“Aww, we’re just getting to know each other. Why so rushed?”
There’s time. They have enough food to sustain themselves for a time, though not forever, and Carver’s always aware of how fast things can turn. And he’s also aware of how goddamn stupid it is to rush anything with a prisoner. People lie. People are selfish, evil things out for themselves.
Carver smiles. He wonders if the security measure, or perhaps just some of them, are on timers. Maybe.
“Hey, what’s your name these days, anyway? I can just keep calling you Egret but that seems cold. We’re getting to know each other, right?”
A new tactic. Singsong familiarity. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. He can always use a knife later, if that fails to produce results. Either way, it’s pretty clear this man wants them at a secondary location. Best not to make it too easy.
The script it is, then. It's like having a conversation with a wall. The one thing that had broken that wall may be too dangerous to risk based on his earlier reaction, except Harold can see this is only going to go one way, otherwise. Prepared to become an absurd grotesque trophy or not, he'd really rather avoid it.
He stares silently at Carver for a long series of moments, weighing his options, completely ignoring the questions he'd just asked.
"I did back up all of my personal files." Because of course he did; and he had hired them at one point, so information about their unit was within what Harold considered personal. "That includes your mother's military record. You needn't take my word for it."
Does he even want that, or has he totally abandoned humanity? It's a test in its own right. Harold has no power in this room, but he has plenty of power elsewhere, and he's giving a chance to prove there's something left there worth saving in Carver. Saving everyone is a privilege he doesn't have anymore.
In another time, another world, Carver thinks he might have gone for it. There’s a part of him even now that’s hungry for his ghosts, for some way to understand the dead and all the echoes they left behind. He enlisted when he was eighteen and thought, okay, she has to talk to me now. We’re the same.
Those were childish thoughts. He has responsibilities now. And selfishness is a sin. You cannot place yourself above the group, above the orders that shape the world.
He tilts his head. And then, quite matter of factly, he draws the knife he wears at his hip.
“Stay on track,” Carver chides. His voice is cooler now. “We’re talking about security measures, remember?”
His mother is gone. What Carver feels about that is irrelevant to the task at hand.
"I thought we were getting to know one another," Harold responds evenly, eyeing the knife with trepidation but refusing to capitulate.
It's not an exceptional sort of enticement, he would admit. She's dead and gone and it won't change anything now to learn more about her. But it does hit, it hits somewhere, which makes him curious. There is still something in there worth saving, he thinks.
"I expect you know that I've done nothing since the fall other than help those who've asked for it, and the security measures are for that purpose. I don't understand why you think I'll treat you differently."
"We've heard about that," Carver agrees. "Thing is, I just don't trust you."
The world's full of liars and weak men. It's a sin to forget the cost of that. They need food, yes, they're always going to need food. But not if it gets them cornered, not if it gets them torn to pieces by the dead or the machinations of men. So it goes.
Carver presses his thumb against the tip of the knife, watching Egret. A false name, sure, but they'll get to that later. "I'm gonna get a map," he says after a moment. "And you're gonna mark a location so my brothers can go scout it out. Better hope they come back in one piece."
Harold thinks about saying that he hasn't killed anyone, ever, not directly -- his deaths are all indirect, and he has plenty of those; but he has never purposefully by his own hand killed someone -- and then thinks about how unbelievable that will be to this man.
"When they do," he says instead, "will you reconsider my offer?" He doesn't specify which one, purposefully.
With utter seriousness, almost comical given that he's tied hand and foot to a chair and his head is ringing and he is believably contemplating a possible future in which he loses a hand: "I will not harm your brothers."
It would be churlish in the extreme to refuse to use the word Carver has himself used for them, so he does.
Carver grins at him. It's not a very nice expression. But what else is there to do except pull mask after mask?
Next time, Carver thinks, he's going to have to try getting loud. This isn't working the way he thought and he worries about Pope's reaction. Interrogations take time, but this -
There's a level of strangeness here that worries Carver.
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Carver says instead. He stands up abruptly, tossing the knife from hand to hand with the careless ease of long practice. Then he whistles, loud and piercing. One of their codes. Come assist, no weapons needed.
A brother whistles in response. On the way.
"Stay tight. Out of curiosity, what's your dominant hand?"
Carver already knows. He pays attention. But that's not really the point of asking in a moment like this.
Physically intimidating Harold is a feat many have accomplished before, and although he never actually became sanguine with violence, he did over time have to become accustomed to the idea that it could be applied to him. He wouldn't have hermited himself so assiduously for so long if he didn't believe there was a real threat behind it.
