A/N: SURPRISE! Happy almost-end of RTY. It's taken far too long, I know, but for those that have stuck around and still hold interest in these two and their trainwreck of a story - thank you.
Summary: Following on from ‘Traitor’ and ‘You’re Somebody Else’. An unexpected visitor throws you right back into the life you thought you left behind. Working beside the man that put you behind bars is one thing, pretending like you never loved him is another.
Word count: 6.3k
Warnings: swearing, graphic violence, graphic thoughts of death and torture, reader is Stressed my guy, marcus "i dont have time for bullshit" pike, a kidnapped hostage stand off situation, use of guns and graphic descriptions of bullet wounds and blood, A N G S T (god i love it), i love grace van pelt, jacob wilson is golden retreiever, patrick fucking jane and his antics, some more angst, critically injured marcus, hospitals and talk of surgeries and more death
main masterlist | series masterlist
This story is 18+ only.
The vicious turning of your stomach increases with every second you spend in the car, wedged between two men, complete strangers. They say nothing. The male driver, also a stranger, says nothing. You say nothing. The silence that fills the small space creates a thick tension, curling around your shoulders and tightening around your chest, and you worry any sound or movement you make could shatter it all completely.
You dare not shift in your seat, remaining so still an ache starts to grow along your limbs and deep in your lower back. You don’t breathe too harshly, but the panic that stirs within your chest threatens to ruin that. You focus on each lungful, the inhales and the exhales.
In, and out.
Repeat.
In, out.
You count them.
One, two, three…
Eyes falling to your lap where your fingers anxiously pick at the other, you find you’d picked completely through the skin by the side of your thumbnail. Blood builds and smears along your nail fold where the skin had given in to the small assault, but you can’t stop. Your other thumb still picks at it, its blunt nail scratching through the sticky warmth and spreading the blood further.
Breathe.
In, out.
It’ll be okay.
It’ll—
You grind your teeth as tears begin to sting behind your eyes. You don’t think you’ve ever felt this shaken, this terrified, in your entire life. Not when you’d been a part of this world all that time ago—you were on a different side back then. Not when you’d been arrested—you’d been scared, sure, but at least they were the so-called ‘good guys’.
They wouldn’t kill you just because you were an inconvenience to business.
You’re going to die.
It sinks into you, heavy and relentless. You wonder if what they say about a warm bright light is true, if you do get a few moments of reliving memories before falling into the inevitable abyss. Would it hurt? Be quick? The fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not knowing all that could happen before the end. Maybe they’ll drag it out, make it a punishment for getting in their way before showing some mercy with a bullet.
No. No crying, you tell yourself.
This is it, and whatever happens… well, there’s no changing it.
A voice echoes in your ears—warm, familiar, stubborn.
I won’t let anything happen to you.
You can’t be mad at him for breaking his promise. It was your own stupid self that got you into this position. If you had just waited at his apartment, endured the safe walls of his home and the waft of his cologne after he left… if you had just listened, you wouldn’t be here.
It was heartache that had you all but running out of that door. You needed air, needed something to clear the sudden onslaught of memories and the way his voice swirled in your mind. It was always real to me.
It had been real.
The soft spoken words, the gentle touches, the way he had looked at you, the way he had made you feel, the way he said those three little words that had been your ultimate undoing…
It wasn’t all a lie.
At least if you die, when you die, you’ll know that. You’ll have that to reflect on. You’ll go knowing the love you had felt had been accepted, and returned. It still hurts, the scarring left from how everything had changed permanent and lasting deep in the very core of you, but at least, while it was happening back then, it had been real.
The car rolls to a stop, and your heart briefly along with it. You don’t know where you are, where you’re being taken to next. You don’t move until they gesture you to. The hand that curls around your arm when you awkwardly make your way out of the backseat is tight, an unspoken promise that there was no easy way out of this.
There was no running.
In, out.
Maybe he’d find you in time. Maybe he was already close.
You comfort yourself with that as you’re moved into a new vehicle, the sound of liquid being thrown about and splashing behind you. You look back out the open door in time to watch one of the men throw a small lit match into the now vacant backseat, eyeing the flames that engulf the interior of the car you had been in, thankful they didn’t decide to just leave you in it.
