By now, you already know the drill. So, I'm actually starting to ease into the biggest changes for this story aside from Reid, Morgan/Garcia, and Drake. What do I mean? Well, we know how the Boston Reaper arc begins and ends. So here, it is revealed how much of an impact he had on other cities and federal agencies. More than that, it's giving you the name for when I arrive at that moment.
Now, I'm honestly thinking about Jordan Todd's character and how she's going to interact with Drake. It's going to be weird, since she's not there very long. For those wondering if I'm going to be cutting JJ's maternity leave extremely short, I can tell you right now that won't be the case. As a matter of fact, I can guarantee it.
There's more background here, but most of it is filling in certain gaps. So, I'll touch on a few things here that may seem to be random in the chapter. The grandfather of Drake took care of him for a while. By that, I mean from the age of seven to sixteen. His parents aren't exactly a subject he likes talking about, but he doesn't hold resentment towards them.
Friday morning came way too quickly, and the bitter work week ended with a paperwork day. Morgan, Prentiss, and Greenaway were slipping files to Reid, who smiled in response. Drake shook his head, hopeful that he'd finally found his final team. From what he's seen, they're a well oiled machine. Hotch is an expert at keeping his calm, whereas Rossi is more emotional when needed. Reid was the expert on everything, but when paired with Morgan, it seemed to amplify Morgan's innate abilities.
Prentiss and JJ were the two who were empathetic, causing families and victims to feel safe in their presence. Sure, most probably only saw them as, well, the weakest agents. The two who could be overpowered if the Unsubs or families decide to be stupid, but Drake knew that was a surefire way to be in pain.
That left him and Elle. She was still an enigma to him, with the way she switched between empathy and compassion for victims to apathy and disgust for Unsubs. As if she suffered some type of trauma. He wasn't going to ask, however, as he liked the ability to potentially have children.
"Yo Sarge!" Morgan caught Drake's attention. "You coming or what?"
"It's lunch already?" He frowned. He figured he still had an hour or so left, but was wrong. Was he really lost in thought for so long?
"Yeah. Hotch is gonna meet us at the diner."
"I'll meet you guys down at the garage in a minute."
"Actually, it'll probably be a minute in a half unless you take the stairs, and even then, you'll be fifteen seconds late unless you take them two at a time. There have been some studies that show that it is a good way to get injured, as you could easily slip and due to your momentum, be unable to stop yourself without-" Reid was cut off by Prentiss's finger on his lips.
"Relax handsome. It's just a saying."
"Why say it when it's not feasible? Wouldn't that just make you a liar?"
"Nope. It's an easy way of saying I need to do something, and I will meet you guys down there." He just nodded, mumbling something about sayings should always be feasible. Drake had to admit, Reid is a great guy. Probably one of the few who would earn a parent's approval for dating their child, but he can take things too literal. Drake picked up the file he had been working on, making sure that nothing was missed, before grabbing his military jacket.
As he reached the garage, he couldn't help but sigh.
It was always hard on him to be a part of a team. He always felt like he'd end up failing them like he did his squad. Sure, he wasn't in command of it, but it's not always the thing that matters. What did was how he could've fought harder to be there for them. To protect them.
To die for them as they fell back.
Shaking the thoughts from his head, he plastered a fake smile on and pretended like everything was okay. His grandfather had taught him how to do just that. Keep pushing, even though the boulder would end up back at the bottom. Jump into honesty when it was time, but to remain prepared.
"What's on your mind Chris?" Elle asked, drawing strange looks from the other occupants of the vehicle. Morgan was just grinning, as if he knew something that nobody else did. Prentiss found herself relaxing, remembering how wound up Elle was a few years ago. She knew the reason for it, so her being so open was a nice change of pace.
Reid, on the other hand, seemed like he was preparing to collect on a bet.
"Just remembering moments with my Grandpa. Why?" He replied, ignoring the looks of the team. He wasn't exactly looking forward to them trying to figure things out.
"Like what?"
"How he always called me Currahee whenever he was proud of me."
"Currahee?" Morgan raised an eyebrow. Reid went to say something, only for Drake to cut him off.
"Yeah. He was a member of the Airborne during World War Two. He was a member of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. That is their motto, which comes from the Currahee Mountain."
"Was he the reason you enlisted?" Elle asked, noting how JJ was turning down the road that leads to the diner.
"Yes. I wanted to be a paratrooper, but he disagreed with it. He said that had it not been for my grandma, he would've ended things in the Fifties. Too many nightmares from those brutal days. He didn't want me to suffer that." JJ pulled into a parking spot, allowing the conversation to be paused. The group of six entered and smiled at the waitress.
