Deep in Earth
He was fourteen.
A scrawny, dark-haired, quiet boy, with not-so-phantom hands on his back reminding him of all the pain in the world, and a little blonde boy waiting for him at home. He sat in the back of his classes, head down and guard up, did his work silently, and left.
Until he met her.
Mrs. Thompson. His elderly high school English teacher who had made him her pet project, each week drawing him another inch out of his shell, moving his desk closer and closer to the front until one week he looked around and he was front and center and leading the classroom discussion while his teacher looked on with a proud smile firmly attached to her face, sitting just beneath the ruby red frames of her old-fashioned cat-eye glasses.
Slowly, she introduced him to the classics, and he found refuge in the disillusionment that colored Hemingway's writing, the flowering prose of Joyce, the satire that was woven so tightly into the stories Dickens told.
He would read for hours, taking his brother to the library with him nearly every day in the summer.
It was a blissful escape from the house, the heat, the world.
And one beautiful autumn day, he had stumbled upon it.
Two lines, beautiful and heartbreaking in their simplicity as much as in their words.
When he had brought it to her, she had smiled as one would do when remembering an old friend, and told him of her grandfather, who had nurtured her love of the arts. The whole afternoon, she graded papers and he worked diligently at his homework, and she recounted to him the stories of her childhood, more than once making him laugh so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.
Later that night, after his father had come home and beaten his mother bloody, he had shared her stories with Sean, sending the young boy into peals of laughter that ricocheted off of the walls of the house like gunshots.
It was a memory he called upon to get him through the many bad days that followed.
He was thirty-nine.
A stone-faced, dark haired, solemn man with nightmares pressing at the edges of his vision and a not-so-phantom gunshot ringing in his ears, reminding him of all the mistakes he had made, and a little blonde boy waiting for him in the other room. He slipped on his jacket and did up his laces, head down, guard up, wiped at the few tears that had fallen silently, and went to tie a too small tie around the neck of his too small son so that they could go bury his too young mother in the cold, hard ground.
He had met her when he was sixteen, had seen her in the hallways and decided to go out on a limb, had tried out for his school's play, had gotten a small part, had gotten close to her, had dated, then married, then started a family with her.
Had loved her, once.
She had made him her pet project, had managed to bring lightness and laughter into his black-as-death eyes in a way that no one else had been able to do, until one night he looked around and he was in the middle of a party that he hadn't wanted to go to, surrounded by his law school buddies, and laughing at one who was trying to convince the rest that he could chug a half keg of beer. Haley looked over from her own conversation, and he caught a hint of a mischievous glint dancing in her eye that could only mean that he was going to hear a well-deserved "I told you so" later.
Slowly, she had brought him into her world, and he found a home in the way her parents and sister embraced him with open arms, in the house that had never had blood scrubbed off of its walls, in the security of their love for each other.
He would stay with them for hours, bringing his brother to dinner with him as often as he could manage it, and usually at the insistence of her mother.
It was a blissful escape from the house, the yelling, the hate.
Pulling himself out of his memories, he refocused his attention on the solemn little boy in front of him now, pulling him into his arms and kissing him lightly on the head.
He stumbled into the stifling garage air of a day too boiling hot to belong to autumn and nearly tripped over a box that had been haphazardly placed there, spilling the contents of the cardboard in his effort to stay on his feet. A single slip of paper caught his eye, yellowed and creased with age.
On it, two lines, beautiful and heartbreaking in their simplicity as much as in their words.
He picked it up and ran the pad of his thumb over the surface as though he was stroking the face of an old friend.
A whimpered "Daddy" brought him back from the edge of that precipice, and he slipped the weathered paper back into the box from whence it had come before continuing on.
"It's ok, Buddy. I'm right here."
And later, when the tearful condolences and the constant reminders of all he had lost had grief hitting him so hard he thought he would fall out of his chair, and his son chased his cousins through the tables and chairs and mourners, their peals of laughter ricocheting off of the walls of the funeral home like gunshots and sounding just as out of place there, he called up his memories of her.
He called upon them many more times to get him through the bad days that followed.
He was forty-one.
A desperate, dark-haired, broken man with a haunted gaze and not-so-phantom screams playing in his mind on repeat, reminding him of all the horrors and injustice in the world, and a little blonde boy waiting for him to pick him up from his aunt's house. He sat at his desk and worked furiously, head down, guard up, until it was time to go home, where he stood in front of the mirror silently, seeing her staring back at him, blood oozing from the slash at her neck that he had been too late to save her from, but early enough to witness.
He had met her when she was eighteen, just heading off to Yale, and then again when she was thirty-two, insistent that she belonged on his team.
She was right.
And after he had realized that, and had warmed up to the idea of her, she had made him her pet project, had managed to drag him out to decompress with the rest of them more times in her first year with them than he had gone the entire rest of his time with the BAU, had brought him coffee and bought him dinner and worked late nights with him, finishing his mountain of paperwork even though he knew that she had her own, in hopes that he'd go home and spend time with his family, or, after that was no longer really an option, get some much needed sleep, had wriggled her way passed his defenses until one day he found himself searching for her simply because he was having a bad day and she made him feel better. When she rounded the corner a moment later, she must've seen the relief on his face, because she caught his gaze and moved to stand beside him like she always did, a not-so-silent pillar of unconditional care and support like she always was.
Not-so-slowly, she had pulled him into the light, and he found love in the way her eyes would light up when it was snowing, in the different voices she would use to read Jack to sleep, in how she would curl into his side when they were watching a movie under the pretense of stealing his popcorn, but would stay there long after the puffed kernels were gone.
He would talk with her for hours, about everything and nothing all at once, even introducing her to his brother when they took a weekend trip to New York on the anniversary of their first date.
And for once, his real world was so wonderful, he found he didn't need an escape.
But in a split-second on an unassuming autumn day, when rain was falling in sheets so thick seeing more than three feet in any direction was impossible, it had been ripped away from him.
The image in the mirror shifted, and that day replayed in front of him like a poorly made movie.
Sending her to interview a witness with an officer.
Realizing too late that the officer was the unsub.
Frantically driving to try to get to her, his normal speed hampered by the weather, his normal cool collectedness hampered by his fear.
Bursting into the building, only to watch the silver blade of the officer's knife cut a perfect canyon in the alabaster skin of her neck.
He tried to call up memories of her to get him through his bad day, but his bad days had been numerous, and his mind was failing him.
And where before he hadn't needed an escape, now there was no escape to be found.
He sunk into the wooden chair in the corner of his room, no longer having the strength to stand. With his left hand, he pulled his Glock from its holster, the familiar weight not settling his mind like it always did.
With his right hand, he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, searching its face for the solace of an embrace that he had found so many times from his old friend, but it had nothing left for him.
He raised the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger, the clap of the fired bullet ricocheting off of the walls like laughter, stunning the five people standing in the hallway, one of them with her hand poised to knock, the blowback pushing his head to the side, the rest of his body following as he fell out of his chair.
And when Morgan had finally managed to break down the door, and they found him lying dead from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head in a pool of blood and brain matter, the rest of him splashed on the walls and the ceiling and already soaking into the fibers of the carpet, Dave reached for his hand and found in it a crumpled piece of yellowed paper, blood-splattered and tear-stained, with two lines, beautiful and heartbreaking in their simplicity as much as in their words.
The others looked to him with tears and questions in their eyes, unable to find a voice to ask for the answer that they were all desperate to have.
Clearing his throat of his grief, he read to them the only explanation he was able to give.
And somehow, it was enough.
"Deep in earth my love is lying
And I must weep alone."
-Edgar Allen Poe