When I started to sketch this chapter in my head, I realised that I hadn't watched "4C" (3x13) properly the first time around, mostly because I became so stuck on the last scene of the episode that I sort of skimmed over the rest. Having re-watched it now several times, I'm deeply impressed by how well-written and multi-layered that episode is. It was my firm intention to "just flesh it out a little". Look how that turned out ...
Warnings: none, surprisingly.
Disclaimer: The usual – I own nothing but my OCs; anything that is recognisable from the show is property of the respective creators. Quotes from the episode are marked as such. Credits for one additional quote from a longer text are given in an asterisk (*) footnote.
Chapter 28: Mercy
Previously: Barely managing the two steps into the house, John enveloped his sister in a desperate embrace. He was shaking all over and drawing a breath was harder than it should have been, but it didn't matter. She held him, silently absorbing his anxiety and despair and letting him soak up her warmth and calmness.
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
"Honey, I'm home," Ben called out as soon as he opened the connecting door from his office to the hall. It was ridiculous, really, considering the fact that he basically worked at home while Hannah was the one with the almost daily commute to work, but it had become sort of a running gag between them. Also, Hannah had once confessed that she loved hearing the words because she knew her husband meant them: she was his home, as he was hers.
Sure enough, Hannah met him at the kitchen door, greeting him with a gentle kiss and a warm smile that never failed to fill his heart with an indescribable sense of belonging. "Hello love. Dinner in ten, I hope you're hungry."
"Always," Ben replied truthfully, and Hannah laughed. Though it didn't show, she didn't know any other person who could eat as much as her husband and still go food-hunting in the fridge an hour after the last meal. Ben claimed it was because he had to make up for all the bad food he'd had in the army; Hannah blamed the atrocious eating habits of medical personnel in general; and both knew it was probably a combination of the two factors, but most of all a side effect of Ben's medication.
"So John is back." It wasn't a question.
"Ah, yes. He's upstairs taking a shower ... I hope." Hannah crouched to check on the stuffed eggplants in the oven, but the way her voice trailed off told Ben there was more to her off-hand remark.
"That bad?" he asked with a slight frown. "Was he drunk or anything?"
Flicking a glance towards the staircase, Hannah sighed. "No, he was quite sober when he arrived, but he's been drinking ... a lot ... at some point. I could smell it on him. Plus, he hasn't been eating. Probably his stomach's been bothering him again. If I had to guess I'd say he's hypoglycaemic and hypotensive. His breathing's worse, too."
"In other words, you want me to give him a once-over before dinner and pull rank on him if he doesn't agree to a full check-up first thing tomorrow?" Ben summarised with a knowing grin.
"Either that, or you hold him down while I sedate him and we give him the full check-up right away."
"I heard that!" John's voice came rumbling from the hall.
"Good. Then you know to go back upstairs and wait for Ben!" Hannah called out with fond exasperation.
Ben smiled and, stealing a quick kiss from his wife, went back to his office to grab his bag. "Strip to your waist and sit on the bed!" he hollered up the stairs for good measure.
Hannah chuckled quietly. Boy, was it good to have her family back together.
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
Dinner was a success, Hannah thought, in that John had eaten and enjoyed the food and actually kept it down without problems. The meal had been a quiet affair, but it was a comfortable silence. Now that Benjamin was off to his evening rounds, the siblings parked themselves on the couch with a mug of tea each and soft piano jazz playing in the background.
Calm though John appeared on the outside, his sister wasn't fooled. She hadn't missed the haunted look in his eyes when he'd all but crashed through the front door a few hours ago. Something must have occurred on his way back, something that had downright scared him into flight, and Hannah was determined to get to the bottom of it – because if she knew anything about her brother, it was that he didn't run away from danger.
She also knew he wouldn't just talk about it, let alone tonight. And frankly, her main priority for the evening was to get him to relax enough for a good, restful night's sleep. So Hannah put her tea on the side table, scooted a little closer to her brother on the couch until she was shoulder to shoulder with him and draped her fleece blanket over both of them. "How was it?" she then asked quietly.
