Hey there! Welcome to the final chapter of CTT! I hope you've enjoyed the ride! Thank you all so very much for reading and for giving me feedback. I hope you like this last installment and I hope you'll continue to read my work. Please R & R!

Chapter 14:

They were all well accustomed to leading lives of anonymity; fading into the shadows to start anew when the situation required. There was always the possibility in their line of work that they would fade from existence entirely while the people they protected daily remained oblivious. No funeral, no fuss, no tears—just the world continuing to turn on its axis. It was the unfortunate pitfall of Reese's cover identity, however, that the NYPD would inevitably want to dig into the disappearance of one of its detectives. They realized quickly what needed to happen.

Detective John Riley had to die.

Under the cover of night, Root and Shaw broke into a morgue to acquire a body, specifically that of a homeless man similar in age and build to Reese. They met Fusco and Finch on a road in the wooded area of upstate New York. Fusco placed Reese's badge and service weapon on the body before it was placed in the driver's seat of his car. They rigged the car to run into the trees and then put the final touches on their deception by lighting the car up with gasoline.

The car was found a day later and the case had been ruled a homicide, though it was quickly closed due to a lack of any probative evidence. They'd been careful not to leave any trace of anything that could lead back to them.

The funeral was just a few days after their staged accident.

They all felt the same strangeness as they lingered behind the congregation. They were witnessing a rarity; people in their line of business rarely got proper burials when they passed. They were just gone. In a sense, Reese was lucky that way. They were lucky. This funeral was for Detective Riley. The people here were honoring the memory of the false identity of a man they never really knew with the body of a homeless man inside the casket, to top it all off. They had been given the chance through this charade of a funeral to say their last farewell to their fallen friend. In that respect, they were lucky.

Fusco was the only one of the group actually in attendance among the congregation of New York's finest.

He was seated on the front row with the same bitter scowl on his face he had sported during Carter's service. None of this was right. A fake body for a fake funeral for a fake identity? He was the only one sitting here who actually knew the man and not the cover identity. He may not have been a cop in the legal sense, but he had still been a damn good partner.

First Joss, then Reese. Two partners gone in a little over a year.

The thought made him burn with fury. He wanted to rage at the world, to hunt down every criminal he could find on the street and kneecap them like John would if he were here. But part of his brain reminded him that Joss wouldn't have wanted that. That kind of behavior isn't what she died for. And Reese…well, Reese would get revenge, maybe even drink himself into oblivion. They were the angel and the devil sitting on his shoulders right now. He didn't know what to do with himself, but he did know one thing:

He was done with partners. Damn them to hell and back; they only caused him pain.

Detective Riley had no known family, so when the time came to fold the flag, it was passed to the closest thing he had to family. His partner. Fusco had come out of his angry daze long enough to gracefully accept it, but he knew he didn't want it. That was how it came to sit in the subway on top of the armory locker as a permanent reminder of Reese.

Finch had left it up to Root and Shaw to decide what to do with it; he wasn't ready to fully accept the hole left in their team quite yet. Shaw had shrugged and passed it off to Root, not really comfortable with this sort of sentimentality. Root, in turn, had deemed the armory a fitting place to put it.

Shaw stood back and looked at it for a moment after putting her guns away, pushing down the sudden urge for violence.

She left the armory with a grim shake of her head and went to Harold.

"What are they saying now?" She wondered in reference to the news feed that was streaming over Finch's computer from DC. She hadn't really kept up; didn't have the desire to hear all the media speculation about terrorism and war and who's next. Didn't want to see the footage of the damaged Pentagon where she lost a friend. But curiosity was an insatiable beast, sometimes.

"The government is calling it 'extremist terrorism'." Finch sighed. "Evidently, they've elected to place the blame on Middle-Eastern terrorist groups."

"Not surprising." Shaw shrugged. "It does seem like the sort of thing they would pull off."

Harold hummed in agreement. Shaw could almost see the gears turning in his head as a short silence fell over them. None of them liked the ease with which the masses were swayed by a government desperate to save face, but…such was the nature of the job; continued self-sacrifice for people who remained oblivious to the workings of the real world. Harold couldn't speak for the rest of the machine's operatives, but he was beginning to question if maybe that price wasn't too high.

