Arc One: The Destruction of You
Thanks to my beta, Greeneyedconstellations!
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Leaning her breast upon the reedy shore,
thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
Orlando Gibbons, The Silver Swan
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Twelve days had passed, and Reid still woke up nightly haunted by the snap of flames and the scent of smoke.
Henry slept through the night and every morning told stories of dreams filled with birds.
Reid wished he had that resilience.
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On the first day, Aaron Hotchner woke in a dark room lit only by moonlight, watched by a man with the kind of face Hotch imagined very narrowly walked the edge of madness.
"You're very ordinary," the man said coldly, and his words split Hotch's world in two. He couldn't respond, just clutched at his head and tried to stop the pain that threatened to overwhelm him, his nose thick with the smell of burning.
"Who are you?" Hotch croaked out eventually, feeling the room beginning to narrow and contract towards him.
The man responded simply and later Hotch would wonder if what he said was true.
"God."
He tumbled back into darkness, feeling the ground turn to liquid beneath him and begin to drag him in.
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Henry recovered with a quickness that Reid both envied and worried over.
"Can I have this?" he asked one day, face brightening as he held up a colourful book with birds strewn across it. The birds' wings and bright plumage spoke to Reid of a freedom he no longer possessed, grounded by grief and responsibilities. "Please, Uncle Spence?"
Reid bought it for him because it seemed like something JJ would approve of, and they spent the night reciting the names of different birds while Reid pored over the job listings. With every name he mastered, the sorrow seemed to lift from the boy's demeanour, the memory of his parents easing its crushing burden.
Reid wondered if Henry would forget his parents. He made more attempts to bring them up in conversation, decorated his (no, their. their apartment now) apartment with pictures of them, even though the daily reminder of what they'd lost cut him again and again and kept him bleeding and raw.
They went to a therapist and Henry chattered endlessly about birds. The woman used words like coping mechanisms and fixations and talked to Reid like he was a well-meaning, but slightly stupid guardian.
It was a nice change. It seemed appropriate that the clever Spencer Reid had vanished and been replaced with this stranger sporting a perpetual line of concern on his forehead and the faint odour of loneliness on his skin.
"But how are you coping, sweetie?" Garcia questioned him one day when she came to pick up Henry for a sleepover, after being shown a shaky poster Henry had drawn of all the different birds he now knew. Reid wasn't the only one diminished by the explosion. The colours and accessories Garcia had once sported proudly were gone, toned down to pale creams and whites. She dressed like a mom.
She dressed like someone else.
"Fine," Reid lied.
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On the second morning, the man took them outside.
Hotch opened his eyes with the water lapping at his knees, kneeling in the shallows with no memory of having walked there. The air around them was still. The moon glinted overhead, the faintest touch of dawn on the horizon. He thought of getting up, of staggering away.
He stayed. He didn't think to wonder why.
"I don't recommend leaving the lake," the man said from somewhere behind him. "When the sun comes, you'll regret it if you do."
Hotch turned and found that he wasn't alone. Rossi stared at him with a faintly bemused expression, standing at the man's side with his arms loose. As Hotch watched, he joined him in the water, their arms brushing against each other, skin clammy with cold and sweat, answering some unspoken compulsion.
Hotch intended to ask him what was going on.
But then the sky lit with the sun and it set him alight. Faintly he could hear his friend screaming as well, burning with him.
When it faded, he looked up from a body too small and too broken to be his, and the man sneered down upon him. "I was right. Far too ordinary to believe. Nothing but a trinket to turn his gaze away from what really matters."
Hotch tried to snarl at him, shout something, defend himself, but the noise from his throat wasn't human anymore. The man walked away.
He tried not to look in the reflection of the water because down that route lay madness.
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It took a month for the grief to recede enough that Reid could breathe.
It left behind the shadow of a man and the bitter knowledge that nothing could ever be the same. He woke one morning and quietly thought to himself that if he continued in this manner, they may as well bury him next to the rest of his team. He thought of his gun.
He thought of Henry and it stilled his hand.
Perhaps they would list his date of death as the day of the explosion, because if asked he would point to that as the day his life stopped. The day he lost everything.
Almost everything.
"Mama doesn't like birds," Henry told him in serious fashion one morning, picking at his breakfast. Reid pushed aside the stack of dirty bowls in the sink and rinsed a cup, scrubbing at a mark on it listlessly. He faintly remembered when his home had been clean, but dusting and dishes seemed a faraway concern these days. "But I dream of her and she's surrounded by them."
"Dreams don't mean anything, Henry. The average person has five to seven dreams a night. They're just your brain organizing itself."
Henry sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, frowning. Reid winced and pushed a box of tissues towards him.
When Reid thought of Will now, he always apologised because he couldn't possibly be even half of the man Will had been.
Or a quarter of the father.
"These dreams mean something," Henry said firmly through a mouthful of cereal. "There's a swan too, and he sings because he misses someone. He sounds sad."
"Swans don't sing," Reid replied absently, feeling sorry for the swan nonetheless.
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Hotch kept to the lake, because the world seemed simpler out there, floating in the current and letting it take him where it wished. The sun beat down on his back, sparkling on the water surrounding him, and if he focused on the points of light he could almost pretend that this was all there was.
It almost made the world make sense again.
He didn't keep track of how long they'd been there, because he didn't want to know. He wondered if anyone was still looking for them.
When night time came, it brought with it unimaginable pain, and he found himself human with water streaming from sodden clothes once more. He stood and stared at his hands, lost in the shape of them.
Rossi stood on the shoreline, eyes wide with fear and something else, shadowed and guarded. "This is insane," he choked, running shaking hands through hair dishevelled with dirt. When Hotch studied him, he could see the illusion of blue and brown feathers still glimmering on his skin, the quickness of his wings a fading echo around him. "It's like some crazy fucking dream we can't wake up from."
When he looked down at his own feet, it was almost a shock to see pink flesh and not webbed claws. "What do you remember before this?" he asked finally, limping to the shoreline and stepping out of the water, the mud oozing between bare toes.
"The raid. Morgan was next to me. A… an explosion." Dave paused, and Hotch could hear the name left unsaid.
Hotch remembered those things too, as well as a sharp scent that he clung to like a life-jacket.
"Spencer," he murmured.
Rossi looked away and they tried not to count the empty spaces around them.