For now, there was still a bit of time.
—
His heart still beats thickly in his throat. Sweat had gathered on his palms as soon as he saw you exit the elevator, and had slowly built along the back of his neck with every moment in your presence. He's surprised he's been able to keep control over his voice so far, a barely there tremble threatening to break free in his words and cause him to stutter under your attention.
You were hard, and completely closed off. You listened throughout his little debriefing, and understandably been pissed when he told you just exactly what they were asking of you. It was hypocritical, even he had to admit.
Even with your evident and spoken anger and borderline disgust, a part of him still warms at the sight of you. He doubts that will ever fade.
“Are we done here?”
He sees how you struggle to look at him, feels the hollow echo of what once was before getting hit with harsh reality.
“Yeah. Yeah, we are.”
He feels weak as you move to leave the room, you couldn’t move quick enough.
It all hits him like a punch to the stomach and he folds from it, bracing his hands on the cool top of the conference room table and letting his head hang low. He drags in a breath, catching the smell of your perfume as you pass. It’s new, so different from your old one.
A reminder of how everything had changed, of what he did to you.
He exhales quietly, eyes slipping shut and seeing the hatred that had swam in your eyes behind his lids. The door slams shut behind him.
—
He gets it over a call.
The car was found, torched and completely destroyed, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that any potential evidence has been destroyed, doesn’t care they weren’t quick enough to intercept before whoever took you fled again. He doesn’t care because he’s relieved at the following information provided to him.
No body was found within the vehicle.
The immediate thoughts that had assaulted him of seeing your body, twisted, unmoving and burnt beyond recognition, vacate to the depths of his mind, and he finds he can breathe a little easier. His tie sits a little more comfortably around his throat, and he’s able to focus a little better on the road as he drives to the office.
You’re okay. For now, you’re okay.
They still want you alive, and that’s good. That means he has time.
“There’s a security camera around the corner from the lot,” Wilson’s voice continues to fill the car.
Marcus didn’t comment on it at the time, too busy swimming in his own thoughts and the sheer relief flooding his system, but he had heard the edge in the young agent's tone when he had answered the call. He’s thankful Wilson wouldn’t be forever haunted by the sick images his mind had conjured.
“It's old, but we’ve been able to get a rough image of the vehicle. Black SUV, tinted windows so we weren’t able to get a look at the occupants. Also got a slight partial plate, but it’s barely readable. I’ve sent it through to forensics to see if they can do anything with it.”
“Good. I’m sending a team your way, make your way back to the office once they arrive. I want you with me.”
If anyone on his team would understand the depth to this, it’s Wilson.
“Yes, sir.”
Marcus knows the agent has some experience at this kind of shit, having previously read over his history within his file before confirming his success at getting the position he was so eager for, but this time it was a little more personal.
You two had spent quite a bit of time together during the start of this case, would go as far as to call you two somewhat friends, and so the softer, less Special Agent Pike, more Marcus side of him feels the need to ask, to focus on something other than his own emotions.
“How’re you doing?”
The line falls silent, before the younger agent clears his throat quietly. “Can I speak freely, sir?”
“Always.”
It comes out in a quiet rush. “I’m so fucking relieved she’s not in that car.”
Marcus makes a low noise of agreement. “You and me both.”
—
“0800, on the dot. Not a second after, understood?”
The young agent before him nods, his enthusiasm evident. Marcus remembers that enthusiasm, the excitement at finally being where he wanted to be, where he worked so hard to get to.
This new guy… Marcus liked him. He knew watching over his interview that he’d be a good fit within his team. The kid was eager for an opportunity, had gall, and Marcus knew you’d be safe in his agent’s hands.
“Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
“I don’t expect trouble along the way, but I’ll note it now that her safety is paramount. She’s—” he stops, looking down at an older photograph of you sitting amongst the various bits of paper pulled from the file and feeling the familiar ache creep around his heart.
She’s important to me.
The words had almost slipped free, danced so easily, so naturally, on the tip of his tongue it had taken his mind a moment to catch up and stop them from leaving his mouth. He clears his throat softly, tucking the image back into the manilla folder so he doesn’t have you smiling up at him.
