Disclaimer:Criminal Minds and all its associated characters are property to CBS and no profit is being made from this story.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Photographic Memory Part. 1
'You're not so far away- you're sitting in the space between the night and day. And so I'll wait for the sound of your footsteps, the tea that's brewed too strong, the part of me that's waited patiently for oh so long...' -Emilie Autumn, Photographic Memory
THREE MONTHS LATER...
Reid shivered against the cold, metal blade of the scissors as they snipped at his hair, frowning when he saw the curls fall into his lap. Why did he agree to this again? Oh yes, that was right. He never agreed to it. But he had just been so fond of this nurse, Tori, that when she glared at his hair and said it got more knots than lanyard string at summer camp, he couldn't help but let her cut his hair if it made her happier. She was the kindest nurse here, always visiting him and always giving him treats and presents. How could he not let her do it?
But he couldn't help the frown he felt every time another curl fell.
Polished acrylic nails ran across his scalp and he cringed at the touch. Tori was the only person whose touch he didn't completely shirk away from, though he wasn't entirely sure why. Perhaps it was because she had always been gentle, doing nice things for him instead of trying to shove needles into him or something equally as unpleasant. The first day he had come to the hospital and had been sedated after an impatient doctor had tried to hurry him along by touching his shoulder, he woke up to her brushing his hair and humming an unfamiliar tune. It had become a tradition of sorts, for her to brush his hair. But in the last two weeks, she had been dismaying over the unkempt state of it that came with the length. Not to mention the fact that she probably pulled out half of his hair while trying to brush through the knots.
On second thought, a haircut wasn't the worst thing he could experience.
"I used to love your hair, you know," she said, her voice lilted as though singing. "It was so soft and pretty. But now it's just too long. I think it was longer than mine." Okay, that was an exaggeration! There was no way his hair had gone past his shoulders!...Right?
He reached down and grabbed one of the clumps of his hair, holding it out before his eyes as he examined it. Hmm, it had gotten quite long. But still, it was an exaggeration.
"Your hair will grow back fast though. It's very healthy," she added, making some final adjustments before running her fingers over his entire head, dislodging any remaining strands. He flinched, but righted himself quickly. He hated doing that around her, but he just couldn't help it. He hated hands.
She was standing in front of him now, smiling widely as she examined her handiwork. "Pretty good," she murmured and Reid shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with being looked at for so long. She laughed though, turning around to grab the hand held mirror and holding it out in front of him. "See for yourself," she said and he moved closer, his eyes going wide at his reflection.
She cut it all off! Brown curls barely even went over the tops of his ears and they couldn't have been more than an inch and a half in length. That most certainly explained the lightness he felt on his head. He chewed his lip and turned his head to the side, examining it some more until eventually a small grin appeared. It was short, but it looked nice.
Tori smiled as she pulled the mirror back and put it down on his desk, looking at the gold watch on her wrist and tsking.
"What?" Reid asked, leaning forward.
She smirked, pulled her black, braided hair behind her back as she said, "Movie time."
Reid groaned. He hated the movies, he really did. They never played anything even mildly entertaining- a large majority of it being romantic comedies or, even worse, family movies. But of course, anything was better than the Lifetime style movies they often forced upon them. He couldn't remember much of his life before he became insane, but if he liked movies before, he definitely didn't now.
"Please don't make me watch it," he groaned, and Tori chuckled at the dramatic way he slumped forward. She seemed to enjoy his displeasure.
"You know as well as I do that it's mandatory," she said.
He sighed. "I know."
"Don't you want to show off your new haircut?" she asked, as though it should be enough incentive for anything. He rolled his eyes.
"Yes, because that's reason enough to be bored by some overly sappy family movie," he muttered.
"It's The Day After Tomorrow, actually," she said, suppressing a laugh.
He quirked a brow. "They've played that so many times, I have had nightmares about it happening. Please don't make me watch it again," he said, knowing it wasn't a total lie. For all they knew, the dream he had where he was caught in an avalanche with a talking elephant could very well have been because of that movie. And he'd be damned if he wasn't going to play all his cards to get out of movie time.
Tori sighed and shook her head, ruffling a hand through his newly cut hair as she said, "I'll go speak to Dr. Forte and see where she stands on the issue." She left the room then, her sneakers squeaking on the clean linoleum as she went.