John didn't even pretend not to know what she was talking about. With a soft exhale he put an arm around her shoulders and rested his head against hers. "Strange," he said. "It was all still the same. Well, obviously not everything, but most of it was just like I remembered it. Our house is still the same, though. Down to the colours."
"Really?" This surprised Hannah. "Who ... does anyone live there?"
"Do you remember the Wyler family?"
Hannah nodded. "They ran the joinery, didn't they?"
"Yeah. Turns out they bought our house after ... well, after it became obvious neither of us was coming back. Apparently they couldn't bear the thought of letting it go to complete strangers. After all, our parents were pretty close friends of theirs. Anyway, Chris, their middle son, took over when his dad died. Lives there with his mum and his own family now. It looks like he's got a good pair of hands on him, because the house and the grounds are in great shape. They're even keeping horses like we used to."
While John was speaking, Hannah snuggled closer into his side. It was a strange thing, trying to imagine that life had gone on in the place they both had once called home.
"Did anyone recognise you?" she wondered aloud.
John shook his head. "I don't think so. Mind you, it's been more than twenty years, and we were kids. One or two people gave me strange looks, as if they were trying to place me, but that just might have been folks who used to know dad."
Hannah sighed. "Does anyone remember us at all? I mean us, not just the tragic story."
For a moment, John debated what to say to that, and how it might impact his younger sister. Then he settled for plain facts. "I was at the cemetery. The headstone still stands. Someone added my name and dates as per the official army version. And there were fresh flowers, and a memorial candle next to a framed school photo of you. I think it's safe to say that, even after all these years, we haven't been forgotten, Hannie."
She felt him drop a kiss to the top of her head and closed her eyes, listening to his heartbeat and trying to process what she had heard. But as she did, an idea started to form in her head.
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
Over the next few days they fell into an easy routine, with Ben and Hannah working their usual shifts and John helping around the stables and with the horses.
It could have been their new normal. John certainly seemed content enough. He wasn't exactly making plans for the future, but being with his family and quietly working alongside them anchored and centred him. Life started to feel more like life again rather than a never-ending ordeal of pain, guilt, depression, and anger.
It could have been their new normal, except that all of them knew that they didn't really "do" normal.
The wave that finally rocked their boat was, surprisingly enough, John's health. In the cold, clammy January air, his lungs kept acting up, and he couldn't seem to shake the persistent cough that had been bothering him ever since his pneumonia.
"It's that weather," Ben said decisively after looking at John's latest lab results and finding nothing major amiss.
"Oh please," John scoffed. "I'm not some dainty old lady who feels every change in weather in her hips."
"Lungs, not hips," Ben deadpanned. "You know, it's not unusual, given what your body's been through," he then added more seriously.
"So what do you propose?" his brother-in-law asked with a sigh and a slightly desperate look at his sister, already resigned to the fact that the doctor's orders would most likely, annoyingly require some sort of participation on his part.
"Two weeks in a warm, sunny climate might be a good start, preferably at the seaside."
"You're kidding," John snorted. "Are you seriously prescribing me a vacation?"
"Oh, come on, don't say it like it's a four-letter-word," Hannah interjected, playfully kicking his foot under the table.
"But I just had a vacation!" her brother said in a tone that was his version of whining.
Now it was Hannah's turn to snort. "Really now? You're calling a four-day-trip right into the middle of our traumatic family history, and then coming back running from your apartment like you've seen a ghost, a vacation?!"
Both men stared at her, speechless – John because she had dared to call him out on his out-of-character return, and Ben because he'd never seen his wife come so close to intentionally exposing someone else's weaknesses. Hannah in turn knew very well that she was flirting with a line here, but there was a difference between harmless denial and dangerous self-deceit, and she wasn't ready to simply let her brother go down that path.
With a deep sigh she reached over the table and took his hands into hers. "John," she started again, in a serious but much gentler tone. "You're not well. I don't need to be a doctor to see that. And I know from experience that everything's just so much harder to cope with when you're not feeling well. I realise that you've suffered wounds that will never heal, but please let us help with the things we can do. Ben's right, this weather isn't doing you any good. So why don't you just find a nice, warm and sunny place by the sea and spend a few weeks there?"
