Posting a bit early this week as my adventures take me away from the land of computers and such. Should be back to the usual Fanfiction Friday by next week!

0

Essential listening – Rabbit Heart (Raise it up), by Florence and the Machine

0o0

They were back, inevitably it seemed, in the conference room.

Grace leaned against the wall, glad to be out of the sun. Someone had let Reid have a white board marker and a board, which she felt might be a bad idea, since he had a tendency to doodle fearsomely difficult equations in the margins when his mind wandered. Given the speed at which that particular part of his body usually operated, this happened with reasonable frequency.

He was currently analysing the questionnaire from the so-called 'Goodman Institute'.

"Look at this, guys. He calls them 'phobias' instead of anxiety disorders."

He circled the word on the board.

"Implying they're something that can be fixed?" Grace suggested.

"Yeah, this guy's either an amateur or studied psychology in the eighties," said Emily.

"The phrasing of the questions is clinical, this guy's a professional," Morgan pointed out.

"He's able to pick the perfect victims," Hotch observed. "'Are you close to your family?' 'Easy making friends?' Answer 'yes' and you're spared the torture."

"Well, we've figured out how he chooses his victims, but that doesn't get us his real name," said Calvert, intense with the hunt.

"Alright, let's review," said Hotch, marshalling his forces. "JJ, can you get Garcia?"

JJ dialled Garcia's number on the Polycom as everyone made their way back to the table. Grace stayed put; there weren't enough chairs, for a start, and she was still feeling the echoes of the victims from the grave site. Slightly apart from her team-mates, the fading cacophony was manageable, but any closer and she would have felt stifled.

"I think the guy's a real psychiatrist," said Morgan.

"Also afraid of being alone, so he's most likely married," Emily added.

"May have adopted children," said Reid, walking around the table.

"Why?" asked Calvert, looking up.

"Uh, because the tortures lack a sexual component."

"Oh, right, he might be impotent…"

"Hey guys," Garcia picked up.

"Also, if he's desperate for a sense of community he'd definitely have kids," said Reid. He shot Grace a look before taking a seat in case she wanted it. She did not.

"Probably also involved in the community in some way," she suggested. "But more of a remote involvement – something he can feel good about doing, but doesn't have to be a part of a team for."

"'kay, I'm crossing psychiatric doctors with adoptions."

They could hear Garcia's keyboard rattling, hundreds of miles away.

"And given the obsession to control his victims with torture he might have been abused," Hotch told her.

"'kay, juvenile records are gonna be sealed, so you gotta give me a minute," said Garcia.

"Uh, he uses antiquated terms like 'phobias', so he's most likely in his forties," Emily proposed.

"And the creep of the moment award goes to…" There was a pause as Garcia worked her magic. "One forty-three year old Doctor Stanley Howard, psychiatrist."

Bill Calvert frowned.

"This guy was killin' his own patients?"

"No, Stan Howard's smarter than that," said Hotch. "That's why he created Goodman and the research ruse."

"He's married to Jane Howard, has one eight year old daughter, Jessica…" Garcia paused. "He started a centre for abused kids."

"Probably because he could relate," Hotch reflected.

"Well, one good deed's not fortifying his karma," said Garcia, snarkily. "Looks like his practice shut down last year."

"Right about the time the killing started," said Hotch.

"That loss of power must have been the trigger," said Grace, glumly.

"He still has a lease on his old office building," said Garcia. "Deed permits were pulled due to renovation, but whadya know, they've been delayed. Yikes!" Everyone frowned at the Polycom. "His bank records show a seriously depleted savings account."

"So he's keeping up appearances," said Hotch. "Where's the building?"

"427 Cedar's Avenue."

"That's not far from here," said Calvert, getting to his feet.

"Alright, let's go check the building," said Hotch. He nodded at Emily and JJ. "You two –"

"Talk to the family, got it," Emily finished.

"Thanks Garcia!" JJ said, flicking the Polycom off.

0o0o0o0

The first address had been a wash out. It was unusual to show up intending to shake down a building that was no longer there, and it had momentarily knocked everyone off their game. Back in the SUV, Emily had given them the location of Jane Howard's commercial property.

