CHAPTER 12: Delicacy

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CHAPTER 12: Delicacy

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It turned out that a knife was the only thing John needed, after all.

"How many?" he asked Slim as they drove past an array of warped chain link fence and into the small wasteland of an abandoned construction site.

"Five," Slim replied, sucking his teeth. They skidded into park, and Slim started prattling again, launching into the sales pitch he'd been making ever since Viktor Enaşca had disconnected the phone call.

"Hear me out—I can help him, fix him. I'd consider it an honor in fact, if you'd let me—"

John didn't answer, only took Slim by the elbow and with his other hand eased the knife's blade out of the shadows.

"Come out this way, on my side," John said. "You're going in with me."

"Well of course I am, Detective," Slim huffed, offended.

They left the engine running. The sun was almost down; there were no streetlights nearby, and the low huddled shape of the unfinished building was dark as well. Naked steel pylons, never adjoined to a second story, rose out of each corner like tusks.

Slim was not built for stealth; he didn't know how to walk quietly on gravel. And then he started whispering.

"I think you're really underestimating the restorative powers of therapeutic massage, Detective. I admit I'm a little rusty, but—"

"Quiet."

"No, just, listen: There's nobody who can do a better job putting him back together—"

"Be quiet."

"—nobody. Please. I want to have one last—"

Slim's foot slipped noisily into a pothole, and the still night air exploded with gunfire. John dropped to the ground, yanking Slim down with him, searching for the source. But there were no muzzle flashes, no bullets hitting the ground around them. They weren't the targets, and the shooters weren't outside.

They were inside the building. The building where Finch was.

"What the hell is this?" John shouted hoarsely.

Slim shook his head, bewildered, the air knocked out of him from the fall. He pointed to something ahead of them, near the building: a dark sedan, engine idling, parked at an angle near a door.

"Not one of your crew's?"

Slim shook his head again, gasping.

John rose to a crouch, pulling Slim up by the collar and waistband and shoving him forward in front of himself: a shield. It might take him longer to find Finch's room if Slim got shot, but he'd make do. Slim didn't protest.

They rushed to the heavy metal cargo door next to the idling sedan, its reinforced steel lock nothing but a melt-edged crater. John recognized the damage immediately: a grenade launcher. Someone—someone who was not him—had brought a grenade launcher inside the building housing Finch.

"Not a sound," John breathed in Slim's ear, and slipped them silently through the door into a wide, dark hallway. Linoleum floor, cheap drop-tile ceiling: clearly just one hallway among many in what was doubtlessly an echoing, institutional maze. Hundreds of doors, and probably not a single window.

The shooting had stopped. There was a wheeled cabinet parked a few yards in and John ducked behind it for cover. Incredibly, Slim managed to follow him without so much as a squeak of his sneakers.

A faint blue light suddenly cut through the darkness, pouring out through one of the doors ahead as a short figure eased its way out into the hall. Expert: lithe and silent despite the small arsenal it carried beneath dark clothing. John caught a glimpse of pale scalp shining through a tight buzzcut.

Someone else was inside the room where the light was shining. A voice drifted out into the hall: flirty, musical, familiar.

"I get it, I do: your boss doesn't like it when you talk to strangers. But the thing is, we're here. And he's not. And we'd really, really appreciate it if you could help us find our boss. Little guy, glasses, suit worth more than a small car?"

Silence.

"No? Aw. That's a shame. Well, bye!" A lilting laugh cut through the air followed by a single gunshot.

The figure in the hallway stiffened in what was clearly a full-body eyeroll, then said in a scratchy female voice,

"Seriously, Root, are you on something?"

Root stepped into the hallway and crowded against the small shooter, who turned toward her squarely, refusing to budge.

"Just high on you, babe. Mm, you smell gooood."

The tiny cluck of John's mouth falling open was all it took for Root and Shaw to whirl toward him, guns raised.

"Come out slow, hands up," Shaw rasped.

"Yeah, what she said," Root grunted.

