Disclaimer:Criminal Minds and all its associated characters are property to CBS and no profit is being made from this story. Neither do I own the rights to Shel Silverstein's poem "I'm Being Swallowed By A Boa Constrictor" or Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Like Alice
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
-Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Two days.
It took two days for the jury to deliberate.
Two days for them to reach a decision.
Two days for them to write Andrew's fate.
Two days for them to call everyone back in, for the sole purpose of hearing the conclusion, to learn which side of the battle had won. 'It takes only one,' Hotch had said, when all the closing arguments had been handed in and when the court had been handed over to the twelve men and women. 'Only one juror for the rest to rethink everything.'
And, it would seem, that one juror held out for two days.
But the question wasn't regarding the stubbornness or persuasiveness of one or more of the jurors, but in which way the rest had swayed. Would Andrew be excused of his crimes, due to a diseased mind, or would he be punished like all the others? It appeared that the answer to that entirely more relevant question had attracted many people, as the courthouse had never been more full on that day that everyone was called in. Reporters crammed into the back, microphones and cameras taking the place where their heads should have been, wires wrapped around each other and entangling the separate groups into one. Journalists sat closer, some wielding recorders and others, preferring the efficiency of shorthand notes, balanced notepads on their knee as they held their pens between their fingers.
In the first two benches, those most directly tied to the crime and the perpetrators were placed, given a first row seat to the downfall or ascendance of the defendant. Nearly shoulder to shoulder in all the other benches, the BAU team were given a slightly larger amount of space to consume- mostly, of course, because Hotch insisted that there be enough room for Reid to at least sit without being crammed between two other people. 'He deserves to see the verdict,' he defended to the Bailiff. 'And suffering a panic attack because he was forced to sit too close to people would prevent that.' Initially angry and put-off by the obvious excuses others were making for him, Reid had no desire to stop Hotch or to even tell the Bailiff to ignore the request. Because, if he were being honest with himself, he was too grateful to his boss for arranging it.
But still, it grated on his nerves.
JJ and Morgan flanking either side of him, and pushed to the far end like he had been for all the other days of the trial, Reid sat on the bench with his hands idly tossing the stress ball back and forth. He had mused on getting Henry a new one before he went back to the hospital, as he had sufficiently damaged the one he had been given. With the latex covering peeling back and revealing the mustard yellow foam beneath in multiple places, it seemed like a good idea.
"Relax, Spence," JJ whispered to him, her breath hot against his ear.
The hair on the back of his neck rose at the feeling and he felt himself shift slightly closer to her, telling himself it was because he was cold and his body was attracted to the warmth she gave off.
"Just a little nervous is all," he said, surprising himself with how calmly he spoke. Nervous wasn't quite the word that fully described the way he was feeling. The fluttering wings of the proverbial butterflies that seemed to be made of steel as they flapped painfully around his stomach, giving him the sensation of vertigo attested to that fact. His digestive tract was making uncomfortable hitching and contracting motions, fighting down the growing nausea, as his skin seemed to crawl. Tiny, microscopic cells that made up the tissue that made up his skin slunk over his sinewy muscles, his crackling bones, his-
JJ covered his hand with hers, cooling the twitching of his skin somewhat. He turned to look at her, only to find that her gaze was directed to the front of the courtroom. "They're giving the verdict," she said, her voice hushed and spoken in a way that indicated she wasn't giving Reid her full attention. But he had little care for her lack of focus, as he found himself turning in the same direction, watching as a single juror stood.
The juror, a man only slightly older than Reid himself yet dressed in all the finery of a much more experienced gentleman, looked at the judge stonily, his dark hair smoothed back.
"Has the jury reached a verdict?" Judge Philips asked.
The man nodded once, curtly. "We have, your Honor." Clearing his throat, he turned slightly so as to cast his view to Andrew and Olivera, who were standing in wait. "We find the defendant, Andrew Wright, guilty of all charges made against him." Looking down at a piece of paper held in his hands, he then read, "Five counts of murder in the second degree, six counts of kidnapping in the first, six counts of sexual assault in the second..."
His words melted, seeping through the air like grains of sand in between cupped hands. A hum, fuzzy like cotton yet electric like a blown transformer filled Reid's ears, muffling the world around him. The man's mouth continued to move, for all the world seeming like a boring pantomime of a speech to the genius as he reeled, his head spinning with conflicting thoughts.
Guilty.
