Title: Red Riding Hood
Author: Sara Nublas
Characters: Emily Prentiss, Derek Morgan, all team involved
Rating: T
Warning: violence and creepy scenes
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds, its characters or the tale of Little Red Riding Hood
A/N: Many people to thank for this story: withouttracelover996 for the prompt, Nix1978 for patiently listening to my ideas, freddlerabbit for the beta reading
Thanks a lot for the reviews! Please keep them coming!
"So, did you grow up here?" Emily tries conversation in an attempt to relax the young and pretty tense agent. The last thing she needs is a terrified cop with an easy finger in the middle of nowhere.
"Ehm.. yes" he swallows, turning around jumpily at each single noise the woods produce.
"What's your name?"
"Peter, Peter Madison…" the agent seems determined to keep a monosyllabic dialogue, too busy in hunting monsters.
Emily rolls her eyes and mumbles "Alrighty…", giving up on the rookie.
Peter Madison looks toward Emily, who is seemingly unbothered by the fact of being alone in a deserted forest with a spooky aggressor walking around. "You must think I'm a stupid rookie, do you?" he manages in the end.
"No, I don't…" she answers back, with her soft, soothing voice, that always manages to comfort everybody, "I think it's not easy to deal with this kind of crime, and to open the doors to perfect strangers. But we are here to help, not to belittle you."
"I know. It's just..." he pauses for a moment, uncertain whether to continue, "the legends the sheriff told you. They can seem stupid folklore to you, but we grew up with them; they're in our culture, in our blood. I know I'll tell them to my kids one day."
"Do you have any?" Prentiss tries to make him feel at ease.
"A girl, Celeste, she's two years old. But we want many…" he smiles full of pride.
Emily smiles back. Sometimes, realizing that there are people who actually have a life outside of their job, and a family that doesn't overlap with the colleagues entourage, still manages to mesmerize her.
"Do you have any kids?" Peter asks, now that the anxiety in his voice seems less heavy.
"No," she avoids eye contacts and surveys the branches of the trees, slowly swinging and swallowing a good portion of sky.
"Married? Divorced? Engaged?" He tries, receiving a headshake at every attempt. "Wow, then it is true…" he comments.
"What?"
"The rumor that FBI folks are married to their job, and either they are divorced, either turn into lone wolves, ending up…" he bites his tongue leaving the sentence hanging.
"Lone wolves ending up how?" She prods him, "having a nervous breakdown? Becoming the killers they devoted their lives to hunt down?" she tries to guess the options.
"Sleeping with their colleagues…" Peter mumbles embarrassed.
Emily looks at him intensely, and if it wasn't for the fact that the unsub might be in the surroundings and hear them, she would burst out laughing. "You know what? I think you've been watching too many soap operas." she chuckles.
"I know. I'm sorry, agent. It's that when I get anxious my blood sugars raise and I tend to say stupid things," he admits apologetically, "I've noticed that you and Agent Morgan seem pretty tuned in…"
Emily arches her eyebrows at the rather unconventional suggestion, and turns her head feeling her cheeks blushing. She doesn't know if because of the inappropriate insinuation of the officer or because he hit some sensitive subject she's been dodging.
Then she sobers up, deciding it's time to end the recreational moment and go back to the case.
"Anyway, as to the legend of the people from the Outside… each town has its own legends, but often they're laid on a base of truth or real history. Could you give me some more insight?" she quickly resolves, her professional shield back in place.
"Not much more, I'm sorry. What the sheriff told you is what I know, but there is a man in town, who might help you. He used to live in the woods for a long time, in one of those cults, segregated from the Outside, growing their own food, living from the land, without television… Then one day he came down to town and became a regular person…"
"A regular person…" she echoes with sarcasm.
"What about you? Did you grow up into the mountains as well?" he tries to change subject in order to avoid the silence.
Emily looks back questioningly.
"You seem pretty relaxed and confident in the woods. Not everybody would be at ease here…" Madison explains.
"When I was a kid I used to spend a lot of time with my grandfather in the French Alps. He gave up everything and went to live into the woods, I guess he definitely escapes your definition of regular person…" she explains reluctantly.
Madison bits his lip and rolls his eyes to the sky, cursing himself for the second gaffe. These FBI agents are impossible when it comes to having a friendly conversation, he thinks.
"France, wow… I never left the state" he tries the most neutral observation he can come up with.
Emily glances unenthusiastically at Madison; 'wow' is not exactly the first word that comes to her mind when she thinks back to those times. If only she could make up her mind so easily about those years with her grandfather and encase them into a neat classification… On one side she knows that if she has become an independent, tough woman, as the Prentiss label apparently implies, it's partly because of what she had to endure during those endless, secluded summers. Nonetheless she reckons that during that time her grandfather put her through an awful lot of unnecessary roughness and that maybe she would have learnt the lesson anyway.
Those summers are the reason why she feels comfortable in the outdoors, but also why every time she sees musk on the bark of a tree or she finds herself in a wood after the sunset, she hardly manages the surging panic…
"Ah…Now I envy you. Such an exotic childhood… My wife and I were thinking of taking a trip to Paris, once Celeste has grown up a bit…" he goes on, now unleashed, while Emily lets him talk without listening.
She nervously glances at her phone with no reception and sighs. Now she regrets the moment she felt the need to grab this guy out of his hole of silence and wishes for this day to end soon, while more and more unpleasant memories resurface from a dark corner left untouched for a long time.
"Here it is" she beckons with relief in the direction of a far spot.
