AN: Sort of a fusion with Rise of the Guardians (2012). You don't need to be familiar with Rise of the Guardians to read this since I'm pretty much only borrowing concepts.
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Chapter One: Winter, Be My Friend
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When Emily was thirteen, she'd almost died. She was told the story many times over her life, told again and again how grateful she must be for the breath in her lungs and the life in her heart. Her teachers would tell her it was a miracle; her priests that it was an act of God. Her mother said very little about it at all, just that it was simply an act of the man who'd been driving by close enough to see a strange flare in the night. And the only image she had of the incident was a picture cut from a newspaper article she'd never read: an image of a small girl with dark, dark hair being carried from a snowbound forest wrapped in the jacket she still had folded neatly in the bottom of her closet.
Emily didn't remember any of it, just that it had been dark and cold and she'd been alone. From then on, she'd had a terrible fear of the snow. One near-death-experience in a flurrying blizzard was enough for her, she decided, and did her best to keep away from stormy weather. This unease extended to the night sky as well; never was she as uncomfortable as when she stood under the unblinking eye of the moon in the sky above, as though it was watching her and only her. Superstition, she was sure, but despite this she made she never to look directly at it, as though it was as blinding as the sun.
Winter, as though it understood and resented her fear, never raged around her like it had that night. From that day forward, any snowfall she was out in, however reluctantly, was gentle and kind, the wind keeping away and the cold barely nipping. If she was in the right climate for snow days, she was gifted with a disproportionate amount of them: those few winters she spent in a true winter while still at school, she found that the snow did everything it could to tempt her out into it, with perfect sledding days and the right kind of snow for snowballs and, even once, waking up to find a half-built snowman waiting for her outside in the front yard on a day she'd been dreaded because of a test at school, which was cancelled. The frost drew early-morning pictures on her windows as though to welcome her out, and she drew her curtains tight and stayed inside beside the fire instead, no matter how tempting outside may have seemed.
Sometimes, she pulled the jacket out and studied it closely. It wasn't hers. She knew it wasn't: for one, the name stitched into the tag was S.R. And it was a boy's jacket, with dinosaur roaring stitched into the back, from an age where she'd still been dressed as her mother's ideal of a little girl.
She wondered often about whose jacket it was, and how she'd come to possess it.
And she grew up.
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After Doyle, nothing really shook her, not even Aaron Hotchner and his near-refusal to accept her into his team. After all, she knew that she could do this job and do it well, her mother be damned.
Eventually, Hotch would come to believe that.
The rest of the team took their time to accept her too. JJ was first, followed shortly by Garcia—"I don't like change, but I do like you," she informed Emily over drinks one night. Then Morgan, although Emily could tell Morgan was one of those that keenly felt the hole Elle had left behind. But Morgan also appreciated good, and she was good.
Then there was Reid. He was the strangest man she'd ever had the fortune to meet in her life, which was saying something as she'd always had somewhat of a knack for finding kindred spirits of weirdness. But Reid? He took not only the gold in peculiar, but also the silver, bronze, participation ribbon, and the cake they gave everyone else as well. He dressed twenty years out of his time, as though he was overcompensating in order to seem older than he was by dressing in his grandfather's clothes, and carried a knobby cane that he often forgot to use. He never met with the team outside of work, never invited them home or came out for drinks, and JJ admitted one day that she'd never actually been able to contact him by phone at all: he just arrived when needed and that was that.
"He has a knack," said JJ with a shrug, as though that was all that was needed to work here.
Emily, intrigued by this quiet man with the eyes he hid behind overlong hair that seemed to have a life of its own, did her best to connect with him. It began with coffee, delivered to his desk every morning in a cardboard holder alongside her own. He always thanked her, looking surprised every time, and she'd watched carefully as he'd slide his long, pale fingers around the paper cup and wince with every sip.
"Not sweet enough?" she asked. "Morgan warned me you use buckets of sugar."
"It's wonderfully sweet, thank you," he responded, hiding his gaze behind that hair once more. His eyes were hazel, she noted. Changeable in different lights. "It's just very hot."
The next day, Emily requested the coffee be colder. Dutifully she delivered it to him; once more, he commented on the temperature.