"Doing what, exactly?" John snapped back, but without real heat. "Read a book? Work on my tan?"
And wasn't that the real problem. The small family around the table sat there, looking at each other sadly, because for one of them, his entire life had fallen apart, and he had no idea how to put it back together.
"I'd go stir crazy," John admitted quietly. "At least here I have something useful to do when everything gets too much in my head."
Hannah rubbed her thumbs across his knuckles, and Ben put a hand on his shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. For a few minutes, no one said a word.
Finally Ben spoke up. "How about this. My parents are spending the winter at their place in Haifa. You could visit them, spend a few days with them? They'd be happy to see you. And I'm sure they'll find enough for you to do around the house to keep you busy. Mum's been saying something about redecorating the living room and I could practically hear my dad rolling his eyes over the phone. I'm sure he'd appreciate some male company to commiserate."
John's lips involuntarily pulled into a small grin. "I guess I'll manage handling a paintbrush."
Ben chuckled. "You'd be doing all of us a favour, buddy!"
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
Of course, it could never have been that easy, because old habits are hard to shake. One of John's habits was to do a little country-hopping before heading for his intended destination, so as to make it harder for potential pursuers to stay on his scent. And this was how he found himself sitting in an airport bar, at an airport that still sported some annoying Christmas decorations, nursing a tumbler of scotch although it was way too early for that, waiting for his flight to Istanbul to start boarding. He'd refused Ben's and Hannah's offer to take him to the airport. Plausible deniability: another old habit.
Fortunately his sister and brother-in-law hadn't made a fuss, neither about his insistence on taking a cab nor about his decision to travel extremely light. One thing, though, had him brooding ever since he stepped out of their house this morning.
Looking out of the kitchen window one could see almost all the way to the access road to the therapy centre, so he noticed his taxi coming a few minutes before it actually arrived. "There's my cab", John announced to Ben and Hannah who were just putting away the breakfast things.
"All right then," Hannah said with a slightly uncertain smile as she wiped her hands and came over to give him a hug. "Call us when you get there, okay?"
"I will," he promised, knowing full well that even if he didn't, Ben's parents would.
"Are you sure you've got everything you need?" his sister asked, more out of the need to talk to him just for a few more moments than because she actually thought he might have forgotten something.
"No, I'm good," he replied, giving her an extra squeeze to reassure her.
John was about to let her go and leave when he felt his brother-in-law put his arms around both their shoulders. "Just a moment," he said quietly. "This time you're not going without a blessing."
For a second, John looked baffled, before he remembered that Ben never let Hannah leave the house for the day without a prayer for blessing, either. His heart clenched, and he closed his eyes against the sudden sting, as Ben gently placed his right hand on John's head and slowly spoke the words, first in Hebrew, then in English.
"... lead us in peace and direct our steps in peace, and guide us in peace, and support us in peace, and cause us to reach our destination in life, joy, and peace ... Save us from every enemy and ambush ... May You confer blessing upon the work of our hands and grant us grace, kindness, and mercy in Your eyes and in the eyes of all who see us ..."(*)
Peace. Grace. Kindness. Mercy. John wasn't sure he deserved any of these, but it did strange things to his heart that his family seemed to think so.
He couldn't have known that within the next twenty-four hours, he'd have it all spelt out for him.
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
If there were indeed five stages of grief, he had to be experiencing a screwed-up version of them. Dismissing denial and bargaining as pointless in the face of the cruel and irreversible reality of Joss' death, he'd started out with depression and had now arrived at anger. Not for a single moment did John feel guilty about directing this anger at Finch. Against his will he found himself trying to protect the Machine's latest number and preventing a catastrophe, so he might be forgiven for not wasting energy on employing his social filters. "You computer guys, you build something you can't control, and when it backfires, you won't accept responsibility! Have you really made anything better? Does it look like you've stopped the violence?"
