A/N: Thank you again SWWoman! Yes, I have started something new...again. My muse seems to be kicking into overdrive. I own nothing of Person Of Interest that you see written here.

A More Conventional Life

It was a typical American family on an ordinary morning having breakfast together to start their day. The scene John Reese watched through the window of the Powell family home wasn't extraordinary, but it captivated him nonetheless. It took him to another place, another life. A life that wasn't his own, but one he had often longed for despite the trajectory his true life had taken.

"Are you still there, Mr. Reese?" Harold Finch questioned carefully, guessing where his partner's thoughts had drifted.

"You ever crave a more conventional life, Finch?" Reese asked in response, his mind still adrift in another place while still maintaining his surveillance of the family in the window. His camera at the ready to snap pictures of his and Finch's new number.

"You mean a life without the numbers? It has crossed my mind," Finch replied, thinking of his own love, Grace, who he had to leave behind.

As Reese's new number kissed his family goodbye, and then walked to his truck, Reese brought himself fully to the present, snapping a few more pictures. "It looks like Powell has a pretty normal one," Reese said reticently.

"If there's one thing I've learned from our venture, Mr. Reese, is that people are rarely what they seem," Finch returned with a hint of irony.

Reese watched as Powell got into his truck then Reese laid his camera on the seat beside him, and pulled his car out into the quiet street to follow Powell to work. Reese made sure to stay far enough behind that Powell didn't spot him, but he wasn't very worried that Powell would be looking for anyone to be following him.

Once again his mind fell back into that other place where Reese lived a normal life with a wife and children, maybe even a dog. When he thought about having a wife, Joss Carter instantly entered his thoughts as she so often did these days. She would be the perfect wife for some very lucky man, and he wished on everything that was holy that it could be him. And Taylor was a wonderful young man. Any father would be proud to have him for a son. But, sadly, he was not husband or father material. He had a very dark past, and demons that he still struggled with till this day. The things he had been ordered to do, and did without question, while in the CIA almost broke him, and more than likely would have if things hadn't changed. Now he was legally dead which meant he had no future with a legally alive Joss or Taylor. He and Joss worked well together as a team, and through her example he was not the man he was when he was in the CIA. She was the light that kept the darkness at bay, and beat back the evil thing that lived deep inside him.

Powell pulled into a park, and stopped. Reese parked on the street outside the park, and watched as Powell entered the park, and sat on a bench then took out a folded newspaper. It was wet, and misting rain, not a good day to be in the park reading a newspaper.

"Finch, it looks like Powell's playing hooky. He's walked into a park," Reese informed his partner who he had on an open line.

"Could be meeting somebody. Are you up on his phone?" Finch asked concisely.

"I'm about to be."

As Reese listened as Powell asked for information about a job opening, he realized that Powell was out of work, and that from his family's behavior this morning they knew nothing about it. Powell was lying to his wife and children about his work status, and that didn't bode well for the future of this case.

What else is Powell hiding? Reese thought.

Later that night, Reese entered his small, one bedroom, apartment, switched on the lights then turned and locked the door. He turned back toward his apartment, stood for a moment looking around at the sturdy, second-hand, furniture, and suddenly realized how empty it felt with no one to come home to. He had never had a problem being alone, in fact, more often than not, he preferred it, but tonight felt different. After a while he shook the feeling off, or at least tried to, and headed for a shower.

After he had showered, and then gotten something to eat, he settled on the small, black, leather, couch in front of the television with a cold beer to watch a basketball game on one of the sports channels, but his mind wasn't really on it. His mind kept wandering back to Powell, and how he had gotten himself into such a jam. Why was he keeping his unemployment from his wife? How could he lie to her day after day for eight months, and not tell her they were almost bankrupt? Was there so little trust between them?

Reese remembered how he had felt as he had watched Powell that morning with his family. He had felt such envy that Powell could have what he wanted so desperately with Joss and Taylor. He was just about to take another swig of his beer when his phone buzzed on the coffee table. Setting his beer down, he picked up his phone, and was surprised to see that it was Joss.

"Hello Carter. Everything alright?" He asked, instantly concerned something might have happened to her or Taylor.

"Hey John. Yeah, why wouldn't it be?" Carter responded with her usual candor, but Reese could hear something else in her voice. A little quiver of nervousness?

"Well, it is kinda late, Carter. I just assumed it was an emergency," Reese responded as he settled back against the couch trying to gauge what the underlying current he felt was.

"It's not that late. It's only 10:30 so unless you go to bed like my nanna did, it's not late," Carter argued.

Reese chuckled. "Ok, I give up. So what can I do for you, since it's not so late?" Reese asked, liking this subtle game they were playing. He still wasn't sure what was going on, but he definitely wanted to find out.

It was quiet so long that Reese thought that she had hung up. "Carter? You still there?" He asked with a slight frown.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm still here," Carter answered back softly.

"Carter, what's going on? Are you sure you're alright?" Reese asked, genuinely concerned.

Reese heard a soft sigh over the phone. "You're going to think this is so silly, but…well, we didn't talk much today, being busy and all, and I just…I just wanted to talk to you, to hear your voice," Carter finally stuttered out.

Reese swallowed hard. Of all the nights that Carter could have called it was on a night when he needed her the most. "I'm glad you called, Joss. I needed to hear your voice too," his voice hushed.

"You did?" She sounded hopeful.

"Yeah, I did. More than you know. Let's talk," Reese said softly.