"It's me!" he called, putting his hands out where they could see them. He felt suddenly loose and lightheaded with a feeling that was almost—but not quite—relief. "It's Reese!"

The two women made their own sounds of surprise and lowered their weapons as John slowly unfolded himself into view.

"Uh, is there a reason you didn't bring a gun?" Shaw asked, voice heavy with disdain.

A long, angry scar ran from temple to nape on one side of her shaved head. A shorter, older one was set above it at a steep angle. She was bulkier than before: even through her dark, weapon-padded clothes John could sense a harder, squarer core. Thickened lats, traps, deltoids. Her stance and carriage were grimmer somehow; like she couldn't take the ground under her feet for granted anymore; like she was digging a foxhole with every step.

Shaw smirked, gratified by his wary appraisal.

"You look like shit," she told him.

The smile disappeared fast when John hauled Slim into view and her gun snapped up again.

"Who's that?" she hissed.

"One of them. He's going to show me where Finch is."

"And you… trust him."

"About as much as I trust you," John jabbed, and a ripple of something soft went through Shaw's face before it hardened up again.

"She's fine," Root broke in, defensive and shrill. "I saved her. She's not with Samaritan anymore. I saved her. We saved her. She's fine! She's…" she broke off, dazed eyes staring into distance. "She's… magnificent."

Shaw rolled her eyes, looking like she didn't care too much for the word "saved", but didn't comment.

"Okay, then," John said coolly. "I guess that'll have to be good enough for all of us."

And just like that, it was.

Slim led the way deep into the dark labyrinth, stumbling and incautious. They met no resistance for several minutes, and when they rounded a fourth corner John just managed to yank him back by his collar before a spate of bullets peppered the wall behind them. Shaw and Root flew to the front while John urged a terrified Slim forward under their fearless, flawless cover.

It was all so familiar: a shadowy blur of gunfire and shouting; Shaw and Root a perfectly orchestrated duet of destruction; John's focus honed in pure and sharp on the mission's Objective—a Number, usually.

Familiar, but also strange: there was no gun in his hands, light was reflecting bizarrely off Shaw's bristle-grey scalp, and Slim… Slim was no Number.

The frantic man pointed to the third door ahead on the left, and as soon as Shaw and Root had pushed their two remaining opponents past it, John dragged him toward it. Before they reached it the door suddenly opened on its heavy hinges and a slouching figure emerged: the big, young blonde. The door shut behind him as he turned to cringe away from the fight and then John was on him, pinning him to the wall, knife held to his throat.

"Give me an excuse," John whispered, and neatly transferred the gun from the other man's waistband to his own.

Slim had caught up and was busy tapping a code into the door's electronic lock panel. It buzzed peevishly at him and John growled, his eyes unwavering on the young man's dull and skittish face.

"S-sorry," Slim said, wiping his sweating hands on his shirt and reentering the numbers. It buzzed again.

"They changed the lock!" he fumed, casting an injured look at his erstwhile colleague.

John bared his teeth, pressed the blonde harder against the wall, let the blade of the knife sink minutely into his soft throat.

"Open it," he said.

"I—I can't—" the blonde whispered. "Please, you don't understand, I can't—"

John tilted his head skeptically, let the knife sink in a little deeper.

"He'll kill me!" the man bleated. "You have no idea, the... the terrible things, what he makes us do, forces us, or else he'll—and not just me—my family too, my mom, he'll—"

John pressed the palm of his hand against the lying mouth, hard enough to create an air seal. Then he lowered the knife and slid it, slowly, into the groove between hip and belly. He was prepared for the resulting throes and screams and contained them easily with his body.

"Right now all you have is a bad cut—and a hernia," John said gently, as the blonde snorted out desperate puffs of air through his nose, his eyes starting to break out in tiny red lines. "Nothing a few stitches won't fix. But that can change." He gave the knife a little wobble. "Now open it."

John spun him around, crushing him face-first against the wall next to the code panel. The blonde hiccuped and whimpered, then reached for it.