But no one to date has managed to mentally intimidate Harold Finch.
Rather than masks, he emphasizes different shades of himself, or at most he withdraws. It's an effort to ignore the racing and throbbing of his heart, too-loud in his throat, but the physical is not the same as the mental and he would rather die than be such a coward. The alternative is many others dying instead.
"I write with my right hand, but if you're asking which to threaten me with, either will be effective. I type with both and would be devastated to lose either."
It's absolutely true in every measure, and Harold lays it out plainly, without challenge or expectation. He's starting to make a bet and he's putting the first two cards down, waiting to see what Carver does with it.
"My name really is Harold, by the way," he goes on, laying down another. "But I would prefer if you call me Finch, if you wouldn't mind."
The strangest part of this is he doesn't think this man is lying. Not entirely, at least, not the way that Carver's been trained to see. Which means that this one, Harold Finch or Egret or whoever the fuck he really is, this man is good. This man is fucking dangerous.
Pope will find this one interesting.
Carver narrows his eyes, giving Finch a long look. "You seem to think this is something you can talk your way out of. Why is that?"
"It's worth a try," he says prosaically, looking back at him tiredly, slumping into his restraints. Harold isn't convinced he has a way out of this at all, but he's decided already who he is and what he's willing to do, so in that sense his path is set for him.
"I'm certainly not going to fight my way out."
He's not physically capable of it, but something about the way he says it implies he isn't regretful of that fact in the slightest.
Someone bangs on the door. Carver gives Finch another narrow look, then steps away to order his brother to find a map. There aren't many. This is a precious commodity.
But worth risking, Carver thinks. They're always hunting for food, for medicine. For fuel.
"Hold onto that optimism. You made it this long."
Carver leans back against the wall, sheathing the knife.
It would be extremely impertinent, and therefore unwise, to continue his deliberate prodding in front of others of his group, so Harold refrains. Visibly, his exhausted irritability gets packed away, leaving just exhaustion. He is tired and ludicrously thirsty and sitting for so long in one position is hell on his back to begin with, never mind what else has happened. He's quite certain he couldn't stand up and walk right now even if he wanted to, so it's not a difficult face to put on.
There's no possible way he could fall asleep surrounded by threats like this, which makes him wish sorely and futilely for a safehouse. Any of them. Eventually he'll pass out, but until then...
"You put the knife away, so I'm feeling extraordinarily optimistic," Harold mutters, covertly watching the door for when it opens again and they have company once more.
Carver leans back against the wall, watching Finch with a critical eye. An odd man, but Carver’s broken those before. Odd men, strong men, monsters in the dark. Everything and everyone. When taken to pieces, they largely end up the same. Everyone’s meat and rot at the end and they all have bad dreams. No one sleeps well in this world. Even Matthew—
Don’t, he tells himself. Just don’t.
“I don’t think I smacked you around nearly enough,” Carver observes blandly. He wonders if he ought to just on principle. If Pope will come to observe from the doorway and comment on that, his rebuke calm and reasonable and oh so brutal. “The commander thinks you’re interesting.”
A dangerous state of being. And usually a temporary one. Still, Finch hasn’t gone the way Carver expected. Here he sits, bruised and dirtied, but still taking that same nonsense. Like anyone shares food in a world like this.
Well, what's Harold supposed to do with it? He's only one person, it's not like he can eat it all -- and the idea of making a comparable cult following for himself practically gives him hives just at the thought. When he'd built up those stockpiles, he hadn't thought society would totally collapse like this. He'd tried with the Commonwealth and eventually determined he wasn't giving them unfettered access to his resources, either. Mostly he'd just like to gradually and equitably distribute them in a way that prevents mass rioting, which means he needs to hide and spread out the sources.
He's meat and rot and bad dreams just as much as anyone, but at least he's doing something.
The commander wants him alive and thinks he's interesting... oh dear. Harold really, really hates being thought of as interesting, and has absolutely no desire to come face to face with that man. He'll either have to compromise his morals to get out intact or he'll say some severely indelicate things and come to regret it, and he's not eager to experience either.
Tactically ignoring everything Carver just said, he goes about with being a cooperative browbeaten prisoner. "Like I said, they won't be able to get in, but there shouldn't be anything dangerous in the attempt. I can't speak to the surrounding area in terms of additional threats, but I wouldn't expect anyone to be camped out, either. It's not currently known as a supply cache."
The one he's thinking of hasn't been accessed in years, so that's a bit of an understatement. It also means it has most of the original security measures intact, which Harold is banking on.