He didn’t want to use your mugshot for the file made for Wilson. He didn’t want the agent to go into this with a preconceived idea of who and what he would assume you are. After everything, the least he could do was give you a chance to be known as you are, not what they made you to be.
“She’s integral to the case. Should anything arise, her safety is your highest priority.”
Agent Wilson straightens in his seat, a cool wash of determination settling into his features. Yeah, Marcus thinks to himself, he’s a good fit.
“Understood, sir. She’ll be in good hands.”
Marcus nods.
He thinks you’ll like him the most out of his team. His other agents are great, but you’ll be on your guard. The others will be quiet, and will keep to themselves more often than not. That wouldn’t help you. Wilson’s a talker, though. Sometimes, relentlessly so. It might help you find some comfort in this shitshow, might make things a little easier for you, a little less lonely.
—
He studies your photo where it’s pinned on the board, only a little ways away from one of the murder victims' post mortem images. The images are a stark contrast from each other, one warm in hues, brightness swimming throughout the image and bursting from the wide spread of your smile. The other is cold, clinical. Void of life.
The more he looks, the more his mind twists and runs, swapping the features of the two women until it’s painted a version of your own post-mortem photograph. Skin sunken beneath your open eyes, pupils fixed, unseeing. A cold measuring tape held next to the gaping hole in your skull.
He blinks, and the images are as they were.
Jane is damn near adamant they want you alive, but without definitive proof that you’ll be okay, it does little to settle his mind.
Marcus turns away from the board with a new wash of nausea he swallows down, flicking through the notes provided to him by Lisbon’s team from the interrogation and marking the noted locations of addresses on the map spread out before him.
He can hear the work beyond the conference room, a part of him comforted by the sheer amount of effort put in by both his own and Teresa's agents.
They’re close.
That familiar feeling swirls in the pit of his stomach, knowing that with every new bit of information that comes through by the hour, they’re closing that gap between them and you. It overrides the worry, pushes his anxiety to the side until all he feels is brute determination, the urge to get the job done and retrieve you swiftly and safely.
You’ll be okay.
He’ll make sure of it.
Marcus feels the presence of someone hovering just inside the door of the conference room, and fights the sigh of annoyance threatening to break free from his lungs. He doesn’t want to entertain niceties, doesn’t have time for idle chit chat and useless empty conversation, so he cuts straight to the chase with a sharp edge in his tone that says just that.
He’d feel ashamed by the bluntness of it if his mind wasn’t working so damn hard to absorb every possible bit of information given to him in an effort to get any closer to you.
“Can I help you with something, Agent Van Pelt?”
He sees her move in his peripheral as he shuffles through more notes, more paper, more satellite images of warehouses and shop fronts and galleries. She shifts slightly, almost unsure as her eyes glance back to the open door to the conference room before they roll back to settle on him.
“I just wanted to say that it’ll be okay,” she says finally. “We’ll find her.”
It’s spoken so surely, so warmly sincere, it completely cuts through the icyness that had settled in his chest and worked its way through his nervous system. He feels his shoulders slacken slightly when he eventually meets her eyes, the tightness of his features softening when she gives a small reassuring smile.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, giving his head a little shake to settle the mess of emotions swirling through him. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be—”
“It’s okay,” Grace’s smile widens . Her eyes fix on the board behind him in open interest, but it doesn’t hit him like it did with Jane and Lisbon. It doesn’t get his hackles up in defence with a need to shield you from potential judgement.
“Seems like she’s really something.”
He looks over his shoulder, gaze swiping one more time over your image. “She is.”
—
It’s a warehouse, empty save for the leftover pallets, a few odd pieces of old machinery from previous companies and the van you had been driven in.
You’d lost track of the route they had taken you, not wanting to risk anything by making it obvious you were trying to decipher your location by looking out of the windows. There was no point. You doubt you’d make it very far if you chose to run.
Playing along, doing what these people ask when they ask it, it’d hopefully buy you some time. Hopefully the time Marcus and his team needs if they were looking. No, you know he is. You can feel it.
Before all the recent developments, you probably would’ve resigned yourself to your uncertain fate, and accepted that you were just another pawn for the FBI. A nobody, just mere collateral damage in the wider grand scheme of things.
