Chapter Two: See how they run…

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Three blind mice. Three blind mice.

See how they run. See how they run.

Did you ever see such a sight in your life,

As three blind mice?

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There were days when the stack of files on her desk seemed insurmountable. Days when it seemed impossible to pick which atrocity within that stack to focus on first. Days when she opened page after page and saw Henry in every one of the sprawled and empty lives; this one has his hair, this one his smile, this a mother and a father who love him just as dearly.

Days when Kailo's butter-yellow wings seemed dulled by the horrors of their jobs. It wasn't just her. She'd seen Elle burn out spectacularly, driven to the edge of despair and then over without a pause; fighting her destruction with a ferret's ferocity, but that hadn't saved her. And she'd seen Gideon and his hawk daemon both fall from their lofty perch, almost bringing the rest of them down with them.

Those were the kind of days when Morgan's boxer daemon clung close to his heels, her tail low. When Spence's hare tucked himself under his chair with his eyes closed, trembling with the strain that Spencer himself refused to let show. Even Emily-Emily with the cat daemon who never had a whisker out of place-had days when her hand lingered just a little longer on her daemon's glossy fur than it usually would; when his purrs were just ever so slightly forced.

Today was, so far, not one of those days. Today the stack was small. The cases heartbreaking, but none monstrous. The paperwork done, the lights dim, and they were going out. A team reconnecting over a meal and drinks and, if Morgan had his way, a dancefloor. Sometimes she felt guilty that she could still have fun like this when there was just so much suffering in the world, but without it they'd shatter. Like Elle. Like Gideon.

JJ couldn't watch that happen again.

And so they reconnected.

As her office door closed, her shoulders relaxed, an invisible load lifted. Below her, Spencer was animated, alive, gesturing wildly with his hands to try and explain some complicated concept to the blankly grinning Morgan. Emily watched, sitting on her desk with her hand to her mouth to hide a smile. The day was done. They'd all survived.

She was thankful for every day that brought that blessing.

"Almost done?" she asked, peering into Hotch's office. The man sat at his desk, straight backed and straight faced, Halaimon a statue at his side. The wolf posed an intimidating sight; coming easily to JJ's elbow in height and coal back with unfathomable eyes. There was something endlessly reserved about the man and his daemon; some sense of a great strength restrained by prodigious willpower.

Anger as well. They'd all seen that anger unleashed. None of them had any desire to see it again.

"Hmm?" Hotch said, looking up, his face smoothing into the suggestion of smile at the sight of her. "Almost. This report is taking longer than expected."

She stepped in, glancing down at it. Kailo whispered a laugh as they both recognised the cramped handwriting on the page, tightly bunched on the lines and sprawling along the margins where he'd run out of space. "You really need to give Spence a word limit on those things," she said. "You'd better hurry – I think the kids are getting overexcited down there."

"You know, they use his reports as examples of 'what not to do' with the new recruits," someone said cheerfully from behind them. JJ didn't even need to turn to know who it was, not when a soft clap of feathers and a gust of displaced air over her head announced the arrival of Eris.

The owl clattered onto the desk with a deliberate clumsiness, sending papers and pens scattering. JJ winced as a file landed with a soft thwop on Hal's head, flapping open and slipping slowly down her spine to lay loosely on the floor. Neither Hotch nor Hal flinched; Hal staring the owl down with a dark gaze that would have had any sane daemon scampering for safety.

"Oops, sorry," said the owl, sounding anything but, shuffling over to the side of the desk to crane her neck down and peer at Hal. "What a bother. Guess you'll have to sort it out Monday."

Hal's nose twitched. JJ held her breath, seeing one of Hotch's eyebrows rocket up into his hairline. She didn't dare glance behind her, because if she did she had absolutely no doubt that Rossi was leaning casually against the doorframe, smirking. He was a smirker. And if she saw that, she was going to laugh.

"Guess we'll have to," Hotch said finally, leaning down to pick the file up and neaten it before ever so slowly standing and grabbing his jacket, tossing the file onto his desk. "Alright, alright, let's go."

