Authors Notes: I promised you an early chapter in exchange for reviews, so you can thank McMoni, ChibiDawn23 and Edith Bodin for making it happen. I appreciate the love for this story and it pushes me to get back to my laptop. The rest of you can make a fanfiction writers day by letting me know what you think my clicking the review box at the bottom. Hope you enjoy this next chapter! X

Chapter 10

Harold woke up to the sound of rain on a palm tree thatched roof and the smell of wood smoke. He opened his eyes to find himself dressed only in his boxers and covered by a thin sheet, on a narrow mattress on a homemade wooden bed. He was in a small panelled shack with a thatched roof. There was a small table beside the bed with a plastic cup of water and a packet of pills on it. His glasses were there too, neatly folded, so he picked them up and put them on before reading the packet, Amoxicillin, antibiotics. Strong ones, if the size of them were anything to go by. He sat up and looked at his feet. They'd been neatly bandaged, with real bandages this time, and although they still hurt, it was a minor annoyance compared to how they had been. In fact, his whole body felt better, even though the mattress was about two inches of squashed foam on a thin board.

He hauled himself up and looked around. There was a woven mat on the floor with another well-used mattress on top, the bed had been made, with pillow and sheet neatened with military precision, clearly a habit that the occupier of the bed had been unable to shake. The thought of it made Harold smile. The parachute pack was sat in the corner of the room. And Harold found his clothes had been washed and hung up to dry on a piece of string that crossed between the timbers of the roof. Someone had left a pair of plastic blue flipflops beside his bed, and so he resolved to use them to find out where he was.

He got to his feet, still shakily, pulled on his pants and white short sleeved undershirt and awkwardly slid his bound feet into the flipflops, frowning a little at them in disgust. He was normally of the opinion that whomever had come up with them should have been locked up for crimes against fashion, but he had to admit that right now it was nice not to have to encase his feet back into those horrid shoes. Thus dressed, he opened the creaky wooden door and ventured outside, or rather, surveyed the scene from the dryness of the doorway.

The rain was so heavy that it obscured his vision, but Harold could see that he was in a small village of similar thatched huts, although his was one of the smallest of them. The hut had been built on stilts to prevent any water seeping in, which was definitely a relief as heavy puddles were forming and turning the rest of the ground muddy. Beyond the small collection of huts were a few scrubby fields with some unidentifiable crop growing in them and then beyond that, the river with a small wooden jetty jutting out into it. A few scrawny looking chickens were wandering around the yard but they seemed to be the only inhabitants that had braved the rain.

There was, however, movement in the biggest hut, one that had a large thatched roof but had only had walls up to chest height, allowing for the air to pass through. It was there that the smoke was coming from and he could see a woman moving around at the back, so he steeled himself against the inevitable awkward conversation and went to investigate.

The structure didn't have a door on, so he avoided the biggest puddles and limped over to the building, getting soaked in the process. He still knocked on the wall to announce his presence as he got there, and stood just out of the rain while he waited to be acknowledged. The domestic scene he was rewarded with made him smile. There were three women in the hut, dressed in faded tee shirts or vests and long skirts. One was stoking a clay firepit, next to a long table with bench seats and the other two were sat on bits of tree stump around a low wooden trough, and sat with them was John Reese. John and the other two sitting women each had a piece of fine metal grill and were using it to grate cassava into the trough. At first glance, John looked more relaxed than Harold had seen him in a long time, he had his tee shirt on but had borrowed a pair of tan cargo shorts and some flipflops that were slightly too small and there was a small, scruffy black and white dog curled up asleep on one of his feet. The women were chatting away in some unidentifiable language, but every so often, the one tending the fire would say something in Spanish and John would reply with a smile on his now-bearded face, but as he glanced down at what he was doing, Harold caught the briefest flash of well-hidden sadness, something that the software engineer had learned to look for in the years that the two had been friends.

It was John who first noticed Harold's presence, the women too deep into their conversation to have heard his timid knock. "Finch!" He greeted. "How do you feel?"

