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Sitting in the dark theater, Karen thinks she'd known this was coming. For the past two weeks, she's been certain that what she's been seeing and experiencing, what she knows others have been, too, must be leading to something. It wouldn't get progressively worse and then stop, as nice as it might have been if that had been the case. She wouldn't have deserved to be let off the hook that easily, anyway, though she can't speak for anyone else who's been seeing things and who might be here now.

Though part of her thinks she should be, she isn't paying attention to any of them now, anyway. All sorts of horrors are unfolding around her, but she can only stare at what seems to be her own personal hell. Kevin, as bloody and wrecked and lifeless as he was when she came to after the car flipped, stands in front of her, his eyes dark and taunting. That isn't how she remembers him, and she hates the sight of it, but it isn't as if she can blame him for it.

"I'm sorry," she sobs, before he gets a chance to speak. It's been building in her for far too long, and he's the one person she could never have gotten to say it to, the one person who needed to hear it the most. Now, it's been so long since she's spoken of it anyway that it's hard not to trip over her own words, a decade's worth of regret spilling out of her at once. "Kevin, I'm sorry, I — I didn't mean to, you know I didn't mean to, I was trying to help —"

"That's what you do, Karen," he retorts. She's never heard him sound so cold, or maybe she just doesn't remember right, but it sends a shiver down her spine even so. "You try to help, and you just fuck things up."

She nods, her vision blurry, but eyes fixed on him. This might be the last she ever sees him. It isn't at all how she would have wanted that to happen.

"It should have been you," he continues, unyielding. "That died in the crash, not me."

"Yes," she chokes out."

"You're the one who was driving drunk and high. Junkie trash. You haven't even told anyone, have you? You kill me, you ruin our family, and you let everyone think that you're so perfect, that you've got it all figured out."

She nods again, and she doesn't stop him. He's not wrong. Nothing that happened that night would have happened it if weren't for her, and she's just carried on, buried it — haunted in her own mind, perhaps, but never letting it carry over, finding people she could trust with it but never actually doing so. She should have known it would only be a matter of time before it came back, becoming inescapable.

Karen doesn't know how it ends, or how she gets out of the theater, everything a haze. What she does know is that, out on the sidewalk, she has to stop to throw up into a trash can, making note to stop and get a little travel-sized mouthwash or something so it won't be too apparent when she goes back to the apartment. Explaining what's happened is going to be an ordeal to say the least when she knows how wrecked she must look, but she'll figure it out. John won't press her to tell anything she doesn't want to share.

That plan, too, changes when she reaches their door and finds a package there — not suspicious but familiar, Ben Urich's familiar handwriting spelling out her name on a post-it note on top of the folder. That brings up a new surge of guilt as she crouches to pick it up, but more importantly, she's seen it before. Ellison showed her when he offered her a job, because Ben showed him, and she hadn't yet known that he knew. The truth is in these pages, or it could be if someone tried to piece it together.

Maybe, she thinks, with a resigned sort of clarity, she can't hide from this anymore.

She wipes off her face before she unlocks the door and steps inside, but her eyes are still red, and she knows any composure she can manage will be flimsy at best. She's also not sure that will be a surprise.

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Bear knows she's home before John does, although they've both been waiting. The dog perks up his ears, his head tilted to the side, and John looks at the door as Bear's tail sweeps slowly back and forth. It's another moment or two before he hears the telltale sound of Karen's shoes in the hall and then she pauses again. Waits for something. He can hear movement, the sound of something being picked up off the floor, which is curious, but he doesn't move from the kitchen.

Bear gets up from his bed and goes to the door while John puts on water for tea. He had been right, the week before, when he had thought he wouldn't be able to prevent Karen from going to the screening if they couldn't stop it. And no matter what he had tried, the screening had gone on. John had looked for legal ways to prevent it, but nothing the city planners told him made any sense. He had, of course, looked for less than legal options as well, but he never seemed to be able to find whoever was behind it. John doesn't know if he's ever experienced that kind of failure before, not when there's something he really wants to prevent.