You lost track of how long you’d been standing in the one spot, almost scared to move. The small group of men had shown you out of the van and onto the main floor of the warehouse, and then moved to the sides. They stayed quiet, sometimes talking quietly amongst themselves, but otherwise leaving you alone.
A welcome relief.
“You’ve certainly been working away, haven’t you? Piece after piece. Surely you’re tired.”
The men take their cue and start their exit, leaving you alone with the newcomer. The one pulling the strings and keeping them in line, if their quick and quiet departure was anything to go by. They clearly deem you no threat whatsoever.
You turn to the voice, eyes sweeping over the familiar face of Edward Thomas. You recoil a little in surprise, almost expecting someone else to be with him because of how out of character something like this was for the older man, but he remains alone, and you are left standing corrected.
“Didn’t really have much of a choice,” you murmur.
You don’t think openly admitting you had readily agreed to helping the FBI wouldn’t work well in your favour.
“How’d you know it was my work?”
“I didn’t,” he admits quietly, “in the beginning. We actually thought you were still in prison.”
“We?”
Edward smiles, though it lacks any warmth or sincerity. He looks tired, older. “Asking for yourself, or your FBI boyfriend?”
You ignore the goad, glancing carefully around the vacant space with a barely concealed shiver down your spine. Now what?
“What am I doing here?”
He sighs, rubbing a tired hand across his weathered features.
“This whole thing, it’s—it’s turned ugly, and quite frankly I’m tired of it. I had no intention of being this involved. I needed something to offer in return for my… retirement, let’s call it. After all, after a few of your pieces had been discovered by myself, interest has grown in your particular… area of expertise. You have a few curious in what you can offer.”
A sick feeling turns your stomach, but you keep a hold of your expression. “So you’re not auctioning off my pieces anymore, you’re just auctioning off me.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Throwing me to the highest bidder so you can, what, run away to a sunny beach somewhere? That’s not like you, Edward.”
“Yes well, as I said, it’s turned ugly.”
“By ugly, you mean the people that have been killed.”
“You’re quite naive if you didn’t think that was happening before your arrest. People died then, and people will die now. It’s simply a part of the world you so readily jumped into.”
“Can’t really blame the girl.”
A calm and collected voice takes you off guard, and you quickly school your stunned expression into something a little less obvious as the one and only Patrick fucking Jane all but waltzes into the room, looking completely at ease as he slides his hands into the pockets of his slacks.
“She wasn’t exactly given a brochure on the workings of an underground art ring upon her application.”
If he’s here, then his team isn’t too far behind.
And if his team isn’t too far behind, surely that means Marcus would be with them, too? A slight twinge of hopes grows to life in your chest, your heart picking up with the possibility you’d be walking free from this.
Edward frowns at him in confusion, eyes darting to the direction of the van and where the three men that had bought you in had disappeared to.
“How the hell did you get in here?”
“The door,” Jane comments as if it were obvious, and you can’t help the eye roll, pinning him with such a look of disdain it makes his lips twitch.
“And what are you doing here?”
He has the nerve to look bored, eyes observing the empty warehouse in false interest. The sheer ease he remains in has Edward’s frown deepening with every step he takes further into the room.
“Checking out industrial real estate. What’s the going rate for one of these?” His hand leaves his pockets to gesture vaguely about the open room.
“Mr Jane, I must admit I do tire of your little games.”
You startle, eyes widening as you glance between them.
“You two know each other?”
“We met at the museum,” Jane shrugs. “When I said I was following my own leads, I was. It just wasn’t you. I did have to get you out of the way, though. Sorry about that.”
He doesn’t sound sorry in the slightest. You stare at him, at a complete and utter loss, your mind struggling to piece together all of the events that had led you here. Did he intentionally upset you at the museum? To get you to leave?
It’s all a big fucking game to this man.
“You knew,” you realise slowly, your brows coming together, “you knew I’d leave the investigation.”
“I expected. Just like I expected Mr Thomas here to make a move as soon as he knew you weren’t being monitored anymore,” Jane explains easily, unbothered by the way your face twists with his little reveal.
You had been a pawn.
Just not the FBI’s pawn.
You were Patrick fucking Jane’s pawn.
