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eden

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While he and Finch are still working on getting their team together, still moving toward having a suitable environment from which to operate and trying to tie up any odds and ends in the world -- like getting John Riley his proper and fake ID to replace the ID in the name John Reese that Darrow had supplied him with -- he still finds himself watching Darrow in the same manner in which he used to watch New York.

It'll be some days before he has the new ID and therefore a few days still before he can walk into a police precinct and speak to someone about getting a job as Detective John Riley, but it's still a hard habit to break. Watching people. Watching his surrounding to make sure he isn't being tailed. So far Darrow has done nothing to make him think Samaritan has followed them here and he's sure the system wouldn't lie this low for such a long time, but he hasn't entirely let down his guard. Not yet.

He doesn't break into their neighbours' apartments looking for bugs any longer, but he does occasionally walk by the other buildings he knows transplants to be shuffled into. It's interesting, as Jessica pointed out, that they're all in the same buildings and not spread out across the city.

It's easy enough, too, to act as if he's a prospective renter, and when a pretty young woman comes out of High Gate Terrace, he smiles at her, easy and curious, and asks, "How do you like it here?"

Then, appearing flustered, he laughs and says, "Sorry. I'm just... thinking about moving is all. I have a friend who lives here, but I think he might say anything to get me to move closer, so I'm just wondering what a stranger thinks of the place."

And if asked, he can easily cite Laurent as said friend. They have to be friends now, although the rest is a lie, Laurent having never asked John to move any closer.

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"There's a cafe nearby," he says. "If you have the time."

John knows the city better than a lot of people in Darrow simply due to the fact that he'd done so much surveillance in those first few weeks since his arrival. Even now he's on the lookout, making sure there's no one following them, taking care to fly under the radar as best he can and make sure Finch does the same. As a result, though, he knows restaurants and bars and coffee shops in every neighbourhood in Darrow, even the ones in which it would appear he doesn't spend much time.

"I'm still waiting for paperwork to come through, so I'm admittedly unemployed. I have all the time in the world," he admits with a laugh.

"I work later in the day," Eden says. "I was just going to go to the store, but I'm free." Her grocery shopping isn't urgent, and she'll still have time before work even with a stop for coffee and a chat. For the last year, she's felt so cooped up by her own sadness that it's a relief just to talk to someone new, to find she still remembers how. It's different than meeting her Rocky Horror castmates, where they all immediately had a common ground and shared work to occupy them as a topic of conversation.

"What kind of work do you do when you are employed?"

"I was military for most of my twenties and thirties," he says, then smiles slightly. "Alright, I was a bit of a troublemaker in my twenties and was offered service instead of jail time for some stupid stunt I pulled. I took it, stayed in the military and then when I retired just before 9/11, I started working with the NYPD."

It glosses over his time with the CIA and everything he had done with Finch and the Machine, but beyond that, it's the truth of his career path.

"I was working homicide when I ended up here," he says. "So I'm just waiting for firearms licenses to be approved and hopefully I'll have a place here soon enough. What is it you do?"

"Oh, nothing that exciting," Eden says, letting out a little laugh. It does sound like he's had an exciting time of it, and she finds herself curious about just what kind of trouble he got himself into that led him down that path. She had a similar choice herself, caught in the midst of a crime, though it wasn't offered by any actual law enforcement services. The Company would have been happy to lock her away and experiment on her if she hadn't cooperated and become an agent for them. It wasn't much of a choice.

"I work in a bookstore, a little secondhand place. And I act, when I can get roles. All theater, not TV or anything, though I went to L.A. when I was younger to see if I could." It was actually just to get away, but he doesn't need to know that. "I did live in New York for a while, though. I miss it sometimes."

"There aren't many cities like New York in the world," he agrees and given how much travel he's done with the CIA, John thinks he's in a position to make such a claim. There are other cities he's loved spending time in, he'd found Berlin incredible and had loved most of Belgium as well as some of the smaller towns he and Kara had visited in China, but nothing compares to New York.

Besides, Kara's memory has tarnished a good number of those places he'd loved and while she'd come to New York for him, too, at least there had been people like Finch and Carter to take him back.