Morgan hands a glass of water to Sylvia, who doesn't miss the chance to grab his arm for comfort.
He frowns at the gesture, remembering his last conversation with Emily. He's not sure what stings more about it, whether the fact that she was probably right about Sylvia hiding something, or the fact that he took it so personally. He knows that Prentiss would never doubt his professionalism or his capacity to distance himself from a person of interest; yet there's something about that conversation which goes on bugging him and he doesn't know what it is exactly. Suddenly he feels the urge to clarify the whole thing with her, and a nagging feeling that this moment won't come soon, starts floating in his mind.
"Your friend doesn't like me," Sylvia interrupts his thread of thoughts.
"What?" he asks, taken aback.
"Your friend, the brunette; she doesn't like me. She's pretty, though." Sylvia smiles, taking a sip of water and keeping her eyes on him.
"Ma'am, I'll have to ask you some questions…" he starts, with a new disturbing thought in the back of his mind.
"Sylvia, please. I don't like Ma'am" she pouts at him.
Morgan takes a deep breath, "Sylvia," he nods seriously, "what's your surname?"
"Parker," she answers, almost questioningly.
Morgan looks towards the glass, aware that on the other side JJ already dialed Garcia and asked her to run the name.
"Ok, Sylvia Parker" he carries on with his soothing voice, "where do you live?"
"In the woods."
Morgan chuckles, "Could you please be less vague?"
"There's a hut in the woods where I grew up with my family," she replies adamantly.
"In the woods… just like that?"
"Well, It's not just like that. Those woods are very precious. It's a blessing and an honor to be able to live there," she stresses the words.
Morgan feels annoyed when the connection between Sylvia's story and the legend the sheriff told them before pops up into his mind. He's annoyed; yet he can't help catching the analogy between the two versions and the definitely weird way Sylvia approaches people. So candid and overt, like a child who doesn't have filters; like someone much younger than her age, like someone who's not used to interacting with people and can't distinguish what is appropriate from what is not.
"Do you walk often in the woods on your own?" he asks.
She frowns at him, "Why shouldn't I? This town is less safe than the woods," she simply responds.
"Yes, but people have been found dead in the woods, not in this town," he remarks.
"Maybe they ventured in places where they were not allowed to go…" she offers curtly.
Morgan shifts on his feet and addresses a stern look to the glass, perfectly corresponded to by an equally stern Hotch on the other side.
The unit chief looks briefly at Rossi, standing beside him "Do we have any news from Prentiss?" he asks.
"No, and the more we dig into this story, the less I like it," the older colleague comments, while Hotch tries to call Emily, unsuccessfully.
"Sylvia, tell me about the man who attacked you…" Morgan returns his attention to the interrogation.
"Tall, athletic, a lot like you…" she says distantly.
"Do you remember any particulars? His eye color, what was he wearing, any tattoos, scars…" he pushes.
She arches her mouth in an indifferent grin, "For me, you are all the same." Then her voice becomes gentler, and she smiles "But not you. You have kind eyes."
Morgan ponders on his following question. It feels ridiculous to believe a fairy tale, yet people are dying and this seems to be the only viable lead, "By us, you mean the people from the Outside?"
Sylvia looks at him seriously, and nods.
"Uh?" Officer Madison asks still smiling at the thought of his daughter.
"The granny's house. It's down there," Prentiss keeps walking toward the house, trying not to be too noisy and looking around.
The house is exactly as Sylvia described it; a small, old wooden house. There are embroidered blinds at the windows and wind chimes on the porch, near the front door; but despite these details the atmosphere is completely still and gruesome.
As they get closer to the hut, it seems that all the noises of the forest have been devoured away. Emily tries to peep through the windows, but the house is dark and there's no movement inside.
The more she thinks, the more her distrust toward Sylvia gets stronger.
And it hurts the thought that Morgan preferred giving a cute stranger the benefit of the doubt, than trusting her instinct. So much for their being tuned in, she thinks bitterly.
She puts her resent aside and reaches Madison at the main door, where he's knocking, to no avail.
"The girl said her grandmother was not comfortable with men… let me try" she proposes, trying to be unbiased and to ignore the bad gut feeling that this case is not going to end soon.
She knocks at the door identifying herself. Once, Twice. No answer.
After a pause, Emily gently pushes the door and the handle immediately turns under her hand. They both draw their guns and enter the house in silence.
The main room is completely clear, covered with dust and spider webs.
"For sure Red Riding Hood hasn't paid many visits to her beloved granny lately," Emily bitterly comments when she gets to the bedroom.
Peter catches up with her and moans in disgust when he sees the almost mummified body on the bed; then he runs out of the house fighting a surging retch.
Emily draws her cell phone, to inform the team, and sighs in exasperation at the lack of reception.
She quickly checks the house again, searching for clues on who the woman is and why Sylvia has sent them there.
She has the feeling that this case is a lot darker than they expected, and the absence of any lead annoys her. But her musing is set aside as soon as she realizes that there isn't any noise coming from the outside.
Where is Madison? Why is he not coming back? Why can't she hear him radio contacting the station?
She runs out in a hurry, thinking that the only possible explanation why Sylvia wanted them into the woods, was because she had a plan.
A plan that involved her and Madison.
A man and a woman. Alone.
In the woods.
A knot forms in her throat when she sees the young rookie, lying on the ground, unconscious. She hurries toward him and, before she can even draw her weapon, she hears paces behind her.
In a second it all goes dark.
