Disclaimer: Despite some reviewer claims to the contrary, I do not own Without A Trace, or its characters. There are days I wish I did, but… On the other hand, I do intend to own copies quite soon.
Author's Note: Thank you, though to all the reviewers who do think I should own Martin. And to the rest of you out there – I really am glad you like it. Extra special thanks to my wonderfully patient beta-readers: gaianarchy, kate98 and silvershadowfire. I'm sorry I forgot to mention you last time.
Author's Note #2: This is a sequel to 'Running.' It may help if you haven't read that one to read it first, but it is not essential.
Expenses
He sees her and knows instantly that she's the one he wants. He recognises the dark hair; the angry, defiant eyes; the cocky, unconcerned stance that says this little girl thinks she's the toughest thing on two feet, despite the fact that she's well-groomed and obviously well cared for, and thus has no understanding of the true nature of 'tough.' He watches as she chats on a cell phone, dangerously oblivious to the people around her.
He steps up quickly and snatches the phone from her fingers, turning it off in the same move.
"Hey. Who the hell…" Some people look around at her protest. Witnesses.
"You are in big trouble now, young lady." The witnesses hear the words, look at the nice young man in his expensive, neatly pressed suit, and turn away. This is obviously a family matter, and New Yorkers don't get involved in things like that. They don't care that his hair is light, nearly blond, or that his eyes and hers aren't even close. 'Family' means a lot of things – it's his tone and his language that carry the weight.
She struggles and swears as he takes her arm, but he's fought with bigger people than her. Killed a couple of too. Amazingly, though, he's not in prison. He drops her in his nice, conservative looking car, and slams the door, knowing full well that she won't get it open before he crosses to the other side. He's fixed the locks so that the passenger can't open them.
He gets in and pulls out a pair of handcuffs, swiftly looping them through the inside door handle and locking them to her wrists, so that her hands are secured, yet out of sight. She starts to scream, but the windows are rolled up tight, and it's a good car, so no one can really hear. He starts the engine, checks his mirrors, then pulls out and is gone. And that's how easy it is to kidnap a child in New York.
"Yes, yes, I… no, Maria, I haven't. Yes, we're looking… no, I don't think that… she's my daughter too. Damnit, I do care! And I think I know a hell of a lot more than you!" Jack slams down the phone, hard enough to break part of the receiver. All the aspirin in the world wouldn't take away the headache he now has. His eldest daughter is missing, a 'runaway' to use the technical term, which means law-enforcement isn't going to spend a lot of time looking for her. They've got enough on their hands with the 'takens' and the 'killeds' to worry about those who voluntarily chose to leave their place of residence.
But Maria pulled some strings, which is how Jack found out, when the police knocked on his door wanting to know if he knew anything about the whereabouts of his daughter Hannah, who apparently boarded a bus for New York without escort or permission. But he hasn't heard from her, and none of the old friends he's checked with will admit to hearing from her either.
He's pulled some strings of his own, and assembled a team, even though they had the day off. Viv, Danny, Sam… but no Martin. Martin said he'd be in, but hasn't shown up and hasn't called back either. Nor will he answer his pager. So now Jack has two missing people instead of one. Not a good day…
She screams, a loud long scream that he pretends to ignore. Finally, she realises that screaming gets her nothing, and to his great relief, stops, though she doesn't shut up.
"You'll never get away with this. My father's with the FBI. He'll put you away for life." She pulls against the handcuffs, but solid steel runs through that handle. She's more likely to break her bones.
"Interesting." He doesn't even look at her, and doesn't sound interested at all. Instead, he watches the traffic, driving more carefully than normal because he doesn't want to get into an accident, but not too carefully, because this is New York and he doesn't want to get into an accident.
"I said my father's with the FBI. He hunts down people like you." She's got a real attitude going – all bravado and no brains.
"So's mine." He takes a random right, and then a left. No sense going anywhere predictable. Someone might have called 9-1-1 after all. But it's such a non-descript car, really, and not a lot of people can accurately remember a licence plate.
"You're lying." She narrows her eyes in accusation.
"No, you are." It's a child's game, but he spends enough time with children to know it well. And part of it is a lie, even if she doesn't know what part. He's not going to jail, or prison, or anything like that. Not for this.
