~I hope you never see what I've become~

Jade's mind often wandered off to faraway places whenever others were engaged deeply in conversation. She looked directly at JJ and Morgan as their mouths formed words and sentences and Jade even responded appropriately but she wasn't there. Her grandmother always claimed it was her high intellect that never kept her grounded in one spot always searching for something else. In reality her introversion was too blame but she let her grandmother sing her praises at family dinners and enthrall distant relatives with stories of what she would accomplish some day.

And by all intensive purposes she was the success her grandmother said she would be. Jade came from a broken home and graduated the top of her college class. She moved to the country and met the man of her dreams and he followed her to the city so she could pursue her passions and join the academy. She toppled every obstacle in her way with remarkable grace and ease. Jade was the legend at the Riotto house on Sunday night dinners. And that's how she had wished it all would stay.

No one wanted a voicemail from an estranged uncle asking for money to pay of the funeral bill. Her grandmother fell in her home on July 6th 2010, 3 days after a Jade landed in the Philadelphia field office. Her body wasn't discovered until a week later after the neighbors had complained about a strange odor coming from the house. Riotto's weren't known for their proactive financial planning and her only listed next of kin was a nephew with an uncanny ability to withdraw frozen bank assets. Her uncle planned the funeral for appearances sake but was mostly just hoping to swindle relatives into his latest pyramid scheme. Jade left Philly in the middle of the night and slept in her car so she could slip into the funeral home in the morning unnoticed. She remembers staring at a body lying in a coffin wearing her grandmother's clothes. All of the facial features were correct but it looked nothing like her. Wherever her grandmother was now it wasn't lying in a box in a poorly lit Victorian house.

Jade was pulled out of her stupor when Reid asked her a direct question and apparently she didn't answer this time.

"Are you sure you are ok?" That concerned look he always had around her was etched in his features again.

"Of course, I'm just jet lagged is all." Jade assured him.

"You better get use to that, girl." Morgan said as he playfully swatted her arm.

The overwhelming dread she felt when Garcia presented the case citing its location in Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania crept into her bones again taking up residence. She better get use to a lot of things she thought, including the thought of seeing Ian's parents tomorrow.


The team was holed up in the most luxurious motel northern Pennsylvania had to offer. Cracked windows and peeling paint only helped the ambiance. Reid lay on his back staring at a spot in the ceiling where the paint had all chipped away and the dry wall began to crumple. The clock on the table next to the bed read 12:35am but sleep continued to allude him. People with higher than average intelligence often suffered from insomnia but he rarely had trouble anymore becoming immediately unconscious once his head hit the pillow.

His mind kept slipping back to her wondering if she was also still awake, staring at the ceiling contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Reid felt as if he invading her privacy by even thinking about her this much. She was highly intuitive, he worried if he imagined what she was doing for too long one look in his eyes and she would know what kept him up at night. Though completely illogical the thought made him blush and fidget uncomfortably.

His thoughts continued in several different directions for an hour or so before slowly settling and allowing him to drift off to sleep. He dreamt of nothing that night. Well that's of course not true he dreamt of something but whatever it was his mind felt no need to retain it. He may see a flash of it months from now but it will be nothing more than a fleeting thought and he will continue on his day.

Reid's dreams were often vivid, sometimes violent, but always memorable. His mother claimed his night terrors as a child were only a side effect of his genius. As he got older and made more sense of them the terror subsidized but the intense imaginary continued. Tonight was a strange night. He heard a distant rattling by the door but it had a rhythmic motion to it so his body didn't stir. The sound abruptly stopped and was replaced by the slow creak of a door. These sounds started to make sense but Reid wasn't sure if he was awake or finally lost in REM sleep.

He could feel someone approaching the bed but a fight or flight instinct never took over. He felt completely at ease as the mattress indented and creaked sounding similar to an old man's over worked joints. Reid was wide awake now. He turned his head slowly to identify the intruder who had made their way into his bed. A sliver of light came in through the window just enough for him to see a mess of dark hair on his pillow. He didn't dare move or even take a deep breath in fear that any slight movement could make her disappear. He watched the rise and fall of her chest for a while until it slowed enough indicating she was asleep.

