Playing Games by JuliaBC
A/N: Well, what I guess last chapter...I think I got enough correct for it to count...I was worried that Diana was being portrayed with too much memory loss, but it looks like that gamble I took may have paid off.
11x11: Entropy was a sad episode. It was also a great episode.
ALSO you might want to reread chapter three of this really quick.
Spencer walked home, alone.
Everything that had happened came crashing back into him.
But there was one more person he needed to call.
He picked up his phone and put it to his ear after hitting speed dial number eight.
"Sorry I can't come to the phone right now, but you can leave a message."
Her voice chirped over the phone. He lowered it and entered his apartment complex, taking his time on the stairs.
And then...there she was. A baby carrier sat at her feet and a book was in her hands.
"Kate?" He whispered.
"I didn't want you to go home to an empty apartment," she said, stepping forward. "Sometimes it's soul crushing."
Her hair was in a ponytail, a style he'd rarely seen on her. It seemed that new motherhood was indeed making her busier and leaving less time to do her hair in the mornings. Or nights.
"You brought Jamie," he said and Kate picked up the carrier as he unlocked his apartment door.
"I did," she returned, carrying it through. Once inside, she placed it on the floor and carefully unbuckled her son from his seat. "He was dozing on the way over."
"How did you know to come now?" Reid asked.
Kate smiled. "I didn't," she said simply. "I got a text from Hotch about an hour ago saying that some of the imminent danger of the case had passed and then I just felt this urging to go over to your place so I did."
"So you've been waiting," he stated as she pulled Jamie from the carrier.
"Do you want to hold him?" She asked and he held out his arms. "You look so good holding a baby," she reflected, passing him over.
"Are you going to baptize Jamie?" He asked. "I never heard a godparent pick."
She grinned. "Chris has a brother, and I thought Meg would be a good pick."
He looked up at her in surprise. "Most churches require godparents to be sixteen."
"I'm not truly religious," she said. "We did actually baptize him at the hospital...a few minor complications...I got paranoid. So now I just don't see a reason to hold a ceremony or anything until Meg is old enough to fulfill the requirements."
"I didn't know you baptized him at the hospital," Reid said, looking down at the baby with new light.
"The cord was wrapped around his neck," Kate said. "I didn't...I didn't want to remember it because I felt guilty about letting it change the way I thought about him. Chris had water and he just did it."
"You need a name," Reid said. "How did you baptize him without a name?"
"Not in emergency cases," Kate said. "You don't need it then."
There was silence for a moment. "My mom has dementia," he finally said. "And I can't...I feel guilty about letting it change the way..." He shook his head, looking at the baby in his arms. "It doesn't change how I feel about her. It never could. But I feel guilty at feeling...some measure of...I didn't want to be her caretaker."
Kate just watched him, her eyes soft. "Everyone feels like that," she said. "Everyone wants freedom, it's instinct. No one likes to be put in a cage, or a box."
"Don't say it doesn't make me a bad person because I know that," he said, almost fiercely.
"It doesn't make you a remarkable person," she began after a moment. "Everyone has tragedy. Everyone wishes bad things on someone else at times. It's how we react to it that changes lives."
He sat down, rather heavily, in an armchair. "I can't be tested for it yet," he said.
Kate nodded. "I can't pretend to understand how you feel right now," she said. "But I think you know what my next line is."
He smiled wearily. "You know, Cat played games," he said. "She asked me if I liked games and I said yes, and that I always won."
She grinned. "You don't," she said saucily. "I can remember a specific Othello game when you didn't."
Reid raised an eyebrow. "Kate, I challenge you to another round of that. You mentally couldn't beat me again."
"Maybe not at the same game," Kate said, tossing her head. "I mean, I don't have an Othello board with me."
"I do," Reid said. "I saw it at a store and couldn't help it."
"You really did take your loss to heart," Kate said, standing up. "Where's it at?"
