just went against his grain.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever, man.", Bruce scoffed.
"Look, I'm joining as soon as I can. I told my mom. You know how she is."
"She cried," they said in unison and laughed. They walked on in companionable silence for a few more steps.
"What'd your dad say?" John asked, not looking at Bruce and some concern showing through in his voice.
Bruce was very close to his dad, but his dad had always seemed to have something against the armed services and had told Bruce, and John, in no uncertain terms, that they should not join any branch of the military. He'd told Bruce that he would disown him if he did join. Now here was Bruce spazzing out about joining.
"He…..umm. We'll have to talk about it…when he's speaking to me again." Bruce's answer is low with hints of deep sadness running through it and he looks his at feet which have suddenly become his focus. He briefly glances over at John and sees the sorrow in his eyes and decides to put a brighter face on his problems about his decision. "Hey, I'm a man now, so he'll just have to get over it and accept my decision, you know?"
John smirks and says, "Yeah, join the Army and be all that you can be, right?" He can hear the false bravado in Bruce's comment and wishes he could somehow make this decision easier on his friend.
He actually felt that it would be rad for his best bud to join the army. Bruce was a bit of a Clydesdale and John knew he would do well in most branches of the military. John was sure that military life just wasn't for him. Until he got into trouble and a Judge gave him a choice; enlist or go to jail. So John enlisted. As he was signing the recruitment papers, Bruce who had lived up to his word and went in as soon as he graduated, his voice kept playing in John's head. He could hear Bruce saying his favorite slogan and see that smirk on his face accompanying the words. "Join the military, travel the world, meet interesting people and kill them."
That's what John's life became: meeting interesting people and killing them. They had told him it was to protect his country, and that had appealed to his need to help and protect; a need that he didn't even really know was such a part of him then. He ended up loving the military…for a while. Until he started to question his purpose and missions. Even through his training and conditioning John could and still did think for himself. Doubts crept in and he started to see the lies and deception behind his missions. The guilt he felt about the innocent people he knew he had killed had begun to destroy his soul. During the Ordos, China mission with his partner Kara, when he barely escaped with his life, he knew he couldn't retire his partner as he had been ordered to by his boss, Mark Snow. He had continued to seriously question what he now did for a living. John was considering getting out of the business. But he knew there was no real getting out. The only way out was to be retired. Not what he really wanted since retirement from this business always meant dead.
Retirement. John scoffed at that euphemism and thought about how he couldn't retire Kara as he had been ordered, but she had no such problems about killing him. She had been given the same order of retirement for John and cold bloodedly shot him. If the missiles sent to retire them both hadn't been so close she would have completed the job and he would now be doing his retirement in some unmarked grave in China pushing up daisies. After he healed from Kara's gunshot, the guilt about all of the lives he had unquestioningly taken and the innocent blood on his hands became all-consuming and paralyzing.
He was purposeless and a worthless man for what he had done. He knew within his heart that he had been a good man at one time. But the CIA, Snow, Kara, the lies, deception, and all of the killing, had driven goodness from his heart and from his soul. Like Kara told him once, "We're not walking in the dark, we are the dark". He was now what they had worked so hard to turn him into – a monster, a monster that looked like a man. It was easy for him to disappear and become no one so he did just that.
He wandered the streets for a few years and lived on them. Guilt for his previous acts as an assassin ate away at him. He knew there was no way to make it right. He had lost his purpose after Kara's retirement attempt. Within the guilt from all of the innocent lives he had taken and the grief of not being there in time to save Jessica, he had lost himself as well. After a while John contemplated his demise. This torture that was now his life, he wanted it to end. He just wasn't sure how to get it done. He was already a retired operative, a dead man on paper. Now all he had to do was make it a reality.