Welcome.

This story takes place after the episode 'Memoriam', Season 4.

I am not a native English speaker. Every critique, concerning the story, but also grammar and spelling, will be highly appreciated.

TO SAY THANK YOU

A Criminal Minds Fan Fiction

Another hotel room.

Another sleepless night.

Another gruesome case, solved.

This time, it hit too close to home... again.

Seven twelve-year-old girls, murdered. Seven dreams, truncated and turned into unspeakable nightmares. Seven lives, ended in the most horrible way... Violated, tortured and then dumped, like rubbish bags. Left alone to die in the filth and in the dark. After we couldn't save the last victim, Derek Morgan, a well-seasoned FBI agent and a mountain of muscles, cried.

The 'unsub' didn't show remorse at all... He was smiling when Hotch and Rossi got him into the police car. Morgan almost jumped on top of him, like a growling wolf. I barely could stop him.

And I don't blame him. This killer made me believe, for the first time in my life, that a bullet between the eyebrows would not be such a bad idea...

I turn in the bed again, unable to even close my eyes, the images of those girls' broken, bloodied bodies etched in my mind, forever. No need of my eidetic memory for that.

(it could have been you...)

In the darkness of the room, interrupted only by the dim light of the small lamp on the bedside table, I can hear those words my mother said, as clear as when she said them.

At that moment, I was so angry, so blinded by rage, that I didn't realize. My only goal then, was to punish my father, not for a crime, but for his abandonment. I did everything in order to prove he was a murderer... I abused my rank as a Federal Agent, even went as far as breaking the law, to do it.

He was innocent. All he did was to try to protect my mother, being consumed by guilt in the process.

According to the small clock on the bedside table, it is almost half past three. I get out of the bed, feeling sweaty and tired.

I go to the window, and open the thick curtain slightly. The lights shining in the distance dazzle me. They challenge the dark, even the brightness of the stars... I imagine they are so intense, they reach the limits of the Solar System itself... If Stephen Hawking wanted to cast a signal for guests of another galaxy or another time, to come, he just needed the lights of Las Vegas.

The Sin City... they have no idea.

I move away from the window, and go to the bathroom. I don't turn on the light, don't want to see those sad, hopeless eyes in the mirror.

I wash my face with cold water and after drying it, I'm not feeling much better.

(it could have been you...)

At first, I didn't want to accept it. Didn't want to believe that a man... a beast just like the one we put in jail today, could've killed me, when I was four years old. Not only that. Before stabbing me to death, he would've teared my hopes and dreams away, violating me. Destroying my innocence, breaking my soul and my body... and then dumping me behind a dryer, when he got tired of me...

A chill like a frozen finger goes down my spine, and I shiver at the possibility.

I was saved. I didn't have to share Riley Jenkins' sad destiny.

There was someone out there, who dared to believe the words of a woman that at the moment seemed to be hysterical and later was proven she had a mental illness. There was someone out there, ready to sacrifice his freedom, his conscience and his whole life, just to stop the terror from happening again. I know what he did was wrong. I know people shouldn't take justice in their own hands... but I can't help to think, if he had acted differently, perhaps I would not be here right now.

When I discovered the truth behind the events of my childhood, I was so shocked, so... stunned, that I didn't think at all about that man... The one who saved not only my life, the one that now was going to spend the rest of his in jail because of me... How ironic has to be to think that the very person you saved, not just from death, but from a torment ten thousand times worse, is the one who locks you into a cell…

It has been one year, seven months, three days and six hours since the last time I saw Lou Jenkins, and not once, not once I have said thank you. Thank you for saving me. Thank you, because what I am now I owe it to you... Without you, I would be just dust and bones buried in a Las Vegas cemetery. A file at the Metropolitan Police Archive... A memory.

I sigh.

I go to the table in the corner, looking for a moment at the shape of the small coffee machine in the gloom.

I decline its invitation, and pour myself a glass of water, instead. It feels refreshing and I succeed in washing down the lump that had appeared in my throat.

Tomorrow, I will ask Hotch for permission to stay behind for a couple of days. I have something to do. Something I should have done a long time ago.

I go back to bed. Weirdly enough, as soon as I place my head in the pillow, I fall asleep.

The next day, after seeing the BAU jet taking off to go back home, I leave the airport. Once again, I use my FBI badge to bend some rules. Usually, it takes more than a couple of hours to organize a visit to what they call 'a dangerous prisoner', but here I am, sitting in an interrogation room, by myself, less than half hour after my arrival to High Desert State Prison.

The door opens, and I can see a man in a khaki coloured uniform appear though the threshold, followed by a police officer that is holding the man's hands behind him.

Before the police officer releases the shackles from Lou Jenkins' wrists, the prisoner looks at me, surprised. As he comes, and takes a seat in front of me, he frowns with uncertainty.

I dismiss the Police officer, and he leaves us.

"Spencer..." That is the first word to come out of this man's mouth. I open mine to say something, but for a moment the words seem to be... stuck.

His eyes are sad, just as they were when I saw him before, just as I imagine they have been from the moment he knew his son had been killed, and what had been done to him before that.

"What are you doing here?" He asks, but there is not anger, not even irony in his voice.

"I... " I try to say, suddenly looking at a random coffee stain on the table. "I didn't have the chance before..."

"What chance?" He asks, softly, patiently... like a father. I dare to look at him again, and I see a subtle change in his expression, he is still surprised, but there is something more, like a little shine in his eyes. Maybe... hope?

"The chance to say thank you. For saving my life." I say sighing, at last, and I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

He smiles. I think this is the first time I have seen him smile.

He reaches out, to take my hand. I take it. His touch is warm, and comforting.

"You're welcome, son." He says.