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meme_of_interest2013-03-28 06:03 pm
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Prompt Post 01
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FILL: We All Fall Down [no warnings] [Reese/Finch or gen]
(Anonymous) 2013-04-28 02:01 am (UTC)(link)As for the below, a prompt within a prompt?
Kara was exactly the same.
She looked the same, talked the same. Was the same. Inescapable agency same. Same as all of them had always been. The crash and the melodrama, the drugs and the bomb and the bus. Then she locked them in a basement, left them to stew in their bombs and their anger.
But that wasn’t all. The physical threat was never all, with Kara. She’d locked them in with her games, too.
The thing about Harold was that he was different. From the very beginning, it was the difference that made Harold interesting. Alluring. Harold was kind and he was wise. Weak in body, twisted physically, but strong everywhere else. Healthy and whole where it mattered.
There were files in that basement room. Tons of paper. Kara’s work over the years John had been drifting in a sea of alcohol, or lately, sheltering under Harold’s redemption. Of course John recognized the game, but he went through the files anyway. Because intel was intel, even in a game, and intel was always an advantage, a route to power. Kara taught him that. But Harold drove it home.
Most important, most obvious, Harold was nothing like Kara and nothing like John. The slightest violence disgusted Harold. John’s weapons, faithful allies so many dark years, so many cold nights . . . John’s weapons made Harold nervous. When John let the old, cold breath of calculation creep into his work, the effortless manipulation into his smile, or the easy, teasing indifference into his words, he could feel Harold’s hesitation. John had seen it, stood by and watched it. Harold’s recoil.
By the time Kara reappeared John was different – or thought he was - while Kara was exactly as he remembered her. Insane.
He’d seen the psychotic gleam from the beginning. Recognized it as it gathered force all around him, like a tide, pulling at him every moment he spent at her side. Sweeping him away from anything solid, from anyone real. But John also knew, had known from the start, that Kara was a good agent.
No, more. She was gifted. Sometimes he thought the frenzy of her mind was just a symptom of her ridiculous talent. Necessary to all the things she got right – played better, smarter, cooler than seemed possible, for a normal person. A whole person. She saw people, for one thing. Really looked into them and saw them. Understood where they were strong and where they were weak, understood the depths of them in a way John never would. She dug up leads, cultivated sources, found answers where no one else would even dream to look. She taught John a lot of what he knew. More than that, more profound, she’d torn down so much of what he’d thought he’d known.
There were a lot of surveillance papers in her files, old documents and photographs. Meaningless images and words, of John and Mark and other agents, men he’d known only by their faces. And there was their handler, and their supervisor, a man he’d only met once.
And there was Harold. Harold and their supervisor. Harold and John’s handler. A younger Harold and John’s old life, walking, meeting, talking together. Working together.
It was only one folder, a few images.
When he met Kara again, in New York, when he opened his eyes and saw her sitting across from him on the bus, John thought he was strong. Stronger than he’d been the last time, at least. Strong enough to withstand her and keep himself. Keep his new world. After all, he had Harold behind him now. Harold, so logical and reasonable and good. An intellect like a Michaelangelo, beautiful, almost too perfect. A mind like a constellation, vast and remote, guiding John true.
On the roof, bomb strapped to his chest, no weapon to save him and no friend at his side, there was a brief moment of being alone again. Truly alone. And it felt like relief.
Then John heard Harold’s voice and all that slipped away. There was nothing solid anymore, nothing real. The tide had come again and swept away everything good.
He wasn’t sure he could gather up the will to care, now. Not again. Harold had tied him up, body and soul, past and future. He put his gun on Harold. He let Harold come close. They would die in the blast, in the wake of Kara, and that would be fine.
In that basement, on the roof, she tore down Harold. She tore down John. Even after she was dead, the bomb diffused, Kara tore them down.
John smiled his goodbyes, waved to Carter and Fusco, and left in the direction of the apartment Harold had given him, moving stiff and slow, body battered as everything else about him. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time; somehow the ache was worse than he remembered.
He went to one of his cash caches and then to a motel, one he’d never been to before.
