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It's been a long time since John has woken because his body clock tells him to rise rather than his nightmares throwing him into memories he doesn't want to remember and eventually dragging him into wakefulness, and for a moment all he can do is blink blearily at the shadows on the wall at the other end of the room.

Joss's wall, he realises, still a little stained with the remnants of the blood he hadn't managed to wash away. He was in Carter's apartment. He'd gone there to clean up but... The warm weight resting against his chest gives a snuffling snore, and he turns his head slowly, blood returning to his squashed extremities as he carefully slides his arm from beneath the woman asleep beside him.

She doesn't open her eyes, instead wrinkling her nose and snuggling against his shirt. Carter fits well against him, Reese thinks, the mess of contradictions that make her up for once physical, touchable, rather than clues given when she says one thing and does another. Dancing between what she knows is right and what she knows is legal. Her head is tucked against his shoulder, full lips half open, it's only because she's so close that John can hear her snoring softly. Glancing down he can see the curve of her hip, the softness of her breasts, the sleek muscle of her thigh thrown over his. It's hard to force his body not to react to that and he shifts slightly. She really doesn't need to wake up with his erection poking her in the stomach. The soldier in him notes the gun on the table where the lamp that had been smashed used to be, the oversized T-shirt she's wearing that doesn't look like something she would choose. No sign of Taylor which means that he's probably with his grandmother or a friend.

Studying her he takes inventory. Her breathing is even, her colour is good. One arm is in a sling, a legacy of the gunshot wound, but the soft cheek that rests against him isn't warm enough to be feverish so infection has probably been avoided. She's probably got anti-inflammatory and pain meds to take though; he's so used to having Finch give him information about anyone and everything it's a little disconcerting not to know whether to wake her or not so that she can take them. Carter's self-reliant but she's hurt, glancing at his watch he notes the time – three 'o clock in the morning and he's the only one around to look after her.

As though she has heard his thoughts Joss gives a snuffling noise and stretches out against him, only barely seeming to hear his voice when he says her name. Wincing she opens her eyes blearily and would have tumbled off the couch had John not steadied her with a hand on her hip.

"Good morning," he says quietly.

She lifts her head up, dark almond shaped eyes squinting in the darkness. The only light is coming from the kitchen and it obviously takes her a while to work out where she is and remember what had happened.

"I fell asleep," she says eventually. "Sorry."

"I'm not complaining," John replies lightly, moving slightly so that she can slide off him to the other side of the couch. "You've had a rough couple of days."

He watches as Joss yawns and dips her head, running her fingers through her hair and grimacing when they get caught in their tousled strands. She winces as she tries to straighten the T-shirt over her chest, and noticing her discomfort John gets up and pads over to the kitchen, finding a glass from the cupboard over the sink and filling it with water.

"Where are your meds?" He asks, placing the glass on the table beside her. " Are you due a painkiller yet?"

She looks at him incredulously before picking up the drink and taking a deep swallow. Rubbing her knuckles across her mouth she chuckles faintly. "I thought that you were Big Brother not my mother."

"Consider this a public service." He leans against the wall watching as Joss takes another sip. She looks terrible, her hair tangled around her face, still a little shaky and out of it from sleep and the come-down of whatever they had given her at the hospital. "What are you supposed to be taking?"

Carter rolls her eyes but obviously can't be bothered to argue with him. "In my bag over there." She dips her head towards the front door where she'd dumped it and her boots. "But I'm ok. I'm not due anything until the morning, and" she looks at the half open blinds showing nothing but darkness and the reflection of neon lights. "It's not morning yet."

It doesn't take John long to find the paper bag with the prescription bottles inside. He reads the dosage printed on the stickers quickly, well aware that Joss is watching him with irritation.

"D'you do this for all the people you follow around and piss off?" She says eventually.

John shrugs, taking the bag into the kitchen and putting the medication on the sideboard before returning and sitting next to her.

"Do you use all the people who break into your apartment as a mattress?" Even in the dim light he can see her cheeks flush a little at that. She licks her lips a little nervously, but he fights the urge to reach out to her.

When she eventually speaks her voice is very quiet. "I didn't want to wake you. I wanted to feel safe."

John feels his chest constrict, for a moment it's hard to breathe. "I'm sorry." His voice is rough and his words stumbling. "I promised to protect you and I didn't. I wasn't there when you needed me."

