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comment_fic: Reese's secret is that he's a werewolf but while Finch passes well for being a regular human there's something... off.
Title: Where The World Grows Thin
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Person of Interest
Characters/Pairings: John Reese, Harold Finch, Supernatural Creatures, Nathan Ingram. John/Harold
Summary: There was something off about Finch. He wasn't another werewolf, wasn't an undead, wasn't anything John could pin down, but there was something wrong about him, and John knew it. He just hadn't imagined quite how wrong it might be, or how much it might cost. Dark paranormal AU
Wordcount: 3200
Warnings/Notes: AU, paranormal elements, death, sacrifice, omens/portents/premonitions
Disclaimer: Not mine
comment_fic: Reese's secret is that he's a werewolf but while Finch passes well for being a regular human there's something... off.Title: Where The World Grows Thin
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Person of Interest
Characters/Pairings: John Reese, Harold Finch, Supernatural Creatures, Nathan Ingram. John/Harold
Summary: There was something off about Finch. He wasn't another werewolf, wasn't an undead, wasn't anything John could pin down, but there was something wrong about him, and John knew it. He just hadn't imagined quite how wrong it might be, or how much it might cost. Dark paranormal AU
Wordcount: 3200
Warnings/Notes: AU, paranormal elements, death, sacrifice, omens/portents/premonitions
Disclaimer: Not mine
Where The World Grows Thin
There was something off about Finch. There always had been.
It hadn't been much more than an instinctive response on John's part, at first, some sense or smell or instinct about the man that raised his hackles, though Finch had seemed human enough. His pulse had pounded too rapidly beneath John's hands for an undead, there'd been no smell to mark him as another wolf or some other kind of shifter, and John had fought enough warlocks to have recognised magic had he sensed it, either.
He hadn't. He hadn't sensed anything. Nothing to make Finch seem anything other than a living, breathing human, albeit one with enough suicidal courage to try and beard a known and unstable werewolf in his lair. And while that didn't speak well of Finch's sanity, it didn't really cast doubt on his humanity.
But there was something, even still. The wolf in him knew it, stirring restlessly beneath John's skin whenever Finch was near. It was something elusive, something as strange and off-kilter and secretive as the man himself, but it was there. It slipped around the edges of John's senses, shied away into his blind spots whenever he tried to focus on it, and it took Finch with it sometimes too. Let the man slip away, let a normal, wounded human turn a street corner and vanish from a werewolf's senses as if he'd never been. Finch's strangeness, whatever the hell it turned out to be, wasn't the product of senses dulled by a drunken stupor or instincts damaged by broken pack-bonds. It was real, and it writhed around them, a shadow dogging the man's footsteps, and now John's as well.
So he'd known. All along, while Finch led him deeper into his shadow world of predicted catastrophes and narrow salvations, while Finch preyed on every protective and hopeful instinct John still possessed in order to fling them into the path of danger. He'd known that there was another shoe waiting to drop, that whatever provided Finch with information no normal human should be able to possess was nothing so banal as some predictive telepathy. Finch was no precognitive. John had seen those too. This was darker than that. This was worse.
Whatever he'd imagined, though, whatever he'd let himself think, it hadn't been this.
"Don't move, Mr Reese," Finch said calmly, one hand extended towards the doorway and John in an easy quelling gesture, only given the lie by the fact that his heartbeat had leapt into the stratosphere and his scent practically oozed with fear. "He's not here for you. I assure you, you're quite safe."
It was almost enough to make John stare at him, almost enough to make him snap his head around and snarl for the man's stupidity, but not quite. Nothing on the face of this Earth could have convinced John to move his gaze from the creature, the thing, that had gathered in the center of the library, grey and cold and looming with silent malice over Finch's suddenly frail-looking figure. The wolf had half-emerged already, claws curled in John's fists and furred ears suddenly flat along John's skull, and there was no predator in the world who'd be stupid enough to look away from this thing.