The word held a certain vindication to it, relief and atonement curling like an angry fist preparing for a fight around his heart. But as the meaning sunk in- the idea of feeling pleasure from a man wilting away in jail- he felt the seat beneath him thin, as though vaporizing into a light mist of barely visible gases. He was seven years old again, sitting in his mother's rumpled bed, curling into the pile of covers that had formed around his small frame. Large glasses with thick prisms were pushed back up along his nose as he stared at her mother, his mouth hung open as he focused only on her words.
Borrowed words.
A leather bound book that read 'Complete Works of William Shakespeare' was placed on her propped legs, the pages opened to young Spencer's favorite tale by the famous playwright, Hamlet. And so, her deep yet musical voice, rough to any other child yet soothing to her son, rang with the iambic pentameter of speech as she recited the words before her.
"...To cut his throat in the church," she spoke, speaking in the voice that she had claimed to belong to Laertes.
Then, switching to a deeper, gravelly voice that had a slight musical and merry tilt to it, she continued reading as King Claudius. "No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; Revenge should have no bounds. But good Laertes-"
Despite having heard the play a thousand times over, and even citing it to memory, for the first time Reid cocked his head and questioned, "I don't get it. I mean, I know that it was a different time and everything, but how could so many people honestly believe killing someone is the best option?"
His mother looked up from her book at him, blinking thoughtfully before smiling. "I would consider it a good thing that you don't understand that, Spencer."
He scrunched his face in thought, the thick-rimmed glasses slipping with the crinkled skin. "Didn't any of them realize that they were only setting themselves up to be murdered by another scorned character?" he asked, sitting up and placing his chin in his hand. While he understood the concept of dramatic irony and knew that his knowledge of the bloody end made him biased, he still could not fathom the sheer ignorance in which each character seemed to shroud themselves with.
Murder was murder. There was no such thing as a justification when it came to matters of harming another human being. Right?
So why did Shakespeare pen so many foolhardy characters who couldn't see this most basic of concepts?
His mother sighed at great length, though it did not appear to be out of impatience or agitation, as she smiled tiredly. "Spencer, as smart as you are, you're still a child," she stated. He bristled, opening his mouth to argue with her- for even though he knew that he still was a child in many ways, he liked to think that his vast knowledge made him more adult-like than his peers. But before he could even formulate a proper argument, she shook her head and said, "There are some things that just can't be learned in books."
At his quizzical glance, she ruffled a hand through his hair tenderly and said, "Some people are blinded by their need for revenge, regardless of how wrong it may seem."
"Like Hamlet?"
She nodded. "Exactly."
But that still didn't quite answer his question. While the madness of a spurned Ophelia- denied love by the single-minded Hamlet- and the tragic death of all those who openly sought their vengeance had solidified this theory, it still just didn't make sense. Yes, Hamlet had let his desire for blood sabotage a romance, taint his mind, and end his life, but why? That was what he didn't understand. Why was killing one man, a murderer though that one man may have been, just cause for all of his problems? It seemed, to young Spencer, that it only worsened them, like opening recently healed wounds.
He sighed, lying back down into the covers against his mother as she continued to read. 'Maybe,' he thought as some part of his mind repeated the words from memory with her, 'this is one of those things that can't be learned from a book.'
The memory of that afternoon was one that had been buried, due to it's seeming unimportance at the time. But now, as Reid watched in silent awe as his almost-murderer was manhandled by the Bailiff to a standing position, it seemed like the only memory that ever mattered.
With the childish innocence that he had never quite seemed to rid himself off, alongside with his strict right-and-wrong morale base, he still could not truly understand what would drive another man to murder.
But he did have a glimpse of the maddening feel of revenge.
In that moment in which he actually felt happiness at knowing Andrew would be locked up, indefinitely, he saw the world as Hamlet did, at one point or another. A world in which karmic action was best left to those impassioned few who deserved to be the cause of the downfall to the one who wronged them. A world in which an eye for an eye was the ruling slogan and where a man could receive joy from another's sorrow, simply because he had been wronged.
It was a world he did not quite enjoy.
"Spence?"
He looked up at JJ, her clear blue eyes cloudy with a cocktail mix of emotions, ranging from joy to relief to concern. Her fingertips hovered over his hand, as though afraid to touch him in such a spacey state, and her light brows dove to the center of her face, the skin wrinkling.
He blinked several times, trying to bring her into focus as he pushed his thoughts away. Sometimes, his own ideas and musings could become so prominent that they placed a shimmering veil between him and the world. A fish-eye like view that distorted everything and kept it from being truly clear.
