It might be inappropriate to write fanfiction in response to a tragedy like today's shooting in Connecticut, but fiction has always helped me process things where fact can't...

Harold had been buried in his work for hours before he noticed that Mr. Reese wasn't there, and even then, he almost decided he didn't care where the other man had gone. This was more important. He had only the tiniest thread of a back door into the machine, and with Root out there somewhere he couldn't risk widening his way in.

With what had happened today, he couldn't risk leaving it alone, either.

And so, here he was, years after he'd given The Machine away, sitting in an abandoned library miles and miles and miles from its servers, trying to fix a mistake he'd made. He wished absently that he could go back to the way it used to be, could look his computer straight in the camera and tell it what to do, could have a simple conversation with it. Because that was all it would have taken. A few more parameters. A little more specificity about the difference between big and small, terrorist and criminal, relevant and irrelevant.

He knew the rules he had laid out. The rules did not cover this. He hadn't seen it coming, hadn't imagined anything like it. The machine knew what to do with conspiracies. It knew what to do with assassination plots. It knew what to do when sane (or at least mostly sane) people made sane (or at least mostly sane) plans. It knew when to tell the government and when to tell Harold instead.

What it didn't know was what to do when insane people made insane plans or equipped themselves to do insane things without planning them first. Harold didn't know if The Machine had seen this coming. He did know that it wouldn't have known what to do even if it had seen it, because this was on the scale of terror but without the rhetoric or the sense.

Harold reached for his phone and called Reese, but it went straight to voicemail. John had probably taken out the battery. He almost left it at that and went back to work, worming in through his tiny, tiny, hair of a crack to try to communicate to The Machine that something like this could never be allowed to happen ever, ever again. But he couldn't quite. Because he knew how Reese felt about children being in danger. He remembered how Reese had reacted to the McGrady kid, who had been 14 when his number came up, and he remembered even more clearly how Reese had reacted to Leila.

He had been, with the baby in his arms, the most desperate and the most dangerous that Harold had ever seen him. In protection of the infant, he had become terrifyingly single-minded, killing more and wounding less and even putting other people at risk – people who were not children. Harold didn't like not knowing where Reese was right now, because however he had taken this news, however he was reacting to the fact that 28 people were dead and they'd had no warning beforehand, no chance to stop it, it was sure to be bad. Even if Mr. Reese wasn't doing anything dangerous, he was sure to be in a dangerous state of mind.

Harold almost called Detective Carter, and then he almost called Detective Fusco, because he didn't want to leave his desk and his computer and the work he was doing. He didn't call, because they both had children of their own. Children who were alive. Children he couldn't ask them to leave right now, just because he felt guilty for the fact that The Machine hadn't warned him to stop this. He cast one last, long look toward his computer and then rose from his chair, Bear springing up from his basket to join him.

"Come on, boy. Let's go find John." He grabbed the leash, even though he didn't really need it. Something about being physically attached to his large, fierce, protective dog made him feel generally better about things. Today, it didn't make him feel as much better as it usually did. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know where Reese was. He didn't even know where to start.

He started moving anyway, hobbling toward the door. Then he realized that even if Reese could get away from technology, he couldn't get away from everything. Reese would have planned for Harold following him. He would have been careful to go off the grid even more than usual. What Reese wouldn't have planned for was a little old-fashioned tracking, because Reese himself was the one who had that skill. Reese – and Bear.

The dog was clearly confused by the many scents of the city, unless Reese had spent his morning wandering aimlessly. Which Harold supposed was possible, if a bit unlikely. Reese didn't seem the aimless type.

After almost two hours, he was nearly ready to give up entirely, to go back to his computers and pretend he had some idea of how to get the computer to stop this from happening again, as if it would fix the fact that it had happened already, as if he weren't trying to work around his own provisions meant to keep even him from making any changes, as if there were any point at all. Part of him was still sure that he could get The Machine to stop these sorts of thing. Part of him was sure that he couldn't, no matter what he did. Even with all the preparation and forethought and attention and monitoring in the world, sometimes people were crazy.

But then Bear started pulling harder at the leash, as though he had caught the scent, and Harold followed him, scrambling to keep up. His feet hurt. His leg was killing him. The dog was excited, almost pulling him over. He forced himself to follow, because at least it felt like doing something. Something besides beating his head against the wall.

When he found Reese, the man was sitting on the roof of a building across from the inner-city elementary school nearest their library. His feet dangled off the edge and there was a sniper rifle beside him, untouched. He looked depressed more than anything, which Harold wasn't sure he'd been expecting. He'd imagined wild rage much more easily.

Harold wondered briefly why no one had stopped John, why the police hadn't come to check up on a man on the roof, why none of the paranoid people on a day like this had done a thing about Reese's presence. Then he realized for the first time how late in the day it had gotten. He'd been working since the morning, since the news first broke. The school was abandoned now, the kids safe at home. These kids anyway.

It was dinnertime and he hadn't even bothered to eat lunch. He didn't want lunch. He might want a drink. He didn't usually drink, but today . . .

"What are you doing here, Finch?" Reese's voice brought him out of his thoughts.

"Looking for you, of course, Mr. Reese. You took the batteries out of your phone."

Reese looked up at him, eyes glittering as if he might be dangerous underneath the sadness. "I didn't want you to stop me."

Harold wrinkled his forehead. "Stop you from what, Mr. Reese?"

The other man turned to look back down at the empty school. "Protecting them."

Harold had no idea what to say to that. There was no one there. But there would be.

Eventually, he settled for the truth, something he didn't usually resort to. "I don't think we'll have a new number for a while, Mr. Reese. I'm trying to fix something with The Machine. I'm not sure I can even get in, but I'm trying to fix it. You can protect the kids while I do."

Reese nodded. "Thank you, Harold." It didn't sound like much, but it was.

"You're welcome, John. Are you going to stay here all night?"

Reese looked up at him and the answer was written across his face. "I'm going to stay here forever," he said, his voice quiet and dangerous.

Harold wasn't sure whether he meant it or not. He wasn't sure he minded either way. "I'm going to fix The Machine," he said. "We're going to get the next one."

John kept looking toward the school. "One way or another," he answered, "There won't be a next one."

Harold tried to convince himself that it was true. He wasn't sure it was. He wasn't sure of anything. He turned around and hobbled back down the stairs to take a cab home. He needed to get back to The Machine. It could be everywhere at once, like he and John couldn't. And maybe it would be easier to work knowing that, useless as it was, John Reese was watching an empty building, unwilling to abandon the innocents it held inside it every day, even when there was nothing he could do to save them.