AN1: Here it is! Part two. Before we get to that, however, I would like to thank each and every one of you who favorited, followed, or reviewed. It really does mean a lot to me when I receive support and/or some feedback on my writing. Onto the story!
Part 2
He dreamt.
That in itself wasn't very shocking-the average person over the age of ten dreams anywhere from four to six times a night, Reid knew-but it was significant in the fact that, for the first time in a long while, it didn't seem to have anything to do with Georgia.
He was on a playground. Wood chips shifted underfoot as he turned around, taking in his surroundings. On his left, a collection of tables and benches were scattered before a line of evenly spaced trees. Brightly colored metal and plastic towered to his right, the apparatus in such a state of neglected disrepair that Reid couldn't shake the feeling of a paralyzing uneasiness. Graffiti littered the playground and nearby brick building. Swings hung on broken chains, creaking and rattling like metal bones.
A group of students stood a few meters from him in the grass beside the playground. Whether they had been there all along or simply just appeared, Reid could not say. They seemed to be gathered in a semicircle, with a young, dark haired girl addressing the group. Despite the feeling that something was very wrong, Reid found himself drawn inexplicably closer, coming to a halt slightly outside the group's circumference.
"Let's play a game called Something's Wrong With Re-id, let's play a game called Something's Wrong With Reid," she called out in a sing-song voice. The declaration was met with five vacant smiles mirroring the girl's own. Reid started and looked around, searching for some other "Reid" they could be referring to, but it appeared he and the group of students were alone. And while the schoolchildren were evidently talking about him, not one of them so much as glanced in his direction.
"Hey, um," he began timidly, but the dark haired girl continued on over him. He felt a familiar flash of annoyance-I'm standing right here, you know-before it was dampened by the disquiet that hung thick and tangible in the air.
"The rules are simple. Whenever something's wrong with Reid-which, let's be honest, something's always wrong with Reid-all you have to do is ignore it! You can recognize it's there, just don't fix it, or else you'll be disqualified."
If pressed, Reid would have admitted to an indefinable aching in his chest cavity at that. But what bothered Reid the most wasn't the flippant, mocking tone or even the words themselves.
It was the eyes.
The girl wasn't really looking at the group she was addressing, but rather through them. Or maybe like she was looking at something only she could see.
As he walked around to get a better look at the girl's playmates, he found an odd assortment he never recalled seeing together on a playground in his life.
A fit, blonde, ponytailed girl in a soccer jersey-mean girl, his brain supplied unwarranted-had an arm slung around another girl who seemed the polar opposite; stout with large glasses and a hairstyle that couldn't possibly be functional by Reid's estimation, bedecked in unnaturally vibrant colors and a frankly excessive amount of sparkles.
Next to that strange pair stood an athletic, dark skinned boy-football jock, his brain chimed in once more-and a tall, serious-looking, dark haired boy. Completing the odd half circle closest to where Reid stood was a shorter, brown-haired boy with strangely weathered features.
In spite of the vast physical differences, however, they all shared the same eyes as the girl-eyes that saw straight through things and yet didn't see at all. Eyes glassed over, but not inattentive. Cloudy, but not blind. Dead eyes, he realized.
"You see," the dark haired girl continued matter-of-factly, "the fun is in the avoidance. In how close we can get to the truth without uncovering it, without actually helping him." The girl faced Reid quite abruptly then, and that was when he noticed the blood. Involuntarily, he took a step back.
Viscous and dark, almost black, it poured from a deep horizontal slash across her neck. Fear seized Reid's lungs, halting their movement. He stumbled back another step as all the other kids turned to face him, similar gashes pulsing out their life-giving contents onto the ground.
"What's wrong, Reid?" The voice was mocking, malicious even, but he could no longer tell who was speaking. He wasn't even sure the dark haired girl had been the one doling out the rules of the game in the first place.