"You know," he started. "In all the years I've worked for the BAU, I couldn't understand why some people tried to get revenge by killing others. You'd think that, studying the criminal mind, I would know, but I just couldn't get it. Killing someone because you were psychotic or had a personality disorder was different, because those people either don't know right from wrong, or think they're above it and so disregard the law. But I could never see how someone who knew the difference and the consequences went and did something like that anyway.:
JJ narrowed her eyes.
"Spence, you're not...I mean, you don't..."
Hazel eyes widened. "No, of course not! I wouldn't kill anyone," he defended, shaking his head vehemently. "It's just...Hamlet." He said the name, as though it were all the explanation necessary.
"Hamlet? Like, the play?" JJ asked, now raising a brow.
"Yeah. My mom read it to me all the time, and it was my favorite Shakespeare story, probably because it was the only one that was a mystery to me in some way. But as a kid, I never knew why he would sacrifice so much," he said, feeling his words trail off.
Her face lighting up in realization, she nodded and said, "And now you know why someone could be so vengeful as to harm another being?"
He hesitated. "No, but I do know why they might want to."
"You got your revenge though, he's going to jail. Aren't you happy with the verdict?" she asked, her brows creasing in confusion.
Nodding, he looked up to the judge, who was nodding thoughtfully as he gave Andrew's sentence- an accumulative five hundred years in prison, with no chance of parole. "That's what worries me, JJ." His voice was quiet, hushed yet filled with slight tremors.
She sighed, not knowing once more what to say to him. With a strict understanding of right-and-wrong and working in a job such as the BAU, it was difficult for Reid to truly think in the way a criminal might. And when placed in the position of a victim, he complied too thoroughly with his morale to allow any vengeful thoughts to take place. Having seen the result of revenge many times, he was having difficulty accepting the emotion and believing that it made him no better than the UnSubs.
"I'm glad he's away, but in some ways it doesn't seem like it's enough. But whenever I start to think like that, I feel like I'm a bad person," he explained, huddling against the seat as he ducked his head, hiding his face from her view.
Fervently, she shook her head. "No, you're not a bad person, not at all, Spence. Andrew was, and he deserves everything he got," she said, enunciating clearly and placing sharp emphasis on each word as she spoke.
He nodded numbly, deciding he did not want to partake in the conversation anymore. Whether or not she believed it herself, JJ would only press her argument to the point of exhaustion. Even if she did think him horrible and a monster no better than Andrew, she wouldn't say so. There was no reason to continue when the outcome was so predictable.
But he couldn't help but feel guilty knowing he was happy that a man would never see the light of day, knowing he was angry that he would never suffer as much as he did, knowing he was hopeful that he might be harmed by some faceless inmate. It wasn't enough, but he desperately tried to keep himself from thinking that.
He wouldn't become an UnSub guided by hate and revenge.
He wouldn't become a man made cold and hard by injustice.
He wouldn't become a modern-day Hamlet, ruined by his wicked intentions.
xXx
Reid was lying on top of damp dirt, face down. The smell was natural, but pungent and unpleasant. Earthy and moist, it tickled his nose and he slowly rose himself upwards, his fingers and knees sinking deeper as he did so. But when he looked up to examine his surroundings, he faced a wall of packed dirt. Slimy maggots peeked through the spongy embankment and he lurched, his skin tickling and trembling with the familiar feeling of flesh crawling like insects over his muscles and bones. Gagging at the small yet disgusting creatures, he swiveled around him, searching for a way out. But he was surrounded by dirt, four walls of earth holding him, flecked with brilliantly white, moving spots. Gulping, he raised his head and looked upwards.
He was in a deep grave, eight feet down into the earth. The mouth opened up to a clear night sky, the jaundice face of the moon shone brightly, eerily, as a painted orb held against a velvety black cloak. Pinpricks of white hot stars twinkled in a pattern, winking at the young man trapped within the hole.
His spine shook, rattling within his body as gooseflesh prickled his white skin. While the moon was often the thing of sonnets and romantic idealism, to Reid it was only synonymous with nighttime, and the claustrophobic darkness that came with it. Like a beacon of light to a straying ship, the moon's purpose wasn't to provide a dramatic backdrop to lovers but to guide the lonely and wandering traveler through the otherwise blackened night. But without the yellow glow, the insignificant region- the corner of the universe- would be embraced in darkness. Yet, Reid could not feel grateful to the light of the moon, knowing it was only a trick of the idea- the moon had no light of it's own to offer.
