A/N: Hey guys! It's been fun, but this is the last chapter! Really short just to wrap it all up. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Anyway, this is an ending I had written back when I wrote the first chapter in January, with some additions and alterations of course. Obviously a lot has changed in the show since I started this, so it's AU. Haha. Enjoy! –Freddie

Chapter 13: The Caged Bird Sings

Hospitals were out of the question, but luckily for Finch, his nephew was a pretty damn good substitute. It wasn't as hard as one might think to cover up their mess. Shawn was shot with Carter's gun and both Carter and Fusco claimed they'd been in the right place at the right time to catch him breaking into the abandoned building. They claimed Shawn had aimed his gun at them and so the inevitable came to pass. Of course, Reese, Will, and Finch were long gone before Carter called for backup.

Will wasn't in the best of moods about the whole sticky affair, but he found it a little hard to be mad after all that had happened. Once Finch had recovered, he offered to come clean and tell Will everything, but he only shook his head and said: "No, I think whatever secret you're keeping should stay a secret. I…trust you on this one."

Finch was more than happy to oblige and didn't push the matter. It was then that Will voiced his intentions of disappearing for a while. He couldn't argue with him and it was not but a few more days before his nephew had left the city, most likely left the country. Finch didn't blame him.

Before Finch's own disappearance, Nathan Ingram told him to never come back, but come back to the company Finch did when he felt it safe to do so, at first failing attempts to save people and torturing himself with his wall of numbers turned faces. But that was the past. This was now. Now, he had Reese and together they were successful. He hated to think about how even that had almost come to an end.

"This was only the first of many attempts to stop us, Finch." Reese said. "We're playing with more than fire, here. We're playing Lethal Weapon. You almost got yourself killed."

"And so did you, remember?"

"I've already been killed, remember?"

"And so have I, Mr. Reese." Finch remarked. "My own partner was the one to do it."

Reese stared openly at him. "Why?"

"Because he knew that if he was the one to kill me then he could also save me, as well as his family." He explained. "His number came up on the machine. I ran after him, straight in front of a delivery truck. He told me that he had planned it that way, that it was because he had planned to kill me that his number came up."

"Why didn't your number come up?"

"Who's to say? My number's not in the system. I took it out." Finch shrugged, which was met with a slight smirk and an impressed nod from Reese. "He said that someone from the NSA had approached him at home, telling him they were going to kill him so no one else would know about the machine. Understandably, he tried to find an out."

"That coward." Reese breathed angrily and Finch shook his head.

"No, that man was my friend and killing me was the least cowardly thing he could ever do. He submitted himself to an agency that was holding his life by a thread, even when I was the one who created it all..." Finch sighed and Reese cocked his head to the side, prodding him to go on. "He had spiked my drink that morning just before I was hit.

"He told me they'd put on a show and hide me, but not before he charged me with continuing to use the machine in secret, to save people like he had wanted. I tried and tried for two years before he too was finally killed by the same agency we had served, all in the name of patriotism..." He paused somberly.

"Are you sure you want to keep going on like this?" Reese asked gently, but Finch didn't answer right away.

Instead he looked up from his screen at the little flight-less bird as it chirped melodically in its ornate cage beside him. Finch often felt like a caged bird, caged by his injury, caged by his identities—and a similar lack thereof—but that couldn't and wouldn't stop him from doing the right thing. The Machine was the song that gave this caged bird his worth, and he would never stop until the day fate found him unable.

At Finch's own rebellious smile, Reese broke into a wide, fox like grin.

"Does not the caged bird still sing, Mr. Reese?"