"Love Story," is obviously by Taylor Swift, and I picked that song for this chapter because the characters demonstrate their different kinds of love in different ways. Also, I couldn't find a song about reciprocity or replacing people, so love will have to do.
Chapter IX: Love Story
Hotch turned down the heat as Elle came over with a box. "Why are you turning the heat down?" she asked.
"Cold sets people on edge," said Hotch, knowing Callia would have already known. He entered the room and banged the box on the table so that Slessman could read the name. "We only want Vogel," he said. "You're just our tool. You see, we know all about the salesman philosophy of reciprocity. You drop the price, and the buyer feels obligated to do something for them. The same thing applies to Vogel's relationship with you. He did you a favor, so now you feel like you need to protect him. He's got you so convinced you owe him so much that you'll go to jail for him."
"Pull him over," Callia said agitatedly.
Gideon looked at her like he was humoring a child. "If we pull him over, he'll try to run."
"Look, something is wrong!" Callia argued.
"How can you tell?" asked Gideon.
"When we left him, Vogel was nervous. And look at him now. He's stopping at every light, he's going the speed limit. This is not someone who is rushing to kill and dump a body."
"Good," Gideon pulled over, leaving Callia's mouth wide open and realizing how well she had been played. "Will you do the honors?" he asked. Callia smiled and got out of the car.
"Sir, I want to see both of your hands, now," Callia yelled at the car, gun raised. "Now!"
The man complied with Callia's instructions on getting out of the car, and as soon as he was out, she slammed him on the ground. Then both she and Gideon realized this man wasn't Vogel.
"Who are you and why are you driving a red Datsun?" asked Gideon.
"Vogel asked if I'd switch cars with him, and I did," said the man, gasping in fear. "He wanted my truck."
"What's the make?! What's the make?!" Gideon shouted. ****
"Good job, genius," Morgan looked at Henry appreciatively. Henry smiled and blushed. Morgan pulled out his phone and dialed Gideon. "Gideon, Sayen's still alive. She's being tortured, but she's alive. I'm getting a live video feed on Slessman's laptop right now."
"Can you put the last twelve images of Varda up next to each other on the screen?" asked Henry.
"Hotch," Gideon said over the phone. "Sayen's still alive. But Vogel's on his way to kill her. You need to get her location. Find something, Hotch, or both girls are dead."
"See how the light bulb above her cage is moving?" Henry pointed out. "It's swinging. She's on a boat or a ship. Call Hotch, and tell him I want to know if there's been any more information on Varda," he added.
Morgan looked at him. "Gibson, she's dead. You saw that explosion. If it weren't for the airbag and Slessman being a twig, he wouldn't have lived. He already lost most of his sense of touch."
"Look, I know Varda, okay? You told Callia and Elle to trust their instincts. I'm guessing the same thing applies to me."
Morgan looked at Henry for a long while. "Dude, you are seriously in love with her, aren't you?"
Henry blushed. "Is it that obvious?"
Morgan laughed. "I'm gonna call Hotch."
'Hotch, Sayen's on a boat or a ship somewhere," said Morgan.
"Then she's got to be at a dock or pier. He wouldn't be able to send images from the middle of the ocean," Hotch said.
"Yeah, but finding out the actual location is on you," said Morgan.
"What is it you always ask Garcia to do?" asked Hotch.
Morgan smiled. "To work me a little magic." He hung up, but Hotch wasn't smiling when he walked into Vogel's room, Elle having long gone with Gideon and Callia to find the truck. He shook off this feeling of abandonment and faced Slessman.
"We have Vogel, but we don't have the girl," said Hotch. "He's telling us that it was all your idea. That even keeping the girls on a boat was your idea."
"Why are you here, then? You must be lying, or you'd just be reading me my rights," said Slessman.
"I'm not reading you your rights because I know Vogel is guiltier than you are. You have a chance of getting the death penalty, and I don't think you deserve it," Hotch said, speaking the words he thought Dulcea was most likely to say. "Now, are they at a dock? A pier?"
Slessman looked forward, seemingly in a daze. "A shipyard. Allied Shipyard…wait, who's 'they?'"
"Varda and Sayen."
"I don't know about the Asian girl, okay. One minute, I was driving. The next, there was some really old guy. It wasn't Vogel, but Varda looked like she was scared of him."
Hotch looked at Slessman and smiled weakly. "Thank you," he said. As he left the room, he remembered why he didn't like getting attached to people. It was so easy to be hurt, even when they weren't doing the hurting. Especially when the people he was attached to weren't the ones doing the hurting. He pulled out his phone and dialed Callia. "Callia, is there any old man you might know whom Varda would be frightened of?" he wondered if Varda had been molested.
The short gasp on the other end of the phone suggested she knew exactly who he was talking about before she hung up with a snap.
Callia turned to Gideon and Elle with fear and agony etched all over her face. "I—" she swallowed. She wanted to save Varda from Cailean, but she needed to be here to make sure Sayen, her loving little sister and once daughter, would be okay.
She stayed, looking for the boat, not knowing Varda was already dead, and that was the only reason Henry could no longer find her.
Meanwhile, Henry and Morgan were sitting in front of Slessman's laptop, looking at the video. They both tensed as Vogel appeared in the room with Sayen, unlocking the cage. Henry cheered as she kicked Slessman in the head and ran outside, despite having run into a wall and fallen more times than Henry wanted to wince.
Morgan dialed up Elle. "Greenaway, Vogel's in with Sayen."
"I know. I've got the area staked."
"No!" Morgan said sharply. "You've got to wait for backup. If we'd waited in Boston—"
"If I wait, Sayen will die," Elle said, not looking at him. "You told me to trust my instincts."