Shuffling his feet along the floor of the grave, he closed his eyes and took a deep steadying breath. "Just because it's dark doesn't mean I'm defenseless," he told himself, exhaling deeply. But the words did little to console him, knowing that just beyond his closed and strained eyelids was night, darkness, and the balustrade of dirt.
His eyes opened, slowly and deliberately, as he tilted his head back and looked out through the mouth of the grave. Why was he in a grave to begin with? Surely, he wasn't dead. He ought to have remembered something like that. And besides, he wasn't in a coffin. Snorting, he shook his head as he mused, 'Maybe, I've been captured by another UnSub, one who buries his victims alive.' A disturbing thought indeed, he was too focused on the spitefulness that had created it- the fact that he always seemed to find himself in the hands of some crazy killer. Honestly, how surprised did he deserve to be?
Stretching his arms out, he tried to reach up to the lip of the grave, hoping to grip the edge and pull himself out. But his palms and fingers simply fluttered over moist dirt and slimy creatures. Recoiling slightly, his hands seeming to burn with the mucus of the maggots, he bit the inside of his cheeks tightly and clenched his jaw. He reached out once more, this time prepared to touch the creepy-crawlies surrounding him.
Like before, he dug his hands into dirt and bugs, wincing but not quite pulling away. 'If I don't look, I won't be as disgusted,' he stated to himself, keeping his eyes fixed on the moon- was it getting larger?- as he worked his hands up higher. Maggots or dirt- he did not know which- or even a combination of both slipped down his arm. But he still refused to look, watching as the moon moved ever so closer to the tips of bare trees, naked and hard from the frost of winter.
Several seconds later found him straining his shoulders and raised on his tiptoes in his search for the edge that never seemed to come. Something- he tried to convince himself it was dirt, though he logically knew better- moved under his shirt and shimmied down his chest and shoulder blades slowly, painfully slow. Frustrated, he huffed and turned his eyes to the wall he was attempting to climb.
"Why can't I find the edge?" he growled to no one in particular angrily, his eyes widening when he saw the reason why the edge was eluding him.
The walls of the grave had risen higher, now surrounding him with intimidating dirt walls of at least nine feet. His breathing hitched. Would it simply grow every time he came closer to the end, keeping him forever away at just several inches short of escape? Deciding to test his theory, he planted his feet firmly on the ground and bent himself at the knees, eyeing the opening that seemed to be taunting him, the moon now so close to the branches he thought that they might poke it and send it whizzing through the sky like a deflated balloon. Clenching his leg muscles, he jumped, propelling himself forward as he grasped out frantically, clawing at the edge that...
That did in fact only move further away.
When he settled down, breathing heavily, the walls were now ten feet.
He wanted to yell, stomp his foot, shout obscenities, and fall into himself, crying. Would he ever get out? Would he, ironically as it was, die in a grave? What had even lead him to be in this position in the first place?
His face was hot from the fear and the anger, despite the biting chill that came from being ten feet underground. He needed to calm himself, he needed to breathe. He needed to find away out.
CLINK!
He paused, his hazel eyes becoming so large they seemed to encompass his whole face. His breath had paused, his heart leaping to his throat as he strained his ears. Someone was out there. Someone was close. Fighting the urge to call out and ask for help, the acrid scent of dirt and blanketing darkness becoming too much and whittling down his logic, he drew himself inward, his arms wrapping around his dirty torso. He peered outward, wandering if the person would help him or hurt him.
CLINK!
The sound of metal against metal pervaded the air, and he shivered at the sharp, grating quality of the noise. But it continued, slicing through the night sky like a blade as it came closer and at more restrained intervals.
CLINK! CLINK! CLINK! CLINK!
His hair was standing on edge, his muscles cringing- but he wasn't entirely sure if it was because of the noise itself, or the foreboding it ignited. As time drew on, he began to realize that the sinister sound of metal was more indicative of a murderer than a hero. His mind began listing off all the items in a killer's arsenal that might make that noise; a knife, a sword, a pick ax, a shovel-
Dirt was thrown across the sky and into the grave, falling to a loose pile at his feet. He gaped at it, his lip twitching, as understanding flooded through him- he was being buried.
The conclusion was met with a shovel full of dirt landing in his hair, small rocks tapping against his skull. Dirt slipped through his locks and down his forehead, falling into his open mouth.