He sunk back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling as he propped his legs up on the table, wearing one green sock with yellow polka dots and one purple sock with blue stripes. Tori had taken to buying new socks for him, making it a nearly weekly occurrence. He had more socks than any one person would ever need by now, and he was beginning to think that she was being too nice.
He was startled from his thoughts by the sound of whispering coming from behind his back and the hair on his arms stood up straight. He swallowed nervously, closing his eyes as he tried to ignore the ever increasing sound. Praying that Tori would return soon and take his mind off of the hallucination, he pressed his forehead against the wood of his desk and began muttering softly to himself.
"Not real, not real, not real..."
His mantra was broken by the throaty, cracked voice calling his name out, slurring the S sound.
"Ssssspenssssser."
His train of thought broken, he turned around slowly, deciding after it was too late that it was by no means a good idea. Five corpses, naked, gray, sewn together, stood in the corner of his room. And he screamed. Loudly.
xXx
"The answer is the same as the last thousand times you asked the question, Agent Morgan. No," Dr. Forte said, shaking her head sadly as she rolled her shoulders forward and pinched her lips. The tall man in front of her huffed indignantly as he crossed his arms over his broad chest, his lower lip being sucked in as he began idly chewing on it in thought.
While Morgan always agreed with the Patient-Doctor confidentiality, he was beginning to think that this doctor put too much stock in it. Really, just because he wasn't an active FBI agent at the moment didn't mean he didn't deserve to know the more specific details of Reid's stay. He opened his mouth to argue this point, ready to say every guilt-descending, brown-nosing line he had to when, after a moment of thought, he snapped his mouth shut. He was lucky enough that they tolerated his almost endless presence in the hospital, every nurse and doctor feeling too sorry for his friend and his situation to tell him to go home even when visiting hours had well since passed. Even if he couldn't visit Reid, sitting in the same ward as him, close enough to help if the need ever called for it, made him feel better. It pushed the still lingering guilt to the side and abated it some, like he was slowly working off a debt that would most likely never be paid even after his death. That being said, he wasn't willing to argue with Reid's doctor in case this unspoken arrangement would change and he would be forced to no longer visit the hospital. The operative word being forced, as he was well prepared to fight any of the "rent-a-cops" he needed to if they tried to take him away from Reid.
He sighed as he let his finger flick over the well worn folder he held in his lap, the one he carried with him everywhere as a child does with a security blanket. He had started carrying the folder with him since the case closed and he moved up to Pennsylvania, knowing Hotch would've been disappointed that he saved copies of such precious information. But he couldn't help it- it made him feel better, made him feel like he actually did something right. He was about to open the folder when Dr. Forte sighed tiredly, drawing his attention back up to her face.
She was probably in her early fifties, with strawberry blonde hair that seemed lighter towards her temple, where the first few signs of aging took their toll. Her eyes were a clear and brilliant blue, but always seemed shadowed by exhaustion- the way he imagined his would look in the future, when his job and the monsters he dealt with began to weigh him down. But nonetheless, she was kind to him and more than accommodating, always being lenient on Morgan. And he had a well founded suspicion that she was about to accommodate him more and give, if not all, then some of the specifics regarding Reid. Which was more than he could ask for.
He watched as she took off her glasses and placed them down on her desk, rubbing her eyes momentarily before looking up at him and smiling wearily.
"I can't tell you much about what has occurred in our private sessions. Confidentiality, you understand." She paused, waiting for him to nod before continuing. "But I can say some less substantial pieces of his treatment." Morgan leaned forward, his hands covering the folder protectively, as he waited for whatever she would say. She smiled at his eagerness. "From what Tori, one of the nurse's here, has told me, he's mentioned to her that the hallucinations are getting better. He no longer hallucinates his father, or your team. Now, he only hallucinates about the bodies."
Morgan's brows furrowed deeply here. Bodies? He had never heard anything about him hallucinating bodies. How come they never told him?
'Suspension,' his mind answered for him. Right. That was it. Stupid suspension.
Clearing his throat, he asked, "What do you mean by bodies?"
Dr. Forte hesitated before correcting herself. "Corpses, actually. He's told Tori that he sees-"
"Dead people?" Morgan asked in disbelief, some part of his mind well aware of the fact that this would have been a funny situation had it not been a one he was directly tied to. 'Nothing's funny when it's you,' he supposed, deciding that no matter the parallels to the movie, this was not a humorous thing to have happen.
