They called him Finch.

Not his real name; just what stuck. Names had weight, and his had grown too heavy to carry. He moved like a shadow in the places the city tried to forget, with hands that stole quietly

He was a thief. That much was true. But not the kind people whispered about with fear. No one had ever heard him speak, but his work spoke. Very loud. He took only what others hoarded.

And sometimes, medicine.

Always medicine. And maybe money from time to time.

It started with a cough. His daughter, June, barely six, small enough to still sleep curled against him like the world was safe.

Then the cough became something worse. Not the kind of worse you can solve with soup and cartoons. The kind with long names. Incurable ones. Treatable..

If you could afford it.

Finch couldn’t.

He’d worked. Before everything. Before June’s mother got sick and died faster than they could say goodbye. Before the bills stacked higher than his hope. Before the system forgot his name. Before being good stopped being enough.

He applied for everything. Begged. Waited. They said waitlists. They said delays. They said no.

So he said “Okay”.

And he took what they wouldn’t give.

It began with a shipment from a warehouse. Clean job, no harm. Then another. He learned schedules. Security patterns. He studied pharmacies like they were blueprints to freedom.

Every vial he stole bought June more time.

She smiled again. Her eyes lit up. Sometimes she laughed so hard she fell off the bed. And Finch? He started believing he could outrun it. Outwork it

Until the night of the van.

He hadn’t known someone was still inside. A guard. Barely twenty. New. Scared. Armed.

Finch never carried weapons. He never aimed to hurt anybody. Physically atleast.

But the boy panicked. Drew the gun.

Finch swung a crowbar in reflex, in fear. Once. Twice. Just enough to escape. Just enough to get the medicine to his daughter.

He never saw if the boy got back up.

June got better. Not cured. But stronger. Long enough to run again. To tell him jokes. To go back to school.

Long enough to say “I love you, Daddy,” and mean it.

But the boy in the van survived. There were cameras. Footprints. A trail.

Finch was caught weeks later, crouched beside June’s bed, holding her hand.

The trial was fast.

They called him a criminal.

They didn’t say father.

They didn’t say desperate.

They said Violent.

They said Felon. A repeated one at that

He didnt deny it. He knew they were right.

June wrote him letters. Bright ones. Full of misspelled hope and drawings of stick-figures.

He read them until the ink smudged from tears.

But people started talking. Not the ones in power. The ones below. Nurses. Cashiers. Strangers. Parents who had stood in line, desperate for medicine they couldn’t afford.

They called him a thief.

But they also called him brave.

June died during an equipment failure at the clinic. A power outage, they said. If she’d had the next round of meds, she might have survived.

The state sent an apology.

Finch never spoke again.