"Ungh!" he sputtered, his face scrunching in disgust as he spat the dirt out. But even as he did so, dirt continued to fly all around him, covering his feet and cooling his skin. He stumbled backwards, peering upward. Someone was burying him, and quickly, with the dirt somehow filling the grave at a remarkable speed, his feet now buried beneath the earth that came up to his ankles.
He looked around desperately, needing to find a way out before he was completely buried- the dirt now reaching his knees. His hands reached out to stabilize him against the dirt walls, no longer bothered by the maggots and he tried to scale the grave, pulling himself upward. But when he heard the voice- an oh so familiar voice- taunting him, he froze.
"Oh, gee, it's up to his knee!"
He paled, looking down at the dirt that sullied his khaki pants up to the knee. He began to climb out more hastily, trying to reach the top before the dirt did.
"Oh, my, it's up to his thigh!"
Faster, more desperately, he clawed upward. Was the dirt filling the hole up even faster?
"Oh, fiddle, it's up to his middle!"
Moving faster.
Moving harder.
Grunting in exertion.
His legs were getting lodged in the packed dirt. He struggled to move them, to break free.
"Oh, heck, it's up to his neck!"
He could see over the edge of the grave, his arms were frantically clawing at the dead and frozen grass. Polished shoes stood directly in front of him, a large mountainous pile of dirt to the left of the man before him. Even as he dug his shovel in and pulled up another heap of dirt to throw into the grave, Reid knew he wouldn't need much more- he was already struggling to free his shoulders.
The dirt was flung into the grave. He closed his eyes- to avoid having his vision obscured with the soil and in defeat. It would take only a few more throws of the shovel for him to be completely buried. He was finished, it was over. He would die, suffocate in his own grave. But when all seemed still about him- even the wind ceasing to blow- he slowly opened his eyes.
The shovel was placed directly in front of him now, the metallic glint winking knowingly and menacingly at Reid. Slowly, he raised his head, looking up at the bearer of the shovel and the one digging his grave.
He rose the shovel several inches, pulling his arms back.
"Andrew," Reid choked, pleading with the man to help him. Hazel eyes locked on hazel eyes, and Reid gasped, his chest collapsing beneath the mound of dirt pressing into him. Never before had he realized how startlingly similar to Andrew he was; the graying hair, it's natural color now, the hazel eyes...
It was like looking into the future, at himself.
"Oh, dread," Andrew started, raising the shovel a little more, his shoulders straining as he pulled it backwards. "It's up to his head!"
Before Reid could even react, the shovel was swung into the side of his head, cracking his skull. His vision blurred, swimming with stars, as blood trickled from the wound. And he was...falling.
All the dirt had disappeared from the grave and he was falling into it, going deeper and deeper than he ever had before. Like Alice through the Rabbit Hole, it seemed like he would fall forever, never landing on ground again, growing further and further away from those he loved.
"Curiouser and curiouser," he managed to snort, his arms reaching out idly as if to see if, like Alice, he would be able to pull books and items off their precariously held shelves. But he met only dirt and more maggots, eager to slide along his already prickly with gooseflesh skin.
He continued to fall, for what felt like ages, and when he suddenly landed with a thud on a hard surface, he groaned, his breath escaping him. His eyes closed in pain and he made to rub his face, but his wrist was tied down.
"No!" he gasped out, his eyes snapping open and widening.
He was back in his room at Andrew's, his arms held to the railing with metal cuffs and his body covered in nothing but a thin hospital gown. Still covered in dirt and slithering maggots, he felt himself gag, his back lifting from the bed as he dry heaved. He felt sick, he felt disgusting.
He couldn't be back there. He just couldn't!
The lights shut off, shrouding the room in darkness. He whimpered, his eyes wet and his vision blurred from tears.
"Nonononono," he muttered, his body moving frantically as he felt the darkness wrap icy fingers around his neck, choking him.
But before his last breath could be made, a spotlight turned on, directly over him. Blinking, his eyes unaccustomed to the bright, yellow light looming overhead, he looked around him. Dust motes traveled through the lighted space, shining like small specs of gold only to disappear when they crossed into the darkness. His eyes trailed them, hoping to distract himself from the ever growing dread and horror as his stomach sunk down to the floor, his nerves on end.
He wasn't sure of how long he sat there, tracing and following the journey of countless motes, when it happened. Hands jumped out at him- hundreds of hands, thousands of splayed fingers. He opened his mouth to scream out, but several of the offending appendages clamped down over his lips, effectively quieting him.