The doctor nodded primly. "Yes, essentially. He says there are always five of them- always the same. We're not sure what particular significance they hold but-" She was cut off by the sound of someone knocking on the door.
Sparing a quick, apologetic look to Morgan, she called, "Come in." But Morgan was no longer paying attention, his astute, analytical mind honing in and tearing apart what she had told him. Reid was only hallucinating one thing now- and it was corpses? Five of them? If he was correct, then what Reid was seeing weren't just any corpses, but the corpses of Andrew Wright's five other victims.
He continued to contemplate the possibility until he heard the name of the person on his mind being spoken. His head shooting up, he listened to the conversation between Dr. Forte and Tori carefully.
"Spencer doesn't want to watch the movie tonight. Is it alright if we skip out?" the kind, dark-skinned nurse asked as she twirled her braid around her finger, watching as Dr. Forte bit her lip.
"Tori, you know he can't skip out on the movies. It's part of the routine," she began, but when a cracking and high-pitched scream ricocheted off the white walls, everyone in the room froze, Morgan leaping to his feet. It took only a second longer of listening for him to recognize the voice with picture clarity.
"Reid!" he roared, sprinting from the small office as fast as his long legs would carry him, the folder clutched in a vice like grip as he followed the scream.
When he found the room that contained the yells and saw the panicked, shouting face of his friend as he sat back on his bed, falling to the mattress, he ran inside only to come to a halting stop, his feet refusing to move. Reid was pressing himself as far into the mattress as he could, writhing his limbs around as though if he struggled hard enough, the bed would open up and swallow him whole. He was flinching from the illusions- the corpses- and his mouth was quivering with fear as his eyes were open wide, unwillingly staring at the hallucinations that no one but him could see.
And as much as Morgan wanted to reach out to him, wanted to make the effigies disappear, he couldn't move. He was stuck in place, horrified and pained by what he saw. He hadn't seen Reid hallucinate. He only saw him confuse him and the others for hallucinations. But this...this was something else entirely! To see his friend so broken, so frightened by not-even-there ghosts had petrified him and glued him to the spot he wavered in, unable to even step forward.
"Go away!" Reid yelled, gripping onto his short hair and wanting to cover his eyes, but too morbidly fascinated to do so.
Morgan's heart was running faster than what was healthy now. He wanted to turn away, to walk out and wipe clean the image of Reid suffering from his mind. To pretend it didn't happen, that he didn't see his friend being haunted the way he was. Was that wrong? Did it make him a bad person that he preferred to isolate the sick, traumatized Reid from the one he had long since known? The overly awkward, genius Reid who was nowhere to be found?
It was Dr. Forte's demands from down the hall that set him into action.
"He needs a sedative!" she called, and Morgan's heart jumped into his throat. He hated when they did that- sedated him. It seemed like they were trying to hold the problem off, keep the real issues and work at an arms' length instead of helping him.
It was that thought process the made him run to Reid, open the folding as he came closer and calling his name, prepared to show him what he hoped would help. Dear God, how he hoped it would help...
xXx
The sunken, graying faces surrounded him, chilling the air and filling it with the gut churning smell of graves. Hands reached out to him, bloated and cold with death and Reid cringed away from them, trying to disappear into the mattress. Why couldn't they just leave him alone? Why were they here?
Black thread hung from their lips, as the same bloated fingers reached up and pulled away the stitches that held the eyes shut, stretching them out until they snapped. He flinched involuntarily, the action making his stomach tighten into knots as he curled more into himself, swallowing.
"Go away!" he roared, covering his head with his hands as the five corpses surrounded him, freeing their eyes of the thread so that they could see him. How come they wouldn't leave?
"Spencer!" a voice called, and he groaned, knowing it was the voice of another hallucination. Morgan came into view then, a folder in his hand as he walked through one corpse, causing the illusion to evaporate into a foul smelling cloud of gray dust.
Reid turned to him, swallowing nervously as he reached out, unsure of whether he was doing so to push him away or ask for help. Morgan looked down at the outstretched hand and then pulled a plethora of what appeared to be photographs from the folder, placing them in Reid's hand before he had a chance to retract it and shoved them forward.
"I don't want it," Reid said, angered that, at a time like this, Morgan would insist on making him look at pictures. 'Hallucinations aren't one for courtesy,' he thought to himself, ignoring the mild confusion at having seen Morgan. He hadn't hallucinated the team in nearly a month. Why was he all of a sudden making an appearance now?
