Caroleyn Marcia Lemieux had been born on a cold, rainy night on the twenty fourth of December on a year that her own mother would fail to recall in years to come. Never knowing a father, she did know a slew of "uncles", "cousins", "man-friends", and, even, on special occasions, legitimate boyfriends. By age thirteen, she'd come to have one of her very own, even if he had been her mother's boyfriend first, and even if he was twenty years older than she herself was at the time.

Dave, he'd gone by - just Dave – nothing more, nothing less. He'd taught Caroleyn all there was to know about the game of love, all about the crying game, and was also thoughtful enough to recruit her into the lucrative business of hooking buyers of prescription medications that he himself had scored from not even God knew where to sell them to. Caroleyn was happy enough to play along with this until the arrest came.

At first, it seemed no big deal to her. Sure, she was scared – who wouldn't be? Then, when her mother wouldn't post bail for her, she told herself, Hey – why should that surprise me? No, it was only once her Dave abandoned her that Caroleyn decided to strike out on her own. She did what little jail time ordered of her (considering that it was so short due to both her age, her lack of a prior record, and the fact that she gave up information on Dave himself in exchange for time, as well) and eventually got her G.E.D., before entering into nursing school. All things considered, she was doing fairly well for herself by the time she reached her very last semester at said nursing school. Days away from graduating, she felt she had it all: her mother (who'd always been a cantankerous sore spot than an actual parent to her) was no longer in her life, she herself hadn't tasted a single drug since her early teens, and she had a wonderful, caring fiancé to boot.

Life was perfect.

It has been noted by many people before (and will be noted by as many more in the future) that the one thing that always seems to come most predominantly before a fall is pride. If ever there was a truer case and example of this, it'd have to be the one that unfolded the second that Caroleyn became too complacent within her own surroundings.

Now, it had happened to be the case that she hadn't been feeling so well in the days leading up to her actual day of graduation. Literally the day before said graduation, a test at a free clinic gave her an explanation for her ill feelings. Not quite too foolish, she half-expected her fiancé to try and bail out once she told him the news, which, by the way, she did directly give to him after the graduation ceremony itself. However, to her pleasant surprise (and utmost relief) Frederick Ford was over the moon about the news of his wife-to-be expecting a baby.

As it was, Caroleyn M. Lemieux, R.N., soon to be wife and mother, was also over the moon regarding her life itself. She had never once accounted for the ghosts of her past, nor had she ever expected a single one of them to dare slip back to haunt her. That said, if she had expected one of them to bother her, it'd have been her mother. But no, most surprisingly of all, it was he who had initially abandoned her once upon a time that came barging back into her life on a cold, rainy, Christmas Eve night that she herself would rather not recall the exact year of.

There had been a knock at the door just after seven o'clock that afternoon. Considering the fact that Fred's family was expected to come over for a Christmas Eve dinner, this was not remotely unexpected or surprising.

Without even checking to look through the peephole, Caroleyn opened the door with a smile on her face, only to gasp aloud and drop the box of turkey stuffing she'd been holding in her left hand, leaving it to fall to the ground, its contents spilling out across the tiled floor.

"It's taken me forever to find you, you little bitch."

Shaking her head in disbelief, the young woman took a few steps back away from the door, bringing a hand to her mouth as she looked back at the gaunt-looking face of the man she once knew as her first boyfriend.

"You were just a kid. You didn't even think twice about turning me in, did'ya? You got me kept in the can for a long, long time, kiddo - a good, long ole time."

"Dave, I –"

"Don't speak my name, you dirty little whore. I saw your wedding announcement in the newspaper. Saw your birth announcement, too. So you thought you could do better, right? Screw your past – move on up to the high part of the neighborhood? Marry a rich guy, have his kid? You think you have it all?"

Before Caroleyn could respond, Dave had stepped up closer to her, taking out a knife as he did so, and using his free hand to grasp hold of her long hair – twisting it up in a painful fashion as he made his hand into a fist. "You thought wrong, you filthy little bitch. You won't have nothing after tonight."

The sound of the gunshot that came next rang out loud and clear. From the other end of the room, Fred Ford had cocked and pulled the trigger of his weapon. But when the shot missed Dave though, the straggler let go of Caroleyn's hair at once, dropping her to the floor, hard. Though she'd landed wrong on her ankle during the drop, and had therefore twisted it, the new wife and mother struggled to clamber to hold onto the edge of the kitchen counter. She'd pulled herself up just in time to watch as Dave stabbed her husband right in the chest – not once, but twice. Immediately afterward, a stunned looking Fred aimed his gun and shot once again, this time fatally wounding the intruder in the gut in the proccess.

As far as Caroleyn was concerned, it was much too late to matter. Remaining stood - just barely able to thanks to the support of the counter's edge - she remained stationery, in a full-on state of shock for several moments, not even responding to the sound of her own infant daughter screaming for her in the next room over.

It wasn't until Fred's family finally did arrive (by way of entering into the home by way of the already opened door) did Caroleyn snap from her state of shock at all. No longer staring silently, she then took to shaking and crying, screaming louder than her own daughter's cries. Authorities were called, crime scene tape was put up – investigations and the like were underwent and, in the end, all that Caroleyn felt she was left with was her daughter and a sense of one certainty: no one would ever harm her child; no – matter – what.