But she's home now. He hears the key in the lock, hears the door open and close, and then he walks from the kitchen to the living room to meet her. She looks terrible, her eyes are red, and there are still streaks of tears on her face, even if she's tried to wipe most of them away. She's holding something, but John ignores it for the time being and instead just goes to her, folding his arms around her gently.

For a moment, the world is finally still and quiet. No ghosts hover in her peripheral vision, the white noise from the street is muffled, and she feels as safe as she ever has in John's arms. Even her instinctive, irrational worry that this might all be about to fall apart doesn't change that, because she knows it isn't. So many times, she's thought that he would understand if she told him, that it wouldn't affect the way he looked at her. She's safe with him in a way she's not really used to being. That hasn't changed just because her past has suddenly become inescapable, nothing she can manage to keep buried anymore.

Still, there's a difference between knowing that and acting on it, between the shit she's been seeing these past few weeks and now having in her hands the closest thing there is to tangible proof of what she did. It's still all guesswork. What she did wasn't covered up well enough for people not to assume the truth of it, but there was nothing that could ever be proven.

Karen lets herself lean into him, breathing in deep and trying to collect herself, before she even tries to speak, cycling through the same few thoughts like a mantra, like if she goes over them enough, she'll actually believe them. "I, uh—" she starts, pausing to clear her throat. "I want to tell you everything. The stuff I never told you. About me, before."

Instead of saying anything, John only nods, running his hands along her arms until he's gently holding her shoulders. Whatever she has to tell him, he'll listen, and that's really the long and short of it. John has far too many dark secrets in his own past for him to hold any sort of judgment over her having kept secrets from him in return. He loves her regardless of what's happened to her or the things she's done and he knows she knows that. They know that about each other. They also know they can trust each other when the time comes.

"Come sit down first," he says gently. "Breathe for a few moments. Relax."

Bear trots over, nudging his nose against Karen's hand. Not to get her attention, not because he wants her to pet him, but as a comforting gesture. John has no doubt the second she sits down on the table, he'll curl up beside her and lay his head on her lap. Bear's a perfectly trained military dog, but he's an equally talented family dog, too.

It will be fine, Karen tells herself as she nods and then starts towards the table. If not fine, then as close to fine as it's possible to be. She can't bring Kevin back, or any of the other people who've become collateral damage because of her, but her life here doesn't have to be upended because of these truths coming to light. The things the specter of her brother told her tonight can still be true without her losing what she has. She and John have always seemed to have a mostly unspoken understanding when it comes to things like this — that they won't push for information the other doesn't want to give, and they'll get what that might entail — and there's no reason that shouldn't hold true now. She's safe here.

It's just a hard thing to try to take to heart, and harder still to try to figure out how she'll put any of this into words after all this time.

She smiles faintly, though, at the way Bear nudges her hand, taking what reassurance she can from such a small gesture, then using her sleeve to attempt to dry her cheeks a little. Relaxing is probably out of the question, but she can at least try to pull herself together a little, however short-lived it might wind up being with what she has to say. As she takes a seat, she breathes in deep and unsteady, reaching for John's hand with one of hers, holding out the file to him with the other. "This showed up," she explains. "It's... some of it. A reporter I was working with for a while, back in New York, he went digging. Gotta vet your sources, and all that."

Trailing off, she looks at his familiar handwriting scrawling her name on the front. "He died not long after."

John sits, squeezing Karen's hand gently, then he takes the file when she holds it out toward him. Her name is written on the front and he slides it toward himself, laying it flat on the table. Like the newspaper he'd given her, he thinks it might explain some things she's kept from him like the information he'd kept from her, but he doesn't want to open it until she's given him explicit permission.

He wants to be annoyed with the reporter for having dug so deeply into Karen's past, but he can't, not when he knows he and Finch would have done the same. Finch might not have compiled a file like this, something so easily abused, but he would have still had the information were it available to be found.

"Do you want me to look at it?" he asks. "I don't have to."