"What I don't understand is the method to this group's madness. Until a few days ago, they had taken a purely pacifist approach."

Shaw scoffed in response. "C'mon Harold. Are you really gonna tell me you don't know damn well that everything evolves? Stalkers become killers, and killers turn into serial killers eventually."

Finch nodded, understanding her point. He spoke absently, thinking out loud more than he was addressing Shaw. "They were just learning before."

Shaw nodded, growing curious about the other loose ends that remained of this ordeal. "So, what about the accountant?"

"While I'm fairly certain that Mr. Rezniczek's role in all of this was more collateral than intentional, Detective Fusco and I agreed that he still needs protection. He made a deal to testify against the Drugonov family and their gambling ring in exchange for entry into the Witness Security Program."

At Shaw's tentative expression Finch was quick to add further explanation. "Oh, don't worry. I put the detective in touch with some trustworthy Deputy U.S. Marshals I know who I've surmised are inspectors with the program."

"And the kid?" Finch noted the special curiosity on Shaw's face and in her voice. She seemed to have developed a reluctant respect for the young hacker after the details of his involvement with Samaritan had been revealed to them. More precisely, after his part in Root's near escape had been revealed. He'd seen the two at Root's side during and after Shaw's operation on her. To Finch's knowledge, there had been no words spoken between them since they came from the harbor, but there had certainly been bonding.

The smile that reached across his face misses his hollow eyes. It did his wounded heart good to think that the orphan boy who used to be their adversary might have earned the continued concern of his team. Shaw was never one to ask about things she was indifferent about.

"I enrolled him in a prep school up state…I think you might be familiar." He smiled wryly and Shaw smiled back with a shake of her head. The mood took a solemn turn again as they both realized it was the first time his tone had sounded anything close to teasing in days. They fell silent again, losing themselves to their thoughts as the coverage of the DC bombing rattled on.

The quiet stretched out before them; a vast emptiness filled with all the emotion of the past several days. There was an unspoken understanding between the two: don't talk about John. Shaw knew Reese had always been Finch's favorite, his right hand. She felt awkward having to permanently take up that role, if she could even say that's what she was doing. They hadn't received an irrelevant number in days. Shaw suspected Harold was ignoring the machine again.

"You know, Finch, ignoring it won't make it go away." Neither one was quite sure which 'it' Shaw was referring to: the machine, John's death, life in general. Finch chose to interpret it as the former, responding to her statement with an apathy in his tone that disturbed Shaw. As if it didn't matter if he decided to shut out the numbers.

"In light of recent events, I thought we could do with some time off."

"You mean the same grievance leave we got after Carter died?" He turned to look at her sharply and she could tell she was toeing some sort of line. She didn't care. In both cases, he was choosing to play god with peoples' lives just to soothe his own grief. She wouldn't treat him with kid gloves. This was the job. Any given day, one of them might not come back, but the rest had to be able to keep on going.

"Something like that." Harold answered, his tone measured as he stared her down with his bereaved eyes.

"Yeah, well, I'm still here. If I wanted a break, I would leave." She didn't need to explain that. She knew by the look on Finch's face that he understood the reference to Reese's leave of absence after Carter's death; the lengthy period of carrying on with the numbers while John drank himself to the bottom of the bottle. She had missed him then and she missed him now, as much as she told herself she didn't. "As long as I'm here, I'm gonna do what you first hired me to do."

Shaw had expected more of a debate, but Finch seemed to be utterly devoid of any fight. With a heavy sigh, he reached out and pushed a button on his keyboard, bringing up the latest number. She read over it quickly then proceeded to the armory. Her eyes flitted to that flag above the locker once again as she retrieved her weapons. From the looks of it, she would need a little back up for this number. Root was gone to have her implant replaced, at the moment so the dog would have to do.

"Bear, komen."

Slowly, the time passed like that with the team continuing to work efficiently, yet struggling inside with the loss. A few days became a week, a week stretched on into a month, and the days passed until the numbness gradually began to fade. The wound slowly began to heal.

In those first few weeks, Finch had predictably buried himself in his work. It was rare that Root or Shaw ever saw him without his face stuck in his monitor and his body glued to the chair as an attack of carpal tunnel syndrome on his typing fingers seemed increasingly more likely.

