Commencement

Chapter 5

"Should we try to get some sleep?" suggested Reid. "We don't know what will happen tomorrow. If we have to get ourselves out of here, we're going to need all the energy we can muster."

"I guess you're right. But I doubt I'll be able to."

"Just close your eyes. Giving the retina less stimulation is one of the key factors in allowing your brain to shut down."

"There's not exactly much retinal stimulation to be had. It's pretty dark in here. Not to mention the creepy noises."

Small showers of debris had been providing an unnerving backdrop to their conversation as the building settled around itself. Despite the fact that Reid had explained it to her, it had been all JJ could do not to clutch at him each time she heard it.

"You're sure it's not going to come down on us, right?"

He wasn't, not to an engineer's degree of precision. But he wasn't going to tell her that.

"Buildings settle all the time, JJ."

"But they're not already in pieces when then do! I think it's my worst fear…."

"Being in a collapsed building?" Doubt in every syllable.

"No….it's the dark. Not just the dark, but the noise and the dark…" He felt her shiver against him, and reflexively pulled her closer. "…..it's the combination. I've always been afraid of what happens in the dark."

Reid tilted his head down to look at her, his thoughts immediately brought back to a conversation he'd had with both her and Morgan, ages ago. They'd been on a case, and sharing their worst fears.

"I thought you were afraid of the woods. I'm the one who's afraid of the dark."

Apparently she'd been brought back to that conversation too, judging from the rapidity of her response.

"No, I told you guys, I made that up. It's the dark I'm afraid of."

He made a face at her. "Why didn't you tell us then?"

"I don't know, I guess I didn't want to seem like the typical girl."

"Ahem. What did that make me?"

She looked up at him, trying to read his features, not sure how to interpret his words. His voice was still strained from its exposure to the dust, and she couldn't quite make out his tone. She was relieved to see the smile in his eyes, and responded accordingly.

"'Did' or 'does'?"

He narrowed his gaze at her in mock indignation. "If you're asking if I'm still afraid of the dark, the answer is 'yes'. But only when I'm alone. Which I'm not."

She smiled up at him. "Then I'm not afraid, either. But I still don't like hearing the building groaning all around us."

Reid had already examined their immediate environment, long before the sun had set.

"I think we're okay here. There are some large crossbeams above us, and it looks like they're wedged against one another. They should be stable. And you can see that sliver of moon there, right? So there's no debris directly overhead."

Not mentioning that those crossbeams could still slip if the debris beneath them moved. But there was nothing they could do about it now, and it wasn't necessary for both of them to be worried about it.

"So, you're telling me it's safe to ignore what I'm hearing, and try to sleep?"

"If you can."

"What about you?" Eyeing him, knowing him too well.

You're going to stand watch, aren't you? Not at all surprised when he lied to her.

"I'll close my eyes for a while."

So she lied back to him. "Okay." Pausing, then, "Sorry if I snore."

Sure she'd gotten a grin, without even looking up at him.

"You snore? You've slept on my shoulder a thousand times on the plane, and I've never heard you snore."

"Apparently I do it when I'm lying down. Or so I'm told."

It took Reid longer than expected to respond, which prompted her to ask him.

"What?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing. It's just…..I have no idea if I snore. I mean, I assume you guys would have told me, if I'd snored on the plane. But when I'm lying down…I have no idea."

"Yes, you do. You're always stretching out on the bench."

"On my side. It's not long enough unless I bend my legs all the way up."

When there was no comeback to that, he wondered if he'd said something wrong.

"JJ?"

"Huh? Oh. I was just thinking...the next time we're on the plane will be the last time."

As he processed it, the idea took him aback, just as it had her. But then he had the presence of mind to take comfort in the fact that she was looking past their present dilemma, and assuming there would be a next time on the plane.

"Well, we'll have to make the most of it, then. Poker?"

"Hmm. I prefer gin. I once beat a genius at gin."

"As I told you then, the genius Dr. Reid let you win."

"You did not!"

He chuckled. "All right, you're right, I didn't. But I wasn't about to admit it."

A particularly loud and prolonged period of groaning of the materials overhead silenced any retort she might have made. Reid felt her clinging to him until the sound subsided.

"You okay?"

"For now, because we're each still in one piece. But…Spence, do you think we should move?"

