Disclaimer: Sure they're mine. I only buy lottery tickets cause I love having little useless bits of paper around.
Author's note: This story may not make much sense unless you're familiar with Mandy Patinkin's role in "Dead Like Me", but I'll try to explain things enough that you should be able to enjoy it.
As for it being a cross-over, to my mind it's technically not, which is why I didn't put it in the cross-over section. Yes, it uses some of the ideas from DLM, but apart from Mandy Patinkin, who was in Criminal Minds in his own right (though as a completely different character), no other character from that show makes an appearance or is involved in the plot.
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Nelson's Phoenix
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The funeral done and the Shiva visit to Stephen's home paid, the frosty evening of the day the BAU saw its former Unit Chief buried found Derek Morgan sitting in his car just outside Spencer Reid's apartment, pondering whether or not to go in. His hand was actually on the door handle when he saw Reid drive past in his old Volvo, heading north.
Intrigued, Morgan followed.
And nearly half an hour later, that intrigue turned to worry when he realized his young friend was heading to the isolated Jewish cemetery where Jason Gideon had been laid to rest only a few hours before.
"Kid, Kid, what are you doing to yourself?" Morgan muttered as he saw Reid go into the grounds-keeper's shack. Fiddling with his phone while he waited and wondering if he should call Hotch, Morgan's worry erupted into panic when he saw Reid re-emerge - dressed in workman's coveralls and carrying a shovel.
Derek exploded out of the car and raced to intercept Reid. "Jeez! Jeez, Kid! What in the Hell are you doing?" he shouted, waving his arms. "God, Kid! Stop it! Stop it! This isn't the way to deal with anything!"
Reid whipped around to look at him, but seemed more annoyed than panicked. "Oh, Hell," Morgan heard him curse.
Just before the Kid reached out and brushed a long-fingered hand down his forearm.
There was a horrible pulling sensation, painful enough to cause his stomach to immediately gripe and churn with nausea, and then the normal chill of the January air was gone, and in its place, another, far more indescribable sense of cold rushed up his body. Shuddering, the last sight Derek Morgan saw before darkness overcame him was his own body lying on the ground at his feet.
-x-
Reid was squatting beside him. "Are you all right, Morgan?"
"I...I...I..."
"Try not to speak - you're experiencing a certain degree of shock."
"Wha...? Shock? Shock! You call this shock?!"
Reid stood. "Yeah, you're fine."
"Holy God!"
"Look, I know you're probably feeling a bit... uh, shaky, right now, but do you think you could maybe grab a shovel and lend a hand or something?"
Morgan shot up to a sitting position as Reid turned back to his chore and thrust his shovel into the loose dirt of Jason Gideon's grave. "WHAT?"
"I mean, you know, if you want to be useful."
"You... you seriously... Jesus, WHAT?"
Morgan watched as Reid stopped what he was doing and turned his gaze towards him again. "Okay, you know that thing you just felt? That was me ripping your soul out of your body and then putting it back."
Morgan gaped.
"So," Reid went on, "before we get into the inevitable argument about grave robbing and depressive episodes and all the healthy ways of dealing with grief that I'm sure are just bursting to come out of your mouth, maybe, just maybe, now would be a really good time to remember that sensation and realize that there are things - big things - going on here that you simply don't understand."
Morgan grabbed the younger man's arm. "Now look, Kid, I know you're going through a rough time, but here's what's going to happen: you and me are going to get into my car and - "
But before he could finish, Spencer Reid rolled his eyes and ripped out Morgan's soul again.
"Holy Christ, Reid! What the Hell, man!"
"Sorry, Morgan, but I can't have you getting in the way. So, I don't know, go bird-watch or something unitil I'm done."
"But... but my body!"
"Oh for Heaven's sake, stop whining or I swear to God I'll put your body into every embarrassing position I can think of and send the photos to Garcia. Now, if you're not going to help, get lost for a little while."
"Seriously?"
"Oh, and watch out for Gravelings," Reid warned. "I don't think they'll hurt you, but they are a bit irritable by nature."
