A/N: Chapter 10! I didn't want to make everyone suffer through a bunch of boring chapters of the same torture and feels. Instead, I skipped ahead. You have a brief overview that pretty much sums up the time I skipped. I hope everyone likes this. I think it time to wrap up the story :( It has to end at some point, hehe. Also, for anyone who watches the Scorpion previews on the CBS app/website, what do you think of Walter street racing? O.o R&R, it helps. Enjoy
The team continued their search. They followed Stogan from warehouse to warehouse. They went from California to Nevada, Nevada to Montana, Montana to Michigan, Michigan to New York, then to 6 other states. Each time, a SWAT team would storm the warehouse they tracked Stogan to, and every time they only found a note. Despite their lack of success, the team refused to give up. They stayed in different HS bases around the country, searching for Stogan.
After three months of hard searching, they were still coming up empty handed. "Come on! Stogan has to slip up somewhere..." Happy trailed off, tugging at her hair. Toby came up behind her.
"We'll keep looking." Is all he said. He had said those three words a hundred times in the past three months, and they had lost their meaning long ago. Paige spoke up from the corner.
"I think we should stop." All heads turned to her, faces contorted in disbelief. "Would he really want us to waste away like this? Spending almost every hour of every day searching for some guy? Finding Stogan won't bring Walter back. I mean, I want to capture Stogan as much as the next person. I want to make him pay for what he did. What were doing now though, were not helping anyone." She explained. Happy, Toby and Sylvester took a minute to process this, and all their faces fell.
"We'll try one more place." Happy said, her face suddenly aging 10 years. We skin had lost it's youthful glow, and her face was ridden with stress lines. Toby didn't look much better. With his baggy eyes and messy hair. He had at least shaved a few days ago, leaving him with his normal stubble. Sylvester looked better. His glasses were constantly crooked, and his eyebrows lessened to be permanently knit together. Paige herself had lines all over her face. She had been taking car of not only a grouo of geniuses, but her 9 year-old genius son. The rest of the team nodded their heads in agreement to Happy' s comment, and Toby picked up the phone.
"Hey Cabe. We have one more warehouse to look at. We talked, and we don't think Walter would want us to go so crazy with finding Stogan. We'll send coordinates and meet you at this last spot." He informed the team's handler before hanging up. Happy grabbed her phone and texted coordinates to Cabe. Then the whole team got into the van and drove off.
After Happy hung up, Cabe almost chucked his phone across the room. Instead he gathered his SWAT team and informed Merrick of the update on the case. Merrick wasn't happy that they were giving up, but understood. Cabe tucked his phone into his pocket and got in the SWAT van.
It was dark. Dark and quiet. Walter couldn't see anything. Not that there was anything to see in the dark little cell he had been thrown into. He didn't know how long he had been Bones prisoner, as it was impossible to tell. He was given just enough food and water that he wouldn't die. That wasn't enough though. His wounds were no longer healing. That had stopped forever ago. The welts on his back and chest still oozed. The bullet graze on his side was never given enough time to heal before it was used as a target. His jaw was bruised, like his whole body. His ankle was sore, but not broken. The torn tendons in his arm were barely 40% healed from what he could tell, and his dislocated shoulder was constantly popped out of the socket, not matter how many times he put it back in. Although they had stopped bashing him unconscious When they moved him, his head still throbbed. His clothes were scraps. His jeans were torn in various places from mid-thigh down. His shirt was ripped and torn, barely a scrap of material. His tie was long gone. All his remaining clothes were dirty, grimey and bloodstained. His hair was longer, curls brushing against his forehead. He had no scruff, as Bones thought he looked bad with it and constantly shaved it off with his knife.
Sitting in his tiny cement cell, Walter thought about his current condition. He was lightheaded and dizzy, not to mention nauseous and tired. Hunger no longer knawed his deprived stomach, and his throat was always dry from lack of water. Dry coughs would make his entire body quake. He couldn't even move, leaning all his weight on the wall he was slumped against. He wanted to sleep, but never could. The few hours he got were just refreshers to his torture. He didn't want to go through that again. The world around him was dark, but it still went fuzzy. He forced his eyes to stay open, even though he was so tired. Just because he was afraid he wouldn't be able to open them again. Really though, would that be worse then how things were now? Maybe it wouldn't hurt to close his eyes for a few seconds. Slowly, he blinked a few times, then fell into the darkness, allowing it to consume him.
No one was there to see Walter O'Brien's eyes go half lidded, or to see his limp body slide to the side. No one watched as he unconsciously curled in on himself, slowly fading away completely.
The team met the SWAT team and Cabe outside of a rustic warehouse in California. They were back in LA, the place this all had started. They were home, home for their last attempt. Poised outside the door, they swarmed the building.
Surprisingly, they walked right in on Stogan. He and his gang were playing cards on a crate. Stogan and his gang jumped up with a chorus of 'hey!'s and 'what man!'s. The SWAT team yelled at them to get on the ground, and the team watched as they cuffed the men. Cabe was watching with them, but then he noticed a concrete room in the corner. Pulling out his gun, he walked over, holding it out and grabbing the handle. Taking a deep breath, he pulled opened the door and looked inside. A small man lay on the floor, covered in crusty blood and grime. He was curled in on himself, on his side. Dark curles tickled his forehead, and his half-lidded eyes look lazily at the floor. The man looked dead, but as broken and dirty as he was, Cabe recognized him. Cabe's arms suddenly felk like lead, his gun dropping to the floor. He breathed the name of the man in front of him.
"Walter"