"Sorry," he said with a grin that didn't meet his eyes. "I'm not much for warmth."
Bemused, the next day she ordered iced coffee instead.
"Wonderful," he beamed, giving her that same almost-sad smile. "This is wonderful, thank you."
She thought about that a lot.
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Reid didn't like to be touched. His stated reason was that he was a bit of a germaphobe, but Emily watched him carefully and noted that he was never wary about crime scenes with biological hazards splattered everywhere, and nor was he shy about administering first aid when needed. He even shared a water bottle with JJ one particularly warm day when everyone was drooping but Reid especially, draining the water without a complaint as he hunched down into himself and tapped his cane irritably between his feet.
Germaphobe, he was not, Emily decided. She waited for her moment and then struck, lurking behind him and then stumbling with a yelp, grabbing his hand when he turned and instinctively reached out to her to stop her hitting the ground. His hand was cold. That was the first and only thing she noted about it, staring at their hands locked together with the chill of his touch sinking deep.
He yanked away, stepping back with his eyes as fearful as they always were, other hand knuckled tight around the cane he didn't need to walk with.
"Sorry," she said, knowing her eyes were wide and not knowing how to hide how startling his hands on hers had been. "Clumsy, that's me. Always clumsy."
He didn't answer, just gave her a look and strode away without limping.
She wondered.
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He always seemed exhausted but never slept. Emily watched him on jet rides home, how he'd curl into a chair and stare tiredly out the window, chin propped on his knee and without speaking unless spoken to. The few times Morgan managed to coax him out of his shell, he seemed bright and excited to share his thoughts, but those times were rare. Mostly he was like he was now as she watched him: withdrawn, fretful, and shy. She wanted more than anything to see him smile truly, right up to those worried eyes.
Very good at his job, Emily noted, but only when people took care not to notice him. The only people he seemed to be comfortable with were the team, which didn't quite include her yet, and if others were around he'd clam up and try to blend in with the background. Hotch seemed to allow it because the man was a genius with the kind of analytical mind Emily envied, but she wondered what kind of a life he had outside of work—and whether he had a life at all.
She wondered, as only someone who knows how it is to be lonely right down to the bones could wonder, if he was lonely too.
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It was an out-of-state case when it happened; Emily was asleep until she wasn't, suddenly snapping awake with the alertness of knowing something was happening nearby. The hotel they were in was small in this tiny town, with only enough rooms that their presence filled the place and with several of the rooms connected by a shared courtyard. What had woken her was the click slide of a glass door being slid open. Not her glass door. She suspected the one adjacent to her: Reid's.
Slipping out of bed, the cold air snuck in, touching at her toes and any bared skin. Shivering already and surprised that winter had swept in so fast when it was barely November, she slid a robe overtop her sleepwear and padded quietly to the outer door, peering out from around the curtain.
He stood out there staring up at the sky above. She blinked to see that he was barefoot despite the snow beginning to fall, despite the freezing air, standing almost tiptoe as though he was eager to touch the stars above. Head tipped back and turning in a slow circle, she saw it: he was smiling.
Truly.
Shocked by this, and a little awed, she slid the door open and walked out there to join him, grateful for her lined slippers and for the thick clouds covering the moon above. He didn't say a word as she came to stand beside him and look curiously up at what he was watching, just kept smiling with the exhaustion that lined his face for as long as she'd known him finally fading.
"Isn't the snow beautiful?" he asked her, reaching up to the flakes falling from above. His cane hooked over one arm knocked against his hip, and she watched as the snow almost seemed to eddy gleefully to his outstretched hand. A wind lashed around them, playfully tugging at her clothes and his, whipping his hair up into a chaotic mess. He laughed, turning around with the wind that turned with him, and she stood motionless. This didn't feel like a moment she should be privy to, but it also felt important that she see this. It was some step towards understanding the world they shared, even if he saw it in such a different way than she did.
"You must miss the snow when it melts," was all she finally managed to say, watching his expression carefully as he answered.
"I do," was his response. "It's the loneliest feeling in the world."
She wondered.