Reid wasn't as confident in their safety as he'd been an hour or two ago, but at least they had some degree of light. Unlike JJ, he hadn't been able to move about the building and take stock of the status of the rest of it. He decided that that known was better than the unknown.

"I think we'll be okay. We're just hearing it all settling." Hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

JJ had either picked up on his uncertainty, or her own consternation had become too strong to be so easily assuaged.

"If you say so. But I know I'm not sleeping a wink."

"Well, then, we may as well make use of the time." Plus it will keep our minds occupied.

"I'm game. What should we start with?"

"How about trying to figure out exactly where we are? It will give us a better sense of how far we have to go to get out."

"And which direction. Yeah, I know. But I wasn't able to make heads or tails out of anything. I could tell that the trash pail was from an office, but I didn't have a way to tell if it was the office we'd just cleared, or the one we were just approaching."

Reid thought about it for a minute. "How about when you first came to? Do you remember where you were, in relation to the office you were in later? Or even in relation to here?"

She tried to think, but it was frustrating.

"I don't even remember waking up. I mean, I assume I was unconscious, because I don't have a good memory of the blast, but…"

"What if I try to take you back?"

"Are you talking about a cognitive?"

She could feel the shrug of his shoulders. "It's worth a try, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, sure. Okay. I just….. I'm not sure how much help it will be, but we may as well try." It's not like we're short for time. "Okay, fire away."

"All right. Let me…. " He struggled to sit up, prompting JJ to do the same, and then he wrapped her in his jacket.

"Spence, no!" she protested, but he insisted.

"I'll be fine for a little while. I want you comfortable while we do this."

If she hadn't been so familiar with the process, she might not have acquiesced so easily. But she was, so she did.

"All right. But just for a little while. So, I'll go back to when I was waking up, and …"

"JJ, you can't undergo the process and control it at the same time."

Shaking his head at her, with the affection of someone who had often told her that 'control' was her middle name.

She was appropriately chagrined. "Sorry. I'll be good."

"Okay. Now, close your eyes and try to relax. Let's go back to before we came here. Back to when we were with Linda. Tell me about her house."

JJ did as instructed. "It was dated. I remember thinking that it looked like the home of one of our neighbors, when I was growing up, except that it would have been considered stylish, back then. I kind of felt sorry for her, because I thought maybe they couldn't afford anything new. Either that, or she was stuck in the past."

Reid thought JJ might just have hit upon something about the case there, but that wasn't the matter of primary urgency now, so he wasn't about to interrupt her.

"Okay, good. Do you remember what Linda asked us to do?" Fairly confident in his own memory of it, but then, he'd been knocked out, too.

JJ nodded, eyes still closed. "She was worried that the investigation had kept her from bringing the files back here, and she was too rattled to do it by herself, alone, even though we'd caught the killer. So we waited with her until her husband got home, and then we offered to drop them off for her."

That also struck a chord with Reid. "Why did we do that? Why didn't we just let her take care of her own business, once her husband was home?"

JJ's brow furrowed above her eyes, which were still closed.

"I don't …. Wait. She asked us to. Or she may as well have, anyway. I think she said something about being so tired, and she wished she wouldn't have to go out again, just to drop folders through a mail slot."

Exactly, thought Reid, remembering it now.

"So, what happened then?"

"We offered to drop them off for her. Once she mentioned the mail slot, it seemed like an easy enough favor to do."

Reid nodded, brought back to the moment when Linda had proffered the idea of the mail slot.

She's got to be in on this. Confirming his prior hypothesis.

"Okay, great. So, what happened when we arrived here?"

"Umm… I remember that I walked up to put the folders into the mail slot, when I saw that the door was open. Not just unlocked, but open, ajar. And I thought it was strange, because she'd implied that no one would be in the building on the weekend. So I came back to the SUV, and told you, and we decided to go in."

"Go on." With her now, in memory.

"So, we went inside, and all of the lights were off, except for the exit signs overhead, and some scattered power lights for various devices. There was a hallway, and there were offices on one side of it. We tried the first door we went to, and it was open, so we went in and cleared it. Then we kept going down the corridor, and there were more offices, and we'd cleared …one, two…I think we'd cleared three of them. And then, we came to a fourth, and I opened the door, and….. and….. and I don't remember any more. Not until I woke up. But the only thing I really remember about waking up is that you weren't next to me, and I had to find you, and then…oh, God."