“What I didn’t expect, was you running off, and.. you know, all that happened after,” he trails off with a slight wince. “That was inconvenient, I’ll admit.”
He, at the very least, has the grace to look apologetic at that. So he didn’t mean for it to work out like this. He knew Marcus would flip and put you into protective custody. He counted on Marcus getting you out of town and finding you somewhere safe to lay low while they worked out the rest of the case.
What he didn’t count on, however, was the mountain of emotional baggage he was undoing and letting loose during his little playtime pretending to be an FBI agent.
“Inconventient?” You grind out, anger simmering beneath your skin. “I got fucking kidnapped, Jane!”
“Like I said—inconvenient.”
“Enough.”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you. Marcus was right, you really are a fucking dick.”
“Things could’ve gone smoother, yes—”
You jump at the sudden firing of a gun, wide eyes immediately flying to Edward where he stands unimpressed, holding the weapon towards the ceiling. He then levels it between you, your undeniable anger at the consultant melting steadily into fear.
Jane takes a step towards you automatically, his arm outstretched as if he could reach you despite the distance between you, but he stills when the gun is aimed for him.
“I said enough.”
—
“North entrance is covered,” Rigsby reports as Marcus arrives on scene mere moments after them. “South’s free—they’re not expecting company.”
“Good,” Marcus nods, eyes scouting the area around the warehouse and the flashy expensive car Thomas had left parked along the side. Might as well be a flashing neon sign in an area like this. “How many on the north?”
“Three,” Cho replies plainly, checking over his weapon.
“You certainly work quick. We’ll send a small team to cover both exits for now, when—”
“We need to wait for back up, we don’t know how many are inside yet.”
He fights the frown threatening to dig between his brows as he looks at Lisbon, her expectant gaze already fixed tightly on him. He knows that. He doesn’t need to be told that like he’s some freshly graduated baby agent, let alone by someone who’s not even on his team. He bites back the sarcastic words building on his tongue.
“When SWAT arrives,” Marcus continues as if she didn’t interrupt him, “we make the call to move in. How far out are they?”
“Four minutes,” Cho provides again, looking between the two superior agents with a look he couldn’t quite decipher, but otherwise keeping quiet.
Anything could happen in four minutes.
Marcus presses his lips together, eyes raking over the structure they suspect you’ve been taken to and its wider surroundings. His hands find his hips as he studies the high windows, wondering if Wilson would be able to find anything to climb up on to find a point to look in to until backup arrives.
“Uh, where’s Jane?”
Rigsby’s carefully posed question pulls Marcus's attention from the building, his teeth quickly mashing together as he attempts to reign in the hot flood of irritation that sweeps over him. Sure enough, the consultant is nowhere to be found when the team looks, and the irritation morphs into something a little stronger, something with a bit more of a kick.
He can’t help it.
Marcus smiles at Lisbon, stiff and sarcastic. “I see that tight leash is working well.”
She sighs, barely sparing him a glance. “Don’t.”
“If he does anything to—”
A single shot echoes from the warehouse and he jolts as if it had come straight for him and pierced right through his chest. Seconds of silence pass, and with each slowed tick of time in his mind, there you are. On the autopsy table, a bullet through the head. Cold. Lifeless.
Someone speaks, reporting to the incoming team that shots have been fired and he doesn’t care to look at who calls it in. His eyes dart over the building, waiting for movement, a yell, a scream, anything—
He doesn’t, he can’t, wait any longer. Logic, strategy, training—it all blends and settles at the sound of nothing. It’s instinct, it's pure adrenaline. Marcus takes off towards the building while reaching for his weapon, the thought of you bleeding out on the filthy floor, losing precious time with every moment he wastes standing around, pushing his legs harder as he comes up upon the back entrance.
“Marcus!” Teresa shouts after him, already following. “Cho, on me. Rigsby, Van Pelt, you’re on the north entrance. Wilson, wait for SWAT and direct on their arrival!”
—
Your ears ring from the gunshot. The piercing echo of it threatens to stop your heart then and there, the tremble in your hands obvious as you quickly and carefully raise your hands in an effort to show you’re of no threat. Jane mirrors you, studying the way the gun ever so slight shake in Edward’s hand as the barrel of it bounces between the both of you.
“FBI, put your weapon down.”