Grace sat tersely in the back, sandwiched between Morgan and Reid and trying not to fall on either of them as Calvert cornered sharply. Not for the first time, she wished that she and the boys weren't such long legged beasts. She also wished Morgan didn't work out so damn much. Colliding with his shoulder at high speed felt rather like rebounding off a concrete block. Spencer, who was on the bonier side of solid, wasn't much better.

Resigned to her bruises, she piled out of the car after them, the agents swarming up to the building like a congregation late for mass – albeit a mass that required them to be armed and prepared to shoot somebody.

"There are no tenants in this building, these must be fake names," said Calvert, gesturing at the board full of 'personnel' in the foyer.

"Helps with the ruse," said Morgan. "Goodman's on the fifth floor."

"We'll take the elevators – Pearce, take the stairs," Hotch ordered. "Let us know if he's on the move."

Grace didn't need telling twice; she sprinted towards the stairwell.

She was four floors up and gaining, strafing around ever corner, when Hotch radioed through that the fake office was empty. Something metallic clanked above her and she looked up: the shadow of a man was moving up the staircase a few floors above her.

"I got someone," she hissed, into her tiny wrist radio. "East stairwell. Can't see his face."

"Keep him in sight," Hotch's voice said in her ear. "We're on our way."

"On about the sixth floor," she advised, quietly. "Moving upwards."

She moved off in pursuit, keeping her gun trained on the shadow, climbing the stairs a couple of floors up. She was on the sixth floor, her mark on the eighth, when a door banged open below her. Morgan's shout made Howard pause to look down.

Grace kept moving as quietly as she could, slinking up the stairs like an overgrown cat. Howard was unlikely to go quietly.

She could hear Hotch and Morgan clattering up the stairs behind her, muffling her own, fluid movements. If she could just maintain the element of surprise –

Howard picked up the pace as she got within feet of him.

"Don't move, Doctor Howard," she snapped.

The man span around, astonished. He'd clearly thought that his pursuers were much further behind him. She recognised a panicked psychopath when she saw one. Still, she was relatively sure he wasn't armed.

That wasn't his style.

"Lie down on the ground, Doctor Howard, hands on your head if you please," she commanded.

As she had expected, he moved to comply, almost as if his body had responded to the voice of authority without reference to its owner's brain. She moved to cuff him, but he bolted up the remaining flight of stairs between them and the roof, taking her by surprise.

Grace roared a curse and shot after him. He was moving too quickly to take him down using her more unofficial talents – that was the last thought she had before he reached the top and wrenched the metal gate open.

Grace, hot on his heels, had the brief impression of a panicked expression before Doctor Howard slammed the gate into her face.

The force of it knocked her backwards, and for a moment she was falling entirely through air before her foot made contact with one of the steps and she toppled down the rest of them. She came to rest at the corner of the stairwell and smacked her head against the concrete with a sickening crunch.

Momentarily, the world went white; everything tasted of iron.

Instinctively, Grace swung herself onto all fours. The world swirled back into view, the floor beneath her sliding backwards and forwards. She blinked, clutching at her face with one hand.

It really bloody hurt.

There seemed to be a lot of shouting coming from somewhere nearby.

Grace wiped at her eyes, trying to work out what was obscuring her vision – her hand came away wet and red. She blinked at it, stupidly.

Someone pushed her back into a sitting position.

"Pearce! Pearce, you okay?"

Agent Morgan's face swam urgently into her vision and Grace remembered where she was, and what she was supposed to be doing.

"Roof," she managed. "Go – I'm okay. Go."

He hurried up the last few steps after Hotch, leaving her propped up against the wall. Grace squinted at the stairs. Was that really all she'd fallen down?

It didn't seem nearly enough…

She tried to get up, found that moving caused a jarring pain in her elbow and quickly sat back down, waiting for the dancing lights to subside. There was a weird, irritating buzzing in her head.

The voices of her teammates drifted down from the hot, sunny rooftop above, still trying to bring their quarry in, even knowing that he wouldn't surrender control unless he absolutely had to.

The silence fell just before Reid and Calvert reached her. She closed her eyes, knowing with sickening clarity that Doctor Howard had just jumped to his death. She had to admit, he wasn't someone she felt the need to mourn, though she felt bad for his wife and little girl.

