A/N: Ahhhh thankyou for all your follows and reviews and favourites and time and...thanks :D It makes me so happy to see them all there :D :D Just a short one this time (and a bit of a boring one in my opinion...oops) also the worst editing I've ever done; I've been working on a novel at the same time, and I just wanted to get it out there. Forgive me? xD Actual Spencer Reid in the next chapter a Lot, I promise.

Two

The Madness Of Some

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

His wings are clipped and his feet are tied

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings; Maya Angelou

Their station was quiet and tidy, paperwork stacked neatly on desks and floors kept well clear. There was a coffee machine on one side of the room, what looked like a conference room on the other. Doors led to more offices, presumably where people higher in the chain of authority got to work, in their own company rather than the company of all the people who would sit at these desks. Neat was such a far cry from her usual surroundings that for a moment she couldn't do much more than stare, laying her books on the table carefully and resolving to keep her restless hands away from stacks of paperwork, abandoned coffee mugs, or the occasional knick-knack that was a sign of a desk's ownership.

She'd been seated at what was probably the cleanest desk in the entire room, being saddled with the least paperwork and organised down to the pens and pencils that resided there. They'd assured her they were going to contact her aunt, and then disappeared off to the conference room. At least six people were in there currently, all part of the same team, from what she could tell. There was no way for her to know what they were discussing; the blinds on the room were drawn and the door left open just a crack, so that they could check on her from time to time. Not that she had any plans on disappearing – she had no idea where in the building she was, let alone the city, and even if she did, exploring really wasn't her thing. She was more of a 'sit inside and read' type.

Presently they finished what had been an impromptu meeting and disintegrated, each taking their own path. The man from before – Spencer Reid, if she remembered right (she was terrible with names – but a last name like 'Reid' reminded her of books, which made it easier, and Spencer was such an unusual name that it just stuck in her head without her really meaning it to), approached her, eyes appraising her books as they had several times before. "I never liked poetry," he said, leaning against the desk with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Neither did I, until my dad taught me how to read it," Mallory replied, choking a little at the thought of her father, who was now dead. She pushed it aside, determined not to cry while she was here in a police station, surrounded by strangers who had met her because they had come to investigate a murder. Crying could come later, when she was alone with her strange thoughts and books that could not help.

There was one thing she needed to know though. "What happened?" she asked.

He frowned; she could almost see his brain working overtime. "What do you mean?"

"My parents. Why did they die?"

"Oh." He fell silent, like he was deciding how much information he could give her. The silence was frustrating; she could feel her hands curling up into balls, and had to force her fingers to relax. All she wanted was the truth, was an answer to whatever had happened to her life, which she now realised had gone from fine and dandy to absolute chaos in the last few hours.

"Are you sure you want to know?" he asked, worried. "It's only been a few hours, and-"

"I want to know," she said firmly, cutting him off. "I need to know."

He heaved a heavy sigh.

"Your family was the latest target of a serial killer, who refers to himself as the 'mad doctor'," he began cautiously, pausing to give her time to absorb the information. "He leads a small gang who have been targeting families with dependent children, and most of the dependents suffer from mental illnesses."

"Like me," Mallory added in quietly, picking up one of her books just to have something in her hands. She took a deep breath, and then another, forcing herself to stay calm, to not lose it in front of these (both impressive and terrifying) people. "Why didn't they kill me too?" she asked finally, not willing to stop without the full story.

"Usually, he kills only the carers and takes the dependents with him. We think he may have just missed you because you were outside, and then panicked because your parents found out they were there."

The image of her parent's bodies came back to her again, just as vivid as when she'd first seen them. Her mother had been in bed still – maybe she hadn't even woken – but her father was spread-eagled on the floor, where he had fallen. And there had been other noises before the gunshots. Someone had screamed, and there had been glass breaking, presumably from her father throwing something at the invaders. He had fought them. He'd lost, but he'd fought them.