"Yeah, let's talk," Carter replied with a smile in her voice. And they did.

To the casual observer, Joss Carter was going about her normal business, but on the inside she was fuming. Scott Powell had just been brought into her precinct for shooting Congressman Delancey, and the FBI was about to interrogate him. She felt the burner phone John had given her buzz in her pocket, and she reached in, pulling it out to answer it.

Joss flipped open the phone, and without giving John a chance to say the first word she whispered hotly as she moved to another more private room, "You! I thought I could trust you! Your partner said I didn't need to worry about Powell, and now the Feds brought him to my precinct?"

"He didn't do it," John responded in usual calm manner, but he knew there was a double meaning behind Joss's words. They had talked a long time the night before, and said some very personal things. Now she felt betrayed.

"Well, there's a banquet hall full of eye witnesses that say he did," Joss returned, not to be swayed.

"I was there, Carter. Powell was set up. The real shooter got away," John replied, still remaining calm.

"He was set up? Set up by who?" Joss asked, trying to reign in her emotions.

"We don't know yet, but we could use some help, Carter," John pleaded.

"Not much I can do. The Feds are running the show. They're taking him into interrogation now," Joss said helplessly.

"I need to hear what they're saying," John insisted.

"I told you there's nothing I can do," Joss emphasized.

"Carter, you could help save an innocent man," John pressed on.

Joss sighed. She hated it when he said things like that because John knew she wanted to help. She made her way to the observation room, leaving her cell phone line open so that John could hear what was being said in interrogation. After a few minutes, her personal cell beeped with a text, and she sighed as she walked out of the room, looking at the text.

Joss brought the burner phone to her ear. "You still there?" She asked with trepidation.

"Yeah, what happened?" John asked with dread.

"The Congressman didn't make it," Joss informed John sadly, and then all she heard was a dial tone.

Tired of pacing in front of her couch, Joss sat down cross-legged, and placed her phone on the coffee table in front of her. She hadn't heard from John since he had called, and asked to let Powell talk to his wife. Of course, she had given in, and found a way for the two to talk, but not before reaming John out for abducting Powell from an FBI prison transfer. Then she asked John to please be careful, and made him promise to call her before going to get Mrs. Powell so she could talk to her husband.

That had been hours ago, and Powell had turned himself in. Then she got a text message telling her to check her email, and the whole damn mess had unraveled. They had gone to arrest Mattheson, but he was already dead with a suspicious, in her view, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, and a very strange suicide note. She had wrapped up her reports, and then went home. Taylor was with his grandma for a weekend getaway to visit his cousins in Atlantic City. He wasn't due back until Monday. She glanced over at the matching sofa chair where John's overcoat was laying. Powell had given it to her to give back to John when she saw him. If she saw him.

That was something else that was weighing on her mind. She knew that Zoe Morgan had helped John and Finch with the case. She also knew that Zoe had a real thing for John which shouldn't mean anything to Joss because she had no claims on John. Yet it still bothered her that John might be with Zoe, and that was the reason Joss hadn't heard from him. It bothered her a lot.

It seemed obvious that John wasn't going to contact her tonight so Joss decided it was time to go to bed. Just as she entered the foyer where the stairs led to the top floor, there was a soft knock on her door. She turned, and looked through the peep-hole, as she always did, and saw John standing on her stoop. She quickly unlocked the door, and opened it to see him leaning against the door jam a little bruised with a sheepish smile on his face.

"Can I come in, Carter?" John asked cheerfully.

Joss leaned against the door with a sly smile on her lips. "You were supposed to call."

"Yeah, I had…some loose ends to tie up," John's eyes sparkled with something Joss couldn't quite put her finger on.

"Uh huh. Come in, John. You're letting the cold air in," Joss replied sassily.

John pulled off his overcoat as he walked over the threshold. "You're the one that wouldn't let me in," he shot back with a small chuckle.

"Yeah, Yeah. How many of these do you have?" Joss asked incredibly as she took his overcoat, and hung it up on the rack.

"What do you mean?" John asked with a frown.

Joss held her arm out for him to proceed her into the den, and then she walked over to the overcoat Powell had left with her.

The frown vanished from John's face. "You got that from Powell."

"Yeah. He told me to give it to you the next time I saw you. My question is, how did he know that I knew you? He had never seen me before or talked to me, so the only way he could have known is if you told him," Joss said, again with that sly smile.

John shifted restlessly on his feet then looked at Joss squarely. "I did tell him who you were, and how you had helped us, him, and asked him to give you the coat to give to me…later."

"You did, did you?" Joss asked deliberately. "And why is that? You could've picked it up from Powell anytime you wanted…or left it with him. Seems like you have plenty."

Then Joss watched as something changed in John. Something broke inside him. As he looked at her, his dreams, his desires of having a family seemed to crumble around him. He suddenly felt lost as he realized what he wanted most he could never have.

Joss felt her heart break at the torment in his beautiful, stormy, blue-gray eyes. She instinctively reached out to comfort him, and felt him stiffen.

"Joss, I shouldn't have come here. I shouldn't have thought…" John whispered then turned to leave, but Joss held his arm firmly.

"You shouldn't have thought what, John?" Joss asked desperately, refusing to let him leave.

"I shouldn't have thought I could have a life," John ground out, snatching his arm away, and striding toward the door, leaving Joss's thoughts in turmoil.

A/N: This is something I've wanted to write about for a long time. I don't know where it will take me, but I think it will be an interesting ride. See you soon...