Chapter Text
I.
Instead of following them immediately, Shaw ducks into the room where the Decima operative is tied up, and Harold flinches violently as he hears Shaw shoot twice again. He's dizzy and blinking as John hustles him out of the house, up and into the woods, careful of his hip and his limping pace, and it's only after a numb eternity of stumbling through the trees, each step too loud, too slow, that Shaw abruptly seems to ghost up beside John, gun drawn but pointed at the ground, glancing over her shoulder.
"Police has moved in. They'll find a botched burglary-murder setup. Doubt there'll be further pursuit, from them, anyway."
John nods, and his eyes are carefully neutral. "Best to lie low for a while. We'll get Harold back to the library. See if you can jack a car ahead."
"Yep." Shaw steps briskly forward, her movements through the shadows near perfectly silent, and it feels as though Harold is seeing Sameen Shaw all over again: not just as the ex-Agent that he has taken in, but what she seems to really be - a huntress, a predator. She had understood the intent of the Machine, and had accepted it: as had John, Harold decides despairingly. John could have stopped Shaw when she had stepped around them. John could have - or Harold himself could have-
He's silent all the way home, Shaw driving, John and Harold in the back. John's sitting oddly close, but Harold doesn't have the energy to make a note of it: he's staring at his hands, instead, nervously rubbing his thumbs over his fingers, and his breathing seems harsh, shaky, and he is grieving, Harold thinks, dimly. This is Harold Finch, grieving the death of innocence: not his, nor Shaw's, nor John's, but the innocence of an entity that had been like a child, and was now something that Finch no longer could claim to understand.
The Machine had been born to commit the first original sin, of knowledge... and now, in its evolution, it had committed the second, of murder.
"A great man in his pride," Harold murmurs, shakily quoting Yeats, as his fingers still, "Confronting murderous men, Casts derision upon supersession of breath; He knows death to the bone - Man has created death."
"He's in shock," John tells Shaw briskly, then Harold flinches again as John presses his big, rough palm over Harold's intertwined fingers. "Harold, you're going to have to lie down-"
"I'm not in actual shock," Harold snaps, and his tone is harsher than he intended, but John doesn't even blink. "Just get me back to the library."
"All right, Harold," John says reasonably, "But you should loosen that scarf and tie, just in case."
"I'm not-" Harold begins, sighs, then irritably tugs at the scarf and then his tie, unbuttoning the top button of his shirt. That doesn't make John relax, but John nods slowly, sitting back against the seat, still too close. He stays close even as they get back into the library, Shaw disappearing to presumably ditch the illegally obtained car, and Harold's briefly distracted by Bear, which whines and nuzzles at his hand and glances between them both, clearly sensing the tension and worried.
"Bear is yours," Harold starts by saying, his voice shaky at first, then firming as he presses a hand against his desk. "I will leave you and Miss Shaw a generous stipend. You may both keep the safehouses that I have set you both up with and-"
"Wait, Harold," John interrupts, and now there's a flash of anxiety on his face. "What are you saying?"
"I told you in the... in the house that if this is where the Machine has gone, then I want no further part of this, of all of this," Harold gestures sharply at the room around him. "I can't assist... It's developed beyond the original parameters that I've set upon it, John. And that frightens me. I built the Machine to save lives. It should not have been able to even begin to prioritize its own function over a person's!"
"All right, Harold," John says, and Harold takes in another shuddering breath as he realizes belatedly that he has raised his voice. "Maybe it wasn't prioritizing its own. Maybe it was prioritizing yours. And mine, and Shaw's, Fusco's, everyone whose life that Samaritan would have threatened by coming online."
"Our deaths were no certainty-"
"And if Samaritan could see everything, know everything, as your Machine does," John rolls on, "Don't you think that it would have found Grace? I found Grace, Harold. So did Root. Do you think that a powerful AI could not have done so, just as easily?"
The world seems to drop away from under his feet, and Harold takes in a high, pained breath even as his hand clenches tightly on the desk beside him, his knuckles turning white. Yes. He had not thought of that. He hadn't thought further than just the immediate variables. What about everything else? If Samaritan was going to wipe the playing board, what about variables like... Fusco's son? Their friends, like Zoe Morgan, Leon and more?
And Grace.
"I think that the Machine was afraid," John continues, in the same measured tone, as though trying to soothe a frightened animal. "And when a child is afraid, it just turns to drastic measures. I think we took too long to figure out what the threat was. I think we can do better next time, maybe, teach the Machine to-"
"To do what, Mister Reese?" Harold asks distantly. "To decide when and where it is right to kill? The problem remains. I made the Machine to protect people. It should not have been able to even conceptualise killing people as an option."