In between numbers Shaw had taken up hunting. Her prey was anyone and everyone she could find who had connections to Anarchy Council. She went alone, with Root, sometimes with Bear; it didn't matter. Though, she knew Root and Finch both preferred that she didn't go off on these vengeance fueled missions on her own. She thought that maybe if she tried hard enough, she could hurt them bad enough to get rid of the incessant gnawing that had crept its way through the cracks in the walls around her heart. The only reprieve she got from those feelings for the first couple of weeks was Root.

Like Finch, Root needed a distraction, and her distraction was Shaw.

There came a time almost daily when Root would get a certain glint in her eye—a needy, vulnerable look of sorts. It was one that Shaw searched through her rolodex of Root's various moods and expressions for and couldn't quite place. What followed soon after was equally baffling on the first few occasions, until she stopped thinking about it entirely and welcomed the distraction. The look would pass over Root's face for just a moment, sometimes longer. Then she would proceed to drag Shaw away into the nearest area of seclusion and bear down on her with kisses and touches that smacked of frustration and desperation among so many other feelings.

In the midst of these impromptu liaisons, there was always one thought that Shaw could read from Root through her actions as clearly as if it were in her own head.

It could've been you.

She felt a twinge of guilt for just the briefest second each time she picked up on the thought. It shouldn't have been either of them; she should've done more to get Reese out. He was never going to finish defusing the bomb in time. She should've made an effort to let Root and Finch know she wasn't dead instead of just lumbering into the subway on tired legs. After all, that is where the source of the thoughts on Root's mind seemed to lay. But she hadn't done those things. It was the best she could do now to offer comfort to the hacker.

Fusco was a very different matter. No one knew quite how to handle him. He didn't know John quite as well as the rest of them, but he seemed to have taken the loss the hardest once the reality of it had set in. He still offered his help when it was required, but he was never in contact beyond that, and speaking to him was like walking on egg shells. Shaw noted during a stakeout shortly after the funeral that he smelled faintly of whiskey…a scent distinctly out of place for a man who claimed not to drink.

There was also the night she got a call from Lee. She'd left him with her number after the HR incident in case he needed help and his dad wasn't around. It was around two in the morning and she'd only just gotten to sleep when it came. She never imagined when she gave him that slip of paper that he would be calling about his own father.

When she made it to Fusco's apartment, he was outside the door pounding on it and shouting unintelligible pleas for Lee to let him in as the tears streamed down his face in his drunken state. The empty bottle of bourbon in his right hand spoke volumes to Shaw about what kind of night it had been. After telling Lee to unlock the door and get inside his room, she guided Fusco to the living room. At first, it seemed to her that he might've been too drunk to recognize her, but soon, he looked at her with an accusing eye and began to hurl accusations at her.

Had she been less sleep deprived, she might've been more understanding, but Shaw was in no mood to deal with it that night and she gave it all back. She gave it back until the next thing she knew, she was telling him to man up and pull himself together for his kid and he was throwing a punch at her face. She dodged it and nailed him square in the nose, knocking him out cold for the night.

He didn't seem to remember the events of that night, but he was no less distant to her, or to any of them. It was as if he was trying to push them away, but he couldn't at the same time. Shaw got the distinct impression that he did in fact resent her more than the rest of them. Out of all of them, her relationship with Fusco had become the most strained.

And so it went until three months had passed and team slowly began to get on with their lives. They were surprised that they hadn't really seen a sharp increase in the numbers as expected since the bombing. Root, having retained her link to the machine, revealed that it was because She had enlisted the aid of the many other operatives, as well.

One day, Root and Shaw walked down the sidewalk having just wrapped a difficult number. They walked side by side, both with a hot dog in one hand. Shaw's left hand was wrapped with Bear's leash as he strolled contentedly between them. They walked that way in silence for the most part; just taking in the summer air, the movement of the city, and the tourists. There was something that had been burning on Root's mind for a while now; something that there either hadn't been time to address or it wasn't appropriate. She figured now was the best time she'd had in a while.

Might as well seize opportunity.

