❝ i'm getting tired losing to this rat-faced son of a bitch. ❞

OLIVIA WALKED INSIDE the BAU's conference room, where Emily, Penelope, JJ, and Spencer were already there. When she stepped inside the room, her eyes instantly led her to the screen mounted in the room. On the screen, pictures of Tara and her brother, Gabriel, were shown. The five agents all looked at one another, a few of them confused. "What's going on?" JJ asked. Spencer looked at the screen behind him and JJ, "It's Gabriel."

"Oh." JJ and Olivia looked at one another from across the table, slightly nodding their heads at one another. Penelope watched them, "How did. . . how come you guys know about. . ." She trailed off.

"Uh, she told us about him when she first joined the team." JJ told her. Olivia spoke up, "And she told me yesterday."

"He flew in this morning, probably looking for money." Spencer commented.

Luke and Rossi then entered the room, and stood beside Olivia. "Hey, is there a case?" Luke asked. "What's Tara's brother's picture doing up?"

Penelope glared at him as Emily answered, "Well, he's in town." Rossi deadpanned, "He must want money."

Garcia placed her remote on the table, the remote making a thud sound on the wood. "Come on, the new guy? He knows? How come I was the last one to know?" She looked at the team as Luke refraining himself from smiling at her reaction.

"It was an experiment." Reid told her. "She wanted to time how long you could keep a private conversation private. And you made it 12 hours."

At this point, Luke had stop fighting the urge of smiling in amusement. "Damn, I had you down for 6." He admitted.

           "Okay, you know what? You guys, I thought you were my friends. But you suck. You all suck." Garcia started walking away. "Especially you, new guy. But then again, you always suck, Newbie." She stopped in front Olivia, a hand resting on her arm. "Not you, my precious angel. I always love you." She then continued angrily walking away, leaving the other profilers grinning at one another.

"I had 14 hours. I think I win, right?" Spencer asked. JJ pointed to her coworkers in front of her, "Uh, who had 11?"

Rossi, Luke, and Olivia all pointed to Emily as she raised her hand, "Oh, I did." JJ laughed as Spencer looked at her in defeat to contrast from Emily's gleaming smile of triumph.

"So, do we really have no new case?" Luke asked Emily. She shook her head, "None from the last time I checked. Plus, I doubt Garcia wants to come back in here."

The team then dispersed to their desks in the bullpen. Since Emily is now Unit Chief and has an office of her own, she gave up her previous desk to Olivia. That desk being right next to Spencer's. They hadn't talked much since Liv arrived back. Sure, they still talked to each other, but it was always case-related. It's like she was reliving the time she first joined the team five years ago and Spencer would only talk to her if he needed to. She missed having a real conversation with him. Spencer placed his messenger bag beside his desk as Olivia sat down on her office chair in front of him.

          Olivia would glance to Spencer every now and then before her gaze returned back to her computer screen. Her phone vibrated on her desk, receiving a text message from Oliver: is spencer at work? and is he busy? Olivia is a profiler, and she's pretty good at her job too. She knows that the only reason he asked was because he wanted to talk to him. She turned her direction towards Spencer after texting Ollie back, "Hey, have you checked your phone?"

Spencer took a little longer than he needed to answer the simple question. It was mostly because he was unsure if she was actually talking to him. "No, why?"

"I think Ollie wants to talk to you." She stated.

"Oh, the twins told you that we've still been keeping in touch?" He questioned. Olivia shook her head and answered, "No, but it has been a little obvious."

Spencer pressed his lips together, unsure about what to say next. "Um, I'm sorry they're not really being quite fond of you right now. I told them they should act better towards you, since I know you've just been trying to provide what's best for them but I don't know if it worked or not." He rambled a little.

"It's been working. Thank you." She told him. He nodded a bit, turning away before she could see the small smile that graced his lips. Truthfully, she doesn't think that him telling the twins to be nicer worked, but she knows he put in his efforts and that cares, so she wanted him to feel proud of himself.

         Then, Tara and who seemed like was her brother, were in the FBI building. Anyone who saw her knew that she wasn't in the best of moods. Her 'brother' was led into one of the interrogation rooms. She asked the team for help to find her real brother, as the man who showed up at the coffee shop was definitely not Gabriel. Spencer went to go help Tara and then came back to the bullpen as Emily and Penelope approached them. "We can hold that man for 24 hours. After that, we need to either charge him or let him go. Is Gabriel answering his phone?" Prentiss reported to Tara.

          "This is his phone. His contacts, his emails. Look at this." She turned the phone around showing them a picture. "He was in the Capitol Hill district. And look at the time stamp. He's been in my backyard for a month and he hasn't told me."

         "Does your father know?" Emily asked.

          "Maybe." She answered. "I mean, I have to speak to him."

         "Albert Lewis Body Shop. He's listed, right? I'll bring him in." Spencer stated, walking to his desk to call Tara's dad. Tara gave the phone to Penelope, "Okay, process that and break it down."

