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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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"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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