Sitting down, Morgan took the opportunity to ask a question that had been bothering him. "Drake, what happened to your parents?" The table noticed the shift in Drake's posture. From sitting up perfectly to slightly slouching, his eyes softening a tad bit.
"They got divorced and left me with my Grandpa when I had just turned seven." Noticing the mixture of pitying glances and angry glares at him and Morgan, Drake laughed. "Guys, relax. I put it behind me when I ran into them after my first tour."
"What do you mean?" Reid asked. He couldn't fathom the idea of forgiving his father. Not the person who left a ten year old in charge of a mentally ill mother, who didn't attempt to reach out and make sure everything was being paid to prevent her psychosis from dominating their child's life. No, forgiveness was something he just couldn't justify.
"My first tour ended about three months after my nineteenth birthday. To celebrate, a few friends of mine made sure that they'd pick me up so we could go to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. During the trip, we went to a pizza place to try their deep dish pizza. My father was working there, and tried to avoid my table. When my friends and I were ready to leave, I made an excuse to meet them outside."
"Safe to assume you took the first step." Hotch stated. He remembered talking to his birth father for the first time after so many years. His step-dad was an amazing person who pushed him into doing it. To try and learn from the mistakes made. In a way, he managed to learn from it, allowing himself to accept the divorce.
"Yeah. He revealed that the relationship, if you could even consider it one, was as stable as a house of cards during a magnitude ten earthquake. My mom wanted to be on the West Coast, soaking in the sun and enjoying the beaches year-round. Dad wanted to be on the East Coast, live through the bitter seasons and appreciate the different colors during the year." He paused as the waitress arrived, taking the late arrivals orders.
"So," he started when the coast was clear, "they were fighting over the best place to live. Grandpa openly told them that he and Grandma would follow them. He wanted to help them survive and become stronger. Once I was conceived, they felt like they needed to stay together to give me a fighting chance. Sadly, that meant neither went to their perspective coast as originally planned."
"What do you mean, 'as originally planned?' They weren't going to try living on both coasts were they?" Elle questioned fiercely. She didn't like the idea of people trying to live on both coasts. It was a waste of time, as you'd miss out on great moments by doing it.
"No. Before I was conceived, they had planned on having two vacations. One in New York, one in LA. They'd take notes, and would compare them to my grandparents notes, who'd be on the opposite coast during each trip. Once they figured out the best option, they'd focus on starting a family." The others nodded, finally understanding the situation.
"Did they stay together because of you?" JJ asked. Her voice shook with fear, realizing that she may be headed down the same path. Something she didn't exactly want for her child.
"Yes and no. They stayed together because of me, but they also compromised and were planning to move down to the South. One of their friends had inherited a house from some relatives in Utah and planned on moving into it. So they'd let my parents either rent or buy it outright. The only reason it didn't happen was due to the friend changing their minds at the last possible moment, leading to their other options drying up. So by the time I was born, they couldn't move and Des Moines destroyed their marriage."
The food arrived, and the hungry Federal Agents dug in. They were alerted to a potential case in Orlando, but JJ was waiting on a few more details before confirming it with the detectives. Morgan and Rossi were both interested in it for…. Tourism reasons.
"Drake, why did you get the sniper qualification?" Rossi asked out of the blue. He had been wondering about it, as he wasn't one in the military. Hotch perked up, already having a hypothesis for it.
"In all honesty, it's because of the man who saved my Grandpa's life. He was a sniper with the Big Red One, and during a mission to take a French town who's name escapes me, he and my Grandfather met. They struck up a friendship that lasted till death. Towards the end of the war, they were often in the same vicinity. One day, a Nazi sniper was picking off soldiers from his company. His friend agreed to help neutralize the threat." He paused for a drink of coke.
"The next day, Grandpa was wounded in the leg, but the enemy sniper was killed. They reunited in Idaho after the war, working for the Boise Police Department. Grandpa had a daughter, and his friend knew a great guy. If you need to know what happens next, you might want to ask Dad," he tilted his head towards Hotch, earning a half hearted glare, "or Uncle Rossi."
"Listen here smartass." Rossi chuckled. Drake smiled at it, while the others laughed. Or smiled, in Hotch's case.
"I was named for him as well. His full name was Christopher Allen Thompson. Christopher Allen Drake." Once lunch was finished and the bill paid, the Alpha BAU team returned to the office. With the normal paperwork already done, partially thanks to Reid, JJ handed out the consults for local law enforcement officials.
While nobody liked it, they knew the importance of them. It was just like when the news couldn't stop gushing over the Boston Reaper all those years ago. Drake might've been overseas for about seven or eight months back then, the new recruits openly speculated on the identity of him.