           "Ay, ay." Penelope said, walking off to do what was told. Rossi went to Emily's office as she turned around to look at Tara and she questioned, "Just why would Gabriel send a stranger to meet me and pretend it's him? It makes no sense. Maybe he's scared or maybe it's another one of his scams, but-"

         She was cut off by Emily who nodded her head towards the direction of her office, "Tara, let's talk."

          They decided to not send Tara to interrogate the unnamed man in order to not give him what he wants. Instead, they let Olivia do it while Tara and Emily watched from the other side. "Good afternoon." She greeted, entering the interrogation room and sitting down in front of the man. "I'm Olivia Griffins with the Behavioral. . ."

          She trailed off as the man finished her introduction for her, ". . .Analysis Unit of the FBI. Tara told me you were cool."

         "All right." She started. "And you are?"

         "Gabriel. Her brother." He stated. Olivia looked down at the file that was in her hands, "Could I get your full name and social security number, please?"

          Without his eyes trailing off somewhere else, the man answered, "Gabriel Anthony Lewis. 989427001." Olivia looked at him, placing the file in front of him and pointing to a printed out picture of Gabriel's driver's license. "That is Tara's brother. See the problem here?"

         "What? It's a driver's license photo, they asked me not to smile." He shrugged.

          "Where were you born?" She asked. To which he responded, "Army base, Fort Rucker." Olivia questioned further, "Right. In Georgia?"

          "No, Alabama." He told.

         "With stops in Okinawa and Hamburg?"

         He corrected her, "Other way around. Hamburg first." She nodded her head, "What did you major in at Yale?"

          The man furrowed his eyebrows, "I didn't. What is going on here?" Olivia sighed before asking him, "Why are you the only one that gets to call her T?"

         He glared at the one-way mirror and scoffed, "We're going there, huh? Her name is spelled T-A-R-A. It was my father's grandmother's name." He stood up, pacing around and continued. "You know what else is spelled T-A-R-A? Tara. The plantation in Gone with the Wind. Some movie most Black folks aren't crazy about. So my mom and dad, they drilled it into her, it's Tar-uh, Tar-uh, Tar-uh. And every time we went to a new school, which was every time my dad got re-stationed, she had to make sure our classmates got it right. You feel me?"

         "I do." She nodded.

         He continued, "Good. So while we're in Hamburg, this kid starts following her around and he starts saying, Tare-uh, Tare-uh, Tare-uh, Tare-uh. Now, he's never seen Vivien Leigh or Clark Gable or I don't know nothing about birthing no babies. He just knew that he was underneath her skin. And my sister said. . ." He trailed off, staring back at the mirror.

         Olivia looked at him, "Well, what'd she say?"

         "What happened next is our secret. Mine and hers." He spoke, sitting back down. "I wouldn't just tell the rest to anybody. My sister knows that. All that matters for this little back and forth, which I'm guessing she put you up to is afterward I started calling her T, to show her that I was always on her side. Even now, T. Even now."

         The interrogation was put on hold as Tara's dad was brought to the BAU. She went to go talk to him to find any information that could be deemed useful to figure out who the man posing to be her brother is and where Gabriel actually was. The man's name was Desmond. Her father ended up telling her about Carl Brubaker, which Penelope searched more information about him. Luke and Tara drove to the address her father gave her.

         Alvez and Lewis found a room where pictures of Gabriel in different ages were displayed. A voice kept repeatedly shouting Luke's name as they entered a different room. They found a video monitor where a recorded feed of Gabriel tied down to a chair was shown. He kept shouting Luke. Then, a set of hands placed a gas mask over his face, muffling his shouts. Peter Lewis, or Mr. Scratch, revealed himself, taunting Tara. Mr. Scratch was targeting their families.

         The team met back at the round table, as Tara went to speak to her father and Emily walking in the room. "I've placed protective details on Hayden and Joy, Will and the boys, and the twins." She told Rossi, JJ, and Liv. "We need to assume that Mr. Scratch is targeting this entire team."

         "You know, that could be why he had Gabriel screaming out my name. He wants us to know that he knows I'm part of the BAU now." Luke guessed.

         "Isn't his M.O. to drug his victims and make them hallucinate?" Olivia thought.

          "Then he evolved. He's taking these victims with multiple personalities and brainwashing them with someone else's memories." JJ figured.

         "So he took Tara's brother and did god knows what to get him to spill his life story, and then he planted those memories in the guy downstairs. The more memories he has, the stronger the identity he can create." Luke said.

         JJ chimed in, "He must have put Gabriel's whole life inside of Desmond."

         "Well, the good news is we have a list from before." Penelope told. "Patients with dissociative identity disorder Scratch might target next."

          "Okay, cross-reference those against missing persons. The rest of us need to figure out how to deprogram the unsub safely. He's still our best lead to Scratch and Gabriel." Emily spoke.