"Please," he sniveled as he typed, "please, he made me—made us do it... had no choice, I swear, please—"

John would have memorized the code, just in case, but the buttons were getting distractingly wet and red— blood on the blonde's hands, layers of dry and fresh across his palms and knuckles; a fine spray down his bare forearm...

The lock snicked open.

From behind him, John felt Slim stealing the gun from his waistband, registered eight different ways of stopping him in the split second it took Slim to lift and aim.

But he did nothing; just watched as the blonde's soft face stretched rigid with animal terror and then disappeared in a flash of fire and smoke.

John took the gun back, kicked the bleeding corpse into the doorway as a prop, and stepped over it into the large room. The light flickered on automatically.

And there was Finch, a rumple of white skin and green cloth, lying face-down by a wall. His face twitched toward them at the sound of the door, one bloodshot eye appearing and straining to bring them into view. A folding metal chair lay on its side, broken, near the opposite wall. John took a brief second to clear the room, sweeping the gun muzzle from corner to corner, and in that instant Slim had blown past him, running to Finch's side—

"—Oliver! Are you all right? Oh, I'm so sorry, Oliver. Oh, I had no idea, I would never—"

—reaching for Finch, almost close enough to touch—

John whirled, caught Slim around the waist, and ended him with an easy twist and a quiet crunch.

Finch's visible eye blinked, flicked up toward John and then back again to Slim's body as it wilted slowly against the floor.

"Oh," he said.

John cast the body aside and knelt down by Finch's head, close but not touching, putting both his hands flat on the floor where Finch could see them easily. His eyes stung: it hurt, physically hurt, holding himself back even this short distance.

"Hey," he said, very gently. "Hey, Finch. It's John."

Finch was still staring at Slim's body, unblinking, pupil dilating and shrinking visibly.

"He talked," he said.

"Shhh. Hey, it's all right, I'm here now." John shifted, blocking Finch's sightline to the corpse behind him. Finch continued to stare, seemingly right through him.

"How did you make him talk?"

Finch's face was bloody, a curtain of red from nose to chin, startling against his pale skin. A shallow pool of it had spread out onto the cement underneath. Above them on the wall there was a trio of red smears at face-level. John moved a hand, slow and deliberate, waiting until Finch looked at it.

"I'm going to check you over now, okay?"

Finch thought about that for a moment, blinking slowly.

"Okay."

"Don't move, though. Okay? It's just me."

"Okay." The eye dropped shut. "Just you."

John didn't see any blood in Finch's hair, but he ran his fingers softly over his scalp to check for swelling. Satisfied, he moved his hands lower, holding his breath and praying that all he'd find was a nosebleed. Gently, he insinuated his fingers between Finch's face and the floor, feeling for damage. Everything checked out: Finch's other eye was intact, there were no gashes in the skin, no broken jaw. Finch took it quietly until John eased two fingers into his mouth to feel for wounds or missing teeth. That drew a low whine from him, and his eyes screwed up tight.

"Easy, Harold," John said, pulling back to rest his hand weightlessly against the back of Finch's head—no pressure, just the lightest of touches against the spikes of Finch's hair, creating a warm cushion of air between the scalp and John's hot palm. "I've got you. It's over now."

As if on cue, a final spate of gunfire sounded from outside and a familiar voice approached, swearing a blue streak. A series of squishy thumps echoed through the hallway: presumably a gauntlet of inconveniently-placed corpses that needed kicking out of the way. Footsteps stopped at the door and John rounded on it, gun drawn so fast Shaw gave him an impressed little "huh" before holding up her hands.

"What the fuck, Reese?" she spat.

"Stay out, Shaw. You're not touching him," John said evenly.

"Like hell I'm not," Shaw snapped, tilting her head to get a look at behind John. Her eyes widened and she surged toward them. John cocked the gun.

"Come one step closer, Shaw, I swear to God—"

"Mr Reese!" Harold rebuked, his voice suddenly crisp.