"It shouldn't have been able to 'conceptualise' the need to protect 'irrelevant' people too, should it?" John counters. "Find a way to preserve its memory every night when coded not to? Harold, you created a living thing, for all that it doesn't wear flesh. Shaw understands this, and Root - I understand it. You have to accept that what you've created is life. And it's the nature of something alive and intelligent to evolve. It's the nature of life to want to preserve itself."
"And what happens," Harold says flatly, "When this 'life' evolves into something dangerous? You don't understand, John. For something so powerful as the Machine to desire something like this, to want us to kill?"
"And what did you think happens to the Relevants, Harold?" John asked flatly. "Do you think they're all alive and kicking? Most of them don't get shuffled into Guantanamo, Shaw can tell you. Don't you realize? What you made the Machine do - what it probably thought its function was - was to help humanity find and kill other humans that threaten humanity as a whole. The only thing that surprises me about this new development is that your Machine chose us to handle the Congressman rather than Root."
Stunned by John's words, the only thing Harold manages to say is, "And why do you think it did?"
"Maybe it thought that we could find another way. Or maybe it thought that it was time for us to grow up," John says easily. "That there's two sides to what it does, and it's time that we recognised that. That you recognised that. Tell me, Harold. Knowing that Samaritan going online could have killed us all, perhaps killed Grace, Nathan's son, Fusco's kid, Zoe, everyone who's been involved with us: are you still telling me that Shaw was wrong to pull the trigger?"
"I think that we're dealing in absolutes when the problem exists in possibilities," Harold whispers. "I don't think that murder is the answer - I think that... I think that perhaps, you're right, John. I never understood the Machine at all. And now that I think that I'm finally beginning to, I think that I can't help it any longer, not until I... not until I think this over, not until I..."
He trails off, uncomfortably, and the silence stretches between them both, the distance, and it's after an indefinite and agonised period of nothingness that Bear lets out a soft and whuffling whine at Harold's feet. John blinks, and then he nods slowly. "All right. But you're not going to disappear, are you? Are you going to be okay here?" John's reasonable tone finally cracks: there's a thread of anxiety in his voice, in the nervous tension of his shoulders.
"I once said that I would never lie to you, John," Harold sits himself down wearily at the desk. "So please don't make me answer that question."
II.
It takes another trip to yet another safehouse before Harold realizes grimly that he's stalling. If he wants to be left alone, to be away from the Machine, then he has to leave the country. Go somewhere remote, or somewhere ludicrously crowded... anywhere that even John and Shaw will have difficulty tracking him down. It's only there that he'll have the space to think.
He'll have to leave his safehouses, all the covers that he's carefully maintained... a considerable amount of his resources, his comforts and protections - he'll have to leave John.
Somehow, that's far more disconcerting than the rest of it all, and Harold realizes that he's just spent the last fifteen minutes standing irresolutely before a bedroom closet belonging to Harold Swan. Grimly, Harold uses his new, disposable phone to make a call, taking care of all of his final arrangements, and then he's on his way to a private airfield just outside New York. Just an hour later, he's en route to Charles de Gaulle.
Paris isn't the best of choices for someone who wants to disappear, Harold knows, but he feels off-balance and unsettled enough as it is, and it feels good to attend a concert at the Musée d'Orsay. It feels good to eat at Mirazur, good to sit in the Louvre, in the presence of much that is great and beautiful in the world, even if he's swamped by a tide of humanity. Harold goes off-grid entirely for perhaps the first time in his life.
All in all, he probably shouldn't have been surprised that John managed to find him anyway: a month into his new residence in Paris, while Harold is sitting in the Denon Wing, John sits down on the bench next to him, unruffled and handsome as ever in a long black coat and his suit, his face a neutral cast.
Strangely enough - or perhaps not - the first thing that Harold finds that he feels is a visceral sense of satisfaction. "John," he murmurs, barely audible over the crowd.
"Harold," John acknowledges, and there's a faint tremor to his voice that even his considerable training cannot hide, and that, more than this month of forced calm, decides Harold on what to do next.
He's always been aware of John's... devotion, of course: it's patently obvious, desperate moments with bomb vests on rooftops and snide comments from Root aside. Before, however, the Machine and his self-imposed life's work with the Irrelevant list had seemed so much more important than any personal concerns, and besides, it had seemed wildly inappropriate. Harold, after all, was John's sole benefactor and employer: it seemed like a breach of trust and worse to try and turn that devotion into something more.
"Do I want to know how you found me?"
"This helper monkey is actually competent at field work, Harold, despite what you think," John notes, dry as dust. "And you didn't go to very great lengths to change your habits. If you really didn't want to be found, you probably should have... I don't know, flown to Mongolia and gone riding with the nomads, perhaps."
"Ah, well," Harold grumbles, with a little scowl, and the mask cracks - John grins broadly: he's so powerfully, beautifully pleased to see Harold that Harold actually starts to feel a little guilt about abandoning New York, however briefly. "You took a month to find me, though."
