The Dangling Conversation - Prologue
Adjusting was difficult. It always was when a member left the team. While he accepted everyone's departure from the team with detachment and understanding their own personal motive and agenda, Emily's exit had taken much of his energy and partially his sanity too.
He hadn't gotten a chance to even say good-bye.
The last memory involved a bloody Emily being rushed through surgery, him frantically making phone calls and running right next to gurney. He had stared at the closed doors helplessly and walked back to the waiting room. The anguish on his face was reflected by his team and a sobbing Garcia looked at him with shining eyes for answers; he was the team leader, after all.
He hated it when he had no answers. He hated it when he couldn't predict future moves of people he closely associated with. He completely hated Emily's decision to leave them and give up being "Emily Prentiss". She was not only giving up her identity but also a life she truly loved.
For them. For the team.
As a profiler and an investigator he knew that a man like Ian Doyle would come back and hunt them. Ian Doyle was several hundred times worse than George Foyet given the way he had hunted down agents responsible for his arrest. Had he been in her shoes, even he would have chosen to disappear till Doyle was caught or dead. He had put his family under witness protection program where he couldn't see or talk to his son in person for a prolonged period of time. One did what one had to do when it comes to family.
She had done it for them; for the team.
Her family.
He had absolutely no say in the way she barged in and got out of his life. For such a control freak like him, it had taken weeks to come to terms with her arrival given how neither he nor Gideon had approved of her entry to the team. And when she made exit from the team and his life, he couldn't do much about it either. He in fact helped her to make a clear exit.
But the impact of fallout of her "death" was much abstruse than he had imagined. He lived with the knowledge of truth and guilt pricked him deep each time he saw one of the team members in anguish. The young doctor Reid looked at her cubicle when he thought no one was looking. Morgan re-read Kurt Vonnegut in flight or his spare time – honoring the memory of his closest friend with who he had bonded over Vonnegut's novels. Garcia missed the older woman who made her laugh with her wit and wicked sense of humor. He wasn't blind to his team's suffering. He couldn't rationalize Morgan's anger at Emily's sudden "death". He couldn't soothe Reid's loneliness which was louder than ever before. He listened to Garcia recall funny anecdotes involving Emily and the time they spent outside office. He was little surprised at how Emily had involved herself with his team outside the official boundaries.
Was it only him who didn't interact with her outside the campus of Quantico?
The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. It wasn't because he felt alienated from the rest of the team but because he had lost an opportunity to know a truly wonderful woman.
"You are still here." It was Rossi standing on the threshold of his office ready to leave for the day. It wasn't a long day at work and the team had spent most of the time finishing up paperwork and pending reports.
"I will be out in thirty minutes Dave; just finishing something for Strauss." He replied to the older man.
"Goodnight Hotch."
He reciprocated a goodnight to Dave and sighed deeply. Bullpen was dark except for the lights flickering in corridor. Emily's desk was cleared and her personal artifacts were boxed and he had stored those boxes in his office. He had refused to label them as hers but and had stuffed it among his other personal belongings.
Thirty minutes later as promised to his mentor, he left office. He couldn't help but glance at bullpen as the old habit forbade him to do otherwise. Only this time, there wasn't Reid having a silly argument with thoroughly pissed Morgan with Emily and Garcia playing as referee and JJ simply giggling. The impending darkness was deep and thorough and he walked quickly away from it as if by doing so he would escape from its sharp claws. He drove as fast as the rules allowed him to and breathed a sigh of relief as he turned on the keys to his apartment.
He tiptoed across living room towards his son's bedroom. He softly closed the door behind him after rearranging his son's blankets and kissing him on his forehead. He cleared up the toys cluttered on the ground imagining his son being there and playing them. He was proud of how his son turned out to be and wished sincerely that his wife was alive with them to see their son growing well.
Once back in living room, he poured himself a drink and settled on the couch with daily mail. He loosened his tie and sipped on his drink idly opening stack of mails.
He choked on his drink when his eyes fell on familiar handwriting. He had seen it hundreds of times over the past four years – reports, case notes et al. Either that or he was too drunk and hung up on the team mate who had left to make a rational decision. He rushed to the bathroom and splashed ice cold water to remove any drudgery of the day. Once he was satisfied he was sober enough, he picked up the envelope again. There was no mistake. It was hers.
Emily had sent him a letter.
Inside the envelope was a small key wrapped in a sheet of paper. The paper had an address written on it. In less than a minute he was walking out of his apartment, the sheet of paper in his hands and the key in his jacket. The profiler in him screamed at the idiocy of the act – he should first get it verified if it was truly from Emily. And then check out what did that the key open. His best guess was a private mail box in the given address. But then again, knowing how cunning and intelligent Ian Doyle was this could all be an elaborate plot. Before he could rationalize the whole situation like he normally did, he had arrived at the destination. The address was not too far from his house, only eleven minutes' drive.
He stood in front of rows of locker which threw a crazy shadow in dim light. The security guard had asked for identification before he let him in and they had walked for almost a minute inside the large campus before arriving at the private lockers. According the security guard, the firm provided top of the line lockers and security services for a price that he equated to extortion. Hotch simply nodded and walked behind the guard memorizing the path he took. The guard had left him alone once they arrived at destination.
He still didn't know if opening the locker without a SWAT team in place was a wise thing to do. But there was something personal in that note and something carefully detached. He finally let go of the fear that was clawing his heart and opened the locker.
A lone cellphone sat in that small gloomy box.
He hesitantly picked it up, closed the locker and walked back to his car without a backward glance.
He settled in for the night thinking with the leftover drink and switched on the cellphone. There were no contacts added nor did it have anything. It was an old model without much of the jazz that latest cellphones offered. He set it next to his bedside and fell asleep almost immediately, the last minute adrenaline rush catching up with him.
At 01:34 AM, the new cellphone rang. He picked it up without thinking twice and groggily muttered a "hello".
"Hey Hotch!"
Sleep left his eyes and he sat upright.
"Emily?"