"Gravelings? What in the name of Hell are Gravelings?" Forced to wander around, and growing increasingly hysterical by the severance of soul and body, Morgan heard his voice shoot up a full octave when he spotted something by the trees. "REID! What are those things?!"
"I really need some specificity here, Morgan."
"Gah...THINGS! Like a cross between Golum and a bunch of butt-ugly iguanas!"
"That'd be the Gravelings."
"Oh God, Oh God, Oh God! REID! They've SEEN ME!"
Reid sighed with exasperation and kept digging.
-x-
Morgan - back in his own body - had somewhat calmed down by the time Reid's shovel thunked against the top of Gideon's coffin. "Okay, Kid, I get it. After Em, you feel like you really need proof," he was saying. "Perhaps we should have let you see Gideon's body. Maybe then you'd have a sense of closure. But slipping me something and then digging up Gideon is really pushing the boundaries of normal behaviour, you know what I'm saying?"
Reid was only half aware of Morgan's yammering as sort of a background noise when he stuck in the crow bar and opened the top of Gideon's plain pine box. Seeing the man inside look up at him with both relief and a peevish impatience, Spencer grinned. "Well, I never thought I'd see you caught like this Rube," he said.
Gideon sat up and was about to answer back when both men heard a heavy thump beside them. Jason raised an eyebrow. "Morgan's fainted."
"Huh," Reid said. "I've got to admit, I never saw THAT coming."
-x-
"I was sorry to hear about Rosie. If I'd remembered..."
"Don't beat yourself up about, Tommy. You couldn't have known then, and then by the time you did, well..."
Morgan heard the voices before he even registered he was awake. Coming to consciousness slowly, he looked around and realized he was stretched out on the couch in Reid's apartment. The voices were coming from Reid's pocket-sized kitchen. Laying still, he kept listening in hopes of figuring out what was going on.
"Did she... you know?" Reid asked.
"Yes. She knew right away. She even remembered the song," Gideon answered, his voice filled with infinite sadness. "I sang it for her as she went. It was a peaceful enough way to go, I suppose, but I thought it would have been..." he trailed off.
"Easier? Not so heart-breaking because it was peaceful and she'd lived a full, long life? No. I don't think it's ever that way with children. I expected the same thing with Glynis, or at least that it would have been easier than it'd been with Ian, but your child's your child, and even if we missed most of their lives... well, you know."
They were silent for awhile, and then Morgan heard Gideon ask, "Did you have a song? You know, with yours?"
"Not with Ian. There simply wasn't time. But I do remember Glynis liking, 'It's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding'. Anyway, I'd better get another cup of coffee; Morgan's awake and could probably use one."
Morgan flinched guiltily as the two men walked into the living room. To his embarrassment, he also shied away from Gideon. It would have been imperceptible to most, by he saw them notice and then wordlessly decide not to say anything. In an attempt to recover his aplomb, he waved a hand towards Gideon's blood-soaked shirt and the open wound at the man's right temple. "Uh, shouldn't the funeral home have, you know, taken care of... of all that," he said.
Gideon looked down at himself, and then raised a hand to his right temple. "Jewish law. A person's blood is considered as holy as his life. Usually there's a ritual washing, but that's not completed if the person suffered an injury or blood soaked into their clothes, in order to honour that belief. But, to be honest, laying around in sticky clothing for so long does not have much to recommend it."
I must have gone insane, Morgan thought. That's the only explanation. Either that, or someone spiked the drinks at the reception.
"On the other hand," Reid pointed out. "The parts of the halacha forbidding embalming came in very handy, you must admit. Not to mention the law mandating the simple pine box; I don't think I could have opened anything else up so easily."
Yep, nuts. Cuckoo. Fran Morgan's little boy is talking to a dead man - there's no way that can be good.
"However, if it hadn't been for the shemira and that Chevra Kaddisha member with me the entire time, you might have gotten to me before I even got buried," Gideon argued.