"Finch," John managed, hard and thin through clenched teeth. "Get away from it. Get behind me."
Finch smiled oddly at that. John saw it out of the corner of his eye. Finch's face creased, something wild and black and desperate moving across it, and in its wake the man smiled a little bit. Darkly, and without much in the way of hope.
"I'm afraid that's not possible, Mr Reese," he said, softly. "The bodach isn't here for you. I am sorry for the disturbance. I hadn't meant to let you ... That is, you were not meant to meet. Or to know. But it would appear that ship has just sailed somewhat irrevocably, hmm?"
John looked at him. He risked it, because despite every instinct to the contrary right now, he didn't believe that Finch would tell him he was safe unless he was. For some reason he trusted, even now, that Finch wouldn't have made him a promise he knew he couldn't keep. So he throttled his instincts, throttled back the wolf, and let himself look away from the monster in favour of Finch.
Who looked back at him, with nothing in his expression save wry censure and a hint of old sadness. There was no sign of the fear John smelled, nor the pain that he could see in the tense lines of Finch's body. Finch looked tired, and sad, and a little bit annoyed, and nothing at all like some shadow creature reeking of an elemental wrongness had emerged from the aether to threaten him.
And it was then, that moment, that John recognised Finch's own wrongness. It was then he realised where Finch's strangeness had to come from.
"... If you mean I'm not likely to forget this, then you'd be right," he said, very slowly. Feeling tired himself. Old. A nice match for the weariness looking out at him from Finch's eyes. "What's going on, Finch? What is that?"
Finch looked away, curling a lip lightly. The monster looked down at him with idle, dispassionate curiosity, as if it wanted to hear the explanation itself. John hated it for that, suddenly. Hated it for the way it didn't seem to care what happened to Finch because of it. Finch deserved better. Even damned, he deserved better.
"He's called a Bodach Glas," Finch said, eventually. Turning back to John, a hand fluttering in the air between them, drawing shapes out of nothing. "It means 'grey spectre'. He is ... You'd call him a harbinger, I suppose. A death omen. He can feel where death is about to happen. He is ... drawn to it. Him and his kind. To the energy of it, when the walls between life and death are traversed."
John drew in a breath, something cold rolling through him. The wolf shrank down, curled back beneath his skin, and he recognised why, now. He knew why the wolf had always bridled at Finch.
The presence of death would do that. Not undeath, not magic. Something far more elemental, far more alien, than either of those.
"That's how you know," he said distantly, recognising the dullness but unable to do much about it. "The mission. All those people. That's how you do it. Not precognition. Not the future. You're sensing death, instead."
Finch shrugged carefully. Twitched. "Not directly," he said, moving stiffly over to his chair and lowering himself carefully into it. The bodach stayed where it was, only watching him move, regarding him with those black, cold eyes. Finch didn't react. He stank of fear-scent, of weariness, but he didn't react. "I can sense the bodach beforehand. I can sense the ... the spirits, afterwards. When I'm too late. When I'm not in time. But I'm not a bodach myself. I can't feel the walls on my own. That's why I ... why I need him. Mr Reese."
He paused, glancing sideways at the dark figure beside him, and John felt horror crystallise, icy and tearing, in his veins. That's why I need him. And earlier, He's not here for you, Mr Reese. The wrongness, the fear scent, the weariness in Finch's eyes. John knew Finch. After all these weeks, all these missions, John knew him. He knew the desperate, suicidal courage that would lead the man to challenge a werewolf on his own, that would end with his throat beneath a werewolf's claws. If Finch had needed the cooperation of a spectre of death still to come ...
"What did it cost you?" he demanded, moving before he'd thought about it, passing within range of the bodach without even a thought, on his way to Finch. The man blinked up at him in pained startlement, flinching as John's fingers curled around his shoulders. "What does he what? What were you planning to give him, Finch?!"
