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mtxref_fic) wrote2012-05-19 12:27 pm
mtxref_fic) wrote2012-05-19 12:27 pm
[Person of Interest] "Striking at the Head, Striking at his Heel" (PG-13)
Author's Note: Written for Person of Interest, Reese/Finch, the end is the beginning.
Spoliers for the season finale. Plus, I'm also working on the premise that the Machine actually is sentient in its own way, and that it might just be alert enough to be able to help protect the one who is, for all intents and purposes, it's father.
Someone had taken Finch. Someone had snatched him away before he had time to find more about the mysterious little bird that had been perched on his shoulder, chittering in his ear for months now.
Right now, as he stood over the now inert consoles that Finch used to access the Machine -- the monitors blank except for lone white cursors blinking in the lop left corner, like some kind of heart monitors for a creature not made of flesh -- it looked like that partnership and that search was at an end. But if he'd learned one thing in the military and his time in the CIA, it was to treat any complication as a time to improvise, to think a detour around the roadblock that the interfering element threw at him.
This was not the end, no matter who was behind this. This was the beginning of another path. The police, HR, the FBI, Turing -- whoever it was, he was going to draw a circle around them, turning their traps on them, however he could.
And there was one way to do that: use the very thing that Finch and he had been using to help stop things from happening to people who, most of the time, did not deserve it. Finch might be peculiar, a man he simply couldn't read well, a closed book bound with clasps like a medieval Bible, but he did not deserve to be snatched away like a treasure from a museum. Reese was determined to unlock those clasps and find out what that book contained. And he was not going to let anyone get to those secrets before him, whatever it took. Still, he had to recover that stolen treasure first.
Right now, all he had was his wits and his strength, useful things indeed, but he was beating against shadows like a blindfolded fighter, a dreadnought minus its rudder to steer it to its target. He needed guidance, and he knew where to look.
He stepped out of the derelict library where Finch roosted and strode out into the crowd that flocked the streets, passersby going to and fro, hurrying to their various engagements, oblivious to the electronic eyes that watched them impassibly from every lamppost and every traffic light gantry. For a moment, he passed among them, a dark figure like a raven moving through a flock of smaller birds hurrying through the sky. Then he paused, as he had months before on the very same street corner, eying one of the cameras, chin lowered, eyes raised, not baring his neck, like a wolf refusing to submit to an alpha. The red electronic eye within the lens stared down at him, unblinking for the moment.
"He's in danger now, because he was working for *you*," he said, stating the facts. Then he offered the challenge. "So now, you're going to help me get him back."
The red eye blinked out, as if the Machine might have closed it, turning a blind eye to what it had to do.
And then he heard it: the ringing of a payphone -- a rare thing these days when every corner market and convenience store and bodega stocked "burner" cellphones -- not more than twenty feet away, an electronic call for help. He approached it and reached to pick it up...
Spoliers for the season finale. Plus, I'm also working on the premise that the Machine actually is sentient in its own way, and that it might just be alert enough to be able to help protect the one who is, for all intents and purposes, it's father.
Someone had taken Finch. Someone had snatched him away before he had time to find more about the mysterious little bird that had been perched on his shoulder, chittering in his ear for months now.
Right now, as he stood over the now inert consoles that Finch used to access the Machine -- the monitors blank except for lone white cursors blinking in the lop left corner, like some kind of heart monitors for a creature not made of flesh -- it looked like that partnership and that search was at an end. But if he'd learned one thing in the military and his time in the CIA, it was to treat any complication as a time to improvise, to think a detour around the roadblock that the interfering element threw at him.
This was not the end, no matter who was behind this. This was the beginning of another path. The police, HR, the FBI, Turing -- whoever it was, he was going to draw a circle around them, turning their traps on them, however he could.
And there was one way to do that: use the very thing that Finch and he had been using to help stop things from happening to people who, most of the time, did not deserve it. Finch might be peculiar, a man he simply couldn't read well, a closed book bound with clasps like a medieval Bible, but he did not deserve to be snatched away like a treasure from a museum. Reese was determined to unlock those clasps and find out what that book contained. And he was not going to let anyone get to those secrets before him, whatever it took. Still, he had to recover that stolen treasure first.
Right now, all he had was his wits and his strength, useful things indeed, but he was beating against shadows like a blindfolded fighter, a dreadnought minus its rudder to steer it to its target. He needed guidance, and he knew where to look.
He stepped out of the derelict library where Finch roosted and strode out into the crowd that flocked the streets, passersby going to and fro, hurrying to their various engagements, oblivious to the electronic eyes that watched them impassibly from every lamppost and every traffic light gantry. For a moment, he passed among them, a dark figure like a raven moving through a flock of smaller birds hurrying through the sky. Then he paused, as he had months before on the very same street corner, eying one of the cameras, chin lowered, eyes raised, not baring his neck, like a wolf refusing to submit to an alpha. The red electronic eye within the lens stared down at him, unblinking for the moment.
"He's in danger now, because he was working for *you*," he said, stating the facts. Then he offered the challenge. "So now, you're going to help me get him back."
The red eye blinked out, as if the Machine might have closed it, turning a blind eye to what it had to do.
And then he heard it: the ringing of a payphone -- a rare thing these days when every corner market and convenience store and bodega stocked "burner" cellphones -- not more than twenty feet away, an electronic call for help. He approached it and reached to pick it up...
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Love the "Are you there, God" icon that you used in the PoI comm too!
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Thanks again! It's one of my personal favorite icons and it really fit the fic well (I need to swap it onto here).
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Firstly, thank you so much for picking up my prompt over on
It's a nice response to the prompt. I like the idea of Finch "chittering in his ear" and in particular the idea of the blank monitors looking like heart monitors, given that the machine appears to be sentient.
Again, thank you. :D
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My family has kept finches as pets in the past (they're surprisingly tough little critters in their own way), so we've been known to smirk at the bird references Finch uses for his identities, and that one time Reese said "A little bird told me" when someone asked him how he gets his information had us all falling over laughing. Thus, I couldn't resist playing with the bird imagery!
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