He's still got a bullet hole in his head, for Pete's sake!
"True," Reid conceded. "That was a royal pain in the rear."
"You weren't the one who got buried. Or had to listen to someone reciting the Tehillim for hours on end."
"Well, it's not like it's never happened to me," Reid said with an edge to his voice.
Gideon nodded and raised an apologetic hand.
"Wait, what?" Morgan asked. He watched the two exchange a look.
"So, Morgan, how have you been?" Gideon asked, attempting to change the subject.
"I've gotta say, Jason, it's been a rough couple of days."
"You ain't just whistling Dixie there, Kid," Gideon told him.
-x-
Reid got Gideon a new shirt from somewhere - does he keep spares around in different sizes for all the corpses he digs up? Morgan wondered - and cleaned up the head wound, but didn't dress it. In fact, once the blood had been washed away, the injury looked far less serious than it should have.
"It's healing," Reid said, as he pulled the wet cloth away from where he'd been dabbing it at Gideon's head and examined it, "But not as quickly as I would have assumed."
"I'm dehydrated."
"That's probably it." Reid gazed down at Gideon from his perch on the arm of the couch. "I hope it wasn't too bad," he said with what Morgan felt was a surprising amount of gentleness. Not that Reid wasn't a kind-hearted man, or that the situation didn't warrant it, but Derek felt there was something else going on.
"It was only a few hours. After what you went through - "
Reid shook his head, and Gideon shut up.
But Morgan was far from an idiot. "Are the two of you suggesting Reid was once buried alive?"
Reid made a face and Morgan couldn't tell if he was laughing or in pain. "Alive is kind of a tricky word..." the younger man said dryly.
"Okay, look, I've had enough of this!" Morgan snapped. "Just what in the hell is going on?" He turned to Gideon. "HOW are you still alive?"
Gideon looked at Reid. "Are you going to...?" he asked, waggling his fingers in a suggestion of Morgan-didn't-know-what.
Reid nodded.
Gideon turned back to Morgan. "I'm not alive. I died in 1927."
"Uh huh. And you?" he asked, turning to Reid.
"1917."
"1917 what?"
"I died in 1917."
"Of course."
"Well that's settled," Gideon said with a wry grin. Clapping his hands together he said, "How about we get some take-out? I'm starving!"
-x-
"You're honestly telling me you're dead," Morgan said to Reid while the other man was digging into a carton of cashew chicken.
"For nearly a century now."
"Dead dead."
"No, alive dead."
"Quit joking around."
"Who's joking around? If I was dead dead, I wouldn't be here."
"Which is kind of my argument, Kid!"
"Look, would this help?" Reid asked, and then grabbed a nearby knife from the coffee table and plunged it into his hand. Morgan started up in shock, but Gideon didn't even stop eating. "That was my knife," the older man pointed out.
"Watch," Reid said calmly to Morgan, and as Morgan did, the younger man's hand healed almost instantly.
"Seriously, I needed that knife," Gideon said.
"Oh sure, but when I wanted something other than chopsticks to eat Chinese food with, I got laughed at," Reid grumbled. "What do you need a knife for anyway?"
"You...you...you..." Morgan stammered, his voice shaking, pointing a disbelieving finger at Reid's hand.
"These chicken balls are too big. I'm afraid of dislocating my jaw if I don't cut them in half," Gideon complained.
"Reid, Holy Cow!" Morgan went on.
"Fine, I'll get you another knife."
"NO!" Morgan shouted.
Reid shot a glance at Gideon. "Gee, it's a good thing I didn't do the 'shoot-myself-in-the-stomach' trick," he said.
-x-
Morgan had needed a drink after that. Then several drinks. Then quite a few many more drinks. It was nearly sixteen hours later when he was once again coherent enough to talk. Once more lying on the couch, this time with a cold compress on his head and nursing a hangover, he asked Reid, "What are you?"
"A reaper. I reap souls for a...well, I guess 'living' is the wrong word."
"Because you're dead."