He'd given her the newspaper without question, but that's no guarantee she wants him to do the same. He'll respect whatever answer she gives him. She's said she wants to tell him and for John, her word, her explanation, if that's all she wants him to have, that's enough. But sometimes the words just don't come.

Even having given him the file, Karen isn’t sure, at first, what her answer to that question is or should be. On one hand, while there’s no concrete information in it, it’s simple enough to piece together what happened from the information inside. Most people back home were quick to make assumptions about her part in what happened, despite her name having been kept out of anything official. A small mercy, really, and one that she knows wasn’t for her own benefit. With as long as she’s gone without talking about this, it seems like it might be easier to let him find out for himself. She wouldn’t even know where to start, really.

On the other, that seems like part of the problem here. She’s the one who buried it; she’s the one who had her past come back to haunt her. Maybe she’s supposed to own it now, to tell her own story instead of letting it be told for her. If there’s anyone with whom she can do so, after all, it’s him. He won’t hate her for this. He won’t decide she’s not worth it. She has to believe that.

"I think I want to tell you, instead," she says, her voice trembling just a little, though she manages to lift one corner of her mouth. "I never have. Told anyone. And I’ve done some really bad shit, but I think… maybe you kind of knew that already."

John nods, laying his hand flat on top of the file and leaving it where it is for now. Karen may still want him to look at it as her story progresses, whatever it may be, so he wants to keep it close, but for the moment he ignores it and keeps his gaze steady on Karen instead.

She says she's done some bad things and John nods, even though he knows he never would have phrased it like that. When it comes to having done certain things, he's the last person in the world who can cast judgement on others, having done some of the worst possible things he can think of himself. John doesn't pretend he's a good person, he doesn't pretend he has some sort of higher ground. All he does is try to understand that everyone faces all kinds of things in their lives and sometimes they have to make decisions they regret later on.

"I'm here," he says. "I'm listening."

Karen takes a deep, unsteady breath, nodding to herself before she starts to speak. Even knowing that there's no getting away from it now, even knowing that this will be alright, she still can't unearth any of this easily. Then again, it's basically there already. What happened tonight wasn't just in her head or a ghost in her peripheral vision. She saw other people's shit, too, which means it stands to reason that they saw hers. For that little while, Kevin — some twisted, undead version of him — was real. The thought is nearly enough to make her burst into tears all over again, but she swallows hard against the lump in her throat, and tries to figure out where the fuck to start.

"My mom died," she settles on, a roundabout opening but, she thinks, necessary context. "When I was a teenager. Cancer. I deferred college because she was sick, and then I just... didn't go, because my family needed me." Unbidden, she rolls her eyes, entirely at odds with the rest of her demeanor and expression. "We had a restaurant. Or... It was my mom's, really. My dad didn't know what to do with it. He would've bankrupted us."

It all still feels beside the point. And she probably doesn't deserve whatever defenses she could make in her favor, but it still seems like she should tell all of this the way it happened instead of jumping right to the worst of it. "I started drinking when she was sick. And then that... snowballed, and maybe a year later, I was doing coke and selling drugs with this guy I was seeing. Going out partying most nights, showing up to work hungover in the morning."

She doesn't look at him. Even knowing that he isn't likely to judge her for it, she can't bring herself to, not saying that, and not with what has to come next. "My younger brother, Kevin, he figured it out. And he undeferred me from school, which was fucking stupid, because I couldn't go, the restaurant would have gone under without me. I got mad, we all got in this big fight, I got Todd, the guy I was with, to come get me, and..." Trailing off, she huffs out a watery breath. "Kevin beat us to Todd's trailer. He'd burned the whole thing down. Todd... went crazy. Attacked him. Then me. He wouldn't've stopped, I don't think, so I — I shot him in the arm. Grabbed Kevin, drove away."