A brother bangs on the door. Carver gives Finch a narrow look, then goes to retrieve the map. There are stages to every operation. They can't get stupid now. But he steps forward and unfolds the map all the same, holding it up to Finch.
"Show me," he orders softly. "We'll scout it. And if one of mine dies, you fucking die."
That sounds like a marked improvement compared to his earlier fate of being kept alive and mutilated until he capitulated, but Harold is not about to say that. He also chooses not to point out that however confident he is that his defenses won't kill anyone, he can't guarantee no one would die at all. It's a morbid reality he's been forced to contend with all too much; even Harold has grown weary and cynical about it. It feels like an inevitability.
He keeps trying to save people anyway because it's what Nathan and John would want, but some days that feels harder to remember than others.
Harold had been hoping the question about his hand was going to lead to him having a hand free -- not for any nefarious reason, just because he's starting to lose feeling in them -- but in the absence of that he gives verbal directions. His safehouses were set up in advance of the fall, which means they're not all in ideal locations at this point, and he'd tended to prioritize urban centers. Harold felt much more at home there and it was easier to hire the work necessary to set them up.
He picks one a couple days' travel from their current location, in the outskirts of a major city: an abandoned outpost of Fort Detrick, the U.S. military's former headquarters for research into biological warfare. Harold had felt confident no one would be too interested in prying into such a location even if they knew it existed, and it was conveniently built with extensive existing precautions. Harold's safehouse isn't the whole facility, of course -- it's one area, the one meant for containment of infectious disease samples like Ebola.
It would probably be unclear to the average person that it wasn't housing original samples of Wildfire, too -- something Harold was keen to take advantage of. The best way to hide something was to convince people they didn't want to look into it.
A location is selected. Carver considers, again, beating this man until he fits a more familiar shape. Breaking an arm, at least, maybe taking some fingers. Not for trophies, precisely, but as some concrete proof to Pope and the others that Carver has done his duty. That he didn’t flinch from it. The location on the map is a start but it’s not the end. Not by a long shot.
But then a whistle calls him away, and those steps remain undone. The commander’s been listening, it turns out. The commander wants them to go immediately, forgoing the initial scouting. Carver wants to argue, but Pope’s expression is cold; he bows his head and says he’ll get it done.
He gathers up Finch and four brothers. They consider transportation. They give Finch some rations and water. Not much.
Then they go. Carver orders the others not to speak to Finch unless necessary and he takes charge of the prisoner. If the others are worried about what they might find at the end, they’re good soldiers and they keep it to themselves.
“I suggest you keep pace,” Carver suggests coolly. “Or we carry you and you won’t enjoy that.”
Harold will press and push when he sees a chance, relentless in his resolve to treat Carver and the rest like human beings and not just an enemy, and he can tell himself all he likes that he's made up his mind on who he is and what he's willing to do, that pain isn't an effective motivator for him--
But he's still not going to be reckless. His willingness to die has always been passive rather than active. Something in him keeps trying to go on, even now, when the years keep proceeding and he remains alone, alone, alone.
If this is the end of him then so be it, but he's not looking for it to be. So he keeps his mouth shut and remains compliant as best he can on the journey. Harold isn't completely out of shape -- despite his hermitage he tries to keep himself active enough that he wouldn't be a sitting duck to the animated dead -- but his spine has only gotten worse as the years went by, and he'd just been smacked around a bit, making his limp even more pronounced than usual. He is, however, desperately eager not to be carried, not just because Carver said he won't enjoy it but because he feels practically allergic to physical contact at this point.
(Maybe if he ever saw Shaw again there would be that one single exception, an old member of his short-lived team; maybe his nerves would read her as safe the way nothing else does... but he has no idea where she is.)
This isn't the sort of trip he'd ever make by himself and there's at least a few times he'd have been killed without them handling it. Harold is mute through the violence, obedient and good at getting out of the way. He remembers this role. Hour by hour, Harold doggedly goes on with a grim-faced silent resolve, stumbling a few times, and he sleeps terribly at night on the cold earth because the pain lancing up his leg and back and neck is so sharp and strong it presses tears from his eyes. He keeps a hand over his mouth to keep his possible gasping quiet.
Small mercies that he has plenty to think about to break up the tense monotony, multiple plans circling around in his mind. He goes over them again and again, making up his mind.
Finally they turn down a wrecked and broken street and the complex looms ahead of them.
