Man's concern about the meaning of life

is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Victor Frankl

Elizabeth Teal, or Lizzie as she was so fondly known, was wearing her Sunday best.

A white dress that frilled around her neck with pink flowers dancing to the seams of the fabric draped against her limp body. Reflective black Mary Jane sandals pinched tightly around her growing tiny toes. Her hair was weighing heavily against the violet carpet fibers, thick vinyl curls splayed out messily.

Snip.

Lizzie's little pink mouth was stoned into a pout. A crease puckered her forehead; the shadowed canyon was carved from worry and forever frozen into her peaches and cream skin.

Snip.

Her perfect little limbs were bent at unnatural angels, snapped in all different directions, like a sloppy pinwheel of arms and legs. Sticky, candy apple red painted her pretty pink and white dress with ugly.

Snip.

The reflection of the camera flashed like lightening in her wide, horror struck, eyes—they were color of spinach. Lizzie never did like spinach.

Snip.

The tech straightened from his crouch, and snapped a final photo, before making way for the agents behind him.

"This is even more gruesome than the last body." Reid remarked, carefully circling little Lizzie's body. He squinted his eyes, and took a half step back to gain a better look at the words, 'never innocent', smeared in Lizzie's drying, tarry blood on the bubble gum pink walls of her room.

Hotch peered closer at a photo of Lizzie that had rested on her little wooden tea table, Lizzie was smiling and twirling in a plain lemon colored skirt with another girl with strikingly similar features. "There's something new about the posing though. It's odd. What do you think JJ? … JJ?"

JJ stood, rooted in place at the small dip in Lizzie's doorway. She opened her mouth to say something, but all that came was a distantly familiar feeling of bile rising in her throat. Her mouth moved, absently forming words with no sound to match and blue eyes got impossibly large, tangled in a web of red lines and glassed over with something eons away. The walls were closing in on her, the walls that were coated in a color she'd only previously related to Barbie.

But God, the walls. Little Lizzie's blood was soiled over that pretty paint she'd probably picked out herself, so dark and red and horrible and ugly and, and… dead. So dead.

Just like Lizzie's face, covered—smothered in death. Her lithe body that twirled in unattractive lemon skirts was broken and tossed to the ground and drowning in a crimson river that flowed out of that cute little dress she was wearing.

JJ could smell the coppery blood—could taste the iron in the back of her throat, suffocating her like Lizzie's heart, which was now decaying beneath her flesh, skin, and sweet little cotton dress.

JJ could hear—could feel the wretched screams that tore from Lizzie's creamy throat as she begged and cried and pleaded in the last, torturous moments of her life. They crawled on JJ's skin like millions of little spider legs, like Lizzie's little fingernails clawing at her captor as the empty, cold shrieks raced around her room before her voice splintered and broke off into choking sobs.

JJ could see—oh how dreadfully clear even with her blurred eyes could she see Lizzie's pain, her fear, raw and staining the air with its bitter, glaring, fresh scent. Lizzie's spinach eyes staring at the ceiling as new splatterings of her innards spotted it, like little red pinpointed stars. Make a wish, her mother had always told her when she would look up at the stars. In her delirious with pain state, she wished and wished upon the little crimson stars on her ceiling even as they fell with repulsing splats onto her cheek. The falling stars were supposed to be the luckiest; but her wish never came true.

The walls, the blood, the blood…

"I… I can't…" JJ fumbled with the latex gloves before snapping them off as they pinched at her skin and throwing them to the ground. She darted from her spot like a spooked deer, rushing down the stairs and through the front door, just barely stumbling by the CSU.

Hotch leveled his gaze to Reid. He glanced to the doorway, and back to the agent, narrowing his eyes just barely.

Reid sighed, and turned, pushing past the investigators and ushering behind JJ, as a perplexed looking detective stared at Hotch for answers.