Harold bustled into the library at 0700, clean clothes, fresh morning, friendly shuffle. John sat in a chair in the corner and watched. Watched him as he hadn’t, really, since the first moment he met him. When Harold finally saw John he jumped, so startled he almost seemed to fall. John studied the movement with interest.
“Mr. Reese,” Harold breathed, “I didn’t – see you.” He wavered visibly between scolding and concern, then turned back to his bank of monitors and pressed a series of buttons, switches and codes. “Did you sleep well?”
John looked at Harold and wondered what Kara saw when she watched him, this strange, brilliant man. What Kara knew when she scanned those photographs.
Harold busied himself with his morning routine. A minute of silence passed unnoticed, before he sensed it, and turned sharply, eying John critically.
“John?” He took a swift half-step in John’s direction. “Everything alright?”
Was everything alright? Everything was the same as it had always been, wasn’t it? It was all the same.
“Of course. Harold. Everything is fine.” John smiled, teasing. Indifferent.
Harold eyed him warily. But then he nodded and turned back to his machine. “No new number yet today. Perhaps we’ve earned a vacation.”
John had always thought of it as Harold’s machine. But it was really their machine, wasn’t it. It was surprising how easily he’d forgotten that. Or maybe it wasn’t.
“I didn’t expect you to be able to diffuse her bomb,” John noted idly.
“Yes.” Harold's tone was dry, distracted. “I sensed your underwhelming confidence.”
“Bombs like that are made to be impenetrable. That’s what they told us, at the Agency.”
Harold glanced at him, posture upright, eyebrow raised, arch and mysterious. Then he went back to his screens without a word, secure in his position. The mysterious boss, all powerful, all knowing.
John the trusting, the loyal, the happy employee.
It was impressive, John could admit that to himself. He’d been played so perfectly, right back into the same place he’d been before.
They’d always played him easily. He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d gotten a little better at the game? They’d taken it to another level. Kara would laugh. Maybe she had.
“How did you find out my real name, Finch?”
John’s tone was ordinary, innocent. But even from the back he could see Finch’s shoulders tense. Watched them climb into his neck, one millimeter, first. Then two.
Harold’s reply was easy, though. Dismissive. “I beg your pardon?”
John got up, movement slow, and walked around to the front of the desk. It wasn’t deliberately menacing. But he was aware now, on guard, and he knew what that looked like. He’d seen it make people shake. Make them run.
Harold froze.
“I said, how did you find my real name. You’ve known it from the beginning, Harold. But that name was erased.”
Harold blinked up at him like a rabbit in a snare. If Kara was here she would know, like a sixth sense, just how much of that was real. Just how much calculation.
John remembered thinking his calculations made Harold nervous, and he smiled.
Harold stuttered. “What – well, there are many – as you know there are always – ”
John didn't particularly want to watch him huff and squirm. He'd seen all that before. He pulled the rolled up photographs from the inside of his coat and set them gently on the table.
Harold stopped talking, but he didn’t break eye contact as he reached for them. He only looked down to study them when he’d pulled them back into his chest.
And then he stood, shaky and grim. “Kara?”
John cocked his head and suppressed a smile. It was liberating, really, to have the weight of gratitude lifted so cleanly from his shoulders.
Harold glanced down at the photos again and raised his eyes uneasily to John. “What . . . what are you going to do?”
Re: FILL: We All Fall Down [no warnings] [Reese/Finch or gen]
i mean... ;____________________;
Very good though @_@
Re: FILL: We All Fall Down [no warnings] [Reese/Finch or gen]
(Anonymous) 2013-04-28 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)FILL Part 2: We All Fall Down [graphic violence?] [explicit?] [d/s] [Reese/Finch or gen]
(Anonymous) 2013-04-28 10:59 pm (UTC)(link)Behind the glasses his blue eyes were intense, knowing. Reese couldn’t look at him. He let his gaze wander to the window. “Does it matter?”
Finch stepped out from behind the desk, stepped toward him. “Yes, it matters, Mr. Reese. You shouldn't go to waste. You're a talented man. One of the best in the world at what you do.”
“And what is that?” Reese’s voice was hollow, weak. He knew it made him vulnerable. He just couldn’t bring himself to care anymore.
