NOTE: Takes place directly after "Number Crunch". (also written directly after the episode; this isn't how it ended up being resolved but I thought it was still worth sharing). Written for Yuletide Gift Exchange 2011.

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John glimpsed the lights of the city smearing beyond the windows of Finch's car. It all made a pattern - light and dark, alternating, but the shadows were wider and deeper than the light.

The lights meant people, good people, who tried to live decently, tried not to hurt people. People like Detective Carter, who tried to protect others, or Judge Gates who wanted to uphold the law and live in peace with his son. Or the lights held people who stole money because they wanted to save their mother's house, or people like Doctor Tillman who wanted to hurt others only to avenge a beloved sister.

But in between the light was the shadow, and those shadows meant people, too. The liars and spies and thieves and assassins… the ones who took and took and never gave back. The ones who lived for violence and sadistic pleasure at the pain of others. Like Elias.

Like himself.

He hadn't started that way. He remembered the boy he'd been, vaguely; it had been long ago. Another lifetime, but he still remembered. Basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring… picnics in the park with the sunlight warm on his skin. There was a golden haze in his memories, making it all seem so inviting. He saw his parents, sister, friends…

Sharply, Finch ordered, "John! Stay with me."

He pulled his scattered attention back, controlling his breathing against the pain. It was a deep burning in his abdomen, flaring at every bump in the road, and his leg throbbed. His eyes wanted to shut, and he tightened his jaw and kept his eyes open, unwilling to pass out. He could feel the blood wetting his clothes and his hands. It was sticky and he could taste it in the back of his throat. The smell was familiar and not at all a surprise.

His mind dispassionately informed him that he was in shock, and he should lie down, but if he did that, he couldn't see out the window, so he stayed more or less upright to stare outside.

"Finch."

"Yes, Mister Reese?" Finch prompted. His voice was tight with worry and he drove the car more quickly than he would normally.

John had to pause to remember what he'd intended to say. Lack of mental clarity wasn't a good sign at all, and considering the abuse he'd taken while a prisoner of various people, he thought he should be handling this a little better. Or it was that bad.

"John?" Finch prompted again.

"I think… I helped." The words took so much air that sparks appeared in his vision.

"There are many more people who need your help, Mister Reese," Finch said, and probably thought he was encouraging.

But John had heard the words before to justify acts which had no justification.

It had started out as "they need our help" or "we help them help themselves". Which sounded good, but all too soon had become "force you into helping us" or "help ourselves to what belongs to you".

He'd started the same - eager to help, eager to protect. Skilled enough to draw attention from his superiors, to earn promotion and medals. More missions. More training. He'd been part of the unit, with his brothers.

Until it had started to shift, becoming less about protecting people and turned to protecting 'interests'. Which also might have been acceptable, except his end of it had already become killing, and the interests had become more personal and distinctly criminal, until he'd realized he was killing the innocent to protect the guilty.

Each step had chipped away at something inside, drowning him in the darkness until he'd been lost in it, feeling his soul, his sense of right, of honor, of all the good wither and die. Until he didn't know whether anything was 'good' or 'bad' or who decided which was which; he could only take each moment as it happened, try to save the innocent and kill those who needed killing.

But that freedom of action needed to be paid for, he knew that. He'd always known that. Standing outside the law bred corruption; he'd seen that with his own eyes. And he was the definition of lawless.

Now his former masters knew he was alive. They wanted to bring their dog back to heel or put him down, and Carter and Finch were in the middle, protecting him. That was supposed to be his job, not theirs.

He pushed himself to say, "Won't go back. Not to them."

"I understand. You won't." Finch promised grimly. "We'll get you out of this. I'll be careful. Hold on," Finch ordered again, sounding more desperate, and he pulled the car into a turn. John fell against the door, choking on the sudden agony burning through him. Finch turned around to check him, looking anxious. "Stay here. I'm going to find help." He rushed out of the car before John could rouse enough to joke weakly,

"Not… going anywhere."

Now that the car had stopped the pain was more tolerable, settling to a nauseating throbbing.

He held up one shaking, blood-stained hand, blinking as it wavered in and out of focus.

Killing hands. Bloodied hands. Some hands healed the sick or brought new life into the world - his dealt only death.

His hand fell back to his abdomen, but he didn't put it back over the wound. Wherever they were, there was no hospital Mark and the Company couldn't find him, now that they knew he was alive.

He remembered the explosion with the satisfaction of a mission well-accomplished. Smoke and mirrors had tricked his enemies into believing he was dead, which gave him the freedom to find Jessica; instead, he'd found that evil was everywhere.

The front door was open; the place dark. Jessica's home was ransacked … her husband had been shot in the head in the front hall… and she lay crumpled in death, her hair trailing across the carpet of the bedroom. Her face held a look of fear. Accusation.

