Notes:
TW: canon typical cases will be discussed occasionally. victims, deaths, mutilation.
I've kept it relatively 'offscreen' but some descriptions were necessary for the story, tread softly and at your own risk.
David Rossi led a full life; he'd loved and lost and missed chances and taken others. He'd seen enough to know that going through all of it alone was the hardest path to tread and while he had wide group of acquaintances and friends to fall back on, there were a few among them who seemed entirely too alone.
Spencer Reid was the first person that description raised to mind, brilliant, troubled, an only child who hadn't had much of a childhood at all, different enough from his peers to leave him mostly shiftless beyond the tightly knit fabric of the BAU. The kid needed a friend who was outside that grim work, someone to go home to.
The second lonely figure was a young lady whose maternal aunt was a close friend of Rossi's. Maggie was worried that her niece was closing herself off too much, smothering the very special spark she'd kept carefully hidden all her life.
Perhaps their mutual concerns could find the same solution.
An interesting study from the first time David Rossi had met him, Reid was an open -if somewhat undecipherable- book. Introductions forgotten, he'd fallen into a rapid fire of questions and only stopped for breath when Hotch redirected him to the urgency of the case at hand. And Rossi's first case back had been an interesting one. Unusual enough to warrant a call.
Rossi left the conference room and nodded a silent acknowledgement to Reid who was running numbers in his head in the quiet of the hallway.
"Hey Al, its David Rossi, I hate to cut the small talk but I need your opinion on a case."
"You're back in the field?" A female voice answered crisply.
"I am. And you're still…"
"-For the time being. How can I help?"
He put the phone on speaker and set it on a stack of boxes so he could sort through the photographs from the last scene with both hands. "The victims had their faces removed; we haven't got a lot to go on; think I could send you a picture?"
A small noise interrupted the momentary silence and Rossi looked back to see Reid trying to pin a poster back on the wall.
"Give me a moment." Rossi pressed the phone back to his ear and entered a vacant office before he spoke again, "I just need to know if there's anything you can tell me about the unsub from his work."
"Clean photos."
"Of course, I'll send them shortly."
"Would you like that in an official report? It'll take a while; I'm scheduled for an autopsy in fifteen."
"Just give me your first impressions for now, we don't have a lot of time."
"I'll get right on it."
"Thank you."
"Don't." She hung up.
Her help hadn't been the lynchpin but it helped him build a sense of the unsub's intentions for the act. But he had overstepped his bounds in his first case back, and been called out by Hotch for acting alone. An error in solitary clouded judgement that years later seemed so clear to him. No matter how brilliant, how experienced, how right you might feel; you needed someone to talk to, to walk you back off the ledge.
"Cancel your weekend plans. Wheels up in 30." Hotch quelled the tide of groans and complaints with a stern look and turned on his heel. The complaints died down until the door closed on his back.
"So much for the beach, I was going to be gorgeously tanned on Tuesday."
"The beach won't break up with you for canceling an all-expense paid weekend trip to the hot springs."
"Rachel is too good for you anyway, or was it, Leah?"
"I don't have any plans to cancel," Reid responded brightly, grinning at the rolled eyes and murmurs that followed his disruption.
Rossi shook his head sadly, "that great for you Reid, but I'm going to have to disappoint a pair of lovely ladies for the second time in three weeks."
"Two at a time Rossi? I didn't expect that from you," Derek quipped.
"Before your imagination runs away with you, I'd like to clarify that I was going to be meeting a friend and her niece over pasta and a nice Chardonnay I've been holding onto for just such an occasion… Speaking of the niece, she's young, beautiful, intelligent and entirely single…" he threw these words out lightly, knowing that the one at whom they were aimed wouldn't take the hint unless it was more direct. He waved away Morgan's raised eyebrow and added, "Reid, if you're interested, I think she might make an interesting dinner companion for you."
"I think your energy would be better spent preparing to leave, seven and half minutes have already passed," Reid deflected easily, focused on packing a box of files, his go bag slung over one shoulder.
This was exactly why Reid needed a date Rossi thought, if only to wipe the smug grin off his face. In the meantime, he'd better call Maggie and apologize.
The rescheduled dinner went off without a hitch on the third attempt two weeks later and Rossi enjoyed the banter of Aunt and Niece on the balcony of his home, refilling the glasses as they emptied and parrying words thrown his way by both silver tongues. Yes, he thought, Alena had enough spirit to keep pace with Reid even in his most exuberant moods, despite being remarkably even-keeled herself. Too even-keeled if he was being frank.
It had taken years to get to the point where she felt comfortable enough to drop the professional smile and formal speech with him, and that only in the most specific circumstances. He knew he was one of desperately few who would recognize her as herself in this moment, sat cross legged on the floor, dark hair spilling out in tangled coils over the stretched-out neck of an oversized sweater and her smile wicked as she bandied words with him. It worried him how extremely different her two faces were, a dichotomy that would someday require one or both of them to shatter.
