Harold limps down the stairs from the roof. He holds his hand hard against the gunshot wound in his side, keeps the pressure constant. He forces himself to breathe in and out normally because if he does not he may start hyperventilating and he cannot afford that right now. The wound in his side stabs and it reminds him of the ferry, of Nathan on a gurney – why is it that his friends always pay the price for him?

Harold feels his breath quickening. He stumbles and nearly falls down the remaining steps. He flings out a hand, dropping the gun he still holds, to plant his hand against the wall, stopping his fall.

"No…" Harold gasps to himself.

He has to make it down the steps, to the elevator and to a hospital. He will not let John's sacrifice be in vain however much Harold wishes that John did not make it.

"John…" Harold whispers then pulls in a deep breath, winces at the pain and keeps moving, leaving the gun behind.

He takes one step at a time; one step and one breath, one step down and further away from John left alone on a roof too far for Harold to stop him. Harold clenches his jaw and focuses on the stairs. Finally he reaches the door to the top floor and half stumbles out into the hallway. The building is empty, evacuated by the Machine despite the lack of need; all just a show for the two of them to save Harold yet again.

Harold stops and leans his hand on the wall as he stares at the tiled floor. He breathes deeply and feels a tear slide down his face.

Harold thinks of hearing John in his ear after John was shot telling him to stay away as Harold drove to his rescue. He thinks of seeing John make eye contact in the train station in Baltimore as Root threatened the security guard. He thinks of John calling his name in Central Park as Harold jumped into the car with Root in search of the Machine. He thinks of the way John looked at him on the bridge when Harold turned himself over for Grace; telling Harold they would come for him. He thinks of John up on the rooftop after Vigilance and Decima. He thinks of John shouting 'Finch' as he jumped in front of a bullet intended for Harold at the stock exchange. He thinks of seeing John appearing alive from the smoke of a Decima shoot out with the Machine in Harold's hand. He thinks of every time John stood in the way, pushed Harold aside, pulled him to safety; too many times to count, too much to ever pay back and impossible to repay now.

Harold smacks his hand against the wall with an echoing clap. "You didn't need to do that!" Harold breathes in sharper, faster and burns his lungs. "You should not have done that, John! It was my turn." Harold blows out a hard breath, shakes his head and smacks the wall again. "It was my turn!"

But it was also John's choice and Harold cannot take that away from him.

Harold rides the elevator down to the lobby, leaning heavily against the wall. Blood starts to drip from his fingertips now. He watches the numbers light up on the display to the right of the doors. Harold wonders if the countdown is for him, counting down the minutes he has left, the minutes he wasted.

Harold limps out onto the side walk and holds his arm up to hail a cab. A yellow cab stops two seconds later beside the curb in front of him. Harold yanks the door open and all but falls onto the back seat.

"Hospital…" Harold groans as he pulls his hand a bit away from his vest to see the expanded blood stain. "The closest hospital."

The driver looks back at him in confusion then his eyes bug out. "Shit… you should call…"

"Just a hospital!" Harold snaps. "Now!"

The driver whirls around and guns the engine just as Harold hears the sound of a missile streaking through the air above him. Then an explosion rocks the ground to their right, a block on the other side of the buildings. The driver gasps in shock, cars honk and Harold stops trying to force the tears back.

Harold walks into the ER, makes it to the intake booth with enough time to say, "Excuse me, I've been shot," before he collapses onto the tiled floor.

Harold wonders oddly about the history of tile becoming a standard for building flooring. He laughs with a wet sound to it as nurses begin to swarm around him. He sees a streak of blood he left on the thick glass of the booth above him. He wants to offer his handkerchief to clean it off.

"Sir?" One nurse's face hovers over his. "Can you tell me what happened, sir?"

Her eyes are blue and her hair reminds him of Harper Rose – or whatever her real name may have been.

"Sir, did you say you were shot? Can you tell us what happened?"