He touched gloved fingers to her cheek and closed her eyes. He stayed at her side, saying goodbye, until he stood up to hunt her killer.

Vengeance brought no peace and didn't bring her back. But at least he'd won himself months of freedom, trying to forget what he was, and then, thanks to Finch and his numbers, he'd spent another few months trying to remember who and what he'd been before that. Was it enough? Could it ever be enough?

When he shut his eyes and tried to remember those he helped, he saw only the dead. So many. Wouldn't that little boy be horrified at what he'd become?

Maybe it would be best to let go. Stop playing God, as Carter had said.

The sunlight was streaming in, the curtains blowing in the breeze with the hint of salt in the air. Jessica smiled at him, raising a hand to beckon him back to bed….

"Oh my God, it's him," a familiar voice reached him, chasing away the dream and the warmth. His eyelids felt heavy, but he managed to open them to see who it was.

She was there. The doctor. The one he'd tried to keep a doctor, by taking out her trash. She was leaning in through the open door of the car and looking at him, with her face knitted in concern.

"He needs your help," Finch said, though John couldn't see him. "But there are some very bad people looking for him, Doctor; if they find out there's a gunshot victim here, they'll find him and finish the job they started."

Her lips parted and John could see the refusal on her face, before her instinct made her reconsider, and she nodded. "Okay, I can get around that. We need to get him inside."

"No," John whispered. "…danger."

But that just made her smile at him a little. "I'm going to help you," Tillman promised and her smile widened. "You're going to be okay."

He wanted to protest. This wasn't right.

But he was too tired to tell them to stop. His eyelids sank shut again, the pull of the shadows so strong he didn't fight. And it was so cold…

The air conditioning in the airport was up too high, but nothing could have warmed him after Jessica walked away. He couldn't ask her to wait, not when she didn't know what she'd be waiting for. He wasn't the man she'd known before, and if she knew what he'd done, she'd recoil in horror. He stood there, waiting for his flight, feeling as if he'd suddenly awakened from a nightmare.

He didn't have to do this. He'd started this to put his skills to work for his country, but there had to be something else.

"Wait for me."

But she didn't hear him.

When he cracked his eyes open, he was on his back, looking up. Lights went by, one after another, but there were no shadows between. He was in the hospital, being wheeled somewhere, and then they stopped.

They cut off his clothes, and a nurse leaned forward, her deep brown eyes kind, while another wrapped his arm to put in an i.v. "You're still awake? Hang in there, sir. We'll get you fixed up."

"No," he whispered, imagining this place as Mark and his fellow well-dressed thugs tore up the place, looking for him. He lifted his head, anxious to leave, and pain and dizziness swirled across his eyes. "Have to go."

"No, you don't," the nurse insisted, and held him down with a hand on his upper chest. "You need to stay right here."

"-don't help," he protested. The familiar feel of narcotics in the drip slipped through him, dampening the pain underneath a layer of cotton, and his voice was nearly buried, too. But he remembered this was wrong. "… things I've done…"

"Oh, honey," the nurse leaned closer so he could see her more easily. She had Jessica's face, gentle and forgiving, even though he knew that was impossible. A warm hand cupped his cheek. "There's no one so lost they can't find the light again." She put her finger across his lips. "Hush now. Rest."

He didn't want to close his eyes, since that would make Jessica go away, but his vision was fading. The shadows rushed in, darkness behind his eyes and deeper within, filling in the cracks.

He'd known it would end like this, from the moment Carter had taken his fingerprints on the cup. He'd let her. Even drunk, he'd known what would happen: she'd run the prints and that would trip a flag at Langley to tell them their lost weapon was alive. With one set of prints, he'd shifted from being a dead end, to a loose one.

He'd been on the other end of the gun before, insuring the target's silence. He knew how it worked. He knew it was inevitable.

He still heard the nurses and Tillman, if from far away, and he considered telling them to stop, but the wish never made it to his lips. His mind was floating now, the pain unimportant, and he thought maybe he was moving.

The lights brightened, turning his eyelids reddish and translucent. If he opened his eyes, would the light chase away the shadows inside? Or would it blind him, and punish him for daring to hope that he might walk in it again?

They put a mask over his nose and mouth and he knew he was about to go under for surgery.

He heard Doctor Tillman's voice in his ear, "Thank you for not letting me do it. You were right. You didn't let me die, John; I won't let you die either."

He remembered the park and watching Judge Gates and his son play soccer, running in and out of the leaf-dappled sunlight.

From a greater distance, like an echo, there was Detective Carter's voice, "Thank you for saving my life."

He took the words with him, little sparks of heat and light, as the darkness gathered him close and he let go.

end.