He felt the fingers tug at his gown, lifting it up, exposing him, touching him. He gasped and cringed away, trying to burrow into the thin mattress and escape the prying hands. But he couldn't escape them, the bed and restraints kept him in place and they continued to roam over him, delving into his most private areas. Latching into his hair, they pulled on the now-shoulder length curls, long and crooked fingernails scraping into his scalp. His mouth twisted underneath the layers of hands, trying to scream, to shout, to make any sort of noise that would help him.
Suddenly, the hands retracted, leaping away from Reid as though his body were on fire and they had scorched the sensitive skin of their palms. Skin crawling and lurching from trepidation, the feeling of lingering hands still burning him, he opened his eyes, gasping when he saw Varney standing over him.
He leered down at him, his lips ripping into a lustful, sinister grin. "Well, well, well. Dr. Reid," Varney sneered as he ran his hands up and down Reid's arms, digging his nails painfully into his skin. "It seems the good doctor is in need of an operation." Flicking his wrists, Varney grabbed the hospital gown- which was bunched up on his hip- and ripped it away from his pale and skinny body.
Feigning a look of shock, Varney said, "Oh my, it seems we're too late!"
The police officer's eyes looked Reid's bare body up and down, coming to a halt on his chest. He grinned, flashing his teeth- each one a sharp and jagged point. Following his gaze, Reid gasped when he saw his torso, his hazel eyes broadening at the sight.
His skin was flayed, peeled back in a Y incision as though someone had started to perform an autopsy on him. But where his organs should have been still and in the process of decaying, they were vivid in color and pulsing in activity. His heart was beating with vigor, his lungs quickening as his breath sped up, his intestines slowly and just barely quivering.
He felt his lips pull back in disgust as he breathed shallowly and quickly, his panic rising.
This couldn't be happening. He couldn't be dead!
Smiling, Varney reached out a hand, his index finger and middle finger extended as the two other fingers and thumb curled into his palm. Slowly but not with hesitation, he placed his fingers inside of Reid's exposed torso, probing him sharply and steadily, his grin growing.
As fingers dipped into the folding mass that was his intestines, Varney's hand disappearing into the bloody mess, he looked up at Reid, sadistic pleasure dancing in his eyes. And as he continued to invade his body, touching where no man ever had and never should have, the young genius felt a new indignation rise with the bile in his throat. The indignation of being completely and totally violated.
He opened his mouth to protest, a scream near close to breaking free from his throat, when he realized that his lips were sewn tightly shut.
"Mmmrrrmm!" he mumbled, struggling against the thread as he thrashed his legs in desperation. But Varney would not yield, not in the least bit deterred by his movements. He was going deaf from the pounding sound of his blood in his ears, and blind from the accumulative dots marring his vision. But none of it seemed to matter, the panic coming to a dead halt, when he saw Varney pull his hand back out, the still beating tissue that had been Reid's heart held firmly in his palm.
Varney looked down at him, his face glowing as he gave the pink organ a gentle squeeze. "It belongs to me now."
xXx
Reid startled, his eyes snapping open as he jumped in bed, his heart thumping wildly in his chest- in his chest! Yes! It hadn't left him at all!
Breathing heavily, he reached a hand out and placed it over his heart, as if to reassure himself that it was still there, and not in Varney's clutches. But it was a silly thing to put stock in such nightmares, no matter how terrifying they might seem. Still, he couldn't help but sigh in relief to know that his heart was still where it should have been, locked away in his chest. And the painful surge of blood pumping through his body was more than enough testament to that.
He gave himself a few seconds, allowing his blood to calm down, where he sat huddled up in his bed, bent at the waist, and his forehead pressed against his raised knees. His hair was short, instead of long and curly like in the nightmare, and he was happy to find that, aside from a thin coating of tacky sweat, his body was clean. There were no maggots slinking along his limbs, no clumps of dirt matted into his hair. He even, foolishly, rose a hand to his chest and felt over his FBI tee shirt, thankful to find that there were no anomalies- just a hard, fleshy surface beneath the cloth.
He wasn't buried alive, he wasn't undergoing an autopsy, and, more importantly, he wasn't with Varney.
"Morning, Sunshine," Morgan called teasingly, making Reid jump with surprise as he walked out of the attached bathroom, a long towel wrapped around his waist. The older man's smile fell however when he saw that pallid tone of Reid's complexion and heard the short and shallow breaths raking through his lungs. Narrowing his eyes in concern, he said, "You alright man? You look like you've seen a ghost."