He reached out to calm her. "It's all right, I'm all right."

"You're not all right. You don't even know if you can walk."

"But I can breathe, thanks to you. And I will be fine. All right, so, from what you've told me, I can make an educated guess that the explosion came from somewhere closer to me than to you, and I was behind you. So it probably came from the other side of the hallway. Do you remember what was there?"

JJ closed her eyes again. "I remember there was a stairwell, and a small elevator. I remember the bathrooms. And a utility closet. And another door? Two? I'm not sure."

"I'm not, either. But I do remember the bathrooms, now that you mention them. So, the work space was to the right of the corridor, the utility space to the left, and there was obviously a second floor, but I can't tell how much of it is still standing. My guess is that the explosive was probably set to the left side, which would have been behind us as we entered each office. So that means we're three or four offices deep into the rubble, and possibly somewhere near the utilities."

"Wait! The drinking fountain, where I got the water….it was probably near the bathroom, right? Don't they keep all the things that require plumbing together? So it was in that direction…." Pointing to where she'd retrieved the water earlier. "But that seems too close to be near the bathrooms, unless we were thrown that far. And if we were thrown that far…" Stopping abruptly.

"If we were thrown that far, why are we alive? Is that what you were going to say?"

She nodded, a little too shaken to speak.

Reid purposely remained impassive. "I agree. So, it's possible the drinking fountain wasn't actually near the lavatory. Or…." Thinking it through even as he spoke, "….or the walls have come down, giving you a direct shot to it, but not through the hallway. That would shorten the distance."

JJ shook her head in frustration. "How does that help us?"

Reid consoled her. "I think it means that we have a direct shot to the front of the building, if we move in the direction of the water source. Or at least I hope it does."

JJ took that in and pondered it for a moment. But her pondering ceased when another a semi-distant showering of debris was followed by another prolonged groan from overhead.

That was too much for JJ. "Spence, are you sure we shouldn't move?"

He laid out their situation as best he could. "My phone is running low on power, so the only reliable light we have is from overhead. You've been out further than I have. Do you think we could navigate it in the dark?"

JJ hung her head in defeat. "No. I mean, you saw how banged up I got going back and forth for water, and that was in daylight, with two functioning legs. I don't think there's any chance you could do it, especially since we haven't really tested your leg yet."

The discouragement in her voice and posture was obvious, and Reid felt guilty about being the source of some of it. He still wasn't fully certain that their overhead shelter would hold the night, but he thought it was their most realistic chance for survival. Still, he felt he needed to offer her the choice. He wouldn't be the reason she didn't give herself a chance. So, despite his best instincts, he made a suggestion.

"Do you want to try on your own? You'd have a better chance without me, and you could use the moonlight for part of the distance, and my phone, once the moonlight fades. Maybe you'd pick up more light further out."

JJ's gaze narrowed. "And leave you behind, completely alone and in the dark? Are you kidding me? I thought we made a promise, way back when, didn't we? That we would always stay together?"

She'd been speaking about how they'd promised to conduct themselves in the field, in the aftermath of Tobias Hankel. But her words carried even more significance this time. Because this time, even if they succeeded in saving themselves, their time together would be measured in hours. There was no time left for 'always'.

Reid caught her gaze in the moonlight, his hazel staring intensely into her blue.

"I just never want to be the cause of anything bad for you. I don't want you to suffer harm because of me, or because you were trying to help me. You're too important to me, and I couldn't have that."

JJ's lips thinned as she pushed back a wave of emotion. Once she was sure of her voice, she told him.

"In case you still don't realize it, Spencer Reid, it would hurt me to my core to lose you. You are too much a part of who I've become, and I wouldn't know how to be 'me' without you. So the last thing I'm ever going to do, is leave you behind."

Reid had to swallow his own reaction. Maybe they were both just being emotional because of their circumstance. Or maybe it was because of their head injuries. Or, just maybe, it was because what they'd each just said to one another was true. But, even if true, and even if it needed to be said before they separated, this was not the time. And it was most definitely not the place.

So Reid simply pushed himself back against what remained of a wall, and lifted his arm, creating a space at his side. JJ took her place there, folding in tight against him, and he spread his jacket over them once again.

"All right, then. We'll spend the night, and start moving with first light."

And, unless a rescue team miraculously shows up, we'll hope we're alone.