"Is there a lot of opportunity in theatre here?" he asks curiously. "I admittedly haven't paid enough attention since I got here, but that friend I told you about, Harold, I'm sure he'd love a night at the theatre."

"You know, there actually is," Eden says, hands slipping into her coat pockets as she walks. "I hadn't thought there would be. Compared to New York, this place is tiny. But there's a pretty good theater scene here. I've done a few shows now. We just finished a run of Rocky Horror Picture Show that was so much fun." She's got auditions coming up soon for a couple of new shows, but she's not holding her breath either. She'd been doing pretty well before Luke disappeared, but now it feels like she's still playing catch-up, trying to make up for the time she spent doing her own vanishing act, too upset to go out for any new parts.

"The Carnaby's putting on a production of As You Like It in a couple months. I don't know if Harold cares for Shakespeare, but there's that."

"The Carnaby," John echoes, committing it to his memory. A good portion of Darrow he already has memorized, but he has to admit he's paid little attention to theatre or musical venues. It might be nice, though, to get Finch out for an evening. Drag him away from feeling like he always has to be finding them something to do, some task to take their minds off how much things have changed.

And the fact that they still haven't found Sameen. He directs his thoughts away from her, forcing himself not to dwell. Sometimes soldiers go down. He misses her, but there's nothing to be done about it from here.

"Are you going to be in that one?" he asks as they walk.

"I hope I am," Eden says with a laugh. "I should hear back this week. They like me there, but that's never a guarantee." They'd trusted her with Proof and she'd earned good reviews as Catherine, but that's a different world from Shakespeare. Besides, it was before she inadvertently took all that time off. She worries directors might be concerned she'll prove unreliable, though when she tells most people why she stopped acting for a while, they've been universally understanding. It's entirely irrational, she knows, but until she gets the part, she'll worry. If she gets it.

That would be a difficult life, he thinks, which is a funny thought for a man like him. Being in the CIA had been hard, of course it had, but at least he'd had job security. He had never worried he might go into work tomorrow and find there was no work.

Of course, then they'd tried to kill him, but he supposes that's a different sort of inconvenient.

"Is it hard?" he asks. "Never knowing for certain if you have steady work?" He's genuinely curious, having never really known any actors in his life. Agents could lie and play their roles, but it isn't the same.

"If I didn't work at New Leaf, I think it'd be agony," Eden admits. "But I have a good steady job and they're understanding if I need to change my hours to work part-time or leave early for an audition. If I didn't have that to come back to, I don't know if I could do it." She'd still try, though. She's not sure anything could stop her from trying. Sometimes it feels like acting is all she has left, as if playing a part is somehow the purest way to get back to who she actually is. "There's nothing like being on stage, though. It's always worth it."

"Sometimes you just find the thing you're meant to do, don't you?" John asks as he walks up to the cafe door and holds it open for Eden to go inside ahead of him.

"I can't claim to understand what you mean, not entirely, I've never been on stage and don't expect I ever will be, but I felt right when I was with the military. Like I was doing something good and like I was exactly where I was meant to be."

That much is true, even if all the details aren't.

"I suppose that's why I couldn't really retire," he admits.

Eden steps inside and turns to look at him, a smile quirking her lips at some private morbid joke. Retire. She certainly retired from the Company. That's as close as she's ever come to the military, being a spy for them, no love lost for anyone there but her handler. She still misses Bennet sometimes. By the end, he was more of a father to her than her own ever cared to be.

"It's hard to leave when you find something that finally clicks," she says. "Jobs, people, places. It's just nice to belong somewhere."

"It is," he agrees, although he isn't sure he ever really felt that until Finch. Being in the military had given him the sense of doing something right, but then he'd been drafted into the CIA and while he'd thought it was the right decision at the time, he knows now he was never quite right for that job. They'd wanted too much of him, expected death to come from his hands with ease and while he'd done what they asked, followed orders, he'd never felt truly right.

Not until Finch had he felt that.

"And I think finding it is lucky," he continues as they head to the counter. "I have a feeling not many people do."

"No, I don't think they do," Eden agrees softly. She's had her chances — her best friends, her love, the few people who made her feel like she finally had a home before they were taken from her again. Everything gets taken eventually. The only thing to do is to love hard and fierce while it lasts.