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After that, the dreams began. She never remembered them when she woke, just that they were filled with snow and laughter and a hand in hers leading her through a white-bound forest. Sometimes she was flying through the air; others, she was effortlessly running barefoot across ice and sliding wildly with her heart singing from the fun of it all. For the first time, the snow didn't frighten her. It felt beautiful instead of terrifying.
In every dream, the moon watched.
Reid changed as winter deepened. His smiles were faster, his movements energised. The lethargy of the summer months faded completely, replaced by a spring in his step and a joyous grin that she earned every time she stepped into the bullpen and wished him a good morning. Emily, seeing him like this, longed to know this man. His mysteries intrigued her wholly, his happiness delighting her. She wondered if he'd fallen in love and if that was why he smiled more. Maybe some pretty thing had caught his eye and chased away his sadness.
But that couldn't be it because sometimes, when it seemed that he thought no one was watching, he looked worried once more.
In February, right on the cusp of winter ending, Reid went missing during a case. One minute there, the next gone, just like that. They were terrified for him for five whole hours, until Emily looked up from her seat in Hankel's house to find Reid walking in the door with his cane in hand and expression mild. Hankel, they found neatly cuffed in a shack at a distant parish, with no recollection of how Reid had overpowered him to escape.
After, she approached him.
"If you're here to ask me how I got away, Hotch has already grilled me—" Reid began.
"I'm not," she replied, despite wondering how he had got away and also travelled the whole way back seemingly on foot and after having effortlessly disarmed Hankel. "I wanted to know if you're okay. I was worried about you."
He looked at her, startled.
"No offence, Emily, but you don't seem like anything worries you," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen you afraid."
She could have listed the things that frightened her, but they were best left in the past where they belonged: snowstorms and Doyle and dying alone and the moon's watchful eyes above her.
"Are you okay?" she asked instead, stepping forward and brushing her fingers against his sleeve, where fingers of frost marked the stiff material. He shook his arm. The frost faded, like it had never been, and she wondered if she'd imagined it.
"I'm okay," he promised her with another one of those bright-but-worried smiles. "And I've never had anyone worry about me before, not in a long time. Thank you. That's… validating."
"Anytime," she promised him, meaning it completely.
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Three years into her job, something changed. An Unsub unlike any other she'd seen before or would again, one that struck right to the heart of their team: The Reaper.
The case when he reappeared was a rough one. Hotch was taking it hard, taking it personally, and everyone was on edge, even Reid. Emily kept close to him, wishing it was close to winter every time she glanced at him and saw him looking tired and taut.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked him, but he wouldn't answer.
They were plagued by bad dreams. The few times they slept throughout that bloody four days, Emily dreamed of blizzards choking her and the moon crashing down from above and destroying the world as she knew it. She dreamed of Doyle creeping closer and of every case they'd ever failed; she dreamed of her team dead and her dying and no one there to grieve.
Judging from the swollen eyes of the team, their dreams were hardly any kinder, if they'd slept to dream at all. Only Reid didn't seem any more exhausted than usual, since exhausted seemed to be his baseline outside of the winter months, but the sheer output of work he was putting out concerned her; there was no way he was managing that much analytics while also sleeping at all.
"I can barely focus," Morgan said on this final day, all of them tense from the bus massacre the night before and Hotch's minor breakdown. "Every time I close my eyes, I end up in a nightmare. This case is messing my head up…"
Emily watched Reid by the whiteboard, seeing how he'd tensed horribly at the word 'nightmare'. Even now, that tension hadn't faded.
"Same," Emily said carefully, JJ nodding along. Hotch and Rossi weren't there. "Reid?" He looked at her, looking pale and fraught. "Are you having nightmares too?"
"No," he rasped, saying nothing more no matter how much she pushed.
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She found him crouched by the puddled blood of George Foyet, gloves on but staring oddly at the red splashed everywhere.
"He's definitely dead," Emily said. "No way he lost this much blood and survived."
"Mmm," was all Reid answered, touching a gloved finger to the corner of a still-wet pool. When his finger came away, it gleamed red but, for a heartbeat, she could have sworn she saw darkness within the wet.
And Reid looked terrified.