Hal got up and walked with sedate grace towards the door, but her tail waved slowly in what was almost a wagging motion.

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Sometimes, Emily wondered just who was in charge of picking the forms that daemons took. Whoever it was, they had a terrible sense of humour.

Watching Morgan on the dancefloor was proof enough of that. Well sure, one look at Hotch and his grim wolf and anyone would be like yep, the daemon reflects the man alright. And Rossi's eagle owl was practically a given as well. They had the same eyebrows, as Sergio had pointed out with glee upon meeting him.

JJ though. A butterfly? Pretty, flimsy things that were carried about by the breeze? Hardly.

And then there was Morgan. He was no dog. "I've seen alley cats with better moves than that," Sergio commented, batting around the lid of a beer bottle absently with his paw, half his attention on Morgan and his daemon trying – succeeding – in getting woman to dance with him. "Look at him. No class. It's a wonder any of those woman are interested."

Out the corner of her eye, she saw the flicker of movement cease as Reid abruptly tuned into the conversation. "Actually, numerous studies have suggested that confidence is the key – hey!"

Emily raised an eyebrow at Garcia as Reid tried to talk around the toffee she'd popped into his mouth when his guard was down. "You came prepared for Reid-ness?" she asked her, Garcia's innocent expression completely ruined by the cackling laugh of the magpie daemon perched on her shoulder.

"Oh hun, I'm always prepared for Reid-ness," Garcia replied. Reid made a choked swallowing sound as he battled the sticky treat, rolling his eyes at her. With a nervous titter, she slipped out the booth. "And now that I've showed my hand, I'm off to rescue my alley cat from himself. Enjoy that, lovelies!"

And she was gone, leaving Emily alone with the spluttering Reid. She could see the rest of her team easily; Morgan creating a small crowd on the dancefloor, Garcia was damn hard to miss, and she'd have to be blind to not see Rossi introducing himself smoothly to a table of ladies who tittered in response.

It wasn't hard to spot Hotch either. His seat at the bar, JJ at his left, was notable by the absence of anyone else around him. Even in the crowded room people were reluctant to sit near the hulking presence of the wolf laying at his side.

"She's not a full wolf you know," Reid said, his voice barely carrying over the soft hum of the music. He'd traced her gaze to their boss, his own expression thoughtful. "Her ears and muzzle give it away. Part dog for sure. Conflicting natures; the domestic vs. the wild. There are several theories…"

"Profiling the Hotchman, Reid?" she asked, turning to face him and lifting her beer to her lips. Reid was placidly shredding a napkin into a tiny shower of white confetti on the table, his own drink barely touched. His daemon was nowhere to be seen. That was nothing new. Aureilo hated the stickiness of bars or getting his fur mussed, and he absolutely despised being surrounded by people. Reid would never complain, but Emily knew it was no coincidence the hare was always notably absent on these outings. She envied Reid his ability to, apparently, painlessly separate from his daemon.

She'd never met anyone else with the ability but then again, she'd never met anyone quite like Spencer Reid before either.

"You know they teach us not to profile based on daemons," he said, and now that she'd noticed the lack of hare at his feet, she could detect the faint tone of disconnection in his voice, as though half his mind was elsewhere. Arse. He could still be brilliant, even like this. She had no idea how he did it. "There's too many variations, too much singularity to each case. One man might have a cat because he craves comfort; another may have a cat because she aspires to perfection." His eyes were locked on her now, and there was no trace of disconnection in their sharp gaze. "Or because she needs complete control over the way she presents herself to the world. Who knows?"

Arse. "Is that so?" she teased, and Sergio swept his tail through the pile of white paper in front of Reid, sending the pieces whirling through the air to settle on his hands and shirt. "And what of the man with the hare daemon that never shuts up? What would you say of him?"

