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Chapter Five: Purity
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_o\0/o_
There was something profoundly wrong about the sight of Finch wearing hospital scrubs. John allowed himself the barest fraction of a thought imagining Finch's struggles against Slim's grip were just a spirited debate about fashion. A dapper man's rebellion against being forcibly swathed in such a cheap fabric of such a garish green.
"He's a stubborn one," Slim told John.
"You have no idea."
For the first time, Slim hadn't changed out of his own green scrubs before coming down to the basement to watch the show with John. He was fresh from the shower, as always. Either he was as fussy a groomer as Finch, or he was washing away some identifiable smell from wherever Harold was being held.
The time was somewhere between 2 and 4pm, John estimated. The day Slim had stopped dosing him with sedatives, John had climbed the basement's rickety wood staircase and dialed the thermostat down to zero. As the hours ticked by, he had carefully monitored the changes in air temperature, and now had a decent gauge of night, morning, and afternoon.
While at the top of the stairs, he had stared for a long time at the closed door there. He'd tried the antique glass knob: locked, but cheap, rattling—a good twist with his bare hand was probably all it would take. No need of tricks from his special skillset. Slim's idea of a joke, maybe.
He'd examined the fuse box too; its design was thirty or so years old, but the house itself was considerably older, judging from the poor insulation and the rough pouring of the cement floor which John suspected covered original flagstones.
An old farmhouse, probably.
Something upstairs hummed and clanked constantly—John doubted it was anything with a legitimate purpose. More likely some sort of white-noise machine, a plant by Slim to disguise any traffic sounds that might bleed through from outside.
So, an old farmhouse long since absorbed into a growing suburb.
Probably.
Wherever Finch was being held was more... generic. A roomy space; low ceiling, bare walls. Clean. Kept at a comfortable temperature, likely at considerable expense. Florescent lighting. High-end security camera. Part of some larger building or complex, but somewhere no one would hear the screaming. Somewhere off the grid, abandoned. Somewhere like their Library and Subway headquarters.
Somewhere they once would have relied on the Machine to find for them, and guide them through, whispering in Root's ear while Finch whispered in John's, Shaw along for the ride—maybe eavesdropping on the whispers, maybe not, equally deadly either way.
But the Machine was on life-support in the Subway, Shaw was god knows where, and those two facts had Root wound so tight that John had taken to resting a casual hand over his weapon any time she got within three feet of Harold. Which, considering they were spending nearly every waking minute with their heads together over a motherboard, was often. Finch had spoken excitedly of nearing a breakthrough. The next day, John woke up in a basement.
He had seen hours and hours of footage, now. Always with Slim at his side. Since being untied John had refused to sit in the low leather club chair while they watched; he stood at ease, back straight and eyes front. Slim always offered the chair, then took it himself with a shrug. If he noticed how John stood a little too close, looming over him and breathing malice, he didn't show it.
Watching Finch wake up after having his own restraints removed, John had known exactly what was about to happen.
Stay, he wanted to say. Just stay.
Instead, John had watched Finch fall, breaking himself down even further in a slow crawl toward the door—the locked door. Locked with steel and electricity; worlds better than the one in John's basement. The punchline on the joke.
Finch had endured the cold cement for a long time, his lips forming silent numbers in an endless stream.
"He did that the whole while he was on the floor," Slim remarked, pushing the fast-forward button. "Do you know what he's saying?"
John had a pretty good idea, but he didn't answer.
"Ah, here we go," Slim said, and slowed to play.
And there it was: the inevitable moment when Finch turned back, defeated. John's own eyes stung but he cudgeled that weakness ruthlessly—he couldn't afford to miss anything; blurring up his vision wouldn't do Finch any good—as he watched the aching, weeping man crawl back slowly, so very slowly, and submit himself again to the padded prison of Slim's hospital bed. Like a dog coming to heel.
You didn't have a choice, John told him in his mind. Not really. You did what you had to. What anyone would have done.
Trust me, I know.
And then, just as Finch had settled himself—before he could even complete a slow, deep breath—Slim had walked briskly back into the room, wheeling a battered metal kitchen trolley. Big, curved scissors sat in a tray on top—John's nostrils flared and he started forward involuntarily. Scissors, unlabeled plastic packages, a tall Styrofoam cup of unknown contents: these so riveted John's attention that he didn't notice the neatly folded set of green scrubs sitting innocently beside them.
Finch was doing his best to get a look at the trolley, too, but Slim was keeping it just beyond his turn radius. Finch had laid himself in a tense, asymmetrical sprawl, favoring his bad hip and propping his neck with one hand, fingers cradling the ruined vertebrae there. Powerful spasms were running through his leg. As Slim's tall frame leaned over him his arm started shaking too, but he offered no resistance when a bony hand went to his throat and zipped his necktie away through his collar. Slim ran his thumb over the patterned silk a few times, then slung it around his own neck.