Another nurse tilts Harold's head the wrong way and Harold hisses in pain. The man starts to say something to another person Harold cannot see about a neck injury. Harold wants to tell him not to worry, that is an older mistake than today's.

Instead he says, "Why does everyone keep trying to save me?"

Harold wakes up in a tent; no, not a tent. The fabric around him is curtains, hospital curtains. He hears muffled voices which come from somewhere across the room. He is likely in a shared patient room, two to four beds.

Then the memories from before hit him in a rush – Root, the car chase, the voice in his ear, the virus, a sharp pain near his stomach, John in the vault, John on the roof far away from rescue. Harold cannot stop a small sound of anguish from escaping his lips. Harold shuts his eyes, wants to just sleep. Then he opens his eyes again. No doctor comes to check at the sound he made and Harold is glad for that. He glances around his small curtain enclosure for a clock. A small table beside his bed holds a cup, a plastic jug of water, his glasses and a clock. Harold puts on his glasses and reads three-sixteen AM on the face.

"Good," Harold whispers.

Night shifts at most hospitals are smaller, more over worked and less likely to notice a missing patient right away. Harold pushes back the covers and pulls up his hospital gown. A large white bandage covers his side. From the way he feels, Harold must have a good amount of morphine in his system. Harold shifts around, tests his body for stabbing pains and finds nothing new.

Harold shifts to one side and sets his feet on the floor. He listens for voices in the room but whoever was speaking earlier has stopped and hopefully gone. Harold stands up carefully, one hand still on the bed just in case. His feet hold him. Harold steps slowly from the curtains around his bed. He sees another bed in the room with a brunette woman; her eyes are closed and no one else sits near her. Harold walks across the room to the closet on his side. He opens it and frowns at the absence of his clothes. The hospital must have disposed of them what with blood stains on his shirt and vest.

"You could have saved the pants," Harold mutters.

He pulls the robe from the closet, the only clothing inside, and pulls it on.

Out in the hall, Harold walks as swiftly as he can, his limp less pronounced than usual with so many high grade pain medications in his system, and checks each door for some sort of staff area.

"Are you all right, sir?" Harold stops as a nurse stands in his path. She smiles, kind but obviously tired. "Are you looking for something?"

"Oh." Harold shrugs. "I couldn't sleep and my nurse said I should try to walk around." Harold puts a hand on his thigh. "My leg."

The nurse purses her lips at him. "Who is your nurse?"

Harold shrugs. "Shaniqua? Shakira? Something like that."

The nurse's face pinches in disapproval and her interest level drops dramatically. "Don't stay out of your room for too long, sir." Then she whips around him and continues on her rounds.

Harold continues past the nurse station, currently empty, and sees a door which reads 'staff only.' Harold turns the door knob and walks in without a pause. If he has learned one thing since passing the age of fifty-five, it is that almost anyone will believe you are just a poor, confused older person if you play it right. Fortunately the need for acting does not arise as the locker room is empty. Harold tries two locker doors, both locked, until he finds one which reads 'John Parsons.' Harold stares at the 'John' for two beats then tries the locker. It opens. Harold pulls out a set of blue scrubs, fortunately not made for someone who is six foot two but closer to Harold's size. Two lockers later, he finds a pair of slip on shoes a half a size too small but fine for now.

Harold walks back into the hospital halls, to the elevators, through the lobby and out a side door without one person stopping him to ask who he is or where he is going.

Harold makes his way to an apartment in the Bronx.

(He sits on the subway, smelling vomit from the other end of the car, one homeless person several seats down sleeping lengthwise across from Harold. Harold stares at the man and thinks of John with a thick gray beard and wild hair, wearing too many layers and a face inches away from suicide five years ago.)

Harold had twelve aliases – not counting the many one and done names he created for the numbers –with enough history and property attached to them to be real. Most of these aliases were blown with the rise of Samaritan and the aggression of Decima. However, Harold always has a backup plan within a backup plan. One of his aliases was always disconnected enough from the other eleven to survive any attack or exposure.