She laughs and shakes her head. "Philosophical before we've even ordered our coffee," she says. "Look at us, fast friends already."

"What better way to start the... well, early afternoon, I guess we missed morning," he says with a laugh of his own. John isn't sure anyone would consider him philosophical, but he thinks a lot. Considers things, turns them over in his mind, then makes a decision.

He had decided once to kill himself. To end the pathetic excuse for a life he'd been leading until that point, a life in which the only bright point had been Jessica, and without her continued existence, it had felt pointless. But Finch had given him something more.

"Would we consider ourselves lucky, then?" he asks. "To have found a place where we fit?"

"Oh, absolutely," Eden says, holding back a laugh. "You're lucky every time you make a friend." She plays it up, a little facetious, but she means it all the same. She's been lonely of late, even with the friends she has. It's always nice to make a new one, to have some hope of future company. Maybe this is all it is, a coffee with a nice guy she never sees again, but maybe it's the start of a real friendship. Only time will tell.

She steps forward to the counter to order her coffee and then waits to the side for him.

Finch would be so pleased he's maybe made a friend, even if it did occur under circumstances in which he might have been scoping out the building in which she lives, which makes John smile faintly as he steps up to place his drink order and pay for the both of them before he follows Eden to the side.

"We're both laughing, but that friend I mentioned, he'd be pleased by this," he admits. "He often tells me I need to get out more. Meet new people." He's sure Finch just wants him to settle down and find someone who makes him happy, but he also knows better than anyone else why such a thing is difficult for John.

Eden smiles, almost laughs. "Well, he may be right," she says. "I find that's true for most people. Especially me. I mean, I meet people all day at the bookstore, but I don't make too many friends." It's her own fault, she thinks, really. When she could go out and solidify the friendships she's made, she's home reading or at a meeting or working, or else she's just feeling too introverted to bother. Or maybe it's just that every friend she makes seems to an end date. Nearly all of them go poof eventually, like a damn carriage made out of a pumpkin.

John nods, knowing he's much the same. On a daily basis, there are plenty of people he meets between working his cover job and the job he does for Finch, but even when he does befriend them, it's something built on a foundation of lies. Even here, he can't tell Eden who he really is or his real name, he can't tell her what he does or the things he's seen before.

"It gets harder as you get older, doesn't it?" he asks with a faint smile. "Work takes up more time, it's easier to find excuses to just head home at the end of the day." The people you love end up dying. John knows it sounds dramatic and so he doesn't say it, but he certainly feels it.

In a place like this, too, where people vanish all the time, Eden's found it's harder and harder to make the effort as the years go by. She has acquaintances, people she sees regularly, even people who know more about her than some of her friends do, because they go to the same AA meetings, but she's not meeting them later to hang out. She's lost too many people. Getting older has its charms when she never thought she would, but the passing of time only makes it harder to bounce back from all the losses.

"Exactly," she says. "And people disappear so easily here. Sometimes it's hard to put in the effort, when I could just go home and play with my cat." She laughs, knowing what a cliché that must make her sound. It doesn't matter. At least she still has Origami.

"Mine's a dog," John admits with a tilt of his head, looking amused. He doesn't want to dwell on the idea of anyone disappearing, because while he knows he would get along with Finch if it became necessary, he doesn't want it to happen and while he's sure most people don't want their friends to disappear, there's a little more to it than just regular friendship.

Looking out for Finch is his purpose. John owes him.

"His name is Bear, he was a military dog a drug dealer in New York had taken off a man he'd killed," he says. "He had no idea what Bear was, but I did and so it's possible I took Bear from him in... not an entirely legal manner."

"Bear, that's so cute," Eden says, lighting up at the probably inaccurate mental image of a big dog in uniform. She can't be entirely bothered by what John has said about how Bear was acquired; she's picked up more than a few things in a less than legal manner herself, though it's been quite a long time now.

"I didn't even know there was such a thing as a military dog. Mine's a little Scottish Fold named Origami." She quirks her fingers at the name of the breed, trying unconsciously to illustrate the way Origami's little ears lie flat.