"I would like to know why you are keeping me here," Finch blurted, and though his voice was rough and quavery with thirst and fear, John noted with approval a glimmer of Finch's flat, do-be-reasonable haughtiness shining through. "If you would just tell me, I'm sure we could come to some sort of—mmph!"
Snake-quick, Slim had gripped him by the shoulder and hip pocket and rolled him neatly over onto his face. His bent arm rolled right along too and was pinned under his chest in a wrenching, reverse half-Nelson. Finch writhed feebly, small cries muffled against the mattress. He was almost certainly hyperventilating, John thought. His thrashing had weakened already; it wouldn't take him long to smother himself in the bed's padding.
Slim had the scissors in his hand, and in a flash of metal sheared straight up the back-seam of Finch's suit jacket. He put the scissors between his teeth and rolled Finch over again. John was relieved to hear gasping breaths as Slim peeled one half of the jacket off his shoulder and down his arm. The other half didn't come as easy; a violent spasm had Finch's arm seized up, still pinned against his chest even though the weight was off it. Slim gave the offending elbow an experimental wobble—Finch whimpered, his entire scapular region sliding back and forth: the elbow was completely immobilized, the shoulder nearly so. So Slim pressed one hand against Finch's ribcage, curled the other around his quivering bicep, and pried the two forcibly apart. There was a long trembling moment when nothing happened, then Finch's arm jerked free and whatever air still in his lungs was pressed out in a long, wheezing huff.
John thought Finch had fainted; he didn't move or make a sound as Slim stripped away his jacket, waistcoat, socks, and shirt, folding each item neatly and stacking them on the bottom shelf of the trolley. But when his belt was unbuckled, Finch stirred and put up a token fight. Slim allowed his hand to be pushed away; then he slipped it under the small of Finch's back and pulled his spine up into a steep arch. Finch's arm dropped like a shot bird.
With his other hand Slim shucked the soft grey trousers down Finch's hips and added them to the growing pile of very expensive, very dirty laundry on the bottom shelf of the trolley. Then he ran the scissors up through a side seam of Finch's boxers, nipped through the waistband, and continued up to the collar of his undershirt. He didn't open or remove the cloth; instead he dropped the scissors back onto the tray with a rude clang and flicked one of the brick-sized plastic packages onto Finch's chest. The trolley squeaked as he rolled it to the foot of the bed.
He returned to Finch's side and looked down at him speculatively. Finch turned his head a fraction, and met Slim's stare as steadily as his tremors and bloodshot eyes would allow. Slim mimicked the tilt of Finch's head, then slowly reached out and took away his glasses. He breathed hot fog onto both sides of each lens and polished it away again with the green tie still draped around his neck. He settled them gently back onto Finch's pale face, and then he turned on his heel and left.
Finch didn't move for a long time. When his breathing evened out, his fingers crept down and found the corners of the package, exploring it tentatively for a moment before freezing in sudden recognition: bathing wipes. The kind used in hospitals for patients too ill or too injured to shower. Finch blinked, swallowed. Then, in painful stops and starts, he wormed out of his remaining scraps of clothing and attacked himself with the wet, astringent tissues. He used the entire bag, going over and over his skin until it was raw.
Watching his friend's self-punishing frenzy, John again cursed his inability to put a time stamp to the footage Slim played for him. There was no set schedule to their viewing parties, and there were always gaps between one video and the next. Knowing he was always a step—or several—behind Finch was eating him alive. His desperation to see Finch in real time wasn't rational; but he was desperate for a sense that, somehow, they were in this thing together. That afterward, he could tell Finch that he'd been with him, right there, every step of the way. The way Finch was always there with John, even when an invisible microphone was the only tether between them.
Package empty, Finch subsided into stillness, looking almost restful. When Slim returned he was carrying a plastic bedside commode, and the lingering relief on Finch's face turned to stone.
He set the commode perpendicular to the bed and reached out for Finch's hand. A deep flush spread up Finch's neck and down his arms, but he only hesitated a second before taking Slim's offered hand. As if in reward, Slim was delicate about bringing Finch to a sit, supporting his neck, assisting the swing of his legs down to the floor, giving Finch a moment to gather himself before executing a perfect lift-and-pivot transfer to the plastic seat of the portable toilet. Then he placed a fresh, full package on Finch's knee and discreetly left the room.
After relieving himself, Finch again used every last wipe to scrub himself down, leaving John wincing as the raw redness spread. Yelps escaped him regularly as he overreached his spine's limits, but he couldn't seem to help himself. He dropped wipes to the floor and scuffed his feet against them, helping his bad leg along with one arm.