So, Harold gets off the subway at Bronx Park East, walks into the botanical garden and finds the hidden metal box with keys and a full wallet under the World of Birds sculpture. (If you're going to choose a theme for your aliases, you may as well go whole hog).

"Hello, Harold Raven." It seems fitting the name he saved for the worst of times starts with an R; just like those he lost.

Harold Raven's apartment is on the fifth floor of the building, with a view of the park and has been rent controlled for ten years. The kitchen is empty of food but the bathroom has pain medication and more first aid supplies than a normal residence should need. The bed is still made, a deep gray duvet; the closet contains three suits and the desk has a laptop from 2011.

"Okay…" Harold sits carefully at the desk, some of the pain medication wearing off now, and opens the laptop. "Let's find out…"

He boots the computer, taking longer than he would like, then begins hacking hospital records throughout the city for descriptions or names that match Detective Fusco and Ms. Shaw. He finds Fusco first at a hospital a couple subway stops away from their Chinatown hideout being treated for stab wounds. The prognosis appears good and not life threatening.

"Good," Harold whispers. "You'll be fine."

Detective Fusco has a son; he should still have his job. Fusco will be able to move on with just the memory of his friends and the war fought. He is a police officer after all; loss of a colleague on the job is not unknown. After all, he lost Detective Carter before, just like the rest of them.

"Where are you, Ms. Shaw?" Harold asks as he types.

No patient record matching her description appears in the system at the same hospital as Detective Fusco. If she was alive and wounded it would seem likely she should end up in the same hospital.

"Unless she left him there…" Harold mutters.

Knowing Ms. Shaw, if she survived, wounded or not, she would avoid the hospital. What with her incarceration with Decima, she had been less inclined than usual toward enclosed spaces or any form of outside control over her actions.

Harold hacks into the NYPD surveillance camera system. It is obviously not the same as the Machine; it has plenty of blind spots. It is, however, what Harold has. Harold stands up and searches the apartment for a second monitor or computer. He wants to be able to look at as many camera locations as possible at once. He finds a second laptop in the living room on the mostly empty bookshelf along with two larger monitors in the hall closet. He sets the two laptops up side by side, an extra monitor hooked up to each. He picks areas around Fusco's precinct and near their subway hideout to start with. He then pushes the chair back and lets them run.

An hour later, Harold sees a short woman appear from between two store fronts in Chinatown; from the entrance to the subway base. Harold smiles. "Good luck, Ms. Shaw."

Harold returns to the living room, his eyes heavy but his mind awake. He should probably find something to eat but it is only after six AM now and he does not feel very hungry. Harold stares around the empty apartment. His side starts to ache and if Harold looks down he expects to see blood. He should not be moving around so soon. If John were here, he would be shoving Harold into a chair or the bed to rest.

"But John is not here," Harold says out loud.

A shudder runs through him and he sighs heavily. That is when he notices the manila envelope on the floor near the front door. Harold frowns. He has no idea if the envelope was here when he arrived or if it just appeared now. He steps over and picks up the envelope. He does not bother to wonder if it could be a trap or anything insidious, he rips the top flap off.

The short, typed note on the first page reads:

–––

WHEN YOU RECEIVE THIS, NO DOUBT, YOU WILL BE ALONE. I AM SORRY WE DECEIVED YOU BUT NEITHER OF US WOULD ACCEPT AN ALTERNATIVE OUTCOME.

WE BOTH WANT YOU TO LIVE AND BE HAPPY.

BUT I FELT YOU DESERVED JOHN'S WORDS AS MUCH AS MINE.

–––

Harold swallows and slides the top page off the others beneath it and lets it fall to the floor with the envelope. He starts to read:

–––

[2012_09_27: 22:19_SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

Do the math and figure out a way to bend your rules because he's my friend. He saved my life. Understand?

I will not do this without him. ]

[2012_10_18: 14:10_SUBJECT_PRIMARY ASSET:

I've spent some time feeling lost.