Finch blinked. One hand drifted up, touched hesitantly at John's wrist. Not trying to remove it. Not trying to break free. Just ... touching. Connecting, while something soft and startled, something warm, flickered beneath the weariness in Finch's face.
"... Nothing I can't afford," he said quietly, looking up at John with something bright and almost awed about him. "It has to happen, John. They feed from death, from the energy when the walls are broken. I knew it when I first sensed them. It's why I ... I never dared to challenge them, before. They can see me. They know when I'm trying to deny them a death. So I didn't. Not until ..."
He broke off, looking away, and John tightened his hands around his shoulders. Held on, while something staggered in Finch, and fell away. Secrets. Masks. Finch surrendered, a little bit, and went on.
"You know about Nathan," Finch said, speaking to the shadow of the bodach on the floor as much as John. "You know he died. He wanted me to fight them, John. He didn't fully understand, I think, he didn't know what they were. He thought I was a seer of some kind. But that doesn't mean he was wrong. He thought that no-one should know who lives and who dies without trying to do something about it. To fight, to warn them, to do something. I didn't listen. I was too afraid, I was too much of a coward. And then ..."
John swallowed, straightened up. From the corner of his eyes, he could see the bodach watching them. He could see the past in it the same way Finch could see the future. He knew what must have happened.
"Then you saw a bodach following him, didn't you," he said. Not at all a question, and Finch went still beneath his hands. He felt Finch's head drop, as much as fused bone would allow. "You realised he was going to die. And you think you should have been able to stop it."
"I know I should have, John. I blinded myself to them. I practised not looking for so long that when it mattered, when I needed to, I never even noticed them until it was too late. It was a ferry bomb, John. A suicide attack. I should have been able to see dozens of them, long beforehand, but I didn't. I didn't let myself. I only saw one, and only too late. I saw it touch his shoulder when the bombs went off. I knew before any of us even made it to hospital that he was dead. I knew I'd let him die."
Finch raised his head, looked up at him, and John almost flinched at the expression there. An expression he'd seen in the mirror, when he'd clawed his way out of his masters' betrayal and realised that his blindness had allowed Jessica to die. Finch looked at him, and John should have said something, should have offered something like denial, like comfort, but he couldn't. Because he knew. Because he remembered.
"... What did you do?" he asked instead. Because it was the part that mattered. Because it was what Finch had offered him. "You hired me. You're stopping the deaths, the ones close to us. The ones you can. But you have to use them to do it, and they don't like that. So what did you give them? What did you offer?"
"I offered them a deal," Finch answered, calmly. Serenely, with that odd little smile he had sometimes. The suicidal one. The one that said he knew how damned they were, and always had. "This one, he was the one who touched Nathan. He'd felt Nathan's ... he felt him dying. He knew something of me because of it. I found him. I tracked him down. And I made a deal."
He lifted John's hands from his shoulders. Detached them, carefully, detached himself. He stood up, and for all that John was ten times stronger than him, for all that John had a werewolf's strength and Finch didn't even have a full human's anymore, John found himself stepping back. He found himself letting Finch stand, and letting him walk away.
But not alone. He let Finch walk towards the bodach's silent figure, but he didn't let him do it alone.
"They can taste me," Finch said, looking up into the bodach's eyes, the curious malice there. "For the same reason I can see them. I have an energy. I'm a place where life meets death, just for the fact that I can see beyond it, that I can see the spirits of the dead and the spirits that feed on death. It gives me something of the energy they feed on. It gives me something they want, and that means I have power over them. So long as I'm willing to pay the price."
And Finch was. There'd never been a question about that. Only a question about what it would mean.
"Necromancy," John said, softly. "Or something close to it. Access to death's energies. But instead of ... of making zombies, or vampires, instead of making undead, you let the bodachs feed from you instead. In exchange for ..."