The students-the corpses-were surrounding him now, and desperately Reid tried to push past one of them to escape. Strong fingers clasped onto his shoulder just as a particularly painful set of cleats kicked out the backs of his knees, sending him to the ground. Landing on all fours, he was prepared to scramble to his feet again when he saw what was clutched in his hand.
A knife, coated in blood.
"What?" It slipped out in a hoarse whisper, like a broken promise or a desperate prayer. The knife was needle-sharp, strange and foreign and yet somehow familiar. Hurriedly he dropped the weapon into the grass, clambering awkwardly away as if to distance himself from incrimination.
"I, I don't understand," he looked up entreatingly at soul-less eyes, willing them to believe that he didn't do this. He didn't kill them. Right?
An amused bark of laughter cut off any possible explanations. The dark skinned boy crouched down beside Reid, cocking his head much like a wild animal listening to an unusual sound. Blood continued to drip from the wound on his neck as empty eyes assessed Reid's frightened figure.
"Little boy genius, knows so much and yet understands so little. Trying to hide behind an intellect not big enough to cover even half his shortcomings. Didn't realize the kid was so damaged he can't even see what he's done. I guess we all just...overestimated him." The boy stood back up with a sneer, analysis evidently finished and finding Reid somehow lacking. Contempt twisted the ring of faces staring down at him, cruel laughter echoing in the wake of the boy's words.
Although Reid was the only one there without a deadly knife wound if felt as though he had just been stabbed in the heart. He was pretty sure these people's laughter wasn't supposed to cause him pain, that those nicknames weren't supposed to make him feel like he'd just been gutted. They were supposed to be special and endearing and cause him a little bit of annoyance but also a whole lot of joy. They meant something bigger than what they sounded like and what they were-if only he could remember what.
In fact, all these corpses surrounding him, jeering at him, mocking him and hurting him-they meant something too. It wasn't a knowledge so much as a feeling-a deep, visceral instinct that this wasn't how things were supposed to be. Something was fundamentally wrong, something was indescribably off. These people weren't who they were supposed to be, or perhaps it was he who wasn't who he was supposed to be? He didn't know. But there was one thing he did know, and, finding his voice once more, he called this belief, this feeling, out desperately-a flashlight cast about in the dark, trying to find the truth.
"No, no, no. I, I wouldn't hurt you guys! You have to understand! We're...we're friends, remember? A family?" He had not been certain of it until he'd spoken it aloud, but now that he had, he was sure of it. These people were supposed to be his friends. They were supposed to protect each other.
They were supposed to be a family.
They were more than acquaintances, they were brothers and sisters in arms and Reid knew with absolute conviction that he would give his life for any one of theirs and that any one of them would do the same for him. He just had to get them to remember! Then everything would be alright! Everything had to be alright!
"You have to remember!" he yelled, jumping to his feet, "We're a family!"
But he was only met with the soft keening of broken swings on broken chains, the only evidence of the encounter the blood stained grass and discarded knife.
He was not sure if he heard the words or imagined them, but their faint echoes followed him into wakefulness nonetheless.
"Are we?"
...
Reid awoke with tearstained cheeks and absolutely no desire to close his eyes for the rest of the night.
Dr. Spencer Reid was never really one for soul searching.
He'd generally figured it a useless exercise, that there was always something else he could be putting his mind to and occupying his time with. Plus, the name itself was vexing-there was no conclusive scientific evidence of human beings even possessing souls, so the idea of "searching" through something that may not even exist seemed positively ludicrous. But now, with another case closed, several hours before their plane's departure, and his current location in a jazz bar in New Orleans staring pensively up at his old friend on the piano, he found himself doing exactly that. Soul searching. Or whatever the proper term was for the introspective state he found himself in.
He had found that for the first time in a long time, he could finally think clearly; like he'd been drowning and somehow blundered his way into choking in a breath of clean air. He wasn't intending to waste the accompanying moment of clarity. Whether it was the revelations from a half-remembered dream or if he was just too tired to be angry any longer, he did not know. All he knew was that he couldn't fool himself anymore-this was going to kill him, eventually, and he was just so tired of running from the truth, of dodging his own voice in his head telling him his chances of surviving this next hit, reciting file after file of instances of the far-reaching devastation of drug abuse, and reminding him of the ever increasing risk of developing mental illness.