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Two months after it ended and Reid took a teaching position. He needed money for things for Henry, little things like shoes and haircuts that were a part of his daily life now. Things to make this easier on them both, even though the very idea of this being easy seemed impossible.
Emily took pity on him one morning and dragged them both out to a movie, seemingly convinced that somehow the distraction would draw their minds away from the obvious.
"Are you coming back to the BAU?" she asked at the park after the feature, sitting next to him and watching Henry swing slowly on his own as he licked at an ice cream cone half-heartedly.
"No," Reid said eventually, because he didn't belong there anymore. "Garcia is going to help me look after Henry while I teach some classes. We might move. He doesn't really… doesn't really say much."
She took his hand and squeezed it tight, and he could feel her hurting as well. There was a sharp, short call nearby. He turned his head without thinking, looking about for the bird responsible, half intending upon pointing it out to Henry. His new interest in birds was becoming an obsession, their apartment rapidly becoming overwhelmed by posters and books on the subject that Reid happily supplied.
His therapist called it a coping mechanism and said it would fade with time, but Reid wasn't sure if he wanted it to.
A flicker of black and white and a hooked beak and the bird vanished before he could identify it.
Henry fell from the swing and cried, and Reid promptly forget that there even was a bird as he swept over to comfort him.
He forgot a lot of things these days.
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Rossi took to wings quicker than Hotch did. Within the week he was swooping rings around Hotch's bigger, more ungainly form. Hotch would crane his neck around and watch the brightly coloured kingfisher plunge in and out the water, living through his joy second-hand. Rossi had always been the best of them for finding the positives in a situation.
Hotch didn't even try to fly because it felt too much like admitting that this had actually happened.
He didn't think of Jack either, because the idea of his son waiting for him to return was too painful. The notion of somehow explaining what had happened… impossible.
And he didn't think of Reid, or JJ and Will, or Morgan, because it was his choice to send them into that warehouse.
If they were dead, it was his choice that had caused that.
During the nights, Hotch became human again but Rossi sometimes didn't. It seemed arbitrary when it happened. On the nights he stayed a kingfisher, Hotch carried him on his shoulder and explored the thin woods around the lake, always cautious of where the moon was and the oncoming dawn. They'd hit a point at the edge of the grounds where the air turned slow and viscous, and they would both back nervously away.
If the man who'd trapped them here could turn men into beasts with just the moon to aid him, they didn't fancy discovering what else he could do. Neither of them seemed to get hungry either, and sleep was more out of habit than need. Rossi cut his hand on a branch once during a short stint as a human, and the cut healed before it even had a chance to stop bleeding.
Perhaps their captor really was what he seemed. He didn't return, so they didn't have the chance to ask.
Sometimes he'd catch a flicker of black and white against the dim green of the trees, but every time he looked closer they were alone.
The first night he'd become human, he'd stripped off the FBI vest he still wore and tucked it under a bush nearby. Over time, his shoes and other oddities joined it. It seemed redundant to continue wearing things like socks when the mud ruined them, and they didn't feel the cold anymore.
When Rossi struck the silky mud in the bottom of the lake one day and emerged glistening with Hotch's sodden FBI credentials gripped tightly in his beak, Hotch didn't even look at them before tucking them under the rest of his things. Rossi might be here with him, but he didn't need the memory of the ones who weren't.
He avoided going there otherwise. He couldn't bear the reminder. He stopped sleeping at night, instead watching the stars and finding nothing he knew in the inky darkness. The constellations he had learnt as a child weren't there anymore; instead the sky was a tapestry of strangeness. But he still didn't sleep because when he slept, he dreamed of slender arms around him and a throaty voice murmuring his name like a faded promise.
As time passed on and nothing changed, it became obvious to him. Their lack of hunger, of sensation.
Maybe this wasn't going mad after all.
Maybe this was just what came after the story ended.
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Four months, and Reid was reaching for his coffee when a hand slipped into his view and leaned the cup away. When he turned, a man standing next to him read his name with a shy half-smile tilting his mouth upwards.
"Reid," the man said slowly, as though he was savouring the word. Reid's stomach lurched strangely at the sound of his name said so reverently.
"Spencer," Reid replied, suddenly aware of the stubble he hadn't had time to shave that morning in the rush to get Henry to school and the stain on his crooked tie. He resisted the urge to run his fingers through his hair. "Do you often steal people's coffee to learn their names?"
The man looked at him with eyes, sharp and blue, and they displayed none of the shyness that his face suggested.
Those eyes both repelled and intrigued him in equal measures.
"Only the interesting ones," the man said with his smile turning hungry. "You don't seem ordinary." He took the pen on the counter and scrawled something on the cup, pushing it back towards him. Grinning, he sauntered away as though he hadn't just left Reid's heart hammering in his wake.
A phone number. He became abruptly aware of the line behind him, people muttering, the barista glaring from behind the counter.
He could be reckless, despite his usual caution.
When he finished the drink, he threw the cup away. After all, he'd already memorised the number.
He tried to tell himself he wouldn't call it, but he already knew he would. The scent of Aaron's skin against him was fading, the memory of them together still clear and vivid, but excruciating.
Loneliness was a compelling reason for recklessness.
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Aaron Hotchner had never been one to allow himself to be beaten.
However, he'd always shown a frightening proclivity to self-destruction. In the past, he'd always managed to stop the spiral before it turned him into his father, drunk and violent with self-loathing. The people around him had grounded him. Haley and eventually, Jack. Dave. His team. His job.
Here it was just him and Dave and the ever-present knowledge that he may have lost every one of those reasons. Death hovered over him like a shroud.
David Rossi had never been one to allow others to wallow in misery. Even with wings and a beak, that hadn't changed.
One morning he seemed determined that today was the day they'd wake up from this nightmare, diving at Hotch's back in quick bursts and raking his pointed beak over the thick, white feathers. The impact didn't hurt, more of an irritation than anything, but Hotch snapped his own bill at his friend furiously.
Rossi responded by flying in ever-tightening circles around Hotch's slender neck, the barest tips of his wings brushing against his throat as he went. It was an impressive display of aerial skill.
It was infuriating.
Hotch opened his wings, gliding easily on the water after his friend and beating them angrily. His wingbeats were deafening in comparison to Rossi's quick thrumming tempo, echoing across the lake.
When the air beneath his wingspan caught, and he felt himself lifting from the surface with a sudden dull ache in his back muscles, he was shocked enough that he promptly dropped straight back into the water with a splash, flapping gawkily to right himself.
