Title: Bluejay
Rating: R
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: JJ/Hotch
Genre: Supernatural/Drama
Summary: It's been two years since Jennifer Jareau has seen her team. She's been a little busy fighting demons.
Author's Note: Written for floatingamoeba, who bid on my auction post for thepurpledove.
Part Nine
Jennifer Jareau awoke to find herself sitting on a sofa in the middle of a jungle. She wasn't alone.
Morgan and Prentiss seemed to have disappeared entirely; instead, none other than Aaron Hotchner was sitting on the end of the sofa.
He was wearing a starched suit, and his eyepatch was gone. This was the Aaron Hotchner of before the apocalypse.
'You know, JJ,' Hotch started, his voice stoic as ever. 'I could really go for some penguins. Bright blue penguins, covered in scales and hot sauce. Maybe with some fries on the side.'
'Penguins?' JJ repeated, dumbfounded.
'Oh yeah. Have I never told you about my love of penguins? I guess there are some things I should go through if we're sleeping together now.'
'Okay…'
'Great.' He gave a wide, un-Hotchlike grin. 'How do you feel about toes?'
JJ awoke with a start – for real this time.
She wasn't in the jungle, but rather a largish stone room. There were no windows, and the only source of light came from a series of torches that had been set into the wall.
Beneath what felt like a bed of woven vines, the ground was hard and uneven. Head spinning, she sat up. Apparently eating the local flora hadn't been the best idea.
'Drink,' said a voice that sounded strangely familiar, and yet completely different. Its owner pushed something into her hands. 'Your body is severely dehydrated. Along with severe hallucinations and dissociation, it's one of the more common side effects.'
'There were teeth marks,' she said, in a voice that sounded almost like a grunt.
'The flesh is safe to eat, but the seeds are markedly less so. The native inhabitants used them to create a potent psychedelic for shamanic purposes. In eastern Siberia, after a shaman consumed the Amanita muscaria mushroom, others would drink his urine in order to achieve similar psychedelic effects, but without the negative side effects. Unfortunately I don't think urine would have quelled the hunger pangs.'
JJ opened her eyes to find Spencer Reid staring down at her. He looked the same, and yet completely different.
His hair had been hacked into a broom-like shape, and his eyes were dark and sunken. Reid had always been skinny, but now, JJ was almost certain she could pick out individual bones.
He'd fashioned himself something that vaguely resembled clothing; JJ was no expert on organic fibers from another dimension, but it looked a little like hemp.
'Hi,' she said, not quite sure what words would actually be appropriate in this kind of situation. "Sorry you got kidnapped by demons in order to do their bidding, but it's nice to see you again"?
'Hi,' he replied, his voice far more stilted than she'd ever heard it. 'They're still unconscious. They probably will be for a little while longer. I believe they're more susceptible to the effects of the hallucinogen than you are. Come have some lunch.'
He led her into the next room, which seemed to be a kitchen and dining area of some variety. There was a roughly made wooden table in the center of the room, which seemed to be used for both meal preparation and eating.
'I only have one chair, but I've already eaten today.' He handed her a bowl filled with something that looked like intestines. 'Would you like a nutritional breakdown of the contents?'
'Uh…no. I'm fine, thanks.' JJ was sure that if she actually found out what she was eating, it would make it that much more unappealing. The texture was a little strange, but it didn't taste all that bad. A lot better than it looked, at any rate.
While she ate, Reid had moved over to the wall, which JJ now realized was covered in numbers and symbols.
'Is this how you fight the demons?' she asked, unsure as to why he'd be doing mathematics in a situation like this. Of course, it was Reid, so he did math in a lot of strange places.
'You're not a demon,' he said, matter-of-factly, as thought there was even the slightest possibility that the idea had been under question. 'Neither are they, although she's had a demon inside her mind; I can tell that much. They're smarter than us, you know. That's what they tell me. They give me ideas. Whispers of the greatest inventions the world has ever seen.' Reid tapped the side of his temple. 'Did you know that people once considered many mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder to be the result of demonic possession?'
'Are you saying you've got demons in your brain?' JJ asked, incredulous. Part of her was hoping like hell for Morgan and Prentiss to wake up, because it was entirely possible that years of solitude had sent Spencer Reid insane.