His bravery was a small warmth deep in the ice that had begun to form in her chest at the wrongness of it all. Surely this was all a bizarre dream? Those happened sometimes. Surely, sooner or later, she would wake up or come to her senses, and all of this would be a blurred memory that she could barely call up.

But she waited longer and longer, and no waking happened.

Her aunt appeared at the door, taking long strides to get across the room in record time and sweep Mallory into an unexpected hug. The girl stiffened. She barely knew Kathryn Reynolds, her dad's sister; the woman had distanced herself from the family a long time ago, only coming back a few months ago when she moved to the city. Mallory barely recognised her. Her eyes and nose were red from crying, and her clothes mismatched and crumpled, her usual neat and professional look absent in the early hours of the morning.

Kathryn turned to JJ, introducing herself, handing out another hug. Her voice began to slip into the special tone that she reserved just for when she was near Mallory (she'd heard the woman's real voice, when she'd escaped into the hallway and left her father and aunt to talk, and it was nothing like that). It was the sort of voice she hated, and Kathryn was the sort of woman she avoided, so Mallory easily tuned her out, focusing on the book in her hands. The Bell Jar.

Five minutes later, a hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her to her feet, and then JJ was leading them out of the building. One of Kathryn's arms remained wrapped around Mallory's, no matter how she tried to extract it. She wasn't even allowed to carry her own books; all three were now tucked tightly under her aunt's other arm, well out of reach.

The car drive was short, silent, and in the opposite direction of everything Mallory knew. The house, too, was quiet, with that musty, unlived in sort of smell that she greatly disliked. There were two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a combined kitchen and lounge room, all filled with unfamiliar furniture and a good deal smaller than her own house. A policeman sat on the couch, watching TV. JJ left.

She slept fitfully, reliving the night and waking with the image of her parents fresh in her mind until finally she couldn't take it anymore and got up to find something else to do. It was barely seven in the morning, she noticed as she passed the clock in the kitchen. The cop had drifted off to sleep sometime in the past few hours, the TV throwing weird colours over him like a blanket. She could just hear the fake laughter of an imaginary audience emanating from it as she crept past.

The light in the bathroom was brighter than the soft colours of the TV, jolting her awake when she flicked it on. Blinking several times, she closed the door behind her and leaned on the edge of the sink, eyeing herself in the mirror. Piercing blue eyes looked back at her, surrounded by a thin face and dark hair with a certain wave to it. She looked like she had a bird's nest on top of her head, she realised now, and reached up to fix it. There was only so much she could do with her fingers though, and it still looked like a bird's nest.

Sighing, she washed her hands and splashed water on her face, in a half-hearted effort to wash her parents from her mind, and then left the room. The cop was snoring now, she noticed as she walked out, the remote for the TV about to fall out of his slack fingers to the floor. With little effort, she rescued it from its fate and flopped down into the other couch, flicking through channel after channel. There was very little of interest on TV early on a Saturday, she realised soon, settling on cartoons that were technically there to keep early-rising children entertained.

A groan came from the other couch as one cartoon ended and another began, the man stirring and stretching, blinking against the sunlight trying to break through the curtains on the other side of the room. He glanced around, taking stock of everything; the closed curtains, the TV, the rustling of her aunt moving in her sleep. Mallory. His eyes traced a line between her and the TV a few times, thinking slowed by lingering sleep.

"Cartoons?" he asked finally. She nodded absently, her eyes not leaving the screen as Roadrunner continued his never-ending teasing of not-so-cunning Coyote. "My kids would love you."

He stood, yawning, and finally she turned to look at him. He wasn't very remarkable, just one of those people that would blend into a crowd. Completely average. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Name's Darren," he yawned, crossing to the kitchen and switching on the kettle.

"You have kids?"

"Yep. Three of them. All under ten. They drive me mad sometimes, but I love them anyway, you know?" The kettle clicked off, and he set about searching for the coffee. "I even miss them, when I'm out on jobs like this."

"Sorry," Mallory said, watching him stir his coffee.