Rossi hung sideways from a branch. He opened his beak widely and laughed as much of a laugh as his bird form could manage.
There was a long moment where the two men stared at each other, one stunned and the other mocking.
Hotch opened his wings slowly and tried again.
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Henry stopped suddenly one day on the way to school and stared at a building across the road. Reid tugged at his hand ineffectually, distracted by thoughts of lectures and students and for once blissfully free of the thought of anything else.
"That bird was in my dream," Henry said uncertainly. "He shouldn't be here."
Reid turned to look where Henry's gaze was aimed, scanning the building. The hawk's proud bearing caught his eye and he found himself entranced by the creature's cunning regard. Sleek feathers of black spotted with white stood out vividly against the dirty grey of the building, the bird's chest bared handsomely.
He didn't recognise the species, which was odd because he'd pored just as intently over Henry's book in an effort to do something right, to somehow make up for the child's unbearable loss.
"Dreams don't mean anything," he murmured, more to himself than Henry, but the bird's intent glare made his stomach roil uncomfortably. He felt drawn towards it, almost painfully. "You probably saw it in a book. It's some kind of goshawk. We can look it up after school."
Henry flickered his eyes back from Reid's face to the hawk's, uncertain and just as thrown by the animal as Reid himself was. "Alright," he said eventually, turning to resume their path.
Reid hovered by the road for a moment longer, watching Henry walk away before glancing back at the building opposite.
The empty perch with not even a flicker of white to show where the creature had stood.
He tried not to think of it as an omen. Superstition had no place in his life.
His neck prickled for the rest of the day, as though sharp eyes still watched him.
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It's an odd thing. A grounded bird has no sense of its own brilliance, the power that it holds at its wingtips. A grounded bird is content to let the world slip by it, time irrevocably passing. It is caged as relentlessly as if there are bars enclosing it.
When given flight again, none of this remains. The bird forgets that it was once caged and revels in its freedom.
Aaron found that out firsthand.
Rossi had the world under the lake as his own, his streamlined body easily breaking the smooth surface with barely a ripple and propelling him through the water.
Hotch had the world above, powerful wings lifting him gracefully through the air. It hurt, at first. The strain of flight set his muscles aflame, and that night as a human he would lay on the shore of the lake and flinch every time his back twinged. Rossi hopped on his spine, small weight useless at easing any of the pain, chattering in his fast, high pitched voice.
Within days his muscles adjusted and he found himself free. It was very much like having his former power restored to him.
The world opened up around them.
Sparse woodland in a loose ring around the lake ended abruptly, as though a line had been drawn in the ground. Beyond that, the world seemed hazy and unfocused. At one angle he could see unfamiliar farmlands, rolling and green, but as soon as he tilted his neck the other way it became the roads and buildings of D.C.
Rossi flew up next to him on what Hotch was pretty sure was their thirteenth day, and whistled, dipping down smoothly to point his beak in the direction he wanted them to go. Hotch followed without question.
He wasn't entirely sure if flight was worth giving up their voices.
When the small house came into view below them, hidden from the lake by a copse of trees, Hotch's pulse quickened uncomfortably.
Down there were answers.
Down there was freedom.
As one, they spiralled slowly down to the building.
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Their first proper meeting was awkward. Reid refused to call it a date because that felt like a betrayal, even with Aaron six months cold in the ground.
If asked, Reid could tell you exactly how long since the last time he'd looked at Aaron Hotchner, but he wouldn't because he still hadn't had enough time to come to terms with it.
The man didn't ask anything like that though. He introduced himself as Stephen. Reid tried to think why that name was faintly familiar to him. He asked about Reid's work, his hobbies. Reid turned the conversation to books, found many they shared.
He kept it away from himself, and the man let him.
Their second date was better, but Reid still flinched away when Stephen touched his hand. They had dinner and split the check. Reid found himself talking about birds. Henry's influence. He talked about Henry, too.
His life had quickly become very much about those two things, and it was a struggle to remember a time when it hadn't been. When he was a godfather and nothing more.
Nothing more except a profiler, a friend. A lover, sometimes. Now none of those things.
Their third date, and Stephen walked him out the concert hall and pulled him close, and this time Reid didn't pull away as their lips met. It wasn't a chaste kiss, nor a gentle one. It left him slow with a heady desire that pooled in his groin as a delicious, almost forgotten, heat.
Stephen kissed him like he wanted to become a part of him, tasting him and inscribing that taste to memory. It was almost frightening and it left Reid aching for something he was missing.
"Your son," Stephen began, and Reid didn't correct him, still reeling from the contact. "I keep birds. Would he like to come see them one day?"
And Reid agreed because there could be something better here, for them both.
When they walked away a harsh shriek followed them, and Reid looked up before even registering what he was looking for.
He wasn't surprised when he met the beady eyes of the goshawk, although his nerves twinged uncomfortably. Stephen didn't notice it.
He didn't point it out to him.
Somehow it felt private.
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The man wasn't there, the house empty and still. There was a bizarre atmosphere around it, as though he'd only stepped out a moment ago and yet had also somehow been gone for a long time. Hotch landed clumsily on feet ill designed for walking. It felt as though his perceptions were being dragged in two vastly different directions, leaving him disoriented and stumbling.
Rossi shook his head and shrilled angrily at the feeling, hopping up to the decorative window above the door and pecking at it sharply. The tinkling of breaking glass left them both feeling intently satisfied, as though finally striking back against their captor. The illusion of revenge.
As his friend disappeared inside, Hotch wobbled back and forth in front of the door, hissing in the back of his throat uneasily. The seconds dragged by tediously, every moment of silence one more moment that something could have gone horribly wrong for them.
Hotch was uncomfortably aware that if something did go wrong, he couldn't reach him in time. He eyed the shuttered windows cautiously, pushing away images of torn and bloodied wings battering against broken glass. After all, they seemed to heal effortlessly here.
That didn't stop him from being wary of the idea.
Another window clicked and swung open, Rossi's tiny blue head poking out and whistling cheekily at him. He snorted at his friend's antics and flapped up to the window, falling through in an ungainly tumble of white feathers and sending papers from the desk he landed on scattering.
So much for being sneaky.
An unfamiliar clattering of wings and a harsh caw behind them. Hotch turned to find a raven eyeing them both prudently.
