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Anyone who knows him wouldn't be surprised to hear John admit he's been at a bit of a loss since Finch's disappearance from Darrow. He's getting along well enough, he hasn't let himself slip into the sort of drinking he'd done after Jessica's death and although there are certainly times when he feels old thoughts slinking back toward him, he's been able to keep them mostly at bay. Work is a good distraction, which is funny, given that John Riley had only ever been intended as a cover for a short period of time while they Samaritan was hunting them.

But John Riley is a good detective. And John Riley is a generally well liked man, both at the precinct and otherwise, and although there are people who know who he really is, there are days when he feels more like John Riley than anyone else.

It's a little dangerous, this complacency. John isn't opposed to happiness, he thinks he's done both Finch and Carter proud with the people he's let into his life -- Karen in particular -- but he also knows this isn't the reason Finch rescued him from himself. While he had wanted John to let people into his life and while he had encouraged him to find happiness with Karen, the life he's living now isn't the mission. It's not even close.

Their team barely functions these days. They haven't all been together in the warehouse in some weeks and John is only here now because he's trying to figure out what to do. Where to go from here. The computers sit silent and blank and he hasn't the slightest idea where to begin with them, but he's been thinking about Peggy, about asking her if she knows anyone who would be good with the computers. Someone she might trust enough to bring into the team.

It's funny that he's thinking of her in that moment, because the lock on the door behind him beeps and then slides open and he turns with a small, amused smile to find her standing here.

"You have good timing," he says simply.

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She's come to the warehouse because she's in dire need of some purpose. That whole business of being suddenly young and meek and without a rudder had been a deliberate-seeming smack in the face considering she's been doing very little with her life that could be seen as purposeful or with proper meaning. Maybe becoming young again had been a sign that she needs to do better, but whatever it was, it's over.

Arms crossed over her chest, she regards him with a wary look, not entirely sure why her timing is so laudable, but it's better than the opposite. "That's good, I suppose," she notes, heading inside and trying not to feel like the emptiness of the warehouse is taunting her, as if it's just another reason that she's not fulfilling her purpose.

Wherever Michael's spirit is, she thinks he must be laughing at her, now.

"I see you haven't gone and expanded our ranks when I wasn't looking," is her wry remark, glancing to all the empty space around them.

Whether or not it's meant as a shot at him doesn't matter, John feels it as if it were. Since Finch disappeared, he's done nothing at all to move this team forward and he understands why they looked to him to get that done, he knows he'd always looked like Finch's partner more than his employee, but that's not how it had been. They'd been friends, of course, but when it came to work, Finch was the leader.

John was just his loaded gun.

"I was thinking about you," he explains instead of focusing on his lack of initiative. "Wondering if you might know anyone who would be as good with computers as Harold could be." Pausing, he reconsiders that before continuing. "Someone who might be half as good would do. I know Harold was exceptional."

She's pleased to hear that he's been thinking about the role and their task, but the trouble that she finds is that Peggy isn't sure that she has anyone particularly suited to that exact job. "There's one person," she admits, given that Tony is just as talented as Howard, but she's not sure how much trust exists. Even if she were to trust the son for his father, there had been multiple times when she hadn't trusted Howard.

"I'm not sure where his skills lie with computers, more so that he's just a genius in general," she says. "I'm afraid that most of my acquaintances, I've felt more comfortable with people from my own era. Have you asked Dutch or Karen yet?"

"No," he says. "Not yet. Karen has a lot going on right now."

That feels like an understatement, but he doesn't know all the details of her friend who has arrived in Darrow and even if he did, he wouldn't share them with anyone. It's Karen's story to tell and there are few people he respects and cares for as much as he does her, so he'll never break the trust she's put in him. Not for anything.

"Dutch might have a better idea," he admits. "Her world has technology I've never even seen before, but even if she knows someone, that doesn't fill the biggest hole Harold left behind."

Peggy feels as though she can be somewhat smug about the fact that John knows precisely how much Karen has going on, but given everything that's happened, she also knows that it would be terribly crass, so she says nothing and instead simply nods her head. She wants to think that she can trust Tony, of course, but she's just not sure.

They haven't gone through the things that she had with his father, and even then, that clearly hadn't worked. "I suppose it is clever to search for someone from the future." She gives John a more pointed look, now evaluating him. "Now, I believe that it would be in your best interest to come walk with me, get away from all this for a while."