You almost choke on a sob at the familiar voice.
He’s here.
You feel Marcus move step up and next to you, his own weapon held steady and pointed directly at Edward . You watch the recognition, the panic, the indecision, the urge to flee play out on the older man’s face, the shake in his hand increasing under the presence of Marcus.
“You’re surrounded. Don’t go doing anything stupid. This is your one and only chance to walk out of here, so put it down, and we’ll talk. We can figure something out.”
“I just want this to be over,” Edward mutters with a distinct tone of irritation, flustered by the sudden presence of an actual FBI agent and having their weapon pointed at him, “it wasn’t meant to go this far… I didn’t want any part of this.”
“I know,” Marcus soothes carefully, his voice smooth and calm. “Put the gun down, and we’ll talk about it.”
“You know, it’s your fault,” Edward continues, completely absorbed in the stress of his thoughts, and the gun changes direction to land directly on you, “if you had just stayed aw—”
“Hey,” Marcus snaps immediately, “if you’re going to point that at anyone, you point it at me. She got dragged into this because of me. All of this? It’s on me, do you hear me?”
You jump in fright at the echo of two gunshots towards the front of the warehouse, and in a split second, you watch Edward jump in surprise too, and give way to the panic that overrides the logic of a negotiation.
It all happens so quickly. You feel a shove from the right, the direct force of a body moving and colliding with you just as more shots ring out throughout the warehouse and you stumble back and away from where you had just been standing.
Edward falls back from the shots Teresa and another agent direct at him, the pair suddenly appearing from behind you and quickly advancing towards him, while Jane jumps forward to kick the gun away from the hand that weakly reaches for it.
The body that had collided with you is sprawled on the ground and your heart drops to the pit of your stomach at the familiar hand swept dark hair of Marcus. He doesn't get up. He doesn't move.
Bile builds in your throat as you drop to your knees, uncaring as the rough floor scuffs the skin of your knees through the thin material of your dress. You tug desperately at his jacket, rolling him over and clawing at his body until he sprawls over your lap, heavy and unmoving.
“Marcus? Marcus, look at me,” you beg softly, a strangled sob falling from your throat when his eyes eventually flutter open languidly and focus tiredly on yours. “What did you do? God, what did you do?”
His lips part, words building on his tongue, but before they can fall from his mouth he jolts in your arms, heaving and coughing and sputtering. It sounds fucking horrible.
You watch the blood ooze from his lips, creating a stark trail of bright red that melts into his faded stubble and slides down along his jaw. You push at his jacket and feel your heart plummet to the floor at the deep maroon patches outwardly soaking the crisp white shift from the holes in his torso.
“It’s okay,” you soothe shakily, wiping the blood away from his lips with your thumb and feeling your stomach jolt with the wet sticky feel of it. “It’s okay. Keep looking at me, okay? I’m here. Somebody help me! Marcus, please—hold on, please—”
“Pike!”
Someone takes him from your arms, lays him on the ground and covers the bullet wounds with their hands. Teresa is yelling out orders, something about getting medics in and SWAT and soon more people swarm the warehouse. You sit on your knees, hands warm, and when you look numbly down at them, you see the glisten of his blood coating your skin.
There's so much blood.
“Marcus?” You whimper quietly, his name sticking to the inside of your throat.
“Hey, come on,” a female voice speaks from the side of you, her hands winding around your arms and pulling you from the ground. Your widened eyes find hers as you stumble to stand on two feet, her red hair previously pulled into a ponytail slightly ruffled and out of place as strands fall across her face.
“Let’s give them some space, let them help him. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I don’t—I don’t know,” you reply hoarsely, eyes falling back to where Marcus lay on the ground as even more people surround him.
“Look at me,” the redhead speaks, a gentle smile pulling at her lips as you do as she says. “Good. Do you feel any pain?”
“Uh, I don’t… I don’t think so.”
“Okay,” she says softly, winding an arm around your back and gently leading you from the warehouse. “We have people out here that are going to help you—”
Why are you shaking so much? So damn hard?
Your breath gets stuck in your throat, and your hand moves to cover the length of it in confusion, hoping the press of your fingers would help the oxygen move more freely into your lungs.