Reid didn't answer straight away, instead scratching out a set of equations on one wall, only to replace them with a whole new set. 'Numbers, and theories and ideas. A key to unlock the universe. There.' He pointed to a corner of the room, where a strange object that looked almost like a high-tech mirror sat. 'My dimensional portal. Not quite finished. A few temporal issues. Might well send you back to the big bang, or the Mesozoic era. I wanted to build a time machine as well, but the paradoxes…' He gave a laugh that was uncharacteristically maniacal. 'Oh, the paradoxes. The greatest mystery the world has ever seen, wrapped into an incomprehensible ball of the laws of reality itself. Srinivasa Ramanujan looked at mathematics from an entirely different perspective than as taught in the western world, independently compiling and calculating almost 3900 identities, equations and theorems, including both the Bernoulli numbers and Euler's constant at fifteen decimal places before he was seventeen. The mere fact that he could achieve such amazing things says a lot about the universalizability of knowledge and the concept of truth and beauty in physics and mathematics.'
He scratched out some more numbers.
'So I started again. An entire history of mathematical knowledge from the beginning. Of course, throwing out my preconceived notions was a big problem, but the demons helped with that.'
'Reid…' JJ's voice was soft, and, though she didn't quite want to admit it, afraid. 'Spence.' He started at the sound of that name, as though it was familiar to him. Good. 'Spence, how long have you been here?'
On the other side, it had been less than a month. JJ didn't know how the time dilation worked, but she could tell that it had definitely been more than a month.
'Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.' He grinned, as though expecting she should be thoroughly amused by his joke. 'I lost track…somewhere along the line. There's a number, and I should remember it, but I can't…I…Years? Decades? Centuries? The mind changes, but the body stays the same. Or at least a little bit the same. I think if my mother saw me, she'd try to fatten me up a little.'
JJ let herself relax just the slightest bit. If he remembered his mother, that was good. He still had some form of mental connection to the real world. 'Do you…' She gulped. 'Do you know who I am?'
'Jennifer Amanda Jareau, born August 17th 1978, East Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Afraid of the woods, used to collect butterflies, favorite football team is the Washington Redskins. Graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, and later from Georgetown. Fiancé, William LaMontagne Junior, Son, Henry LaMontagne, both deceased.' He faltered slightly. JJ tried to bite back the nausea that came up at the mention of Henry and Will.
'JJ?' he whispered. For the first time since she'd awoken, his voice was filled with something akin to fear. Afraid of what, JJ wasn't sure. Maybe he thought that it was all in his head. If the thought was terrifying to her, it would have been much more so to Reid, who had a much greater sensitivity to the issues surrounding mental illness.
'It's me, Spence,' she replied, unprepared for the sudden, tight hug that he wrapped her in. Reid had never been all that big on touch, but she could imagine that years of isolation might acquiesce that somewhat.
'It's been so long,' he said. The words came out as a whimper – not an accusatory one, but then, JJ couldn't help but hear it as accusatory anyway. Whatever they'd been through was nothing compared to Reid's plight. 'I wasn't sure…I wasn't sure if my memories were real, or made up.'
'They're real,' JJ assured him, as she pulled away. 'The BAU, the end of the world…All of it happened.'
Reid nodded. 'Of course, using a solipsist argument, the entire universe could well be the product of my mind, but I don't think that's likely.'
'No?' JJ raised an eyebrow.
'No, there are many arguments against the idea of solipsism in a purely epistemological form. For example—' He stopped midway through his sentence, eyes darting towards the doorway to the other room.
JJ turned quickly. Her hand started to edge towards her gun, stopping when she realized what Reid was staring at.
'Reid?' Morgan sounded incredulous, as though after all they'd been through, he hadn't actually expected to find the other man. Markedly less surprised, Emily reholstered her weapon and rushed over to embrace him without even a second thought. Not half a second later, Morgan followed suit.
'It's good to see you, man,' Morgan grinned, patting Reid on the back.
'It's good to see you, too.' Reid gave a small smile. For the first time, JJ was starting to feel like maybe they'd make it back alright.