The young genius just barely resisted the urge to snort- had he been a more poetic man he might've replied with something along the lines of 'A ghost of the past, more accurately.' But he wasn't poetic or artistic by any reasoning, and so he simply shrugged and mumbled, "Nothing, really."
Not seeming to believe him, Morgan simply stared at him, or rather, it felt, through him. When it had reached the point that Reid was fidgeting awkwardly under his gaze, his eyes cast down to the bedding and his fingers picking at a tightly wound seam, Morgan sighed and shook his head, turning to the dresser.
"Nightmares, again?" he asked quietly, trying to sound comforting. But there was no comfort that could be offered in those words- words that made the younger man shrink into himself with shame, knowing that this would forever be his place in the team. Knowing that he would forever be the one with constant nightmares, the one that always needed to be handled with care.
Still, he managed to nod, and even more surprisingly, managed to say, "Yeah. A bad one, actually."
And it was the truth. While all of his nightmares were, like nightmares tend to be, bad, this one was particularly terrifying. Normally, they consisted of previous crime scenes merging with the memories of imprisonment- stuff he had seen before, and stuff he was used to seeing. But he was not accustomed to seeing his own chest open to the world, his skin peeled away and stapled back to reveal his organs. He was not accustomed to being in an endless grave, only able to find his way out when he had been sufficiently buried. He was not accustomed to seeing things that didn't make sense, things that didn't and couldn't happen. His nightmares were almost always a rendition of his memories- perfect and without logical flaw. Except, of course, for this one.
"You want to talk about it?" Morgan asked, his tone suggesting that, even though he wanted to offer help, he wouldn't feel quite comfortable with it. Reid couldn't help but smile, if only for a fleeting moment.
"No, it's fine. I think I just need to shower and have some coffee."
He stood from the bed, hoping his wide-leg pajama pants would hide the shaking and unsteady limbs from view. But when Morgan sighed and smiled, he knew he had passed the inspection and would be allowed to leave without further prodding. 'Thank God,' he thought, not in the mood to have to deal with the awkward round of questions.
He opened the door to the bathroom, pausing when he heard Morgan speak.
"Oh, don't forget- we have Varney's trial today."
BANG!
The door slammed shut into the frame with Reid standing in front of it, his arm outstretched and his breathing even more ragged than it had been only moments before. It seemed that as the days wore on and his mental health was tested, his memory began to fail him, because he had forgotten about that- forgotten about it entirely.
Of course, he knew that it wasn't necessarily that he forgot about the trial made him so stunned by Morgan's words, but more so because he wanted to forget. Despite what his team believed, his memory was only so useful if he chose to search for something- it wasn't alarm activated, acting as an internal clock and reminding him to do certain things, when he needed to do them.
He hadn't wanted to do this, and so his memory seemed to have no problem with letting this little obligation slide through the cracks.
"Reid?" Morgan called, his voice getting high-pitched with worry. "Reid? Are you alright?"
Licking his lips, he responded, "Yeah, I guess I didn't realize how hard I was closing the door." His voice cracked, he fumbled over words- surely Morgan would know he was lying.
He stayed by the door, tentatively waiting for Morgan to come in, shake him, yell at him, demand to know what was wrong. But none of that ever happened. Instead, he heard only the deep voice call to him, "Alright then. I'm ready when you are."
Furrowing his brow, he turned away and began to undress, his legs still trembling. Had Morgan known he was lying, and just decided to give him some time to collect himself? Or was he just getting tired of having to soothe the storm after Reid, and didn't press any further because he didn't want to try to comfort? Didn't care to comfort?
He shook his head. No, of course not. Morgan did care, just like all of his other teammates. He was just giving him some time to cool off. After all, the man was smart enough to realize that the mention of Varney had been the trigger, and he would sit back and wait until Reid felt better.
He sighed as he tossed his clothes to the side and turned on the shower, waiting for the water to heat up. 'I think trusting people again will be the hardest thing to get used to,' he thought, idly shoving a hand under the shower head. He watched as beads of water, tepid but slowly getting warming, slipped down the curve of his fingers and palm, sliding down his wrist. 'My fear of hands will be a close second.'
But he was happy to note that he could at least tolerate JJ's hands and having her touch him- sometimes even welcoming it. Of course, there was still that momentary stiffening, the second in which he recoiled, memories flooding back to him, the urge to pull away. With JJ, though, he was at least able to push all of that aside in order to let her comfort him.