"I'd say," Reid said carefully, ducking his head to hide a shy smile. "That's he's probably tired and ready for bed, but afraid that if he gets up to leave he'll be accused of being anti-social and dragged onto the dancefloor. I'd also say he's unlikely to be very good at dancing. Uh oh. JJ."

Emily turned again, the cracked leather of the booth complaining under her weight, just in time to see JJ heading for the door with her phone to her ear. Hotch watched her, his own drink back on the bar and untouched.

As she watched, the door swung closed behind JJ, and Hotch ordered a water.

Well, fuck. "Hope you didn't have your heart set on your bed," she warned Reid, noting his crestfallen expression. "Looks like our weekend is over. All five hours of it."

"Typical," he said, and drained his scotch with a long smooth pull, setting the glass down with a loud clink on the tabletop. She handed him his coat, their fingers brushing together, leaving her own damp with condensation. His hands were cold.

She hoped this case, whatever it was, wasn't a bad one.

She knew it was a useless hope. They were all bad.

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Naemaria's hackles lifted when Morgan propped the tablet up on the arm of the chair so she could peer over his side to look. "There's so few similarities," she commented, and he could feel her shiver slightly through the leather of the armrest. "Age, appearance, socio-economic status, they're all varied. They're grabbing kids at random. How did we not know about this before now?"

Reid didn't look up from where he was paging impossibly quickly through a thick sheaf of papers, but they all knew by now that he didn't need to be consciously there for them to get the benefit of his mind.

"We did," Aureilo said, standing on his hind legs, front paws propped on the table and staring directly into Morgan's eyes with an almost challenging gaze. It wasn't unusual; the hare had a disconcerting habit of demanding attention when he spoke, which was often, and it was hard to disobey that silent snap of command. "We just didn't realize they were related. No one connected them until now, but we've all seen the cases individually on the news."

Morgan would never admit it, but as much as he loved his Pretty Boy Reid… his daemon was unnerving as shit.

Daemons weren't supposed to talk to humans other than their own.

Daemons weren't supposed to be the polar opposites of their human's personality.

And they really, really weren't supposed to treat the bond between themselves and their humans like it was just a suggestion instead of a rule; straying as far from Reid as he wished without any regard for how it made Reid look.

But Aureilo did all those things. Morgan swallowed down the weird feeling he always got around the hare, and answered while looking at the top of Reid's head instead of that uncanny amber gaze.

"We have five children missing between the ages of six and twelve, all from different small towns and rural areas of Georgia. All went missing in the past two weeks. That's a huge hunting ground if they're travelling."

"59,441 square miles," Reid said quietly, not looking up from his paperwork. "But they're mostly centred around the one area. That narrows it down." Aureilo glanced at him, almost disdainful, before switching his stare back to the team. Morgan shivered again.

He hated Georgia. Kid wasn't like this before Georgia. It was like the further Reid withdrew into himself, the more Aureilo tried to compensate.

"None had settled daemons," Emily added, enlarging a picture of the most recently taken; a girl of seven, blonde haired and blue eyed. A butterfly with wide blue wings perched on her ear.

Morgan looked away from that picture and found JJ staring at it as though her heart was breaking. He didn't look at her for long.

Sometimes he was damn glad he wasn't a parent. He didn't think he could do this job with a kid at home.

"Irrelevant, isn't it?" Rossi asked. "The oldest is twelve. How many daemons settle at twelve?"

"Actually," Reid said, snapping to attention. "We've got three girls in this group. Two of them are over ten—puberty, often accompanied by the settlement of daemonic forme, begins earlier in girls. Statistically, the fact that he has a one hundred percent rate of taking children with unsettled daemon could be relevant." He turned back to the page, shutting them out completely. Emily stared at him, thoughtful.

"Discounting that, we still have three children who left for school and never made it home. Two who went out on the weekend to the local park and didn't return. Not one witness saw them being approached, there were no notable strangers in any of the towns that people could recall." Hotch's eyes pinned each and every one of them, mirrored by his wolf, goading them into getting their minds ticking. Morgan could see them all responding to that, expressions turning focused and intent. The jet shuddered under them and no one even blinked. "We're heading for Buford, Gwinnet County. The geographical profile of the taken children so far suggests that our unsub is likely based in the area, and the local forces have invited us in. One of the children, the first taken, is from the town."