JJ was already hammering down the sidewalk and away, away from the blood and the walls and the stars and the blood…

Reid gasped as he ran out of the house, and searched frantically for his teammate. A bob of blonde flashed in the corner of his eye. "JJ! JJ stop!"

Great. He thought with an internal roll of his eyes. Contrary to popular belief long legs didn't automatically give you super speed abilities, especially when giving chase to an avid runner.

But he pushed on, wobbling awkwardly behind her as she all but flew across the pavement, her body in sync and positively graceful as her muscles pumped and her legs pounded against the ground. The sky was pouring down with heavy, splashing raindrops that smacked against her body with fury.

"JJ!" He wheezed, clutching at his side and almost tripping into a garbage bin.

Her hair whipped behind her, and her thighs gained a slow burn as her calves pulsated like an external heartbeat into the cement, muscles twitching and protesting the sudden and intense use.

"Jay—Ah!" A sad squeaking noise came from his lips followed by a low rumbling that she almost mistook as the thunder. She forced herself to stop, and looked back at Reid who was trying to untangle himself from, well, himself. He'd snagged his shoelace on the handle of a carelessly strewn bike on someone's lawn, and lurched over the shimmering fuscia tassels.

Like Lizzie's room. Like the wall, and the blood, and the lies, and…

JJ had swung around, doubling back to help Reid up when she turned abruptly to the manicured, damp grass of someone's front yard and retched the bag of potato chips she'd wrangled from a vending machine earlier.

She coughed a few times for good measure, a mixture of alkaline, rain, and that sick smell of pennies swirling on her tongue. Slow steps that slapped against the wet ground drew closer to her, and she felt a small, warm pressure on her back.

"Come on, let's go back to the hotel, I'm sure they can manage without us and no one's going to be able to focus so late, ah, early." Reid's words were whisked away by the thick sheet of water drenching them both, every little drop catching into their shirts' fibers, and spidering out along the threads until they were absolutely soaked.

JJ wiped her hand across the back of her mouth, and looked up at Reid, whose hand was still steadying her untrustworthy figure. Colorful prisms reflected in the clear beads of water that stuck her eyelashes together, and he could have mistaken them as raindrops.

Reid guided her back to the SUV, sending Hotch a quick text message as they waited for the heater to kick on. JJ listened to the pattering of rain against metal and slosh of rain against glass, watching the lines on the road blur together with what could have been the speed of the car or the tears rolling silently from her eyes.

God, she was a mess. Running away from crime scenes, throwing up, crying like some kid that dropped his ice cream cone. What was wrong with her?

Reid shot her a concerned look from the driver's seat as JJ huffed out a mirthless laugh at her own thoughts.

Wrong with her? Where did she even begin with that one. The whole case was a mess, in about ten days three girls (seven, eight, and seven) brutally murdered—and that was before the hours of torture.

And Lizzie, sweet little Lizzie in her Sunday best, all covered in red, was dead because of her.

It was tense. Tenser than usual because nothing seemed to be going right. Local LEOs were screwing up forensics, their profile was being challenged everywhere they went, and it was just bad. So the team did the only logical thing, they took out their frustrations on each other. Snapping, scathing remarks that were full of venom and empty all at once were being tossed carelessly.

And then the press conference.

Morgan had thrown a particularly nasty comment in her face, bringing up Emily's "death" and a whole slew of ugly phrases. She knew he was just pissed because they had just discovered the third body, but it didn't take away the sting. The worst part was Reid was standing right next to him, and when she looked over to his wide, hazel eyes, he didn't even try to defend her. So she did the one thing she never did—she went to face a pack of ravenous reporters distracted.

Then, when asked whether the man in question would appear intimidating, she responded with a no. That the unsub was a sad, slight guy who took out his rage at the world on innocent little girls because he was otherwise impotent in his life.

She said it because that's what she was supposed to say. Because that's what her teammates told her the profile said. Everyone said she did a good job.

But of course after they found sweet little Lizzie, that changed. Nobody would admit it, but she knew they all thought it was her fault. Not that she could blame them, it was her fault. Everything was her damn fault.

