The title comes from the (very) old song by Jeanette MacDonald 'Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life.' If you want an experience, I would encourage looking it up while reading the end of this piece.
For a long time, John Reese had thought he was a sociopath. He had to be. His colleagues were. It was an occupational hazard. He felt…nothing. No matter what he did, who he killed, how he killed them, he felt nothing. And yet in that nothingness, was a bite of frost. The kind that damaged tissue and led to amputation. The kind that left flesh discolored and damaged.
It wasn't until he tried to get out that he realized his soul had been shivering. Much like frostbite, he didn't feel it till he was out of the cold.
Reese had wanted to die then. Had done his level best to make it quick and painless by drowning his liver in booze. At least it'd made him feel warm before he went. If he was going to go out, he would go out comfortably drunk.
And then Harold Finch happened.
And John…felt something. For the first time in years. Something other than the numbness that filled him.
Reese discovered something through the enigmatic billionaire's machinations. Or maybe rediscovered something he had always known. He discovered that John Reese had a heart. Not just a regular one of flesh and blood, but one that felt, one that bled with sympathy for his fellow man. It had been a revelation that was as welcome as it was surprising, like a forgotten and cherished childhood toy or family heirloom.
And he lived. Maybe for the first time. It was here and there. A cup of Starbucks coffee, sweetened with caramel syrup. A heated blanket for his hotel bed. It was humanity. And he let himself be satisfied with the work he did. He let his newly revived heart swell with bittersweet solace as lives were saved and decent people got to live the normal life he never had.
Somehow he had never realized how soft his heart had been before…everything…
But Finch and his enigmatic Machine…because of Harold and his little project, winter in John's soul had melted into spring. The had driven away the frost and revived something real, something human, something that was, at its core, tender, and kind. Perhaps it has always been so and he just hadn't known it.
Either way, Reese was grateful.
And as he staggered and bled down the steps of a parking garage, the air reeking with the piss and vomit that pervades New York's streets, he found himself overwhelmed with the urge to say it. To thank Finch for giving him a chance to live again. To feel again.
Reese didn't trust Finch, per se. At least he didn't think he did. But he held him in a regard he reserved for a very, very few. And so he tapped his earpiece and he thanked him.
The pain was starting now, edging in around the shock of the two gunshot wounds and weakness of blood loss. It hurt to move. And truthfully it seemed like a waste to make the effort. They were going to find him. He was going to die. It would've been more peaceful just to let his legs give out, to collapse into the filth of the stairwell. Die gently and on his own terms.
He told Finch to stay away. But the billionaire wasn't listening. It confused Reese for a moment, why would Finch risk his operation over a replaceable asset? And then it dawned on him vaguely: it was because Reese wasn't just an asset to Finch. John was a person who Harold wanted to protect just as much as any person whose number they received. And when Harold told him to just keep going to the bottom floor, somehow, somehow John found the will to obey him.
His legs started to give at the sight of the car as the limping, eccentric little man rushed to him with greater speed than John would've thought him capable.
And as Harold's arms slid under his, John staggered into them trustingly. He felt Harold's hand wrap around his taller frame, clutching him as Detective Carter's voice suddenly rang out behind them, ordering them to stop. A look passed through Harold's eyes as both he and John turned and met the detective's gaze, the look on Harold's normally placid face was something close to condemnation, tinted with quiet disgust.
Look what you've done. Harold's eyes accused, darting between John's shaking body and the gun drawn by the foolish woman who'd sold him out, however unintentionally.
Harold's grip tightened and he instinctively pulled John to his chest, angling him away as if to shield him, even as they both continued to stare down the barrel of the detective's gun. Reese noticed, of course. Even like this, he noticed everything. It was touching, if pointless.
Harold is a friend, John thought dimly. A strangely profound and warm word in the shadow world in which John lived. But he was a friend. A friend with a tender heart just like John's. A friend who'd seen in John what John couldn't see himself: kindness, humanity, a conscience.
And as the stand-off ended with a guilt-ridden Carter holstering her weapon and helping to shove him in the back of the car, Reese reflected that it was rather nice to know Finch cared.
As the tires squealed, John slid off his belt, his trembling hands fumbling as he strained to tighten it around his pulsing thigh. The bullet wound in his stomach was a different matter altogether, that he would simply have to put pressure on. With the amount of blood he was losing, that wasn't likely to work for long.
As Reese had told Finch in the stairwell, it still was "not looking good."
All the same though, as the city lights rushed by in a blur, John thought it was nice to die with the warmth of knowing he had a friend.
But then Harold's voice came again, quiet and steady as he sped through the streets.
"You are not going to die, John. I will not allow it."
Before John realized it, Harold's warm hand had reached back from the front seat and found John's clammy one, gripping it tight and giving it a reassuring squeeze. Despite himself, John felt a slight fond smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Harold was sentimental like that. And, as much as he might've once denied it, so was John. Harold's words weren't a command. They were a promise. And John for all his cynicism… believed him. Harold had a contingency plan. He always had a contingency plan.
If he didn't have to die…well, John wasn't exactly going to say "no." He wanted to live. For the first time since he could remember, he wanted to live. He wanted to live to protect, live to feel, live to see a summer's day, and drink another caramel macchiato.
He wanted to figure out the secrets of the mysterious billionaire currently risking everything to save his life all over again.
He wanted more of whatever…this…was. This…kinship, partnership. Friendship.
Reese's memories faded from there into flashes of fluorescent lights and the image of looking up at Finch wheeling him on a gurney through corridors that smelled faintly of formaldehyde.
John couldn't summon the air to speak—if he could even have been heard over the sound of the gurney's squeaking wheels—but he knew what his eyes said as he met Harold's frantic downward glances.
Please, his soul pled with all the softness and gentleness it had once denied. Please, I want to live.
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