"I feel like I've been away from it for a little too long," he says honestly, but he moves toward the door with Peggy regardless. It's not as if staring at the bank of computers is going to make the solution suddenly appear and he can't spend all day inside the warehouse.

"Isn't that part of the problem?" he asks. "A lack of leadership."

But that was Finch's job and John doesn't imagine there's anyone he would honestly trust to take Finch's place. In New York, he would have followed Carter, he might have even followed Root, but in Darrow he's not sure anyone can fill that role. There's no denying he loves Karen and she has far more initiative than he does, but he's not sure even she would know what to do in Finch's place.

"Staring at the problem has never helped anyone," she opines, gesturing for him to walk with her. "Let's walk a bit, see if we can't let the cool air and the movement to give us some ideas," she says, bundling up her jacket a little as she waits for him at the front of the warehouse, feeling rather wary about the whole business.

She has no solution, but perhaps they're having the wrong discussion.

Slowly beginning to walk with no purpose or direction, she waits a few moments to speak. "Have you considered that what the team looked like before isn't necessarily what it ought to look like?"

John buttons his coat up to his throat, then pulls on his gloves as he follows Peggy out into the cool winter air. It's warmer than New York, but only a little, and there's something comforting in that, something that focuses in a little.

With a nod, he considers what she's saying. It's something he's thought about already, that maybe their team doesn't need someone to replace Finch, as if there was any hope anyone ever could, but he also doesn't function well without a leader. John knows this about himself and he isn't ashamed of it.

"I've considered that," he says, then flashes a faint smile. "But I've also considered myself. I do better with someone telling me what to do."

Oh, well, that wicked thought is only apparently going to stay out of her head for a few moments, because here she says, "I'm sure if you're looking for someone to give you orders, Karen would be more than willing. She seems like a woman who knows what she wants in the world," she remarks, with the clear admiration that Peggy holds for a woman like that.

She's not entirely sure that she's in a position where she knows how to lead either, but maybe the point of this is to make them better. "I was eighteen, just a few days back," she admits, "Young and inexperienced and meek, without purpose. Back then, I needed someone to force me into a position where I learned."

"Have you considered, maybe this is also that sign?"

John says nothing in response to the first comment, only casting Peggy a small smile and an arched eyebrow. Although he may not be quite the same sort of private person as Finch had always been, there are some things he would always rather keep to himself and his more intimate moments with people are among them.

The rest, though, gives him pause, too. He's not sure where to begin. It makes him tense, a little, to think of someone considering Finch's disappearance a sign. He can't imagine what it might mean to have lost his best friend and the man who saved his life, what life lessons he should be learning from that. There's no shame in knowing what he is and how he best performs and he can't imagine taking anything away from having lost Finch that he doesn't already know about himself.

"You were eighteen," he echoes instead of focusing on that. "How?"

She quirks her brows back at him when the topic of Karen isn't elaborated on, but she doesn't press because she does feel bad for him when he clearly doesn't like to have his personal life prodded and poked and she does listen, at times.

"There's something about this place, apparently it can do that. Well, that or turn you the other sex. Daniel and I myself both were in our teens, but he remembered everything that happened here while I didn't." She's stopped looking for logic or reason, has determined that it's something so insidious and small that she'll never be able to figure it out.

"Perhaps it's experimentation or simply something we came into contact with? It went away on its own, though I didn't know enough to think anything needed to be fixed."

All of that is enough information to give him pause and he's quiet for a moment, trying to imagine what it might be like to wake up as an eighteen year old version of himself and to not remember any of the years between. At eighteen he had been a bit of an asshole, it's how he had ended up in the military in the first place, given the choice between service and jail as a result of his own stupidity. It had shaped the entirety of his life, that decision, but he has no way of knowing it he would make the same choice again or if he'd just go off the rails and self destruct.

Even now, years later, that tendency manifests itself in the way he puts himself in the line of fire without a second of thought.

"There's already so much of this place to think about," he says. "And now I have to consider that I might wake up as a teenager." He smiles faintly. "I wasn't a nice teenager."

She can't help but think that no one likes the person they were when they were younger. That's certainly true in her case, because she'd been so timid and meek, set in the role that society wanted for her and unwilling to change. "Well, if I find you and you look rather young and not-nice, I'll be sure to give you a smack," she vows.

"Do you want to stop and get coffee? Or is today a day for something stronger?" With all topics of work aside, Peggy has other things to ask as they walk. "How are you doing? Not just with the job or purpose, but losing a friend is never easy. How are you coping?"

