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The Purge had been an eventful night, leaving John a little unsettled regarding the way Darrow conducts itself and while he hadn't been particularly worried about the people he cares about, knowing them to be capable of taking care of themselves, it has shifted his attitude regarding their team.

Knowing what he's like, he's still certain he's not meant to be in the role of their leader, and he thinks Karen and Dutch will both accept that. Peggy seems less sure, but he thinks if he has the other two backing him up, he'll be able to avoid that for at least a little while longer. His focus right now is trying to figure out the right way to get back into what they used to do.

And that means finding a way to create something similar to the Machine.

Before he can even begin to consider something like that, however, he needs to tell a few people the whole story of who he is and what he had done in New York. Karen knows everything and Dutch knows more than most, but even she doesn't know about what Finch was capable of or the computer he'd created. It feels like the first step in getting back to what he used to be, telling her the entire truth, and so he's asked her to meet him late one afternoon.

When he sees her, he raises his hand and smiles faintly.

"Coffee or guns?" he asks. "Your choice. I have some things I need to tell you."

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"Whoa, that's both the sexiest offer I've had all day but also a very ominous statement," Dutch says lightly, coming closer and tilting her head. He doesn't appear to be upset but this is John, a man she's seen show emotion very, very rarely. He could probably be hemorrhaging blood and still say he was all right.

"Coffee first. Let me get caffeinated and then I'll be ready for the guns," Dutch decides. "And you can tell me these things whenever you're ready. Do tell me if I need to sit down for anything though."

It makes John laugh and reinforces the thought that this is the right call, that he can trust Dutch with the information he has, with everything Finch has ever done. Maybe they won't be able to find a way back to something like the Machine, but at least it gives them a starting point, a place where they can all be on even ground and that's better than he's been doing for the team so far.

"I think you'll be able to handle them," he says as he walks in the direction of a nearby coffee shop. "Some people might not be able to, but given the world you've come from..." Dutch has seen technology John has never even been able to imagine, even after dealing with the Machine and Samaritan for such a long time. If she's from a world where such things aren't really that strange, maybe the Machine will seem like a natural progression to her.

"It's a big of a long story, though," he adds before they reach the coffee shop. There's no one around and so it's the best place he'll find to say this part. "It starts with the fact that I was CIA. Secret service. I worked for the government doing things regular law enforcement couldn't."

"There's very little I can't handle," Dutch says confidently. She's had to grow up quickly and adjust to things like death and blood and loss. She's had to get used to losing people she loves and watching others be persuaded away by things like money and security. She can't blame them though because she knows that that sort of thing is rare in the Quad.

"But oh, this does sound like it's going to be an interesting story," Dutch says as they walk, already intrigued by the scant few details that John's revealed. "So, you've been keeping secrets. I absolutely guessed that because you had to be keeping some things to yourself but now that you're telling me, I get to see if any of my guesses are correct."

"I hope you placed bets," John says as he holds open the door of the coffee shop for Dutch to go in ahead of him. "Or maybe not. It's only a predictable story for so long."

There's a fair bit he can talk about in line, things it doesn't really matter if other people hear, but he still takes care to keep his voice low. A product of years of secrecy, he knows, a habit he doubts he'll ever truly break.

"I was going to retire," he tells her. "There was someone... her name was Jessica, I wanted to marry her and retiring seemed like the right thing to do. The right time. But there was a terrorist attack on the country and after that, I just couldn't. I couldn't leave. I should have. Jessica couldn't wait and I couldn't ask her to. She married someone else and a few years later he killed her."

"Jesus," Dutch says quietly, shaking her head. There had been a lot of things she'd guessed about John but that hadn't been one of them. She's pretty sure she would have felt the same way if there had been a large scale attack on Westerley but after her husband, there wouldn't have been anyone but a few brief lovers waiting for her and she doubts that her death would have affected them.

"What happened to the man that killed her?" Dutch asks, glancing over at him. "Did you go after him?"

That makes him smile, not at all surprised that Dutch went in that direction, knowing she won't be surprised either, not by his answer.

"She called me just before my last mission. She asked me to come help her, but I didn't realize how serious things were and I went to do my job instead." An awful decision he carries with him every single day. "My employers decided to have my partner... terminate my contract. They thought I was gone, so I went to find Jessica and found her husband lying about her death instead."

The smile turns grim, but it doesn't disappear. "He's not with us anymore either. After that, everything felt pointless. I went to work on drinking myself to death. I was homeless in New York, making sure I wasn't found by my former employers and I was halfway to dead when Finch found me instead."

