Dandelion Days
"Please."
Her laughing tone floated around him in the dark SUV, teasing a small smile from his lips even as Morgan huffed from the backseat.
"Are you telling me that that actually works for you? With real, live women?"
"You can laugh all you want, Prentiss, but I'm telling you, the ladies eat it up. Normally, at least."
It was a well-practiced routine, a back-and-forth that played out like the final volleys of an evenly-matched tennis game, an attempt at levity when their world was spinning to black. They needed it, needed the normality that this game provided them as they were headed in to do battle. It was a sort of insurance policy, a way for them to keep their bearings as they suited up and headed out, hopefully to return and do it all again tomorrow.
It was why he always called Jack before strapping his own Kevlar armor on.
And he didn't need to be a profiler to see how the tension on her face belied the tone of her words, or how the dark-skinned man sat straighter with every mile that decreased between them and their destination. He didn't need to be, but he was, and so he saw her force the next part of their routine into the air surrounding them, and he saw Morgan hesitate just a moment too long, the bluff almost falling to pieces around him as she noticed his misstep as well, and he wondered if this was the time that everything would go to shit, but in the same breath Morgan found his line and volleyed it back to her, the three of them pretending for another second that they were back at home, driving to get lunch. The seconds stretched longer, the stress rolling off of them in waves and making the air hard to breathe, and as much as he pretended not to notice the anxiety coiled in his agents, they pretended not to see the same in him. But the horrible feeling that he'd had since they'd gotten this case was still there, the proverbial elephant in the room, so suffocatingly present that it was almost palpable, and he knew that they both felt the same way, because if this was just another case, just another warrant, just another unsub, she wouldn't've had to force that remark about Derek's astoundingly poor defense of his actions, and Morgan wouldn't've faltered in his response, and he himself would've laughed at the absurdity of the situation.
But he wasn't laughing.
"And you call yourself a ladies' man."
She snorted derisively and smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.
They stepped out into a field of dandelions, the white tufts swaying back and forth in the light breeze that floated across the clearing, the warm sunshine bearing down on them and causing them to twinkle, as though beckoning the agents forward towards the house in the middle of it all. They stood for a moment, side by side, each of them unwilling to be the one to tear open this dandelion day, knowing that it would bleed ugliness and hatred and pain and pure, unadulterated evil into the field of flowers.
The world had enough of that already.
But that was the job, so he sighed and took that first small step forward, knowing that they would be right behind him, weapons drawn and ready for whatever this latest house of horrors had in store for them.
God, he hoped they were ready.
He had no time to dwell on that now, though, so he let that thought float off into the breeze with the cotton-like seeds of the dandelions that had come loose with his trek to the old weathered door in front of him, and with a nod of his head the wood splintered and gave way, permitting them entry into a circle of hell he had hoped never to see.
The woman who owned the small house was sitting at the kitchen table slowly sipping a mug of coffee. She stared at them over the rim of the mug and blew at the steam that was rising from the hot liquid. Something that looked an awful lot like insanity twinkled in her eyes as she smiled at them, and he felt a chill race down his spine as his apprehension grew.
"They said you would come today."
Her matter-of-fact tone only tightened the coil of anxiety in his gut, but he still had a job to do, so he pushed it aside. Turning to the two agents at his side, he gave them an order.
"Search the house."
They reluctantly nodded before lowering their weapons and moving up the stairs.
He kept his weapon trained on the woman as he nodded at one of the police officers who had accompanied them to handcuff and mirandize her. The young officer completed his task, cuffing her hands in front of her when she refused to relinquish the drink she held, before stepping back to watch the stoic profiler.
He holstered his Glock and took a seat at the worn table, her eyes following his every move.
"Who said?"
There was a soft thunk as she set the steaming mug of coffee down on the table.
"The voices."
The metal of the handcuffs rubbed together as she moved her hands so that one long, dirty fingernail could tap against her temple.
"Here. They said you would come today."
She picked up the chipped mug once more, the grin on her face causing unease to settle more heavily on his shoulders.
Silence fell over the kitchen, only broken by the occasional creak of the floorboards as the officer shifted in his place and her slurps of coffee. He didn't know how long he sat there, but he felt more than heard his agents come up behind him, their search apparently over.
"Hotch, we've looked everywhere. They're not here."
He could hear the faint bit of disappointment that colored her statement, but made no effort to acknowledge her. Still, he knew that they were waiting for him to do something.
"Where are they, Beth?"
That same twinkle in her eye, insanity wrapped like a cloak around her shoulders as she once more grinned at him.
"Who? The beautiful things? Where are they? They are there. There they are."
She laughed, a sharp, barking sound that cut the air and stung their faces.
She leaned closer to him, the table pressing into her flesh, but she seemed not to notice, or if she did notice, she seemed not to mind. In a cold whisper, she called to him.
"Would you like to know what's under the stairs?"