"When will you finally get out of that dungeon and write your books, the world deserves to hear your voice," Rossi said, and not for the first time.
"I'm needed." She answered simply.
Her aunt huffed and repeated the old argument, "and what of you, child, what do you need?" expecting to be met by the usual rebuttals, but they never came.
Silence fell then, dark with reflections unspeakable. Rossi subtly shook his head at Maggie, this wasn't the moment to push.
The soft-spoken words were nearly swallowed in the heavy night air.
"To be needed."
A truth too bare for refutation.
Rossi pondered it further as he cleaned up the empty bottles after they left. I need to be needed, she had said, and it had wrung hollowly from the dark space he sometimes saw behind her eyes. The two faces again at war.
Hiding behind activity and usefulness the real human wound of not being wanted. Something both she and Reid knew too much about. Yes, they might suit each other quite well, if not romantically, they would still benefit from having a friend who understood. They were compatible in other ways too, both much better suited to quiet libraries and coffee shops and intimate intricate conversations than to loud and crowded bars. If only Alena would drop her guard and Reid would be patient enough to look past her false impression.
Rossi chose his first attack with care, on a day when Reid was as relaxed as his overactive brain could be, wrapping up a case report for prosecution. "Reid, there's someone I would like to introduce you to."
"I'm not interested in being set up on a blind date." Came the short reply.
"It wouldn't have to be romantic, just dinner, she's rather in need of friends nearer her own age, and I think you'd find her quite a capable conversationalist. Now before you go rejecting the idea, I'll put it another way; do conditions exist in which such a meeting could be to your taste?"
"It would be ridiculous to insist that there are no conditions under which a meeting might be tolerable, but that's just a logical fallacy trap you're setting to get me to agree to a date because you think I need more companionship and I can assure you my time is very well occupied already," Reid replied without hesitation or heat.
"That isn't a no."
"It's certainly not a yes."
Several more subtle attempts over the following months led to Reid admitting he wasn't entirely against meeting her if he could choose the time and place. But Rossi's enthusiasm was dampened by the flat and total rejection of the lady when he posed the question to her.
"Sorry Rossi, I really can't date right now, you know how it's been with my work. I appreciate you looking out for me, but I haven't got anything to give right now."
The pain in her eyes as she said it left him with no spirit to argue his case further. "I know you've got a lot on your plate Al, but I hate to see you trying to carry it all on your own." The words didn't reach far enough to shake from her that bone-deep stubborn independence and all he could add was, "anything you need Al, anytime, I'll take your call."
When that call came almost a year later, it was Rossi who was doing the asking, at 6:43pm on a Friday in October.
"I'm sorry to ask this of you AL, but there's no one else I can call."
"Where and when do you need me?"
"You can say no if it's too much to ask. I know you just got out of—"
"You know I have the time. Where and when."
"I'll text you the address and let them know you're coming." He heard her sigh and wished she'd refuse, even though the team couldn't afford to waste any more time trying to find another expert. "You can say no."
"If that was true you wouldn't have called."
He couldn't deny the truth of it. "Look after your—" but she hung up before he could finish speaking "—self…"
When she arrived to the front gates of the FBI in Quantico, Alena was immediately struck by the overbearing architecture of authority, pristine, bleak and impenetrable, an idea that was echoed again in the grand foyer of the building David had indicated to her. She approached the desk with a polite smile for the secretary and her ID ready, "David Rossi sent me."
"Ah, yes, here's your pass. Go through the security gates, left to the elevators, sixth floor, he'll be waiting for you."
However, when the doors slid open on the sixth floor, no one stood there. The bullpen was cluttered with leaning stacks of files on desks and swivel chairs turned every which way, all left in haste. The silence was eerie in the way that liminal spaces so often were, a place where bustle and sound and the traffic of people and their thoughts filled the air so completely that it lived and breathed with them, and when they left it empty and waiting, the fabric of time itself seemed to hold its breath.
A thud and a barely audible sound of exasperation pulled her attention past the bullpen to what looked like a conference room with the door ajar.
"Hello?" She called out cautiously.
Shuffling sounds and another thud greeted her as she pushed the door open carefully. A young man with shoulder length hair was picking up a crutch that had fallen for what she assumed was the second time, he straightened up abruptly, wincing as his left foot connected with the floor.
"Are you okay?"
"Oh, you're here. I wasn't expecting you so soon, Rossi said you'd be here in an hour but it's only been—" he looked as his watch "—43 minutes."
"I was already on this side of the city, and the traffic was good," she said, smiling to ease the awkwardness. "Where is David?"
