Warnings: Mild gore, nothing too graphic. Also SLIGHT hints of slash.
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Timeframe: The story is set somewhere after the first episode of season 2 of criminal minds. Because I havent seen any more. So dont spoil me, please:P
Language: English is NOT my first language, so I may do LOADS of mistakes. Dont hate me : Also I have no Beta reader.
Characters: I still dont think think that I've pinned down any of their characters exactly, but as I said, I haven seen that much. Yet. (working on it^^)
Also this is my first published fanfic ever. Be nice, please^^
Its cold when they find the trail of blood.
Colder than normally in the Washington area this time of the year. White fog emerges from the mouths of the CSI team as they, like grey shadows in the soft snowfall, begin taking pictures and picking up things with their cold rubber-coated hands.
There is a small hint of mist in the air, and along with the snow it makes everything white and hazy, causing Reid to rub his tired eyes.
Doctor Spencer Reid has never liked the snow. The whiteness of it makes him feel like he's suffering from some disease, and is slowly losing his ability to see.
He has read enough books on diseases to know that it is possible.
Sometimes he wonders if Morgan isn't right about him reading too much. Not all information makes you happier, he must admit.
Like the time he was researching the aspects of his mother's schizophrenia, and found that it was in most cases hereditary.
Reid brushes the snow off his coat, and focuses on the task at hand. The case is trickier than usual, with a unsub that leaves clues for where they can find his next victim in library books, the works of Edgar Allan Poe to be exact.
They have already found six bodies, and Reid solved the last puzzle just this morning, leading them to his current location, a little cabin in a field far from civilization.
The forest nearby is called Ravenwood, and since the clue was about the poem The Raven, it hadn't taken Reid, with the help of Garcia, long to find out what the clue meant.
The body is that of a young man, hung from the balcony, with Raven feathers spread out on the floor beneath him. His eyes are sewn shut, just like the other victims eyes.
Morgan signs and leans against the doorpost, and watches as the CSI team haul the man down to the ground.
"There's got to be something we're missing here. The carefulness of the stitches, the sloppiness of the hanging… It just doesn't add up," He says.
"Yes, the profile tells us that he's a perfectionist, but this hanging is really badly done, the rope almost broke as he was hanged here, and he wasn't killed instantly. Does he want to make them suffer? That isn't like this unsub at all." Reid explains, and gestures to the rope.
"And we are sure that it's only one usub? He might have let someone else in on the killings" Hotch suggests. Gideon just shakes his head.
Read takes a walk around the cabin, trying to clear his head. He isn't usually this frustrated about a case, and when he is, there always seems to be someone else there who solves it for him. Like Gideon for example. He kicks up some snow and pulls a face at the snow and the light and the whole damned situation.
That's when Reid finds the trail of blood. His shoes are soaked through and his trousers are well on their way there, but he wills away the thought of a warm fire and dry, miss-matched socks, and follows the trail after yelling to Morgan to come have a look at this.
The trail isn't very easy to follow, but some broken twigs and a few raven feathers keep him on the right track. Somewhere behind him he hears Morgan yell for him to wait, and is just about to stop when he sees it.
There are feathers everywhere. On a desk-chair in the middle of the feather-pile sits a man, carefully sowing together bits of what probably was a raven once, but had now been ripped to pieces only to be put together in a way that is almost right though at the same time very very wrong.
On his lap there is a large kitchen knife that he's presumably used for cutting the pieces of the raven.
The man looks up and waves, before getting back to his sowing, like it's the most natural thing in the world to sit in the middle of a forest, in the snow, on a desk-chair, sowing together a Raven.
"I thought you might find me, Doctor Reid. " He says after a little while. Reid can't take his eyes of the mutilated raven, and simply nods absent-mindedly.
"It's nice to finally meet you." The man continues while making a knot on the thread, biting it of right above the knot, and picking up another piece of raven from his lap.
"I've had a lot of fun constructing these puzzles for you." Reid snaps out of it and stares at the man, while cautiously stepping towards him.
"For… me? He asks, carefully.
The man starts sowing again, meticulously and with great concentration.
"Of course. I knew that you would understand, you see. I have read all about you, Spencer Reid, and I knew that you were the only one who would see things my way."
"…And what makes you think that?" Reid feels confused, and more than a bit creeped out by the whole thing.
There is something about this man that is more than just a disturbed person killing people for the hell of it. He wishes that Morgan would turn up soon, he doesn't like being alone with the man.
"So I left you messages" The man continues without answering Reid's question.
"You mean the one in the poems?
"No! Yes! I mean no. It. Is not. The. Poems. That's. Important." He stabs the crow with the needle with every word, sounding annoyed and frustrated.
"It's the monsters! The phantoms, the ones with the eyes! The eyes that must be shut!"
Reid thinks of the eyes of the victims that had been sown together.
"…the bodies?" He asks, almost afraid of the answer. He has taken out his gun now, and holds it low while looking at the man who is sowing more frantically. The sowing becomes sloppier, and the raven looks little more than a piece of flesh now, with the wings in the wrong angle, and the chest crushed by the man's tight grip.