Finch was calm. The shaky mask long gone. “You work for me.”
“And you work for the Agency.”
“No,” Finch countered. At the twist in Reese’s face, he went on. “I work with the Agency, from time to time. And as you have surmised, as Kara apparently wanted you to know, I found you with the Agency's help. Unwitting as it may have been.”
Unwitting . . . “I don’t believe you.”
“I’ve told you nothing but the truth from the beginning, Mr. Reese.”
John laughed, and even he heard how broken it was, how pathetic.
Harold leaned against the desk and crossed his arms. “Your experience with the Agency was a dark one. You saw the worst face of it. But not everything they do is sinister, John. To get the necessary background information, to vet you fully, I had to convince enough of them that you could be . . . repurposed. As you obviously could be.”
Anger welled up in John and he welcomed it. Anger gave him strength. “They gave you a few favors, let you play Robin Hood for awhile, and now they own you, Finch. You let me believe I was finally free. But all this time they’ve been pulling the strings. You lied.”
John should leave, disappear. But he couldn’t get over it. It had seemed so genuine. Too far-fetched even for the Agency –
“It’s understandable that you would feel that way,” Finch said, dispassionate. Reese could feel the weight of his stare, the penetrating brilliance behind it. “When you decide to serve a cause you want to do so totally, blindly.” Finch paused, added softly, “That’s why I urged them to pair you with Kara.”
Reese bowed his head, took a moment to school his expression. The anger had been beaten back by a wave of nausea. “Wow,” he managed. “Have to hand it to you, Finch. You’re a colder bastard than I’d ever given you credit for.”
“Perhaps,” Finch agreed. “But cruelty had nothing to do with your choice of partner. You needed to work with someone accustomed to absolute control. Someone willing to hold absolute control over you. Without it you would have walked away from the horrors of that job before you fulfilled your purpose there, before you even had the skill to survive beyond it. You would have been assassinated by your own people.”
Kara as protector. That was rich.
“I know it wasn’t pleasant,” Finch continued. That same soft, steady tone. “That she wasn’t kind. But she gave you a structure, Mr. Reese. Gave you the sense of direction that you need. One I was not yet ready to offer, at the time.”
John shook his head, but Finch kept going. “You say you want to be free. But we both know that isn’t true. All you have ever wanted is to serve. To be given a purpose.”
The way he said it, so knowing - John stiffened, his eyes drawn back to Finch reluctantly. He couldn’t know –
“You’re wrong,” John said.
“There are times I can’t help but feel you are willfully blind, Mr. Reese. They told you from the very beginning that they knew absolutely everything about you and so did I. You simply never believed it.”
John still couldn’t quite believe it. And he couldn’t really be bothered to care. It didn’t matter, now. None of this mattered.
Finch sighed again, continued calmly. “You won’t serve just anyone, I’ll grant you that. You need something you feel is worthy to devote yourself to. But isn’t that what you have here, John? You know the work that we do, the help that we provide, is real. Regardless of my past and how we came to be here, we’re making a difference. It’s something you can be proud of,” he added gently, like he was giving John a gift.
John shook his head, eyes wandering once more to the opaque windows. Harold was trying to justify it, to confuse him. This is what they’d done to him before. This exact thing. “Until they come for us,” he said. “And we have no choice. I know this game now, Harold. I won’t play it again.”
Harold’s voice grew sharp. “You have never had a choice, John, and you probably never will. Because choice is not what you want. If not for this job you know very well you would be dead by now, by your own hand. What you need is trust. And I think you know you can trust me. That’s why you came here today, isn’t it?”
“I was curious,” John said dully. “How you would justify it, if you would. Can’t say I anticipated this.”
“Yes, well, you think I’ve lied to you, and I don’t appreciate the accusation. Perhaps the Agency did lie to you, perhaps Kara did. But I have protected you from them. I gave you a second chance, gave you what you need. You think I’ve betrayed you, but the truth is, John, you never asked the right questions, were never willing to face the truth. You don’t ask for what you need. Come here.”