…
Reid refused to take them to the portal.
That was a hurdle that they hadn't anticipated, and it left Morgan reeling with anger. It wasn't that he blamed Reid. It wasn't his fault – not really. He was angry at Sekhmet, for putting them in this position.
'Well, she did say he "lacked focus,"' JJ commented, picking at the meal they'd put together from Reid's food storage. Considering what happened the last time they'd eaten, Morgan didn't need to guess why she wasn't enthused.
'So what, does she want us to just give him a pep talk, as if that'll erase whatever's happened to him over however long he's been here?'
'I don't know about you, but I'm not much of a motivational speaker,' JJ shrugged.
'Whatever happened to the kickass communications liaison that could convince the media to turn around and go home?'
'The world turned to hell, Derek,' JJ said sharply. 'That woman has been dead for a long time.'
'Well as nice as it might seem to let our guns do the talking, I don't think that'll really help in this case.' Emily's voice was dark, and for a moment, Morgan wondered how things had gotten to the point where they were seriously considering using this kind of force to solve their problems.
Reid was in the other room, working on…well, working on whatever the hell he was working on. He'd eaten breakfast briefly, but judging by the way the other man's bones seemed to poke out a little more than usual, Morgan was entirely certain that he ate only enough to keep himself alive.
'Give it time,' Emily said with a shrug. 'He'll come around.'
'We don't have time,' JJ snapped. 'For all we know, everyone else is dead. We need to get back there, and help them.'
'You think I don't know that?' Emily countered, angrily. 'I'm not trying to be obtuse, JJ, I just don't think it's going to help if we push him. He's not exactly in the strongest state of mind right now.'
'Stop it,' Morgan interrupted. 'Arguing isn't exactly going to help the situation here, either.'
JJ gave him a curious look. 'When did you become the peacemaker?'
He gave a slight shrug. 'Come on. Let's go see what the genius is working on.'
In the morning light, they could see exactly what Reid was working on. All four of the walls in the next room were covered with scribbles and notations. He'd seen them yesterday, but now they seemed so much more prominent. Maybe the whole damn building was like this – like some enormous whiteboard.
'What are you working on?' Morgan asked, half-afraid of what the answer was going to be.
'Everything,' Reid answered. 'Physics, math, demonic symbols, the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I'm also translating the world's funniest joke into German, but I can only do it one word at a time.' He smiled widely, and Morgan wasn't quite sure whether he should reciprocate or not.
He settled on a slight chuckle.
Satisfied, Reid continued. 'Many scientists consider 1666 and 1905 to be "anni mirabiles," or "wonderful years." During his isolation for the duration of the bubonic plague, Isaac Newton invented differential and integral calculus, devised the universal theory of gravitation, and produced an explanation from the spectral nature of sunlight. Albert Einstein produced four significant papers on Brownian motion, the Photoelectric effect, Special relativity, and matter and energy equivalence, all of which played a significant part in laying the foundations for modern physics. Both men were in their mid-twenties.' His eyes lit up brightly, and Morgan could see the madness in them. It was almost frightening. 'If two of the greatest minds of our time could do that in one year, imagine what I could do in ten.'
'Wait, you can read their language?' Emily asked, digging in her pocket. She passed over the piece of paper on which she'd scribbled those unreadable symbols.
'Certainly,' Reid said, taking the piece of paper from her. His eyes scanned the page. 'It's a passage from their Scripture.'
'They have Scripture?'
'Most cultures throughout history have created mythologies, or origin stories – more often than not as the result of some search for meaning. Really, though, I think the universe is interesting enough without creating metaphors for its wonders.'
'What does it say?'
'"The dead shall walk among us, and the skies will turn to darkness, and we will vanish from this world. Locked away from the Carithnon for all eternity."'
'"Carithnon?"'
'It seems to be the accepted demonym for their species.' He cracked a small smile at the unintentional pun.
'You know a lot about them,' JJ commented, and Reid gave a small shrug.
'Once I figured out the symbols, the rest was mostly dialects. Realistically, though, I've read less than 0.01% of their recorded history.'
'That's a lot of history,' Emily mused. 'Seems strange to think that there's literally an entirely separate world that's just as complex and interwoven as ours.'