"We'll have to find a way in," Harold admits, speaking quietly, subdued. He's practically shaking from fatigue but doesn't waste any breath complaining. "I haven't been here in years so I don't know what might be intact or not until we get to the cache."
Time passes. They march. They kill a few rotters and leave their corpses to lie where they fall, more bones to one day crunch underfoot. Their ghosts forgotten. Harold keeps up, more or less. Doesn't even complain, which Carver's mildly impressed by.
Then again, it wouldn't have gotten him anything worth keeping. Harold Finch was a smart man back in the day. He hasn't gotten any sloppier after facing the new world order. There's a reason that Pope didn't order him killed and hung with the others around the perimeter. And the commander's word is second only to God's. This is the work now.
Carver rolls his shoulders, considering the problem ahead of them. It's not a small complex. Then he motions to his brothers, commanding them with hand gestures and whistles. They don't need to speak to be effective in the field. Sometimes, it's better to operate entirely in silence.
He claps his hand around the back of Harold's neck, in the meantime. It's not gentle. "You see that big oak there? Yeah, that one. Any of my people get killed," he explains, almost conversationally. "That's the tree I'm going to hang your corpse from."
The casual manhandling smacks of cruelty, and it's wholly unnecessary. That and the threat together make all of Harold's exhaustion bubble over into frustration, and he has to wrestle with it for a long moment before he can keep his composure as he replies.
"If they get killed it will be through no fault of mine. So please," he says flatly, "can we just get on with it?"
Harold starts ahead tiredly into the complex, hobbling worse than usual. He's wary, cautious, but he keeps going. He's never quite managed to give up, no matter how many reasons he has for it.
"Mr. Carver, I have been trying to save lives since long before the world degenerated into what it is now," he says. "Many times at the potential cost of my own life. Your threats change nothing about my behavior."
Well, maybe they change something in terms of execution, but they won't manage to alter his intent.
Eventually, you hit a point where words don't matter so much. Action does. Carver shoves Harold hard, just to prove he can. This was something they were drilled on in Afghanistan. The inconsistent, petty nature of cruelty. It's about the violence, sure, because violence is the best tool for a broken world manned by broken, evil people. You have to prove that you're the one in control as much as possible, in as many ways as possible. And to do it inconsistently, to break up the comfort a prisoner might take in recognizing patterns.
It's petty bullshit but there's always a purpose. There's always the mission.
"That's nice," he drawls, just to be a shit about it. Teeth bared, eyes bright and alert. "You're not gonna make it easy on us, I know."
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There’s time. They have enough food to sustain themselves for a time, though not forever, and Carver’s always aware of how fast things can turn. And he’s also aware of how goddamn stupid it is to rush anything with a prisoner. People lie. People are selfish, evil things out for themselves.
Carver smiles. He wonders if the security measure, or perhaps just some of them, are on timers. Maybe.
“Hey, what’s your name these days, anyway? I can just keep calling you Egret but that seems cold. We’re getting to know each other, right?”
A new tactic. Singsong familiarity. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. He can always use a knife later, if that fails to produce results. Either way, it’s pretty clear this man wants them at a secondary location. Best not to make it too easy.
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He stares silently at Carver for a long series of moments, weighing his options, completely ignoring the questions he'd just asked.
"I did back up all of my personal files." Because of course he did; and he had hired them at one point, so information about their unit was within what Harold considered personal. "That includes your mother's military record. You needn't take my word for it."
Does he even want that, or has he totally abandoned humanity? It's a test in its own right. Harold has no power in this room, but he has plenty of power elsewhere, and he's giving a chance to prove there's something left there worth saving in Carver. Saving everyone is a privilege he doesn't have anymore.
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Those were childish thoughts. He has responsibilities now. And selfishness is a sin. You cannot place yourself above the group, above the orders that shape the world.
He tilts his head. And then, quite matter of factly, he draws the knife he wears at his hip.
“Stay on track,” Carver chides. His voice is cooler now. “We’re talking about security measures, remember?”
His mother is gone. What Carver feels about that is irrelevant to the task at hand.
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It's not an exceptional sort of enticement, he would admit. She's dead and gone and it won't change anything now to learn more about her. But it does hit, it hits somewhere, which makes him curious. There is still something in there worth saving, he thinks.
"I expect you know that I've done nothing since the fall other than help those who've asked for it, and the security measures are for that purpose. I don't understand why you think I'll treat you differently."
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The world's full of liars and weak men. It's a sin to forget the cost of that. They need food, yes, they're always going to need food. But not if it gets them cornered, not if it gets them torn to pieces by the dead or the machinations of men. So it goes.