Even as a bird, they both recognised him immediately.
Derek, Hotch thought with a rush of the sweetest relief imaginable. All at once everything he'd been fighting not to think about over the past few weeks assailed him: Morgan burning in the explosion, JJ reaching for Will and failing to find him in time, Spencer's brilliant mind stilled forever as his body lay twisted beyond recognition.
He staggered and gagged, a horrible noise tearing from a body unsuited to human reactions. The raven hopped a few steps along the perch he was standing on, and the sickness instantly vanished from Hotch's stomach and was replaced with rage as he saw the delicate leather strap attached to his team member's thin leg.
Hissing furiously, he moved forward, craning his neck up to examine the strap. Rossi landed next to the bigger bird, a bright trinket against the glossy black of the raven, and bit at the strap while holding it down with one agile foot. Morgan stood quietly, watching them both with bright eyes, gratitude and shock visible in the hunch of his shoulders and back.
It was oddly easy to release the strap and Hotch wondered why Morgan hadn't done it before with his much deadlier beak.
A question answered when the raven flapped cumbersomely over to the doorway and vanished through, Rossi following. Hotch shuffled after them, finding them both hanging off a gilded cage and peering within.
This time the relief was tempered with apprehension.
JJ and Will. Huddled together in a frightened ball of dusky red and creamy feathers, long forked tails brushing against the floor of their cage. Alone.
No Spencer.
He didn't know if that was a good or bad sign.
It was the work of a moment for the two men to release the intricate catch, freeing the swallows. Will perched on the opening of the cage, his feathers ruffled with barely repressed anger. JJ fluttered down to Hotch, landing delicately on the ridge of his wing and whistling lightly in greeting. He turned his neck back and tapped his bill against hers, taken aback by the vast difference in size between them now.
Will took to the air, broad pointed wings lifting him easily despite his lack of practise, landing on a door handle and tapping the wood with his beak. The meaning behind it was clear. In here.
Hotch opened the door with his bill, the others watchful. They filed in, forming an odd sort of formation with Hotch at the lead. Almost like everything was back to normal. Like they were human once more, a team just doing their job.
Almost like he could turn around and Reid would be there with his hair falling into his eyes in a cascade, grinning shyly and almost vibrating with his contagious, ever-present pleasure in life. Eternally optimistic.
Hotch sorely missed that optimism right now.
The room lay silent, forgotten. Unlike the rest of the house, there was no feeling of the inhabitant having just stepped out. A thick layer of dust covered everything and someone sneezed, a soft, tinny sound in the still air.
Hotch examined the prints on the walls, birds of all shapes and sizes. Books filling the shelves. A box of grimy film reels.
Photos lining the cupboard.
It was like stepping back in time and by JJ's shocked inhale, she saw it too. Morgan and Will didn't react. He couldn't tell about Rossi, the man stayed mute, his feathers flat and head lowered.
A desk sat in one corner of the room, but whatever had covered it had been swept to the floor, the polished surface marred by long gouges out of the wood forming a spiralling design of symbols. Hotch didn't look at the patterns carved into it, he couldn't. He stood in the doorway and tried to breathe evenly, tried to focus on what he knew instead of the absurdity that beckoned to him.
He couldn't ignore what the room was telling him.
Gideon, called the photos, smiling inhabitants hidden by neglect.
Gideon, laughed the film reels, and he knew that if he was to return during the night with hands and play those clips on the rusty projector, he'd find Charlie Chaplin soundlessly repeating the same.
Jason Gideon, whined the birds on the wall, the shapes they were trapped in, the absence of Reid.
Hotch still wasn't sure if he was ready to believe in magic, but the possibility of betrayal was nothing new to him.
The possibility of this betrayal, however?
It could destroy them.
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"I've been dating," Reid told Emily when she rung to ask about Henry, keeping his voice casual. She sounded stressed, and he could hear a familiar noise in the background. At work.
Her work. Not his. Not Garcia's. Not anymore.
Neither of them were strong enough to face it. Emily… Emily had always compartmentalized better than any of them.
"Oh?" The tired tone vanished, replaced with a cautious sort of relief. "What's he like?"
Reid thought of the man's piercing blue eyes, and the shark smile that slipped onto his face when he thought Reid wasn't looking. He thought about Hotch profiling him (narcissistic personality, possessive, controlling. dangerous. what are you doing, reid?) and what Morgan would think (you can do so much better. stay the hell away) and what Emily would say to him if she were ever to meet him (fuck off), and he voiced none of these things.
"He's not boring," he said quietly, and thought finally of the goshawk.
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A clap of heavy wings broke the stillness and the smaller birds scattered as something swept through the door and landed on a rugged perch. Hotch backed up and hissed warningly, feeling JJ's small claws cut into his wing to keep her grip as he spread them outward in warning.
The strikingly marked goshawk peered down at him with eyes of endless deep red drawing him in and clicked its beak in return.
"Mage is returning. You should get back to the lake," said a clipped, familiar voice in the back of their minds.
Hotch knew that voice. Not a betrayal after all.
A reunion.
Gideon, he thought once more, shivering with the truth of it.
He tried to imitate the speech, pushing his thoughts towards the goshawk, but received no response. A focused sort of silence fell around him as though the others were trying the same, all of them sparing nervous glances back at the doorway.
Gideon spread his own wings and tilted his head, fixing them with a stare that Hotch had had levelled at him many times over the conference room table or a chessboard. "I'll help you speak. But you need to get out now. Now!"
They went and the goshawk followed.
.
.
He dressed Henry sensibly and himself attractively.
He wasn't even entirely sure why anymore, because there was something about Stephen that made every part of his profiler brain scream run.
When he dressed, he ran a hand over his hip thoughtfully, and realized he was checking for a gun he hadn't worn in six months. He still didn't cancel because there was an even bigger part of his brain that told him there was something important about tonight.
"Ready to see the birds?" he asked Henry when ready, finding the boy sitting at the kitchen table and drawing intently. He really was getting quite good. Reid looked down at the wonky outline of what was clearly the goshawk and his unease grew.
"Mama wouldn't like me going near birds," Henry replied with a shrug. "But I won't tell her if you won't."
By the time Reid processed that statement, it was already too late to respond to it.
He tucked it away as further proof that JJ had been wrong to trust him with this.
.
.
Morgan picked it up first.
"Is this right?" His voice quiet, and uncharacteristically uncertain, oddly hoarse considering he wasn't using any vocal cords.
