Ekphrasis
Challenge: Write this prompt with the technique of ekphrasis, where a visual medium is described using prose.
#
To anyone who watches the video stored in the digital archives of the FBI under 'Hankel, Tobias', this is what they'd see:
The first bunch of videos are set in the victims' homes. The viewer sees the terrible build-up, gigs and gigs of it. People living their lives, unaware that the man about to end those lives already has eyes within their homes. After the build-up comes the equally terrible ends: the viewer sees those people die. It's a horror movie in every way but one: these videos are real. Each are lives taken, each are people shattered.
In those files, there are other audio recordings. The calls made to emergency services moments before the knife struck home. If the viewer wishes, they can listen to the hoarse, grating voice of those people's murderer. They can listen to him perverting the words of God to reach his own eventual end.
And then there's these.
Of the few who do open these files in the years after the Hankel case has long been closed, some of them know the man within. Even if not by name, they know him by sight. Spencer Reid, after all, has been a staple of the BAU for a long time now, as expected within the bullpen as is the carpet or walls. People recognise him, but never like this.
The footage is silent for the most part. The camera had been running beyond what Hankel had broadcasted. It's a cruel mockery of the man they recognise. On the screen, he's smaller than life and he's broken to boot. There's blood in his hair and spooling down his face. Bruises litter the skin that's bared to them, his leg crooked grossly against the chair he's slumped in. What Hankel used to control him is a cautionary tale to all trainees: you can be overcome.
That person looks closer and shivers to see the evidence of the binds holding Spencer Reid to that chair: the belt around his arm and the broken skin. The rash of red, bruising and blood, the track-marks too small to be seen for sure. The empty hypodermic that's left there at one point. The blown pupils and empty gaze of the agent as he wakes and sleeps and wakes and sleeps and never looks close to escape.
The videos also show his death. Several of the watchers turn it off here; incidentally, those who turn it off are those who recognise him by sight. It's uncomfortable to see the man on the desk opposite you convulsing and dying on the floor. It's uncomfortable to see him suffer.
It's haunting to see any of it.
And it's a cautionary tale: this could be you. For three days and three terrible nights in 2007, it was Spencer Reid.
Don't get cocky.
Witch-Hunters
Sometimes, he considers that maybe they're on the wrong side…
#
"Youse the witch-hunters?" they're asked when they ride into the village together. Rossi just rolls his eyes at the question. They've got the white Roman collar of the Catholic clergy and the red Roman cuffs of the Witch-Hunters Guild; what else do these people expect?
"Where's the witch?" Hotch asks. A lifetime of trying to save these people from damnation and they still hide the guilty and avert their eyes when he rides into town. It's insulting, really, even if a small part of him whispers that it's also understandable. Hadn't Rossi said it best when he'd first taken Hotch under his wing, back when Hotch was nothing but a hotshot hunter with no tact to speak of?
We're torturers too, he'd said. That had pissed off Hotch who, at the time, had seen nothing wrong with that. But now…he's older now, and he knows not everyone reported to them is guilty. His disdain for these people no longer extends so far that he condones what the Guild does to them.
But what choice do they have?
They're pointed out of town and onwards they ride, expecting the woman to flee them.
She doesn't.
She's waiting outside her ramshackle hut, stained glass windows casting rainbow patterns on the dirt the witch-hunters ride over. "I'm not a witch," she says when they draw up before her.
"That's what they all say," Rossi responds. She sure looks the part, with razor-sharp black hair and a long, pointed nose, but it's her eyes that catch Hotch's attention. They're dark and discerning and he thinks: this woman is nothing like the others. "You got proof?"
"I have someone to speak for me," she says with another smile like the first. "And I have a God who doesn't believe in torturers."
"Do you now?" Hotch asks, curious despite himself.
All he gets in return is an, "Ask him yourself," with her gaze drifting past him. "I'm nothing but a familiar."
When Hotch turns, there's a man standing there—and then there's nothing.
#
When he wakes, he's a raven in a cage. There's an owl looking startled next to him, the feathery tufts above its eyes eerily reminiscent of Rossi's eyebrows.
Shit, thinks Hotch.
Always knew we'd go wrong being sexist pricks, Rossi responds with a hoot.
Beside them the woman appears, leaning close and studying Hotch. "Hope you like mice," she informs him pertly, closing her dangerous eyes with slow satisfaction. "You're going to be in there until he thinks you've learned your lesson."
What lesson? Hotch asks angrily, jumping around on his perch.
"Appearances are deceiving," says the witch from behind her, a man with a wiry frame and thick glasses. "And your faith is cruel."