The water at the desired temperature, he retreated his hand and used it to push aside the curtain. He stepped into the tub, but not before glancing at himself in the mirror to make sure his chest was still intact, and his vital organs sealed away.
xXx
"How's Reid doing?" Hotch asked Morgan as he turned his back on the door to the bathroom, the sound of a running shower echoing off the tiled walls.
Morgan shook his head as he threw a white button up over his matching undershirt. "I don't think the trials are what he thought they would be," he answered, shrugging his shoulders as he worked the buttons through their corresponding holes with deft fingers.
Hotch frowned. "What do you mean? Andrew's going to prison. He'd be given a lethal injection if it weren't New York history with Capital Punishment. Or rather, lack there of, for about about fifty years," he said, absently straightening his tie.
"No, not that. I just think he didn't fully understand what seeing Andrew and Varney might do to him. He spent so much time in that hospital with nothing to do but think about what they did to him. In his mind, going to the trial would be beating them. But the reality is that it's just making him worse," the darker agent said through a sigh, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I knew this would happen, too. That's why I had wanted him to stay back at the hospital and let us tell him what happened."
Hotch pondered this for a moment. "Maybe he had to realize this on his own." At Morgan's quizzical glance, he elaborated. "Did you ever think that maybe Reid wanted to come, not to prove he was strong to Andrew and Varney, but to prove he was strong to us?
"Reid's our biggest academic asset, there's no denying that. But there's also no denying the fact that he isn't the strongest, or the most...coordinated. He was probably thinking, whether or not he knew it, that after everything that happened, we would consider him weaker. And the only to prove he wasn't weak to us was to come out here and stand trial, and act like everything that happened didn't bother him."
Morgan paused in looping his tie, his mouth slung open as he looked at his boss. He hadn't thought of that. Why would he? Reid's mind was a difficult thing to understand, especially when he was determined to keep himself guarded. He knew the young man suffered from a low self-esteem regarding his physical strength, but he never he would feel so emasculated as to prove he had strength to his team- his family.
"But he knows we don't think that way about him," Morgan concluded, uselessly. He of all people knew how little others' thoughts mattered to oneself.
"What Varney did to him," Hotch started, his voice low and his words slow as though he were choosing them carefully and with great consideration, "was for power. You and I both now that when a straight men to assault other men, he's looking for control, not sexual gratification. And he got it. So now, Reid feels even weaker than what he would have if Andrew had been the only one harming him. Because with Varney's attack, he thinks every ounce of masculinity he possessed has been taken from him." He paused, listening to the resonating sound of the water in the shower. "And now, he wants it back."
Morgan nodded as he sat down to work socks over his feet. "And he also wants us to see that he's as strong as possible," he finished.
Of course Morgan knew what the kid was going through- he had been there, himself, hadn't he? He had underwent the touches and abuses of Carl Buford for years, thinking it was what necessary in order for him to move on from the life he lived- the life he believed he was destined to live. He knew as well as Reid what that sort of thing could do to someone.
"You know," he said, his voice hollow as though he weren't so much speaking as he was reciting a memorized prose. "During that case with Owen, I told him that the reason I worked out and tried so hard to be," he paused, searching for words. "Well, that guy was because I didn't want to get bullied."
He clasped his hands together as he propped his elbows up on his knees, his eyes focused on the floor. Hotch regarded him for a moment before sitting down on a nearby armchair, his hands gripping the edge of the armrest. "I know," was all he said to the subordinate profiler, his dark and stony eyes settling on the small kitchenette.
"You should make coffee."
Morgan turned to him, one brow quirked. "I...excuse me?"
One end of Hotch's lips rose in a smile. "Make Reid coffee. He'll appreciate it, and he'll understand it's your way of helping him without babying him."
Opening his mouth to argue, Morgan quickly conceded, remembering JJ's words to him only several days ago. Grumbling, he stood up from his place on the bed and made his way over to the coffee pot.
"Everyone knows the way to a genius's heart is through the coffee filter, Morgan," Hotch said, his small smile growing slightly as the man glared at him over his shoulder.
Morgan scoffed. "Reid's right, you only have a sense of humor when you can taunt someone."
Hotch, if only for a second, had the decency to look indignant.
xXx
Author's Note: So sorry about the long update! There has been some conflicting schedules, and I broke from the guilt and decided to post this! Sorry!