SUBJECT_SOFIA_CAMPOS:

What changed?

SUBJECT_PRIMARY ASSET:

Someone found me, told me I needed a purpose.

SUBJECT_SOFIA_CAMPOS:

Sounds like a good friend.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY ASSET:

He is.]

[2013_05_09: 19:12_SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

This is the second time Root has been able to get to him. He went with her on purpose?

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

YES.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

noise of surprise He wants to sacrifice himself if it's about the Machine… about you…

Do you want him to live, no matter what? I'm asking you because that's what I want; that is what I am always going to do.

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

YES.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

Then let's make a deal.

[2013_12_31: 20:47_SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

Something you said once. About how sooner or later we'd both probably wind up dead.

SUBJECT_ADMIN:

I prefer later. After all, I'm the one who got you into this in the first place.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

I'm pretty sure I'd be dead already if you hadn't found me.

SUBJECT_ADMIN:

It's hard to say.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

Not really.]

[2014_05_06: 11:47_SUBJECT_RELEVANT_ASSET:

Well, Mr. Payday there was our last lead on Finch. We're back to square one.

SUBJECT_ANALOG_INTERFACE:

The machine says we have other things to worry about.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

Greer has Finch. He's the only thing we have to worry about.]

[2015_01_30: 10:32_ SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

I know you feel the same way about this. You know him as well as I do.

Probably better. You can see his whole life, can't you?

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

I CAN.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

Then you know whenever this ends, he thinks he should be the one to end it.

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

HE WOULD NOT WANT YOU TO SACRIFICE YOUR LIFE.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

It's my life. I can do with it what I want.

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

YOU CAN.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

Maybe he is right, maybe his sacrifice is the right thing to do, but I don't think so. That's not his end. Agreed?

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

YES.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

laugh He thinks he owes me something because I've protected him; I've shot people for him, saved his life but… laugh he's given me five more years than I would have had.

He doesn't owe me anything.

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

HE WOULD SAY THE SAME TO YOU.

SUBJECT_PRIMARY_ASSET:

I know.]

[2016_06_01: 8:13_ SUBJECT_JOHN_REESE:

Can you hear me?

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

YES

SUBJECT_JOHN_REESE:

I know you're with him, doing whatever plan he has for Samaritan now, but you have to promise me. We stick to the deal. We save him.

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

EVEN AT YOUR EXPENSE?

SUBJECT_JOHN_REESE:

Yes.

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

IF IT THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT. YES.

SUBJECT_JOHN_REESE:

Thank you.

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

I KNOW YOU LOVE HIM TOO.

SUBJECT_JOHN_REESE:

I do.

He… he cares enough to want to save me, not just use me, and I don't think he's ever known how different that is. He really doesn't know how much he's done.

SUBJECT_CORE_FUNCTION:

HE WILL MISS YOU.

SUBJECT_JOHN_REESE:

sigh He saved my life, he's kept on saving it, and I am going to pay him back, no matter what.]

–––

By the time Harold reaches the last page, the last transcript, he has sunk to the floor with his back against the old brown couch of the living room. The papers lie where they fell from his hands around him, almost in a complete circle. Tear lines streak his face and the wound in his side throbs. But Harold only focuses on the papers. He still clutches the last page in his hand, declarations between the two beings who maybe loved him most of all.

"You didn't have to do this," Harold whispers.

But he is wrong. There was no way John would have let him take the bullet. That was why Harold tried to lock him in the vault. He just didn't bargain on the Machine having a say too.

John always chose Harold, chose Harold's life no matter how many times Harold dragged him back. And the Machine did say John was living on borrowed time. Harold just never thought of it that way; he thought he had saved John for good, not just for himself.

Harold stares down at the paper – you love him too – he saved my life – I am going to pay him back.

They want him to live. John wants Harold to keep on living, to have a real life.

"Okay," Harold says to the air and drops the last sheet of paper down with the others. "Okay, John."