"He's, he's not here, the team is in Tennessee, I, uh, we, will be connecting via videoconference if… when, we find something." Finally getting the wayward crutch under his arm, he pointed at the screen on the far end of the room. "I should brief you first." He froze for a moment like he'd forgotten something important then turned to her and said, "I am Supervisory Special Agent Doctor Spencer Reid…"
He waited for her to return the introduction but didn't extend a hand to shake which she assumed was the fault of the crutches. She nodded her head in polite acknowledgement.
This must be the young doctor David was always talking to her about. Handsome, brilliant and isolated. A good match or so David thought. Thus Alena had dismissed the high praise as David's attempt to pique her interest. Certainly, Doctor Reid was attractive, though he looked nothing like the picture she had drawn in her mind. Isolated was the only part of the description she'd take issue with, it was a massive understatement in the present.
The empty circular table in the center of the room was large enough for a dozen agents to sit comfortably, a large screen sat blank on the far wall and the whiteboard Doctor Reid stood in front of was covered in a hastily but clearly written hand, names, locations, details. Notably absent were photographs, bare white rectangles and magnets holding the space where they should be.
Alena let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding and mentally stepped into work mode. "Alena Wilderfeld, pleasure to meet you, Doctor Reid."
Doctor Reid tilted his head in obvious surprise and she wondered what, in so short an introduction, might have given him pause.
"Rossi said you were a doctor as well…?"
It was a soft question, open ended and innocuous, but it still tasted bitter in the back of her mouth as she swallowed.
"Alena is fine," she said quickly, setting her bag down in an empty chair, "can you tell me about the case?"
They walked through the details the team had found so far, two women, mutilated in a very specific way. The coroner in the small town had never seen anything like it before and the usual specialist on the FBI's payroll was out of town on a work retreat for the long weekend, he wouldn't be back in range of cell service until late on Monday night. And so, Alena thought, Rossi had called her and told her that she could say no. Despite not having anyone else in the immediate area to call and although there was a general forensic pathologist enroute to the location, they still needed someone with her specific expertise and had no time to waste in finding another.
A sliver of pride in her professional skill battled against the blood rising in her ears, itching, anxious and ready to run. She toyed with the gold hoop pierced through an inner fold of cartilage on her left ear as she read on.
There wasn't much in the printed reports for Alena to linger over, the deposition sites had been clean and relatively free of particulates, the victims had been washed and wrapped in white sheets before being laid on grassy hillsides out of view of the highway the unsub had likely traveled. Doctor Reid was articulate and spoke quickly enough for Alena not to get lost in her own thoughts as he enumerated the information from which they had begun to generate their theories about the unsub's patterns and motives and she appreciated that he didn't try to dumb things down for her. The vocabulary of profiling wasn't familiar to her and though she picked up enough context to get by, he wasn't above clarifying when she did raise a hand to ask.
The facts and reports finished; it was time for the part of the job she'd dreaded since she'd gotten the call. Now wasn't the time to save face. She had a job to do and getting sick before it was finished wouldn't bring it to a quicker end. She twisted the gold hoop again, willing the nausea away. "Are- uh… Are the photos in colour?"
For a second time, Doctor Reid looked at her with unguarded confusion, "yes, of course."
"Could I see them in black and white?" She swallowed sharply and bit the inside of her cheek but resisted the urge to hide her face. "I… I'd like to see them in greyscale first if I could, on a tablet is fine, you don't need to reprint anything."
"Uh, I can ask Garcia, I don't…" he looked from her to the nearest tablet with continued bafflement, "I'll, just go ask Garcia to set it up for you." He slid it into the cross-body bag he'd been wearing since she entered and swung himself out of the room, the crutches making a soft thump-thump on the thin carpet. She used the time to gather herself, glancing over the reports again to prepare herself for what the photos would show.
Reid left the conference room combing through his scattered thoughts.
It was uncomfortable enough to be left behind, and more so with Hotch still on mandated leave to recover from being stabbed. Meanwhile Strauss was breathing down everyone's necks and Derek and JJ were trying to make everything seem as normal as possible and he was stuck here feeling useless on a bad leg. Worse, they'd been called into this case late, a week after the second victim was found, when the unsub's escalation made every day's delay more critical.
And the consultant puzzled him. Something about the way she'd brushed off being given the proper title of doctor didn't sit right.
Rossi hadn't said much more about his contact than that and he hadn't specified a field but implied perfect confidence in her ability to assist and then made the strange request about the photos. Again, the odd request rang through his mind like a bell. And Rossi's tone had made it clear that accommodating her was a priority, though he'd shown so little concern for Reid's wound in the past few weeks that Reid felt a little like rebelling and leaving the board as it was, he had even considered how he would justify non-compliance to the team later.