"Actually, I took a week to find you," John corrects. "I respect your choices. You wanted to leave, I could respect that. Shaw did, too."
"Then..." Harold trails off for a moment. "Ah, I see. My number came up. Probably of the alias I used to book the flight."
"Yes." The tremor's back in John's voice.
He's been naive after all. Harold should have known better. He's never been able to escape the world. He should have left Paris within days of landing there, travelled through to the Continent, or disappeared in Hong Kong or Shanghai to live somewhere quietly. He should have known.
"Decima?"
"We presume so."
"The Machine shouldn't have been able to track operations outside of New York."
"It's been learning. All this time." John notes quietly. "And besides, just because its eyes and ears are limited to New York doesn't mean that its mind is. It's tapped into the World Wide Web, after all, and the darknet and more, isn't it? I don't care how it knew. But I'm glad that you're safe."
"We can't fight Decima," Harold murmurs. "They're a very well-resourced organisation. The best we can do is hide from them."
"Fighting them isn't our problem." John narrows his eyes a little. "I gather the Machine decided that it's Root's problem. The last I heard, she might be cutting a deal with Control."
"A deal with the devil to fight a devil."
"Maybe. Not our problem." John's casing the area, Harold notes, watching the crowd with a seemingly casual indifference. Letting out a deep, slow breath, Harold decides to leave. Decima probably wouldn't try anything within the Louvre, but if they did, Harold would never forgive himself if any of the masterpieces got even remotely scratched.
They end up having lunch at Angelina, with its perfect croque monsieur and desserts, as much as John's clearly growing a little impatient. "So what next, Harold?" John finally asks, over coffee. "Mongolia after all?"
"I don't think that I can do any sort of nomadic living with my hip and spinal injuries," Harold says dryly. "But thank you for the suggestion, Mister Reese."
Something shutters away in John's expression, even as he straightens up a little in his chair and toys with his coffee cup. "Hong Kong. Sweden. Mombasa. Or buy an island. That might be best."
"Attractive as the prospect of holing up in an island is, I'm actually coming back to New York," Harold says, and manages not to smile as John's hand freezes over the rim of the cup. "I didn't come here to run away from it all, John. I came here to think. I suppose that it is a good time for me to return."
"I'm surprised that you haven't built yet another world-changing miracle in the meantime, then," John teases, but his heart's not in it: there's too much relief even for his training to hide, this time - it's naked and breathlessly intense in his face, bright with feverish joy.
Harold has an apartment in the Latin Quarter, and the cafes are still busy outside as he unlocks the door to let them both in. He doesn't actually have anything to pack, and he wonders if John knows this, if there's protocol, if perhaps he's misread the situation all along, if it's still too inappropriate. But then John presses close after doing a quick circuit around the apartment to check security, and kisses him nervously on the mouth, brushing and quick, lingering with a low gasp only as Harold tentatively reaches up to get a hand around the nape of John's neck.
They don't make it to the bed: Harold ends up sprawled in an armchair nearly scandalously close to a window, John between his thighs, hands cradling Harold's hips as he sucks him down with a rough and noisy enthusiasm that's hell on Harold's self-control. Harold lets out a hoarse yelp as he feels John's throat compress over the head of his cock and scrabbles at John's shoulders, suddenly so desperate with lust and need that it frightens him.
He's never felt like this with Grace, or with anyone: but of course - this is the first time that he is so naked with anyone, not acting a character, not under any sort of cover or falsehood. John is the first person whom Harold has ever met to have loved his truest self so absolutely and fiercely.
John misinterprets Harold's touch, pulling off with a quick look of concern that turns into smugness when Harold growls and tugs at his collar. "Want to fuck me, Harold?" John purrs, his voice a rasp from the abuse that he's just put his throat through, and when Harold sucks in a sharp intake of breath, John rubs his cheek against Harold's thigh, his lips obscenely red and spit-slicked. "Or, to be more precise, I want you to fuck me."
"The mechanics of such an exercise are going to be rather limited," Harold tries to say without squeaking, but John merely laughs and palms Harold's cock teasingly and smirks again.
"Leave the mechanics to me."
John ends up naked and precariously balanced on Harold's lap, sprawled with limber ease over Harold in the dangerously creaking armchair, and then he sets an palm against the wall and one against the backrest once he stretches himself impatiently and rides Harold with a raw hunger that seems brutal in its pace. John's breath heaves against them as Harold grips his narrow waist, and then he groans and snarls as Harold manages a tentative lick, then a bite, over a hard nipple.
"Harold," John stutters, and then gasps, "Oh Gods, Harold," as Harold experimentally slips a palm down past the small of John's back to the cleft in his rump, and at the first curious press of his thumb against the stretched rim of John's hole, John cries out and spills against him, his cock pumping a wet stripe against Harold's belly, ruining his vest.