The man doesn't say anything for a while and then he stops sowing and looks up at Reid, stares him directly in the eye.
And that's when Reid realizes why the profile had been wrong.
The unsub had seemed sane, if you can call a serial killer that, and quite aware of what he was doing, based on the way he was killing. And the clues had been so cleverly thought through that they had been sure it was a highly intelligent man who was only craving attention, and was therefore killing and playing around with the police.
But as Reid looks into those eyes he recognizes the look. He knows it all too well.
It's the look that his mother gives him during the worst of her episodes, the look that he fears to see every time he sees himself in the mirror.
The look that says I am aware of what I am doing.
I am aware of what I'm doing, and some part of me knows that it is completely insane.
But I no longer listen to that voice.
The man has stopped sowing, and the raven lies on the ground next to his chair. In his hand he holds the knife. He is mumbling, looking around with wide eyes, and his hand is shaking.
"Body… body what do you mean body they were not real only monsters, phantoms, PHANTOMS and they needed to SHUT their EYES and and…YOU!" The man staggers a little as gets up from the chair, and walks towards Reid.
"YOU! You were supposed to understand! Why won't you understand?"
Reid realizes that this is probably not the best time for him to fall apart.
"I… I… You… We are the same you and I! Geniuses, geniuses… only we can save the world, you know that… Right, Spencer Right?" The man continues pleadingly.
"Yes, yes of course." Reid tries but it's too late. The man is too far into his own delusions to listen to another word he says.
The attack comes suddenly, but Reid is prepared. No matter what people might think, he is actually trained for this kind of situation. They don't let just anyone become an FBI agent you know.
So he grabs the man's arm, twists it around by using his own strength against him and makes him drop the knife, before kneeling him in his stomach and pushing him down face first into the ground, and puts a knee on his back to keep him down.
The man is stronger than Reid, so he knows he can't hold him like that for long. He debates whether he should put the gun to his head but doubts that the schizophrenic man would even realize the danger. Besides, his gun is somewhere on the ground behind him where he dropped it during the attack.
So it might not have been his greatest maneuver, but it went better than he had thought, considering.
"MORGAN!" He yells, because he could really use someone with a little more muscle than himself right now.
"Damn it kid! I told you to wait!" Reid breathes a sigh of relief when Morgan's strong arms helps him hold down the now catatonic unsub, and he is pushed aside and can let go of the man.
The rest of the theme arrives shortly, along with a whole bunch of officers who take shuffle over to the unsub and takes him away, while Elle is being helpful and reading him his rights.
Reid always feels kind of empty when a case is over.
After being so into something he is suddenly at a loss of what to do.
Because his work really is his life, there's no way around it. Most of the time he just wanders around aimlessly while the rest of the team talk about how glad they are that it's over, or if it's a bad case, sit around trying to cheer each other up. Once they get on the plane the exhaustion usually hit Reid, and he falls asleep right away. After that he feels a bit better.
This time it's different.
He can no longer feel his toes, and the few clothes that he had been able to keep dry before are now damp and cold and itchy for some reason.
But that wasn't really what was bothering him. The cold and damp was just the thing he thought about in order to not think about other things.
It doesn't work very well.
So he just stands there, keeping his face as clean as he can, and stares at the poor raven that lays forgotten by the chair. He wonders how that chair got there, but even that thought can't distract him enough.
He hears Hotch giving orders, he and Gideon is going back to the local police station to work out some paperwork, while he instructs J.J. to arrange a press conference. Then he lowers his voice, but in the quiet of the woods, Reid can't help but hear what he's saying.
"Morgan, will you take Reid back to the hotel? Make sure he's all right?"
Morgan must have answered, because the others are leaving.
Reid is still pretending to find the raven incredibly interesting when he feels Morgan's presence by his side.
He wonders why Hotch asked Morgan to stay. Sure Reid and Morgan got along okay, and Reid would agree that Morgan was one of the few people that he would consider a friend. But really, Morgan had a tendency to not be very considerate, and Reid can't help but think about the kind of cruel pranks that Morgan likes to pull on him as they stand in silence watching the remnants of a poor bird as the snow keeps falling quietly on their heads.
But then again there was the nightmare incident. Morgan had told Gideon and Hotch, and at first Reid had been hurt that Morgan would break his confidence like that. But later he had realized that if it weren't for that he would have been a lot worse off by now.
Morgan always helped, but in his own way. He reminded Reid of the kind of bullies back in school who would hurt him not because they hated him or liked to do it, but because they didn't know how else to act.
"Reid… You're not him. And you never will be" Morgan says quietly.
And that's all it takes.
Reid doesn't cry. He doesn't even say anything. But he can feel his entire body shudder as he exhales, shakily. Inside he is all broken up, torn, and vulnerable in ways he doesn't like to be. Not here, not with Morgan.
But then there is warmth, and it takes him some seconds to process that it is Morgan's arms that are wrapped around him, and that it is his shoulder he's leaning his forehead on, and that it is his arms that keeps him from collapsing right there, on the ground.
And Spencer Reid can't help but think that maybe this is the best time to fall apart.