Much later, in a quiet moment, he'll admit to himself that a lot of this anger was directed at his own naïveté in believing he could actually help prevent bad things, only to have to watch helplessly the one time it really counted. He won't back down from what he said to Lionel just a few weeks back: they were only delaying the inevitable. Given that all human lives eventually end in death, though, this was a fairly weak argument. Of course everyone died in the end.
Right now, he was trying to avert the untimely demise of the one hundred and thirty people on the plane. As usual, he didn't much care whether he lived or died, but he couldn't just stand by and do nothing. Cheeky little Titus and his mum, the elderly lady in the seat next to his, Holly the flight attendant ... they all deserved to come home to their loved ones. Not to mention the fact that Hannah would never forgive him if he got himself killed now for no good reason.
No matter how he felt about having been dragged into this mess against his will, here he was. So he did what he'd been trained to do: turn every negative emotion into constructive action – and push away any thought of the possibility that it might not be enough.
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
It was enough. In a hare-brained stunt they'd saved one hundred and thirty people, strangers who mattered very little to them on a personal level. John thought he should be feeling better about this than he did, but the truth was that he'd never again be able to look at a person they saved without grieving for the one person they didn't.
He'd had that drink with Holly, more for her sake than for his own, and it was fine, but his heart wasn't in it. The card with her number on it would be conveniently lost the next time he pulled out his phone from the same pocket, he knew that already.
When he saw Harold sitting in that café across the street, John felt conflicted. Things would never get back to their insane version of normal, he knew that. He was still angry and frustrated and disappointed in the man, but Harold was his friend. And, unlike him, the reclusive genius had no family or loved ones to help him cope with this impossible situation.
Sitting down at Harold's table, John sensed it was time to let the other man speak his piece. His words, though, were painful if true, and John looked away, struggling for his composure. "Great loss." Indeed.
"I miss her dearly, too." Had John been able to look his friend in the eyes just then, he would have seen the pain, the hurt, and the pleading for forgiveness in them ... but he couldn't. His gaze wandered around aimlessly, not settling on anything and especially not on the man in front of him. And although he hadn't seen that look in Harold's eyes, he had heard in his voice what the man opposite him couldn't convey with words. It sparked a short but intense battle in John's soul. Peace. Grace. Kindness. Mercy. The words of Ben's prayer echoed in his mind, and he realised that it was within his power to grant Harold a little bit of that. He wasn't ready to let go of his anger and resentment completely, not yet. But if he had people in his life who prayed for him to be given peace and grace and kindness and mercy, who was he to withhold them from a man who didn't have anyone?
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
In the end, he went to Haifa after all. He flew to New York with Harold, stopped by his apartment to pack a proper bag, and turned around to go back to the airport.
Shira and Adil Al-Khalil were more than happy to see John and pamper him for a few weeks. Not that they'd ever let him suspect that they were pampering him. A bunch of paintbrushes and dozens of buckets of paint took care of that. Still there was plenty of time to spend at the beach, or in one of the many fantastic restaurants, or in their beautiful garden.
They didn't do too much heavy talking, except for the two nights when John woke up from a particularly bad nightmare gasping for air and drenched in sweat. The first time it was Shira who knocked on his door and wrapped him in a comforting embrace until he stopped shaking. That was when John told her the entire story of how he and Joss had met, become friends, fallen in love, and been torn apart forever by a hail of bullets. Shira held him, cried with him, dried his tears and told him how sorry she was, and how much she had liked Joss.
The second time, Adil came in and skilfully roused him back to consciousness, because his breathing had been bad enough to make Ben's parents seriously worried about his condition. They spent the rest of that night playing chess and talking about John's plans for the future, or the lack thereof, and that he was feeling he had no choice but to go back to work, but didn't really know how to keep on doing his job without Joss there to ground him and keep him right.
When John went back to NYC three weeks after he had arrived at Haifa, it was with a lighter heart and a certain new-found sense of serenity. He briefly debated whether or not he should go back to his apartment but decided against it for the time being. He knew that he would eventually, when he started working again, but for now he still needed his family.