"He'll get you," she snarls. "He'll get you, and you'll wish you'd never been born."
"Uh-huh." He turns into a parking garage, twisting down a couple of levels to an empty spot. He switches on the radio – classical, that ought to drive her nuts – and pulls a palm-pilot out of the pocket behind her seat. He plugs in the folding keyboard, and goes to work.
Jack stares at the note that scrolls out of his fax machine. It's his worst nightmare: a note that reads "I've got your girl." Something's off about it, but he can't quite place what. He's too upset, angry and scared to do an analysis.
The phone rings, his direct line, not through the switchboard. Caller ID shows it to be Hannah's cell. Jack punches the speaker button, because the handset doesn't work anymore.
"Hey, Jack…" An electronically disguised voice oozes out at him. "She's a cute kid…"
"Look, you son-of-a-bitch…" It's a violation of protocol, but Jack's not thinking straight.
"If you want to insult my parentage, go with the right half." Even through the distortion Jack can hear the dry amusement in the voice. A game player.
Danny comes into the office, looking concerned. His eye falls to the note and he reads it – every good agent knows how to read upside down – then he looks at the second sheet to come out of the fax. An odd smile quirks his lips, something that annoys Jack even further.
"Did you look at this, Jack?"
Jack shakes his head. He doesn't want whoever it is on the other end to hear him.
"That boy has spent way too much time in White Collar," Danny says, flourishing the paper. "When was the last time you saw an itemised ransom note?"
Jack snatches the paper from Danny's hand and reads it, as Danny continues. "And looking at the handwriting on that cover sheet, I'd say your subject was highly anal, with occasional impulsive streaks and no rationality whatsoever. I'm surprised he managed to pull this off, given his lack of intelligence…"
Jack glares at Danny and stabs a finger towards the speaker-phone.
"Intelligent enough to know that you're going to get it for that," the robotic voice returns.
Jack blinks a couple of times, looking down at the paper, then over at the phone. It's just hit him what was wrong: he's seen that handwriting before, on this very desk. Hannah's been picked up alright, by the one person Jack knows who truly is strange enough to send an itemised ransom note to the head of the Missing Person's Unit of the New York offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, an organisation that specialises in hunting down kidnappers. He remembers a conversation from a couple of months previous, about coming home and what made children do so. "Usually federal agents?"
He smiles, knowing that Hannah can't hear her father's end of the conversation. "Consider it a learning experience, Jack." Martin cuts off the call, and stares at his prisoner. "Daddy seems to be having a little trouble right now."
"Let me go, you son-of-a-bitch!" She starts jerking at the cuffs again, throwing her entire body into the useless attempt.
"Like I just told him: insult the right parent." He checks his mirrors then backs out of the spot. He can't stay here too long, whoever belongs in apartment 11B might come back. New Yorkers can get so territorial about parking spaces, it isn't even funny, and Martin really doesn't want to kill somebody today. He knows one thing, though: he's just been given license to do anything he'd normally do with this girl, because Jack knows it's ultimately not much. But just because Jack knows that Hannah is perfectly safe doesn't mean that Hannah needs to know that. Rather, the whole point of this is to scare her silly. And if anyone knows the sheer terror of these streets, it's Martin Fitzgerald, sometime runaway. He reaches over and taps her on the nose – something you'd do to a small child, but also proof that he can utterly and completely invade her space. "You might try being nice to me, Hannah."
She pales. She's never met this man before, and now he's calling her by name. "How did you… and my dad…" She's scared stiff, but just smart enough to be suspicious, too.
He lifts her purse and shows her that he's rifled it. "You mean your dad's name really is Jack?" He laughs, like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. "I was just calling him that." He relaxes into his seat, and keeps smiling. "Look at us, just like friends. Do you want to call me Marty?" He hates being called Marty, but it's the type of thing a snatcher might say, trying to build familiarity with his victim. And this is a role, a play. 'Marty' will work. "'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…'" He says it softly, but she hears and looks at him strangely.