"Correct," Gideon responded, turning his head and eyeing the raven with a predatory glare. Hotch wondered how long their friend had been here, trapped in the body of a bird. He wondered how much of himself he'd lost to the hawk's fierce demeanour.
He tried not to wonder who had done it to him… or if he'd done it to himself.
He definitely didn't think about how.
"This is senseless." JJ this time. Her voice a whisper, a tickle in the back of their minds. Rossi chirped in frustration, shaking his head vigorously. "We have to get out of here. Henry, he must be so worried about us. And Jack, Hotch. What about Jack?" She glanced at Will, who looked away.
We're going to get out of here, Hotch tried to send, but no one responded. He tried again. Failed. Hissed with bitter defeat.
"He's here," Gideon sent, glancing down at Hotch and blinking slowly. "You'll get it eventually, Aaron."
The eeriness of hearing his name from the goshawk spoken in such a familiar manner would never really fade.
The swallows and raven vanished, melding into the undergrowth. Rossi darted up into the trees, perching lightly on a thin branch and peering down the scraggly path towards the sound of faint footsteps.
Hotch slipped into the water and floated away, keeping close enough to the shore that he could see the man, profile him better, but far enough away that he was out of reach if things went wrong.
He felt almost sick with anticipation, the terror and reluctance at coming face to face with a man of untold power battling with the desire to face their common enemy.
His memories of the man were blurry, hazed with pain and shock, but he had a vague idea of what he expected him to be like.
His expectations were wrong.
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Reid stepped out of the thin trees and the first thing he saw was a lake stretching out into the distance, still and calm. It should have been a peaceful sight, tranquil even.
His palms started sweating as soon as he saw it, suddenly absolutely certain that there was something else going on here, feeling like a rat cornered by a hungry cat.
Or a hawk.
Henry wriggled out of his grip, smaller hand slithering from Reid's slippery hold, and darted towards the shoreline.
"A swan!" he yelled back, feet skittering on the smooth pebbles. Reid cringed as mud sprayed up the child's pants. He was never muddy and filthy when JJ and Will were around… "Uncle Spence, look at the swan!"
He looked at the swan, feeling the man step up next to him. The bird stared back, frozen on the glassy surface of the water. Neither of them seemed to breathe for a long moment. He studied it intently, drawn to it. Thick feathers of a brilliant white with wide, dark eyes ringed in black.
He had never actually been this close to one before.
A hand on his arm, gripping tightly. Reid felt fingers digging into his flesh. There'd be bruises there later. "Pretty, but he lacks substance," Stephen remarked, and Reid was stunned by the loathing in his tone. "I can offer you so much more."
The swan reeled back, swinging its long neck around and eyeing them both with what Reid almost fancied was trepidation. There was a startled whistling call from their left, and Henry almost fell into the mud in his excitement. "Kingfisher! Do you think… oh!"
Reid sucked in a sharp breath as the brightly coloured bird dived down and alighted gently on Henry's outstretched hand, its short squeaking voice turning low and affectionate.
"Are they tame?" Reid asked with great interest, stepping forward cautiously and focusing on not slipping in the slick mud. It would be just his luck if he ended up in the water. A quick examination of the great bird's large wings confirmed his suspicion that it could do plenty of damage if it wished. The kingfisher hopped around on Henry's hand, whistling once while peering up at Reid's face, and switching to a darker, angry chittering when it glanced at Stephen.
Stephen pulled him back, skating his hand away from Reid's elbow and sliding it around his waist instead. Reid expected something, some sort of warmth from the gesture, but for some reason he found himself looking again at the swan. The waterfowl looked back, face as impassive as expected, but the feathers on its back bristled as though inexplicably agitated.
"You could say that," Stephen responded with a cool laugh. "They're clingy enough." For some reason, as he talked, he stared straight at the swan challengingly.
"Why is he alone?" Henry said unexpectedly, turning to face them. "He looks lonely… he shouldn't be lonely. They're supposed to mate forever."
A flicker of movement in the corner of Reid's vision and he turned his head to find the goshawk peering down at him, red eyes wary. Misgivings gave way to a firm certainty that there was something here he'd been guided towards. Something important.
Reid wasn't the kind of man to believe in superstition, but he did hold a certain wry acceptance of fate.
He almost missed Stephen's next words, the callousness of them sending a bolt of icy rage straight to his core. "His mate is dead. He'll spend the rest of his life alone, as he deserves."
"But she might come…" Henry's voice wavered, broke. The kingfisher shrilled nervously, tapping his beak against the small hand softly.
"You don't come back from the dead. You should know that, your parents never came back after all."
Reid stiffened and pulled away. The charming mask that the man wore had fallen, and there was a cruelty there that was finally visible for him to see clearly.
Maybe he'd always been able to see it.
Hotch's voice. "You never told him about JJ and Will. You never corrected him that Henry wasn't your son. Most delusional stalkers have a predisposition toward psychosis."
Paranoid. He was being paranoid. Stephen hadn't shown behaviours consistent with the profile of a stalker.
He lashed out at Henry. "Paranoia may make the delusional stalker act aggressively towards a third party." Hotch's voice again, as casual as if he was delivering a profile to a room of police officers.
"Is that your goshawk?" Reid asked, hearing Henry's shocked sniffling turn to quiet sobs. The anger vanished, replaced with a nauseatingly calm determination. Even the birds seemed frozen, appalled. "He's not native to America."
A disinterested shrug. "Yeah. It's a useless old relic, but it pleases me to keep it around. A memento, you might call it." He smiled, but it was his shark smile and Reid returned it weakly.
It. Reid wondered how Stephen referred to him.
"What makes the delusional stalker more dangerous is their tendency to objectify their victims."
He made his choice.
He needed to get Henry out of here.
Then he needed to come back.
.
.
Spencer. Alive. Human.
And older than Hotch had ever seen him. Hair longer than the short cut he'd sported the day of the explosion, brushing his shoulders again. His skin haggard and taut, as though he'd spent weeks, possibly months, deprived of sleep. And thin… Hotch ached to have arms again, to pull him close and feel for himself the changes in the man's body, the new lines and angles that he could see shifting under the thin shirt he wore.
And Henry. Hotch had seen Henry just weeks before the explosion, holding JJ's hand and grinning with all the tenacity of youth. That Henry wasn't the Henry standing in front of them, taller and wiser than his age should have allowed.
