Beginnings

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"The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin." – Alan Moore, V for Vendetta.

–

Darkness.

That's all there was from the moment the child started to run.

No, not run. Sprint.

The young adolescent was sprinting through the vast darkness, enveloped by a thick brush of wet leaves, dangling vines, and large tree trunks in the tropical forest. Their bare feet hitting the forest floor, crunching on leaves and jumping over branches, made little noise as it was covered by the sounds of rain pouring down and thunder cracking in the dark sky above.

Every so often, a flash of lightning would light the way, but other than that all they could see was what was directly in front of them as they dashed. And all that lay ahead was even more jungle and brush. But that couldn't stop them. They didn't come this far just to stop now. So the young one kept running, and running.

They jumped over a tree root sticking out in the mud, slid beneath a mossy trunk, swat away large wet leaves, and slashed their way out of thick vines. The child felt her breath shortening and her body slowly starting to slow down as the adrenaline from their initial escape began to wear off.

The child's feet were sore and wet from blood, sweat, rain, and mud. Their hair was the same. The child's arms had small cuts from running through countless bushes and branches and their eyes were already becoming strained in the dark.

After a few more minutes of running, the child's strength was wearing thin when their ankle was caught on a tree root sticking out of the mud.

"Wagh!" The young one shouted as they fell face-first into the mud and brush on the grund. Their skin pricking against a fallen vine full of thorns. "Mm." The child moaned slightly as they attempted to push themselves back up onto their feet. But... it was too much.

Their body was sore, they were out of energy, it was dark and the couldn't see hardly anything as the rain continued to pound down from up above.

The darkness the child had began running towards was slowly starting to become suffocation as they lay on the jungle floor trying to catch their breath, allowing the dark to encase and envelop them. Their eyelids growing heavy as they blinked once, twice, then closed them, embracing the dark once and for all.

–

Jason Gideon had never seen such a small kid before.

When he'd first found the little one lying in a pile of wet leaves a few clicks out from the base he and his team were occupying, he thought that the kid had been dead. Left behind by the guerilla military group they'd been sent to Asia to take down to begin with.

The group of notorious in SouthEast Asia for kidnapping children and using them as child soldiers to do their bidding and when Gideon and his team had been sent to eliminate the group's adult members and spare the children. Unfortunately, it hadn't worked out the way they planned and the child soldiers ended up trying to fight against Gideon and his team resulting in a mass slaughter. But apparently, one had ran away during the bloodbath.

The kid was a girl.

Though, it was hard to tell through the mud, sweat, and dried blood when Gideon and his close friend on the team Bruno Hawks had found her. The doctors, however, confirmed it. Still, she could've passed as a boy with how muscular she was and how short her jet black hair was haphazardly cut into a pixie cut around her pale complexion.

According to the doctors at the base in South Vietnam, the girl was malnourished, had been abused both physically and sexually (Gideon also inferred mentally as well), and was around the age of seven, they couldn't tell for certain.

She had bruises scattered across her skin, some fresh and some faded. There were scars littering her body. There were few that looked like knife cuts, jagged cuts from branches perhaps, and scars formed from bullet wounds. There were at least four of those found and even a bullet still left lodged into her side no one had bothered to get out. Apparently, if the doctors hadn't done so when they did, she'd have died from infection within a few weeks.

This girl must've gone through absolute Hell on Earth. Gideon had never seen anything like it in his time with the military thus far. The bloodbath at the camp was bad, but it was probably a better end for those kids than what they were facing if they'd have stayed. Especially for the girls if they were being beaten and treated the ws this girl had been.

"She's coming to," Hawks muttered from where they stood in the doorway of the girl's room, quietly watching her sleep on the nearby bed, IV's attached to her small ad, and the beeping of her registered heartbeat on the monitor lulling her out of unconsciousness.

Gideon and Hawks walked towards the girl, registering her head moving side to side nd her small eyes slowly opening and taking in her surroundings. It must've been a bit to bright than what she was used to because it took sometime for her pupils to adjust.