"Shakespeare," he supplies, "As You Like It." This is scary too: the kidnapper who quotes ancient playwrights, people born and dead before Eminem was even a thought. Martin played Benedick once, back in high-school. Much Ado About Nothing. He'd been the only one who actually learned the meaning behind the lines, making rehearsal interesting as he tried not to burst out laughing. Teenage boys and 'horned staffs' are not exactly the world's greatest mix. He wonders how much ado Jack made about this nothing, when he thought it was a something.
"Look, Mister…"
"Marty," he insists. He hates 'Mister' even more than 'Marty;' 'Mister' is too reminiscent of 'Mr. Fitzgerald,' who is Victor, not Martin. Besides, if he's supposed to be trying to gain this girl's trust…
Not that he really wants her to trust him. He wants her to be scared, to want to run straight home to Daddy at the first chance she gets. But he also doesn't want her to fall into the trap of thinking that the dangerous people on the street are the crackheads and the obvious pimps and pedophiles; he wants her to learn that sometimes they come packaged in the guise of nice, clean-cut people with a friendly demeanour and perfect, charming smile. He's pretty sure that she's already had the lecture – he can't see Jack letting either of his kids out of the house without the full lecture on trusting strangers – but what she needs now is proof that Daddy wasn't paranoid. At the very least, that he was paranoid with a reason.
Because it's pretty clear that the lecture didn't take, or Hannah wouldn't be sitting in Martin's car right now. She'd be in the private school that Jack pays so much child-support for, learning things that it sometimes turns out are useful to know. As it stands, she is one lucky girl. After all, the only differences between Martin and a real kidnapper is that Martin has Jack's blessing, because Jack knows that Martin will go no farther than this. He hasn't done anything a smart child-abductor wouldn't do – he's just not going to rape and kill her like a real one might. Most kidnapped children end up dead. It's a horrible thing, but one that cannot be escaped. Most ransom only purchases a body, if even that much. It's sad, how much people need to believe in an irrational hope. Someone was bent enough to take your child away, yet you believe that they're honest enough to give him back if you hand over money. He wonders, though, if he wouldn't do the same, if it was his child. After all, Jack knows better than to yell at a kidnapper, but he just did.
"Mister…"
He ignores her, staring straight ahead.
"Marty," she tries again. "Marty, I have to go to the bathroom."
He glares over at her irritably. "Don't play games with me, Hannah." It's a good attempt, he'll give her that. Pretending to bend to his will, pretending to become his friend. But if it is a game… he doesn't want to let her off easy, yet.
"I mean it, Marty. I really have to go." She wiggles around in her seat, as though to emphasise the fact.
"All right." He keeps driving for a bit, then pulls in at a gas station. He's not worried about the camera surveillance – if this were for real, that could bust him. But he's doing Jack a favour, so there are going to be no more 'be on the lookouts' for this particular little girl.
"Wait a sec, you're saying that Martin kidnapped Hannah?" Vivian stares at Jack like he's stepped in from another universe. Maybe he has. In a sane world, FBI agents don't pick up their SAC's children off the street and drive off with them. And if they do, they certainly don't advertise their identity to the SAC himself.
Jack sighs, patiently. He's not sure how much of this he understands. "Hannah ran away. Martin spotted her, and I think he's trying to convince her that leaving home was a bad idea." At least he hopes that's what's going on, he never really got a chance to ask. On the other hand, Martin is perhaps the best person to figure out a way to truly communicate that message to her. Their background is similar: distant FBI agent father, private school with its hidden agenda of overachievement, and a pigheaded stubbornness that sometimes leads to stupid decisions. Add to that the fact that Martin volunteers twice a week to work with runaways, and he probably knows more than Jack with his degrees in psychology and years of experience in tracking missing kids down. Because the sad fact is, very few of those missing kids are actual 'runaway' kids. Like other law enforcement agencies, the FBI has little time and resource to spend on every kid who decides that they'd rather not live at home.
But Martin has hunted runaways, counselled runaways, and even been a runaway himself. He knows what might work and what might not. And Hannah has never met Martin, she has no idea that this stranger she's with actually works for her dad. What did Martin say? 'Consider it a learning experience, Jack.'
"All I can say is, looking at this, you might want to consider paying up within the next six hours." Danny waves the 'ransom note' and grins.
Viv raises an eyebrow curiously, and Sam comes up to read the note over Danny's shoulder. Jack turns to his junior agent with a minor degree glare.