"Ssssspenssssser," the corpses hissed, their voices molding together into one, echoing chill. He winced at the sound and involuntarily moved closer to the profiler, seeking comfort in his liveliness. Whether or not he was real, he at least didn't look dead and that provided more comfort than the other illusions.
Morgan leaned forward, trying to hold the pictures up for Reid to see, but he was too focused on the hissing, sewn together faces before them, the dead skin making his own skin crawl. "Nonono," he whispered, trying to move Morgan away as he simultaneously moved closer still. Perhaps he was the lesser of two evils, despite trying to force the photos on him.
But when he felt a firm and calloused hand reach out and grab his chin, his attention was fully turned away from the corpses, staring at Morgan in an offended manner as he tried to move out of his grip. But it was too strong, Morgan wouldn't let go, and he began to panic, his fear of hands returning with a new intensity.
"Let me go!" he shouted, turning his fists to Morgan who simply avoided the weak punches and pushed the pictures in his face.
"Look at the photos! Reid, you're not making them up!"
What? What did he mean he wasn't making them up? Was he referring to the corpses? Looking around at their terrifying, ghoulish visages, the eyes fluttering open with the last of the thread, he nearly scoffed at what he said. Of course he made them up! Where could these...these things! exist anywhere but inside his diseased mind? Surely, he never saw anything like this in his life before insanity.
"Just look at them, Reid. Please. Look. Spencer, look," Morgan pleaded and curiosity getting the better of him, Reid turned his gaze down and to the photos the man held in front of him, gasping when he saw exactly what they depicted.
The dead bodies- the same exact dead bodies!- were imprisoned in the glossy sheet, a stilled moment of time. Leaves surrounded some, while semi-clear water, murky with clay, surrounded others. His hazel eyes darted between the photos, now laid out before him on his chest so he could see the pictures of all five of the corpses, and to the visions before him, which were slowly cracking. The bluish gray skin was getting dryer and dryer as if some unseen source was sucking all the water from their forms. His mouth fell open, his eyes unsure of whether they wanted to settle on the photos or the quickly dehydrating corpses.
"They were real, Spencer. You saw them before, that's why you're seeing them now. You're not sick, you're not making them up," Morgan said more firmly, his voice growing quieter now that he had garnered the patient's full attention.
He wasn't sick? That couldn't be true, Andrew had told him he was!
But here were photos, telling the exact opposite. He wasn't being haunted by a diseased mind, but by images that were burned into his brain and came out in a corporeal form. Had Andrew purposefully concealed the truth?
No! Andrew wouldn't lie to him!
But the photos...
He blinked, his mind overwhelmed with all the thoughts that ran through it. So instead, he turned to the now impossibly dry corpses, their bodies so chapped that they seemed to be made more from dust than anything human. He wanted to reach out and touch them- see if they fell at his hand like the one did at Morgan's. But before he could, more people rushed into the room, their harsh and loud footsteps shattering the illusion and causing the rest of the ghosts to became nothing more than a cloud of gray dust.
Swallowing, he looked to the photos and then behind Morgan, where Tori, Dr. Forte and a large, intimidating orderly stood, watching the scene with a dumbfounded look. Neither of them seemed ready to move forward and interrupt, so Reid took it as the opportunity to regain his composure- or what was left of it- and better examine the pictures.
He propped himself up on his hands, trying to push himself into a sitting position as Morgan hastily pulled the photos off his chest and held them, handing them back one by one when he was comfortably sitting against the pillow.
He grabbed the photos almost greedily, the possibility of being sane too good to pass up. If these photos were anything to account for, than maybe...maybe he was going to be okay. Maybe his mind had just been confused and messed some wires up. Maybe his hallucinations and delusions were just a fluke.
Thinking too much about it made his head hurt, the overlying contradictions and possibility of all truths complicating matters. So he decided to once more focus on only that which was right in front of him: the photos.
"They..." he started, too shocked for words. "How did you get these? How did you find them?" He looked up to Morgan, no longer caring how crazy he might've looked to the people still standing in the doorway. He needed answers, and if a hallucination was the only way he could get them, he didn't care how insane he appeared.
"These are the photos from the crime, Reid. These are his victims," Morgan said gently.