"For the deaths that come from willful harm," Finch finished, without even a flinch for the accusation. "That was the deal. They show me deaths that someone, some willful force, is actively trying to bring about, they let me try to prevent it, and if I succeed I let them take from me the energy that death would have given them. It has ... there's a balance, that way. A justice. I can't stop fate. I can't defy death, not the way Nathan thought, not the way the undead do. But I can stop a murder. I can stop a living act of violence, if I have help, if I know it's coming. I have the power to do that much, now that I'm not running in fear of it any longer."
"... No," John said, with a faint, familiar pain, an old humour. "Now you're just dying for it instead. That's so much better."
But it was, wasn't it? They were dead men, Finch had said to him, when all of this began. They'd died once already, and would again before they were through. Following Finch was a death sentence, and he'd never once denied it. Because John had been dying too. John had known what death meant, and how far it was from the worst you had to fear. Maybe Finch had seen it. Maybe he'd seen Jessica's spirit, maybe he'd seen Kara's, maybe he'd just looked at John and seen the shadow of death behind his eyes. But he'd known, and that was why he'd asked a broken werewolf for help, instead all the better and more reliable people he might have chosen. Sometimes dying was better, sometimes things were worth dying for, and Finch had needed someone who knew that. John realised why, now.
"How long can you last?" he asked, coming up behind Finch and curling his arms gently around him. Finch's breath hitched, a little gasp of pain and relief that all the bodachs in the world couldn't have pulled from him, and John drew him closer because of it. Curled him close, bore him up with all the strength John possessed. "How long have we got, Finch? How much can you give?"
Finch laughed. A wet, cracked little chuckle, leaning back into John's arms. "I don't know," he answered honestly, looking away from his damnation, breaking free from the bodach's gaze, and turning to John instead. Something in his eyes. A wild thing, but brighter than before. More hopeful. "Would you like to help me find out, Mr Reese?"
Will you stay, Mr Reese. Will you help me, John.
Yes. Always and forever, yes. John had failed once already. He'd let one pack, one mate, one love die. Much like Finch, he wasn't letting it happen again. No matter what.
"Well, I suppose I don't have anything better to do," he said, with a casual shrug, and when Finch's mouth twitched in careful laughter John leaned down to catch it with his own. Death hung over their shoulders, watching them with that dark, curious gaze, and John ignored it. John held Finch close, John held him near, and searched for some taste of hope in Finch's kiss.
And it meant something, it meant so much, that in the end he thought he found it.
"You should ... you should step outside for a moment, Mr Reese," Finch managed breathlessly, when John let him go. He stumbled a little, catching it badly with the bad hip, but waved aside John's offer of help. "I have ... We have some business to attend to, my shadow and I. You should wait outside. You don't want to see."
"I see just fine," John corrected lightly, with a flash of wolf for the insult of it. Finch winced, and John shook his head, reaching out to touch his cheek. "It's alright, Finch. You're a private person. I remember."
Finch stared at him helplessly, the bodach a shadow at his side. "John, I ..."
"No," John interrupted, shoving the wolf back once more. Locking instinct away carefully, just for the moment. Finch was too raw for the werewolf now. The man's instincts had never sat well beside John's, too civilised and too alien for the wolf. Not all of it because of death. Some of it, John knew, was just Finch.
"No," he said again, more gently. "You don't want me to watch. I get that, Finch. I know some things are harder when you know someone has to see. It's alright. I'll come back in an hour. I'll be fine."
They both would. He felt that, he willed that, feeling the wolf rise back up all unbidden, claws in his hands and eyes ice-blue as he looked behind Finch and dared the shadow to make it untrue. He didn't know what a werewolf could do against something that ate death, but he promised, with the silent hum of blood and violence, that if anything happened to Finch he would find out. The bodach looked at him, tilted its head, and something strange flickered in alien eyes. Something, a fascination, an appreciation, that chilled John to the bone.
