Don't get mad! I've had a crazy month (For those of you who follow me on Facebook and Tumblr, you might have already heard, but basically I was in the hospital a few times, school has started for me and my life is just crazy hectic right now) and by the time I finished recovering, I had almost forgotten about this challenge. Sorry if it seems less than my usual kind of writing. I promise things will get better (I hope).
Anyway, September challenge fic for CCOAC. My pairing was Emily Prentiss/ Spencer Reid and my prompts were a locked door, fire, a baseball bat, and a turtle.
I don't own Criminal Minds, or Classic Doctor Who, as that's mentioned in here. Please feelfreeto leave a review!
I think space will be conquered through the mind rather than the clumsy medium of space travel. ~ Actor Patrick Troughton
As a child, Emily Prentiss always felt compelled to rescue animals in distress. It was a childish habit, one that her mother greatly disapproved of as she grew older, but Emily continued to be a champion for the various creatures she came upon.
When there had been a cat stuck in a tree, Emily had climbed the large oak tree herself, stood on a branch under the cat and had pried each of the tabby's four paws from the bark of the tree before trying to climb down. The whole affair had ended with both the cat and Emily tumbling from the tree and onto the ground. The cat had run away, unscathed. Emily however, had scraped her knees, ripped her skirt and had scratch marks on her arms.
Another time, a baby bird had fallen from its nest and sat on the ground, crying for its mother. Ignoring her mother's protests, Emily had rescued the bird and placed it in a cardboard box, attempting to feed it worms and bugs. Later, the Ambassador had called the Animal Control and told her young daughter that the bird's mother had picked it up. Emily had believed her mother until she was thirteen and found out about birds abandoning their young if predators came too close.
As Emily grew up, these instances happened less and less. This was mostly because of her education and the continued increase of homework and a need to finish everything by a certain deadline. Also, it was usually frowned upon in many of Emily's friend's social circles to try and save the lobsters, frogs, turtles, fish, shrimp and snails before they were baked, broiled, fried, boiled and fileted to be served for dinner.
Years later, she sat in her nearly emptied apartment, surrounded by cardboard boxes and packing materials. She was leaving for London in less than a week, after many years of living and working in the United States, most recently in Washington DC with the FBI. She had found a photo album in a drawer and was now looking through pictures.
Her friends smiled and laughed up from their frozen windows of the past. There was one picture of the six team members during the Super Bowl party that had preceded the Tobias Hankel case in Georgia. There were countless pictures of the members of the team sleeping, reading, playing games and other things in the jet. Pictures of baby Henry and little Jack, a picture of Morgan flexing his muscles, Hotch and Rossi pretending to look serious for the camera, even though seconds after it was snapped they both burst into laughter.
Emily's favorite was a picture of Reid and Garcia from last Halloween, back when Garcia still had red hair. Reid had gone to his Phantasmagoria show with Prentiss the night before Halloween, and the two of them had accompanied Garcia to a Halloween party. They had needed costumes. Emily had chosen to go as the Wicked Witch of the West, complete with green face make-up and a broomstick. But Reid and Garcia had really outdone her little costume.
Reid had shown up at Emily's wearing a pinstripe suit, a tan trench coat, red high-top Converse and his old horn-rimmed glasses. As soon as Emily has opened the door, he'd pulled a silver instrument from his pocket and pushed a button, causing what Emily learned was a Sonic Screwdriver to light up and buzz.
"That," she proclaimed. "Has got to be the best Tenth Doctor costume I've ever seen."
Garcia had gone to that same party as Donna Noble and the two had won Best Combination Costume at the party.
Emily was jerked from her thoughts when she noted that her foot had fallen asleep. She moved it around for a moment, allowing the pins-and-needles feeling to leave it before standing up and stretching.
Later that evening, she found herself walking through Reid's neighborhood. His apartment was a few blocks away from the Underground, so it wasn't hard to locate. As she turned the corner and spotted Reid's building, she gasped.