"Over in the living room, you'll see it," Reid promised and she ducked into the other room to look for it.
He heard a small exclamation and then Kate called: "Did you read Harry Potter?"
Reid opened his mouth to respond. "Something happened there," he said. "I was listening to it on audiobook and I was utterly fascinated with how the wizarding world operated. How the prejudices echoed, but didn't exactly replicate, our Muggle ones. How everything was carefully crafted, even with all of the plotholes that JK never quite filled in."
"Plotholes?" Kate asked, coming in with a frown on her face. "What are you talking about? You've barely reached the fourth book, by my estimation."
"See, that's what I was getting to," Reid said. "I stopped for gas and there was a Barnes and Nobles book store so...I may have taken a few hours out of my trip to finish the series on the way home."
"In the store?" She wondered.
"No, I bought a box set, it's in my luggage," he responded. "I drove Poe nuts. No matter how much he tried to get my attention I just couldn't stop reading."
She just shook her head as she sat down in front of him, pulling an end table over to place the board on. "Reid, you are just too much. But tell me this. Who was your favorite character? Hermione?"
"That's bad profiling," Reid said immediately. "Why immediately assume that I'd like the smartest character first?"
She raised an eyebrow as she set up the board. Gameplay commenced as they continued their conversation.
"Okay, then Luna," she tried.
"Because she was slightly kooky?" Reid asked. "That's even worse."
"I'm trying to think of people you'd identify with and there are quite simply too many people in the Harry Potter universe," she shot back, placing a black piece on the board and capturing three of his white pieces. "Dumbledore?"
"Dumbledore was quite an interesting character, from a profiler's point of view," Reid replied rapidly, playing his pieces carefully so as not to disturb the baby in his arms. "But no. What about you, Kate? Your favorite character?"
"Ginny," she said simply. "I love how, in the books at least, her character shines. There are so many reasons why she was a good match for Harry but even beyond that, I identified with her because she was always a background character. She didn't have to do everything and anything to shine. She shone in small ways."
"I liked their relationship too," Reid said. "I did initially think that it would be Hermione but then I realized that he wasn't sexually attracted to her and nor did they share the same sense of humor."
"What about Hermione and Ron? What do you think about that ending?" Kate asked.
"I was surprised that their marriage had lasted so long," Reid said. "But happy for Ron. I liked the Weasleys."
"And the Malfoys?" She wondered, placing another piece. Five white pieces turned black.
"Draco was a very well set up character," he said and paused, fingering one of the tokens. "He wasn't...just another boy with daddy issues."
She watched him. "Do you want to talk about what happened on the case?"
"Not in the least, just know that everyone is safe," Reid said immediately, the words tumbling out of his mouth.
"Ah," she answered.
The board was getting filled up with pieces. Reid noted that Kate was keeping sharp watch on them, and he realized that she was trying to trick him again. Hmm.
Jamie wiggled in his arms and he was distracted for a moment, looking down at the baby.
"James, Sirius, Lupin," Kate murmured.
"What?" He asked, placing his last piece on the board.
"It's one of those three," she said.
"Lupin was a very compelling character, and I adored James and Sirius' relationship, even while I regretted their bullying of Snape."
"Oh god," she said. "I should have known. That is really bad profiling, just way too obvious."
"How could my favorite character not be Snape?" Reid protested. "By the way, I win."
She looked down at the board and her mouth twitched.
"You can't use the same strategy twice," he said. "Last time you distracted me from the real object of the game by making a very well placed bet that I...couldn't..." He reexamined the board. "Kate, you hustled me!"
She looked with triumph at the board. "Look at that. All four corner pieces are black."
A/N: In other news, JLH has been hired to direct three movies for the Hallmark channel. I hesitate to say what this will likely mean for her character's likeliness of returning to CM.
And yet another note...maybe it's not the best reasoning but after learning of Alan Rickman's death today, I had to have Reid pick Snape. Always. And I can see it anyway.