Sayen pulled the tape from her eyes and mouth and managed to get onto the dock before Vogel caught her. The moment he grabbed her, she screamed and began struggling.
Gideon and Greenaway were alerted by her screams, the latter aiming from behind, and the former approaching from the front.
Vogel used Sayen as a shield and Gideon stopped as Vogel's gun poked Sayen's jawbone. She looked beyond Gideon, remembering another girl's father and his terrible revenge.
"Point the gun at me, not her," Gideon said.
"Right, so then you have a reason to kill me!" Vogel spat. "You think I'm stupid?"
"I think you're an absolute moron!" Gideon spread his arms wide. Sayen's eyes rolled back into her head and Gideon's heart constricted, but then they came back and she shook her head like she was warning him not to do what he was planning to do. Gideon continued regardless. "I know all about you, Tim. You're at the gym five days a week, you drive a flashy car, you stink of cologne, and you can't get it up. Not even Viagra's working for you. You know what that tells me? That tells me you're hopelessly overcompensating, and it's not just in your head. It is physical. What did the girls call you in high school? What'd they come up with when you fumbled your way into some girl's pants, and she started laughing when she got a good look at just how little you have to offer? Short Stack?" asked Gideon. He noticed Sayen's eyes roll back and reappear again, but this time she started mouthing something. "Very little Vogel?"
This time, Sayen looked at Callia and said something. Callia stepped forward slowly until she was right next to Gideon. She looked frail, unformed, and very unarmed. "No, I've got it," she said. "Tiny Tim."
Vogel screamed, pushing Sayen away, and shot at Callia. But Sayen got in front of him and pushed him right into Greenaway's line of fire. The bullet bounced off her sternum harmlessly, except for the dent now in the middle of Sayen's chest. Vogel aimed at Callia again, and Elle Greenaway shot so many times, Vogel was unrecognizable.
"Are you okay?" Gideon asked.
Sayen smiled weakly. "I was scared."
"It's natural to be scared."
"I'm still scared."
"That's normal too. You wouldn't believe how many victims I've met who had fallen apart. You're holding up pretty well." A little too well, in Gideon's opinion. It was almost as if she had done this before.
Sayen nodded and looked around. "Callia's gone."
Gideon looked around. "She is," he was astonished. This girl almost dies to save the woman's life and the woman doesn't even stick around to check to make sure the girl is okay. "I'm sure she'll be back."
Sayen leaned back on the stretcher. "She knows that Cailean took Varda away. She should have gone earlier. She stayed because she loved me enough to see that I get out of here. You don't know Callia. She wanted to leave to get Varda, but she stayed. She loves me."
Gideon shook his head and chuckled. Sayen was strong. She could survive this. "I was wrong," he apologized. "You're a survivor, not a victim," he corrected.
Sayen looked at him once, smiling softly, and fell asleep.
"What kind of report is the Director looking for about Gideon?" asked Morgan, observing from further away.
"There's concern about whether he's ready for field work," Hotch watched too. "You know, Hailey and I were looking at baby names and she suggested 'Gideon.' Do you know what that means in Hebrew?"
"Mighty warrior," Henry said, trying to hail a cab. "Appropriate."
Hotch swallowed his disapproval at this friend of Sayen's leaving right as she was critically injured. "What would you tell the director?" he asked Morgan instead.
Morgan nodded at Gideon. "Gideon saved her life," he answered. "That's good enough for me."
"Alright, we're ready," said EMT Allison Cameron. She looked at the group of people gathered together. "Who's riding with her?"
Henry turned momentarily, about to say yes. But he changed his mind. Sayen was in good hands, but Varda was not.
"I will," Hotch said. He climbed in. Sayen looked up with large, warm eyes at him. The conversation they may or may not have had inside that ambulance will forever remain a mystery.
But not to us.
"Hailey and I are having a baby, and when we were picking out names, every name she suggested, well, Charles," he gave an example.
"You thought Manson," Sayen nodded.
"She said Jeffrey," Hotch looked to see if she'd understand.
"You thought Dahmer."
"Henry," Hotch leaned back, testing her knowledge.
"Um, I know a Henry, so I'm kinda drawing a blank here," Sayen admitted, smiling a little at her own silliness.
Hotch chuckled and spoke quietly, "That's the way it should be."
Aww, how cute was that? Sorry, I just think Hotch and "dad" in the same sentence and I get squealish, if that's even close to a word. It probably isn't. Anyway, this addition means that Humanizing Horatio is going to be undergoing major changes in the near (hopefully) future. Anyway, I hope you liked this. I tried to stay true to the characters, which is a lot easier when you actually see the episodes as opposed to just reading a recap. Well, I hope you continue to read my stories in the future.
Next time on Tesseraction: "Guys, please, you're vampires. To other humans, you don't exist. And I'm an alien from another planet. I'm not supposed to be here either. Except I accidentally brought a person back to life, so I am. Any questions, or are you going to help me save the universes now?"
Oh, and by the way, the serial killer Sayen couldn't identify was Henry Lee Lucas, who is believed to have killed between four and three thousand people. Why the huge discrepancy in number? Lucas confessed to multiple murders, then recanted (took back) his confessions, then confessed to MORE crimes, and so on. He was convicted of eleven homicides, sentenced to death for one of them, had his sentence commuted to life in prison by the then-Texas governor George W. Bush, and died of heart failure in prison when he was sixty-four.
Wow, what a cheerful way to end a cute chapter. I sincerely apologize for anyone who is going to have nightmares from reading this.