His eyebrows knitted. "Victims? Whose victims? And why am I seeing them?" he asked.
Morgan hesitated for a moment, licking his lips as he turned to Dr. Forte as if asking permission from something. When he finally looked back to Reid, he said, "These are people that...people that Andrew hurt."
Reid was shaking his head in the negative before he was even aware of it. "No," he said firmly, before adding, "Andrew wouldn't hurt anyone. Andrew was trying to help me."
Morgan sighed, rubbing his mouth and chin slowly. "Reid, he hurt these people. And he was trying to hurt you, too. But we saved you."
Reid turned to Morgan, his eyes burning and his jaw clenched tightly. "Andrew was helping me! You only made it worse!" he seethed.
Ignoring the flare up of pain he felt at seeing the hatred once more, Morgan persisted. "He made you sick, Reid. He made you think you were insane, but you're not. You are an FBI agent. You are a genius. And I am real." His voice was pleading, and for one brief, miraculous moment, Reid's lips parted slightly and he stared at him with a look of recognition. But all too soon it faded away and he snapped his lips shut, shaking his head.
"No," he said firmly, but his mind wasn't as confident as he sounded. Andrew wouldn't hurt him. Would he? Morgan wasn't real. He didn't know anything. But the pictures...
NO! If Morgan was an illusion, than so were the photos. Andrew wasn't a liar. Morgan was lying- could hallucinations even lie?
"Reid, please, think back to it," Morgan said. And before Reid could yell at him, tell him to shut up, he kept on talking. "You were on a rock, surrounded on most sides by water. You were reading notes, and then Andrew came. What happened then?"
Reid began to shake his head, ready to reach out and push Morgan away, when a new, yet oh so familiar memory crept into his brain, ceasing his movements and making him stare at his white bed sheet in confusion. "What did it smell like?" Morgan asked.
Before Reid could even truly contemplate the question, he answered. "Mountain air. Like...fresh, but humid, too. You could smell the water." Where had that come from? How did he know the details of a memory that couldn't be his? A memory that felt so distant, yet so real?
"What did it sound like?"
Again, Reid popped out an answer he didn't even knew he possessed.
"Running water and rustling leaves, from the wind."
"What do you see?"
At those words, it was like a picture painted itself in front of him, Reid being witness to every brushstroke, every blend of individual colors. He watched as he saw his own hands, his own index finger running down a page of tightly packed, neatly scribbled half-words. His bare toes flexed in the cold, running water- he could actually feel the creek lapping at his skin, chilling it to the bone yet feeling too nice alongside the bright sun to retract it. Suddenly, he pushed the notes aside, shifting slightly as he sunk his foot in deeper, barely noticing the chill as he thought, his mind contemplating what he had read.
But instead of focusing on his past thoughts, he answered Morgan's question, unaware that his eyes had closed as he tried to better the see the painted memory. "I'm on a rock. There were notes in front of me, but I moved them. I'm thinking and then..." he swallowed as the memory continued to play out before him. "Andrew came out and we spoke together."
Morgan moved closer, his throat running dry and his heartbeat resonated in his entire body, pulsing in his feet, his hands, his chest, his throat, his head...everywhere. He was hearing the firsthand account of Reid's capture, hearing it from the victim's mouth. He swallowed. Reid's mouth. He wasn't just a victim. He had a name. Though of course, he supposed they all did.
Licking his lips, he said, "And what happened after?"
Did he really want to hear this? Did he really want to know what had happened, what Andrew did to cause that large pile of blood, to take Reid away? Too late now. He couldn't take the question back and Reid continued to answer them, too enthralled by the new memory to actually realize that he was speaking.
"He...he said something. I realized he was the UnSub." The UnSub? How did he know that word? What did it even mean? Was it an acronym? A shortened phrase? "We talked back and forth and I tried to get away. I hit my leg on the rock below the one I sitting on. It hurt. A lot." He winced with the now remembered pain, instinctively curling his right leg inward. "I fell in the water and nearly drowned, but he pulled me up. Then he took a needle..." He trailed off here, squeezing his eyes even tighter together as the vision become fuzzier, less clear. Was this a fabricated memory that was no longer being entertained by his mind? Or was this a real memory, and he legitimately could not remember what came next?