"Oh my god," JJ said suddenly, her voice clear even though she wasn't visible to them. "They're older, Hotch. They're so much older, Henry is older. How long have we been here?"
"Reid's been grieving." Morgan's voice now, and it had all of his brashness back, loud and forceful. "Look at him, he's a wreck. This fucker is in his head, man. He got us out the way and now he's in Reid's head."
The man's voice, sharp with malice. "You don't come back from the dead. You should know that, your parents never came back after all."
"You bastard!" snarled Will, his accent strange in Hotch's mind. "You sick bastard, you stay away from my boy!"
"Don't be seen," Gideon snapped suddenly. "Unless you want to be caged again."
Hotch couldn't look away from Reid, seeing the barest shift in his emotions. Not enough. Not as much of a shift as Hotch would have expected, would have wanted.
The Reid that Hotch had held not even two weeks prior would have destroyed the man who dared to speak to his godson like that. This Reid… this Reid stood silent and watched Hotch with cautious, shuttered eyes, barely even seeming to register Henry's distress.
The man oozed closer to Reid and curled around him with a possessiveness that set alarm bells off in all their heads, leaning in close and murmuring something into Reid's ear. Reid stayed still, face as blank as though he'd forgotten to wear an expression, nodded minutely. Took the man's hand.
A return of affection.
Something in Hotch's heart cracked as Reid turned slightly and brushed his lips against the other man's, the barest hint of a smile turning up the corner of his mouth.
"What the fuck?" Morgan. Voicing all their thoughts.
Rossi swooped off of Henry's hand, taking to the tree again reluctantly. "Don't jump to conclusions," he responded, his tone calmer than any of them, except perhaps Gideon. "He's the smartest man I know. No matter what's happened, what he believes happened, he'll work this out."
As one, Reid and the man turned to walk away, Henry trailing after them and wiping at his face with a grubby sleeve. Reid didn't call out to him, didn't call him closer into a comforting embrace.
Didn't call him closer to the man's reach.
A spark of hope alit in Hotch's chest, fizzling weakly. He spread his wings, intending to fly after him, but something pinned him to the water, stopping his body from leaving it. He fought it for a moment, before subsiding. He felt almost paralysed by the notion that if he lost sight of Reid again, if he left his view, he'd never find him again.
The man clearly didn't want any of them following him. Except Gideon. The goshawk flew after them easily, not sparing the other birds a second glance. Like a faithful hound. Trained in captivity. Hotch wondered again how long Gideon had been a prisoner here, how long they'd failed him.
"He believes we're dead," JJ said finally, heavily. "He's not even looking for us. No one is. You really expect him to work out that we've been turned into birds? In what world is that even possible?"
Jack. Jack would think himself an orphan.
He almost shattered under that knowledge.
"He'll work it out," Rossi said again, resolutely. Stubbornly. "If there's anyone I'd expect to believe in magic, it's Reid."
.
.
Stephen showed them his home with his focus locked on Reid the whole time.
Reid had had someone's focus on him this intently once before, but it was Aaron's and it was different. He could feel the hunger in Stephen's eyes, the consuming desire to possess and own.
He managed his perceptions, didn't allow any of his feelings to leak through the carefully constructed facsimile of his face. Stephen didn't notice, or if he did, didn't care.
When they found the gilded cage empty, the shattered glass of a window crunching beneath their feet, the air around them turned heavy and dangerous. It burned in Reid's mouth and left behind the cloying taste of sulphur. Henry said nothing, just pressed closer to Reid's side and trembled.
"Swallows shouldn't be caged," Reid said once, and Stephen's gaze was violent when it snapped back around to stare at him.
Reid glanced through an open door into a dusty room before Stephen pulled him sharply away, and it was a vivid reminder of the past.
He'd seen that room before.
The hawk watched him endlessly and Reid felt madness beckoning.
.
.
Gideon reappeared and found them in a huddled group. They turned against him at first. He was one of them once and now no more. They knew that this could end with them on one side and him on the other.
None of them knew which side Reid would be on.
Hotch didn't admit that whatever side Reid took, he'd join. He'd lost him once. He couldn't do it again.
"He's my son," Gideon said with finality, his voice spent with a resigned grief. They were shocked into silence. "The man, he's my son. I did this. My actions, my inactions… I did this."
"Tell us," Hotch said eventually, because no one else seemed capable.
He did.
.
.
There's a saying among law enforcement officers that they have two families.
The ones at home, the sisters and brothers, parents and grandparents, spouses and children. The ones they protect.
And there's the ones at their job. Their partners. Their teams.
Eventually, every one of them has to make a choice between the two families.
It was the one thing that Aaron, Jason and Dave all shared. They'd all picked the work.
They'd all paid the price.
.
.
It began before Spencer Reid had ever stepped foot into the FBI, before Aaron Hotchner had even considered that there was a future for him in another man's arms.
It began with a boy who saw his father choose his work over his family again and again and again.
Reid could talk for hours, and had indeed done so, about the nature vs. nurture debate and whether the likelihood of personality disorders developing in children was made greater by parental neglect or childhood trauma or whether it was entirely genetics. Or perhaps how the two would intertwine and create the perfect storm of unavoidable tragedy on their path.
Gideon himself would be the first to tell you that he was no stranger to narcissism.
There were missed bedtimes, a graduation ceremony with a seat filled with discarded expectations, and the final betrayal: when the child walked away, the father didn't follow.
When the child came back, he was no longer child but a man grown, and a stranger.
He saw his father with another man, close enough in age that they could have been brothers, and upon this man the father heaped all the praise and encouragement he'd neglected to give his own son.
Resentful stalkers pursue a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victims – motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress the victim.
At first. But then it changed.
Even the man, bitter and ostracized from his peers by his own brilliance, could see that his father had found someone special. Someone remarkable. Someone who could shine brightly enough at his side that his father would have to notice him. They were two halves of a single whole.
Intimacy seekers seek to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. Such stalkers often believe that the victim is a long-sought-after soul mate, and they were 'meant' to be together.
The man planned.
He learnt.
The magic?
It was all a part of it. A ripple of space where the world shifted just enough that it became possible, a relic of an older time when magic was commonplace.
At least, that was what he believed. All he knew for certain was that this world allowed him the ability to create a place where he and his perfect companion together could burn brighter than anyone would have ever believed possible.