After a haircut, dye job, and move from one state to another with her precious little Katrina, Caroleyn (now going under the name of Carole L. Ford, R.N.) worked as a nurse for quite a long while until she faced both hour and pay cuts at work. To suffice for the way of life she had been thus far (and had always planned to continue to) provide Katrina with, she returned to an old habit of selling medicine on the side.

True to her past crimes as well, she was eventually caught and arrested, though this time bail was put up for her – by her late husband's mother. Katherine Ford was not proud of what her daughter-in-law had done, but she had understood the reasoning behind needing to provide little Katrina with the best she could be given.

Katherine had taken custody of her granddaughter while Carole got her life back together (even if it did include a second arrest and stint of time in jail), and in the end, she returned Katrina to her mother once she proved herself to be able to provide a stable (and legal) life for herself and her daughter by way of becoming a stock broker. It was around this time that Carole also met a man by the name of Elan Stohnam, who had a daughter about ten years younger than her own little girl.

As it was now, on the sidewalk by the busted-out window of the boutique on Main Street, Caroleyn Marcia Lemieux-Ford-Stohnam had just shot her very own step-daughter in the stomach. With some sense of regret and sorrow immediately striking her the second she did it, the woman then did something no one present had quite expected her to do: she dropped the gun to the sidewalk, before loosening the hold she'd had around the scared-to-death looking Seph.

As any number of police officers, of varying ranks and precincts rushed to crowd in around the now-unarmed woman, one badge-carrier remained off to the side, knelt to the ground with the head of a glaze-eyed girl lying, resting upon his lap.

"I liked you because you were so different, but so the same," Gabrielle was saying to Reid, managing a faint smile, even as the blood in her lower abdomen continued to spread. "I know you know I'm not a good person. I'm okay with you knowing that I'm not a good person because . . . even if you're a good person, you and me – we're still made from the same thread. We just . . . split at different ends, you know? You, you split for the better – me? I split for the worst. . ."

"Gabe, don't say that. Gabe, you're – you're going to be alright," Reid said to her, himself growing pale as his stomach twisted in a sickening way while he looked down at her.

Placing a hand at her forehead, he pushed her hair back out of her eyes, saying, "Come on, just – just try to hold on a little longer. Ambulances are on the way."

"Why do you want me to be – what – spared, Spence?" Gabe asked him in a faint, starting-to-drawl sort of voice. "Like I said, we both know I'm not a good person."

"Anyone can change . . ." he said to her quietly, keeping a hand at her forehead, the other covered over her bullet wound. "Like you said – we're – well, we get it, you and me – we get the point in the same way, in the way others don't get it; for good or bad, it's still so different to find someone else that's able to really get and understand what you mean in the same way that you yourself do."

"Well, again . . . that's why I liked you so much in the first place, Spence . . ." Gabe said, still smiling faintly as her eyes slowly rolled back into her head.

"Gabrielle!"

Looking up and over as Seph bolted across the otherwise blocked-off street, Spencer Reid kept his hands on Gabe's forehead and stomach, not moving her as he watched likely the only true friend this kid had ever had drop to his knees beside her motionless body, his eyes wide and panic-stricken.

"Do something!" Seph shrieked at Reid, who could only look back at the seventeen year old and give him an apologetic stare.

Back on the other side of the street, Prentiss had Carole's hands affixed behind her back, handcuffed. She'd just read the woman her Miranda Rights, and was about to turn her about to get her to a police car when a voice called out to her from back across the other side of the road.

"Why'd you do it?" Seph shouted at her, tears now stinging in both his eyes and throat.

Not answering him, Carole remained silent and simply let Prentiss lead her on toward the police car, knowing in her own mind her own reasons for doing what she'd done. As her head was ducked downward so that it wouldn't strike the roof of the cruiser, she replayed in her memory a phone conversation she'd had earlier that same day:

"Yes, Mrs. Stohnam – this is Agent Emily Prentiss. I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Your step-daughter – Gabrielle – she was in to speak with me just earlier. She seems to think that your daughter, Katrina Ford, might be - in some way - connected with the recent string of murders of former high school dropouts. . ."

Of course, as Carole would later calmly – practically gladly testify to – it had been her doing the killings all along. Each case had a reason – each former highschooler had tried to do-in her Katrina in some way or another. Not a single murder had been for nothing, not even up until the very end; In her twisted mind, at least, this was the case.

Elan Stohnam, having seen things very differently, of course, felt no need to even try to pretend to be normal without his daughter in his life anymore, and had thusly packed up and moved to some obscure place where he wished never to be found. Katrina Ford, on the other hand, took every opportunity to visit her mother behind bars, when not otherwise pursuing a career in the business of Wall Street.

Seph, on the other hand, seemed to be the one somehow most blatantly affected by all that had happened, and had been the very first to sign up for his high school's criminal profiling class, even if he was a senior, and only got to complete one half a semester of it before graduation. He'd had a one-on-one talk with Spencer Reid in the days after the passing of Gabrielle Stohnam. He didn't like to often think about the particulars of the discussion they'd had together, but he did often dwell on the general gist of the message that he'd taken from it.

People were clay – ready and waiting to be molded by the slightest things imaginable. If Seph had any say in how someone was to be molded for the better, then that's what he'd dedicate his life to.

If only he'd realized all this sooner, then maybe he could have saved the best friend he'd ever had from the mad world they all lived in.