"Harold," John returned. "Trust me—you're probably confused—she's been with Samaritan this whole time—"

"I recall what happened perfectly well, thank you, Mr Reese."

Root appeared at the door, her eyes wild as a spooked horse's until they found Shaw standing with her hands up, all black leather and indignation. Despite the tense tableau between her three comrades, a beatific smile spread over her face and she clasped her chest, overcome.

"Like old times!" she trilled, misty-eyed.

They ignored her.

"He needs a doctor, Reese," Shaw rasped warningly.

John made a low, miserable noise and found it was the only response he could muster.

"Mr Reese," Finch said, very quietly. John's head twitched to the side slightly, the better to hear. He wanted to turn, to look at Finch. He wanted to so badly. "John. Let them come in, now. We need their help. Please." John made the noise again. "You've done enough," Finch whispered.

His arm dropped, the gun clanking clumsily against the cement. The knot of doubt in his gut turned to water and he bowed over at the waist, shameless. He managed to creep a hand toward Finch, seeking out the thin skin of his wrist, the flutter of living blood underneath.

"I'm... I'm quite at a loss," Finch was musing as Shaw hurried toward him. "Which isn't to say I'm not happy to see you, Miss Shaw. All of you. In fact I—"

"Shut up, Harold," she said, kneeling next to him and shouldering John to the side. "What hurts most? Can you roll over?"

"I'd... really rather not."

"We shouldn't move him," John interjected, dragging himself around to hover over Finch at Shaw's side. "I don't know how we're gonna..." His voice, high and thick, cut out for a second. "His back. That fucking bastard broke his back, Shaw — he broke his back. We could paralyze him, Jesus."

"I think that might be overstating the gravity of the situation somewhat," Harold drawled, and damned if he didn't sound like a professor chiding a misguided student.

"I watched him take you apart," John burst out, then bit his lips together. Finch didn't need to know about that. Not yet.

"Well," Finch said, swallowing. "Well. I'm sorry you had to see that. But. Be that as it may," he went on, drily, "it's my back. And this is not, as they say, my first rodeo."

"This isn't funny, Harold, and you're in shock—" John stopped abruptly and turned to Shaw, his grip on Finch's wrist tightening. "And he's bleeding inside, shit, I forgot—"

"My left side, Miss Shaw," Finch said helpfully, talking over John, frighteningly calm. "Mr Armstrong was nothing if not precise, however; I doubt the danger is imminent—"

"Shut up, Harold," Shaw hissed again, slipping her hand under Harold's shirt, between his belly and the floor, and pressing gently. "Yeah. Spleen. I feel the swelling, but his abdomen's a long way from rigid. He might need surgery, sooner the better, but we've got time. Reese, I need you to get over on his other side—hey! Reese!"

Shaw smacked the heel of her hand, hard, against John's forehead. He blinked and looked up at her, her face resolving slowly out of the haze of green his eyes had thrown up from staring at the slick of blood on the floor by Finch's nose.

"Go. To. His other side," she ordered, pointing with her chin. "You're going to support his back. Come on, let's go!"

"Let's go," Finch echoed, eyes falling shut, his moment of clarity leaking away. "Yes. Let us go. Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table..."

"Yeah, that's really lovely, but we're gonna roll you now, Finch. Sorry."

"But it isn't lovely, Miss Shaw, that's just it," Finch interrupted, his eyes springing open and fixing earnestly on Shaw. "Eliot is elucidating the narrator's romantic deficiencies through the very un-loveliness of his language—"

"We can play school later, Harold," Shaw said, moving to kneel above his head, both hands settling in gently around his neck and face. "Root, stop ogling my ass, and get down here and help."

"I hear and obey," Root intoned, and dropped gracefully to her knees.

"Okay. Everyone ready? Nice and easy now."

Finch gave a little cry as they rolled him smoothly onto his back, and then his eyes began flitting about, searching the room as he muttered under his breath. "Very very nearly a right scalene," he said, slurring. "But alas, falling just this side of acute—"

Shaw leaned forward, her face hovering over Finch's as she slipped a hand under his head and down the back of his neck, checking the alignment. John noticed some more scar tissue over her right eye; when she frowned it popped into view, throwing the blinking of that lid just slightly out of sync with the other.