Eventually, when the did, her eyes focused on the two male figures at the edge of her bed and her body jolted upright. Her face registered a bit of pain from the abrupt movement, but she pushed through. Gideon took it as a sign as something she'd done countless times before, pushing through pain to stay alert and protect herself.

Hawks held his hands up in a very unthreatening manner as he tried to help the frighten girl understand that they were not going to hurt her in any way like all the rest of the people in her life had so far. "Hey, there... We're not gonna hurt you." The girl must've registered what he said. A flash of recognition passed through her eyes, but she didn't drop her defenses as she pushed herself as far back against the pillows on her bed as she could go.

Gideon made the first move to take a seat in the chair in front of her to show through actions that he wasn't a threat to her. Hawks followed in suit. She noticed this and slowly began to relax as she eyed them up and down. She looked absolutely scared to death. Gideon could imagine why.

An idea struck him and he leaned towards the small table close to the bed, she jerked away at his movements do he moved slower. Carefully, he grabbed the Vietnamese protein bar the nurses had left for her and placed it at the foot of the bed before pushing it towards her slightly. "Eat," he suggested.

She glanced between him and the bar before quickly snatching it up in a flash of quick motion. She was fast. Must've been how she'd gotten miles from the camp.

The girl had her eyes glued to both Gideon and Hawks as she tore open the bar with her broken and dirty nails. Once she had it open, she quickly began to scarf it down. Biting, chewing, and swallowing as if she were starving. She probably was. It was probable that this was her first real item of food in a long time judging by the disproportion of muscle and fat she had for such a small kid.

Gideon watched her visibly relax as she ate and when she finished, he took the opportunity to try and get some answers from her. "What's your name?" He asked her, hoping that if she recognized some Engoish words she could understand his question. She did.

"...Dai," came her barely above-whisper answer.

Gideon raised an eyebrow at the girl's response. Dai... That wasn't Vietnamese. "Taiwanese?"

'Dai' nodded stiffly. "Sword technique," she explained in a broken English accent. "Boy's name."

Beside him, Hawks nodded. "Your name is Dai? After a Taiwanese sword technique? That's what they named you?" She nodded again.

"Where are you from?" Gideon prompted her, seeing as she understood English well for a girl from Taiwan it seemed.

She shook her head. "'M not sure," she replied. "They do not tell us..." At the mention of 'they', she stiffened again. Her eyes traveling around the room, specifically towards the door, as if anticipating for 'them'– or her captors– to come and burst through to drag her back to that hellhole in the jungle.

"Well, you don't got to worry about them anymore, kiddo," Hawks assured the young girl, a smile plastered onto his face as he tried to help her feel safe again. "They're gone. They can't hurt you anymore." She visibly relaxed once more, her eyes conveying gratitude at his words. Not being hurt anymore must've been a new concept for her. One she was glad, but cautious, to accept.

"Do you know where your parents are?" Gideon continued to question her. "Who... they took you from?"

Tears began to form in the girl's eyes at the mention of her parents. Her bottom lip quivered, but a son never broke from her mouth as she stifled down her need to cry. She shook her head. "No."

Gideon wanted to reach out to the girl, hold her hand and reassure her that it was gonna be alright. That what she went through at that camp in the jungle was in the past and he was gonna get her back to her family no matter how long it took. But her body language seemed to suggest that the last thing she wanted was to be touched by anyone.

"Hawks. Gideon."

Both soldiers turned their attention towards the doorway of the room to find a fellow team member standing in wait for them.

"The Captain said we're moving out soon. We're due back East for our next assignment," the solider explained. His eyes traveled to the little girl I'm the corner of the bed as he added, "He said we can take the girl back to the States and see if maybe some Intelligence Agency can track down her family."

"Thanks, Maxwell," Hawks called back to him. "Tell him we'll be done here soon." The soldier nodded before disappearing back down the hallway.

Hawks and Gideon turned back to the little girl who was now seared in the center of her bed, crossed legs messing with the IV needle in her arm.

"Hey, kid." Dai looked up at Hawks calling for her. "Don't you worry, alright? We're gonna find you a family to take care of you while we look for your mommy and daddy, okay?"