It was on fire!
Flames leapt and shivered against the night sky and Emily could hear the sound of crackling and burning. On the street in front of her, people milled around, crying out and pointing toward the upper floors of the building.
Emily reached into the pocket of her jacket and called Reid's number. The phone rang but then went to voice message.
"Hi, this is Spencer Reid -"
Emily hung up. There wasn't time to call again. Her friend could be trapped inside that building.
She spotted a metal baseball bat laying in the yard of a nearby building. She ran through the front gate and snatched it off the ground before running toward the apartment.
She ignored the shouts and protests as she shoved her way through the crowd, yelling "FBI, coming through!" to anyone who tried to stop her. She pushed her way through the doors and raced up the stairs to Reid's second floor apartment.
"Reid!" she shouted as she raced down the hall and began banging on room 205, Reid's door. "Reid, open this door!"
There was no response. All around her, the smoke was acrid in her throat, stinging her eyes and making it harder to breathe. Her hand gripped the baseball bat tighter, remembering that it was still in her grasp. She stood back, gripping the bat tightly in her hand as she swung it backwards and hit the door with a heave thud. Again she smacked it, and pounded at it. She hit the knob, the wood and the hinges until she heard something crack. She smacked the bat into the door one last time and the wood smashed like cardboard.
Luckily, there was no sign of fire in Reid's apartment, although it would soon fill with smoke. She reached her hand through the hole in the door and unlocked the door before pushing it open.
"Reid!" she called again, coughing as she tried to locate her friend.
The apartment was small, no bigger than her first apartment in Georgetown all those years ago. From the entryway you could see the kitchen and living room, both of which were empty. The bedroom door was shut, making it the first place Emily ran to. She opened the door to find….
Nothing. The room was empty, except for the small fish tank where a turtle sat, watching with interest as Emily walked into the room.
"You wouldn't happen to have seen my fried, would you?" she asked it as she looked around the room. Even the adjoining bathroom was empty, she noted dryly.
The sound of sirens made her remember that the building was on fire and would probably come crashing down around her shortly. She ran back to the bedroom about to shut the door….
But she couldn't leave the turtle!
She returned to the tank and tried to pick it up, but it was mostly filled with water and rocks and was heavier than it looked. Still, Emily wasn't leaving without that turtle!
Somehow, she managed to get both her hands on the bottom and carefully lifted it before staggering toward the door.
As she reached the hallway of the apartment, she was met by firefighters who took the tank from her and escorted her from the flaming building to the street, where a worried Spencer Reid stood waiting with the other tenants.
"Emily!" he cried when he saw her and the two of them embraced.
A half hour later, Emily and Reid were staring at the smoking remains of Reid's old apartment. "I didn't know you'd gone out," Emily said, sitting down on the edge of an ambulance with a blanket and an oxygen mask.
"Philosophy class reunion," Reid explained. "It was supposed to be dinner at the professor's house, but it turned into a discussion on Descarte's mind-body problem, which then branched into Locke's theories and Hobbes' theories and some other theories and then the news came on and someone asked if that was my apartment, so I hurried home as fast as I could."
"Because of that guy?" Emily asked, pointing to the turtle.
"That's Troughton the Turtle," Reid clarified. "Garcia bought him for me after I got shot. She told me that having him would give me an excuse to exercise my leg."
"So you would walk over to the tank to feed him," Emily stated. "But his name… Isn't that-?"
"Patrick Troughton played the Second Doctor in Classic Doctor Who, yes."
"I would have thought you would have named him after the Brigadier."
Reid smirked. "I almost did."
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes as Emily continued to breathe in oxygen and Reid tended to Troughton the Turtle.
Finally, Reid spoke up. "Emily, I just wanted to say thank you, for saving Troughton. He's very important to me."
Emily took off the oxygen mask and smiled. "You're welcome, Reid," she began. "You see, when I was a kid, I had a thing for saving animals…."