"Well..." Dutch trails off, taking a moment to digest all that before speaking. His life's taken a similar track to hers, it seems, though the participants and events have been different. The up and down and down further and further motion of their lives had been very similar.

"And Finch saved your life, I'm guessing?" Dutch asks, deciding not to ask about any of the messier aspects of what's happened to him. Finch finding him seems to have been the turnaround that's sent him onto his current way of life.

"He did," John says simply, pausing in the story as they get to the counter and place their orders. Once that's done and he's paid and they've moved aside, he looks at Dutch and his smile is still small, but it's sincere.

"I was attacked on the subway by some kids with ties to organized crime. They weren't expecting the drunk homeless guy to fight back, but I did and that's when Harold's Machine took note of me." His gaze flicks away, checking their surroundings, then back to Dutch.

"The Machine is where things start to get a little strange. Harold built an artificial super intelligence. It could predict violent crime."

"The Machine?" Dutch asks, brow furrowing the slightest bit. It sounds a bit like what Lucy is, if she's honest but Lucy would have hated her if she'd given her a name like 'Machine.' But, Lucy's also just a ship and her artificial intelligence had just been about keeping her afloat and keeping everyone inside alive.

"How could it do that?" Dutch asks, still frowning. "People have free will and the freedom of choice. How would a machine predict what the most unpredictable of species can do?"

"Through use of public cameras, tracking social media, text messages, e-mails," he explains. "The public would consider it a huge invasion of privacy, but the government wanted to pay Harold good money to have a system to track and predict terrorist attacks. It sorted the violent crimes into two categories; relevant, meaning large scale attacks that would take dozens of lives, and irrelevant. Violence that would only affect a few people."

John shakes his head and says, "Harold's partner wasn't happy with that. I never knew him, but I think I would have liked him. He built a back door into the system, a way to have the irrelevant numbers fed to him before they were wiped every night. Nathan was killed in a bombing, though, the same one that injured Harold, the one that caused his limp. He felt guilty, I think, and he took up the work Nathan was doing, but he needed help. That's where I came in."

Dutch still doesn't know if she believes a machine can accurately predict human behavior but she's willing to believe that it happened in his world. It just seems like a power like no other and a scary one at that.

"It seems like this...Machine isn't the safest thing to be associated with," Dutch says thoughtfully. "Between Nathan and Finch and the constant danger I'm sure it's put you in, it seems like something that would keep you busy."

That's probably a good thing when it's a choice between that and being stuck inside your own head. "How was he going to continue that here without the Machine?"

"It wasn't," he agrees, but he knows he would do it again if Finch presented him with the opportunity. The Machine and Finch, they had given him purpose, a reason to keep moving, something to do. A way to at least try to balance all the horrible things he'd done with a few good acts. He hadn't been able to save Jessica and Finch hadn't been able to either, despite the fact that her number had been given to him by the Machine, but at least he could save others.

"And I'm not sure," he continues. Their names are called for their drinks and he steps forward to retrieve them, holding Dutch's cup out toward her. "Harold never shared a lot of the technological details with me. I don't know if he thought he might be able to try and build a new Machine here or if... if we were on our own. But lately I've been thinking about what we can do without him. If it's worth it to try and find someone else who might be half as good as Harold was with computers."

"Man, wherever Johnny is, his head just went up like someone signaled him from miles and miles and miles away," Dutch jokes, taking the drink and smiling. "He's not a genius or anything like that but he Lucy loves him and he could make just about anything technological work. Even I'm not that smart."

She smiles both at her own joke and at some of her better memories of Johnny dealing with Lucy and Johnny dealing with her. There is no one she misses more.

"I wish I could help you out with suggestions there, though," Dutch says, focusing right back on the conversation. "I don't know if I know anyone really good with computers. It's certainly not me."

"Nor me," he says with a small shake of his head and a smile. Truthfully, he doubts there's anyone in the world as good at computers as Harold Finch, but in a moment like this, he's not sure where else to turn. It feels like he has no other ideas for jumpstarting their team again and he's afraid, without proper direction, they might find themselves without purpose.

They deserve better than that. They all do.

"I was thinking we have access to alternatives, though," he says, voice still carefully lowered. "Maybe we can't build another Machine, but if we were to set up a series of police scanners, we might still be able to get more access to information we're not already getting."

"And those should be fairly easy to get," Dutch muses thoughtfully. "Nothing against the police department because from what I've seen, they do good work but I don't think they're very secure. It's not quite 'leave the door open and unlocked' but it's a little more lax than some departments would be."

