Chapter 14
Finch drives them himself, back to the house on the Sound. Snow may be neutralized, but he still hasn't assessed the extent of any lingering threat from Fuller Avionics, and until that happens, Jessica must remain Lisa Williams to the rest of the world. As long as she is Lisa Williams, no one else can know her address.
There's been a change in the way they act with each other, Finch notices, an ease, a closeness, a sense of old familiarity. An observation that can't help but be accompanied by a sharp stab of jealousy — ghosts are not supposed to be resurrected complete with long, delicate fingers to rest on the crook of an elbow in the backseat of the car, clearly visible in the rearview mirror. Ghosts are supposed to stay dead, and haunt.
So when he pulls into the drive and they take the suitcases from the trunk and walk inside, Finch waits only long enough to check all of the cameras through his phone. They're all operating, the ones inside and outside. He has them in all of the rooms except the bedrooms, which are covered with a camera on each door and window. Finch might not be able to see what happens inside — nor does he want to — but no one except Jessica and Reese can get in or out without raising the alarm in the facial recognition software he has monitoring the feeds at all times.
Satisfied everything is working, and with no sign that Reese is going to come back out to the car, Finch puts it in reverse, heads back toward Manhattan. This will change things, he knows. Reese has something to lose, now, and it may make him cautious, turn him into a less effective operative, albeit one Finch is a little more comfortable with, one less likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
Even though she'll have nothing to do with their work with the numbers, Jessica has become a factor in their operation, one with more influence than Carter, Fusco, Snow, Elias, anyone. Because there are any number of things that can happen with Jessica — she could be abducted again, killed this time. Or, more simply, she could break things off with Reese, because a relationship based on years of longing and comparably little time together doesn't exactly have the greatest odds for survival.
Regardless of what it is, if anything happens with her, Finch expects it will be messy. Reese will fall apart again, and Finch will need to be ready to remind him there's a reason to live, that there are numbers — people — who will die if Reese allows himself to go into a tailspin. He will have to hope this is enough.
Inside the little house, Reese is still getting used to the idea of staying somewhere that feels like a home. Small, warm, sparsely but tastefully decorated, things he absorbed but didn't really reflect on the last time he was here, more focused then on evidence of who Lisa Williams was, what she looked like. There is no doubt that he'll be staying here, although Finch seems to have neatly dealt with Snow — at least for now — and she should be safe without him. He'll be staying here and they'll be sharing the bed in her bedroom, just as they have the hotel bed, ever since the night Finch called to dig up all of his skeletons.
There are going to be times he can't stay here, though, times it is too late to come back here and he needs to use one of the crash pads in the city, times he'll be out on surveillance all night, not sleeping at all. He's explained this to Jessica, walked her through all of the protocols involved in the various ways she can always contact him. Given her the chunky pendant necklace Finch soldered together, the stone in the middle actually a panic button, the silver oval a GPS tracker.
He'd been planning on giving her a gun, too, but she says already has one, leads him back into the bedroom and opens the top drawer in her nightstand. A nice little Beretta, and she says she remembers what he taught her — they'd been dating for several months before he'd ventured to take her to a firing range, but she'd been pretty good for a beginner, once she got used to the recoil. Still, he makes her load and unload it multiple times, then unload it again and dry fire it a few times before he's satisfied.
When these preparations are over, they walk down to the market to pick up enough items to make dinner, and partially replace the moldering contents of her refrigerator. It's an outing that feels wildly strange to Reese, wandering up and down the rows a step behind Jessica, buying fruits, vegetables, salad greens, grass-fed beef, organic cheese. He looks at all of the people with their canvas bags and their thick-knit sweaters and thinks, this is what the rest of the country was doing, while he was killing people, this is a world where he will never belong. She must notice him drifting away, because she gently touches his arm, tells him they have enough for now, why don't they head home?
At least in the house, he feels like he could be comfortable here, could belong here. Not, perhaps, the way he thought he would in the days after he'd resigned his commission, when he'd envisioned a bigger house with Jessica, full of kids. Rowdy boys, covered in mud, thundering in through the back door, sweet little girls toting dolls through the family room, some safe government contract job to support them all. That all came down with the towers, but still, he could belong here with her, in the times between the numbers.
After dinner, she pours them each a second glass of wine, asks if he'd like to go out on the deck, watch the sun set. He would have said yes anyway, but when she shyly adds that it's something she's done almost every night since she's been living here, it feels like a gift from her, a glimpse into her life of the past few years.
The breeze is mild today, the waves on the Sound gently rolling and a faint smell of salt in his nose as they step out onto the deck. The sun large and low on the horizon, the sky around it bold shades of yellow, orange, purple. Reese can see why she came out here, evening after evening; there's something mesmerizing about the colors, the waves, the peace of it all. He half expects Finch to call now, to tell him there's another number — they're long overdue and it's the way of his life that something should interrupt this moment.
But at least for this sunset, there is no call. Reese sips his wine and watches a gannet plunge through the water and come back out with a tremendous splash, holding a small fish in its beak. Listens to the gulls squall overhead, the children laughing in some distant backyard. Slips his arm across her back and thinks this might be the closest to peace he's been in ten years.
[end]
AN: So I assumed this was not the way things were going to go on the show, but it was nice to at least give them a happy ending here. Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading. Feedback and constructive criticism are very much appreciated, particularly on pacing and point of view, which I've been focusing on working on in this fic.