"So…" She spoke slowly, and Shaw's eyes drifted over to her, questioning. "You and Her seem to be getting along these days."

They walked along in silence for several steps as Shaw considered an answer. When she finally did speak, the cryptic response was delivered around the last mouthful of her hot dog. Root smirked slightly at the crass display.

"We came to an understanding."

"Oh?" Shaw made a display of rolling her eyes at the wry smirk Root was wearing. "You know…I knew you wouldn't stay mad forever, but I figured I'd have to intervene at some point." Root teased, earning a close-fisted love tap to the shoulder from Shaw, who scoffed in response.

"Sure Root, like there would be a damn thing you could do about it if I really wanted to hold a grudge."

They lapsed back into an easy silence. The thoughts of the events that brought them to this conversation settled over them both. Shaw thought about getting shot at the NYSE; how she'd been so sure she was just a pawn in the machine's strategy. She thought about how that made her resent the machine, not because of how she felt, but because she knew Root was always so sure that the machine cared; sure that it didn't see them as objects.

Then there was the abduction.

She'd been livid. Outraged. Furious. Fit to be tied. Every angry adjective under the sun, really. And she wanted to blame the machine….oh, did she want to so badly. But, she was still rational enough to know that the machine had been rendered powerless, and therefore, blameless in all of it. Then, she got a taste of what it was like to be Root; to communicate with and rely on the machine.

"You know," Shaw spoke after several minutes of silence. "I guess you did intervene, in a way."

Root looked at her with a raised eyebrow as if she was expecting more of an explanation.

"The machine helped me—us—find you after it started to come back online." Root smirked at Shaw as if she knew, or at least suspected that already, but she kept talking. "You always said all that stuff about how she cares, but none of us ever really bought it. I didn't until she started talking to me; telling me how to find you."

"You heard it, didn't you?" Root asked knowingly. There was a certain reverence in her voice that she reserved for speaking of The Machine. "In Her voice?"

Shaw stayed quiet, but nodded in response. She knew what Root meant by 'it'. That strangely motherly quality that had an edge of concern to it. A tone that was somehow unsettling and comforting all at once coming from an artificial intelligence. They both thought back to that morning in Shaw's apartment when Root had promised to tell her why she chose to trust the machine. It no longer seemed necessary at this point, but she still felt a need for Shaw to know something that she hadn't divulged before.

"Do you still believe she sacrificed you? Knowing what you know now?"

"Still trying to work that out, actually." Shaw said, shaking her head slightly as if clearing extraneous thoughts. "How could she care, but send one of us to a very likely death?" It was a question she'd asked several times since her return, but now it lacked any bite. Now, there was only genuine confusion.

"If it was the only option."

Shaw felt compelled to meet Root's gaze at the assured seriousness of her tone.

"I still struggle with Her choice, myself. But you have to know…there were almost a million different options. The one she chose was the only one where you didn't end up the only survivor." Even now, so many months later, she felt her throat tighten at the thought of none of them making it alive from the stock market; of Shaw and Bear being the only two left.

"Also, the Machine never actually predicted that you would be the one to push the button." At that, Shaw's head jerked so that she stared at Root. Her furrowed brows silently asked for an explanation. Root smiled, feeling a bit of pride in Shaw at what she was about to say. "The Machine was able to calculate that you had the best chance of survival, but not even She predicted that you would be the one to push the button."

"So, who did she predict would do it?" Shaw's voice was curious, but there was an edge to it that told Root that she already had a good guess."

"Me."

Shaw opened her mouth to respond, there were still some things that didn't quite add up. Why had the machine told the operatives who'd helped her to be at the stock exchange at that precise moment? How did they know who she was? She filed these questions away to be addressed later when Finch's voice rang in her ear over the comm.

"Ms. Shaw; Ms. Groves, are you two preoccupied at the moment?"

"What is it Harry?" Root wondered. Both women noted the urgency in his tone.

"There's something you need to see."

The pair took a moment to look at each other with curiosity at Finch's vague explanation before making their way back to Chinatown.

When the women made it back down to the subway, they found Finch at his usual spot at the desk looking very interested in a news stream. At first glance, they thought it was just old footage, but then James Wylie's face popped up on screen as the reporter's words painted a clear picture.