John looked at Finch, at the bright, angry blue blaze of his eyes. He felt the edge of the precipice under him, the drop into nothingness. Into the drunk and the wasting away. It wasn’t death that he feared, there. It was the nothingness. The despair. Finch said he was talented and Reese knew that was true. Talented at fighting, at espionage, at killing. But knowing who to trust. Knowing who to give that service to, or when to pull back – that wasn’t in him. He’d been molded for obedience, molded for orders. Knowing who to take them from was something else.
“There will be more numbers, John. I can protect you from your past, from the Agency and all who will come for you. From your fears. But only you can protect the numbers. Do you want to continue doing that?” Harold’s words were even. The question felt sincere.
The fall loomed under John, gave him vertigo. Innocent dead lay in wait for him down there, ready to crush him. But he could feel others trying to pull him back. Desperate men and women, desperate teenagers, children even, who were safe now. Relief, kindness in their eyes as they thanking him. Thanked him for saving them.
It was the only proof he’d ever had, the only hint in his life that he was, had ever been, on the right path. “Yes,” he gasped.
“Then come here.”
John did.
“Take off your coat and jacket. Remove your weapons.”
John hesitated. Harold was going to kill him. Or call someone else to do it.
But Harold had also given him the numbers, given him some peace. Maybe it was better this way. Maybe he needed to step aside to protect the numbers. Something clean, something here, would be better than wandering into the city anyway, wandering and waiting for death to come. This would be more merciful.
John did as he was told.
“Your shirt.”
John gave it to him.
“Face the wall.”
Harold gestured to a spot on the wall. John turned and walked to it.
“Kneel.”
It was going to be Harold, then. Here, now. John felt something like the relief from the roof, only he wasn’t alone now. This was better, warmer. He hoped that it wouldn't trouble Harold. From the sure, easy tone of his voice, it didn’t sound like it would.
John smiled grimly as he slipped to his knees. Hidden depths to the very end.
Harold came to stand close behind him. John could feel the soft wool of expensive pants brush against his back. He heard the distinct clink of handcuffs.
“Arms up.”
John turned his head to the side, away from the dark wall. He wanted to go freely. “I’m not going to try anything, Harold.”
“Arms up, Mr. Reese.”
John put his hands behind his head. Harold secured his left wrist in one of the cuffs and pulled it up and out, finally clipping the cuff to a pipe at the farthest point John could stretch. His second wrist followed, stretched high in the opposite direction, John almost hanging between them.
He flexed his hands. Nothing useful in reach. He pulled, subtly, but the pipes were secure. He could have stood up if he wanted to, but there would be no escape either way.
“Are you giving me to the Agency, then?” he asked. John’s loss of faith meant he was less reliable then before. Maybe Harold thought John couldn't be trusted to go back, whatever his intentions. Maybe Harold was going to trade him in for a new model.
Harold put a hand on John’s head, silent, and simply kept it there. John bowed eventually, submitting to the weight of it. Vulnerable, death lurking close, it felt intimate, powerful. Like the hand of god.
“Shh, Mr. Reese. I will ask the questions. A simple yes or no will suffice in answer, unless I say otherwise. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” John answered dutifully.
“Kara and Agent Snow died yesterday. Does that trouble you?”
John blinked, staring hard at the wall. A test of his Agency loyalties? Or of how far he had moved beyond them?
Harold’s hand smoothed through his hair gently, like he was petting Bear. “Just answer honestly, Mr. Reese. That is all I want you to do, all you need to do.”
“No,” John answered, honest. Kara and Mark were the past. Their deaths were more than deserved and John hadn’t killed even them. They’d killed themselves, really.
“Are you sure?” Harold’s hand stroked down the nape of his neck, massaging the corded muscles softly.
“Yes.”
Harold moved away, steps toward his desk, only to return a moment later. He held something in front of John’s face, but close against the wall it was too dark to see.
“Open,” Harold said. It took a moment to understand. John opened his mouth and Harold pressed it in. “Bite down.”
It was soft and tough.
