Chapter 8: for all of them to share; defiance in his eyes;
Prompts: Team as a family; multiple whumpees;
Please note: In the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1, there are suggested music, etc., to accompany this and other Chapters, meant to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them.
Primary Safe-house, Mid-town, January 2015
Couldn't keep a good man down. Finch was still awake, working in his room down the hall.
Reese had made his way back here to the living room once they'd gotten him settled. Poured himself a drink from one of the bottles Finch kept stocked in the cabinet. Left the lights down low, just the first click on the lamp next to his couch.
He'd angled the crutch under his leg, letting the knee bend just enough over the top to keep the strain off it. It ached, like a boring kind of pain deep inside his knee.
If Bear had been there, he'd have jumped up next to him and rested his muzzle on his thigh, swiveling his eyes at him, the way dogs do. And, pretty soon, his hand would've found its way over to him, gentle-scrubbing through the fur around his ears. He'd always liked that.
Instead, Reese sipped the amber elixir in his glass, lamplight reflecting off the rim as he spun it, a quarter-turn at a time on the arm of the couch. Round and round in his hand, like a meditation.
Quiet now… They'd all gone to their own spots to be, and the night had descended around them.
Reese turned to thoughts about Finch, first, sipping his whiskey.
After the stunner of finding his Machine alive and still functioning, he'd had to back away from any further questioning while the rest of the Team were there. His Machine had insisted on it. Apparently the thing had come up in an altered state and would only agree to be led back by one trusted guide – Finch, himself.
He'd been anxious to get to it, but Shaw'd insisted on having him eat something before he left for his room to work. Couldn't heal without food, she'd told him. He'd gone along, reluctantly; so Reese had pulled something together for all of them to share at the table, something easy Finch could eat with a spoon.
They'd fashioned a way for him to hold it himself by winding the handle with layers of gauze over the top of the bandages he already had, and then he'd used the spoon like a shovel. Well, maybe not that in-elegant; this was Finch, after all.
He'd picked and poked at the morsels until he could lift them without rolling them off the other side of the spoon. Slow, but he'd made it work. Like using chopsticks before you got any good at it. Drank his tea through the straw Root had dropped in his cup, too, and so he'd only needed to ask for help when he needed a refill on the tea. Managed to do everything else on his own.
So, now he'd gone back to his room, propped on his bed, with his laptop open on the tray table in front of him.
Said he wouldn't need to type anything more for now. The light at the top of his screen told him the Machine was there, watching, listening. He only had to talk to the light, and the Machine would respond. Like always.
Reese didn't really get it – the way the whole thing worked between them. More of a "guns and butter" kinda guy, himself – and light on the butter. The tech-y world Finch preferred seemed far off in the clouds to him. Glad they still had him, though. Not sure the world'd be the same without Finch.
World…
The word dragged him back to the other issue - the one in the other safe-house.
Things could go either way with Olawale. Maybe he'd open up on his own. Maybe he'd need convincing. And one thing Reese was good at was that. He'd had a knack for intimidation his whole life. Too many bad guys had ground down under his skill to keep the count any more. Didn't even wanna go there.
He'd left most of that off to one side, one dark place deep inside - and letting it bubble out didn't do anyone any good. Wished there was a way to let the sunlight penetrate in and vaporize all of it – the visuals, the scents, all the sounds. He'd run out of places to bury them deep enough.
Reese stared, without focusing. A clock on the wall ticked loud enough to notice. Time, ticking away. And no way to know how much was left.
Not so much for himself. People like him couldn't expect to last. But for the rest of them. People going about their lives, and unaware.
Maybe better that way, he thought. Didn't all need to run around lookin' for places to bury the choices they'd made.
Reese took a deep breath, and a long swallow of his drink. Burned some on the way down.
Better to let them go, these kinda thoughts. Getting a little too close to the door on that dark place inside. Kept it boarded up, but every once in a while, he found himself on the other side of the door and he'd wake up in a cold sweat.
His knee was starting to talk to him. The leg had slid down the metal tube of the crutch, straightening his knee out, where it didn't wanna be. Better with a little bend in it. He re-adjusted the crutch under his leg, and took another swallow of his drink, a little help chasing the pain away.
Turned his thoughts to the debrief tomorrow. Remembered how Olawale had left things with him, before the fire.
Trapped, and he knew it, but still defiant.
Strength, even with a bad hand to play.
defiance in his eyes;
Secondary Safe-house, West Side, days ago (From P2)
"Let's start with London," Reese said in his whisper-voice. "You were how old when you arrived?" Olawale's eyes rolled up and away, no emotion on his face, as if catapulting himself back to that time in his life.