Danny doesn't seem to notice. "Hey… after eight hours, he's liable to start billing for overtime."
"Where's he buying gas?" Sam's eyebrows disappear into her hairline. "It says here 35.82 for fuel and related expenses."
"Probably charging me for the whole goddamn tank," Jack mutters. He still doesn't know whether to be relieved or furious. Relieved, because Hannah is safe, but furious because Martin is treating this whole thing like a game.
"If I were you, I'd ask for receipts," Danny says.
Viv still seems sceptical. "You're sure this is Martin? Why? What could he possibly hope to gain by taking Hannah?"
"Thirty-five eight-two?" Danny suggests.
Now it's Viv's turn to glare. She's a mother, and she knows what kind of hell a missing child is.
Jack waffles. He's unsure how much he should reveal here. Martin is a private person and if he's up to what Jack thinks Martin is up to, then he wouldn't like to have the details of his long-ago past spilled to the rest of the team. And not so long ago. The image of a lone figure running through the snow sticks with him. And really, Martin is doing Jack a favour, teaching Hannah that there are things worse than divorcing parents who argue over who loves you more.
"I think Martin just wants to help, that's all." Admittedly, it's an odd way to do it, but maybe he'll get through where Jack and Maria have failed. Right now, Jack's willing to try anything, even putting his daughter through an extended purgatory if it means saving her from a brief hell. Martin, at least, won't harm her: he's too smart to be telling Jack he's got her if he had any plans that way. "He's got a different perspective on the matter."
"Scare her straight?" Danny finally looks up from his perusal of Martin's expense sheet. "Gotta admit this might work better than the usual drill of marching them through the jail to show them where all the 'bad guys' are."
Sam nods. "Because they still think 'it won't happen to me.' But with this…"
"It's happened." Jack agrees. "And as far as she knows, it's real."
"I can't believe you're taking this so calmly, Jack." Viv shakes her head. "If he'd done that to my kid…"
"Reggie's not catching buses half-way across the country, either." Jack reminds her. Which is only another way of saying that Vivian isn't this desperate yet. Maybe Hannah has only pulled this stunt once, but once is too much.
"What does Maria say?" Viv, as usual, finds the trouble spot.
"I haven't told her," Jack admits. "She'd probably have me and Martin arrested."
"I can tell you, I'd rather my kid was with someone I knew – even Martin – than out there on those streets," Danny agrees.
True, but I'd rather she wasn't there at all. Jack leaves the group to go stare out at those streets. Am I really that horrible an option?
Martin frees her from the cuffs before letting her out of the car, but not before he makes sure she sees that he has a gun. She becomes very still as she looks at it – he knows that she's well aware of the power of such a thing. Jack's mentioned that one of Hannah's greatest fears was that Jack would be shot and die. The first thing the kid of any good agent learns is that guns are something to be respected, not taken lightly. Martin learned that lesson well, which is why he never took one when he ran. Easy to lose, easy to die. He wonders if Maria even has a gun in her house, or if that's something she connects with Jack and the life she no longer lives. He doesn't know her feelings, her philosophies, and some FBI wives (or husbands, to be fair) are like that. They try to ignore the unpleasant parts of their spouse's life, and pretend it's just another nine-to-five job. But those are the ones who can't make it, who can't face the fact that sometimes agents see things that most people would rather believe didn't exist. Maria would probably be calling her lawyer right now, if she had the slightest clue where her daughter was.
And I don't think I could count on a pardon from the President. He helps Hannah out of the car, keeping a hand on her shoulder and maintaining custody. She doesn't try to run, doesn't try to pull anything until they're inside. At the counter though, she makes her move.
"Call the police," she says quickly to the startled acne-victim manning the counter. "He's got a gun. I've been kidnapped."
"Hannah," Martin does his best to sound exasperated, even rolling his eyes. "Little sisters, huh?"
The kid nods, but still looks a bit suspicious. Even in this world of blended families, the explanation doesn't quite fit.
"Your bathroom got a key?"
The kid blinks, then hands over a key attached to a large piece of wood, possibly a hockey stick in a former life. Martin takes it with a smile and escorts her out to the bathroom. He checks inside first to make sure there are no escape routes – standard operating procedure when escorting a prisoner. As much as it's a pain in the ass, you can't deny a person the right to pee. It's in the Constitution somewhere, not in those words, but it probably falls under 'the pursuit of happiness.' Woe betide the agent who denies a prisoner their constitutional rights.