"A coffee would be nice. I work later, it's probably not a good idea to show up with alcohol on my breath," he says with a small smile. And while it might not have bothered him once upon a time, John actually tries to do well in Darrow, not just for himself and not just for Karen, but because once upon a time Finch had given him a chance to be better and Carter had asked him to do the same.

So he tries.

"I'm all right," he says. "Harold isn't the first person I lost and he isn't the most difficult either. That loss... that's the one he saved me from, though. It'd be a slap in the face of our friendship to let myself fall back down into what he brought me out of it, so I'm fine. Truly."

"No, I imagine that it isn't a clever idea," she says, though she's thinking of Howard Stark and how it's a struggle sometimes to get the smell of Bloody Mary off his breath, seeing as he works best under some very unique circumstances. "I'm glad to hear you're all right, but I am going to still worry."

Glancing around, she sights a coffee shop down the way and angles their walk towards it, though it will be a few blocks from memory. "I don't presume to think that I can save you from anything," she says. "At the same time, I do hope you know that I'm more than willing to lend you an ear when you need one. We might not be close, but I'd like to think we are friends."

"We are," he agrees and it's an odd thing for him to be able to say, but he likes that he can. Making friends has never been easy for him, but especially after all the people he's lost, after not being able to trust his partner, after Jessica. Carter had wanted so badly for him to find his way back and he's not entirely the man she would want him to be, but he thinks if he can even get part of the way there, he's on his way to something better.

"I've never been much of a talker," he admits. "Which I'm sure isn't much of a surprise, but there was a detective I worked with in New York. Joss Carter. She... she wanted me to learn how to ask for help and I know I'm still not very good at it, but I'm doing better."

He smiles again and says, "That's why I asked you about the team."

"Us Carters can be very clever," she teases, as though she knows anything about this other woman to be able to tell whether they have something in common, though she suspects that they don't. "I do appreciate having my advice solicited, even if I'm afraid that I didn't have the right answer for you in this case," she says, wishing that she did have it right.

"What about with people on the job?" she asks, as she opens the door to the coffee shop and gestures for John to go inside first. "I know it's doubtful you can share everything with them, but what about the basics? Do they know you're seeing someone? Do they even know anything about your life?"

"I'm very well liked at work," John says, although that's not a direct answer to Peggy's question. He moves toward the line at the shop and waits there for a moment, reading the menu board although he already knows what he wants to order. It gives him a minute, though, a chance to consider what he ought to say next.

"I have an excellent case record, most of my assignments end up being closed one way or another," he says. "I get along with people, I make small talk. They know I have a girlfriend and a dog."

If his coworkers need to know more than that, they're going to be disappointed. For John, that's already a great deal of information.

She's quite boring when it comes to her orders in these shops, setting her watch by the Earl Gray tea that she has. Still, it'll warm her, and with the weather turning brisk again, it's needed. "I'm glad to hear you have that, even if on a superficial level of sharing," she notes, because obviously it's not the same as telling someone all your issues.

"I still haven't found myself a work that I can truly feel right about," she admits, which is difficult to say. "Policework was part of my job before, but I don't think I would be comfortable here with that." It would be like taking a step back, though she doesn't say that aloud.

"It's not technically what I did back home either," John admits. "It was a cover given to me and when I ended up here it just seemed to make sense to continue using it."

And it's not like he has any interest in going back to an organization like the CIA. They had been some truly terrible people, they'd kept him from Jessica, they'd tried to kill him more than once and they'd turned Kara into a monster. If John can stay away from that for the rest of his life, he'll be content.

"And it's worked here," he says. "I hear things I might not otherwise."

"Ah, you see, my cover involved the phone company, but I never worked the lines," she says, thinking of Rose and the others who had such transferable skills that she'd been missing out on. "I don't think I'll be signing myself up to be a detective anytime soon, no matter how close it might be to what I did before," she says. "Perhaps I have to go even further back," she admits.

Codebreaking might not be a necessity all the time, but why not offer her skills to some degree? After all, she's sure there are enough people interested that a class wouldn't go amiss, would it?

"Unless you've heard something that might give me a purpose, that is," she can't help but tease.

"Working on it," he answers with a faint smile. He knows she's only teasing him, but what he needs to do is find a way for them to make this team work. Finch had given them purpose and he was good at it, but John doesn't have that same skillset. What he needs is to find both a leader and someone to fill the other roles Finch has left empty.

