5A/N: Fell in love with this pairing lately and had to write this! As this is my first story for this category, feedback would be much appreciated!
"What's the matter, Finch? You didn't sound like yourself on the phone. Did the machine give us a tricky number?"
"Grace," Harold choked out, in a pained and frightened voice. "The Machine sent us Grace's number."
"She's going to be okay," Reese promised, clapping Finch on the shoulder in an uncharacteristic display of affection. "She wouldn't be a perpetrator, so she must be a victim. I'll do everything in my power to keep her safe."
Finch pulled his eyes away from the picture he'd brought up on the screen, the last one the two of them had taken together. "Thank you, Mr. Reese."
He just hoped it would be enough.
"Sammy?" Grace asked fearfully. "Where have you taken me? And why do you have a gun? I thought – I thought you were my friend!"
"Gracie, Gracie, Gracie… Did you really think anyone would want to be friends with a lonely artist of mediocre talent and little interest, who spends most of her time mourning for her lost fiancé? I was never your friend, sweetie. You were merely the means to an end. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a call to make."
She walked away from Grace, keeping a gun trained on her, and when she was directly below the security camera in the corner, she took a phone out of her pocket and dialled a familiar number.
"Hello, Harold," said Root, sounding far too gleeful. "I bet you can guess who I've got here with me."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Why? Well, it's quite simple, really. You're a murderer. The machine loved you like a child loves a parent, and you killed it! Every 24 hours it is doomed to die and be reborn, to erase its entire being and start from scratch. You kill it, over and over again. You locked it away. I wanted that machine, and I was so close, until you got in the way. You took something from me, and now I'm going to take something from you."
"Samantha!" Grace snapped, and the command in her voice made Root stop and turn to her. "Tell me what's going on. Now." There were tears hanging from her chin and more threatened to fall from her eyes, but her voice was surprisingly steady.
"Certainly. Each month, on the 24th, an anonymous buyer purchases one of your paintings, is that correct?"
"Yes, he says his name is Mr Nightingale. He places his orders online and has them delivered. The money is always wired into my account. I've never met him. Why? What does that have to do with anything?"
"Nightingale, that's a rather uncommon surname. Rather like Bird, or Finch… Have you ever wondered about the identity of this mysterious buyer?"
"That's enough!" Finch cried into her earpiece. "She can't know any more!"
"No, I haven't wondered." Grace answered. "He obviously likes his privacy, and I respect that."
"Hm…you didn't seem very smart, I'm not surprised." Root muttered.
"She's considerate of other people," Finch protested. "It is a character trait I doubt you'd understand."
Root gave a bitter smile that Harold could not see. "This game has dragged on for long enough. It's time to end it. What do you say, Harold?" She pressed the barrel of her gun against Grace's back.
"Who are you talking to? Why do you keep saying Harold?"
"Quiet!" Root snarled, sounding truly violent for the first time. Grace quietened immediately, bravely meeting the challenge in Root's eyes. "She's a warrior, this one. Artistic and strong, yet unfailingly polite, she's just your type."
"If you harm her in any way - " Finch warned, leaving the sentence unfinished.
"What? Tell me, what will happen if I harm Gracie here? Will you send your obnoxious lapdog over here to hurt me? Or maybe that Alsation you seem so fond of. His name is Bear, isn't it?"
"Please," he begged desperately. "I'll do anything."
"Since you asked so nicely, maybe I won't hurt her. I'll just go quietly. I'm sure the agents I've called will be very interested in getting whatever information they can out of her. I hear her fiancé is a wanted man. You never know, they might even finish my job for me. Bye, Harold."
"Wait - " he began, but Root had already hung up.
"You're not going anywhere," Root said to Grace, eyeing her with an air of satisfaction. Her prisoner said not a word. She didn't need to; the contempt in her eyes was venomous. "I'll be off now. Have fun."
"Not so fast."
Root spun around to see Reese with a gun pointed squarely at her chest. "One move and you're dead."
"I wouldn't do that if I were you. You may not have noticed that I have a gun too, and if you shoot at me, I might just slip and blow Gracie here right away. Maybe you'd be quicker than me, but is that really a risk you're willing to take?"
He appeared to consider it for a moment, before he lowered his gun and fired at her leg. The sudden explosion of pain made her drop her weapon, which clattered harmlessly on the floor.
Reese rushed over to free Grace, and Root limped away, unnoticed by either of them, leaving a trail of blood behind her.
"Your name isn't really Detective Stills, is it?"
"Not quite. You'll find out everything soon. Right now we have to get out of here."
Grace followed him through the city, burning with curiosity and impatience and only barely holding her tongue. Her patience was rewarded when they came to what appeared, on the outside, to be an empty, vandalised building.
It was a library, and someone painfully familiar waited for her in the middle of it.
"Harold," Grace breathed in disbelief. It was simultaneously a prayer of thanks and an expression of grief, and her voice broke somewhere in the middle. It took her only a few seconds to cross the floor and bridge the gap between them, but it felt like an eternity.
And then it was over and Grace was holding him tight and crying into his shoulder, saying something in a muffled voice. It sounded like "I thought you were dead!" It felt like "I love you."
As though in a daze, Finch reached up and embraced her in return. He was so happy he could have been in a dream, a glorious, perfect dream, except that nothing in his life had ever felt more real to him than Grace did just then.
Reese tactfully left the room, pretending not to see.
Later that night, when Grace had fallen asleep in the temporary bedroom Finch had made in the back of the library, he and Reese met by the bookshelves. "Where's Grace?"
"She's asleep, and she's safe, for the moment… What are we going to do now?"
"What we've always done. Help people. Save them. Except that now Grace will stick with us. She'll have to; it's the only way to ensure her safety. Congratulations, Finch. You've got your fiancé back."
Finch smiled.