And that's how they all got woken up at one in the morning to go investigate a crime scene of a poor little girl. A little girl whose family was taken hostage, as she was tortured to death just above them in her pretty pink room. They knew what it meant. He was getting bolder, actually going into her house rather than snatching her away.

They also knew it was because of that damned press conference. Because of JJ.

The reverberating of thunder was washed away to a dull bass, the heavy rain that rocketed down to earth registering loudly in the otherwise silent car. Reid pulled the keys out of the ignition and snapped his seatbelt off. He leaned back into the stuffed leather, making no to indication of leaving.

JJ pressed a slender finger against the window, the chilling outside seeping through the car, and watched a bolt of lightening light up the ashtray sky.

"I hated the rain when I was little. The thunder, it scared me. One day I was out with my mom, running errands I guess—I don't really remember—and my sister… my sister was with us. Mom left the two of us in the car for a few minutes, and there was this huge storm outside. Just… massive. And I was so scared, but I tried not to show it because I didn't want my big sister to see me crying like some baby.

"But she noticed—she always noticed when something was wrong with me—and so she made up this game, to distract me. We watched the raindrops on the glass, and we'd pretend that they were like racecars or something. She, she even made up names for some of them. And we'd each pick a raindrop and see which one would make it to the bottom of the window first.

"And all I really remember is thinking how fearless she seemed. After that, I… after that I loved the rain. I didn't want to be scared anymore. I wanted to be just as fearless as her."

Reid couldn't be sure if it was tears or the tangling streams of rain that slid down JJ's reflection in the window. He didn't ask.

"She killed herself, you know." The words were whispered, soft and as soon as they were spoken the howling wind stole them away from existence—Reid heard them anyway. "And I so mad at her, because all I could think was how could someone so fearless do something so cowardly."

Her head dropped to her chest, chin resting on her in turned neck. She stifled something between a sigh and a sob.

JJ peeked over at Reid through the wheat colored wet threads of hair that were plastered on her skin, "You hate me."

"You hurt me." Reid corrected, if only slightly.

JJ's hands clenched, and it took all of her will power to hold her broken gaze on him. "I know." She croaked out dejectedly. "I know. What kind of monster am I?"

Reid exhaled gently. "JJ…"

"No! No, I-I am. I deliberately hurt my best friend, and I don't even feel guilty about it, because I did the right thing. At least that's what I keep telling myself, because if it's not true, then suddenly I'm nothing." Big, cerulean eyes swam with hurt and guilt and resolution and a dash of something that could only be described as lost.

"When I saw that little girl, and I saw all those pictures of her and her sister, I just… How long can we do this, Reid? How much of myself do I have left? That little girl was tortured for hours before dying. Hours, in her own fucking home, in her pretty little fucking pink room.

"You know how she died? They suspect that just like the other little girls, she died of shock. She was in so much goddamned pain, that she slipped into shock and died and that fact? That fact is merciful. She was tortured and the last thing that she probably saw before her body completely gave up was the unsub's face smiling down at her.

"And then we—we come into her room, the pretty little fucking pink room where some of the most horrific things you could possibly do to a human being happened, and we don't even notice. We look for how the body was positioned, we think about how much time it's been since the last little girl was tortured to death, we search for fingerprints—but you know what we don't see?

"We don't see how a piece of that little girl's liver was sitting on the head of her stuffed monkey, that was probably her favorite considering how worn it looked. We don't notice all the pictures of her and her sister she had in her room, and how her big sis is forever going to be haunted by finding Elizabeth's body and having to listen to her die while she was trapped downstairs.

"I didn't see. I didn't notice all of that. The first thing I thought when I walked into the room, not how sad it was, not how atrocious it was, not even that I couldn't wait until we caught the bastard unsub, the first thing I thought was how this little fucking girl was lucky to have died quicker than the others."

Tears were dripping freely from her eyes, collecting at her jaw line before quivering for a few moments and making the final plunge into the inky seats.