A hand on her shoulder dragged her back to reality – she opened her eyes to find both Reid and Agent Calvert peering worriedly down at her.

"Grace?"

Spencer was saying something about focussing on him.

"'m okay," she said again. "Jus' knocked abou' a bit."

"You're slurring," Reid pointed out.

Behind him (or above him, Grace wasn't entirely sure), Agent Calvert was calling for an ambulance.

"We lost him," said Hotch, coming back down the stairs. "He jumped."

"You okay?" asked Morgan, concerned.

Suddenly, the little kink in the stairwell felt entirely too full of people. All four of them started saying 'Woah –' when she struggled to her feet. It was like a chorus of worried cuckoo clocks.

"You need to sit down," said Hotch's voice, oddly distorted over the throng.

He was pushing gently on her shoulder, but she brushed him off.

"I need some air," she managed to say, and everyone except Morgan backed off a little.

"Nuh-uh," he said, as she made to stumble towards the stairs. He caught her around the waist. "You're comin' with me."

0o0

They had taken the lift back down, depositing Reid and Calvert somewhere on different floors in the building.

Grace tried to think of something funny to say to Morgan about his earlier escapade, but her sentences didn't seem to be forming properly. They walked her past Doctor Howard's shattered remains, his blood forming a little stream leading to the nearest drain. Morgan made her sit down under a tree. The shade it cast was minimal, but it would do for now. She put up a token resistance, mainly for show, wishing she'd been a bit slower off the mark in that stairwell.

"Sit," said Morgan. "Stay."

"Woof."

He ignored her and rejoined Calvert and Hotch a little way away.

Grace closed her eyes again, clutching her head. She let the voices of her colleagues wash over her.

"They found a Missy Cassell's car in a parking lot next to the building," Calvert was saying. "Howard's is around back"

"Before he jumped he said that my biggest fear was not being able to save everybody," said Hotch, thinking out loud.

"Hotch, this guy wasn't right in the head," said Morgan.

Thank you, Agent Obvious, Grace thought dimly.

"No, I know that," Hotch interrupted. "But what I think he meant was that she's here somewhere."

Grace's frown deepened. They had to find her. She tried to stand up again, but slumped back against the tree, forced to concede that right now she wasn't much help to anybody. She heard the door slam open and squinted over in time to see Reid emerge from the building at some speed.

He stopped abruptly when caught sight of Howard's corpse, a look of horror forming on his usually cheerful face. It pulled him up short for a moment, but he quickly recovered, still staring at the murderer's face.

"I went though all of his journals and found Missy's," he said.

"What did it say?" asked Hotch, urgently.

"She was going on a cave diving trip – uh – she wasn't scared of the water, but she was terrified of the walls crumbling down on her."

"So what was she afraid of?" Calvert asked.

"Being buried alive," Reid told him.

"Basement!" Grace shouted, from under her tree. "Look in the Basement!"

The four agents turned on a hair and scrambled back inside the building.

"I'll stay here and – er – guard the corpse," she glared in the direction of the late, unlamented remains of Stanley Howard.

She didn't believe in hell in a traditional sense, thinking that it was more of a creation of human imagination than anything else, but if she ever saw it, she decided, she'd check that Dr Howard was still serving time there. If anyone deserved fire and brimstone, he did.

Her gaze shifted to the road as an ambulance screeched around the corner. Two paramedics sprang out as soon as it had come to a halt and made a bee-line for her. She waved them away.

"There's a woman in the basement who's been buried alive," she called. "Take breathing equipment. I can wait."

The two men hesitated for a moment before spinning around, one heading straight for the building, the other back to the ambulance for their kit.,

She watched them go, hoping that they weren't too late.

0o0o0o0

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I swear to God, Reid, if you try to make me focus on your fingers one more time I'll throw you off this bloody jet."

"Children," JJ commented, tolerantly, as she passed their table.

"Head injuries are no laughing matter!" he protested indignantly. "Last year alone, nearly fifty thousand people died from concussion or other traumatic brain injuries."*

"Morgan, he's quoting statistics at me, make him stop," she whined.

Morgan's head appeared over the back of the seat behind Reid.

"Okay, Pretty Boy, leave her alone," he said. "The doctors cleared her hours ago."