Instead of helping you find your breath, you feel the smear of blood along your skin and the heady metallic ring of it sinks into your senses, the urge to vomit suddenly curdling your stomach.
The shaking increases as you jerk your hand away from your neck as if it had cut you. You make a noise, something small and choked, and your knees weaken from the spin of your head.
“Hey, I need you to take a deep breath for me, can you do that? I’m here, I’ve got you.”
“I-I’m trying,” you choke out, suddenly aware of the hot tears spilling down your cheeks as the wind hits with a sharp bite as soon as you step out of the building. “Is—is he going to be okay?”
The redhead briefly glances back at the warehouse, and you think you find a small edge of uncertainty shine in her eyes, but it’s gone within a blink. She gives you another small, reassuring smile though it does little to steady the tremble sitting within your limbs.
“The medics are onsite, he’s in good hands.”
—
The plastic chair is uncomfortable beneath you, the thin scratchy blanket wrapped around your body doing very little to cushion the solid surface of it, yet you don’t move. You don’t think you could if you tried. You hate hospitals. You hate the sterile smell, the cold white walls, the rush of staff and the endless ring of alarms and codes.
This room isn’t too bad, though.
It’s a smaller waiting room, away from the hustle and bustle of the main hospital corridors, and away from the half dozen pairs of eyes that seemed focused on studying your every move. It’s nicer in here, both in style and temperature. The walls are a softer, more welcoming cream colour and a little wall mounted heater keeps the space filled with a nice warmth, but it does very little to calm you.
Your tea had long gone cold next to you, delivered by a startlingly quiet member of Lisbon’s team, Rigsby was it?, before he left you to your thoughts again. You didn’t reach for it once.
Instead, you stare blankly ahead, mind turning over with worry as Marcus is off somewhere in the hospital, somewhere bleeding and hurt and possibly dying. No one comes to talk to you. No one had come to comfort you since Grace had found this room and put you in here, and you think you prefer it that way.
You think she knows you would prefer it that way.
He’s hurt. Severely so.
He’s hurt because he pushed you out of the way, because he took the bullets that had been meant for you, whether they were accidental or not. He had moved with very little regard for himself, instinctively putting himself between you and potential death.
You should be the one in theatre. You should be the one broken and bleeding on an operating table. And yet, you’re not. Here you are, with nothing but bruised, scraped knees and a shot to shit nervous system on the brink of collapsing in on itself.
“Hey Picasso,” Jacob murmurs softly, his face appearing in your view as he crouches down before you, “I think we should get you home—”
Your head is already shaking before he can even finish. Leave? No. No, you can’t do that. What if something happens during surgery? What if he deteriorates and he has no one here to beg them to keep trying? What if—what if he dies on the table and you’re not here for it?
His face creases in sympathy, his hand warm as it comes to rest over your knee.
“Listen to me, alright? You with me?”
His head tilts, waiting until he’s sure you’re fully locked in and focused on him.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s got a collapsed lung, and quite extensive internal bleeding. They said he’s gonna be in there for a while—hey, look at me.”
He ducks his head to help your eyes meet his, and you do your best to swallow down the lump quickly building thickly in the base of your throat.
“While he’s in there, getting the help he needs, I’d like to get you home so you can shower, and get into something more comfortable. Lisbon’s under strict instructions to call me if anything changes, and we’ll come right back once you’re done, alright? How does that sound?”
“Sounds like he could die,” you mutter, voice rough and hollow. “Is he going to die?”
His thumb softly swipes at the stray tear on your cheek.
“I have been assured they are doing everything in their power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“It should’ve been me. It should be me.”
He gives a small, sad smile. “I may not have been a part of this team for very long and know him very well, but I think we both know that was never an option for him.”
“Is it my fault?”
“Absolutely not,” he says firmly, shaking his head, “and you know damn well he wouldn’t want you thinking like that. Now come on, the quicker we go and do this, the quicker we can get back.”
“You promise we’ll come straight back if… if he—”
“If I happen to get a call to say he…” he trails off, eyes dropping to where his hand rests on your knee before he gathers the strength to meet your eyes again. “If I get that call, we’ll come straight back, alright? Even if you’re all shampooed up and half naked. I swear.”