He got his revenge on his father. And he used him, used him to learn all he could about his new obsession. His father would be the final blow against the man to bring him into his arms. It would be simple. Perfect. Brilliant.
Jason Gideon had always loved birds.
Then Spencer Reid chose another without even considering how this would make Stephen feel.
Obsessive love is a hypothetical state in which one person feels an overwhelming obsessive desire to possess another person toward whom they feel a strong attraction, with an inability to accept failure or rejection.
Stephen burned the world around his love, leaving him vulnerable, and then took from him the creature who'd dared to try and possess what was rightfully his.
And then he swept in to pick up the pieces of the man he'd broken.
.
.
"Can we leave this space?" JJ stayed calm and collected, recovered from her shock at seeing her son so altered in what felt, to them, like mere weeks. "This… ripple… that he's trapped us in? How come Reid can come here? Won't he notice time has passed when he leaves?"
"You can't leave while the spell is active," Gideon responded, turning his head to stare at Hotch. "Reid is a creature of the outside world, and we're not. Not anymore. Time will pass normally for him while he's here, just as it would outside. If we want to leave, we have to break the spell. It's tied to the strongest one. To break them all, we need to break that one first."
"Mine," Hotch said quietly. "How?"
"I don't know." The admittance was reluctant. "There's a key to it, but only Stephen knows what it is. Mine was… mine was familial love. If I could repay the sins of the father to the son. I failed in that, and now it's too late. He has you. And he feels stronger about you than he ever did about me."
"He despises you," Morgan added, feathers rustling slightly as he shivered. "He could have made the spell painless. Mine is, when he lets me be human. But he controls it. He made yours complex and torturous."
Hotch knew that too.
"Because of Reid. He's obsessed with Reid, believes that they're destined to be together." Rossi had his profiling tone on, posture rigid and locked in thought. "Jason, your key was based on what he perceived as your failure to be his father. Aaron, yours has to be based on Reid. It's the only thing that makes sense. He's a borderline erotomanic stalker, obsessive and delusional. Maybe it's because you're in a position of control over Reid, as his boss?"
For a profiler, his friend could miss the blatantly obvious sometimes.
He told them the truth.
"We… we were together. That's why Stephen lashed out like this, he must have been… watching us."
Shocked silence.
"That could be it," Gideon said finally, and there was no sign of sentiment in his voice anymore. He'd been a bird so long maybe human emotions were harder for him to grasp. "If you can prove that you love him… romantic love, it might be the key. One of them, anyway."
"What's the other?" Will asked, because the others were still staring at Hotch like he'd grown an extra head.
Hotch wished he hadn't asked because as soon as Gideon had admitted that his spell tied the others together, he'd suspected as much. He just didn't want them knowing. If he had to act on it to save their lives, he didn't want them stopping him.
"Your death. If you die, we're all free."
Hotch waited until the others had moved away, separating to try and deal with everything that had happened. Then he approached Gideon; the raptor perched in a tree unmoving and observing the direction of the house.
"You can leave here. You've done it before, to spy on us." It's not a question.
"Yes."
"Can you do it without Stephen?"
"Yes."
The goshawk swivelled his regard back onto Hotch and waited for his request, although they both knew what it was. Hotch pushed what he'd retrieved from the sad pile under the bush forward with a webbed claw. It sat between them like a wall they couldn't breech.
"You say you want to help us. Will you take this to him?"
In the time that followed, Hotch could hear the soft sound of the goshawk's quick breathing. "Yes."
Hotch held the credentials up in his bill and the hawk took it with a careful talon, claws cutting the thin leather as easily as a knife through butter. He could hear them grating along the metal of his badge within.
"Why didn't you try to get a message to us sooner?" He asked because he had to, because there was something resigned about his old colleague's behaviour that was far too much like acceptance of his fate.
"Because it would have been a betrayal to my son."
That wasn't all. Hotch could feel it. "And?"
Gideon closed his eyes before he answered. "I told you. There are two keys to your spell, same as mine. Love, to free us. And betrayal."
"Betraying him would have broken the spell?"
The hawk didn't reply, but Hotch didn't need him to.
Betrayal equalled death. He wasn't worried. He'd never betray Reid.
He'd rather burn than betray him.
Black wings barred with white spread above him; Gideon preparing to fly to the man Hotch loved.
"Wait, does it still count?" Hotch queried suddenly, numb horror sinking into his bones. "Does this still count as betraying your son?"
'Will this break your spell?' was the question left unsaid between them. 'Did I just ask you to die?'
His voice when it came rang with wry acceptance. "Yes."
It didn't stop him from going before he could tell him not to, and a part of Hotch went with him.
.
.
He called Emily because a part of him was still the Reid of six months ago, still the man who walked into danger with his team at his side.
He wasn't a man who went in alone.
He called Garcia as well because they were still a team, even now, and someone needed to be there for Henry if he didn't come back. His loss would mean little on the tail of Henry's grief for his parents, just a small set-back in his recovery. Garcia would be better for him anyway.
When they arrived at his door, they both wore cagey expressions, looking at him like something was wrong. Maybe something was.
He wasn't completely sure that he was still sane either.
"You want me," Emily began slowly. "To help you break into some guy's house that you've been seeing because he's… weird? Reid, you're weird. Doesn't it make sense that you'd attract the same?"
Reid breathed slowly. He hadn't wanted to tell her the whole of it, or Garcia. He still wasn't going to, not entirely.
How could he possibly explain how he'd looked at a bird and seen something familiar in its eyes?
"I think he's been stalking me," he said finally. Emily went quiet and furious, and something dark began to simmer in her eyes. "I've seen his… him around. Watching me and Henry. He shows all the signs of fixating on me, possibly to a dangerous level. I… I need your help. Please."
He couldn't exactly tell her about the goshawk, not yet.
Or the kingfisher with the tilt to his head, just like someone he had known once.
And certainly not the swan with the painfully familiar bearing.
"He's stalking you and you want to go to his house?" Garcia shrilled. "Reid, hun, are you insane? I know you miss the FBI and the action and maybe you're a little adrenaline deprived but you're not Morgan, you can't just go kicking doors in… oh." She trailed off at the mention of her friend, blinking back tears furiously.
Henry appeared in the doorway, a red line across one cheek where his pillow had pressed, and eyes gunky with sleep. "There's a bird at my window," he announced, breaking the tension. "He wants in."