The look she gives him is of such baffled outrage that he's almost tempted to shift further away from her on the couch.

"What's wrong with you?" She sounds genuinely pissed off. "You saved my life. Twice. You saved my kid's life, Fusco's kid's life. You took on some of the most batshit crazy, trigger happy psychopaths I've ever seen and now Tay doesn't lose his mom, Fusco's kid gets a future and so do all the people that would have been hurt by the Ember group." Her eyes are blazing, and it's hard to look away from her. "You should have a fucking statue in Times Square not a guilt complex, so pack it in."

"Yes ma'am." The steadfast faith that Joss has in him can't help to make Reese wince. It's been a long time since anyone but Finch has really been on his side, and while he admires and believes he and the reclusive genius have a connection that has evolved from business partners to friendship, neither of them would ever really acknowledge it directly. There is far too much blood on his hands, far too many names branded into his mind of people that he had not, could not save. The emotions are a little too uncomfortable so he deflects them in his usual fashion.

"A statue? I hope you aren't suggesting I pose nude, Joss, I'm not sure where I'd get a fig leaf from."

John's reflexes are very good, but still he's too surprised to flinch when Carter grabs the collar of his shirt and drags his head towards hers. The press of her lips upon his is both soft and insistent, when she pauses for a second, perhaps wondering if she'd gone too far, he cups her head and licks her bottom lip, sighing slightly as she opens her mouth to him. She tastes of cool water and something sweeter, smells of hospital antiseptic and sweat. The curl of her hand around the back of his neck is the first thing that has felt truly real since she went missing.

When she pulls back, breathless, flushed and beautiful he touches her cheek and can't think of anything to say.

Finch however is not as mute. The shrill tones of the cell phone in his pocket mean that the moment is broken almost as soon as it has begun.


Harold Finch is a practical man but not one who dismisses emotion or sentimentality as being either pointless or damaging. The Machine may be his driving force, his conscience and the only legacy he is likely to leave, for better or for worse, but it is after all a machine. It needs human emotion for anything to come of the numbers it creates, it needs the belief that human lives are worth saving for the numbers to become survivors rather than statistics. They are a symbiotic creature, and it does not escape Finch's notice that it was only by building an emotionless computer that he truly started to feel. You can programme a computer to monitor someone but you can't make it see them. Credit history, criminal records, a thousand different variables for millions every day sometimes based on nothing more than a tell-tale word in an email. It can't explain the colour of a lover's hair when it spills over the pillow in the early morning light. It can't understand why a parent would risk getting into debt with a loan shark to pay a child's medical bills.

He's the voice for The Machine and Reese is the muscle. Until either of them walk away.

Frowning, Harold settles back into his chair. He'd managed to get a few hours sleep in the store room in the library that he had converted into a bedroom, but despite the specially designed mattress he woke up aching, his muscles stiff. Checking Reese's cell phone location it wasn't much of a surprise to see him still at Detective Carter's place. He checks Taylor's location almost without realising that he's doing it. Still safe and sound at his grandmother's. No new numbers, no threats to any of them. For the first time he tries to formulate a plan for letting both Reese and Carter go; just because he can't have a future with Grace doesn't mean that John can't make one with Joss. They obviously have feelings for each other, Taylor – annoying, bright, likeable Taylor, wouldn't oppose the match. Harold could set them up, well anywhere they wanted. Fake I.D's, enough money to provide a new life, a house, a business or a farm (he scratches the idea of a farm as soon as it occurs to him – farms involve cows and horses or poultry and none of them have experience with that from his records. He certainly can't see Carter mucking out a stable) anywhere from Canada, Australia to Europe or China. They all deserve a happy, quiet life, and even as he thinks it he knows that it's a pipe dream. Both John and Carter are born soldiers, alpha wolves. Whatever happens between them they won't stop fighting the good fight just because he wants them to have what he can't.

When his computer beeps it's almost a relief to see Owen Banks's face show up on the security camera by the Greyhound bus station. Reese might sound a little sleepy when he answers the phone, but he's alert enough to sound hungry for the information when Harold tells him where the extremist is headed. Owen Banks is now a personal matter for both he and John. He wonders what Reese will say to Carter; he wonders if he'll say anything at all.

A/N Thanks to my kind readers and reviewers – you do keep me going. Yeah not much happened in this chapter, more action in the next chapter I promise.