But as he watched this Andrew- whether constructed or genuine- punch a hook to his head, grab him by his hair to pull him from the water, inject him with some mysterious substance that made him sluggish, he felt a sharp pain in his head and a dull ache in his chest. No, Andrew wouldn't do this. Andrew wouldn't hurt him. He was helping him!
Collecting his thoughts, Reid grabbed the photographs and threw them across the room, flopping onto his side and turning away from Morgan and the three people still hovering in the doorway.
"Reid," he heard Morgan say softly.
"You're lying," he responded, hating the way his voice shook. "Andrew wouldn't do that."
There was a long pause. Finally, Morgan whispered, "I didn't say anything. I just asked you questions. You were the one who said everything."
Reid wanted to turn around and yell at him, call him a liar more and more, tell him to leave him alone like the other visions of his teammates. But he couldn't. He knew he was right- if anything lied to him, it was his own, traitorous mind. But when did it lie? Was Morgan telling the truth and the lies began when Andrew...when Andrew broke him, or was it lying now, trying to turn him against Andrew? He licked his lips, subconsciously biting into it as his shoulders shook, just now realizing he was crying.
He felt so confused! So hurt! Who was being truthful and who wasn't? Which reality was the right reality- the one where he was an FBI agent, or the one where he was a disturbed mental patient? He didn't know- had no idea of which was more likely than the other- and he hated it.
Maybe if he were in the righter mind, he would think this situation funny. Spencer Reid, resident Genius, Knowledge of Everything, Fact-Seeker and Statistician, didn't even know who he was. It was laughable. At any other time, of course.
At this time, though, he was confused. He was angry. He was sad. He was betrayed. He was...humiliated. If he was an FBI agent and let Andrew get the better of him, then he had let an...what did he call it? An UnSub? He had let an UnSub break him. He had been weak enough to crack. Perhaps it was a trivial thing to concern himself with- the feelings of embarrassment at having called his friends fake. But he couldn't stop it. He felt so stupid, so ridiculous.
It was easier to believe he really was a patient.
He was never an FBI agent.
Never a profiler.
Never a genius.
But even as he said to Morgan, over his shoulder, "Just leave me alone," he couldn't help the ever-growing feelings of doubt. There were two realities he had now had to choose from: which was the one he truly belonged to?
He had never been so unsure.
xXx
"Agent Morgan, your photos," Dr. Forte whispered, straightening herself as she shuffled the pictures into a pile and handed them to the man, biting her lip as she looked at Reid. His shoulders were shaking though he was clearly trying to still them, not wanting to let anyone know that he was crying. Even when he was so far from his old self, he seemed to still hold strong to his stubbornness.
"Should we still sedate him?" the orderly, a burly, red-headed man named Robert Berger, asked, his voice low so as to not disturb Reid.
She eyed him for a moment before slowly shaking her head. "No. Monitor him, though. I want him on CC immediately until further notice, but no sedation," she said, then turning her blue eyes to Morgan and explaining, "CC, it means Constant Care. We will have an orderly stand watch outside his door at all times. His bed will have to moved to the other wall though, so the orderly will have to sit at his desk for tonight."
Robert nodded then, walking over to the chair, left in the middle of the room in between the desk and bed, and sitting himself down. "I'll take the first watch. Tori, would ya mind gettin' me ma book, Sugar?" he drawled in a low voice, still being conscious of Reid. Tori nodded and left, sending a lingering look to Morgan as Dr. Forte motioned for him to follow her out the door.
He swallowed nervously as he walked with her to her office, each step sending jolts through his body. Every part of him was trembling- not only from seeing Reid hallucinate so badly, but from what he saw in his eyes. For just a moment, a wonderful, fleeting moment, he saw the old Reid resurface. During the cognitive interview, he saw recognition in his eyes, saw the look of a focused, fully-there Reid. And then he closed his eyes. And he heard it! He heard what happened! Forensics of course had been able to construe an extremely accurate portrayal of what had occurred at the time of Reid's abduction. But hearing it come from Reid, hearing the words of his struggle for life from his own mouth...
It sent more shivers down his spine than any horror movie or well-told ghost story could have.
They entered Dr. Forte's office, and Morgan took the seat he had been sitting in until he had heard the scream. Sitting down had made him fully aware of the jitters that shivered through his legs, and in the time it took for the doctor to sit herself down, he rearranged his seating position five times.
The first thing she said was a question that he had asked himself many times before.
"Why are you carrying those photos around with you?"