Your eyes dart between his, searching the soft forest green depths for any trace of a lie. You find nothing but sincerity. Your fingers wrap around his hand, briefly comforted by the steady warmth of it as he turns it in your hold and interlocks your fingers carefully.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
He helps you stand, releasing your hand in an effort to keep the blanket wrapped around your frame. He tucks it back under your chin, giving you a little grin.
“Hell, you being here half naked would probably bring him back before any crash cart could—”
“Jacob,” you half sob in surprise, unsure whether to be horrified or angry. Your face must display it all openly.
He flinches, face creasing from shame. “I know, I know. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I get weird with this kind of shit, let’s just go.”
For anybody not caught up: Tennessee just passed a new map that pretty much makes it so black neighborhoods have no power in local votes. Two things about this. While protestors were chanting "No Jim Crow", white Tennessee lawmakers were caught laughing on video. On top of this, Representative Justin Pearson and his brother KeShaun Pearson were arrested for trying to give their takes on the matter (which is not only their legal right but literally his job). If you give a shit about black people, help fight this. We can't allow a return to Jim Crow.
this week i read a compendium of interviews with Toni Morrison and there was this one excerpt that's had me on the verge of tears for days. let me see if i can find it online
from Toni Morrison on Love and Writing, a 1990 interview with Bill Moyers on PBS TV [x]
MOYERS: As I listen to you talk about the liberation of motherhood and love, I find all the more incredible Sethe’s willingness to kill her son—
MORRISON:: Oh, yeah.
MOYERS: —Rather than let the slavecatcher kidnap him. Was that a far-out figment of your imagination to make a dramatic point, or did you find in your research into the past there were mothers willing to do that?
MORRISON:: That was Margaret Garner’s story. There was a slave woman in Cincinnati named Margaret Garner who escaped from Kentucky; arrived in Cincinnati with her mother-in-law. The situation was a little different; I think she came with four others. And right after she got there, the man who owned her found her. And she ran out into the shed and tried to kill all her children, just like that. And she was about to bang one’s head against the wall when they stopped her. Now, she became a cause celebre for the Abolitionists, because; you see, they were trying to improve the situation a little bit and get her tried for murder, because that would have been a big coup, if they had gotten her tried for murder. Because it would assume that she had some responsibility over those children. But they were not successful. She was tried for the real crime, which was stolen property, and convicted and returned to that same man.
But what struck me, because I didn’t want to know a great deal about her story because there would be no space for me to invent — was that when they interviewed her, she was not a mad dog killer, she was this very calm, you know, in her 20s, woman. And all she said was, “They will not live like that. They will not live like that.” And her mother-in-law, who was a preacher, said, “I watched her do it, and I neither encouraged her nor discouraged her.” So for them, it was a dilemma. This is a real dilemma. “Shall I permit my children, who are my best thing, to live like I have lived, and I know that’s terrible, or to take them out?” So she decided to kill them, and kill herself. And that was noble. That was the identification. She was saying: “I’m a human being. These are my children. This script I am writing.”
MOYERS: Could you have put your — did you ever put yourself in her position, and ask—
MORRISON:: In the writing of the book, yeah.
MOYERS: —could I have done that to my three sons?
MORRISON:: I asked it a lot. As a matter of fact; the reason the character Beloved enters is because I couldn’t answer it. I felt just like Baby Suggs. I didn’t know whether I would do it or not. You hear stories of that in slavery and Holocaust situations, I mean, where women have got to figure it out fast, I mean really fast. So the only person I felt who had the right to ask her that question was the child she killed.
MOYERS: The child.
MORRISON:: And she can ask her: “What did you do that for? Who are you talking about? This is better? What do you know?” Because I just — it was, for me, an impossible decision. Someone gave me the line for it at one time, which I have found useful, is that it was the right thing to do, but she had no right to do it.
MOYERS: And you’ve never answered it in your own case, “Could I do it?”
MORRISON:: I’ve asked. I don’t know.
"the only person I felt who had the right to ask her that question was the child she killed" has been ringing in my head. there is no truer thing in the world.
A message from Mary, a 72-year-old Amazon worker from North Carolina projected onto Jeff Bezos’s $120 million penthouse before tonight’s #MetGala, chaired by Bezos.
