Disclaimer: You might've figured this out by now, but I don't own Criminal Minds.

Notes: This story is both a contemplation of what the relationship would be between Spencer Reid and Rebecca Locke, and what the contrast is between their respective shows. I much prefer The Inside as whole, not just because its darker but because it just goes there and Criminal Minds doesn't. So this was my attempt to kind of map what exactly that means, but not at all am I using it to bash one over the other. I love both shows, but for different reasons.

Also, I was unaware that Rachel Nichols had actually appeared in Criminal Minds before I started writing this (and that she'd show up again, and yes, I am trying to get this out before that episode airs). I argue that this does not screw up this fic idea too bad (though if something develops between Reid and her character I'm gonna be all kinds of confused) because sometimes I like to imagine Rebecca Locke portrayed by Amy Acker instead. Speaking of which, I believe she's unemployed, why doesn't Criminal Minds give her a call? Just sayin'

Anyway, enjoy.

They say they're so much alike. Rebecca refuses to believe this. They say this because of their timid glances, their intelligence, their youth. Two strange, stray kittens with pretty faces and sharp cheekbones who never got to be children.

Mel teases her about his sweet smile, his tousled hair. She knows what she's thinking. But no matter how hard she tries she can't look at Spencer Reid and think of romance and kissing and a life. Rather, she imagines time suspended in a universe neither of them ever lived in - sitting cross-legged on hotel room floors and playing cards, making him watch movies that he's never heard of and him teaching her his magic tricks, because he can't show her one without her immediately demanding to know how he did it.

Their isolated Los Angeles VCU had crossed path with Quantico's B.A.U. several times, but the first time was when they were called to pick up where Web and his team left off.

It wasn't the first case that they had dropped. There had been ones in the past that had aged them, that they had to step back from for their own sanity and returned to later. This was not one of them. The gears just started to wear thin. They couldn't look at another crime scene photo without feeling numb. With each kill the un-sub cried for attention that they just didn't have it in them to give, and Web was done.

"He's getting sloppier by day," he grumbled with both irritation at himself and apathy at their tormenter "They don't need us to solve this case anymore. Someone will clean things up. We have better things to do."

In swooped in the B.A.U. Picking up pieces and putting them into place was what they were good at. They showed up at the office one morning to look through their files, not looking the slightest bit fazed or ruffled from the cross country flight. The others tried to help them as much as they could when Web wasn't snapping at them to get back to their own jobs. Rebecca hung back, watching them over her own pile of work.

Paul and Danny bonded quickly with Agent Morgan, while Mel and Prentiss would lean into each other with matching conspiratorial red grins. She thought she heard Mel tell Emily once, "Some advice," nodding towards Reid, "don't let the wunderkind spend too much time in here." Prentiss' eyes flicked to Web's office door and then she nodded.

Rebecca was dazzled by the color they brought into the space. Los Angeles was the city of lights, where everyone had a tan and their hair and eyes shown with fantasy and ambition. But she never realized how cold she had felt here until the B.A.U. walked in. Their warmth intimidated her, Prentiss and Morgan's brisk sensuality made her want to shrink in her chair. When Reid first wandered over to ask her about the forensics she just nodded towards Carter and tucked her head back down into her work. When she didn't think they were looking - silly girl, someone always sees - she would watch.

Rebecca watched Agents Hotchner and Rossi, their quiet severity and confidence, and bitter feeling in her belly created crescent shaped imprints in her palms. That was where she was be, that was life she was supposed to be living. But no one wanted her at Quantico. No one wanted the invisible girl. Only Web saw fit to use her in the way she was meant to. Always Web.

It was Rossi though that pulled her out from behind the desk and asked her to walk them through the crime scenes.

"Everything you need is here," she said, gesturing lamely at the mess of files in front of them.

"Their just pictures and paper," he said, looking her in the eye the way not many people do. "Your team says you have a way about these things. Tell me what you know."

She cast a hesitant glance at his team, and then let her mind warp into a line-up of dead girls. They're last movements, their thoughts, their habits and interests. When she was done she didn't dare look up at their gaping faces, she simply shuffled back to her desk, but feeling happily warm anyway. And when Reid caught her at the coffee pot and began babbling about LA traffic patterns and life cycles of Southern California's birds she couldn't help but giggle.

If they were so much alike then why didn't her eyes fall into that lovely round shape when in touch with genuine pain and emotion? It was only when faced with a corpse that she could feel herself softening, relaxing. So much pain and brutality, but all there was left was a body, a still, peaceful form. She could feel something in that. She could relate to that.

Where she empathized, Spencer analyzed. His chin would scrunch up into his neck and he'd touch his brow lightly with his fore finger while he detailed a scene like pieces falling together from his mouth. He made order of a nonsense, turned madness into a series of dancing equations and traceable lines. He made the world, in all its horror and chaos, beautiful.

Against Dr. Reid's sparkling logic was Agent Rebecca Locke and her black intuition. She marveled at the way the B.A.U. broke down an un-sub into categories and methodology. Pieces - that's what they were good at. They really made it look like science.

The Los Angeles VCU preferred to swallow its prey whole. The way Rebecca worked seemed more like Spencer's tricks, profiles generate seemingly out of thin air. To her, it isn't magic though. Every case grinds against the gears in her head, and when its over she feel purified. At least, for a little while.