Darrow was an enclosed city with not a huge amount of violent crime. It existed and it was enough to warrant a police department but Dutch didn't think there were murders being reported everyday.

"You know anyone on the job that might be able to help you out?"

"I'm sure I could get my hands on one without the disappearance looking too suspicious," he says. "And the young officer I helped with the rocket launcher would probably look the other way on a second."

John doesn't like the idea of potentially getting him into trouble, especially not when he's a good cop and he looks like he has a solid future ahead of him, but it's worth a shot. There's Jake, too, and although they haven't seen each other recently, John has to wonder if he would be willing to help out. It would be a relief, he thinks, to have another cop in on what they do.

"The one in my car is useful," he says. "But it needs to stay in the car. They might question that."

Edited 2017-12-05 21:54 (UTC)

"If you're not able to get in, I'm pretty sure I could make it happen," Dutch decides with a sly, slow smile.

"An attractive woman can make a lot of things happen by showing a little skin and batting her eyelashes. Of course, there's a few who'll hold out and act like I don't affect them but those are easily taken care of with other methods."

She'll knock them out if she needs to. Just unconsciousness, nothing more. It might get them in trouble in so she'd rather avoid that though.

"I have no doubt you'll be able to make it work," John agrees with a laugh. There's a reason Dutch is part of this team, a reason he trusts her like he does, and he knows she's capable of getting just about anything done if she decides she wants it. Finch might have been the one to vouch for her initially, but he had been right, John has no trouble admitting that.

"Let's see what I can get my hands on first," he says, then allows a slightly wider smile. "Unless you're looking for a little adventure."

If that's what it is, he understands completely, and he's willing to hand the task over to hear in that case. Sometimes it's just necessary. It's why he'd gone out on the night of the Purge, after all.

"I do like a little adventure but I'm fine with letting you have this one," Dutch decides with a nod. "I had a lot of adventure on Halloween so I'm taking a bit of a break, getting my adventure juices back up and running."

It hadn't been the worst thing she'd ever seen but there had been something terribly affecting about a group of people she's mostly thought of as good overall tearing each other to pieces so easily.

"But, I will gladly be your backup," Dutch says, bowing. "I can drive a getaway car or something."

"I was hoping to get away with as little fanfare as possible," he says with a grin. "Maybe I'll be able to pass it off to you outside of the station."

His smile fades a little as he thinks about Halloween and the Purge. He's lucky, he knows, that everyone he cares for is safe. That's not something that everyone left in Darrow can say, he'd been called to a few particularly awful scenes the next morning, when the law had suddenly mattered again and they had needed people to clean up the mess. It's true he's not supposed to be investigating, but he has been anyway. He'll get some of them for other charges and that's enough for the time being.

"You made it through safely, though," he says. "And your friends?"

"Not...all of them made it through," Dutch admits, thinking of Tommy for a brief moment. They hadn't known each other that well but Dutch had liked what she'd known of him and hearing that he was dead and hadn't just been able to go back home had been hard to deal with.

"I just hope he wasn't in any pain when it happened," she says, sighing heavily. "He was a good guy, big and strong and a little dopey, and it shouldn't have happened to him. So, I just hope it didn't hurt."

"I'm sorry," John says, wishing that wasn't the case. The Purge should never have happened at all, he doesn't understand what kind of city allows people to hurt others just on the extremely flawed assumption it would decrease crime for the next seven years. There is absolutely no logic in that, nothing that supports their claims, and John had said as much, as loudly as he could and still nothing had changed.

He had helped on Halloween, but he hadn't helped enough. Not if Dutch had lost someone.

"I went out, even though my boss told me not to," he says. "I tried to help wherever I could. I wish I'd come across your friend."

"It's okay," Dutch tells him with a quick smile. She still doesn't really know the details of what happened to Tommy but she's not sure she wants to know. She does not want to think that he suffered or that she could have helped him if she'd been closer or more focused on helping people instead of taking some those KIRIN buffoons.

"I don't want to say he's in a better place because I don't know that but I'm sure that's what Alvis would try and tell me," Dutch says with a shake of her head. "All I know is that night was shitty and how it happened is even shittier. I don't put a lot of stock in government but...that was a horrible decision."

"It was awful," John agrees. There are people in the department who aren't happy with just how vocal he was with his distaste for the entire night, people who have since made it clear that they might purposely make it difficult for him to advance in his career. It's not something John really cares about, he's never been all that interested in becoming a captain or anything of the sort, but he doesn't want there to be any trouble down the line for Karen just because she's associated with him.