He stands guard outside the door, and sees the kid from the counter watching him. Sighing, he pulls out his I.D. and holds it up. The kid comes closer and actually reads it.
"You're an FBI agent? That's real?"
Fortunately, it's a thick door, and the window looked painted shut, so Martin doubts that Hannah can hear.
"Yes, it's very real. I'm escorting a protected witness. We try not to advertise it, but I don't need you calling the cops."
"Oh." The kid coughs. "I was going to… then I wasn't sure… and…"
"Kid, next time? Go with the 'going to.'" The idiots this world bred, sometimes. You think I'm a kidnapper with a gun, so you come out to see what I'm up to? This was why you could walk across the Hudson on bodies instead of a bridge.
Hannah tries to twist the knob, and Martin motions for the kid to get lost. The kid does, but keeps an eye out, now wanting to see a real Government Agent in action.
Martin lets go of the door, and grabs his prisoner before she can make a run for it. Then he checks out the bathroom again and groans. "Hannah, Hannah, Hannah…" He shakes his head sadly. "Where's the pen?"
She glares at him, and he moves his jacket just slightly to remind her of the gun. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the black felt pen she used to mark up the mirror: 'Help, I've been kidnapped.' It's a good message, actually – it even includes a description of the car, her name, and the date. If they were actually looking for her, something like this would be a godsend. As it stands, though, it's just an annoyance.
He scribbles over the writing, blacking it out entirely and watching her expression change to match the ink. The kid's gonna love this: it'll take him hours to scrub this mirror clean – not that it looks like anyone cleans in here very often anyway.
"Did you actually go to the bathroom?" Because if it wasn't just a ploy, he doesn't want to have to get his car detailed.
She nods, looking as deeply resentful as only a young girl can.
"Good." He takes her back to the car, this time slipping the cuffs on her before closing the door. At least that's the plan, but she beats him to it, slamming the door shut before he can fully withdraw his hand.
He screams and wrenches the door open, yanking her right out of the seat. "You fucking bitch! You goddamned fucking little…" He cuts himself off, before he says more or does more that will get him into trouble once she's rescued. Because she needs rescuing now – his hand is in so much pain he can't even feel it. He can see it swelling already; it's been good and smashed.
She begins to shake, truly terrified for the first time since this started. Up until now, he's been reasonable, friendly even. But now he's angry – incensed, really.
"Get in the car." He fights to keep his voice steady, doesn't even try to stop the tears. He reaches down with his good hand to pick her up, but she scrambles to her feet and into the car, pulling the door shut behind her and huddling in her seat.
He turns her phone on and makes a quick call then walks around to his own door and gets in. He glares at her as he fights to fasten his seatbelt – it's his right hand that she did in. His operating hand, his shifting hand, his gun hand for Chrissakes. He cradles the hand in his lap and reaches over the steering wheel to turn the key in the ignition. Shifting into Drive is even more awkward, and he suddenly finds himself thankful that the transmission is an automatic.
He shouldn't drive like this, especially not with a passenger in the car, but he's lived through worse injuries, so he supposes that he'll live through this. It's just that it goddamn hurts. More than that, the little bitch just bought him at least six weeks desk duty and it won't even be paperwork, because he won't be able to write. He's going to be answering phones, pushing pins into bulletin boards and playing solitaire. He hates solitaire, almost as much as he hates manning the phones.
He doesn't say anything to her for the entire drive, though at a stoplight he risks disaster by turning the stereo back on. Not classical anymore, but something more suited to his mood: American Idiot. She looks a little bit surprised as the drums and guitars blare out at her – guys his age aren't supposed to listen to stuff like that. Guys his age aren't supposed to have the FM broadcast 6-cd changer, either, but Martin likes to be prepared for contingencies. This definitely counts.
It counts for something else, too. He pulls into an old rail yard and stops, slamming the car into park and reaching into the console for something that the others will be shocked to find out about. Danny has his booze, and Martin has these. He yanks out a pack of cigarettes and slams the lighter in to heat up. Hannah stares at him in amazement, because this action comes out of nowhere. He's surprising her with everything now.