"I'll see you in an hour, then," Finch interrupted, stepping silently between them, a weight of warning in his eyes. For John, not the bodach. Wry, exasperated, pained. Don't challenge death head-on, Mr Reese. Kindly don't blow up the building until after you've cleared it. Honestly. John ducked his head, humour springing unbidden, a well of grief behind it. Finch. Always, always Finch. "Until later, Mr Reese?"
"Yeah," he said, watching the man softly. "Until later, Finch. I'll see you soon."
And he would, he thought. As he left the library, as he closed the door on a man bleeding silently into death behind him. He'd see Finch through until the end. He knew it now, and he'd know it until the moment they drew their last breaths.
John, like Finch, didn't make promises he didn't plan to keep.
A/N: The Bodach Glas is a real mythical figure, much like a banshee, but yes, I did first come across the idea of bodachs from reading Odd Thomas. Heh.
There was something off about Finch. There always had been.
It hadn't been much more than an instinctive response on John's part, at first, some sense or smell or instinct about the man that raised his hackles, though Finch had seemed human enough. His pulse had pounded too rapidly beneath John's hands for an undead, there'd been no smell to mark him as another wolf or some other kind of shifter, and John had fought enough warlocks to have recognised magic had he sensed it, either.
He hadn't. He hadn't sensed anything. Nothing to make Finch seem anything other than a living, breathing human, albeit one with enough suicidal courage to try and beard a known and unstable werewolf in his lair. And while that didn't speak well of Finch's sanity, it didn't really cast doubt on his humanity.
But there was something, even still. The wolf in him knew it, stirring restlessly beneath John's skin whenever Finch was near. It was something elusive, something as strange and off-kilter and secretive as the man himself, but it was there. It slipped around the edges of John's senses, shied away into his blind spots whenever he tried to focus on it, and it took Finch with it sometimes too. Let the man slip away, let a normal, wounded human turn a street corner and vanish from a werewolf's senses as if he'd never been. Finch's strangeness, whatever the hell it turned out to be, wasn't the product of senses dulled by a drunken stupor or instincts damaged by broken pack-bonds. It was real, and it writhed around them, a shadow dogging the man's footsteps, and now John's as well.
So he'd known. All along, while Finch led him deeper into his shadow world of predicted catastrophes and narrow salvations, while Finch preyed on every protective and hopeful instinct John still possessed in order to fling them into the path of danger. He'd known that there was another shoe waiting to drop, that whatever provided Finch with information no normal human should be able to possess was nothing so banal as some predictive telepathy. Finch was no precognitive. John had seen those too. This was darker than that. This was worse.
Whatever he'd imagined, though, whatever he'd let himself think, it hadn't been this.
"Don't move, Mr Reese," Finch said calmly, one hand extended towards the doorway and John in an easy quelling gesture, only given the lie by the fact that his heartbeat had leapt into the stratosphere and his scent practically oozed with fear. "He's not here for you. I assure you, you're quite safe."
It was almost enough to make John stare at him, almost enough to make him snap his head around and snarl for the man's stupidity, but not quite. Nothing on the face of this Earth could have convinced John to move his gaze from the creature, the thing, that had gathered in the center of the library, grey and cold and looming with silent malice over Finch's suddenly frail-looking figure. The wolf had half-emerged already, claws curled in John's fists and furred ears suddenly flat along John's skull, and there was no predator in the world who'd be stupid enough to look away from this thing.
"Finch," John managed, hard and thin through clenched teeth. "Get away from it. Get behind me."
Finch smiled oddly at that. John saw it out of the corner of his eye. Finch's face creased, something wild and black and desperate moving across it, and in its wake the man smiled a little bit. Darkly, and without much in the way of hope.
"I'm afraid that's not possible, Mr Reese," he said, softly. "The bodach isn't here for you. I am sorry for the disturbance. I hadn't meant to let you ... That is, you were not meant to meet. Or to know. But it would appear that ship has just sailed somewhat irrevocably, hmm?"