"A stupid decision with no logic attached to it," he says and shakes his head. "And too many people died because of it. I told anyone who would listen that it was a bad idea, but no one really seemed inclined to do anything."

And that's part of why he had gone out. It's not the sort of thing he would have been able to refuse in the first place, he can't just leave people out there to fend for themselves, but knowing so many of the people in this city tasked with protection were unwilling to help had made him furious.

"I asked a few questions but didn't get any good answers as to why this was necessary or even legal," Dutch agrees with a nod. "People talked around the issue, talked about something else or just dismissed me. I'd almost forgotten how much I hate dealing with the government until I tried to get some answers out of the inept idiots who say they run this place."

It had been like beating her head against a very hard wall. The people she'd spoken to were aware of the complaints about the night but they refused to do anything. No one gave a reason why this was needed or could point her to someone who even wanted it.

"I just don't know how you keep going in a place where one night someone beat the hell out of you and took your stuff but the next day, they're in front of you at a coffee shop. Makes no sense."

"They claim it reduces criminal tendencies for the next seven years," John answers, his tone making it clear what he thinks of that idea. "There are no studies that support that idea, that the chance to commit any sort of criminal activity without consequence reduces to desire to do so over time. I know people who have studied things like that."

The CIA has no qualms about conducting questionable experiments, no issue with using people to see what happens when they're allowed certain freedoms. John has seen parts of the studies and he knows they don't end with peace for any length of time.

"I'm doing what I can to find the people who committed the most violent crimes," he admits. "They may not go to prison, but I can find other consequences for them."

"So, shoving a whole bunch of criminal activities into one night just...gets it out of their systems?" Dutch asks dubiously. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes before sighing.

"In a way, I could see their reasoning but they don't seem to understand that if you give someone a inch, they're going to take more and more and more. This city isn't that big and the police force can't be everywhere. Now people know what kind of shit they can do and they know that they'll probably get away with it. The people that run this city are morons."

That's all there is to it. They're idiots. They don't understand how to run a city without causing more and more harm. It's ridiculous.

"No arguments here," John agrees. "I know a lot of the officers I work with disagreed and lent their services to other places for the night. There was a safe house in one of the churches and a few people I work with went there to protect those who gathered. A few helped their neighbours keep their houses safe. Most of the cops I know really tried to do what they could within the restrictions that were handed down to us."

And John had been among them, but he's the only one he knows who's still working to take people down.

"Maybe that ought to be our next mission," he says, looking at Dutch with a faint smile. He's serious, though, and it's clear in how he's looking at her that he isn't joking. "We can start with the people who killed your friend and go from there. We can find other things to do to them even if we can't put them in prison."

"You tell me where to point myself and I'll be there," Dutch tells him with a nod. "I don't really know where to look first since there was a lot of shitty people doing a lot of shitty things that night but I'm sure someone's talked about it or bragged about it."

Not to her, thankfully. She's stuck to her guns when it comes to not killing anyone unless it's absolutely necessary but she can't say definitively that she'd adhere to that if she faced some of the people who'd done horrible things that night.

"Probably the first step is finding the worst offenders," Dutch muses. "I don't really care about the people who broke windows or threw rocks at buildings. That's shitty but small in the grand scheme of things."

"I can do that. There were still reports made, even if we were unable to do anything on the record. I have names of people who lost loved ones, people whose homes were burglarized, people who lost things with significant personal meaning. I even have a few reports from people who said their pets went missing or were abused."

And John puts up with violence toward animals with as little patience as he does toward innocent people.

"Several reports of assault, multiple rapes or attempted rapes. We'll have plenty to start with, if you're interested." It's against every last rule that had been laid out to him as an officer during the Purge and he doesn't care at all.

"I'm interested," Dutch confirms with a nod. "I have a lot of time and an inkling to put my hands on some of those people who thought it was okay to go around hurting people just because the idiot mayor said they could."

She still doesn't plan on killing anyone but no one's going to care if she busts a few chairs over their heads or backs. It's the least they deserve for deciding that they were above the law despite being given permission.

"Forward me whatever you want me to look at and I can keep you in the loop as to what I find."

Dutch's answer doesn't surprise him and he suspects, as with his own plans, she won't be killing anyone. There's no reason they can't put a few people in the hospital, though, and John plans on making sure certain folks are unable to use parts of their bodies they might have otherwise very much liked to keep uninjured.

That's fine with him, though. If someone can't be a respectable member of society, he doesn't have to treat them with respect in return.

"I knew there was a reason I liked you," he teases, his voice dry and his smile small.

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