"Straighten out his legs, slowly, one by one," she told John, whose fingers had again found their way around Finch's thin wrist. "Don't jostle his hip if you can help it, though."

John looked down at his own bloody hands and froze, unable even to swallow for a moment that stretched and stretched.

"Root, dear," Shaw ground out. "Why don't you go out in the hall and get that big guy's coat? Should work okay to carry him in, between two of us."

"Mmm, I think She has a better idea," Root said dreamily, her hand at her ear, and waltzed away in a shimmer of elation and flowing hair.

Shaw breathed in and out slowly, a martyred expression on her face.

"Twenty-one hours I've been putting up with her," she breathed, before turning her attention back to Finch. He had broken off his rambling geometrical treatise and was looking up at her, eyes big and moony.

"You look very pretty upside down," he said plaintively.

"Why Harold, you dog," she teased, but her smile fell flat when she palpated the bridge of his swollen nose with her thumb.

"I think it's broken, Finch," she confessed, grimacing.

"Ah. How very unfortunate."

John ducked his head and listed to the side, suddenly dizzy; Shaw chopped him viciously in the collarbone and ordered him to get to work already. He scooted sideways obediently, waiting until the last second to let go of Finch's wrist. The transition from warm, trembling skin to the cool cloth over leaden muscles made him shiver. He ran his hands ineffectually over Finch's slightly curled legs, wracked with visions of Finch unraveling like a snapped spring if he made a wrong move.

"Okay, not that carefully," Shaw urged. "He's not glass."

John privately disagreed, but made more of an effort to ease the stiffness in Finch's knees.

"...not unlike the structural lines of the Mona Lisa," Finch was rambling, his voice growing wet as blood from his nose dripped down his throat. "Though most art texts will insist on labeling it isosceles: such an unnecessary contrivance..."

Shaw was trying to shush him, her hands on his face, absently running her fingertips down along his five-day beard, smoothing it out where it was matted up against the grain. Above those gentle fingers her eyes burned as they ran over Finch, taking in the rip in the seam of his bloody collar, the intermittent panting that made his shrunken potbelly quiver where it was visible between his waistband and rumpled shirt.

More and more she was looking like she wouldn't mind a top-up on her kill quota for the day. But her touch remained soft.

Finch did eventually quiet under her hands, though he looked more puzzled than soothed.

"Mr Reese... already performed an examination for facial trauma," he informed her, haltingly.

"Yeah well, Mr fucking Reese isn't a goddamn doctor, is he?" she hissed, but her hands firmed up quickly into a more business-like grip around his head as she shifted, repositioning herself beside his shoulder.

"Harold," she said, slipping her hands into his, "try to squeeze for me. Good. Now, can you feel this?" She pinched at his sternum, then in increments down his stomach.

"...In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo."

"O-kay, I'm gonna take that as a yes." She went lower. "What about here?"

He gazed at her, a fleeting tremor complicating the muscles of his face. He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

"Do I dare? and, Do I dare?"

Shaw frowned at him.

"Do I dare... Disturb the universe?"

"Harold?" she said. She pinched harder, at his flank, hips, the tops of his thighs. "Feel anything down here?"

He flicked his eyes downward at her hand, then up at the ceiling.

"No," he said flatly. "Thank heavens."

Shaw raised worried eyebrows at John, who looked away.

"How did you find me?" Finch went on soberly. "How did you know?"

"The Machine," Shaw said simply, and Finch's mouth caved in, trembling.

"It's alive, then," he whispered, a tear tracing a bright wet path through dried blood. "It's alive."

Root appeared in the doorway. Horribly, she was carrying some scavenged parts from the Rig: the body sling, a few loose straps, and the collar. She trotted inside, and John's mouth went dry.

"Oops, pardon me," she said to Slim's corpse, stepping nimbly around it.

