Part 1
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
- Og Mandino
Chapter 01
He held her in his arms, her warm, willowy body pressed against him. They danced slowly, to the sound of a scratchy record sitting on a table under a tree. They danced under the heavens, strewn with millions of stars.
"It's almost time." She murmured quietly.
"Time?" He asked.
"For me to fade into memory."
He tightened his grip slightly. "No."
"Yes." She replied calmly. "Your true love is on her way. She'll need the spaces in your dreams."
"You're my true love." He insisted.
"No." She replied so very gently. "I was your teacher. My purpose was to teach you how to love."
She had, he realized. If that was her purpose then she had done her work admirably and well. "Why?" he asked.
"Because you two have so very much to do," she replied. "You have a task almost greater than you could imagine. To accomplish it you must love with all of your heart, just like I taught you."
"What do I have to do?"
She smiled and tipped her head back. "Look up to the stars."
Spencer Reid awoke clutching his pillow tight to his chest.
It had been eighteen months and twenty-two days since Maeve Donovan had died. Since then he had dreamed of her more times than he could actually remember, since he had blocked out a few that he'd thought might be nightmares. But only in the past three or four months had he stopped waking from them weeping with the loss. He rather considered that an improvement.
Now he rolled over, turned off his alarm and considered. He knew that his dreams of holding her were to somehow make up for never being able to hold her when she was alive, and he knew that the conversations they had were stitched together bits from the letters and phone calls they had shared in real life. But he sometimes wondered what his subconscious was trying to tell him.
It would come to him eventually.
He sat up, stretched, said good-bye to Maeve for another day, and headed to the shower.
"Hey, looks who's back!"
Yeave smiled as everyone welcomed her back to the scot locker room with big smiles. Being away for the mandatory time was a pain, literally. It was good to be back and back on her feet.
She made her way over to the locker pod in the far corner, where she knew the rest of the crew of the Sulaco would be getting up and moving for the day. "Lazy, sloppy, half-blind…" She teased as soon as she was in earshot.
Kemom, their operations officer, turned and gave her a big grin over his shoulder. "Well what do you expect with our nanny off on vacation."
"Oh ho ho, vacation, yeah, right. You get vacation when you guys go, for the girls it's not so easy." She'd just had a shower before she left the genetics unit, but the rest of them were still getting dressed, so she leaned against the wall to wait.
Leander, their engineer, looked up from where he was pulling on his pants. "Did you hear the news?"
"I've been in Genetics for two weeks; no one gets news in there."
"Admiral Nox is coming aboard."
Oh hell. "You mean he's actually doing work?"
Lendel grinned, "Probably not."
Kemom looked at her after his shirt came down over his head. "He probably ran out of nulls on his flagship, finally." Yeave rolled her eyes and nodded at the forth station in the pod. "What? She's not paying attention. She never pays attention in here."
Yeave looked around to the fourth station. There, tucked in between the pod and the wall, sat Sarai, their pilot, her nose buried in her reader. "Are you going to finish getting dressed?" She asked.
"Are they covered yet?"
Yeave smiled as the voice that bypassed her ears and went straight to her brain. Not paying attention her ass. She nodded as Sarai's eyes flicked to her. Immediately the younger woman stood and started pulling on her outer uniform. Yeave looked back at Leander, "I saw that we're scheduled for maintenance today. What are we doing?"
"Swapping out the stabilizers, Captain."
Oh goody. "All right, let's go get breakfast."
Matthew Star sighed as a plate of eggs was put down in front of him. It wasn't that the papers he was grading were bad; it's that they were dismal.
Walter Sheppard waited for him to move said papers so he could put down the toast. "That bad?"
"Worse. My students think they can skate because daddy will buy them in to the college of their choice and we can't say anything because, if we do, daddy will have us all fired." He closed his briefcase and turned back to the table. "What's worse is that they're right."
Shep clucked his tongue as he sat. "It wasn't like that when I was teaching. Back then parents had expectations."
"It's not only that, these are the sons of power and privilege. Someday they just might be leaders. What happened to Nobellese Oblige, the idea that privilege entails responsibility or at least honorable behavior?"
Shep chuckled. "Look at their role models."
Matt groaned. "Please, I'd like to be able to eat." Just then his phone bleeped a text. "Oh you have got to be kidding."
"What?"
"Meeting before chapel, if we can make it. Apparently someone got in trouble last night." And these were the equivalent of the children of noblemen. "Was it like this back home?"
"No. But they had your father for a role model." Shep checked the clock. "You can make it if you pick up coffee on the way to work.
Emily Prentiss turned from the coffee kiosk and very nearly ran into her co-worker. "Peter." She said as she shook coffee from her hand.
"I don't know why you drink that swill." He said as he offered her a handkerchief. "You have an assistant who makes very proper afternoon tea."
"Nostalga. Why are you down here?"
"I wanted to catch you before you got upstairs; it seems the austerity movement has reached Interpol at last. They are closing offices they consider redundant."
"So?"
"So with Scotland Yard as a partner we are apparently redundant."
Emily considered this. She'd taken over the Interpol office when Clyde Easter had been promoted, believing him when he said it would be an exciting opportunity. Clyde lied; it was all paperwork and politics. Truth was she was immensely bored and lonely in London. "This might not be a bad thing. I mean everyone will be snapped up by other agencies, you know that."
"And I am ready to retire, but what about you?"
What about me, Emily thought. What will I do now?
.
Note:
This is a crossover of sorts between Criminal Minds and an obscure TV show from the 1980's called The Powers of Matthew Star that inspired the book "I Am Number Four". Not based on the book but on the original show.
Cannon for CM through 08x20 "Alchemy".
Roughly cannon for TPMS through 01x08 "Endurance", but I'm playing very fast and loose with that cannon.
All CM character and TPMS characters copyright to their creators. The crew of the Sulaco is mine.
Please note, I'm posting this so people can subscribe if they like. Expect chapter 2 roughly five days from the date this is published.