Her voice wavers more prominently, then, and she presses a hand to her mouth for a moment before she continues. "I was drunk and I was high and I shouldn't have been driving, I wouldn't have, otherwise, but..." But she hadn't seen any other choice. But she'd been trying to help, not make everything worse, only the mess was already one of her own making and it couldn't be so easily undone. "I hit a railing. The car flipped. I was okay, but... I killed him. I killed my brother."

It's a lot to take in, but John listens and watches, occasionally squeezing Karen's hand gently. Everyone has been through something they'd rather put behind them, things they don't want to remember, but Karen keeps talking and John wants to collect her up and take her away from all of it. He can safely say he's been through a certain kind of hell, but what Karen has faced is beyond anything he can imagine living through.

And yet she'd lived through it. She's here and she's thriving and she doesn't need John to save her from anything.

He reaches out, lifting his hand from hers to the side of her face instead, his fingers gently pushing some of her hair back over her shoulder. There isn't much he can say, nothing that wouldn't sound trite, so he doesn't say anything for awhile, simply holds his hand against the side of her face, feeling the heat of her skin, the damp of her tears.

"Was it Kevin you were seeing?" he asks after a moment. His fingers stroke gently against the skin just behind her ear. Trying to be a comfort all while knowing he can't make any of this better. It's something she has to live with, something she's been living with all this time. His knowing doesn't change how she deals with it every single day.

Karen nods, leaning into his touch, a choked breath escaping her. If talking about it is going to make her feel unburdened somehow, it hasn't happened yet, and she certainly doesn't expect it to alleviate her guilt. She still did what she did. Her brother's death is still her responsibility. Nothing will change that. Maybe at some point down the line, when everything isn't still so raw, it will feel like a weight off her shoulders to have shared this truth with someone else, but it won't let her off the hook for any of it. Knowing that feels important. Right now, she's too much of a mess, anyway, the last two weeks having worn her down, tonight only making it worse.

"Yeah," she says. "By the end. It started small, but it was... all about that. That day you saw me wander out into the street, I'd seen him standing there, looking like he did after the car flipped." And then tonight was worse than any of it, but having said so much already, she's not sure how to get into all of that. She needs a few moments first, time to process having given voice to this. Back home, Ben knew, and then Ellison, but they found out on their own, and she never really talked about it with them. Even having known it would probably be fine, this is different.

"I've never told anyone that before."

John had figured as much, but still he nods when Karen says she's never told anyone before. Shifting forward in his chair, he presses a kiss to her forehead, then sits back again, dropping his hand back down to cover hers. Since finding her that day on the street, he had known something was wrong, deeply so, but he hadn't wanted to press her on it.

Maybe he should have. Maybe if he'd asked, she wouldn't have had to face all this on her own.

"I'm sorry," he says. "That you had to go through all this. That you had to do it alone."

He's sorry he couldn't stop it all from happening, sorry he hadn't been able to prevent the screening, although he knows, logically, it wouldn't have really made a difference. There are plenty of things John can do, crimes he can prevent, but Darrow is something else, something far bigger than what he and Finch had taken on together.

"I could've said something," Karen says with a shrug. She didn't, of course, but she thinks it ought to be said all the same. That she never talked about it doesn't speak to any trust or lack thereof between the two of them, at least on her end. Rather, the knowledge that it would be alright, that he would understand if she did talk about it, made it safer not to. She can't say the same for most of the other people who've been in her life, including her own fucking father, who sent her away as soon as Kevin was in the ground. "I think... that's why I didn't. Because I knew it would be okay whether I told you or not."

Very little else feels particularly okay right now, but at least she has this, somewhere safe to come home to when she feels like she's falling apart. "And I think I would've anyway, after tonight, but this showing up sort of settled it."

Someone else would have rushed to reassure Karen, to promise her it would be okay, no matter what she ever said to him, but John only nods. It's something she knows already, it's something they both know about the other, and he doesn't think there's any reason for them to have to say it. The level of trust they share is something unlike anything else he's known.

The only person who's ever come close was Carter and even then, he knows he didn't trust her as much as he does Karen.