"He's a Belgian Malinois," he tells her, smiling at the way she quirks her fingers, wondering if she's realizes she's done it. His feelings for Karen may be bigger than he's realized, complicated in ways he doesn't want to address, but it's hard not to see how attractive Eden is, too.

"They're used by the Secret Service, something about the breed is just exceptional at being able to sniff out bombs, narcotics. I knew the man who trained them for the American military and I knew he'd trained them using exclusively Dutch commands, so I may have used that to my advantage." He smiles again. "Origami. That's a cute name."

"I think it is," Eden says, smiling wonderingly at what he's said. "You stole a dog by speaking Dutch? Now that's a story." Not a false one, she's pretty sure, she doesn't get the feeling he's lying, but an interesting one. It makes her wonder what other kinds of stories he has, what kinds of misadventures he's gotten into in his line of work. "I barely speak English most days. I did try learning Japanese, but I never got to practice it, so I don't even know if I remember it anymore."

"I speak a few languages," he admits with a small smile. "My parents spoke Spanish when I was growing up, so I learned that from them, but I picked up the others during my time in the military. My Dutch is mostly limited to being able to give the dog commands and only because I was friendly with the man who did the training."

John doesn't generally think of himself as being intelligent. He follows orders, he does what he's told, he does it well, but sometimes he surprises himself and the fact that he speaks several languages fluently and others conversationally says something about him he's never quite known what to do with. "I think I just have a knack for it," he says. "I'm fairly good with Portuguese and Arabic as well."

"That's a nice knack to have," Eden says. Lots of people do. She's not sure she's ever been or ever could be one of them, but it's nice for him that he is. Everyone has their talents. Hers involve a lot more lying and acting than languages, though, she thinks, maybe her power counts toward that end. It's certainly a skill, at least, albeit a rusty one.

Hearing her name called, she turns to take her coffee from the barista. "Thank you," she says, picking it up, and glances back to John. "And thank you, too. It's sweet of you."

"Of course," he answers with a smile, taking his own drink when it arrives. "And it isn't always very difficult to pick up pieces of a new language. Dutch is easy if all you need to do is order a dog around." Having an entire conversation would be beyond John, but luckily Bear is the only one in his life who knows even a little bit of Dutch besides Finch and they're perfectly capable of conversing in English.

Stepping away from the counter, he says, "If you meet Bear and want him to come, all you need to say is Bear, komen. Sit is just zitten, so it's mostly simply. Although telling him to stay would mean you'd have to say verblijf."

Eden laughs, wending her way between people to find a table for two. "That's a mouthful," she says. "I'm not sure I even dare to try. Komen, though, I think I can remember that. Komen. Zitten." She laughs again, wrinkling up her nose self-consciously at the new words. It's probable she'll just forget them before she ever has a chance to meet Bear, if she ever even does, but she likes to try. It's fun to feel the way new words sit in her mouth.

Verblijf might be well beyond her, though.

"That's really the extent of my Dutch," he says with a laugh of his own as he sinks into a chair once they've found a table. That's not truly the entirety of it, he knows how to tell Bear to attack, but somehow that feels like taking it all just a step too far. Bear is a sweet dog, but he's trained for a very specific purpose.

Even though he's said Bear is a military dog, he knows most people don't like to think about attack dogs or what they can do.

"German, though, I learned all the curse words when I was a kid," he continues. "So we're much better off there."

Eden laughs, shaking her head as she takes her seat. "I only have English for that," she says. "I get the impression German must be a wonderful language to curse in, though." It seems like the kind of language that would have a lot of very colorful and highly descriptive turns of phrase to describe exactly just how infuriating people are. Maybe it's just because she knows of a couple highly specific German phrases as it is. Or maybe it's just the way the language sounds. Either way, she's sticking to it. "So why German?"

"The words just sounded so much angrier and their direct translations were always more creative than I expected them to be," John admits with a small smile. "When I was twelve, I had a friend who told me die Arschmade means son of a bitch."

He pauses to take a sip of his coffee, then looks at Eden with another small smile. "When I got a little older, I looked up the translation and discovered that while they use those words to convey a feeling similar to son of a bitch, the direct translation was actually ass maggot. You have to love such a creative language."

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