"Actually, I was thinking because I've never been paid for it, but yeah, that too."
"And you're dead."
"Yes."
"Dead dead."
"I think we've already been through this," Reid said.
"So... GOD, WHAT? I don't understand any of this!"
Reid took a deep breath. "I was killed in mid-April, 1917."
"You don't know the exact date?"
"That's what's surprising about that statement?"
"You DO have an eidetic memory."
"It was nearly a century ago! And I DIED! Of course there's going to be a few blurry days here and there, even for me. I mean, being dead involves actually dying. Matter of fact, honest to goodness death. It's a little more disorientating than bruising a couple of ribs or taking a graze to the arm." Reid smirked and said to Gideon, "You should have heard them a few months ago - him and J.J. and the new agent, Kate. 'Oh, I got shot here!' 'Oh, I took a big, giant knife there!' 'Oh, I broke my little fingernail!' "
"No one said that!" Morgan protested.
"Might as well have," Reid said. "I DIED. Literally. Funeral and everything. So let me tell you, until you do that, you are never going to win the who's-got-the-best-wound-story game. Heck, even then, your odds are pretty small unless your death turns out to be particularly gruesome."
"Oh yeah, so how'd you die then?"
"I was a surgeon at a British field hospital in France during the Great War - "
"The Great War?"
"I meant the first World War; we didn't have differentiate them numerically until we knew there'd be more than one. Remind me to buy you some history books for Christmas."
"Ha ha. Just go on with the story, Vincent Price."
"My apologies. I was remiss in not making the tale of my death entertaining enough." Morgan did have the good grace to look a little chagrined by that, but Reid went on. "Anyway, we'd had an influx of Canadians coming in from Vimy. Between patients, I went outside for a smoke. Then there was an explosion - some imbecile with a grenade he'd bought as a souvenir. The blast went off near an ammunition shed and, predictably, that added to the disaster. Six dead and Nurse Clendenning lost an eye. I myself died from being impaled through the neck by the shards of a dead man's femur. It sliced my jugular. Ironically, other than that, I wasn't too bad off. And, on the bright side, I also gave up smoking."
Morgan considered this. "You win."
"Obviously."
"So the guy with the grenade was blown to bits?"
"Less than that. He was practically obliterated. The shards of femur that impaled me was actually from some Belgian who'd died the year before. Constant shelling does a real number on the actual ground of a battlefield, and there's all kinds of mud, and the dead end up trampled down where they lay, so they're only a foot or so under the surface and then the next bombardment comes along, and... you get the picture."
Morgan looked appalled. Moving to face Gideon, he asked the older man how he originally died. "Killed in a bank robbery," Jason replied.
"So you were fighting crime even then? Interesting." Gideon was trying to keep from laughing and out of the corner of his eye, Morgan could see Reid biting his lip, attempting to do the same. "What?"
"I was one of the robbers," Gideon admitted.
"Remember those extra prints of Chaplin films his "great-grandad" was "left" by the studio?" Reid asked.
"Yeah."
"For "great-grandad" read "Gideon", and for "left" read "stole"," Reid elaborated with a chuckle.
"You're kidding!"
"Nope. Once upon a time, Gideon was a lot more sticky-fingered when it came to other people's possessions."
Morgan shook his head as if to clear it. "Okay, okay, we're getting off topic a bit here. So you both died. It doesn't answer my main question: why are you still, you know, walking around?"
"We're reapers," Reid explained. "We remove souls from people when they die. Ideally, just before death, but depending on circumstances that's not always possible."
"How did you become, uh, Reapers?"
"Each reaper has a secret quota of souls," Gideon said. "When they meet their quota, they 'get their lights' as we call it - which means they move onto another realm - and the last soul reaped takes his or her place."
"Between the Great War and the Spanish Flu, there was a big turnover when I died," Reid put in. "There's a lot of Reapers who were created then. But at least in the War Department I've got a good chance of meeting my quota; I can't help but pity those poor people in Plague Division."