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The months that followed were grim. The Reaper evading them felt like a failure too monumental to escape, as though it soured everything they'd done since. Winter came and Reid didn't perk up like usual, even more withdrawn than ever and with his behaviour positively paranoid as his introversion grew. Emily wasn't sure she'd heard him say a word to anyone who wasn't the team for months, but no one seemed overly inclined to panic about this despite admitting that it was weird.
"He'll tell us if he needs help," said Morgan.
"He's fine," said JJ.
"Reid's business is his own," scolded Hotch.
And Emily began to wonder if they were ignoring him on purpose, because he was in no way acting in any semblance of what she'd call 'fine'.
This continued until the day Hotch failed to arrive at work.
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Emily volunteered to go to Hotch's apartment to find him, but she was surprised when Reid announced he was coming with her. The drive there was silent, Reid saying nothing as he toyed with his cane across his lap and, occasionally, attempting to contact Hotch.
"You've been quiet," Emily said finally, the silence grating on her. "Something you want to talk about?"
"Not really."
Emily hmmed over that. "Are you sure? Because you seem…"
He looked at her.
"…Scared."
"Aren't we all?" he responded, tilting his head and studying her with those changeable eyes. Outside, the weather was fluctuating. It would be winter soon. "We've all been on edge lately. How is my behaviour any more worrying than Hotch's, or your own?"
"Because you twitch like you're the one hunted," she retorted. "Come on, Reid. Don't make me profile you. We've all known you, how long now? But we know nothing about you. Nothing about your family, your life, your home, your interests. I don't know you any better now than I did the night I found you in the snow."
He glanced at her, seemingly surprised. "You remember that?"
"Of course I remember that. How could I forget? It's the only time I've really seen you happy."
Clearly discomforted by this, he looked back down at his lap and traced his nails over the cane as though following a memorised pattern.
"And yet," she mused out loud, turning down Hotch's street and slowly idling while waiting to turn into the parking area of his building, "I still feel like I know you better than anyone else on the team, like… like there's something about you that's… familiar?"
"I—" he began as they stepped out of the car, but trailed off. She followed his gaze up the side of the building, seeing something dark flicker against the window of a floor several stories above.
"What was that?" she said, shaking her head in case she'd imagined it or it was a trick of the light.
But Reid didn't say anything, just ran.
She followed.
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After, she'd doubt that she'd really seen what she'd seen. Reid yelled at her to get Hotch's door open. Since he sounded truly terrified, she did. Morgan would have been proud.
They burst into the apartment, Emily skidding on a smear of still-wet blood, and Foyet was standing there. Hotch lay below him, unmoving. Bleeding.
Foyet smiled.
His eyes, Emily noted, were black.
"Hello, Jack," Foyet said quietly, staring right at Reid. "I've been looking for you."
"I'm not Jack," Reid responded. His voice was thin, shaken. Scared beyond reason. Emily gripped her gun tighter and aimed it steadily. Reid wasn't even holding his. "Get away from him, now. He has nothing to do with us."
"I think," Foyet said in a voice that felt to Emily as though it had crawled out of one of her nightmares, "he absolutely does. When will you understand that we are meant to be together? You can't hide from what you are forever, look what it's doing to you. Making you weak."
And he lurched towards them. Emily fired.
The world turned black, the darkness roiling around them as a deep black that choked her when she gasped for air, hearing Reid cry out with fear. It was in her mouth, her nose, and she spat and spat but it still coated her tongue in a sandy mass that bit and burned.
She was dying. It seemed inescapable. The fear of it crushed her.
But there was a bright snap of light, a crackling sound like glass shattering, and light returned to the world. Emily was on the ground, her gun gone and Hotch still motionless, but the black had faded.
She turned fast, reeling around and finding Reid standing there alone, his cane gripped in both hands and breathing hard. For a split second, just the time between a blink, she'd swear she saw his eyes meet hers, blue all the way through and his wild hair as white as the fallen snow.
The blink was over and she looked again, seeing nothing but hazel and brown.
"Call an ambulance," he said, striding past her to attend to Hotch. "Now, Emily!"
She did, but not before noting that the ground she was kneeling on was slicked over with a thin layer of frost that vanished even as she watched, leaving nothing behind but the faintest scent of winter and the memory of a fading chill.