He winked at Grace, who gave him a painful smile. Reid glared at him. He'd been hovering around her like a gangly mother hen since they'd pulled Missy Cassell out of the bottom of that lift shaft back in Portland. It was the same behaviour she'd seen when the Lonely Heart Killer had knocked Emily for six back in Wisconsin; it was both irritating and endearing. It was difficult to stay annoyed at him for too long, though the pain in her face was making his behaviour grate more than usual.

Grumpily, he subsided; Morgan went back to his file and Grace rested her aching head against the cool glass of the jet window. She admired the view.

"I'm getting used to being so high up," she mused, aloud.

"You're afraid of heights?" Reid asked, surprised.

"No," Grace cracked a weary grin. "Just falling from them."

The corners of his mouth turned upwards slightly.

"Aeroplanes, more than heights, anyway. Speaking of which," she said, making herself more comfortable. "You never told me why you called me – it was when you were stuck in the lift with Morgan, right?"

Spencer nodded. There was something evasive about the expression in his eyes, which made her want to press the subject.

"Uh – yeah. It – it was an accident," he said, hurriedly. "I – uh – had my cell phone out when it – it dropped us."

"It dropped you?" Grace gasped, horrified. Absently, she wondered why Reid would blush so fiercely at that. She would have been terrified. "Urgh – I would have been trying to claw my way out!"

He gave her a worried grin.

"We pretty much did," he admitted, relaxing slightly.

"No wonder you freaked out."

"Is this the elevator?" Emily asked, dropping into the seat beside her.

"Yeah," said Grace, as Reid blushed even harder. "It dropped them."

"It dropped you?" Emily's eyebrows shot skywards. "Woah."

"About ten feet," Spencer admitted. "But not all at once."

"Woah."

"I don't think you'd get me in another lift," Grace observed, and then winced.

Raising an eyebrow has had unexpected consequences, given the bruising.

"Tch-yeah," Reid chuckled. "I had to make myself look up the load-bearing capacity of elevator cables last night."

Emily and Grace laughed.

Encouraged, he went on: "Did you know, the first elevator was built by Archimedes in around 236BC?" he asked, excited. "There were several later versions, including one in 1000BC in Islamic Spain – but early lifts weren't installed in palaces in England and France until the seventeenth century. The first screw drive elevator – that wasn't based on a – a hoist or winder – was designed by the Russian engineer and inventor, Ivan Kulibin, and installed in the Winter Palace in Moscow in 1793. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that more modern elevators came into being."

He said all of this very fast.

"Good," said Grace, perfunctorily.

"I'm not a fan of scorpions," Emily told her, before Reid could start again.

"I've never really come across them," said Grace, "but I imagine I wouldn't be particularly comfortable if I was in the same room as one."

Emily shuddered.

"It's not just the sting," she said. "I just… I don't know. They're not like anything else."

"You know they fluoresce under UV light?" Reid asked, not in the least put out that his previous topic had been shut down. "There's a chemical in their carapace that reflects it."

"Yeah, something about amplifying their eyesight," Grace recalled.

"That's the current theory."

Grace playfully tapped Emily on the arm.

"Hah – you could used them as nightlights."

"Urgh. That's going straight into my nightmares, thank you."

Reid and Grace laughed.

"I don't even like the way they move."

Spencer nodded.

"Our minds are predisposed to instinctively mistrust that which is alien," Reid observed. "It's why so many people freak out about spiders – they don't move like anything we're used to."

"Plus there's the fight or flight response," Grace remarked. "I mean, some spiders are poisonous, after all."

"Yeah, but sometimes it all gets messed up and you end up with people who're afraid of clowns," said Emily.

"I don't like clowns," said Reid.

"Now why does that not surprise me?" Emily laughed.

"No, I'm with Spencer here. There's something inherently sinister about clowns," said Grace. "Something to do with the face paint…"

"It's a mask thing," Reid put in.

"Either way, they always look like they're up to something."

Emily laughed at them both until they joined in.

"Growing up, I knew someone who had anxiety attacks around bananas," Grace recalled.

"Bananas?"

"Surprisingly common allergy, apparently."

"As a fear, though, that's pretty rare," said Reid. "I knew a girl in college who was mortally afraid of the sound of tin foil."

"Really?"