'So why leave it all behind?'
'Because their scripture told them to? Like some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy thing?'
'I don't think so,' Reid said, matter-of-factly. 'As near as I can tell, their habitat was no longer able to sustain them. Like…imagine a fire.' He frowned. 'No. That's not a good analogy. Imagine a fish. It swims along happily in its own environment. Then, the oceans suddenly turn to acid, so the fish is forced to created an interdimensional portal. The fish that are already in the other dimension don't like intruders; they're afraid of things they don't understand, so they kill the new fish. But some of the new fish decide that this should be their home, so they slaughter the old fish at will. If we close the portal off, the new fish will die, but what right do we have to say whether they live or die?'
'Reid, they destroyed our home. Millions of people are dead. Billions, maybe. We don't do anything, and our world will be dead, too.'
'God does not play dice with the universe,' Reid murmured, but Morgan could tell that he wasn't entirely convinced by his own words.
'Nobody's asking you to play God,' JJ said, perhaps a little more harshly than she would have two years ago, but Morgan wasn't going to judge. 'They would have died here if they hadn't jumped over?'
'Almost certainly.'
'Then you're not playing God. You're putting things back into balance. You want to change the world, but you can't do that from here,' JJ told him gently. 'What good is a wonder year if there's nobody around to reap the benefits? Isn't that what science is supposed to be about?'
'"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things - from subnuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is."'
Reid paused.
'Sagan, 1974. Broca's Brain. Page 15. A grain of salt is literally too complex for the human mind to understand in full detail. How can we ever possibly hope to understand the universe in all of its complexities? And that's without taking alternate dimensions into account. There are voices in my head, and I don't know if I want them to stop.'
Morgan shared a skeptical look with JJ, but it was Emily that spoke up.
'They don't stop,' she whispered. 'Even after they're long gone, their ghosts are still in my mind, haunting every thought.' Her voice took on an angry tone, and Morgan would have to be dumb, deaf and blind to miss the tears in her eyes. 'No matter how far you run, or how well you hide, they will always be there. Every waking second, every dream, every nightmare. At least…if we kill the others, then the ghosts are the only thing I'll have to deal with.'
'You never mentioned that,' Morgan said, feeling a little betrayed that she didn't feel she could confide in him.
'Well, there were more important things to deal with.'
There was a long, almost awkward silence, but Morgan was sure that he could see some kind of decision forming in Reid's eyes.
'It's getting late,' he said, with a harshness that wasn't like him. Morgan wondered if the demons in his head could take control. 'We can discuss this later. You should get some rest.'
Morgan didn't bother pointing out that they'd pretty much slept most of the day anyway. He knew Reid well enough to remember that the other man could be surreptitiously stubborn. So he returned to his makeshift bed, satisfied in the thought that an answer would come in the morning.
Only it didn't.
"Later," in Reid's mind, seemed to mean days later. They'd explored the area surrounding his hideout, but it became quickly clear that he'd set up his home a long way from wherever the portal was. He had provided them with a translation key for their language – several hundred pages of symbols with scribbled notes beside each one. Morgan had quite happily handed it over to Emily, who seemed better suited to the task of translating ancient languages.
'There's a big difference between Arabic and Demonic,' Emily told him.
'Actually, they're remarkably similar,' Reid told her, not looking away from the wall that he was currently writing on. 'It begs the question of whether or not there was some shared history between the worlds – perhaps a catastrophic event that resulted in a dimensional tear. The science isn't particularly sound, but that may be because this is a world of magic. I'm still attempting to determine how the rules work.'
That was the first two days.
On the third day, he acquiesced.
Morgan wasn't quite willing to call it "giving in," because he didn't fold, or break down, or surrender. He simply packed a bag, and said, 'We're leaving now,' as though they had absolutely no argument in the matter.
Which, really, they didn't. Their ability to save the world was contingent on Reid's willingness to help them do so.
'How are we supposed to destroy it, anyway?' Emily asked, as they walked through the overgrown streets of the city. 'I can't imagine that it has a self-destruct button.'
'I made demolition charges before my mind was consumed by other things,' Reid told her. 'They're in my bag.'
