Kat woke the next morning in silence, temporarily disoriented. Her eyes popped open, but she remained very still, concerned that some combination of the numerous idiotic decisions she had dreamed about had actually transpired. Her eyes traveled along the baseboard of the wall as she pieced the evening together yet again. And then she realized that something was off. She shifted, and as she did so, Finch awoke with a sharp inhale, fingers still entangled in her hair, shoulders still propped against the headboard. So she hadn't dreamed this after all. Fantastic.
Finch awoke with a sharp inhale, fingers still tangled in Kat's now-unruly hair. He froze, staring straight ahead in the general vicinity of his own knees. Slowly, silently, and ever-so-carefully, he extracted himself from her auburn nest of hair, and, after doing so, slipped gingerly off the edge of the bed. She was awake, he knew, but she remained almost motionless, staring pointedly at the baseboards. He picked up his shoes.
"Harold?" Her voice was still scratchy with sleep. He was afraid to turn to look at her now.
"Yes, Katherine?"
"What did I say to you last night?"
"You were experiencing nightmares. In hindsight, Bear would have made adequate company for you."
"Bear wouldn't have comforted me." He heard her shift, knew she was waiting for him to acknowledge her, but he couldn't bring himself to admit that he had allowed himself to fall asleep there, tilted uncomfortably against the headboard.
"Nonsense. He's a dog, that's what they do." He tried to sound flippant, but it just sounded gratuitously irritated to his ears.
"Did you… sleep well?" She asked, awkwardly. His chest felt particularly squeezy at this point.
"Katherine…"
"What did I say to you last night? That I can't remember?"
Finch hesitated. He turned back to her, to find her sitting, now tiny in the sea of blankets, knees drawn up and sheets pulled up to her chin.
"You said you needed someone to comfort you. I was mistaken; it should not have been me. You were half asleep and you asked me to stay. So I did."
"Thank you."
This was not what he expected to hear, nor was it the response he was prepared to respond to. So he stood, shoes dangling out of one hand, lip twitched quizzically, caught between the defensive response he had prepared and the perplexed relief he was quickly cultivating, until Bear woke with a yawn and a whine, and leapt from the foot of the bed to beg for breakfast. As he turned once more to follow the dog to the stairs, Katherine swept the blankets aside.
"You know, you're lucky you have a dog." She called after him.
"Why do you say that?" He asked, still retreating.
"If he wasn't here, you'd have no convenient excuse to break the horrific tension." She was smiling. He was standing on the second stair down, bristling under her almost gleeful frankness.
Breakfast occurred in awkward silence, Kat cracking eggs in the kitchen with Bear wriggling around her feet, and Harold hiding behind the screen of his laptop, trying desperately to attain the same level of focus he might have had by himself. The urge to keep his houseguest entertained kept intruding, mingling with the still-fresh horror of jolting awake with her curled at his side.
Kat was dealing with her own sudden rush of awkwardness by aggressively scrambling eggs and buttering toast, sneaking a smear of butter onto the tip of Bear's nose and rumpling his ears as he went cross-eyed trying to lick it all off. Perhaps the best course of action was to pretend it had never happened at all?
At last, she sidled quietly up alongside Finch, sliding a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast toward his elbow. He swiveled slightly, and eyed her in silence for a moment.
"Thank you." He responded, finally.
"I've only got two clients today, but they're across town. " She responded, noncommittally.
"I'd like you to take Bear with you."
"I mean, I can't exactly take him on the subway with me…" She began.
"I can't keep you safe from halfway across town." He protested. "If you need a ride, that can be arranged, but you're not walking around the city all day with no one to look after you."
"Are you always this restrictive with your charges?" She asked pointedly.
Finch hesitated, poised to retort, but unable to.
"No." he said finally. "I am not."
"I have to go, if I want to be there in time." She said quietly.
"I'll have a car waiting out front for you." He responded, toast in hand, eyes fixed back on his monitor.
Once she had slipped out the door, Bear trotting happily at her side, Harold began distractedly pushing the remainder of his scrambled eggs around the plate. She'd had a point, of course. It was rare for himself and Mr. Reese to make substantial contact with their charges, and he had no qualms about leaving them to their own devices in far more treacherous-seeming circumstances, provided he could keep an eye on them from afar. If she had been anyone else, tracking her cell phone would have sufficed, yet somehow, he found himself terribly concerned for her wellbeing this time around.
Another thought was tugging at his mind, too, as he tapped furiously away at the keyboard. A thought that bothered him even more than his own inklings of personal bias. The more he looked for danger, the less evidence he found that it might occur, at least in an immediate sense. What if she wasn't just another repeat number? The Machine had steered him toward people for other purposes before… But he wasn't ready to entertain that notion quite yet.
Finally, adjusting the rim of his glasses, he resigned himself to the fact that the best thing he could do for Katherine was to find the root of her threat, and send her on her way where he would likely never see her again.
Kat, meanwhile, was by now halfway across town, being led through the dog park by the strangest tandem pair of dogs she'd ever undertaken. Bear, ever alert, sniffing and panting and tail-waving, and the wrinkliest, most apathetic looking Basset Hound in the city. Letting them off-leash to play, she found that Bear was more than content to follow Harold's commands to keep an eye on her, sitting stately at her knee and eyeing her every so often. Peering down at the dog, her dream from the night prior flooded back into her mind. She felt her chest squeeze uncomfortably. Right. She had forgotten about that. At the very least, she didn't have to share that horror with Harold. She could process that one alone.
What had happened to her last night? It was loneliness. Just loneliness. She was alone, and it could have been anyone, and it would have felt like a good idea. She had thought perhaps her first conversation with him, when he had driven her home through silent Manhattan streets, would be enough to salve that horrible solitude, knowing she wasn't the only one who felt it, but she found instead that it became worse. Unbearable. She felt the same loneliness from Harold and John, but John handled it. He used it as a tool. Harold was consumed by it.