And like all the times he asked himself, he gave her the same answer.
"They remind me that even if we couldn't save Reid in time, we at least got to him before the worst could happen. Before he became like all the others," he answered, suddenly realizing just how obsessed that sounded- just how bizarre he might have appeared. Feeling the need to fully explain himself, he added, "I feel guilty, about what happened. I let him go, you know. I let him leave by himself, and then he was captured." He hesitated, staring down at the ground at his confession. How could he have let him go on his own? How did he let this happen? "Being able to see the pictures, of what Reid could have been, reminds me that we did...something for him."
Dr. Forte nodded, looking at him over the glasses she had recently placed on. Slowly, and in a clipped tone, she said, "And you showed them to him. Why?"
Morgan sighed, biting on his lip as he looked up at her, shrugging his shoulders. "I thought that if he knew that what he was seeing was real, that there was a reason for it, he would be able to better understand it," he explained, knowing he sounded pathetic. He thought it had helped. And it looked like it did, if only for those brief few seconds.
Sighing, the doctor folded her arms on her desk and leaned forward, smiling as she said, "I think it helped him."
His head shot up. "You do?"
"Yes, I do. I think it also made it less scary for him." She shook her head and looked off to the side, as though in deep thought. "He's different from most people who hallucinate. While everyone else believe what they see and hear are real, Reid knows they aren't. And I think that frightens him, because he knows to just what extent his illness is. But I believe seeing those photos made him feel less sick. Like he wasn't totally insane. And now he has a more certain idea of who the corpses are."
Morgan couldn't resist his smile. He had helped! In some small way, he had aided Reid.
"I think," Dr. Forte began, smiling softly as she continued. "That so long as you're careful about what you say and do, you could visit Reid."
"Are you serious?" he asked, his eyes wide and his smile growing larger, practically falling off the edge of his seat. He could come and see Reid? They would actually let him speak to him, have conversations, be there with him?
She nodded. But before Morgan could truly begin to celebrate, she added, "Provided, of course, that you begin to slowly help him more forward."
He nodded eagerly. "Anything I could do, I'd do it," he said.
She smirked. "Well, first, I think he needs to learn more about these other victims."
"What do you want me to tell him?"
"Give him names and ages. Bios. Photos of what they looked like before Andrew got to them. Maybe if he can humanize the hallucinations, they'll be less frightening and he can work through them. Can you get all that information, even though you've been suspended?"
Now it was Morgan's turn to smirk.
"I can't, but I know someone who can."
xXx
"Talk to me my Chocolate Milkshake God," Garcia answered, smirking when she saw the name flash on her cell phone, indicating Morgan's call. Despite being on suspension and renting a flat in Pennsylvania, Morgan still made an effort to update the team with any news he could get about Reid. While the news wasn't always good and often revealed very little, she still looked forward to hearing his updates, knowing that at least Reid had someone there with him.
"I need you to find some information for me, Baby Girl," Morgan said and she pushed her chair away from her half-touched meal and over to her computer, sitting straight.
"Your wish is my command," she said with a playful smile. She always enjoyed their flirtatious banter. "What do you need me to find, Hot Stuff?"
There was a moment of hesitation before he said, "I need you to get into the FBI archives and find the stuff about Andrew's other victims."
Her jaw dropped. Why was he requesting this? Wasn't there the unspoken agreement that said they would never talk about that case again? Didn't they all decide it was worth pushing into the past and locking away, if at least for the time being? Why was he trying to dredge up the nightmare everyone was trying to work past?
As if sensing her confusion over the phone, he explained to her what had occurred while Reid was hallucinating, and what the stipulations of his visit were. Once he had finished, Garcia was grinning a literal ear-to-ear smile, looking very much like a blonde Cheshire Cat.
"So, you want me to hack into sealed information that you can't have, being an Inactive Agent?" she asked, trying her best to sound like a disappointed and chiding mother. But her joy over the situation made that difficult- Reid, their Reid, had come out! He was getting closer to coming back to them!
Morgan chuckled. "Pretty much."
She smirked. "Naughty, naughty boy," she said as she began the process to find the records. Once they were all pulled up, she leaned back and asked, "How do you want me to get them to you?"
