Morgan and Hotch were sitting in the interrogation room with Fairaday. They had plenty of evidence, but closer for a case like this it is important to verify all the victims and get a confession. But as Gideon stood behind the one-way mirror and looked at the scene, he found himself much more interested in finding out how exactly Fairaday had ended up there. Reid stood next to him, and Gideon found himself studying Reid's reflection more than Fairaday's image. "From what Morgan tells me, you should be in there instead of Hotch. He says that it was you who figured everything out."

"It's bad enough just looking at him." Reid's slim shoulders shuddered briefly. There was a sudden shift in mood, and Gideon was meeting Reid's reflection. "When did it happen?"

Most people wouldn't know what Reid was asking, but Gideon knew. It's why it was still so challenging to play chess with him. "I was 34. Old enough to have been around, think that I'd seen everything, and too young to realize that there's always something else…."


He could still feel the dew on his feet. Cool with out making him cold, the stars sparkled in the night sky and the moon was so full that he could almost see green of the grass. Wandering in the playground, he had followed the strained notes of a little girl jumping rope. "3, 4 shut the door
5,6 pick up sticks
7,8 I have a date
9, 10 I die again"

Suddenly the rhythmic jumping ceased and the girl was facing him, pink ribbon in one pig tail and a bloody hole to match on the other. "I'm dead but no one knows it. Find me."

Suddenly, he was jerking awake sweaty and stiff with an irrepressible urge to go hiking. He called up Hernandez and headed out. They hiked for two hours. He couldn't have told you which direction they were going or how far they had gone, but somehow he knew the spot. Panting, he fell to his hands and knees and started to dig. The earth seemed to part under his fingers like it was as desperate to give up it's burden as he was to find it. Brushing the dirt gently away he finally revealed what they were looking for—a little girl with a pink ribbon in her hair.


"I told myself that it was my subconscious, piecing together various files that I had seen, people that I talked to. But I could never get over that pink ribbon or the matching head wound, and how I had seen that in my dream so so clearly."

Reid voiced no doubt or surprise at Gideon's story. "You have to be careful when dealing with the dead. Their priorities are very different and time doesn't exist for them like it does for us."

"So, you think it was the little girl contacting me?"

Reid smiled at that. "Gideon, you are a very perceptive person, better at reading people than anyone I've ever met, but you are not psychic. At least, no more so than most people. You just trust your instincts more than most and are receptive enough for some of the more powerful entities to reach you. But no, that wasn't you finding that little girl. It was Marie finding you."

Gideon's eyes finally moved from the glass, wide and startled, "I never told you her name."

"No. You didn't." Nothing else needed to be said. Focus shifted over to the interrogation room.

"Why Fairaday? Why treat these people like meat?"

Suddenly the room exploded. "BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THEY ARE! MEAT AND BLOOD AND GORE. MESSES!!! THAT'S ALL THEY'RE GOOD FOR IS MESSES!!" The ranting degenerated from there.

Reid turned to Gideon, "Do you think we could request his work detail be in the kitchen cleaning?"

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Congratulations were handed all around, but everyone seemed to realize that the real thanks especially went to Reid who had blown the case wide open. Reid basked for a moment before shying away awkwardly and hanging on the fringes. Most people wanted 15 minutes of fame, but Reid -- used to being singled out and not for his betterment -- was happy with fifteen seconds of thanks and then the anonymity of the fringe. Morgan seemed content to lean next to him in silence, so Reid continued to chew over Gideon's story and wonder if there were anymore that he might manage to weasel out sometime soon. Morgan didn't say anything, even when they were packed up and heading to the plane, but Reid felt like he was going to. Reid supposed that Morgan was just waiting for the right time.

The flight back was long, and Reid was looking forward to falling asleep, the certainty that there was one more bad guy in jail and the world was just a little safer was enough to give peace of mind, at least for a night or two. Just as he was getting settled in to curl up in a seat, Morgan flopped down next to him.

"Hey, Spencer, can we talk?"

Reid straightened up and suppressed a yawn. "Yeah, what's on your mind?"

"It's, well, it's what you did with this case. I mean-it was pretty amazing, you figuring that stuff out, it's just that well... Hotch, he doesn't think it's a good idea for people to know that you do that stuff. I can kinda understand, it's not something that normal people tend to believe in."

"No," Reid laughed, "I suppose not. But then what is normal? For me, my sister calling when I'm thinking about her is normal. Knowing when JJ is feeling guilty for cheating on her diet is normal, and for me, always knowing too much of one thing and not enough of another is perfectly normal."

"Hey, now. That's not what I'm saying at all. I think what you did was important. You have a gift. A gift." Morgan emphasized. "It can help a lot of people, just, you know be careful when you're using it. You really freaked out the lab director."

"He was a little 'freaked'." Morgan could actually hear the quotes around the word.

They sat in silence for a minute when Morgan finally broke in and asked, "When you were reading my palm or whatever, what else where you going to say before you stopped. I mean, did you see, there was this thing in high school and I was just wondering if you –ya know saw it or something, because it's probably not what you're thinking it was..." Morgan felt a warm weight land on his shoulder and looked over to watch as Reid more than half asleep curled up across the seat and snuggled in, his head slid down to become firmly planted in Morgan's lap. He considered waking Reid up and moving him, but well the teasing material alone was worth it—even if he was going to have to put up with some of it himself.