He was done running away. Away from Georgia, from his problems, from his teammates, and from himself. Just...done.
So when Gideon sat down beside him, he was of the fullest intention to come clean and finally get help. He was sure that if anyone could help him, it was his friend, his mentor, his father figure. He had to concentrate not to break down when he admitted he was struggling; to anchor the pain somewhere inside so he could push through this conversation.
But then Gideon was saying how anyone would be struggling in his position, and suddenly Reid wasn't so sure that the senior agent knew what he was really getting at.
Almost reflexively, Reid did what he knew best. He misdirected. Before he could gather up his rapidly deserting courage to correct his mentor that no, there is something else I need to tell you, there is something more I was alluding to-I need help, please, please hear what I don't have the strength to say-he finds himself instead saying that missing the plane was a way to see if he could step away from the job.
Suddenly Gideon is giving him some abstract monologue about when to get out of their line of work, all the while Reid's insides are on fire. He needed to see if he could step away from the job because he's not sure how much longer he can continue on like this. Because he's knows one day, someday, sometime soon, his addiction will either cost him his life or his job, and if it's the former nothing will matter at that point anyways, but if it's the latter, he needs to know he won't be completely lost without the life he has now, that he could somehow survive the crushing blow that would deal.
There was definitely some truth to what he told Gideon-after all, a misdirection is not a lie, but a repositioning of the importance of a given set of facts. It reorders what to notice and where to look. The ordeal he went through in Georgia has made him doubt his ability, his place on the team, even his career choice-but despite his doubts he still knows in his innermost being that he wouldn't do anything else in the world, and that of all the things he could have done and all the places he could have gone with his off-the-charts IQ and eidetic memory, he belongs in the FBI. He belongs in the BAU. He belongs on a team led by Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner, with SSA Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, Jason Gideon, technical analyst Penelope Garcia and media liaison Jennifer Jareau.
So, no, Gideon, this was not just about missing a plane and wondering about quitting, it was about a lot more than that. It was about the ghost of Tobias Hankel that had been haunting Reid since the night Reid had been forced to shoot him. It was about the problem that everyone seemed to notice but no one wanted to address.
Unbidden, a little girl's voice floated back to him from the shores of an unknown world.
"Let's play a game called Something's Wrong With Re-id, let's play a game called Something's Wrong With Reid."
"Let's play a game called Something's Wrong With Re-id, let's play a game called Something's Wrong With Reid."
He blinked and found Gideon waiting expectantly for an answer to his query. Well? What did he find, in his "quest" to see if he could step away?
"I'll never miss another plane again," is what he said aloud, sidestepping the question.
What he'd actually found was that he could leave this job if it came to that-he only hoped that that day never came. No, he would not voluntarily abandon his life's work, but if circumstances forced it upon him, he would have no choice but to recover and adapt. And recover and adapt he would, to the best of his ability, but, damn it, wasn't this conversation supposed to be about preventing that outcome?
The moment of courage to come clean had passed, slipped through Reid's fingers like infinitesimally small grains of sand, each one scoring his hands with their physical absence. Reid sat immovable as stone, frozen with regret and yet too terrified to say what needed to be said, until Gideon reached over, patted his leg, got up, and left.
Sometimes, Reid wished he wasn't so good at misdirection.
AN2: So that was the second installment-did something a little bit different there with the dream sequence. I hope that turned out alright. On that note, that "Something's Wrong With Reid" game has been bouncing around my head for a while. Honestly, sometimes during the show, it felt like the other characters were really playing that game. Like when Reid had those headaches. Or when he was the only one upset about the deception surrounding Prentiss' "death." Or...you get the idea.
Anyways, please review! Really, they make my day.