"Creative," Slim commented to John.
Most of the package went toward scrubbing at his hair, ears, and face. He even bunched up a little corner of one wipe and carefully squeaked away at each tooth, coughing at the taste but determined.
"And hygienic," Slim added.
A squeak of wheels again heralded the door opening. This new thing Slim was pushing inside was large, unwieldy; it scratched and pinged against the doorframe despite Slim's characteristic precision. John wasn't sure what he was looking at—it looked like a cross between a home gym and a hydraulic mobility-aid body lift: there was a large central sling, big enough for a person. Various strange, strappy appendages were jury-rigged to its frame—medical traction devices, John realized with a pang.
Finch's face blanched under the raw scrub he'd given himself, his bad foot rattling louder against the metal leg of the commode. Slim parked the apparatus in the middle of the room and locked down its six wheels with his foot. Then he returned to the bedside and swiped the set of green scrubs off the trolley.
"Listen," Finch croaked, eyeing the apparatus. "Listen. You're right, of course, I'm sure you know that my, my name isn't r-really, ah, really Crane."
Slim was crouching by Finch's feet, scrunching up the legs of the scrubs into fat rings on the floor. Finch let out a little yip as Slim lifted his feet into them.
"Nor is it Whistler. Nor... Partridge?"
Finch was watching Slim carefully for a reaction; there was none.
"You see I... I have quite a few aliases, I admit. And I couldn't honestly s-say that, that the activities of all these identities are... entirely legal, ah, in the very strictest sense—"
Finch's voice was muffled as Slim manhandled him into the green shirt.
"—so perhaps," he continued when his head popped out of the V-neck collar, glasses askew, "perhaps if you tell me which of my names your, ah,complaint is in connection with, we can...can talk, we can discuss—"
Slim tilted Finch forward, pulled the scrub trousers up to his waist, and then carefully pulled him up and laid him out flat on the floor.
Finch lay mewling, his nose red and streaming, words lost to him as he stared up at the shiny metal arms hanging over him like a malevolent chandelier. Slim picked up the Styrofoam cup from the trolley, then sat cross-legged on the floor by Finch's head and fed him ice chips from it.
"Please," Finch whispered between one chip and the next, his voice growing stronger as his mouth was wetted. "Please."
When there was nothing but water left in the cup, Slim drank it himself, then stood and puttered around the room, stuffing the cup with the crumpled wipes scattered on the floor.
"Please tell me what you want," Finch was murmuring, almost as if to himself, eyes closed. "Whatever it is—anything. Anything. Tell me why. Please say something. Anything."
Slim went to the device's control panel, and pulled the lever to lower the body sling to the floor. One strap ghosted over Finch's face as it descended, then slid off to gather near his ear.
"Now watch this," Slim whispered to John, leaning forward eagerly, the bumps of his spine showing through the thin fabric of his shirt. John identified the most vulnerable vertebrae and imagined four ways of snapping Slim in half.
The Slim on the screen reached for Finch's shoulders, and Finch lost it. He snarled and kicked, actually managing to knock Slim off balance for a split second. He recovered instantly, and swiftly bundled one of Finch's legs into the sling. Finch's fingernails were tearing at the fabric, his free foot doing its best to find somewhere on Slim to land.
"No!" He shouted, the sudden depth and power in his voice a shock. "NO!"
Slim hit pause on the image of his hand closing around Finch's throat.
"I've got to go," he said blithely, "so we'll continue later. But before I go, I've got something for you. You've been very cooperative, and I bet you're almost as eager as your friend was to get out of that suit."
Slim stood and gently laid a third, pristine set of grass-green scrubs on the seat of the chair. He straightened and looked at John shyly. "See, I like to think of us three as sort of a team, in a way—"
And suddenly John knew exactly how to set a timeline to the events onscreen.
The first punch doubled Slim over and knocked him back a step; the second sent him straight into the floor, bleeding from the nose and mouth. John was on him, flipping him over, forearm at at his throat and knee poised at his groin. Slim immediately opened his hands in surrender.
"Tell me: exactly how 'cooperative' do I need to be?"
Slim's heavy brow furrowed thoughtfully, and he shifted minutely under John's weight. "That's a really good question, actually." He licked slowly at his bleeding lip. "Um. As long as I'm still able to do my work... I guess any minor injuries sustained would not be in violation of the contract. Technically."
John landed a punch to Slim's groin and two more to the face before leaning down, breathing his next, dangerously soft words directly into Slim's ear.
"Okay. But when this is over, when I get Harold back... I will kill you."
Slim looked up at him sadly, and nodded.
"I'd expect nothing else from you, Detective."
_o\0/o_
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