a/n: Thanks to WallofWeird for the review! I've gotten a lot of subscription adds for this one, but just the one review. Wanna toss me a few more, anyone? :)
Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning.
Actually, it's more like most of the time.
Reid awoke gasping in the night. He pressed a thin hand against his chest and struggled to breathe. The dream…the dream was fading as quickly as he tried to remember it, and he knew it was gone for good. He was sweating and trembling, and as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, a voice in the dark made him cry out in a wavering, terrified yelp.
"Hey, calm down. I didn't mean to scare you," she said, settling onto the bed next to him (he felt her weight, he'd swear it). "You looked like you were dreaming, so I thought I'd just wake you up."
"Christ," he muttered, though he wasn't usually given to such oaths, "can't I sleep without you popping in to give me nightmares?"
"That wasn't your nightmare," she said, offering him a towel (he spared a moment to wonder, as he often did, how a hallucination could interact with the physical world). "It was mine."
He ignored the towel and rubbed his chest again. It ached. "I felt like I was drowning."
"Uh huh." She rose in a graceful, cat-like motion and paced the room. "When was the last time you looked at any of these?" she asked, pushing at a stack of newspapers with her toe. It teetered ominously, and she stepped back.
"I, um. What?" He was still distracted by the pain in his chest and the ghostly tendrils of dreamstuff fogging his mind. "I guess…it's been a while, I guess. I get busy and forget."
"Hhhmm," she said. "Maybe you should catch up. A lot can happen out there while you're stuck in here, dreaming."
He frowned. "I know what happens out there, Elle. I live the worst of it every day."
"OK, then, maybe there's some good news in here, like about puppies and kittens and unicorns. Never know until you look."
He raised his head to pin her with a glare, but she was gone. "Christ," he repeated. Shaking his head, he rose and stumbled toward the bathroom. On his way back he nearly tripped over the newspapers, and he kicked them aside with a savage sort of glee. Tomorrow he'd throw them all out, and that'd show her.
Figment of his imagination that she was.
He pulled the sheets up and tried to get comfortable, but no matter which way he turned he could imagine that forlorn stack of newspapers. Unread. The knowledge they contained melting away in some recycling facility….
With an angry sigh, he sat up and flicked on the bedside light. Stretching his long arm to the limit, he grabbed the top paper on the pile and began flipping through it. Freaking hallucinations were getting damn demanding these days.
I have been searching all of my days,
All of my days.
"Did you know about this?" Reid demanded of Hotch the next morning. The young genius had stormed into the Unit Chief's office breathing fire, and now he slammed a newspaper down onto the desk's neat, shiny surface.
Hotch stared down at the article in consternation. "What is this, Reid?"
"That's what I'd like to know." His thin frame was vibrating like a live wire.
Hotch's face creased in concern. "Calm down. Have a seat. Let me look." He raised a placating hand as he spoke, and his voice was soothing.
Reid refused to be soothed, but he did fold himself into one of the chairs opposite the desk. "It can't be right, can it? I mean, it can't be."
The grooves in Hotch's forehead deepened as he read. "This is the most recent article?" he asked without looking up.
"It's from yesterday. She's been missing for weeks, Hotch. How did we not know?" Weeks. Six weeks. The exact length of time she'd been visiting him.
"As far as I know, no one on the team has had contact with Elle since she left. It's only natural we wouldn't…." He didn't want to say "miss her," but that's what he meant.
Suddenly she was there, behind Hotch, arms crossed over her chest. She gave Reid a sardonic look, and he tried to keep his gaze steady, not react to her presence. "I think we should look into it," he managed through lips gone numb.
"We haven't been called in, and I think it would be a conflict of interest, don't you?"
"The article says they suspect she's the third victim. That makes him a serial. You know JJ can get us called in." He remembered, briefly, the conversation with Garcia months ago: I'm a blinker, he'd said. Well, he refused to blink now; this was too important, and he was too caught up.
The Unit Chief frowned; studied his young colleague over steepled fingers.
"She was one of us, Hotch. I know she screwed up, and I know we haven't heard from her in years, but she was one of us. What if it were Gideon?"
That hit home, Reid saw, and he knew it had been a low blow.
Hotch stared down at the article. He had always worried something would happen to Elle. She'd lived her life too close to the edge, burned too hot. When she'd walked out of his office, he'd felt like she'd left with a part of him, and that he'd failed her. Maybe if they found her….
"You know she's probably dead, Reid," he said gently.
He went pale. Gulped a little. "I know. But still. We could stop it from happening to anyone else. Isn't that what we do?" His eyes darted to her and back to Hotch.
He sighed. "I'll have JJ make an inquiry with the local PD. If they don't want us there, though, we drop this. OK?"
Reid nodded convulsively. "Yeah, OK. Thanks, Hotch. Really."
Elle flicked her fingers toward the young genius in a sort of salute, and he nodded again. Recognizing the odd look Hotch was giving him, he bid the Unit Chief goodbye and beat a hasty retreat.
He knew Hotch was right: Elle Greenaway was dead, had been since her abduction six weeks ago. The small amount of research he'd done into the case had told him the UNSUB didn't keep his victims alive…but the first two victims had been found fairly quickly. So where was Elle? Was it the same UNSUB? Was it even an abduction, or was the press getting hysterical?
Now Spencer Reid had a new puzzle to work through: was he slowly losing his grip on reality, as his mother had, or did he believe in ghosts?