'You're just walking around with homemade explosives in your bag?' Morgan asked, suddenly skeptical of the idea of making it out alive.
'Derek, I have an IQ of 187 and several hyper-intelligent demonic beings living inside my head. The charges are safe. They have a remote detonator.'
It took about thirty seconds for the reality of those words to sink in. 'Reid. When you say remote detonator, you don't mean the kind of remote detonator that'll work interdimensionally, do you?'
'Not at all. The remote needs to be triggered from this side.'
They stopped.
'What are you saying?' JJ demanded. 'That someone has to stay behind to set them off? Can't you set them on a timer?'
'While it is technically possible, I believe that it's advisable to use the remote detonation option in order to ensure total destruction.'
'I'll stay,' said three voices at almost exactly the same time, and Morgan was not surprised in the least.
'Listen,' he said, before either of them could make their arguments. 'I don't have anyone left back there. My family's dead. I won't be leaving anyone behind.'
'Except Garcia. And Rossi. And the rest of us,' Emily reminded him. 'Besides. You're not the only one that doesn't have anyone left.'
'We can argue about who gets to make the mortal sacrifice later,' said JJ, in the kind of voice that made it pretty damn clear she would argue the point to the last. Morgan was sure that they all would. Hell, if Reid wasn't so addled by all the crap he'd been through, he'd probably be arguing about it, too.
They kept walking.
Four hours later, the sun was high in the sky; it felt like a normal day back home, except maybe a little more humid. The overgrown buildings grew smaller and more sparse, until they were out of the main city area. Ahead was a vast plain. For miles and miles; nothing.
'Are you sure you know where to go?'
Reid didn't even grace the question with an answer. Instead, he pointed at a peak in the far distance.
'Why so far away?' Emily asked. 'It seems a little strange for them to build the machine that's supposed to save their lives in such a remote location.'
'Radiation,' Reid explained. 'We're probably being bombarded by particles even as we speak.'
'Oh. That's nice to know.'
They kept walking.
It took a little less than a day of walking to reach the base of the mountain. At night, they lit a fire and took turns keeping watch. Morgan shot a six-legged, fur covered beast that got a little too close for comfort, and it ended up as the following morning's breakfast. He missed bacon.
Two hours in, they turned a corner and suddenly, it was right in front of them. Carved into the very surface of the mountain, an enormous, swirling portal. It seemed to be every single color at once, and yet none at all. It absorbed light, and yet reflected it. It was like nothing that Derek Morgan had ever seen in his lifetime.
'So that's what's keeping them alive, huh?' Emily asked, voice more than a little bit awed. 'Shit.'
'So how are we going to work this out?' Morgan asked. ''cos I'm pretty sure that if we start arguing about it, the world's gonna be completely destroyed before we get an answer. As the ranking member of the team, I nominate myself to stay behind.'
He didn't miss the looks of disgust that both Emily and JJ shot in his direction.
'Seriously?' Emily asked. 'Seriously? The Bureau's been dead and gone for two years, and you want to go and fucking pull rank? I don't know if that's chauvinistic or just plain stupid, but it's not going to work.'
'So what do you suggest?'
'Here's an idea,' said JJ. 'Draw straws. No arguments. No second guessing. One pick, and it's over.'
'Fine,' Morgan said, though he was absolutely not fine with it. One in three was better odds than he might've gotten otherwise. 'But Reid holds the straws.'
Reid, who had until that point been fixated on the portal, turned at the sound of his name. 'Drawing straws? Would you like to know the statistical probability of—'
'No,' Emily interjected, before he could say anything further. Reid looked slightly crestfallen, but went in search of sticks that he could use to complete the task.
The length of each stick disguised, Reid instructed them to close their eyes while they picked. Morgan reached out, and took the first stick that he touched, hoping beyond all hope that it was the right one.
It wasn't.
Stomach sinking in his heart, he looked towards the others in askance.
Emily gave a slight shake of her head, showing him her stick. It was the same length as his. Which meant…
'Well I guess that's settled, then,' JJ said, a grim smile on her face. She flashed her stick – the shortest stick – at them briefly, before tossing it to the ground. 'Reid, how do I blow this thing up?'