John looked at him. He risked it, because despite every instinct to the contrary right now, he didn't believe that Finch would tell him he was safe unless he was. For some reason he trusted, even now, that Finch wouldn't have made him a promise he knew he couldn't keep. So he throttled his instincts, throttled back the wolf, and let himself look away from the monster in favour of Finch.
Who looked back at him, with nothing in his expression save wry censure and a hint of old sadness. There was no sign of the fear John smelled, nor the pain that he could see in the tense lines of Finch's body. Finch looked tired, and sad, and a little bit annoyed, and nothing at all like some shadow creature reeking of an elemental wrongness had emerged from the aether to threaten him.
And it was then, that moment, that John recognised Finch's own wrongness. It was then he realised where Finch's strangeness had to come from.
"... If you mean I'm not likely to forget this, then you'd be right," he said, very slowly. Feeling tired himself. Old. A nice match for the weariness looking out at him from Finch's eyes. "What's going on, Finch? What is that?"
Finch looked away, curling a lip lightly. The monster looked down at him with idle, dispassionate curiosity, as if it wanted to hear the explanation itself. John hated it for that, suddenly. Hated it for the way it didn't seem to care what happened to Finch because of it. Finch deserved better. Even damned, he deserved better.
"He's called a Bodach Glas," Finch said, eventually. Turning back to John, a hand fluttering in the air between them, drawing shapes out of nothing. "It means 'grey spectre'. He is ... You'd call him a harbinger, I suppose. A death omen. He can feel where death is about to happen. He is ... drawn to it. Him and his kind. To the energy of it, when the walls between life and death are traversed."
John drew in a breath, something cold rolling through him. The wolf shrank down, curled back beneath his skin, and he recognised why, now. He knew why the wolf had always bridled at Finch.
The presence of death would do that. Not undeath, not magic. Something far more elemental, far more alien, than either of those.
"That's how you know," he said distantly, recognising the dullness but unable to do much about it. "The mission. All those people. That's how you do it. Not precognition. Not the future. You're sensing death, instead."
Finch shrugged carefully. Twitched. "Not directly," he said, moving stiffly over to his chair and lowering himself carefully into it. The bodach stayed where it was, only watching him move, regarding him with those black, cold eyes. Finch didn't react. He stank of fear-scent, of weariness, but he didn't react. "I can sense the bodach beforehand. I can sense the ... the spirits, afterwards. When I'm too late. When I'm not in time. But I'm not a bodach myself. I can't feel the walls on my own. That's why I ... why I need him. Mr Reese."
He paused, glancing sideways at the dark figure beside him, and John felt horror crystallise, icy and tearing, in his veins. That's why I need him. And earlier, He's not here for you, Mr Reese. The wrongness, the fear scent, the weariness in Finch's eyes. John knew Finch. After all these weeks, all these missions, John knew him. He knew the desperate, suicidal courage that would lead the man to challenge a werewolf on his own, that would end with his throat beneath a werewolf's claws. If Finch had needed the cooperation of a spectre of death still to come ...
"What did it cost you?" he demanded, moving before he'd thought about it, passing within range of the bodach without even a thought, on his way to Finch. The man blinked up at him in pained startlement, flinching as John's fingers curled around his shoulders. "What does he what? What were you planning to give him, Finch?!"
Finch blinked. One hand drifted up, touched hesitantly at John's wrist. Not trying to remove it. Not trying to break free. Just ... touching. Connecting, while something soft and startled, something warm, flickered beneath the weariness in Finch's face.
"... Nothing I can't afford," he said quietly, looking up at John with something bright and almost awed about him. "It has to happen, John. They feed from death, from the energy when the walls are broken. I knew it when I first sensed them. It's why I ... I never dared to challenge them, before. They can see me. They know when I'm trying to deny them a death. So I didn't. Not until ..."
He broke off, looking away, and John tightened his hands around his shoulders. Held on, while something staggered in Finch, and fell away. Secrets. Masks. Finch surrendered, a little bit, and went on.