Dangling from her arms, a metal clip clinked loudly against its grommet, and they lost Finch completely.

"No," he said. "No. You're dead." His red eyes rolled, trying to get a look at Slim's crumpled form—nothing more than a green smudge to his naked eyes. "And John broke that thing, I heard it break, and he... he stopped you. John... he made you talk, and I think... I think that killed you—"

He was slurring again and his pupils blew wide when he turned his gaze back to Shaw.

"And you," he whispered, "...you died, too."

"No," Shaw said quickly.

"Oh dear," Finch breathed. "Oh dear."

John curled one hand around Finch's again; he held up the other, fingers spread, against Root's approach.

"We can't use that," John pleaded. "You don't understand. We just can't."

"Yes we can," Shaw said grimly, her hand closing like forceps around his elbow. "And we are. Now either help me, or get out."

The sharp stars of pain from his ulnar nerve grounded him, and John started helping.

Finch closed his eyes as they rolled him, pliant and mumbling, onto the fabric of the body sling.

"...there will be time to murder and create... and time for all the works and days of hands... that lift and drop... a question... on your plate..."

As they trussed his arms against his sides, John pushed Shaw's hands away and closed the buckles himself, as quietly as possible.

"...some overwhelming question... "I am Lazarus, come from the dead..."

"I'm not dead, Harold, I'm not, I swear, and neither are you, I'm real, I'm here," Shaw murmured. And then she closed the collar around his neck. Finch fumbled his arms, weakly, trying to squirm away. John took his hands, stilled them with his own. Finch stared up at him.

"...I have known the eyes already, known them all—the eyes that fix you, sprawling on a pin... when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall..."

John and Root each took a side, counted to three, and lifted him. As he lost the floor's support and sailed upward, suspended and dangling once again, Finch stopped breathing for a long moment.

"Oh, oh," he finally wailed. "I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling—silent—in the seas!"

The heavy door creaked as Shaw threw it wide for them, kicking the young blonde's body clear and swearing savagely. John thought he heard her hawk and spit as they rushed past, out into the hall. Finch's whimpers spurred them on through the corridors, Shaw running ahead, leading the way. Root had sobered with the effort of keeping Finch's cocooned body level as she and John rushed forward in some sort of strange, deadly version of a three-legged race.

Finally they were outside. The cold, dirt-scented night air was like a blast of heaven against John's skin and in his lungs.

"Oh my, how invigorating," Finch exclaimed in agreement, suddenly lucid.

The sedan was there, running and ready. Shaw ratcheted the passenger seat forward and pointed at John.

"You, him, backseat floor," she said. "This'll be a rough ride; we need to stay off the grid and the roads on the shadow map aren't always smooth. You're a shock absorber, got it? Hold him still."

John caught on immediately. He snaked his way in and settled on his back, holding out his arms for Shaw and Root to lever Harold in on top of him. The jut of the driver's console was a convenient anchor at their waists; the well between John's chest and throat made a secure notch for the back of Finch's head. John fitted his chin to the top of his head and actually felt Finch relax fractionally. A tuft of scrub-brush hair immediately found its way into John's nostrils.

One of the thick straps immobilizing Finch's torso was completely unacceptably twisted, and of their own accord John's fingers scrabbled at it. Once undone, he couldn't stop, and he threw the rest of the restraints to the side and replaced them with his own arms, snug around Finch's chest. He could feel a rapid heartbeat beginning to slow against the firm, warm pressure between them—Finch's, his own, or both: he wasn't sure.

"You know," Finch murmured, relaxing another increment, "surprisingly, in light of recent events, this is actually not unpleasant."

The car screeched into reverse, and John willed himself to become as jellylike as possible. Finch sighed.

"It was all very lonely, you know."

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Huge thanks and credit to my collaborator and beta, StrictlyReading!

Her ideas, guidance, and encouragement touched every aspect of this chapter

and I couldn't have done it without her!

**Poetry quotes are taken from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot.

PLEASE REVIEW! :)