Judging by the dinner Hannah cooked on his first evening back, she was either trying to make up for something she had done, or to butter him up for something she was about to do ... not that John minded. The weeks of work, sun, and fresh air in Haifa had brought his appetite back with a vengeance and he found himself smiling at the thought that he would make even Shaw blush with the amount of food he put away now.
"I have a confession to make," Hannah blurted out after pouring the coffee and sitting down opposite her brother. Ben had been called away to an emergency mid-dinner, so it was just the siblings and Max the Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy, the latest addition to the therapy centre staff.
"I'm not a priest, and you're not Catholic, but go ahead," John smirked. Whatever Hannah thought she had to confess, it couldn't be too bad – and even if it was, it was extremely hard to scowl when one had fifteen pounds of wriggly puppy on one's lap.
"We did some redecorating on your room."
John frowned. "My room? I wasn't aware that I had one."
"Yeah, well ... now you do. It's not like anyone else is using it, or like this house is lacking rooms." That was true. The old farm house had so many rooms that three of them were just empty, unused spaces.
"Okay. Do you want to show me?" A stupid question, really, because Hannah seemed just as eager to show him his redecorated room as the puppy was to climb up his chest and lick his face.
"Max, down!" Hannah commanded and, when the dog had settled on his bed next to the door, all but pulled her brother up the stairs.
Not much had been changed, really, John noticed as he looked around the room. The walls had been repainted in an understated shade of ... cappuccino, he supposed (the things you did for family, including spending hours poring over colour samples and learning the difference between aquamarine and turquoise). There were new sheets, a new bedspread, and new curtains. The rest of the furniture had been rearranged a little: the small desk, bookshelf, and dresser along the walls, a comfortable-looking sofa under the window that wasn't new but hadn't been in this room before, the TV set and, added since he'd last been here, a probably very decent sound system and a few tasteful pictures on the walls.
"It's very nice, Hannie. I like it," he smiled, putting an arm around his sister's shoulders. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," Hannah smiled back, but her tone said that there was something else. And, sure enough ...
"There's one more thing, though." She opened the closet doors and reached in, sliding away a part of the back panel to reveal a safe in the wall. "You can change the combination, of course," she explained while fiddling with the combination lock. Then she stepped away and gestured for John to take out the contents of the safe.
With a quizzical look, John pulled out a box about the size of a filing folder. He lifted the lid and glanced inside. Blinked once. Twice. Sat down on the floor right where he stood, carefully placing the box on his lap like it was made of fine glass.
There was the photo album Finch had sent a few weeks back. The abandoned case file from his kitchen. The grey pullover. Joss' white pashmina that she had forgotten on his coatrack.
Absentmindedly he traced his fingers along the delicate fabric and found two more items that lay underneath. One was the latest John Grisham novel, bookmarked somewhere in the first third, and the other a golden bracelet.
"She forgot these at my place when she slept over the night before the wedding," Hannah explained quietly. "I found them when we got back from our honeymoon, but I never got around to returning them to her."
"I ... I don't understand," John whispered.
Hannah sat down on the floor next to him, Indian style, leaning slightly forward. "I had nothing more than that photo of you and me to remember you by, but it was proof of what had been, and by extension of who I was, even if I had to live under a different identity. This ... this is proof of Joss and you. Something to remember her by when the memories start to blur."
She squeezed his forearm, pressed a tender kiss to his temple and left, closing the door behind her. John remained where he was late into the night, looking at the pictures in the album and recalling all the moments between him and Joss. When he crawled into bed around two o'clock, his last conscious thought before falling asleep were the words from Ben's prayer. Peace. Grace. Kindness. Mercy. Now he knew what they meant.
*POI*POI*POI*POI*POI*
(*) I found this beautiful "Traveler's Prayer" on . The original is much longer than my quote, by the way. On the site it said "by Eliezer Wenger", although I highly suspect it just refers to the English translation, since I know the exact same prayer from a different (non-English and anonymous) translation of the Hebrew text. Still, I think it's only fair to give credit where credit's due.