"The kids do have one thing in common," Aureilo said suddenly almost cutting off the tail end of Hotch's sentence. He waited a moment until they were looking at him, then stretched a paw towards the photos of the missing children resting under the side of Reid's hand. "They're all very atheistically pleasing. No glasses, no braces, considerable symmetry of facial features. The sex of the child is less of a focus in predators who hunt younger children—we should consider child trafficking."

"On the basis of five pretty kids?" Morgan snapped, irritation sparked by the matter-of-fact tone of the hare's voice. Reid was never so pushy with his damn opinions.

It was a weird feeling, to like the man but not the daemon.

"Only five?" Reid said, his voice cautious. Silence followed, and he glanced up, reshuffling the papers. The sheet he laid on the table wasn't their file at all, but a hastily photocopied city council report with'Homeless population numbers reduced' scrawled across the top. "Georgia's poverty rate is the third highest in the country. Gwinnet County has almost fourteen percent of their population living below the poverty line. It has a serious homelessness problem-In 2012, there were 26,300 evictions in Gwinnet County. That equals approximately 120,562 family members that lost housing, including children. And the average age of homeless children in the area is…"

"Six." Rossi lowered his phone, looking troubled. "You don't think these are our first victims, do you?"

Reid shrugged, eyes locked on his daemon. "I don't think a first time kidnapper manages to take five children in two weeks without a single witness," he said finally. "Do you?"

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Hotch rapped his fingers on the steering wheel, his mind whirling with the pictures of the missing children. How could the unsub have taken five without a witness, without a fight? Five children, five daemons. Did none of them scream? Did none of them run?

He thought of Jack at the park, mere weeks ago, and the scream both he and his daemon had put up when Hotch was out of sight for just a second. Ever since Haley, ever since Foyet, Jack hated being away from him or Jessica. It was troubling.

It was somewhat reassuring. No one could take Jack without Arelys shifting into a snarling miniature Hal, her shrieking barks alerting everyone in the vicinity. So why didn't these children's daemons offer them the same protection?

Reid was silent next to him, his hands folded in his lap over the huddled mass of his hare. Over the years of working with him, Hotch had assumed that at some point the kid would come out of his shell.

He hadn't, at least with him. Hotch had stopped expecting it at this point. Any progress they'd made with him had been lost after… well, this job left them all with scars.

Some more than others.

"Jennifer exhibited considerable signs of distress at the photo of Kayla Chant," Aureilo said suddenly, flicking his ears upright. Hotch could hear Hal moving about in the back seat, always awkward in the confined space of the car. "Likely because of the physical similarities between the child and Jennifer, and Henry of course. Her ability to remain—"

"Don't profile her," Reid said, flicking his hare's ear, cutting him off with an indignant squeak. "We don't do that. She's fine."

Reid so rarely spoke up against his daemon that Hotch couldn't help but glance at the man. "JJ will be fine," he agreed firmly. "In the interests of intra-team cooperation, please refrain from profiling your co-workers, Aureilo." It felt oddly normal to speak to the hare as though he was his own creature, even though Hotch couldn't imagine doing the same with Emily's Sergio or Morgan's Naemaria.

And there it was, really. Sergio was Emily's. Naemaria was Morgan's, just as Eris was Rossi's or Kailo JJ's.

Aureilo was Aureilo. He didn't really seem to belong to anyone but himself.

"Fine," huffed the hare. There was a flicker of light over the tree-line to their right, drawing attention away from the brewing confrontation. The hare snapped his attention around, standing up and almost smacking his head into Reid's chin. "Fireworks?" he asked, swivelling his ears around. "During the day?"