Carver presses his thumb against the tip of the knife, watching Egret. A false name, sure, but they'll get to that later. "I'm gonna get a map," he says after a moment. "And you're gonna mark a location so my brothers can go scout it out. Better hope they come back in one piece."
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"When they do," he says instead, "will you reconsider my offer?" He doesn't specify which one, purposefully.
With utter seriousness, almost comical given that he's tied hand and foot to a chair and his head is ringing and he is believably contemplating a possible future in which he loses a hand: "I will not harm your brothers."
It would be churlish in the extreme to refuse to use the word Carver has himself used for them, so he does.
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Next time, Carver thinks, he's going to have to try getting loud. This isn't working the way he thought and he worries about Pope's reaction. Interrogations take time, but this -
There's a level of strangeness here that worries Carver.
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Carver says instead. He stands up abruptly, tossing the knife from hand to hand with the careless ease of long practice. Then he whistles, loud and piercing. One of their codes. Come assist, no weapons needed.
A brother whistles in response. On the way.
"Stay tight. Out of curiosity, what's your dominant hand?"
Carver already knows. He pays attention. But that's not really the point of asking in a moment like this.
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But no one to date has managed to mentally intimidate Harold Finch.
Rather than masks, he emphasizes different shades of himself, or at most he withdraws. It's an effort to ignore the racing and throbbing of his heart, too-loud in his throat, but the physical is not the same as the mental and he would rather die than be such a coward. The alternative is many others dying instead.
"I write with my right hand, but if you're asking which to threaten me with, either will be effective. I type with both and would be devastated to lose either."
It's absolutely true in every measure, and Harold lays it out plainly, without challenge or expectation. He's starting to make a bet and he's putting the first two cards down, waiting to see what Carver does with it.
"My name really is Harold, by the way," he goes on, laying down another. "But I would prefer if you call me Finch, if you wouldn't mind."
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Pope will find this one interesting.
Carver narrows his eyes, giving Finch a long look. "You seem to think this is something you can talk your way out of. Why is that?"
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"I'm certainly not going to fight my way out."
He's not physically capable of it, but something about the way he says it implies he isn't regretful of that fact in the slightest.
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But worth risking, Carver thinks. They're always hunting for food, for medicine. For fuel.
"Hold onto that optimism. You made it this long."
Carver leans back against the wall, sheathing the knife.
"Then again, so did we."
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There's no possible way he could fall asleep surrounded by threats like this, which makes him wish sorely and futilely for a safehouse. Any of them. Eventually he'll pass out, but until then...
"You put the knife away, so I'm feeling extraordinarily optimistic," Harold mutters, covertly watching the door for when it opens again and they have company once more.
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Don’t, he tells himself. Just don’t.
“I don’t think I smacked you around nearly enough,” Carver observes blandly. He wonders if he ought to just on principle. If Pope will come to observe from the doorway and comment on that, his rebuke calm and reasonable and oh so brutal. “The commander thinks you’re interesting.”
A dangerous state of being. And usually a temporary one. Still, Finch hasn’t gone the way Carver expected. Here he sits, bruised and dirtied, but still taking that same nonsense. Like anyone shares food in a world like this.
“We’ll see about that.”
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He's meat and rot and bad dreams just as much as anyone, but at least he's doing something.
The commander wants him alive and thinks he's interesting... oh dear. Harold really, really hates being thought of as interesting, and has absolutely no desire to come face to face with that man. He'll either have to compromise his morals to get out intact or he'll say some severely indelicate things and come to regret it, and he's not eager to experience either.
Tactically ignoring everything Carver just said, he goes about with being a cooperative browbeaten prisoner. "Like I said, they won't be able to get in, but there shouldn't be anything dangerous in the attempt. I can't speak to the surrounding area in terms of additional threats, but I wouldn't expect anyone to be camped out, either. It's not currently known as a supply cache."
The one he's thinking of hasn't been accessed in years, so that's a bit of an understatement. It also means it has most of the original security measures intact, which Harold is banking on.
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"Show me," he orders softly. "We'll scout it. And if one of mine dies, you fucking die."
It's that simple.
time skip perhaps?
He keeps trying to save people anyway because it's what Nathan and John would want, but some days that feels harder to remember than others.
Harold had been hoping the question about his hand was going to lead to him having a hand free -- not for any nefarious reason, just because he's starting to lose feeling in them -- but in the absence of that he gives verbal directions. His safehouses were set up in advance of the fall, which means they're not all in ideal locations at this point, and he'd tended to prioritize urban centers. Harold felt much more at home there and it was easier to hire the work necessary to set them up.