"What you do is amazing," Spencer told her, but she could only smile weakly in response.

"Maybe," she said. "But sometimes I wish I could do it your way." Glean her knowledge from books, rather than the greasy fingerprints all over her insides.

"Gideon could do that," he said, past an inward flinch that Rebecca saw even though he tried to hide it.

"Yeah, well," she said, "look where it got him."

Gideon. The name made her mouth feel sour. Web revered him- one of the few people he did, but that was probably only because no one could find him. Absence is probably the only thing that could make Web's heart grow fonder.

As far as Rebecca was concerned though, he could stay gone. A man who ran from his duties served no purpose. A part of her was sure Reid felt the same way.

Web hated Spencer. Well, that wasn't quite right. He loved his ability, and moreso he loved his vulnerability. If Web had managed to get Reid on his team he would've turned him into a puppet and kept him locked away for no one else to touch. No, Web hated Spencer because of how Rebecca became around him.

"He turns you into a toddler," he growled once. "You might as well sit together making mudpies for all you're worth." That wasn't the reason though. The reason was because when Spencer was around, Rebecca didn't want to be around Web. Mostly because she didn't want Web anywhere near Spencer.

It was these thoughts, her desire to teach herself that there was more than one kind of man in the world that brought her to his hotel room with more files for them to look over and a bag a chips that she picked up on the way. She sat with him and Rossi discussing pathology, quantum physics, and their respective teams while polishing the bag off.

After Rossi went to his own room, she and Spencer lay on the bed slowly drifting off to sleep on their sides facing each other. Finally, he said, "You look at me the same way Webster does. I don't know what that means."

Rebecca felt a sigh sink her deeper into the mattress. "Web is a collector," she explained. "He doesn't see you as a person, but a part that he can use, that would look good on his shelf." Spencer's brow furrowed, widening his eyes and she melted, but his arms were curling in towards himself. "I won't let him do that," she said. "He can do that to me. But not to you."

"So why do you look at me that way?"

"Because I would do the same thing," she said, fingers lazily reaching for a strand of his hair. He flinched back further. "I would lock you away if I could, so no one could hurt you."

Spencer shrugged a narrow shoulder. "Too late for that."

Every one of them - she wanted them dead. While he lied there turned away from her she imagined them disassembled like pieces of unwanted toys. Gideon, his father, the three-part bastard that held him captive with handcuffs and a syringe - none of them were worthy of even touching him, and if she could she would've torn them to pieces herself. She ached for the opportunity.

She imagined herself saving him a million times. He was almost as good at getting taken as she was, you'd think her wish would come easily. It was the third time the VCU and the BAU came into contact, that she got her chance. She remember how he greeted her with a smile and a hug when they got off the plane, but by the time the case was over he would fold into himself when she came near.

She remembered the way he looked at her as the smell of gunpowder swam in the air around them and seared Rebecca's lungs. She relished the scent and warmth flowing from the gun in her hand, she felt solid, rooted to the world in this way. Kill or be killed, survive or die. She wanted to be apart of that cycle. Not this limbo, not this walking half-life.

Rebecca looked at Spencer then and saw that even through the years of death and evil his mind still lost its footing just a bit at the sound of gun blasts. He looked at her and saw the animal that she loved being. So many laughs, conversations and games and it came down to that. Where she lived and where he lived, in the ground and in the air. He would always care for her, but he wouldn't be sure what frightened him more - this thing in her, or the thing in him that loved it.

"Come with us," Rossi said. "Apply for a position at the B.A.U., we've had an opening since J.J. left -"

"No," she said.

"Why not?" he said. "You don't have to stay here."

"I do," she said. "I was rejected in Quantico twice."

"That was a long time ago. You're a different person now."

"Maybe," she conceded. "But there was a reason. I don't belong there." She paused for a moment watching Prentiss and Morgan behind the glass doors of the VCU where they had squeezed in and were now packing up their work. "You guys…you may work in the dark but you live in the light. I don't. We don't."

Rossi just looked at her, eyes round and sympathetic. Like Reid's, but darker, wiser. She adored them, and because she adored them she wished they could look at her in a way that sharper eyes did. He wouldn't though; unlike Virgil Webster, David Rossi was a good man. He didn't see her that way. And anyway, if he did, she wouldn't love him the way she did.

"My place is here," she said finally, and turned walked back through those doors.

Now when she was in Virginia, she would visit Reid and eat his boyfriend's cooking. She played poker with them and their friends. She wasn't bad at it, but Spencer always won anyway. She liked seeing his competitive side, the doe eyes seemed to disappear and finally she felt like they had something in common.

His boyfriend reminded her of Web. Younger and better looking of course, but they were both commanding men. Dominant, possessive. Protective. The difference was that Spencer's man was warmth. His confidence was molten and smooth, which blended like honey with Reid's excitable charm. Web existed more as a crackling whip that wrapped like fire around Rebecca's dead girl heart.

"He isn't like you," Web said. "He's not strong like you."

"He's not weak."

"I didn't say he was," Web shrugged. "He has strengths and he's…visible when he needs to be. But he's not you." He lifted her chin. "No one could be you."

At least someone could see that. Of course it was Web. Only Web.

Thanks for reading. Would love you much if you reviewed, and I always respond to reviews. And if you're wondering who Reid's boyfriend is, go read my fic Love Song for a Profiler.