Disclaimer: Credit to Jonathan Nolan, Greg Plageman, and the POI writing team. Bolded sections are straight from the episodes.
QUEENSBRIDGE PARK
Chapter 28: after Most Likely To
"I went to a high school reunion yesterday," Reese announces to Elena.
He's back in the city after he and Shaw had been exiled to Westchester to save a Number who had been attending his 20th high school reunion.
"That sounds ... fun?" Elena says tentatively.
"It was a blast," he drawls, thinking of the small explosion Shaw had set off in the chem lab to draw out a shooter.
And somehow, Elena knows he's telling her the truth, even if it's not the whole truth.
"Meet any old girlfriends?" she teases.
"Yes." A pause. "But they weren't mine," he adds. In fact, he'd been slapped by not one, not two, but three former flames of the man he'd been pretending to be.
"Wait, what?"
"Didn't say it was my high school reunion."
And somehow, that makes much more sense.
"Figures," she laughs.
"How's that?"
"You don't seem like the type to want to ... reconnect with people from your past."
Reese is silent for such a long time that she checks the phone to make sure the call is still connected.
"You got that right," he finally says.
She's pushed too much, and she expects him to end their call soon, but she's not quite ready to hang up yet.
"Do you think we would have been friends in high school, John?"
"I didn't have many friends," he answers honestly.
"Let me guess, you bullied the bullies?"
"Uh ..." Reese blinks. She's spot on.
He can hear the smile in her voice. "Seems like something you would do."
"Did you like high school, Elena?"
Oh, he's chatty today.
"I loved it."
"Prom queen?"
"Homecoming, actually."
She can hear the smile in his voice. "Figures."
"Oh? How's that?"
"Pretty. Popular. Head cheerleader?"
"God, no."
"Student government president?"
"Secretary." She rolls her eyes. "Figures."
She tries to keep her tone light, but he can hear the self-deprecation there.
"How's that?"
"I don't seem to have accomplished much since then. I became a secretary, I'm now back in school."
"You helped bring down a dangerous criminal organization," he adds.
She laughs. "Okay, one high point in a rather ordinary existence."
"Elena ..."
"I went to Florence over the weekend. I saw Michelangelo's David. Do you know he was 26 when he made that? I'm older than that now. Everyone else in this program is leagues more talented than I could ever hope to be."
"Not everyone can be Michelangelo."
"I know that. And I don't want to be extraordinary, just ... not ordinary." Saying it aloud makes it sound so stupid. "Not Little Miss Normal anyway," she mutters.
He frowns. "What was that?"
"Nothing, never mind. How's —?"
"El."
She sighs. "It's ... what Tree Lady called me."
"Tree Lady?" he repeats in confusion.
"You know, she has brown, wavy hair, kind of like mine? She said her name was Leaf or something."
"Root?"
"Yes!"
"When did you talk to her?" His mind is already imagining Root spinning the Machine's weird web around Elena.
"The night ..." Elena's mind blanks. The night Ken died? The night John almost died, again? "That night," she finishes lamely.
Reese sits back. Of course. Elena and Root had met that night in the safehouse. And yes, he supposes their hair did look similar. But in his mind, Root and Elena are parts of such different worlds that he can't wrap his mind around the idea of them talking to each other.
"John?"
"I don't think she's the best judge of what's normal."
She laughs. "Are you?"
"Not by a long shot."
They settle into one of their comfortable silences. He can hear her moving about her apartment, making coffee.
"El, do you want to know a secret?" he asks, when he hears her settling down with her cup.
"You mean you're actually going to tell me one?"
"Yeah. You're perfect just the way you are."
She wants to write it off as him just trying to console her, but she can hear the sincerity in his voice.
"I bet you say that to all the girls."
"It's not a line," he says seriously. "I deal with people every day who are driven by anger, revenge, grief. Driven to do terrible things. But you ... you've lost so much, been through so much, and you've never let yourself think that way. I wish I could say the same."
"John ..."
"You're better than most people, El. And there's nothing ordinary about that."
"Oh, I don't know about that. I think I'm just too nice. That's what Lionel always says."
"That's the thing, El. The world doesn't need another Michelangelo. But it sure could use more niceness. Goodness. You."
A/N: Stole the bit about Reese bullying his school's bullies from Point of Origin (s4e08), something he tells Iris.