Suddenly, all eyes were on him, human eyes at least, and he felt incredibly awkward. The oldest of the women, slim and grey haired, got up from the trough and walked over to him with a big grin. She wiped her hands on her skirt and then took his hand, "Viene, viene." [Come, come.] Harold allowed himself to be lead over to an unoccupied stump, a bit bemused by the whole situation.

"Take a seat, Harold." John suggested, indicating the stump. "You're looking better."

"Erm, thank you." Harold pushed his glasses further up his nose and did as he was told, taking a seat beside the woman who had lead him over. "What are you doing?"

"Making cassava bread." John replied, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm getting quite good at it. Let me introduce you, this is Maria, Maria and Inez." He pointed out each woman.

"Buenas dias." [Good day.] Harold greeted, giving them an awkward little wave.

"¡Buenas tardes!" [Good evening!] Inez who had called him over and one of the Marias who was working the fire answered in unison. The other Maria, didn't appear to speak Spanish and just smiled at him nervously.

"Buenas tardes? How long have I been asleep for?" Harold asked.

"Two days." John replied.

"What?" Harold was shocked.

"We came across this village a couple of nights ago. You were really out of it, but your fever seems to have broken this morning."

Harold wracked his brain, and then he was hit with a slew of memories. John hauling him up onto the jetty and carrying him bridal-style through the village. A woman, Inez he thought, trying to help him drink something. Tossing and turning, sweat-soaked and delirious while John sat on the floor beside him and wiped him down with a cool wet cloth over his face. The thought of it was mortifying, he was glad he didn't remember anything else, because he knew there had to be worse.

"We've been staying at Inez's son's place while you recover. When we're feeling better her husband has offered to take us to town on his boat."

"Oh, muchas gracias. That's very kind." [Thank you very much.] Harold said. "I'm sorry we don't have anything to offer in return."

Inez said something to John and he explained something in fluent Spanish. While Harold spoke pretty good Italian and passable French from his travels round Europe after MIT, his Spanish was rudimentary at best and he was too tired to think in any language but his own. He was thankful that languages was another skill that the former international spy possessed. Whatever he said made Inez smile. She said something back and reached over patting John's hand and said in heavily accented English, "Good boy."

Harold laughed at the pronouncement and John looked a little sheepish. "I've been doing work around the village to pay for our keep." he explained. "Her son and a lot of the younger generations have moved to the towns so they needed someone to repair the roof and help out in the field."

"Well, tell them I'm very grateful nonetheless."

Harold watched fascinated as the women and John finished grating the tough root vegetable, squeezed all the moisture out by twisting it inside a large swath of cloth, and then spread it out on the grill over the fire until it turned into a thin pancake of bread. As it got dark, a few men and younger women drifted in from the fields and a small group of children were dropped off by boat on the jetty from school. They all washed up and then the whole village came and sat down to dinner on the bench seats.

Dinner consisted of the cassava bread that they'd spent all afternoon making, potatoes and fried piranha. After days of near starvation, the food tasted as good as any high-end New York restaurant. John and Harold were content to sit at the end of the table just listening as their hosts talked animatedly in their native tribal language. Inez translated what she could into Spanish, which John then translated into English for Harold, but the whole process was rather exhausting so they soon gave up. Half way through dinner, Inez's husband, Miguel, came home from a day's trading in the nearest town. He sat down opposite the two Americans and chatted away to John as he ate.

When dinner was finished, John tried to help with the washing up but was made to relax. Miguel got a couple of cold beers out of a basket in the river and produced his guitar. They spent the evening drinking their beers and listening to Miguel sing and play. Harold really didn't like beer but sipped at his anyway and marvelled at his friend. He'd rarely seen this side of John, who seemed oddly comfortable in this village life. and even sang along quietly to the more famous songs in Miguel's repertoire. He wished he could stay up to take full advantage of the idyllic evening but he was still exhausted and it wasn't long before he had to retire for the evening. He left John finishing the beers and went to the hut for the night.