He lights one up and inhales deeply. He hasn't smoked in ages – he quit the day he turned twenty-one and couldn't piss off his father with it any more and he decided to aim for the Bureau and realised he needed to get himself in shape to make the Academy. Bonnie threw a party when he announced he was quitting – ironic that she was the one to die of cancer. Until now, he's only stumbled once: after shooting Reyes. But the cigarette in his hand is the only thing that's preventing his fingers from wrapping around Hannah's delicate little throat and throttling her.
The rock opera is half over before the cars pull up, boxing him in. The entire team piles out – Danny pulls Martin from the car and slams him up against it, and Martin tries not to lose consciousness as sparks flash in his eyes. "Easy," he mutters.
Jack unlocks Hannah and pulls her into a hug – she wraps her arms around him so tight that Martin is surprised that the man can even breathe.
Then Danny twists Martin's hand down to put on cuffs, and Martin yelps, falling to his knees and retching. Danny glances down and echoes Martin's cry. "Jesus." It sounds more prayer than curse, though. It must look bad now – Martin's been too scared to see.
"I'm sorry, Daddy." He hears Hannah's apology, muffled by her face buried in Jack's clothes. Good. He hopes she stays that way.
"Jesus." Jack looks up at Danny's minor sacrilege, then sees that it wasn't one at all. Martin's gone whiter than the dry-erase board in the office and he's on his knees even though Danny isn't even touching him. Jack looks through the open doors of the car and spots the mangled hand, and is nearly sick with sympathy. That's Hannah's work, all right; she did it to Jack a few years ago, though not nearly as bad. It'll probably take surgery to fix that mess, if it can even be fully fixed at all. Martin's going to hate the winter and rainy days from here on in.
Hannah murmurs apologies into Jack's neck and Jack doesn't let her go. "Get him to the hospital." He doesn't need to say it; Danny's already helping Martin to his feet.
"He was going to kill me, Daddy." Thankfully, it looks like Hannah bought the act, even though the ending didn't exactly play out according to plan, if there even was a plan.
"Don't ever do anything like that again." Looking at that hand, Jack wonders how far off Hannah really is. I almost can't blame him if he wanted to. Almost… this is Jack's daughter after all. "Ever."
She's sobbing and he doesn't get an answer, but he's willing to let that slide for now. At this moment she's safe and scared enough to realise what a stupid stunt she pulled. "He had a gun… he showed me… and… and then I slammed the door on his hand, but that just made him mad…"
With Martin, that's quite the accomplishment. Danny's right – Martin can be impulsive, but he also doesn't get explosively mad all that easily. When Jack and Maria fight, it's all out screaming, but Jack saw Martin arguing with his father once, and were it not for a slight tenseness in Martin's stance he would never have guessed it was anything other than a simple discussion. For Martin to get 'mad' in a way that Hannah would recognise as such would require a serious wounding. Even the day Martin received news that his aunt had died… he'd merely blinked a couple of times then gone back to work. He'd claimed to be ready for it, but Jack had seen the truth deep down in those eyes and the lie in the words. Martin isn't a machine, despite the office rumours. He just buries things deeply, something Jack can understand. But while Jack just buries the big pains, it sometimes seems like Martin buries everything.
"You're safe now." Now, but if she does something like this again, he can't offer guarantees. He's loathe to tell her that the only reason he found her is that Martin told him where to look. Had this been real, things would likely have been far different.
He registers something else, now: the smell of burnt tobacco. At least half a dozen butts litter a formerly pristine ashtray. They have to be Martin's – Jack's mind refuses to believe they could be Hannah's. His mind flashes to a cabinet filled with unused anti-depressants. It seems the boy does have his crutches after all. The smell reminds Jack of his own dark days, when long-term survival took a back seat to short-term. Though he has to wonder whose survival those cigarettes insured: Hannah's, by Martin's hand, or Martin's by Jack's after Martin did harm to Hannah.
"He just grabbed me and nobody tried to stop him. Then when I said you were an FBI agent, he said his dad was one too… he was lying, Daddy… he said I was lying, but he was, wasn't he?" She doesn't sound sure, but she still doesn't want to believe that the monsters can come from a land she knows that well.