"Send it to Dr. Forte's fax. I've got the number right here, somewhere..." he trailed off, as though distracted by his search. And while he looked for the number, Garcia took the time to look at the last file in the folder, the file belonging to Dr. Spencer Reid, the only victim to get away.
xXx
Reid woke up, not because he was no longer tired, but because he felt eyes on him- eyes that made him decidedly uncomfortable. He was still lying on his side, the side he had flopped onto to hide his tears after Morgan showed him the pictures that sent his mind into a confused setting between both worlds. But somewhere along the lines, he had fallen asleep and woken to a new morning and the burning feeling of eyes on his back.
Blinking blearily, the sun making his puffy, encrusted eyes even more irritated, he slowly propped himself up, looking around the room to see not one, but two sets of eyes surrounding him. An orderly, part of the morning staff that he recognized to be a man named James, sat at his desk, reading something on his phone as Morgan sat in a cushioned chair beside his bed, his nose buried in a book.
Reid sighed as he glared at the illusion. Didn't he get that he just wanted to be alone?
Spitting out the words as though they were poison on his lips, Reid said, "What are you doing here?"
Morgan looked up, smiling slightly as he closed his book and folded his legs. "I've got seven more months of suspension. I have nothing better to do," he said, and Reid felt his annoyance strengthen at the amused tone in the man's voice.
Reid opened his mouth to retort, but stopped when Morgan stood and dropped a large pile of paper onto his lap, each covered in pictures and printed words. Slowly, he looked down to the first paper on the pile, frowning when he saw the familiar, dead faces that often tormented him. They were thumbnail versions of the photographs Morgan had shown him last night- the photos that had made the ghosts crack and turn to dust.
"What is this?" he asked, his anger quickly dissipating and being replaced by puzzlement.
Morgan was closer now, his chair so close to the bed he was practically on the mattress as he answered, "They're the victim's files. The hallucinations you see, these contain the information about them before Andrew killed them."
Reid shook his head at the final statement. "Andrew wouldn't kill anyone," he whispered.
Morgan continued, as though he didn't hear him. "You can read them, if you want. Keep them. They're all yours," he said, falling back into his chair as Reid stared at the documents uneasily, unsure of whether or not he really wanted to look. Part of him was screaming to read it, intake the information as though it were oxygen and validate the lingering feeling that maybe, just maybe, he actually was an FBI agent. But another part of him- the part that almost obsessively held onto Andrew- was screaming for the opposite, begging him to throw the papers down on the floor like he had the previous night. Begged for him to dispose of the evidence and return once more to Andrew's defense.
He was so confused! He didn't know which to do, which part of him to obey! So he just sat there, the pile of paper sitting on his lap and weighing him down, his mind arguing with itself.
He wasn't sure how long he sat there like that, but eventually, Morgan said he had to go do something and would be back later, saying a goodbye that Reid didn't return. But James did, which piqued his interests. James saw him?
Looking up at the orderly, he chewed on his lower lip. If he saw him, did that make Morgan real? While he thought it were possible that neither of the men were real and they were both hallucinations, he came across a new, recently discovered theory. The photographs had planted the first few seeds of doubt in his mind, so now, instead of assuming the first idea that both men could converse because neither were actually there, he began to wonder if perhaps Morgan was real.
The battling ensued once more.
FBI Agent?
Mental Patient?
Sane?
Insane?
Real?
Hallucinations?
And more importantly-
Look?
Don't look?
It was nearly thirty minutes later when he finally removed the first sheet of paper and began reading about some unknown man named Angelo King.
xXx
Author's Note: This chapter definitely changed from the original planning. Damn plot bunnies, running away all crazy like that. But anyway, ONE MORE CHAPTER TO GO! WooHoo!
IMPORTANT: I have several stories I need to do that are part of competitions (Harry Potter competitions are fun to get the juices going) So I won't start working on the sequel(s?) until once they are all completed, which should be rather soon. So by the start of September, the first sequel (if two) will start being uploaded and worked on. More information about that on the next- the FINAL- chapter though. Haha, can you tell I'm excited?
Anyway, thanks everyone for all your reviews, favorites, and alerts. Updates made possible by people like you. Let me know your thoughts and whatnot on this chapter- I'm very nervous about it so I'd love to hear your suggestions and opinions.
Also, there won't be a preview for the upcoming chapter. As much of a tradition as it has become, I feel it will take away some of the mystery. So sorry, but the chapter should be posted soon! (I slowly began working on it when I first started writing this, so it's more than halfway done.)