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He probably shouldn't have gone through the breach, but after the newspaper article Karen had found on him, he hadn't been able to help himself. It was a risk, but it was one he was willing to take just to find out what was on the other side, to see the world another John Reese had lived and died in, the man who had never been found by Finch, who had never been saved.

It hadn't seemed all that much different than this one. He hadn't felt the need for a disguise, expecting anyone who had known this world's John Reese would have known him at the man he'd died as. Homeless, bearded, his hair long and unwashed. No one would recognize him as he was now. He'd wandered through, observed the people who lived here, stopped in at the library to find himself a copy of the newspaper Karen had shown him, then headed out to pick up a coffee before returning to the Darrow where he'd found himself months ago.

Carrying the newspaper with him is perhaps a little dangerous, but there's a part of him that wants to show it to Finch. Everything he'd told Karen about Finch's role in his life had been the entire truth, but he knows he's never been particularly good at expressing his appreciation right to Finch's face, and he thinks the article might encompass everything he doesn't know he has the right words to say.

Without Finch he would be dead. He's long since thought so, but now he has all the evidence he'll ever need.

He's back in the Darrow he's been living in these past few months, reluctant it to call it his Darrow or the regular Darrow as he's heard others refer to it as. John wouldn't call himself settled, he'd been disappointed to find he wasn't able to orchestrate a way for him and Harold to head home through the breach, but he's more comfortable here. This is a city he's investigated, one he's searched, it's a city he's come to know. There's comfort in that.

John might be reluctant to say he's made friends, having never been very good at friendship before Finch, but at the sight of a familiar face ahead, he smiles and lifts one hand in a wave.

"Afternoon," he says when he's close. "How are you?"

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"Didn't have anywhere more pressing to be," John answers with a small smile of his own and he has to wonder now if such things are usual where Peggy is from. They've all had a bit of time to adjust to it, admittedly, but he also can't imagine anyone getting entirely comfortable with it unless they've seen something like it before. Of course, he's making assumptions. She may not be comfortable with it at all, but rather too curious to let the opportunity pass her by.

He knows more than a few people who would fit such a description.

"And you?" he asks. "Anything in particular?"

"Looking for somewhere to eat," she says, thinking it a victory that she's remembered to even have a meal today. There have been so many occasions in which Peggy's allowed her work to simply consume her and forget to eat -- typically lunch, but sometimes dinner. She finds without a roommate, the intricacies of mealtimes pass her by. "I've spent quite a long morning out exploring the other universe."

"That does build up an appetite," she jests.

"So I've heard," John says, knowing he, too, has a tendency not to eat when he should. There are just times when he's too caught up in what he's doing, in what Finch has asked of him, and it's easy to forget something as unimportant as three square meals a day. With the CIA, he'd often been too busy or they had just been out of range, and the only thing to eat had been military rations.

For John, stopping for a sandwich is something of a luxury at times.

"Do you mind if I join you?" he asks. "I haven't eaten yet today and I probably should." Or risk Finch's wrath.

"I'd welcome the company," Peggy agrees, thinking that lonely lunches alone might be fine and all when she'd been eating at her desk, but it does get a touch pathetic in a place where, by all rights, she should have friends.

After all, there's little chance of them being killed because of her here. "Do you have any particular cravings?"

"How do you feel about Thai?" he asks, nodding toward a restaurant up ahead. It's not one of the ones he's tried yet here, but when it comes to food, John can be the adventurous sort. If one can get by on military rations, one can get by on just about anything.

"I can't promise this particular place will be any good, but it's worth a shot," he adds. "I've spent a good amount of my time here so far experimenting with the restaurants. Which is probably a sign it's time for me to get a job."

She stares at him with the look of a woman who's only heard of Thai as a culture and not a food type, given that coming from the past is still causing her to have to sprint to catch up, at times. "If you can explain to me what flavours I ought to be expecting, then of course, I'm in," Peggy says cheerfully.

"Depends on what you order," John says. "They have dishes that can fulfill just about anything you might want. I'm personally fond of green curry dishes, which are on the spicy, lighter side, but they have heavier noodle dishes with sauces that are almost like gravy."

He smiles then and ducks his head slightly to say, "Trust me, it's good."

"My knowledge of food does tend to run more towards the English side of things," Peggy confesses, though she does like to think that she'd be willing to broaden her horizons with ease. "Sausages, potatoes, and gravies do feature quite thoroughly, but pub food had been rather hard to get, where I came from." And then after, when Howard Stark had taken her in, she had her pick of everything, though his taste in food had been ... unfortunate, at times.

After all, no one could like Velveeta cheese so much as Howard could, to which she still didn't understand.

"Would you rather a pub?" he asks. "I'm sure we can find one without much trouble."

English pubs had become popular enough in the last ten years, a new one popping up almost weekly in New York. John has never really understood the trends of food, but then, he does think most people have had the sort of luck he hasn't when it comes to simply enjoying a meal.

"No," she says decisively, "let's find something outside of my comfort zone. I'd much rather find something new," she promises, because it's broadening her horizons that's going to make her better, in general, at becoming accustomed to the future.

She gestures forward, trying to give him a little bit of a lead. "On we go!"

He doesn't ask if she's sure, because if she wasn't, he would have expected her to say as much already. So instead he just leads them toward the restaurant he'd first indicated, then holds the door open for Peggy to go in ahead of him.

"I think after having to live on military rations, anything at all came to taste good to me," he admits. "But I loved Thai even before rations."