"War Department? Plague Division? You guys are set up like a corporation?"
"Pretty much," Reid agreed. "Since I died in an accident caused by war, I'm in the External Influence Division - accidents, suicides, homicides, etc. - and for a good while, Special Branch War Department in that division."
"You're shittin' me, right?"
"Unfortunately not. There's a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and paper work in the afterlife," Gideon said.
"Wonderful. Still though, there's an afterlife, right? God and everything?"
"Couldn't tell you," Reid said, "Have yet to get there. The lights - and the whole Reaping thing - do suggest an afterlife of some duration, but as for God, I have no idea."
"So you've been here ever since you died?"
"Yep."
"Then you're immortal?"
"God, I hope not!" Reid exclaimed, utterly appalled.
"But you're...old."
"Yes."
"How old?"
"I was born in 1894."
Morgan took a moment to do the math. "Let me get this straight: you're one hundred and twenty-one years old?"
Reid smirked. "Puts a whole new spin on "Kid", doesn't it?"
Morgan didn't touch that one. "And you, Gideon? How old are you?" he asked instead.
"One hundred and forty."
"All right, so you're...old. And you're Reapers - you take the souls of the dead. So, in essence, you've been doomed to a purgatory of killing people."
"Purgatory, yes. Killing, no. It's the Gravelings who do the killing," Reid clarified. "Or at least, they're the ones who cause the accidents that kill people. How that gets decided, I don't know."
"Why don't you just... I don't know... not take people's souls?" Morgan asked. "Would the Gravelings still kill them? Or why don't you push people out of the way? You know, prevent the accident in some way."
Reid hesitated. "That can be tricky."
Gideon had no compunctions about their job, however. "We take souls because that's what we're supposed to do. It's better for them and it's better for us. It allows the soul to move on after death. Imagine being stuck in your body after it's died - going through the autopsy, being buried - "
"Or cremation," Reid put in.
"Jewish law forbids that too," Gideon said.
"Lucky for you," Reid shot back.
"Extremely so. In any case," Gideon said, going back to Morgan's question, "If you leave the soul there and the person dies, it's a nightmare. You leave it there and they live, well, sometimes that can be even worse. The soul can wither in the body, become twisted - Hell, apparently Adolf Hitler was supposed to have died as a boy, but some Reaper felt sorry for a little kid. Look how that worked out."
"That doesn't always happen," Reid argued.
Gideon stared disapprovingly at Reid. "What have you been up too? Tommy, Tommy, Tommy..."
"Wait," Morgan broke in, "You called him that before." He pointed at Reid, "And you called him Rube."
"Nicknames," Reid said. "As I was saying, the soul withering doesn't always happen, but there can be other consequences."
"One of mine in Seattle stopped a man from getting killed," Gideon said. "He turned out all right, but his avoiding death lead directly to deaths of a few dozen other people not scheduled to go. You never know how it's going to go, but being soft always makes it go wrong." He looked pointedly at Reid. "Even if it's just for the Reaper."
Morgan saved that up for later. "Get back to the names. What are Tommy and Rube nicknames for?"
"Why do you want to know?" Reid asked, genuinely puzzled.
"Kid...uh, Old Man...You're one of my best friends. I'd like to know your actual name - my sense of reality needs some shoring up after all this."
"So you don't plan on looking us up on the internet?"
"Oh no, that's going to happen," Morgan assured the other man.
Reid seemed reluctant, but finally he shrugged and said, "Fitzgerald Reid Thompson."
"Fitzgerald?"
"Mother's maiden name."
"Hey, wait, speaking of mothers, what about Diana? How is she related to you?"
"She's my granddaughter."
Morgan stared at Reid. Reid stared back. "I think I need another drink," Morgan said.
-x-
Reid booked Gideon a flight to Toronto. It left at 4:00 am. Morgan drove him to the airport and he and Gideon sat in the front while Reid napped in the back.
"You know I've still got about six hundred more questions, right?" Morgan said.
"I'd question your sanity if you didn't," Gideon said with a smile. "What do you want to start with?"