The eyes of the officer standing in the background widened as all of the air was sucked out of the room, the agents' blood running like ice through their veins as each of them were suddenly filled with a dreaded knowing of what it was they would find there.
He stood so quickly the wooden chair clattered to the ground, the smack of wood on tile sounding so much louder in the quiet of the kitchen. The harsh staccato of his footsteps fell in time with her cackling laugh, his brow dark as he marched to the staircase which he knew now housed things that nightmares couldn't imagine.
He stopped in front of the drywall, frozen, looking for any sign that would indicate how to access the evil contained therein. Vaguely, he heard Morgan calling to some of the officers to bring him a ram, a moment later drywall was falling down around them as Derek busted through the wall. The small room they stepped into was dark and dank, it smelled of mold and fear, and he would've sworn under oath that it was at least ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house. The room was empty, save for a trapdoor at the far end, the iron ring that served as a handle the only indication that it was there at all. He met his agents' eyes briefly before walking over and pulling the trapdoor open, revealing a rickety wooden ladder that descended into the blackest hole he had ever seen. He pulled his flashlight from its spot on his belt and made his way down into the darkness. Morgan and Prentiss followed him down, and not a breath later they were standing at the bottom of the ladder staring at the solitary door that was dug into the dirt wall in the tiny underground room. Sharing a look, they drew their weapons once more. She found a key hanging from a leather cord on a nail in the wall and unlocked the door, whipping it open and following the members of her team through its threshold in practiced movements with perfect timing, only to step out a moment later with a hand pressed to her mouth and tears in her eyes. Morgan stood frozen in the doorway, his eyes taking in everything in front of him and yet seeing nothing at all, leaving Hotch to secure the room on his own.
He checked for the steady beating that would indicate life on every body in there, but found none. Pushing down his own wave of nausea, he called for his agents to come back.
"We need to take them out of here."
It was cold and dark down here, and even though he knew that they were all dead, he had this sudden, irrational fear that they would be scared. He wouldn't, couldn't leave them alone in a room of midnight black. And so, he slid his arms gently under the body closest to him, fighting against the tears in his eyes that threatened to spill when he noticed that the skin was still warm, and carried the shell of a person up the ladder and into the light.
An older detective was standing in the living room just outside the hole that Morgan had made in the wall, directing the officers that kept arriving on scene to scrounge up whatever lights they could find. When he noticed what the stone-faced profiler had in his arms, he let out a gasp before locking eyes with the dark-haired man.
"Have your officers lay some tarps out. Then send them down."
The detective turned and nodded at a couple of the younger men who had watched the short exchange, and they hurried out of the house to pass on the instructions.
Shifting the weight carefully in his arms, he stepped through the makeshift entry and into the living room before moving slowly down the hallway towards the door that would take him out of this hellish house. As he passed the kitchen, he paused.
"I found the beautiful things, I did. I found them and I brought them home. They cried with happiness, they cried! You should have seen, they were so happy!"
Her smile melted away and her eyes hardened and turned dark.
"But they were sad, too. So sad. Such beautiful, happy things shouldn't be so sad. So I cut them open, I did. I cut them open and I found their happy, and I gave them wings, and now they are happy forever."
He forced himself to look away from the old woman, concentrating instead on placing one foot in front of the other until he could feel the soft breeze on his face and the sunshine on his skin. Looking around, he saw that the officers had placed two tarps about ten feet away from the house in the field of dandelions. He crossed the distance to the nearer sea of blue and knelt to lay his load carefully down. He brushed a lock of cinnamon and crimson away from her forehead and straightened, turning his back to her and making his way back into the depths of hell.
He found her in the field of dandelions as the sun was beginning to set, the dying light casting shadows of purple and pink across the clearing and seeming to set the white heads on fire.
They were not the only things burning.
And as he watched her stare at the eleven eviscerated bodies of the children they had spent the past three weeks looking for, their ribcages cracked open and twisted to give the appearance of wings and painting a picture as clear as crystal of the suffering endured by these six- and seven-year-olds before they passed mercifully into death's embrace, the burning in his chest increased until he was standing shoulder to shoulder with her, the both of them with tears leaving fiery tracks down their cheeks.
He could not remember the last time he had cried at a crime scene.
They stood until the last rays of light had disappeared beyond the tree-line and the officers had redirected some of the lights from the dirt dungeon to illuminate the oceans of despair. Morgan had joined them at some point, turning their grief duet into a trio. He knew he needed to say something, but for the life of him, he had no idea what the right words were.
Maybe this was one of those times when there were no right words.
He needed to pull his shit together, though.
It was time for them to leave.
Giving himself one more moment, he took a deep, shuddering breath and turned, leading his agents back the way they had come just that morning. As they reached the black SUV that would carry them back to the rest of the team at the precinct, Prentiss caught his eye. Pausing in the open space of the passenger's side door, she begged him.
"Tell me it won't ever be worse than this."
He fought not to look away from her, equally unwilling to lie and to tell the truth – that he couldn't promise that, opting instead to stay silent.
"Please."