         "It's the pictures that are baffling." Spencer remarked. "Scratch left them out specifically to call our attention to them."

          "He's a math genius. He likes us to solve his puzzles, which usually tends to lead to bigger traps." Luke replied. Spencer explained, "But it's the configuration that's strange. The pictures are obviously of Gabriel at different ages, but normally one would arrange them in chronological order or reverse chronological order. 15, 11, and 32 is a pattern he wants us to see."

          "Not us. Tara. It's a pattern he wants her to see." Rossi commented.

         Garcia, Spencer, Olivia, and JJ decided to watch the video Scratch had showed them to find any clues that could lead them to him and Gabriel. "Wait, pause the video. Zoom in on the wrist, Garcia." Reid requested, her doing so. "That rope, it's called shibari. It's an intricate form of BDSM bondage. The last time Mr. Scratch needed BDSM gear, he used a fake name. My name, actually, to buy it."

         "Well, maybe he did the same thing with Carl Brubaker." JJ suggested.

         "It could give us another location Scratch is hiding at. Garcia, can you run financials?" Olivia spoke.

         "Yes, I will." She said. "And my search of possible DID patients/potential victims is going to give us a much needed break." Her computer beeped when finding a result. "I know that name."

        Penelope, Rossi, and Emily met back at the conference room. Garcia explained her new findings about Desmond to them. Emily then let Tara interrogate him. He eventually wanted to leave, but then Tara played along and pretended that he was actually Gabriel to get him to stay. Her dad also accompanied the two in the interrogation room as 'Gabriel' explained the origin of one of the photos.

         While so, JJ and Emily pursued a lead. They went to the house of the people who might've sold the BDSM gear to Mr. Scratch. When they came back, Tara had made a realization. She went back to the room with Desmond and triggered him back so he wouldn't act as Gabriel anymore. He gave her an address and the team put on their bulletproof vests, ready to find Gabriel and Mr. Scratch.

         The team stood in the elevator as the time was ticking to find Tara's brother. She broke the silence in the small box, muttering, "Thank you."

         Emily spoke up, "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting tired losing to this rat-faced son of a bitch. He's not gonna take anyone else away from us, not on my watch. Am I clear?" The team nodded as the elevator doors opened. "Let's get to work."

         They arrived to their destined location along with other field agents. They searched around the area, their guns pointed for caution. "Clear!"

         Spencer looked above him, "Wait, hold up. That doesn't belong." He looked at the structure in the ceiling. "Lewis, Alvez, you and I will go to the second floor. Reid, JJ, Liv, open that up, but don't disable anything until you get my go-ahead." Emily requested.

         Reid carefully opened the panel, revealing different wires and buttons. Emily, Tara, and Luke found Gabriel tied to a chair with duct tape on his mouth and a shotgun pointed at his head, an intricate creation used as a trap.

         "We found a power source. If we cut the right wire, it should shut down the vise." Olivia spoke into her earpiece.

           Gabriel's movement determined if the trigger on the shotgun was going to be pulled. Tara told him to focus on her and not at the weapon. Emily spoke to the other half of the team at the panel, "Guys, what have you got?"

          Spencer pulled apart a piece of the panel, where three shotgun shells were in place. "We may have something, hold on." JJ responded. "These aren't fuses, these are shotgun shells. It's a decoy. The shotgun isn't loaded." Spencer concluded.

          Luke and Tara untied Gabriel as Emily pondered aloud. Scratch wouldn't make it that easy to just grab Gabriel and escape. "Guys, look for another trigger." She told Liv, Spencer, and JJ. Then behind Emily, a banner was let down. She spoke in her earpiece again, "Reid, what's Exodus, chapter 8, verse 24?"

         "It's one of the plagues of Moses. And the lord did this. Dense swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh's palace. Throughout Egypt the land was ruined by the flies."

          Emily found that the bigger trap they were looking for was above them in the ceiling. "There's a redundance switch somewhere. It's going off." JJ spoke. Spencer explained, "We can interrupt it if we bypass the correct fuse."

          Tara and Luke were immediately untying the rope on Gabriel. Reid flipped a switch in the panel, "Okay, this will only delay the trigger for a few seconds."

          "All right. Go, go, go, get him off of there!" JJ said. The others in the second floor quickly running off to the side of the room before the nails shooting down from the ceiling could hurt one of them. After successfully returning Gabriel with Tara, they went back to the BAU. Tara's brother and father were also able to reunite as they embraced each other in a hug.

ANGIE'S NOTES ☺︎︎
the ending of this chapter kinda sucked lol
but it's fine
so i found out what my schedule was for the 2021-2022 academic school year AND I HAVE LUNCH 3RD PERIOD🤨🤨 THATS LITERALLY LIKE 10AM WHAT
i eat breakfast at 10am, you're telling me at school i have to eat lunch??? that should be illegal 🏃‍♀️
anyways tomdaya🙏🙏🙏