Hotch smiled. Finally, something he knew that the genius and his hare didn't. "Smoke effects," he said, watching the coloured cloud dissipate over the trees, leaving trails of floating gold that shimmered oddly in the sunlight. "They use confetti and streamers too. Jack wanted them for his birthday. Expensive though. I ended up talking him into some sparklers instead."

"In the middle of the woods?" Reid asked. "If they're so expensive, why waste them on a show no one is there to see?"

Hotch shrugged, even as Aureilo twitched with shock at the next loud whistle-boom, almost falling off the seat. "Practise?"

Reid hummed, and folded his hands over his hare's ears, sheltering him instinctively.

They travelled the rest of the way in silence.

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"What are you thinking?" Aureilo asked, his paws silent on the tiled floor of the precinct. Reid didn't answer, not straight away, watching the huddled group of parents and daemons in the centre of the next room through the distorted glass between them. His team was out there, doing damage control, trying to corral all the sets of parents into some semblance of order.

He'd been tucked into a side room with a map and a pack of push-pins, where he couldn't unsettle anyone.

"I'm thinking," Reid said, tilting his head and scanning the wavy forms of the parents and their assortment of daemons. "That this guy has to have some kind of control over these children. Something about him is trustworthy. Children scream. Scared children scream a lot."

"Large vehicle; ice cream truck?" Aureilo asked, and Reid felt a bite of frustration that he was in here and not out there where he could hear the tones of the parents' voices, see their body language. He trusted his team-they were the best.

But he wanted to see. They were just rehashing what they already knew in here.

"We're missing something," he said, turning his back on the window. All he was getting was garbled information anyway. The map stared back at him, almost accusingly. "Besides some accurate detail on the number of homeless children in the area."

Aureilo snorted, scratching at his stomach with a brisk hind leg. "Why count the homeless when it looks like it's becoming a self-cleaning problem?" he said, voice cold with sarcasm. "Who bothers about some missing eyesores? Spencer… about Jennifer."

Reid frowned. He really didn't need this. "No," he said firmly, glaring at his daemon. "Don't do this, Aur. Don't run roughshod over the team because you think you've seen something they haven't. You're so cocky. This is why Morgan is…"

"Scared of us?"

That hurt. "Of you, maybe. You're the weird one. Why can't you just be normal? If you were normal, we'd be out there doing our jobs instead of locked in here like an embarrassment." His voice turned sharp, almost without his conscious awareness of it. He tried to reel in the bitterness, but hiding it in his tone didn't hide it in his heart.

Aureilo didn't need to be the soul of a profiler to know the resentment in Reid's heart.

"Oh," the hare said, and he sounded angry except his shoulders hunched forward and his long ears folded flat, making him small and hidden. "I'm not the reason we're lonely," he snapped, and Reid could see him shivering but to comfort him would be to admit that maybe Reid was in the wrong here.

And Reid had seen the way Morgan had looked at Aureilo on the jet. He didn't want to be looked at like that anymore.

He didn't want to be isolated anymore.

"No. Not entirely." He turned back to his map, turning his back on his daemon. "But you're a big part of it."

He didn't hear the hare leave, but when he looked around, he was alone.

Like usual.

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Even over the hollering of a gaggle of distressed parents, Rossi heard Eris's quiet, "Uh oh."

He looked around, following the eagle owl's keen-eyed gaze until he saw what she was looking at; the slim brown form of the kid's daemon heading for the exit. He hadn't even lasted the hour.

Odd. It wasn't like him to bail so quickly in a strange town, especially when the case was still in the early stages. They needed him close, needed Reid sharp. They'd get neither with him wandering off.

"Damnit, I can't afford to chase the beast," he muttered, and saw Emily turn to look as well, hearing his curse. Her mouth thinned as the hare vanished out the low swinging flap set in the wall for daemons, the flash of his white tail the last sign of him. Rossi could almost hear her concern ticking up a notch.

After all, it was Prentiss who knew the kid best. Hadn't it been her who'd been the only one to actually tell her what his deal was when Rossi had joined the team and found himself facing the fount of perpetual oddness that was Dr. Spencer Reid?