Reid's heart tried to throw itself out his mouth and he was moving before the two women had time to process the odd statement, darting to Henry's room and shoving the door open.
The goshawk stared at him through the glass, and for a moment the disappointment that it wasn't a swan almost overrode the fierce bite of fear the sight of the creature inspired.
"What is that?" Emily said behind him, stunned, but he ignored her and opened the window.
"It's Uncle Spence's friend's sparrowhawk," Henry answered with a yawn. "He follows us a lot. I don't like Uncle Spence's friend. He's mean. He lies."
The goshawk hopped in and held out a patient talon, something dark held tightly in his grip.
Something in Reid broke a little at the sight of the warped leather, recognising it instantly. He knew whose face was going to look out at him even before he reached out and took the credentials, turning so Emily and Garcia could see what he held.
"Oh my god, what," Garcia stated flatly, going pale and pressing back against the wall. "Reid, is that…"
Emily said nothing but she reached out and opened it, sensing the crippling fear staying his hand.
Aaron.
Aaron's badge. Aaron's ID. Aaron's face frozen in a moment long ago.
"How did you get this?" he asked the bird. Emily stared at him like he'd expected her to, watching him talk to an animal as though anticipating an answer. "Did you get...?" He stopped and choked on the words, pushing back cruel hope violently. He wished Henry wasn't here. "Did Aaron give it to you?"
A startled sound behind him. He couldn't look at them. He couldn't see their faces.
The hawk nodded stiffly on a neck unsuited to the movement.
"Oh shit," Emily whispered.
Reid couldn't think.
"Is he… alive?" Garcia said, her voice hitching. He wanted to hug her, to thank her for asking what he couldn't, but the words tangled in his mouth. "Are they alive?"
The hawk nodded again, slowly.
"Can you take us there?" He found his words.
The hawk nodded, one last time.
"Okay," Emily said finally. "Okay. Let's go. The world has gone mad and we're following a bird, but let's go."
.
.
Gideon hadn't returned by the time the sun began to dip over the horizon. Hotch watched the sky restlessly, the water cool under his body, waiting for the pain he knew was coming. He viewed it fatalistically. Nothing he could do would stop it from happening, he just had to deal with it when it happened.
It almost felt like repentance.
For Jack, for Reid, for his team and the months of their lives they now knew that they'd lost. For the grief their families had suffered.
For Gideon.
The moon appeared like a promise and he felt the ripple of the spell up his spine as the thin white light began to glimmer on the water's surface. He knew that the others were nearby, watching even though he'd told them not to, their silent sympathy and love almost tangible. He wondered if any of them would join him tonight.
"Someone's coming," Will said suddenly, his voice faint as though far away. "Awh, Aaron, it's Reid! And Emily, they're coming! Gideon found them!"
"Hold off on changing back if you can." JJ that time, and frantic. "If he doesn't see you change, we'll never get him to believe it."
Pain washed over him in a wave and he spread his wings and trumpeted loudly, the sound a hollow echo through the trees. "Hurry."
"Hold on." Rossi appeared out of the trees, landing on his wing and whistling soothingly. "Come on, Aaron. Hold on. This is it. This is the end of this."
The moon gleamed.
.
.
The hawk faltered as soon as they stepped into the forest, its wings drooping as is landed with an awkward skittering on a branch. Reid watched as it swayed as though in disorientating pain.
"Is it okay?" Emily asked, keeping her distance from him.
"I don't know." He didn't think so. He reached up to it, trying to coax it onto his arm. The raptor came down reluctantly, shuffling up his jacket sleeve, talons leaving long painful scratches despite its care. Reaching Reid's shoulder, it slumped against his neck and panted, clearly exhausted.
Two small, dark shapes burst out of the foliage around them and dived around their heads, calling shrilly with piercing songs. Emily ducked as one skimmed her hair with a wingtip. It grabbed a lock of hair and tugged on it with tiny claws, wings beating rapidly and forked tail brushing her shoulder.
"Oh, this night just keeps getting fucking weirder," she yelped, pulling her hair out of the small talons and dropping her hand to her gun.
Reid stared at the other bird as it hovered in front of him, meeting his gaze attentively. "We should follow them," he said softly, unsure of what goaded him to that remark. "They want us to follow them. Quickly, come on."
"Oh, why not? I mean, we've come this far on the trail of a bird… why not a little further?" Her voice was heavy with sarcasm, but she still followed.
He had a feeling she always would.
.
.
He still didn't know how long the transformation took.
He was never conscious enough to count.
The pain came and it took with it everything that made him human, leaving him a broken form screaming for release.
This time he tried to push it back. Just till he gets here. Just hold it until he gets here.
Spencer. I love you.
His last thought was one of love before the pain became too much and his body began to shift despite him.
.
.
The cry was raw and animalistic and Reid began to sprint, needing to find the source. The birds whirled around his head, goading him on, and he could hear Emily keeping pace behind him.
The lake at night was a pitch black mirror, cold and empty except for the dim reflection of the moon off the snowy back of the waiting swan. Waiting for him, he knew, although he had no idea why the notion seemed so certain to him.
If this was madness, it had been unbearably kind in its descent upon him, and he almost laughed with the tragedy of it.
Silver light flashed on white feathers and the bird turned wildly, shaking its head and calling out, a mournful sound. And again with a voice that was almost human, throwing its wings open and sending sprays of water fountaining outward from its wingtips.
His mother's voice stole the air from his lungs, a long held memory of a murmured verse. "There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song."
Henry. "He sings because he misses someone."
Reid opened his mouth to say something but the light grew until it blinded him, hiding the swan from view. Emily cried out, startled.
His own words. "Swans don't sing."
Someone else screamed and he wasn't sure if it was him or not.
The light cleared and he was on his knees with Emily's fingers biting into his arm. The swan had vanished. The moonlight gleamed off pale skin instead of feathers.
He stumbled up and a man raised his head and looked back at him from the water where the bird had sat, face pale and gaunt, shadowed. Dark hair limp with dirt, matted against his forehead. Dirty and half-dressed, but his eyes were still his. Exactly the same as the last time they'd looked at each other, in that instant of anger before Reid had walked away.
"Aaron," breathed Reid, the logic and rationality he'd spent his life believing in crashing down around him.
In the end, he didn't even care how it happened.
Aaron was alive.
And Spencer Reid blazed to life with him.