Darren shook his head. "No, don't be. Blame that twisted psychopath they're trying to track down. You want coffee?"

"No."

"Suit yourself." Mug in hand, he went back to the couch, and she trailed after him. "Luckily," he continued as she sat down. "We've got one of the best teams in the country working on this case. They'll catch him, no doubt about it."

"What are you two talking about?"

Mallory looked up; her aunt was awake and standing behind them, regarding Darren with some suspicion. He withered under her glare, shifting uncomfortably and putting his coffee down to avoid spilling it. "We were just discussing the case," he said, in a voice that lacked the confidence he had shown earlier.

"Any news?"

He shook his head. "None but, like I told Mallory here, one of our best teams is working on it."

She sat down, clearly interested. "The BAU team, isn't it?" she asked. Darren nodded. "I've heard about them, they're very impressive, aren't they?"

This got the cop's attention, though Mallory was completely lost. She wasn't very good at keeping up with current affairs. "Oh, they're impressive all right. I think most people in this line of work want to be on that team. They're amazing to work with."

"One of them lives upstairs." This caught Mallory's attention. "A young man, about Mallory's age, though I don't know his name…I always wondered how someone so young could get into such a risky job."

"Spencer Reid," Mallory said suddenly, causing both heads to turn and stare. She glanced between them, and then shrugged. "The man who lives upstairs. His name is Spencer Reid."

"How do you know that, dear?" her aunt asked.

Her voice had slipped back into that sweet, sympathetic tone, the sort of voice someone would usually use when talking to children, throwing Mallory off. She shrugged again, and then turned back to the TV and tuned them out, regretting saying anything. It wasn't like she'd meant to; the name had just stuck in her head from their brief meetings in her house and the police station. His face had stayed in her memory too. Soft, she remembered. Soft and kind, with a face that was much younger than any of his co-workers, though he was still their equal.

She didn't really know him, she realised suddenly – she had a name and a face, a purple scarf and a list of facts about schizophrenia that had been rattled off with hardly a pause for thought or breath. Here she was, giving people his name like she'd earned the right to know it, but she didn't know him at all.

She had no idea who he was, but he was infinitely interesting all the same.

At ten, her aunt realised she'd forgotten to take her meds.

At noon, Darren left and another police officer took his place. This one wasn't so friendly, or so willing to share information.

At two, there was a call to say that she was safe, that they could go home…wherever home was now. The man who had killed her parents was in hospital with a bullet in his leg – soon, he would be behind bars. There were five other people in the same situation as Mallory, though she declined the offer to meet them or attend the counselling sessions they were facing. They'd been kidnapped and held in an old warehouse while she'd sheltered in this unassuming little house, and she was bad at making friends.

Her excuses were weak, but they worked.

Home, it turned out, was her aunt's (no, Kathryn – she didn't like the idea of being an aunt) apartment, the one a floor below Spencer Reid's (who she only knew four things about). Kathryn didn't seem particularly thrilled at the new arrangement, but she didn't seem particularly thrilled at the thought of her brother dying either, so Mallory didn't question it.

Her new room was tiny, not like her old room in her old house. For a moment, she wondered how all her books would fit in there (they wouldn't). She'd looked around the rest of the apartment, but the only bookshelf to be found was filled with knick-knacks and photos and trophies and all the things that people put out on their cupboards and shelves to collect dust and be admired once in a while. There were probably ten books in the entire house. Well, thirteen now. She had brought Sylvia Plath with her, at least.

At five thirty that afternoon, while she was sitting at the kitchen table eating whatever Kathryn had put in front of her, she saw Spencer Reid pass by the open front door, and heard his light footsteps climbing the stairs. He looked thoroughly worn, like he'd hardly slept in the last few days. Maybe he hadn't.

She almost went out to talk to him, to ask him about the man and the case that her aunt was being decidedly tight-lipped about. Almost. By the time she'd made up her mind and gathered her courage, he was gone.