Dryly: "Just ten, ah so, as I said."
"Boarding school, you said?"
Olawale nodded back.
"Good in school?"
"Above average, they say." Olawale held Reese's brief stare, while Reese stopped to consider that for a moment.
"A smart kid like you must have gone pretty far," he suggested, in that whisper-voice. Olawale smiled, without showing his teeth, and his eyes focused in the air over Reese's shoulder.
"Bit of a renegade, as it happens."
Reese stared at him. "Say more."
"Sent to the Headmaster's Office – quite often, actually," with the smile lines around his eyes deepening.
"Fell in with a bad crowd?" Reese watched as the smile lines winked away. Olawale shook his head.
"No. Nothing like that," he said, voice soft – with his eyes dropping down to the floor.
Reese waited him out. Something he didn't want to say. Olawale rubbed the crease on his slacks with a thumb. Down and back, down and back. Then he exhaled hard, with a little shake in his head. Clear to Reese he wasn't going to give any more right now. He'd circle back later.
"What'd you like in school?" Olawale grinned suddenly and looked up.
"Emma Jones," he said, square white teeth gleaming from his smile. Reese wasn't amused.
And his knee was starting up again, stretched too far on the low couch. He pushed his cane forward, crossways under his right leg, then angled it over so that the knee would bend a little over the top of the thick metal tube. Olawale watched him, his dark eyes steady. Bear groaned in his sleep, curled at Reese's feet.
"Subjects. What did you like in school?" Reese queried. Olawale thought for a moment.
"Reading," he said, and he touched the books at his side. "Math – but not right away. I struggled with it at first, until one of mah teachers opened mah eyes." Reese noticed Olawale turn his eyes to the sunbeams slanting across the floor from the front room, so bright that the light seemed to make his eyes water.
"What about later?" Olawale looked confused for a moment.
"Subjects – later," Reese clarified.
"Math and science, electronics, computahs – mah geek years," he said, recovering his smile.
"College?"
"University. Same track. Engineering, computahs," he said, nodding.
"What about after?" Reese noticed his eyes flicking to one side, briefly but definitely.
And then Olawale raised his eyes to his, steady, sincere, like he wanted Reese to believe him. "Started mah doctoral work."
The trouble was, Reese didn't believe him. Felt like a sleight of hand trick, to lead him off the track.
"Nothing else? Say, around the same time?" He waited a long time for Olawale's response.
"Have yah evah toiled and, yes, slaved ovah yah job, fah years, Mistah Reese?!" The heat in his voice seemed odd to Reese. And why'd he called it his job, instead of his research? He stared blankly at Olawale.
"Let's just say the work can become – all-consuming." Olawale raised his upturned palm and swung it around the room, again, like before. "I'm sure yah can undahstand," he said, in a softer voice.
Reese was only sure that there was more here. That he'd touched a place where Olawale wasn't willing to go, and this was all some kind of diversion. A long pause, and in slow, measured words:
"And so, who did you find first, then – Greer or Finch?"
There it was. Hanging there in the air, like a bird flushed by a gun-dog. The image made Reese acknowledge – not so very different than what he was doing here with Olawale.
He'd seen handlers in the fields, before, with their dogs out quartering, searching for scent-cones rising off the game. But sometimes, when a bird had just flown in, and the air had been washing over the bird all the while it'd been flying, even an experienced dog could work right over the top of the bird and not find the scent.
Olawale shifted himself on the leather couch, and crossed his arms in front of his chest, grimacing with the pressure on his ribs.
"I want to make it clear, Mistah Reese. I've given you more than enough to establish mah cooperation. I reserve this line of questioning for mah first meeting with Mistah Harold Finch."
Reese took a breath and leaned forward toward Olawale. Blue eyes armed and ready:
"Don't flatter yourself, Olawale. Like I said before – you came to us, remember?" His eyes burned. Every time Reese thought about his trip up inside Zuma Rock and his solo raid on Greer's camp to spring Olawale, a burn started in the center of his chest. Now his eyes, too.
He could have left him there to rot. Maybe a few more days of Greer's hospitality would have made him a little more cooperative. But Finch wouldn't have taken the chance – and, if he was honest about it, neither would he. The more dug-in Greer got, the harder it would've been to get Olawale out.
He wouldn't budge now: arms across his chest and defiance in his eyes.
Shaw appeared at the archway. Bear rolled up from his nap on the floor; alert, ears up, tracking from one to the next.
No one said anything...