"I can't even imagine—can't even begin to fathom the kind of hell that little girl went through, and the first thing I think when I see her, that poor little girl that I got killed, is how she was lucky."

The silence was deafening. The pounding rain, the roaring thunder, the flashes of lightening like the camera that captured little Lizzie's dead eyes in its lens forever, the thick, heaving breaths that JJ forced into her lungs.

Gray. Ugly, hideous gray steeled itself over the world. It was so contrary to the vibrance of Lizzie's entrails being strewn across her ladybug blanket.

"I'm scared of losing myself, Spencer." She confided, looking at him with a new mixture of sadness and desperation. "I'm scared that I might have already. I lied to you and to everyone for weeks and weeks and that little girl, God, that little girl…"

"JJ… you're not a monster. You're human. And sometimes that can be a burden." He paused, gathering his emotions. "You hurt me. You lied and you hurt me. And it's not something that can be as easily fixed as you want it to be.

"But, JJ, Elizabeth, she… We do what we do to save people. We risk our lives in more ways than one to save the helpless and the hopeless. There are other little girls out there like Elizabeth Teal. And when we catch the unsub, we're saving them.

"It's not enough to make all the other girls' deaths any better—nothing is—but it's why we do this. There's a thin line between us and them. Between good and evil, right and wrong. We blur that line because it's the only way to keep everyone else safe. That's what you did. And while I understand it, it still hurts.

"Maybe you're right, maybe we will lose ourselves. Maybe we're all too far-gone, but at the end of the day, it's worth it for me. It has to be. And maybe, at the end of the day, when you go home to Henry, it'll be worth it for you too."

She swallowed thickly, his words sinking in. "I don't want to be trapped on the other side."

"The fact that you feel like that proves you're not. And you never will be, that's why we have the team. We keep each other from looking too long into the abyss."

JJ sniffled until the noise dissolved into a laugh. "When did you get all philosophical on us?"

He smiled. "Well, I am a genius with a BA in the subject."

She threw his shoulder a good-natured punch and chuckled as he rubbed at his bicepe. "That you are."

"JJ…" Reid swallowed, fidgeting with the cuffs of his sleeves. "JJ, you know that it wasn't your fault right? Elizabeth getting killed was because our unsub chose to do it, not because of anything you said, you understand that, right?" His words were spoken with conviction but felt hollow as they played in JJ's ears.

"What do you think?" She whispered the words like a breeze across his face.

Reid sucked in a long, deep breath, before blowing it out again in a steady gush of air. "I think… I think that one's going to make it down first." He pointed his index finger to a particularly fat raindrop hanging from the top of the windshield.

It took a few seconds for JJ to piece together what Reid was doing, and when she did, she smiled so wide it hurt.

"My money's on this one," she said, touching her fingertip to a slimmer one. The cold—freezing, really—glass sent a shiver down her spine.

"Psh," he sounded against his lips, leaning against the dashboard to watch his raindrop more closely, "mine's way better."

JJ parroted his action, and barked out a laugh that felt like a balloon, flying freely up and up and up and taking her with it into the heavens. "Bring it, oh Rain Man."

"Ah ha! See? Mine's moving first."

"Yeah but—look! Mine's faster."

"Yes, well… Randy Raindrop is a far better contender."

JJ snorted. "Randy Raindrop's a chum. Stevie McCloud: Rain Racer Extraordinaire—now there's a piece of precipitation that knows what it's doing."

"Then explain why Randy's half way done an—how did Stevie move so fast?"

"Ha! Randy's a glob of water, Mr. McCloud is an ar-tist and looks for the path with more rain to catch on to."

"No! Go, Randy! You're almost at the wipers!"

"Stevie! Stevie! Stevie!"

"Move you imbecilic, covalent bonded chemical substance, you—find your inner deluge!"

"Go, go, go, go, go!"

"Ah—"

"The last stretch, get to the finish line! Have those wipers meet their maker!"