He doesn't blame her for not having said anything. Sometimes, these things take time. Or they don't come out at all. And she's right, they would have been okay either way.

When she refers to the file, John looks at it, then back up at her. "What do you want to do with it?" Chances are it's the only copy that exists in Darrow. There may be other copies elsewhere, but the only one they can do anything about is the one right here in front of them.

"I don't know," Karen says, shaking her head, looking down at the folder as if doing so might hold the answer. "I hadn't actually thought that far." Given the night she's had — the past two weeks, really — she thinks that's probably understandable enough. Mostly, it just pushed her over the edge into knowing she had to tell him. Chances are, it would have come out anyway after the screening tonight and everything that entailed, the image of her dead brother blaming her for what happened nothing she's likely to forget anytime soon, but this made it feel inescapable. She thinks she's alright with that. She always knew it would be okay after all, if she did tell him. If it took a push to make that actually happen, at least she didn't have to worry about how he might react.

"I mean, it's not... all of it. Anyone who read this could figure it out, Ben did, but no one really knew what happened." She peels the post-it note off the top. It's a stupid, sentimental thing, but somehow, the fact that it's Ben's handwriting makes her not want to lose that one part of it. "I don't think there's any reason to keep it."

"We can get rid of it," he answers easily and simply. If that's what she wants, they can make it happen. It's an easy enough thing, burning it and dumping the ashes down the toilet. Or, if she would rather keep it somewhere safe, John can get her a different identity if she wants, let her take out a safe deposit box at a bank where only she'll know the location, make sure to hide the key somewhere else. They can make it disappear in any number of temporary or permanent ways. Whatever she wants, he'll do.

"You don't need to keep it," he says softly. "Those memories... they'll never go away. A case file isn't going to make it any easier, but you don't need to keep it around to make it any worse either."

These are things he thinks she probably already knows. Nothing he ever says will absolve her of those choices or make her feel as if she's not to blame. That guilt is something she'll always carry and it's something John understands completely. He won't judge her for the choices she's made, but he knows they won't so easily leave either.

He's right, of course. If ten years haven't faded the memories or the weight of them, then chances are, nothing will, and there sure as hell isn't anything that will alleviate her guilt. She did what she did. She can't take that back. All she can really do is keep trying to live with it, though at least coming out and telling someone, actually owning it, seems to be a step in the right direction. Karen doesn't know whether or not she'll ever tell anyone else. As rocky as tonight has been, it's kind of hard to think past right now anyway, her head fuzzy from crying, her stomach still not quite having settled.

"None of this really covers it, anyway," she says, frowning slightly. It's not like she ever told her story. Some of the speculation came close, but it was all still incomplete at best, no one who'd speak publicly about it knowing how they wound up where they did. "I don't... There's no reason to keep it around here." Getting rid of it isn't the same as burying what truths are enclosed in it. Someone else knows now. Even if it never goes beyond the two of them, that still counts for something.

John nods, then says, "Think about it again tomorrow. For now..."

He stands from the table and picks up the file, then goes to the closet across the hall from the kitchen. At the bottom is a small metal safe, not exactly hidden, but difficult to see behind their shoes and coats. John crouches and pushes the coats aside, then presses the ten digit code into the electronic panel on the front and spins the combination to get inside. He doesn't keep weapons in here, they would be too easily found, but there are several fake ID cards, as well as the mask he wears when he goes out on his own. Shifting these aside, he puts the file on the bottom, then looks back at Karen.

"It's safe for now. You can decide what to do with it." He closes the safe, then spins the combination lock and listens for the beep at the electronic lock slides home as well. It's a safe he'd given the codes Karen to a long time ago, something she has complete access to whenever she wants.

When he stands, he just holds his hand out toward her. This awful night can have its end now, he thinks. Tomorrow will be something else, a different task, but she's exhausted and hurting, and he can't take that away, but he can at least help the night finish.