"Who's Rosie?"
A faraway look came into Gideon's eyes as he stared at the passing streetlights. "She was my daughter. She died just before Reid came on the team. She was the real reason I took some time off back then. Not that Adrian Bale and the warehouse didn't play a huge part. Or maybe it was just everything all together."
"If she died then, why does Reid only remember it now?"
"Something happened to Tommy... Reid. When he first joined the team, he didn't remember what he was. He only remembered after Hankel."
"Wait, so that's why he was so screwed up after that? Not drugs?"
"No, there were drugs. Not to mention the torture that he'd undergone. But remembering what he was so suddenly like that definitely exacerbated the problem."
Morgan was silent. "So Reid... er, Tommy... had kids," he said quietly after some time.
"Glynis and Ian. Ian died as a toddler. Measles. Glynis was Diana's mother. She lived to be forty-seven or so, I think. When she died, Tommy took over raising Diana. We're not supposed to go anywhere near our families, though. Like saving people, it can lead to bad things."
"Like what?"
"We're punished. Sometimes, it's just a run of bad luck for the Reaper. Minor stuff, but hard to take after awhile." Gideon looked back sadly at the man sleeping in the back seat. "Tommy, though... He shouldn't have ended up like this. Doctors - those with the true vocation to heal - always make bad Reapers. It's not in them to just sit by and watch death come, no matter how many times you show them the consequences. I can't tell you all the ways he's paid for sparing someone. Bad luck, personal tragedy... Hell, unless the quotas are truly random, it's probably why he's still here.
"As for Diana, well, it's different in every case, but I know Tommy believes Diana's condition was his fault. I wouldn't phrase in terms of 'fault' myself, but I can't deny the two events are likely related."
"Bad luck, huh? The Kid's sure had his run of that in the last few years. And all because he's been saving people. Jeez, maybe he's right and there is no God on the other side of this. Maybe it is all nothing but a bunch of cosmic bureaucrats running the show."
"I think that's why they sent him here, in a way. The usual way this works is that we get the notice of who's going to die before it happens, and we reap them before death actually occurs. But with murders, the temptation to save is too great, so the notice comes after."
"So people are spared the trauma of slipping on a banana peal, but left to go through being raped and beaten to death?"
Gideon shrugged, but Morgan could sense the bitter anger coming off the older man at that. "Like you said, cosmic bureaucrats," Jason replied.
"You know, this explains quite a lot about Reid: the fuddy-duddy tastes, why he always seems to survive everything..."
"It's also why he has an aversion to touch," Gideon said. "When you can take someone's soul by the simple laying on of hands, it's hard not to become obsessed by the emotional weight of physical contact."
"God, you two don't take a person's soul every time, do you?" Morgan asked. "What if people touch you by accident?"
"Don't be silly," a voice said from the back. "If we took a soul every time someone bumped into us, I'd be knee-deep in corpses every time I got off the Metro. And I don't have fuddy-duddy tastes, you Philistine, I just got tired trying to keep up with every new trend. Do you know how exhausting and pointless it is to try and remember every new song or movie? Ninety percent of them are forgotten in five years because they're garbage. I stick with what lasts now."
"Sure, Kid, sure."
"Infant," Reid muttered.
Arriving at the airport, Morgan parked and he and Reid followed Gideon in to see him off on his flight. Morgan stood back though, and let Reid and Gideon have a private goodbye. Watching closely, he was puzzled again when Gideon asked Reid a question, waggling his fingers the same way he did before.
-x-
"You are going to take care of this, right?" Gideon asked.
"Of course."
"I don't get it. Why even tell him in the first place?"
Reid shrugged. "You know how it is. Sometimes you just have to tell somebody."
Gideon nodded. "Make sure you do a through job though, right? That particular skill has never been your strong point."
"It'll be all right."
Gideon shook his head with a smile. "Your too much of an honest man, Tommy. You've never been good at it because your entire being rebels at hiding your true self. But you need to do it, and you need to make it stick. You know that."