"No, fast—"

"YES! And the wonder of Mr. McCloud once again awes the audience!" JJ shot her arms up victoriously, before clapping them together in an innocent kind of glee.

"I call for a rematch. Randy was cheated." Reid fell back against the driver's seat in a huff, but was smiling at JJ nonetheless.

She wanted to say so many things. Thank you for being fearless when I'm not. Thank you for insinuating silly rain races to make me feel better even when I don't deserve it. You're my best friend. Every time I catch you glancing at me with that hurt expression you get it kills me—psychically pains me to see that look and know I caused it.

She decided on something less heavy but still so true.

"Oh, I've missed you Spence." She adopted the nickname, feeling like that balloon again, soaring higher into blissful weightlessness.

Reid's eyes turned wary and guarded before JJ had a chance to blink. "JJ…" He started slowly. "JJ things aren't suddenly fixed between us, you understand that right? We have a while before that will happen."

JJ had a sudden rush of nostalgia for the times she'd been dumped by a boyfriend. Reid's voice held the same 'let-her-down-gently' quality the others had. She sunk her teeth into her bottom lip to keep it from quivering, and pretended not to notice the hot tears that were forming in her eyes. "Of course."

The balloon popped.

Reid sighed, "Ready to go inside?"

JJ nodded numbly, popping the door handle, and splashing her feet down into the gritty, sodden asphalt. Reid had already ducked into the small awning of the hotel, and waited for JJ.

She paused on the sidewalk, turning back to look at the sky. The dark, swirling sky with heavy ashen clouds and darkness seeping into day.

"Hey Reid," she called out, attempting to doge the raindrops as she hurried to meet him under the moss-colored awning, "it will happen, right?" Her almost bashful blue eyes took on an endearing, child-like apprehension.

Reid gave her his signature half smile, it was a little forced but she didn't care, and reached for a small hug.

JJ couldn't hold it back. She all but lunged forward; gripping him in such a tight embrace she swore she heard his breath escape him. Tentatively, he brought his arms back around her waist. Their bodies were glacial, and slick, and radiated against each other until a warmness surged through them.

"I'm sorry, Spence." She breathed into his ear, burying herself in his neck and his positively sopping sweater, stained with rain and salty sorrow.

"I know." His voice tickled her cheek, and he smelled faintly of coffee.

A final look out to the looming, dismal ash clouds swallowing the sky whole, and they headed together into the hotel, shoulders brushing just enough to speak volumes as they left the sloshing downpour behind them.

Not that the rain wouldn't come again, it would, they were sure of it. And not even that the current storm would clear up anytime soon—the heavy showers could come for days and days and weeks and weeks and longer, even.

But the promise that it would clear up—the hope, the thought of sunlight, desperately clutching to the beautiful memory of that radiance, the sliver of luminance in a storm—

That was enough for now.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free, and discover that prisoner was you.

Lewis B. Smedes

A/N:

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds. I do love it, though. And also I own Lassie t-shirt signed by the original Timmy. But that's probably not relevant.

So I figured I should fall to peer pressure and post a post "Proof" (lols - so much alliteration) fic.

Actually, the beginning of the story I'd written out before even the season premiere, but was kind of stuck, and the JJ/Reid rift fell perfectly to what I needed so hooray!

I actually quite enjoyed the ep, even if a bunch of stuff pissed me off. And when Reid brought up dilaudid? I was all, "Oh, shiiiiiiaaaaattteeeee." But it was awesome, because no one ever, ever brought that up, so it really just stung that much more, and let's face it - POed Reid = Sexy Reid.

No, wait. Scratch that.

Reid = Sexy Reid.

Anyway, so I just wanted to throw this out there as my take. Like usual, this is unbeta-ed so any and all mistakes are mine - apologies in advance for any, I try to edit as much as I can.

Thank you, beautiful person, for reading! I really hope you enjoyed it!

Please review and tell me your thoughts, thanks!

-Yellow