"You know about Nathan," Finch said, speaking to the shadow of the bodach on the floor as much as John. "You know he died. He wanted me to fight them, John. He didn't fully understand, I think, he didn't know what they were. He thought I was a seer of some kind. But that doesn't mean he was wrong. He thought that no-one should know who lives and who dies without trying to do something about it. To fight, to warn them, to do something. I didn't listen. I was too afraid, I was too much of a coward. And then ..."
John swallowed, straightened up. From the corner of his eyes, he could see the bodach watching them. He could see the past in it the same way Finch could see the future. He knew what must have happened.
"Then you saw a bodach following him, didn't you," he said. Not at all a question, and Finch went still beneath his hands. He felt Finch's head drop, as much as fused bone would allow. "You realised he was going to die. And you think you should have been able to stop it."
"I know I should have, John. I blinded myself to them. I practised not looking for so long that when it mattered, when I needed to, I never even noticed them until it was too late. It was a ferry bomb, John. A suicide attack. I should have been able to see dozens of them, long beforehand, but I didn't. I didn't let myself. I only saw one, and only too late. I saw it touch his shoulder when the bombs went off. I knew before any of us even made it to hospital that he was dead. I knew I'd let him die."
Finch raised his head, looked up at him, and John almost flinched at the expression there. An expression he'd seen in the mirror, when he'd clawed his way out of his masters' betrayal and realised that his blindness had allowed Jessica to die. Finch looked at him, and John should have said something, should have offered something like denial, like comfort, but he couldn't. Because he knew. Because he remembered.
"... What did you do?" he asked instead. Because it was the part that mattered. Because it was what Finch had offered him. "You hired me. You're stopping the deaths, the ones close to us. The ones you can. But you have to use them to do it, and they don't like that. So what did you give them? What did you offer?"
"I offered them a deal," Finch answered, calmly. Serenely, with that odd little smile he had sometimes. The suicidal one. The one that said he knew how damned they were, and always had. "This one, he was the one who touched Nathan. He'd felt Nathan's ... he felt him dying. He knew something of me because of it. I found him. I tracked him down. And I made a deal."
He lifted John's hands from his shoulders. Detached them, carefully, detached himself. He stood up, and for all that John was ten times stronger than him, for all that John had a werewolf's strength and Finch didn't even have a full human's anymore, John found himself stepping back. He found himself letting Finch stand, and letting him walk away.
But not alone. He let Finch walk towards the bodach's silent figure, but he didn't let him do it alone.
"They can taste me," Finch said, looking up into the bodach's eyes, the curious malice there. "For the same reason I can see them. I have an energy. I'm a place where life meets death, just for the fact that I can see beyond it, that I can see the spirits of the dead and the spirits that feed on death. It gives me something of the energy they feed on. It gives me something they want, and that means I have power over them. So long as I'm willing to pay the price."
And Finch was. There'd never been a question about that. Only a question about what it would mean.
"Necromancy," John said, softly. "Or something close to it. Access to death's energies. But instead of ... of making zombies, or vampires, instead of making undead, you let the bodachs feed from you instead. In exchange for ..."
"For the deaths that come from willful harm," Finch finished, without even a flinch for the accusation. "That was the deal. They show me deaths that someone, some willful force, is actively trying to bring about, they let me try to prevent it, and if I succeed I let them take from me the energy that death would have given them. It has ... there's a balance, that way. A justice. I can't stop fate. I can't defy death, not the way Nathan thought, not the way the undead do. But I can stop a murder. I can stop a living act of violence, if I have help, if I know it's coming. I have the power to do that much, now that I'm not running in fear of it any longer."
"... No," John said, with a faint, familiar pain, an old humour. "Now you're just dying for it instead. That's so much better."