Fear registered with his words as the girl sat up straight, her eyes wide and bloodshot as she cried out, "No!" Hawks and Gideon blinked in surprise at her fearful reaction to being told that they were going to give her a home while searching for her parents. Was that not what she wanted?

Apparently not.

"I want stay with you!" She exclaimed.

"We'll be there with you when we get you your new family," Hawks explained. "No one is gonna hurt you again-"

"No!" She shouted once more, more defiantly this time. "I stay with you!"

Gideon and Hawks exchanged uneasy glances before turning back to her. "You can't stay with us, Dai," Gideon stated in a soft, yet firm tone. "We're soldiers. Little girls can't do what we do."

"But I can!" She exclaimed. "I shoot- I-I hunt- I kill, like you! I can do it. I stay with you!" She shouted insistently, almost as if she were begging.

Gideon opened his mouth to further explain why she couldn't stay with them when Hawks surprised him with a very different response. "Alright, kid," he allowed. "But first we gotta do something about that name of yours."

The girl stared at Hawks with wide eyes filled with both gratitude and a bit of surprise. Gideon stared at him as well, but in complete shock. What the hell was Hawks thinking encouraging her? She'd just come out of a war zone and now he was commending a child to go back in one?

One of the nurses chose that time to walk in to check little Dai's vitals. Gideon vaguely heard Hawks explain to the Vietnamese nurse that the girl was gonna need discharge forms to head back to the States with them. When Dai's full attention was eventuallg turned to the nurse (maybe the first woman she'd come into contact with since being taken) Gideon took the time to pull Hawks aside.

"Hawks– a word," Gideon grumbled as he stood from his seat and started walking towards the door, Hawks on his tail. When they made it to the hallway, he turned on him with a fierce expression of anger and frustration. "What the hell are you doing, Bruno? She's a kid fresh out of a guerilla warfare camp. You can't just go encouraging her behavior."

"I'm not encouraging her behavior. I'm giving her what she wants," Hawks defended himself. "If the girl says she wants to be a soldier like us, who am I to say 'no'? Who knows, maybe after a few years of schooling and a bit of some proper training, she'll be the next Bruno Hawks." Gideon watched with disdain as Hawks smiled appraisingly to the little frail girl on the hospital bed inside the room getting her IV checked in her minuscule arm.

"She's a kid who's been abused for most of her life. The last thing she needs is more nightmares," Gideon insisted. "I'm talking to the Captain about letting her stay here to find her family-" Gideon made a move to walk aaa down the hall when he felt Hawk's hand grab his arm, holding him in his place.

Hawks leaned forward to talk with him. "Look, man, you heard her in there. All this girl knows is death, war, and fighting. She's never gonna be a normal kid after everything she's seen. Who are we to try and force her to be something she's not?"

Gideon was speechless at his friend's words. Hawks, in turn, took it as an agreement. He promptly let go of Gideon's arm and turned to walk back to the girl.

"Alright, kiddo, you ever heard of the band called ACDC?"

Gideon could've gagged at Hawk's logic for what he wanted to happen with this kid. But he knew deep down it was out of his hands. He would later go to the Captain of his team and ask him to allow Dai to stay in Asia and be cared for by an Asian family while Asian officials searched for her family. And he'd later be pushed aside when Hawks brought forward his own case arguing that the young child soldier would be useful should she be brought back to the US and be given the proper training and 'family' in the States. The Captain would ultimately side with Hawks and a few months later Gideon would request his honorable discharge from the Army.

Jason Gideon, now proud profiler with the Behavioral Analysis Unit had a lot of issues with his past. But one thing he would live to regret nearly sixteen years later was not helping that little girl he found half-dead in the jungle of Vietnam find her true family...

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A/N: There may be a flaw in my timeline about Gideon's whereabouts over a decade and a half before he rejoined the BAU, but it was revealed in Season 1 episode 21 that Gideon and Hawks had done military service together and I inferred that the way they spoke was that it had been somewhat recent, but not too recent which is why I put it at sixteen years. Also because little Dai is gonna be pretty important sixteen years later ;)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my new brainchild. Lmk what you guys think.