"Some people have a thing about the sound of polystyrene or balloons," Emily nodded. "Oh, I dated this one guy who couldn't bear terracotta. He couldn't even touch it – it made him physically sick."

"It's incredible what fear can do," Grace nodded. "My friend Alice – my old Guv's daughter – she used to get an actual skin reaction to meeting new people."

"Wow, that's pretty drastic," Emily frowned.

"Well, she had it rough," Grace explained, sadly. "Her parents were murdered when she was little. She hid in a cupboard while it happened. She was five."

Emily and Reid screwed up their faces.

"Yeesh."

"The Guv' worked their case. She wouldn't even talk at first, but she always trusted him. He's a solid sort of person, really. He adopted her after the murderers went away. He always did take in strays."

"Like you?" Emily teased, and Grace flashed her a painful smile.

"Oh, absolutely," she laughed. "Alice is doing much better now…"

"She can talk to people?" Reid asked, thoughtfully.

"Yeah – still clams up around strangers and we can't get her to leave either the Guv's house or Cross Bones, but I think she's incredible," Grace told them, proudly.

"Cross Bones?" Emily asked.

"Our nick," she said, after a moment. "It was next to the old Cross Bones graveyard in Southwark. The name kind of stuck."

"She'll move between the two, though?" Spencer asked; he'd obviously been trying to profile Alice in the back of his mind. "Unusual for agoraphobics."

"Not willingly," Grace chuckled. "She made a camp in the basement for months because the Guv' practically never left. I gave her my old flat when I left."

"You lived in the station?" Emily asked. "I could not do that."

"Above it. Well, that's London for you," she said. "Everything's on top of everything else. Anyway, it was handy."

She turned her attention back to the window again, rubbing her head. There was a lot about her time in that flat that she would rather forget.

Spencer mumbled something about agoraphobia and she smiled at him.

"It's far simpler than that," she told him. "Alice told me once that she didn't have a lot of different fears and phobias. Just the one."

"What was it?" Reid asked, interested.

"Everything."

0o0o0o0

She had taken refuge behind the knackered old sofa that lived at the far end of the office, her long legs stretched out in front of her. She was staring straight ahead. If anyone had cared to look they would have thought she couldn't hear them.

As usual, as soon as Grace and her more stalwart defenders were out of sight, half the team had started discussing her personal life. Alice knew better.

She and a handful of close friends had been with Grace all through those bitter months, and there wasn't a thing that was said about her these days that held a grain of truth. It was as if the people who had worked with her for years had suddenly decided that rumour was more trustworthy than experience.

Alice hated them for it.

Moving silent and unnoticed through the busy office – just another part of the wallpaper, as far as most of Cross Bones was concerned – she sat quietly beside Grace, tucking her knees up to her chest. She wished everyone on the other side of the sofa would just shut up. Grace had been through enough already.

Ten years her senior, Grace had become Alice's confidante, her staunchest defender; her best friend. It was rather like having a big sister, and Alice (after a week of initial terror which Grace had blithely ignored) loved her for it. She had always seemed so strong…

"Just ignore them," said Alice quietly, glancing at her friend's face. It was carefully blank, as it always seemed to be, these days.

Grace shrugged; Alice examined her shoes.

There had been a time when someone talking smack about Grace would have earned them an ice cube down the back of their shirt at the very least, or a devastating right hook. She had been legendary, in fact, for speaking her mind – often when she probably shouldn't have. She had not been known to suffer fools gladly. Not anymore.

For nearly a year and a half now, Grace had been alarmingly silent.

At work she was professional and faultlessly polite. Off duty, she had become a ghost, stalking the halls of Cross Bones at night, ensuring that it couldn't ever happen again.

Alice understood.

No one could lose so much in such a short space of time and stay intact – and working with a group of people for whom suspicion was a base-state of being, she could well appreciate why Grace had chosen to pretend that their chatter passed over her head.

She missed the old Grace – the mad, silly woman who snuck cupcakes up to her room when Alice wasn't feeling well, or giggled uncontrollably at all the least appropriate moments, or danced with her on the roof of Cross Bones in the rain, telling Alice that they were dancing on starlight. She made every terror Alice had ever experienced seem manageable – conquerable.