Reid was sure he locked the door... She was a peculiar girl. Apparently lock picking was also one of her many talents. Jade began to whimper some in her sleep and without thinking he put his hand on her arm to comfort her. A few seconds of complete panic were replaced by longing as she quieted seemingly by his touch. After an intense internal struggle he mustered up the strength to inch closer to her lithe frame and drape his arm around her. She nestled into his chest signaling it was safe for him to breathe again and enjoy what Reid couldn't yet decipher as reality or a cruel dream. Her scent filled his lungs and seemed to creep into every part of him. She stirred slightly and he blamed his over zealous thoughts for disturbing her peace. The seconds ticked by too quickly, ruthlessly leaving him with less and less time to savor the feeling of her pressed up against him.

Now he was sure his thoughts had gone too far. He tightened his arm around her focusing all of his attention on the skin that was touching hers. Reid closed his eyes around 3am hopefully drifting off to wherever she was.

He awoke to Morgan yelling unnecessarily loud something about getting his ass out of bed and going off roading up the mountain. Reid was more than sure he wouldn't be doing that second part. Driving with Morgan on an actual road was an accomplishment in itself let alone anything that could be considered "off roading".

Reid was finally awake enough to regain control of his limbs. He felt for Jade next to him but the only evidence she had even been there was a twisted blanket and a pillow on the floor. The sight of an empty bed gave him a hollow feeling in the pit of stomach and made him wonder if she was ever really there at all. She must have slipped out without waking him taking his fevered day dreams with her. Did he need to address her differently now? Or was he making this into nothing? She needed temporary comfort and left when he was no longer needed anymore. He rattled off more neurotic scenarios like a nervous teenage boy trying to ask the popular girl to the dance. Reid finally got up and started fumbling around the room trying to remember how to put on pants and where the bathroom was. This girl may be the death of him.


Jade stood in the local police station staring at the wall of missing pets waiting for the ancient coffee maker to finish brewing the tar it would inevitably create. Missing pets are the biggest catastrophe this town has ever seen. A serial killer is so unfathomable many of the locals laughed in their face when they went to question them.

The coffee machine started making an angry hissing noise similar to the one her cat makes when she accidentally steps on its tail. It brought Jade out of her trance enough to notice Spencer had walked in and was talking to one of the officers. Maybe if she stood still long enough he wouldn't notice her. She felt strangely nervous around him after picking the lock of his door last night, getting into bed with him while he was sleeping, and then leaving before he could wake up. Perhaps that's not the most normal thing to do.

She desperately needed comfort and he seemed to be the only one who could center her and give her a few moments of piece. At night she saw all of them again. They came to her one by one and then in masses. They screamed her name and taunted her with images of their bodies strewn across the floor like discarded children's toys.

Clarissa was always the first. That wasn't actually her real name but that's always what she called herself. She whispered bible verses to herself incessantly but those never saved her. Jade had shared a cell with her for weeks and watched her tear her hair out strand by strand. She thought if she wasn't pretty anymore they would have no use for her. And she was right. She was tossed out with the trash one day, her limbs were contorted and blood smeared down her chest. Jade saw her on her way to one of the makeshift arenas. She remembered feeling nothing at all seeing Clarissa that way. Her eyes were still open, fear etched in her sallow features. Perhaps that's why she always saw her first. Jade had done nothing to help her. She knew she was too far gone and wouldn't last the month. Her parents and child in New Jersey would have probably disagreed...

The grief she felt for this sad girl didn't start until a 2 weeks after she had come home. She watched a woman push her child on the swing and it triggered a memory of Clarissa chanting about the swings in Merrill Park. It just seemed like nonsense then, before Jade learned Clarissa would take her daughter to the swings after church every Sunday. Jade's pulse use to quicken every time she walked by a park but now Clarissa was only a distant echo in her ear during the day. At night she still refused to leave her alone.

She felt Reid's eyes on her and had an odd sensation in her body at the thought of it. The ghosts would have to wait for now, she wanted to be near him again. As soon as Jade's eyes met his he averted his gaze and started shuffling though paperwork on the table in front of him she was positive he had already memorized. She hated leaving the warmth of his arms in the morning but didn't know how to deal with the consequences of waking up in her team member's bed. Or maybe that was just an excuse and she didn't want to confront her own feelings. Jade assured herself it was best not to evaluate those yet and decided to watch him from afar instead. Or in reality 6 meters or so and the small proximity of the police station didn't exactly make her invisible. He met her eyes again but this time he didn't look away. No past sin or regret could drown her in that moment.