His return home gave him more insight. The specter of the bastard loomed large, even after he stopped killing. Cities were dealing with unruly citizens demanding extra protection from the police, while also trying to form taskforces to capture him should he arise again. In Albuquerque, people openly attacked those who seemed to be following them.
Drake sighed. He didn't want to consider the ramifications should a copycat pop up. If, by some miracle, the bastard was still living, then the police would be blamed and riots could potentially break out. Either way, he'd win the war convincingly. Remove faith in the police, or have a student, protégé even, take up his mantle.
"We've got a case!" JJ announced, grimacing from what she had already read about it. A killer that had slowly escalated into becoming a family annihilator. She was concerned about what would happen to her child while growing up, but she trusts Will to be a good, guiding force for their currently unborn child.
"Isn't California's central valley good for agriculture or something?" Morgan asked exasperated at the lack of solid leads. He was next to Drake and Greenaway, both of whom had been busy racking up travel miles. Drake was slightly agitated at the trains for just existing. They were ruining his original hypothesis of the it being a team of Unsubs.
"Migrant workers!" Elle pulled out her cell phone and asked Garcia to find out about it. Once she received the affirmative, the team jumped into action, leaving a dead Armando Ruis Salinas in their wake.
Chris and Elle sat across from each other, trying to compartmentalize the conflicting emotions within their souls. Elle was horrified at the thought of someone risking everything to have a better life, only to be looked down upon due to their race.
Drake, on the other hand, was trying to figure out how people could be so damn destructive. Sure, he could see it if there had been signs of PTSD, but there was nothing. Just….. someone killing for no real reason. It scared him. A killer with no reason was always bad news.
He just had to ask a Bostonian about the Reaper to prove him right.
"Hey," Elle whispered, "you okay?"
"Yeah. Just got a lot on my mind. You?"
"Same. Armando just wanted to have a better life, so why kill? You said before that hitmen didn't follow a set standard for evolving?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Had he tried to be one, where would he rank on your meter?" Chris pondered the thought. He really never thought of it like that
"Probably at either end of the spectrum. Had he crossed borders, he would've been high on the scale. Too many variables, the changing of his MO. Catching up to him would be pretty hard, but we could have stepped in front of he doubled back. On the other hand, he could have been caught after the third or fourth death. Him staying in houses would've tipped someone off." Elle blinked back tears, uncharacteristically getting emotional.
"All he needed was one person to listen and help him. Yet he got nothing. How can people think that's a good thing?"
"Reminds me of an old saying my Grandpa used to say." Elle raised her manicured eyebrow questioningly, allowing Drake to continue. "'To truly be a good friend to someone, you become their family. To be their family, you must accept the fact that you will have fight their battles by their side.' He told me that every June Fifth. I came to learn that to fight side by side with someone, that I'd have to do it from the shadows. Become the demon their enemy fears."
So, hopefully that explains the sniper qualification, cause fucking hell did I forget to touch on it in depth. As for the whole "being named for him" stuff, as well as the purposely left out names of the French town and Grandpa's name, that actually snowballed from my original plan.
Drake was originally going to get it as a way of relaxing. Work out frustrations by getting better with every weapon possible. And that's just for when I wrote it in Chapters 1 and 2(or, at least, referenced). Before it started, I was thinking of having him use it as a way to get into the minds of the LDSK brand of criminals.
Now, to kinda explain the CID case, I the CID in the same vein as NCIS. You'll have overseas teams, and maybe even undercover operations. So with him being used primarily undercover will begin in a different country(I'm leaning towards it being Britain or Italy since I promised to go outside of my comfort zone) and continue stateside. Potential for a disgraced soldier to try and get revenge is there, and will sit on pile of 'only if necessary' ideas. Which is code for me having plans for seasons 8, 9, and 10 that'll make people happy.
Speaking of which, I'm excited to announce three things. First is that, if there's demand for more at least, I'll be having more chapters like seven. This way I can fully jump into the things that were changed without fearing about the pacing.
Secondly, I'm currently planning on uploading the story to AO3 every twenty chapters or so. So there might be a missed upload after doing it. More information will be available later on down the line. This is going to be the first cross posted story of mine up there, and I'm kinda excited for it.
Finally, the name of the Foyet arc is going to be called Nobody Gets Left Behind. To explain the reasoning behind the name, it's fitting. The reason it fits is because it will bring impossible decisions into it, and giving Foyet more power. Can't reveal everything, but it's going to lead to a recurring line from Drake.*
*I decided to add it in this chapter. This way I don't have to worry about accidentally screwing it up.