Disclaimer: Credit to Jonathan Nolan, Greg Plageman, and the POI writing team. Bolded sections are straight from the episodes.
QUEENSBRIDGE PARK
Chapter 37: beginning & end of Prophets
Trigger warning: Talk of suicide attempts
Elena and Reese are sitting on their fire escape as the sun sets. She'd done research for her thesis at the museum all morning, then picked up an afternoon shift at the store — Sameen's. He'd kneecapped a guy who had been trying to commit suicide, and landed himself in mandatory counseling. The first session had not gone well.
"If this Dr. Campbell is as good as you say, you know what you have to do, John."
"No, because I would have done it already."
Elena rolls her eyes. "You're going to have to tell her the truth."
"You know I can't do that, Elena."
"I don't mean the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God, Boy Scout. But enough." Her eyes twinkle in the moonlight. "I hate to be the one to break this to you, but lying isn't your strong suit."
He gives her an affronted look. "That's because I tell you the truth, El."
She hesitates for a moment, then gives him a sad smile. "Sure you do, John. About things like your birthday or how much the takeout cost last night or ..." she glances around for inspiration and raises the bottle dangling from her fingers. "Or your favorite beer. But I mean telling her something important, something that matters."
She stands and stretches before reaching across him to snag the empty bottle on his other side, steadying herself on his shoulder as she does so. He puts his hand over hers as she begins to pull away.
"You matter, Elena," he says, looking up at her. "That's why I can't tell you everything. Telling you would put you in danger."
She squeezes his shoulder. "I know. But that excuse isn't going to work on Dr. Campbell."
She disappears back inside to get them fresh beers.
"Look, I had to go to counseling, too, when I was in high school," she says a moment later, handing him the ice-cold bottles before she scrambles back through the window. "It's not all bad."
"You?" he asks in surprise, opening the caps with his bare hands while she's still feeling around for the perpetually misplaced bottle opener. "The homecoming queen and student government secretary?"
She smiles that he's remembered such unimportant details of her life. "It was before all that."
The humor leaves Reese's expression. "When your father died."
She nods as she tries to figure out how to phrase it. "Yeah, I ... did something ... reckless ... after Dad died."
Whatever it is can't be too bad compared to what he got up to in high school. "Fall in with a bad crowd?" Reese guesses. "Boyfriend?" His expression turns dark.
"Um ..." Elena hesitates, now regretting leading the conversation in this direction.
"El?" He says just one syllable of her name, but there's that look that she never can refuse.
"You know, for someone who doesn't like to share, you sure have a knack for getting people to tell you things." She sighs. "I ..." Even after all these years, it's difficult to say, but she can't very well lecture him about telling the truth and then avoid it herself. "I ... tried to kill myself."
She's looking anywhere but at him now. Across the street, at the moon, the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
"Bottle of painkillers. Bottle of whiskey. I wasn't successful. Obviously. Grandma found me in time. Lionel drove me to St. Mary's in his cruiser." Her brow furrows. "I still remember the lights and the siren. That's all I remember from that day. They told me about the other stuff later."
She can feel his gaze on her, the weight of it comforting, like a blanket, but it still takes her forever to finally face him. "And after, I had to see a therapist. And it helped, it really did, once I started talking and telling the truth about what I was feeling."
He reaches out, his hand enveloping hers. His look is full of sympathy ... no, she realizes, empathy.
"I felt the same way, too, once," Reese finally divulges. And honestly, if Elena hadn't already been sitting down, she would have toppled off the fire escape in shock. This time, he's the one looking anywhere but at her. "I was going to walk off a bridge or put a bullet in my brain, maybe both. I don't think I'd really decided yet, just that I was going to end it."
"What stopped you?" she whispers.
"Joss." A small smile appears on his lips. "She talked to me like a human being. No one had talked to me like I was an actual person in so long."
"She was good at that ... seeing that someone could be so much more." He looks at her in surprise. She shrugs. "Like how a receptionist at City Hall could help take down HR."
"Or how a homeless guy on the subway might actually be a special forces vet and international assassin who'd lost his way."
Elena had chosen the wrong moment to take a sip of her beer. After several moments of choking and spluttering, and John tapping her on the back, she finally gets her lungs working again.
She has about a million follow-up questions to the truth bomb he'd just dropped on her, but she also knows, somehow, now is not the time to ask.
"You'll have to tell me more about that someday, John."
"Someday," he promises vaguely.
Her eyes light up in realization. "That's your truth! She's your truth. Talk to Dr. Campbell about Joss."
Elena's right, Reese realizes. It wasn't something he wanted to explore, but he wouldn't have to lie about anything related to Carter, not really.
Even in death, she is still saving him.
"How'd your therapist convince you to start talking?" he asks.
Elena scoffs. "She didn't. My grandmother made a deal with me: take therapy seriously and I'd get a dog."
"Bailey," he realizes. And he holds her hand just a tiny bit tighter.
She nods. "I'd bribe you with a dog, too, but Harold would probably end up taking care of it."
"Don't be jealous, El. You and I share Fusco."
The corners of her mouth twitch upward. "Lionel took me to the shooting range after every therapy session. I think that helped as much as the therapy."
"Well, shooting's what landed me in the counselor's office in the first place, but otherwise I'd say Lionel had it right. You any good?"
"I'm actually a pretty good shot," she admits.
He raises an eyebrow.
"Not like hit a guy in the back of the knee while he's sprinting through a Manhattan park, from the top of a tourist bus good, but decent enough."
He tries not to look too proud. He fails. "You heard about that?"
"All of New York heard about that, Detective. I'm surprised you're only getting called into the counselor's office now."
"Must be my charm."
"Yeah, too bad it didn't work on Dr. Campbell."
"Not yet."
He smirks, she rolls her eyes, and they relax in companionable silence.
"Hey," she says softly after some time. It's dark enough now that they can barely see each other — well, she can barely see him. She's sure his vision is still sharp despite the gloom.
"Yeah?"
She squeezes his hand. "I'm really glad you're here, John," she says softly.
And he knows she's not talking just about here on the fire escape, but here, on Earth.
"I'm really glad you're here, too, El."
And they clink bottles and hold hands in the deepening twilight.
"I'm trying to help you, detective," Dr. Iris Campbell stresses during her next session with Detective John Riley. "You are heading down a dark path, and you'll wind up getting yourself killed. All these incidents ... I think you enjoy shooting people."
"No, I don't," Reese says truthfully. "I hate it. But it's what I'm good at, and it's what I have to do."
"You don't have to save everyone," Iris insists.
"Yes, I do. There are far too many bad people in this world and not enough good." He takes a breath. "I knew a detective once, and she was the best cop I ever knew. Never lost sight of good and evil." His voice wavers slightly. "I couldn't save her."
He continues, "Now, this job is dangerous. You think I am too. So be it. Maybe that makes me unfit to be a cop. If I don't save these people, nobody else will."
Iris nods infinitesimally. "I think we're making progress."
A/N:
"For a spy, lying isn't your strong suit."
—Carter to Reese, in Terra Incognita (s4e20)