Harold stepped away and John twisted his wrists quickly, grabbing onto the pipes for support. The first blow was a lick of fire, falling on his right shoulder and tearing down to the left, to his waist. The second was the same, only opposite, starting at his right waist, lapping up his left shoulder. Harold paused then and John breathed deeply through his nose, bearing down on the strap, gripping the pipes under his hands.
After that the blows were harder, landing unerringly one on top of another, and it wasn’t fire anymore. It was worse, raw, flaying him open. John bore it unmoving, for a time. But it kept on, on and on, the only sound the deep thud against his back. Harold had easily cut him to the bone by now, but still it went on, until it stopped, as suddenly as it began.
Harold’s footsteps moved away. John knelt, shaking, sweat pouring down his face, too relieved to really wonder where, or why. Harold was back again quickly though. He tugged John’s head back, pulled his face up toward the ceiling. It stung his neck and John clamped his eyes shut, blocking out Harold’s face looking down, seeing his pain, the tears that had to be obvious on John’s face.
“Open.”
John opened his mouth blindly. The strap was removed and a moment later, the plastic rim of a water bottle held to his lips. “Drink,” Harold said, and John swallowed rapidly to keep from choking on it.
When John turned his face away, Harold let him. His hand came up again, stroked over John’s sweaty hair, and John put his face to the wall. Harold petted his head, his face and neck, for long minutes.
“Your former partner, Kara, and your former teammate, Mark Snow, died yesterday.”
John didn’t stop the shudder, didn’t try. “Yes.”
“Does that trouble you?”
He thought about it. Wondered if this answer would determine his fate. Whether he would be allowed to return to the numbers. Whether he would be allowed to live.
“Just answer honestly, Mr. Reese,” Harold said patiently.
John swallowed. “No.”
The petting didn’t stop. Harold didn’t step away this time.
“Open.”
Reese opened his mouth and the strap slipped in. He bit down without being told.
It went on longer than before, and somewhere in the depths of it, in the darkness of the wall and the stretch of his body down from the pipes, in the unrelenting rhythm of the pain, Reese lost all sense of where he was. He was in training. He was captured, in prison. This was an exercise, valuable prep for some new tactic. This pain was the last thing he would ever feel, the last thing he would ever know. He began to grunt with each blow, a sound to anchor himself, to keep a toehold in the world. He leaned forward to escape it, pressing his head, his face, as much of his chest as he could against the wall. It was futile, there was no escape, there was no mercy or relief or sense to it. He shuddered and cried for a time, pulling uselessly against the pipes, and then he sagged, quiet and still, surrendering utterly to the cross of knives falling endlessly on his back.
When he realized it had stopped he wasn’t sure how long the quiet had gone on, whether he had slipped into unconsciousness or not. He hung without strength in the cuffs.
Harold was above him, tipping John's head back. “Open.”
John’s eyes were open. Sightless. Harold wiped a thumb down his cheek, wiped away sweat and tears, his hand coming to rest on John’s jaw. “Open, Mr. Reese.”
John struggled to release. The strap scraped out from between his teeth. Water flowed into his mouth, flowed out. Harold’s hand went to his throat, massaging firmly. “Swallow.”
John did.
Harold left, came back. Petted his hair. “Do you need to rest?”
John did not know what rest was. “No,” he said.
A sigh, above him. “Did the deaths last night of your old friends, the destruction of your former teammates while you survived unscathed, trouble you at all?”
John leaned against a forearm and cried silently, shoulders jerking weakly against the pull in his arms. The hand on his head was the only kindness, the only softness in the world.
“Mr. Reese. Your honesty is all that is required.”
“I don’t know,” he gasped.
The click of a handcuff key was dim, unreal. All that mattered was the hand on his head, and that did not falter.
“Well,” Harold murmured. “It’s a start.”
Re: FILL Part 2: We All Fall Down [graphic violence?] [explicit?] [d/s] [Reese/Finch or gen]
Re: FILL Part 2: We All Fall Down [graphic violence?] [explicit?] [d/s] [Reese/Finch or gen]
(Anonymous) 2013-04-29 06:29 pm (UTC)(link)Can't wait to see how this continues.
Re: FILL Part 2: We All Fall Down [graphic violence?] [explicit?] [d/s] [Reese/Finch or gen]