"You'll mostly end up talking to his daemon. You'll get used to it."

"Has he always been like this? Seems odd he'd have gotten a job here if he can't be…"

"Normal? He is normal. There's nothing the hell wrong with him."

"I wasn't saying there was… Listen, Agent Prentiss, if I've caused offence…"

"Look, he's fine, okay? He just… if you want to know, look up Tobias Hankel. Reid didn't recover from that. Aureilo did. So you talk to the hare until Reid decides otherwise, got it?"

And here he was. Watching the daemon leave the building, leaving the man alone. It was almost unnatural. It was certainly unusual.

Rossi had always loved the unusual.

Maybe he should send JJ in there… Team Mom to the rescue.

A quick glance around showed JJ with her hand on a woman's arm, guiding her to a chair. Her daemon danced around her head, wings manic in a way that screamed I am distressed.

No help there. Hotch was sequestered in the room with the sour-faced sour-assed sheriff of this spit of a town. Prentiss was separating parents into groups and finding them rooms so the team could interview them. Morgan was quietly expressing his displeasure with the lack of information on the local homeless in such a way that the man he was expressing his displeasure to didn't appear to even have noticed how angry the profiler really was.

Fantastic. David Rossi to the rescue again. In the year he'd been here, he could count on one hand the amount of times he'd actually had a face-to-face conversation with the kid.

Never let it be said that he backed down from a challenge.

"How's the geographical profile?" he asked, sticking his head into the room before sidling in without waiting for a further invitation. Eris rattled with irritation as her feathers caught on the door, talons biting into his shoulder as she gripped down.

"Limited," Reid said, staring at the map like he could see straight through it. Already Rossi could see the vague emptiness that came when the daemon was away from the man and getting further, although that could also be Rossi himself projecting. Who was he to say whether or not the man was sharp with or without his daemon? At his worst, Reid was still the smartest brain in the room. "We need more information."

"More missing kids you mean," Rossi said, warily bumping his heel against the door to ensure it was shut tight and soundproofed. That kind of callous comment wasn't a Reid comment. That was more an Aureilo comment, and it sounded odd coming from the kinder man. "Odd thing to hope for."

Reid blinked, then looked horrified. "Oh no, I didn't, I don't… I don't want…" he trailed off, ears turning red under the mop of ridiculous hair on his head. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. I was distracted."

Obvious.

"Wanna tell me where ol' lop ears is going?" he asked, doing his best Hotch impersonation. Maybe he could glare the kid into trusting him.

Reid tilted his head, as though listening.

Rossi tried not to shiver.

"Not far," he said finally. "He's just outside. We… disagreed. On the case."

He looked away, guilty as the proverbial kid in the cookie jar. Case my arse, Rossi thought darkly. "Bullshit," he said out loud. Reid's eyes widened, trapped. Good. Maybe the kid just needed a little reminder that he wasn't the only one on the team, and the rest of them needed to know when things were about to go to shit. "What is it actually?"

Reid looked from Rossi to his daemon, and then actually opened his mouth as though to say something. There was a resigned cast to his face. He was going to talk. Thank fucking finally. Rossi wasn't Hotch. He wasn't content to wait with his thumbs up his arse for the kid to work shit out on his own.

Then his mouth snapped shut, his eyes locked on the glass behind Rossi's shoulders. The guilt returned, twice as strong. Well, at least he'd have a fair idea who the kid was actually talking about, since no one looked quite that guilty unless the person they'd somehow betrayed was right there.

He turned right as JJ opened the door and stuck her head in, her face pale. "Northside Hospital just contacted one of the deputies," she said, eyes flickering between them both curiously. "He just shouted it out for the whole station to hear, including the parents. They've just had a bunch of unattended children rock up on their doorstep."

"That's good right?" Reid babbled, pale and nervous, bouncing on the balls of his heels. "They're alive? They're okay?"

JJ swallowed. "They only have three."

Well, shit.