Someone killed him. More than that; they outed his operation.

The reporter droned on and on about the explosion at the Pentagon, the attempted bombing of the capitol building, the Anarchy Council, and James Wylie's involvement with all three. It was clear to the three standing in the subway exactly who had designed all of this, too.

"Had to be Control." Shaw spoke absently, absorbed in the footage. "She was pretty pissed about everything when I left."

The reporter's mentioning of a single black SUV with government plates leaving the scene only furthered the theory. Finch felt himself nod at Shaw's suggestion even as confusion settled in. "Yes, but to what end would she allow her vehicle to be seen? She's as efficient as the agency she commands. Allowing her vehicle to be seen on camera seems a bit out of the ordinary."

"Not if she's trying to send a message." Shaw smirked, surprised to find herself on the same page as her old employer for once. Root and Finch looked at her expectantly. "She's letting what's left of the Anarchy Council know that she's kicking ass and taking names."

"Yes…" Finch muttered. "And painting a rather large target on her back in the process."

"Not as big as you might think…"

The three froze where they stood in front of the desk. It couldn't be. It was unlikely that they had all imagined it, and that familiar gravelly tone sounded far too real to be any kind of illusion. For a long moment no one moved. Each of them was afraid to turn around only to be disappointed. Finally, they turned around together and the sight of John standing only feet away greeted them.

"Mr. Reese…" Finch gasped as Shaw and Root looked on with their mouths open slightly in shock.

There he was standing in front of them, real, and every bit as alive and intact as before the explosion. The only difference, they noted, was that he now favored his left leg a bit. Root started to question him, but was cut off by Finch.

"How-?"

"Am I to assume by your choice of words, Mr. Reese, that you know something about this?" He asked, gesturing toward the news coverage. He looked lighter than Root and Shaw had seen him look in months, and they all felt the same.

Reese shrugged in response. "I might've helped a little." He waved Finch off when he tried to press further on the issue. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, Finch. Control seems to have a good handle on the situation." He kneeled down to pet Bear, who, up to this point, had been patiently waiting for attention from his master. The other three continued to watch him in amazement; they still didn't quite believe their eyes.

"How on earth did you survive that blast?" Root asked with pure befuddlement tinging her voice. "That was enough explosive to level two city blocks."

John looked up at her with a grim smirk as he continued to rub at Bear's belly for another moment, coming to stand a few seconds later. "I tried to get away when I realized I wasn't going to defuse the bomb. I managed to get most of the way out of the blast zone, but the debris took me down. I don't remember much after except being pulled out and then waking up in a private hospital room with Control at the foot of my bed."

"Why would she bother to save you?" Shaw asked with a slight tone of incredulousness.

"I don't know." Reese shrugged. The gesture implied that he didn't really care, either. "She said something about 'making things square.' Then she said I could help her make things even with the people responsible for the attack."

"Clearly you did." Finch stated, still eyeing John as if he might fade from existence right before his very eyes at any given moment. Root and Shaw had similar sentiments. They all had thoughts and questions racing through their heads at a thousand miles an hour, but none of them could seem to collect the thoughts enough to articulately express them. Reese seemed to recognize that. He remembered feeling similarly when everyone had been together for the first time in months back in the subway after the fall of Samaritan…after watching Shaw get shot. He understood what his friends were feeling perfectly.

John simply nodded in acknowledgement at Finch's words and excused himself to turn back to the armory. He really wasn't good at this sort of emotional reunion stuff, anyway. To his surprise, it was Shaw who stopped him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm glad you're back, Reese." Just as a genuine smile started to spread over his face at her touching sentiment, she continued to speak. "I like taking the lead in the field and all, but I suck at being you."

The smile came back and he shook his head in amusement. He understood what she really meant and knew that this was the best welcome back he could hope for from her. Honestly, Reese couldn't wait to get back out into the field, but for now he was content to be reacquainted with his team.

They exchanged a look of understanding between them. If anyone could understand how good he felt to be back in familiar territory after months away, it would be Shaw.

"It's good to be back, Sameen."

And that's that. I hope you enjoyed the read. Thank you all for sticking with me through this story! Please R & R!