Rossi says nothing, just sighs and closes his eyes.
And there they stay.
Healing
Time is a great healer, and it sure has been a long time…
#
When Jack is grown, he takes his children somewhere important to him, somewhere he's never really thought to take them before. Ally is too young to understand the gravity of the moment, but Damian seems to get it. The walk across the grass is muted but comfortable, both of Jack's hands filled by his children's, and his wife walks beside them.
"Is this Grandma?" Damian asks when they reach the grave where Haley Brooks rests. Jack looks down and wonders if his dad is ever sorry that she died a Brooks and not a Hotchner, or if he's never thought of it past the grief of her being dead in the first place.
"It is," he says quietly. It doesn't hurt as much as it used to. He's burned a lot of candles to talk to her, even though her voice only exists to him now in the aging home videos he's watched. "She died protecting me from a monster. You know the story."
"She's a hero." Damian nods seriously. "I want to be a hero like Grandma too."
Jack just smiles and ruffles his son's hair. He'll learn, one day. There's no one in Jack's family he doesn't consider a hero.
Asleep
Someone is missing…
#
It's been a rough case. They're on day four and no one in the team is getting enough sleep. Hotch is starting to feel like his eyes are about to fall right on out of his head, only realising that he's nodding off at the desk when the case file under his nose is suddenly a lot closer than before. Jerking upright, he glances around hoping that no one saw that—noting JJ's red eyes and Rossi's hang-dog expression and the glazed look on Morgan's face. They're at the end of their tether, and he knows nothing more is getting done tonight. Time to all go recharge. He tells them this, making sure each and every one of them leaves the precinct before turning to pack up his own belongings. The hotel is just down the street so he's not worried about any of them driving tired, which means his mind can remain blissfully empty of all but the thought of—
Reid.
Where's Reid?
Hotch goes looking, asking the officers on third shift if they've seen his youngest team member. None of them has, which isn't surprising. Most of them have only just clocked on and are still doing their intakes. Curious and a little concerned, Hotch keeps searching. Reid's not in the breakroom, or in the file room, or talking to anyone in the squad room. A text to Prentiss confirms that he's not back at the hotel.
Now truly worried, Hotch jogs outside and turns in a sharp circle looking for a familiar profile. His phone is silent, no response from Reid—
There's a shape in the front seat of the SUV, unmoving when Hotch sprints towards it. He's terrified for a second but finds, when he gets there, that there's no danger here. Just Reid curled up in the front seat and fast asleep, not even twitching when Hotch opens the door to check he's okay.
With a thin smile as his heart rate slows, Hotch leans the door almost shut and goes to the back of the car to fetch the blanket they keep back there for emergencies. After a shock like that, he's not all that tired himself. Maybe he'll just cover Reid over and wait for him to wake, working on the case in the driver's seat beside him.
Just in case.
Anthropomorphism
He doesn't fully trust his gun…
#
Reid doesn't fully trust his gun, always sure that it's passing silent judgement. It begins after Hankel. The Glock 26 he's always carried, the one that Hotch gave him, it begins to feel wrong. He fancies it's because it knows what he did in Hankel's hut; it knows he's not at all worthy.
So, he switches to a revolver. That's easier to handle, though he still doesn't trust it. It feels dangerous and alive in his hands.
It reminds him he could die.
Neverwhere
She's lost, but that may not be such a terrible thing…
#
Elle is lost. After leaving the BAU, she wanders aimlessly, doubting that anyone cares. She wanders and she wanders and she wanders, until suddenly she becomes aware of a door. She's in a part of town she's never been so a door really shouldn't be that startling to her, except this one is. For one, it's in a startling place: smack bang in the middle of the street. She stares at it, wondering how the fuck it's staying upright, who the fuck put it there, where the hell it goes.
That last thought should be obvious, and she laughs at herself for even thinking it. Obviously, it goes nowhere.
Just to prove this to herself, she marches right on over there and opens it, stepping through without thinking. And isn't that just like her? It's exactly what got her fired, after all, acting without thinking. It's what almost let that scum escape.
She's not on the street anymore.
She's somewhere else in a market with a cement roof, looking up and staring at where the sky should be and finding only concrete. Around her, people bustle, none of them quite right.
It kind of feels like she belongs. She's not right either.
"Where am I?" she asks a stranger, turning and finding that the door is gone. She's not that worried by that. Where would she go anyway?
"Nowhere," the man says with a smile.
"Neverwhere," says the rat. "Where the lost go, lovey. Where those who don't 'av a place up top. 'Av you got a place up top?"
Elle thinks, no.
She belongs here.