He picks one a couple days' travel from their current location, in the outskirts of a major city: an abandoned outpost of Fort Detrick, the U.S. military's former headquarters for research into biological warfare. Harold had felt confident no one would be too interested in prying into such a location even if they knew it existed, and it was conveniently built with extensive existing precautions. Harold's safehouse isn't the whole facility, of course -- it's one area, the one meant for containment of infectious disease samples like Ebola.
It would probably be unclear to the average person that it wasn't housing original samples of Wildfire, too -- something Harold was keen to take advantage of. The best way to hide something was to convince people they didn't want to look into it.
Sure!
But then a whistle calls him away, and those steps remain undone. The commander’s been listening, it turns out. The commander wants them to go immediately, forgoing the initial scouting. Carver wants to argue, but Pope’s expression is cold; he bows his head and says he’ll get it done.
He gathers up Finch and four brothers. They consider transportation. They give Finch some rations and water. Not much.
Then they go. Carver orders the others not to speak to Finch unless necessary and he takes charge of the prisoner. If the others are worried about what they might find at the end, they’re good soldiers and they keep it to themselves.
“I suggest you keep pace,” Carver suggests coolly. “Or we carry you and you won’t enjoy that.”
And then they march.
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But he's still not going to be reckless. His willingness to die has always been passive rather than active. Something in him keeps trying to go on, even now, when the years keep proceeding and he remains alone, alone, alone.
If this is the end of him then so be it, but he's not looking for it to be. So he keeps his mouth shut and remains compliant as best he can on the journey. Harold isn't completely out of shape -- despite his hermitage he tries to keep himself active enough that he wouldn't be a sitting duck to the animated dead -- but his spine has only gotten worse as the years went by, and he'd just been smacked around a bit, making his limp even more pronounced than usual. He is, however, desperately eager not to be carried, not just because Carver said he won't enjoy it but because he feels practically allergic to physical contact at this point.
(Maybe if he ever saw Shaw again there would be that one single exception, an old member of his short-lived team; maybe his nerves would read her as safe the way nothing else does... but he has no idea where she is.)
This isn't the sort of trip he'd ever make by himself and there's at least a few times he'd have been killed without them handling it. Harold is mute through the violence, obedient and good at getting out of the way. He remembers this role. Hour by hour, Harold doggedly goes on with a grim-faced silent resolve, stumbling a few times, and he sleeps terribly at night on the cold earth because the pain lancing up his leg and back and neck is so sharp and strong it presses tears from his eyes. He keeps a hand over his mouth to keep his possible gasping quiet.
Small mercies that he has plenty to think about to break up the tense monotony, multiple plans circling around in his mind. He goes over them again and again, making up his mind.
Finally they turn down a wrecked and broken street and the complex looms ahead of them.
"We'll have to find a way in," Harold admits, speaking quietly, subdued. He's practically shaking from fatigue but doesn't waste any breath complaining. "I haven't been here in years so I don't know what might be intact or not until we get to the cache."
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Then again, it wouldn't have gotten him anything worth keeping. Harold Finch was a smart man back in the day. He hasn't gotten any sloppier after facing the new world order. There's a reason that Pope didn't order him killed and hung with the others around the perimeter. And the commander's word is second only to God's. This is the work now.
Carver rolls his shoulders, considering the problem ahead of them. It's not a small complex. Then he motions to his brothers, commanding them with hand gestures and whistles. They don't need to speak to be effective in the field. Sometimes, it's better to operate entirely in silence.
He claps his hand around the back of Harold's neck, in the meantime. It's not gentle. "You see that big oak there? Yeah, that one. Any of my people get killed," he explains, almost conversationally. "That's the tree I'm going to hang your corpse from."
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"If they get killed it will be through no fault of mine. So please," he says flatly, "can we just get on with it?"
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"If they get killed," he repeats, almost serenely, "you die. That's not fair or unfair, that's just what's gonna happen."
The world is simple like that.
"Move."
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"Mr. Carver, I have been trying to save lives since long before the world degenerated into what it is now," he says. "Many times at the potential cost of my own life. Your threats change nothing about my behavior."
Well, maybe they change something in terms of execution, but they won't manage to alter his intent.
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It's petty bullshit but there's always a purpose. There's always the mission.
"That's nice," he drawls, just to be a shit about it. Teeth bared, eyes bright and alert. "You're not gonna make it easy on us, I know."