Harold was so tired that he didn't even hear John enter, but he was awoken in the early hours by a sharp intake of breath from the floor. Harold sat up and stared down in the dark at his employee. It was almost pitch black in the confines of the hut, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark he could just about see John, laying curled on his side facing the wall. A bit of moonlight filtered in through the gaps where the walls met the thatch, and it highlighted a line of well-toned back and narrow hips.

"John? Are you okay?" Harold whispered.

"What?" His voice was quiet and a little hoarse, "Erm, yeah. Just a bad dream."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Harold asked, knowing the answer.

"No." The ex-operative's voice wavered as he tried to get whatever emotions the nightmare had dredged up under control. He kept resolutely facing the wall, not able to look at his friend, even in the dark. "I'm fine," He sighed, "I just… I'm a little tired."

Harold decided that if they weren't going to talk about the things that were haunting the other man, then they would talk about one of the aggravating factors instead. "You've been pushing yourself too hard. You're not indestructible, and no one but you is expecting you to be. I can't thank you enough for what you've done out here, but you need to take care of yourself as well."

"I screwed up Finch." He said, so low it was a strain to hear it. "Our number's boyfriend, McKay is dead."

Harold frowned, "I'm sure you had no choice, I know you…"

"It wasn't me." John's voice sounded hollow, perhaps even further upset at the conclusion that Harold had jumped to. "I spoke to him, tried to get him to see he wasn't alone, that he had something to fight for. But I was distracted when The Machine told me you were in trouble, I sent Shaw to take my place but it was too late. He'd killed himself."

Harold lay in the dark wondering how to respond. Putting aside the fact it sounded like The Machine had done more than just give John his number, there was so much more to the ex-operative's terse words. Of course, Harold had known that his friend would identify with the man, an ex-soldier, driven to drink by the horrors of what he'd experienced, but him being suicidal was something that neither had factored in, and undoubtedly had brought it much closer to home.

John gave a sigh, and it was deep and shuddering, "It seems no matter what I do, I get people killed."

The smaller man had been about to say something and then stopped. So the veteran hadn't been thinking of his own brush with ending it, after all. Instead he'd been worried about the lives he couldn't save. Harold knew that everyone they failed weighed heavy on the other man's heart, as they did his, but the recent loss of a certain detective had been a blow to the already damaged man, and Harold didn't know if the resulting cracks could ever be fixed. Harold had suspected that John had blamed himself for that tragedy, but he hadn't known he would also take the blame for everything he felt he couldn't control.

"Well, call me selfish, but I'm glad you came for me. I most certainly would be dead if you hadn't."

"And yet I pushed you too hard and could've killed you anyway. If we hadn't come across this village…"

"There's only so much you can do. You can't fix everything, no matter how hard you try."

John stayed silent. Harold imagined that he wasn't telling the other man anything he didn't rationally know. But Harold was well aware that knowing something rationally and being able to feel that it was true, was not always as easy as it sounded.

"When I first started this," he started slowly, still unsure how much he wanted to reveal even after all this time, "I was helpless. I was already responsible for my best friend's death, and then I was stuck in a wheelchair, watching as The Machine showed me people in trouble and I was unable to do anything to save them. I blamed myself for not being good enough, for not finding a way to fix things. But then I found you, and suddenly there was this other person who could do the things I couldn't do, who cared as much as I do, and who will put themselves on the time for complete strangers in a way I never could. I don't think you've ever realised just how important you are to me, to the people we help, or to the world. Now when we lose people, I still feel sad. But I don't beat myself up about it, because I know that we have done everything in our power to prevent it."

Harold watched the bare back of the other man in the oppressive silence that followed. The tension in the shoulders, the way it heaved up and down with his breathing as he tried to control his emotions. His skin was a moonscape of shallow craters and lumps of knotted flesh, marring the toned lines of muscle, ugly reminders of all the hurt that had been done to him. Harold wondered, not for the first time, how much hurt one man could endure.

When the response came, it was so quiet that he almost missed it. "Thank you Harold," and they both lay in the dark with their thoughts until first John, then Harold were dragged back into a restless sleep.