"What are you afraid of, Alice?"

Grace had been quiet for so long that the question took Alice by surprise.

"Outside," she said, scrunching up her toes inside her shoes. "People. Everything."

Grace nodded slowly. She didn't see to feel like saying any more, so Alice fell silent again.

She could hear Roger complaining loudly about Grace's lack of work ethic. Alice frowned, angrily. Grace in put in more than her fair share of work – she always had. She even lived in the station now, putting in extra hours when everyone else had gone home.

Alice glanced at her friend, wishing that she'd spring up, leap over the sofa and sock Roger in the eye.

The old Grace would have.

Alice stretched out her legs, measuring them against Grace's. There had been a time when she'd though the woman beside her was a giant, but the older Alice got, the more she found herself catching up with her surrogate sister. She snuck another glance at her.

A lot of things had changed recently. Alice couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that Grace was retreating – running away.

"What are you afraid of?" she asked, curious and a little concerned.

"Never going outside again," said Grace, softly – so softly that Alice almost missed it. "Myself. I don't know…"

She ran a hand through her hair, which was growing back out. It was a gesture of real frustration, and more emotion than Alice had seen from her friend in a while.

"I have to get out of here."

Alice looked up, sharply.

"You can't leave!" she gasped, horrified.

I'll go mad without you.

Someone at the other end of the office roared with laughter and Grace glanced at the back of the sofa.

"I can't stay here," she told her.

Alice would have argued, but she had seen the pain in the older woman's eyes.

"No, I suppose not," she said instead, trying not to panic.

However much she needed Grace to stay, it was painfully obvious why she couldn't.

This place was killing her.

0o0o0o0

Grace looked up from her book at the knock on the door.

"It's open," she called, getting up to stretch.

Apart from her bruises (which were at the really interesting purple stage) she felt great. She'd sat up on the jet, long after most of the others had gone to sleep, and come to a decision as the wheels had hit the tarmac at Quantico. Forced home to recover from her encounter with the metal gate, she had slept, dreamlessly, for the first time in more than a year.

She had slept for nearly a full day and night, and woken to a series of concerned text messages from Garcia, JJ and Reid. Twenty minutes later, Morgan and Emily had shown up at her door with take out and a stack of DVDs.

It had made Grace feel very comfortable, being someone people cared about again.

"Hey," said Reid, sticking his head around her kitchen door. "You ready to go?"

She caught him wincing at her bruises and ignored it. They didn't hurt nearly as much as they had the night before.

"Almost."

Reid watched her as she pulled out a backpack and tucked her shopping list in her pocket, an air of excitement about him.

"Do they have a book stall at this market, by any chance?" she asked, giving him a perspicacious look.

He grinned.

"Maybe. There's a pretty sweet candy store, too."

"Aside from the whole FBI thing, did you grow up at all?" she smirked.

He frowned, unsure how to take her mildly anarchic personality.

"Uh…"

Grace laughed.

"Me either," she smiled, falling into step beside him. "Being an adult is so over-rated."

He waited politely amongst the roses while she locked the door, their dusky scent filling the air like a cloud. When she turned, she found him watching her, his head titled slightly to one side as if she was a particularly tricky crossword.

"What?"

Spencer hesitated before he spoke, as if he were taking care over his choice of words.

"You seem – uh – different," he said, slowly.

"Different how?"

"I don't know… Just – different," he repeated. "More – more you."

He frowned, as if he was aware that this hadn't made a great deal of sense.

Grace compressed her lips; she hadn't thought she'd been that easy to profile – but then, she hadn't really been operating at full capacity for quite some time.

"You know what I realised yesterday?" she said, setting off down the path.

"That – uh – metal gates and your face shouldn't be introduced to one another at speed?"

"Hah!" she laughed and whapped his arm; he rewarded her with a cheeky smile. "No, I realised that fear is a choice."

They paused at her gate. He gave her a penetrating look.

"And you've decided – not to be afraid anymore?"

His smile broadened as she grinned.

"Come on," she said, "Tell me about that sweet shop."

0o0

-But you said there was no defence.

-"There ain't."

-Then what do I do?

-"Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on."

- Excerpt from Beloved, by Toni Morrison

0o0

*Thanks for the help with the stats, Bonesy!