Peggy follows after, arching her brow as she regards him. Speculatively, she gives a soft hum as she takes a seat. "I don't know, the chocolate started to taste good after a few years," she deadpans, because it had been pure and simple brainwashing, she believes, that she'd ever thought of any of the rations as tasty.

"To this day, I can't stand the taste of meat broth," she shares as she moves her cutlery around. "And I was lucky enough to be stationed with a very fussy eater with plenty of money to throw around." At least, she had been until she'd gone into the field with Steve's boys.

They would have served in different wars, he knows that for certain, but there's still something comforting about the presence of another soldier. He'd felt it with Shaw, too, that instant peacefulness that encircled them both, making them fast, brutal and efficient whenever they were together.

"I was a grunt," he says with a grin, snagging the menus from behind the salt and pepper, passing one across to Peggy. "We were never really given much of anything special."

Peggy studies him up and down, amusing herself with a grin as she settles into her seat to take the menu. "I trained men like you," she says, her chin up and just a little smug about it. "Usually, I had to beat the smugness out of them because they weren't accustomed to taking orders from a woman. I don't sense you would have had that issue," she observes.

"No," he says, thinking of Kara briefly before he returns his attention to Peggy. "No, that's not something that would have been an issue for me. I was trained by a woman when I first moved from active service to special forced. If I'd behaved poorly, she probably would have killed me."

It's meant to be a little bit of a joke, but it's also true when said about Kara Stanton.

Peggy raises her brow in faint amusement and respect of this woman that he had known. "How long were you in the service for?"

Sometimes, Peggy forgets that even in the SSR, she had technically still been working in the same service that she had served in during the war. "I find it's very hard to turn off, those habits."

"A little over ten years," he answers, keeping the number vague on purpose. He had been in service for a little less than ten when he had first attempted to retire, then had moved into special forces after September 11th and following that he had been with the CIA for too long.

Long enough to get Jessica killed.

"I wasn't quite sure what to do after I retired," he admits with a small smile. "Which is why I became a detective."

"They go hand in hand naturally," Peggy supposes, considering that though she has no badge to hide behind, the SSR developed into a body of investigatory persons. They're really just one step removed from the police, once you add in the spooky and the strange that the regular world isn't equipped to cope with.

"The job transitioned, not me, in my case," she admits. "I served the same agency, but we went from being soldiers to spies, in a manner of speaking."

John nods, looking interested, as if he has no knowledge whatsoever about spies and what that sort of life might mean. What Peggy has done might not be all that different from what John himself has done, but he's still an active spy, even if he's no longer with the CIA. He still serves Harold and, to some extent, the Machine.

"What agency?" he asks, then grins. "Is that something you even can tell me?"

He wouldn't be able to. He's told Karen, but mostly because he had to, because there was no other choice, because she had already seen the article about him. Even here, he doesn't want to put anyone in danger.

"It's called the Strategic Scientific Reserve, that much isn't classified," she's happy to share, given that she knows that there are many things that are and she can't really go on and give much more information, but that ought to do. "We were assigned special projects during and after the war."

She peruses the menu as they speak, thinking that perhaps a little tea will go with whatever she's going to try here today.

It's not a division or an agency John has ever heard of, but given what he's done for a living, that doesn't entirely surprise him. The world carries a good number of secrets and having crossed into a place like Darrow, he's had to accept that number is probably a great deal higher than he'd ever imagined.

"The red curry is nice, though it's a bit spicy," he offers when she looks at the menu. "The green curry would be a bit more mild. And that's which war?" Not any of the ones he's been in, he's sure of that.

It will never cease to be strange to her that people have to ask that question. And yet, at the same time, she doesn't think it should be so odd because it's 2016 here in the future and she's a relic from another age. "It was the second World War," she says, grateful that at least that typically doesn't require more explanation that a name given.

"I don't mind a bit of spice," she says, not really getting the opportunity to have much. "Honestly, some days I think I'll take anything with an overt amount of flavour, to combat all the years with those tasteless things. I still find myself rationing and being conservative from time to time, but I need to remind myself that shaking the war and all the habits are important." Besides, she'd been on that track given Howard's lifestyle and how she had glommed onto it.

John nods his understanding, knowing she'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't know most of what they need to know when she says that. "I was stationed in Iraq," he tells her. "There was an ongoing conflict."

That he's still certain his country didn't really want to end. They wanted to prevent terrorism on their own soil, of course, that's why they created the Machine, but when it came to bringing violence to Iraq and Afghanistan, they certainly never hesitated.

"It is hard, though, isn't it?" he asks. "Shaking the war."

"It leaves a set of scars I'm not entirely sure I know how to cope with," Peggy says cautiously, not wanting to complain. Still, she'd been thrust right back into a pressure cooker of tension that left her always on guard. Colleen's death is proof that when she lets her guard down, terrible things happen. "There are so many things that are better, now that we've put the fighting in the past, but some of them come with new battles."

Especially for her, considering how many jobs and how much respect had dried up when she had returned to the US after the treaty had been signed.

John doesn't believe the human race capable of putting fighting in the past. It's a pessimistic view, perhaps, but Jessica was always the optimist to his occasional misanthropy. It's hard to go to war, to see what people do to one another, to do awful things in the name of protecting your country and not think the worst of people as a whole most of the time.

Individual people, though, that's where John finds real beauty.

"There's always a fight," he says. "Always a conflict. That's what becomes most frustrating. You want to believe you're doing something good, but when you come home and there's still another battle, another enemy... well, that's hard."