"You don't feel like you ought to be the one taking the lead for us now?" he asks, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "You seem more cut out for it than any of the rest of us."

"Well, when you finally have a solution, know that I'm ready." It's been since the Hydra mission that Peggy's really gotten to get her hands dirty and she's more than looking forward to a little more of that in the coming future, what with all the potential for John to search for something.

When John asks what he does, she gives him a wary look. "I won't disgard that as never happening, but from what I hear, that person is a future me. Someone who has an agency down the line. As it stands, I don't have experience in running missions for other people. I know how to complete them on my own and I'm quite good at that," she admits. "I don't really know how to direct a team just yet."

"Are you sure this isn't the place to start?" he asks with another small smile. "It's not as if using us as a learning curve would leave us any more directionless than I feel like we are right now."

John can take on his own jobs and he's done so with Karen already, but for the most part, he doesn't know how to handle an entire team. He doesn't know how to assign, how to delegate. When it comes to the hard work, he wants to do it all himself, he takes it one because he thinks it's required of him, something he owes the world.

He doesn't trust anyone else enough to bring them in, though. Their team is small and without a leader, but he can't imagine trying to find someone else to take Finch's place.

"I'm not sure you'd like the cases I brought us if I were to be in charge," Peggy confesses, which is the other reason that she's not leaping at the opportunity. To a degree, it feels like it's still something for her and Daniel, seeing as it's a problem that followed them from home.

At some point, she knows that she'll be Peggy Carter, director, but there's a lot to learn before then, she feels. Not to mention, she didn't do it alone. She had Howard and the Colonel, and here, she has resources as well. "If you're wanting to give up some control, I'd be happy to help, but I don't want to take over completely."

"I'm not in control," John points out. "That's the issue. No one is."

But if it's not something Peggy wants, then that's the answer he has to accept. At this rate, he might also have to accept that there no longer is a team. Without the Machine, at least they had Finch, but without Finch, all they really have is a group of people who want to help, but are, essentially, without any kind of direction.

"Maybe it's best to give up the warehouse," he says. "Accept it for what it is. It doesn't mean we can't still work together, but..." He trails off and shrugs. He's sure they'll still find things to do and if there's something he thinks Peggy can help with, he'll call her and assume the same will be done in return.

"We could have a smaller space," she suggests, because a warehouse had always seemed quite large and silly to her, but then, she was used to operating out of the hidden back offices of a talent agency or a phone company, so it's not that she doesn't admire the panache, it's simply the lack of use that had been odd to her.

"If you are still looking for something, perhaps you can come by for dinner and drinks with Daniel and I," she suggests, sipping at her tea. "We could discuss Hydra, our next steps, see if that's something you're interested in helping fight against?"

The warehouse made sense when Finch's computers were being used and it works as a place to store John's weapons, but he can find something smaller and more secure for that. The warehouse just doesn't make as much sense without Finch around and John knows the computers will have to go into storage somewhere. He wouldn't know the first thing about wiping them safely.

"That'd be nice," he says with a smile. "I'd like that. I have my work, too, it's just... being a detective was only ever meant to be a cover."

And now it's all he is. Most of the time he's not sure what to do with that.

"And here you see, being a detective for me was merely a side part of my job seeing as being an agent still meant you had to detect, but usually stranger things," she can't help the warm jibe, seeing as she holds a great deal of respect for those who do the job.

"You should come around for tea or dinner anyway," she decides, because if Finch is gone, then he'll need more company anyhow. "Daniel and I would love to entertain yourself and Karen. Call it a double date if that's more amenable."

"That sounds nice," he answers. "And I'm sure Karen would like it, too."

She's better with people than he is anyway, kinder and much more open in her way. The secrets she keeps -- and she keeps plenty, John had noticed that a long time ago -- she does with such poise it never really seems to matter to anyone. Karen would have made an incredible agent and all he can do is be thankful that's not the sort of life that ever really found her.

"And the more people who are better conversationalists than I am, the better for everyone involved."

"Perfect," Peggy says, with a determined nod, having been unwilling to take any other answer than the one they've landed on. "Daniel will be more than happy to have you over, but I do hope that neither of you will mind if I don't cook," she says. "Fair warning, it would be quite terrible if I attempted it," she can assure, thinking it's better for everyone in the event that they order in.

"Maybe once we put our heads together, we'll think of something," she adds, still willing to be optimistic.

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