But it was, wasn't it? They were dead men, Finch had said to him, when all of this began. They'd died once already, and would again before they were through. Following Finch was a death sentence, and he'd never once denied it. Because John had been dying too. John had known what death meant, and how far it was from the worst you had to fear. Maybe Finch had seen it. Maybe he'd seen Jessica's spirit, maybe he'd seen Kara's, maybe he'd just looked at John and seen the shadow of death behind his eyes. But he'd known, and that was why he'd asked a broken werewolf for help, instead all the better and more reliable people he might have chosen. Sometimes dying was better, sometimes things were worth dying for, and Finch had needed someone who knew that. John realised why, now.
"How long can you last?" he asked, coming up behind Finch and curling his arms gently around him. Finch's breath hitched, a little gasp of pain and relief that all the bodachs in the world couldn't have pulled from him, and John drew him closer because of it. Curled him close, bore him up with all the strength John possessed. "How long have we got, Finch? How much can you give?"
Finch laughed. A wet, cracked little chuckle, leaning back into John's arms. "I don't know," he answered honestly, looking away from his damnation, breaking free from the bodach's gaze, and turning to John instead. Something in his eyes. A wild thing, but brighter than before. More hopeful. "Would you like to help me find out, Mr Reese?"
Will you stay, Mr Reese. Will you help me, John.
Yes. Always and forever, yes. John had failed once already. He'd let one pack, one mate, one love die. Much like Finch, he wasn't letting it happen again. No matter what.
"Well, I suppose I don't have anything better to do," he said, with a casual shrug, and when Finch's mouth twitched in careful laughter John leaned down to catch it with his own. Death hung over their shoulders, watching them with that dark, curious gaze, and John ignored it. John held Finch close, John held him near, and searched for some taste of hope in Finch's kiss.
And it meant something, it meant so much, that in the end he thought he found it.
"You should ... you should step outside for a moment, Mr Reese," Finch managed breathlessly, when John let him go. He stumbled a little, catching it badly with the bad hip, but waved aside John's offer of help. "I have ... We have some business to attend to, my shadow and I. You should wait outside. You don't want to see."
"I see just fine," John corrected lightly, with a flash of wolf for the insult of it. Finch winced, and John shook his head, reaching out to touch his cheek. "It's alright, Finch. You're a private person. I remember."
Finch stared at him helplessly, the bodach a shadow at his side. "John, I ..."
"No," John interrupted, shoving the wolf back once more. Locking instinct away carefully, just for the moment. Finch was too raw for the werewolf now. The man's instincts had never sat well beside John's, too civilised and too alien for the wolf. Not all of it because of death. Some of it, John knew, was just Finch.
"No," he said again, more gently. "You don't want me to watch. I get that, Finch. I know some things are harder when you know someone has to see. It's alright. I'll come back in an hour. I'll be fine."
They both would. He felt that, he willed that, feeling the wolf rise back up all unbidden, claws in his hands and eyes ice-blue as he looked behind Finch and dared the shadow to make it untrue. He didn't know what a werewolf could do against something that ate death, but he promised, with the silent hum of blood and violence, that if anything happened to Finch he would find out. The bodach looked at him, tilted its head, and something strange flickered in alien eyes. Something, a fascination, an appreciation, that chilled John to the bone.
"I'll see you in an hour, then," Finch interrupted, stepping silently between them, a weight of warning in his eyes. For John, not the bodach. Wry, exasperated, pained. Don't challenge death head-on, Mr Reese. Kindly don't blow up the building until after you've cleared it. Honestly. John ducked his head, humour springing unbidden, a well of grief behind it. Finch. Always, always Finch. "Until later, Mr Reese?"
"Yeah," he said, watching the man softly. "Until later, Finch. I'll see you soon."
And he would, he thought. As he left the library, as he closed the door on a man bleeding silently into death behind him. He'd see Finch through until the end. He knew it now, and he'd know it until the moment they drew their last breaths.
John, like Finch, didn't make promises he didn't plan to keep.
A/N: The Bodach Glas is a real mythical figure, much like a banshee, but yes, I did first come across the idea of bodachs from reading Odd Thomas. Heh.
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