"I know. Don't worry."
-x-
Morgan drove Reid back to his apartment, letting him out on the sidewalk in front of his building.
"You know I'm going to be looking you up on the net. I want to see a picture of this Fitzgerald Reid Thompson, Army surgeon."
"Won't do you any good - my name wasn't the only thing that changed."
"Pardon me?"
"My original body is lying - hopefully, at least - a full six feet of French soil. This is nothing but a loaner. Even if you find my picture, you won't recognize me."
"Dammit!"
"What would you have done with my picture in any case? It wouldn't have helped anybody believe you - Photoshop is too prevalent not to be the far more logical explanation."
"I don't know, I just wanted to see it."
"I think I understand. Oh, hey, pass me my coffee, would you?"
When Morgan did, Reid reached out and touched his hand. A warm feeling overtook Morgan, but he thought nothing of it. Nor did he think of the immediate way he fell into a deep slumber the minute he got home.
-x-
Reid, J.J. and Kate were all catching up on paperwork the next day when Morgan sauntered by their desks after getting some coffee from the break room.
"Did you have a good weekend, Morgan?" Kate asked.
"Must have. I don't remember any of it."
"When are you going to stop living like a frat boy, Derek?" J.J. laughed. "What's the point of having a good time if you don't remember you've had it?"
"Beats me, but I feel great today. Really rested. Which is weird, because I had the strangest damn dream last night."
"Is this going to be something we'll regret hearing?" Kate wanted to know.
"Wasn't an X-rated show, if that's what you're worrying about Callahan. No, it was about Gideon."
J.J. and Kate looked up and shot worried glances in Reid's direction, but he seemed fine. If anything, he was curious. "So what happened in this dream, Morgan?" he asked.
"I'm telling you it was weird! You were there - "
"Just in case we have different definitions of X-rated, please assure me I had all my clothes on in this dream."
J.J. and Kate gaped in amazement; had the shy and retiring Dr. Reid just made a joke? However, Morgan merely slapped the younger man lightly upside the head, causing the wild hair to whip up as if a gust of wind from below had hit it. "Yeah, you had all your clothes on, Dr. Pure-as-the-driven-snow. What you were doing was digging up Gideon's grave."
"What?" Reid exclaimed. "Holy cow, Morgan, is that what you think of me? Jeez, what did I do then, hide his body in my closet?"
"No, no, you've got it wrong. You saved him."
"Saved him?" Reid asked.
"Yeah, he was buried alive! Then the two of you were giving me some song and dance about each being a hundred years old and about how you reap souls."
"I see. You think I'm Bela Lugosi."
"No, you did it to help people."
"I helped people by taking their souls?"
"Yeah."
Reid looked at Morgan. "You're not waiting for me to analyze that, are you? Because even with a Psych degree, that might be a little out of my league."
"In any case, Derek," J.J. added, "It seems like it's always been a good impulse on your part to avoid Halloween; apparently you're very susceptible to it."
"I concur," Reid said, as he got up to get his own coffee. "Not to mention, I think I'm a little insulted. I might be weird, but I'm not that weird."
-x-
Life (and afterlife) went on. Morgan forgot about his weird dream, except for one time. When he and J.J. were once again comparing battle scars, now with newbie Tara Lewis, he couldn't get over the feeling that Reid was laughing at him.
.
.
Well, there you go! Hope you enjoyed. Oh, and if you were wondering about "Rube", it stands for Reuben John Sofer, and the bit about the songs referred to a specific scene in "Dead Like Me" when he goes to see his - now elderly - daughter in a nursing home. He sings the song "(I'll Be Loving You) Always", which he sang to her as a child. It's a very touching scene.
For those of you waiting for updates on my other stories, I still want to finish them, but it might be awhile. My living situation is still up in the air and I'm staying with someone right now and it's not always easy to get time on the computer, let alone the space to organize all my notes. I think I wrote this mainly because I needed to get in the habit once more, or I might *never* write anything again!