Karen knows what he's doing as soon as he starts in the direction of the safe, and it seems like it might be the best idea. NO one else will ever stumble upon it, and she doesn't have to make any decisions now or even soon, which is for the best when she knows she isn't exactly thinking straight. After everything that's happened tonight, it would be impossible to. Besides, this probably wouldn't be the time for it, anyway. She doesn't know how what happened at the screening was possible or what she actually saw, but she doesn't think she should decide what to do while reeling from seeing her dead brother brought to life again, blaming her for what happened to him.

"It can stay there for now," she says, nodding as she takes his hand and gets to her feet. She's exhausted, not just tonight but the last two weeks weighing on her, as if it's all caught up to her at once. Maybe now it will finally end. Her demons will be her own; there won't always be ghosts lurking in the edges of her vision. "Jesus, I'm tired."

He knows, though, and the world hasn't ended. Nothing has changed or broken. She knew that would be the case, but actually going through with it is something else entirely.

"Come on," he says softly. "Come to bed."

As he speaks, he begins to lead Karen down the hall and once they're inside their bedroom, he turns on the dim bedside lamp instead of the overhead light, and gently pushes down on her shoulders to get her to sit on the edge of the bed.

Ducking into a crouch, John begins to take off her shoes, setting one aside, then the other. When he's finished, he reaches for the buttons of her shirt, undoing them one by one. There's no intention behind his actions, John knows better than to think either of them are in the mood for sex right now, but he wants to get her undressed and into bed. He wants to be able to take care of her in this moment.

"Lie down," he says softly. "Let's get you under the covers."

There's an odd sort of relief in letting John help her out of her clothes, her limbs feeling heavy, the exhaustion of the past couple of weeks inescapable now. Even just in this, there's a kind of a trust, too. Not as much so as telling him what she did, but she knows that he must get it, how worn out she is, and that he has no other motivation in undressing her. The prospect of getting in bed sounding more than a little appealing, Karen nods, exhaling slowly. She still doesn't feel lighter, not really, but maybe that will come eventually, when she hasn't just been confronted by the specter of her dead brother, his words still echoing in her head.

In light of that, she's a little worried to actually sleep, but lying down is bound to do her some good regardless. Taking a seat on the mattress first, she eases under the blankets. "Thanks," she says. "God, this has been exhausting."

Once she's under the blankets, John stands to undress himself, leaving his shoes in the closet, then taking off his suit and shirt and hanging them up. Before Finch, in the state he'd been, he probably would have just dropped them where they fell, but he's been well trained since then. Once everything is hung, he goes around to the other side of the bed and climbs under the covers as well, then slides his hand along Karen's arm.

"You're okay," he says softly. It's not as easy as that, John knows that better than most, but he can't not say it. He wants to be able to give that to her, a place where she might be okay in the long run, even if she doesn't at the moment.

His hand moves over her arm, up toward her hair, fingers carding through the soft strands.

"Yeah," Karen says, shifting a little closer so she can rest her head against his shoulder. "I am." She sounds a little like she's trying to convince herself of that, and maybe she is, but she knows he's right, too. The feeling of actually being okay isn't there yet, hasn't settled in, but it seems close, and God, right now, that seems like enough. "For the first time in, like, two weeks, I actually feel like I could be."

She's gotten by alright, for the most part, over the last ten years. Some times are always harder than others, but she's been relatively fine, at least in that regard. It's the way her past has come back to haunt her that's felt impossible to deal with until now. Somehow, she gets the feeling that she won't be seeing things anymore. She doesn't know whether or not Kevin is at rest, but maybe her own guilt can be.

"I'm glad I told you. I hate what it took, but."

"I'm glad you felt you could," he says. There's no pressure between them, he would never demand she tell him anything or even expect it from her, but he's glad she felt that she was able, no matter how much time it might have taken. And no matter what ended up prompting it.

Turning onto his side, John faces Karen, his fingers still stroking through her hair. He knows it's a lot to tell her she's okay right now, but he thinks she will be and he thinks she knows that, too. It's coming, it will take a little time, but they have that for now.

"Try to sleep," he says softly.

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