ooo - "He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words." - Elbert Hubbard

oo:57 - January, 4th

It felt wrong.

So wrong. Yet they knew they couldn't stop; they knew that it had to be done - but it didn't mean that they would have to like it. While going through the motion a few words escaped, a few observations were made. They brushed paper work, pages and pages of slanted hand writing, journals, knick knacks, books, postal cards and letters. So many letters addressed to no one. Some old, some new. They ran through it all never letting others touch such precious things but it didn't seat well, with them it didn't-

It hurt.

God above it hurt so much. Once again they failed. Once again they didn't see it coming. Lulled by the false sense of security of smiles and beautiful words. Something akin to desperation clawed inside the team as they searched for answers as to why- Maybe because he was so different - was it because they wanted something they couldn't have? They knew it wasn't the first yes - would it be the last? They would find him- no. They had to find him. But the question would always remain. Would they be on time? Would it be his last? Would it finally break him? Would it finally push him away forever? How many times before his eyes lost all that wonderment, all that innocence, all that life?

Aaron Hotchner looked at the broken cup on the floor and tilted his head to the side. The small kitchen had just a few appliances, just the ones that were most needed; it was typical of the boy, practical and efficient because the intake of food wasn't all that important. Just a spare glance. The stoic man traced with his eyes the path from the there to the living room and covered it with his own feet. In the brown and sturdy coffee table sat - in the middle of the mounds of paper - a small chess set. There was a game going on; a few pieces lay discarded at the side but... His eyebrows furrowed and his eyes moved to the couch and the floor.

The King and the Tower were missing.

Jennifer Jereau lifted herself from the crouching position she was in and took in the apartment. It was already marked by its owner; it already had that feeling of lived in. Even if there were a couple of boxes at the entrance, the space was already home. The built in bookcases filled with what seemed to be first editions with none or whatsoever order, the larger living room and the comfortable couch. The ever green walls that they tried to give some life. There were so many signs of him there that it made her ache more. She knew - because she had faith, she believe they would bring him back - that he would move again. Once more. She wondered if he never got tired.

David Rossi considered that even the beautiful black vertical piano that sat silently in the cornered bookcase, was a witness. The silence seemed to reverberate through its strings. A few music sheets were lying scattered in ground and bench - the kid had been trying to learn some new pieces; the older man bended to grab a few and put them back in their place. When he looked at the top of the instrument there was a book - which he couldn't understand - but it wasn't exactly that that had his attention - it was the small pice of chess. A King that sat atop of the book.

Derek Morgan was angry of course. It simmered just below the quiet surface of his emotions. It roiled like a thunderstorm behind his eyes. The man walked to the desk near the window and lifted his fingers to touch a frame that sat at the center of the writing space. He recalls a conversation - one of the firsts he ever had with the kid. Once he had asked Spencer Reid why he head to little photographs at his desk work and the boy had smiled at him. He remembers the smile - just this shy of painful. Of course he recall it. The way the big hazel eyes unfocused for instants and came back to him once again.

"Because I remember everything."

The words were said in a whisper, an after thought. Morgan still hears them echoing in his head - now more clearly because he his pushing it. Eidetic memory - he explained so many years later after that conversation - was something that could come has a burden and has relief. To remember the good and the bad. So the older man look at the frame once more, it was not that Reid didn't had photos - he had. But few. The important ones. And this was apparently something fond to him. It was in his desk after all but at the same time-

Out of place. So of course he knew then - that precise minute - that their Boy Genius was talking to them. He turned to the team with a gleamer of hope pushing through the thunderstorm of anger. He turned to rest of the people in the room and looked up from the image of an old man and a very very very young Spencer Reid.

"Guys, I think I've found something..."