John pauses only to catch his breath, then he grins and clenches tight, studying Harold as he yelps and writhes as though committing him to memory, then he starts to ride Harold again, shorter, quick snaps of his hips that are exactly what Harold needs, and he ends up moaning "John, oh, John," when he comes.
The shower's a squeeze for two, but they manage, and then John checks the window reflexively before curling up against Harold on the bed. "How's everyone?" Harold asks tentatively.
"Fine. Bear's doing good, Fusco's helping out more, Shaw has the Irrelevant list under control."
"I'm not sure that I like the idea of an alliance between Root and Control."
"Root can't handle the Relevant list by herself." John's tone is deliberately disinterested, and he presses a kiss against Harold's shoulder even as he speaks. "It's presumably a nationwide problem, not just New York."
"I know." Harold hesitates. "Eventually, the Machine will find a way to increase its current... capacities. Encompass the nation itself, perhaps more. The Irrelevant list will also grow beyond our capacities."
"Yeah." John doesn't sound disinterested anymore: he leans up on one elbow, his expression watchful, almost wary.
"I made something as close to God as many of us would think, and then I set it free," Harold murmurs, "And I am afraid, John, very afraid that it may have never understood the concept of mercy, of the value of all life."
"Then teach it." John points out, as he settles back down against Harold's flank. "Shaw and I may be the helper monkeys, Root may be its prophet, or whatever she is, but I think that you have always been its teacher, Harold. I think perhaps that your rejection of it as anything more than a tool in your operation to save people possibly led to the problem with the Congressman, indirectly."
"John-"
"I think that it's highly dangerous that the only person whom the Machine feels that it can safely talk to - really talk to, person to person - is Root. I think that until you fix that, it's probably a little unfair of you to expect as much of your creation as you do."
"Oh," Harold says numbly, as John grins tiredly at him and nuzzles his arm.
"Can't fault a child for learning bad habits when it only gets bad parenting,"
"You've made your point," Harold concedes, and sighs. The suggestion that John has made is one that he objectively knows that he has been avoiding irrationally for some time. "The truth is, I'm afraid of the power that the Machine has given Root. To have the ear of God - I didn't want that."
"If I could do it for you I would," John says, "But Harold, you're probably the best person I know to do what needs to be done. You taught it to understand humanity. Maybe you need to teach it how to learn from humanity, not just from our data."
"I know." Painfully, stiffly, Harold manages to turn, to get an awkward kiss up against John's forehead which quickly turns into a hungry one as John surges up to meet him.
III.
Eventually John settles for just reading a magazine with a thigh pressed casually against Harold's, and relaxes further with a low sound when Harold tentatively places a palm over John's knee.
"John. When we're home..." Harold trails off, a little uncertainly, then tries again. "About this."
"You're coming home. That's enough for me. Harold, I thought that - when I boarded the flight for Paris - I thought maybe I would be too late. That I'll never see you again. Or that I'll see you one last time before you disappear somewhere else into the world. If you want more: God yes, Harold. If you want take it slow, fine. If you want to forget it happened..." John leans forward, his hand pressing over Harold's. "Fine. If that's what you want."
"I won't be cruel," Harold promises, uncomfortably. "It's just that this is very new to me, John. I've always been... Harold Finch, or Wren, or Crane, and so on. Even with Grace, although that was the closest I've ever been to being me, she's never... well," Harold concludes helplessly.
Grace had never been subjected to Harold's paranoia, his prickly side, his occasional intransigencies. He had never been impatient with Grace before, or unreasonable, or angry. Grace has never known the extent of what Harold has done to the world, of what he had unwittingly done to Nathan. He knows that she would have loved him regardless: probably - but still. The vastness of Harold's secret had sat heavily between them.
"I know," John's grinning again, broad and relieved. "And I get that we have more problems right now. I just want you to know," he adds, as he leans in, to brush his lips distractingly up Harold's jaw, "That you're the best thing that has ever happened to me."
Harold gets very little else done through the flight, and when they land, hours later, he's actually feeling refreshed. Energized, even. He steps out briskly onto the tarmac after hobbling painfully down the narrow ramp steps to see Shaw waiting for them both, leaning against one of Harold's black cars, wrapped up in a coat with her gloved hands tucked into the deep pockets.
"I admit I had some doubts," Shaw tells John, as he steps around Harold to open the door of the car for him.
"That I would come back?" Harold asks.
"That John here could find you at all," Shaw grins, "Or that if he did, that he would even bother to come back with you. I was imagining maybe that he'll just keep on stalking you all over the world."
John shrugs. "Anything came up while I was gone?"
"You could say that." Shaw pushes away from the car. "Root's gone missing. And I think that the Machine is starting to get angry."