"I don't know." Now Jack lies. He's known from the beginning who 'Daddy' was to Martin Fitzgerald, what he didn't understand back then was the actual meaning of the kid's call for 'no special treatment.' He'd thought at the time that it was the usual disclaimer, a way of trying to endear himself to a new SAC who wasn't known for his political ambitions. And it wasn't true, Martin does want special treatment. He wants to be left alone to be an FBI agent, a favour never granted until he landed here. He wants his own learning experiences, he doesn't want to be coddled and sheltered and taught only theory, as heir apparents so often are.
'I still run, Jack.' More words from Martin come back, and Jack realises now what they really mean. Martin is still a kid, deep down inside. Like Jack, he's got a family shadow that won't go away, only Martin's shadow is bigger and darker in this gossip community called federal law enforcement and politics. No one's ever let him grow up, become.
It seems odd to be focusing on someone else's kid rather than his own right now, but Jack realises something else, too. Martin is his kid in a way, a latecomer to the family, but family nonetheless. Viv wanted to know what Martin expected to get out of this and Jack guesses that now he has it figured out. Nothing. Family simply looks out for each other, and if Martin is a part of Jack's family, then Hannah is a part of Martin's. And like any big brother, Martin's not afraid of scaring the crap out of his little sister if it's ultimately for her own good. An odd match, maybe, but Jack will take it. Especially if it keeps his little girl safe.
It doesn't hurt so much anymore, or maybe he just doesn't care. They've given him something good, whatever it was. He got off lucky, luckier than it looks. She only got his fingers with their flanges, not his whole hand with all those tiny tarsal bones, so it's just splints instead of a scalpel. Big-ass splints though – he could double for Freddy Kruger or Edward Scissorhands. He thinks about it for a moment. Given the situation, Scissorhands fits better – it's far closer to Burtonesque surrealism than a slasher flick. Now he's just sitting on this bed, waiting for an official discharge so he can pay his bill and go home.
Jack walks in and drops a piece of paper in Martin's lap. It's the ransom note, and scrawled across it in blood-red pen are the words 'Request denied.' "You didn't attach receipts."
Martin smirks. "Thanks, Jack." He didn't actually expect approval. In fact, it's almost a relief not to get it; it means that Jack is less afraid of him than ever. The kid-gloves are gone for good now.
"First rule of kidnapping: get the ransom before you lose the hostage." Jack turns to leave.
"I thought the first rule was 'don't do it.'" Anyone else would blame the drugs, but Martin knows he's unable to resist shooting back.
Jack turns back and smiles evilly. "There's that too." And then he's gone down the hall, leaving Martin alone with his pain. He sent Sam and Danny away: they were hovering and he hates that. Besides, Danny kept trying to lighten the mood, and when Martin's got an excuse, he likes to spend some time being cranky, bitter and miserable. This he can and will blame on the drugs.
Finally, the doctor comes back with a prescription and some warnings, then Martin slides off the bed and heads down to the cash-office. Insurance will cover the basics, but like the 'ransom,' it's things he'll need to claim to get back.
He gets down there and the nurses hand him not a bill, but preliminary paperwork. He blinks, his drug-addled and shock-riddled mind taking a second to comprehend. Jack's already started the insurance claim. Not only that, but he seems to be calling it a 'line of duty' injury.
He turns around to see Jack and the others standing there and watching him. He holds out the clipboard and the pen pleadingly – he can't even pick the pen up with his right hand, let alone write with it. Jack shakes his head and walks away, then Danny raises his hands and does the same.
"Hey, I've got a kid to get back to." Vivian makes her own exit, leaving only Sam.
"Come on." He smiles, Sammy will help him.
"I love you, Martin, but not that much." She gestures at the clipboard and its multi-page reports. "I'll see you later, okay?"
He stands there, stranded in the hospital lobby as all his friends take off, having no sympathy for the poor guy who they claim to like or even love. Insult to injury. Or it would be, if this weren't ultimately what Martin has always wanted. No special treatment. Just part of the group, a guy they're willing to make fun of to his face, rather than behind his back. It's a weird feeling, but one he wants to get used to. After all these years, he has a place to run to. Somewhere he belongs.