But then he'd heard the childishness of his own thoughts and dashed to retrieve the photos, barely getting them into a folder in the messenger bag he was employing as his spare arm as the elevator heralded her arrival. And she had opened the door to discover him behaving like an uncoordinated oaf. It wasn't something that would ordinarily have bothered him except for a suspicion that took root in the space between Rossi's sparce description and her appearance. If she was his intended blind date there was no telling how much Rossi had told her about him, or how overblown his praise had been. The date had never materialized and he hadn't wasted time feeling offended, but he couldn't deny that now she was here, a part of him wanted her to regret her loss.
She didn't have the appearance of someone easily impressed, everything from her neatly gathered hair to the crisp silhouette of the black blazer was equally fitted for the cover of a business magazine or the FBI dress code manual. In contrast, Spencer: thumping around on crutches, his hair a mess and his cardigan in disarray, he felt immediately out of place, as though he was the intruder and she a judge. However, the longer she listened, the more his embarrassment faded, and he was left with the impression of a cool observer, not offended when he didn't offer a handshake and showing no discomfort in being alone with him, only the photos had disturbed the smooth surface of her demeanor.
Granted, he hadn't presented an intimidating figure, but he was used to the way people's eyes so often glazed over or slid away from him when he got worked up over the details of cases and topics he felt keenly about. Years of that sort of reaction primed him to anticipate the moment he became "too much" but it didn't happen. Her attention was on the subject and she remained fully focused, her eyes moving rapidly from him to the board to the reports in her hand and back to him. Confidence returned slowly with each explanation given and received, here there was something he could do to help the team.
"Garcia, I need you to put the photos on this tablet."
She looked as confused as he felt. "You're too pretty to be this much of a luddite Reid, they're already in the network." She turned it on and selected the folder and then covered her eyes as they appeared. "Don't make me look at them."
"I know they are, but I… uh."
"Spit it out.
"I need them… in black and white…"
"Seriously? Why?" Garcia asked, surprised and perhaps mildly annoyed.
She hated looking at such things Reid knew. Perhaps Rossi's friend was similarly discomfited. He couldn't make it fit with a doctorate that would be useful in their investigation. Perhaps she was a medical doctor and not used to witnessing the dead. "Uh, the… consultant asked for them that way."
"Huh," Garcia said, looking at the tablet through her fingers and tapping at the screen with a stylus "well that's easy enough, just give me a few seconds… done."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it."
"How's it going with … the consultant…" her eyes narrowed suddenly, "suspicious, you don't normally avoid using names, is it a pretty lady consultant perhaps? An Irene Adler to our Sherlock?"
"Irene Adler was a criminal in the original so I hope not." Reid waved away the inquisition and the blush rising along the back of his neck.
"Well, you never know…" Garcia winked.
"Tablet?"
"Ah, yes, here you go."
Alena waited, trying to quell the rising panic. These victims. These women. She knew their names now and couldn't undo it if she wished to. No. These women needed her help, needed her voice, and she wouldn't abandon them. Fingernails pressed hard into the meat of her palms to steel herself against the growing hollow in her gut, she counted the returning thump-thud of crutches and feet.
"Here you go."
"Thank you." She didn't look at Doctor Reid, not wanting to see if her reflection in his eyes showed how green she felt, fearing still more a pity that would make it harder to feign indifference.
Stay on task.
The photos were less gory than she'd expected, the perpetrator had thoroughly cleaned post mortem as the reports had indicated, but something nagged at her, something odd she couldn't quite identify. She flipped back a few photos, forward again… yes it was there… the color, the tone, even in greyscale she could see it. Something very strange was going on, Rossi was right to call her. But before she gave it a voice, she needed to be certain.
Reid watched her work, trying to match the discordant pieces together, a doctor not wanting the title, a polished professional. She certainly poured over the photos in a measured way, scanning them in slow quadrants as though it were a historical dig and not a high-res image of a victim on a gurney. Her eyes changed their pattern suddenly, returning again and again to the same part of the screen, she shook her head and set the tablet flat on the table scrolling back to the first image. He couldn't see anything that would merit the stiff expression or the breath she was still holding as she, with increasing speed, passed through the album again, not scanning the whole but darting to a specific point on each photo that showed the face and then without warning to the next, toying with an earring in what seemed to be an unconscious tic. When she'd sped through all the photos at least twice she spoke without looking up.
"You have the color photos I presume?"
"Yes," Reid answered sliding the folder toward her.
There was no change in her concentration, but every movement slowed almost imperceptibly. She sorted the faces from the rest, then sorted these images into groups, her eyes darting back and forth between different angles of the same subject, repeating the process with the second victim shaking her head occasionally and moving her lips without making a sound.
"You've found something," Reid stated. He couldn't help but feel the building tension, this case had been all stops until now but he could see in her body language that she had found something important, something that could break the case wide open. New information that they would be able to act on.
"Mm… yes. Well, without seeing it in person… but the probability of it being anything else… too low to consider… yeah, I'm certain."
"I'll call the team."
Notes:
Timeline notes: The first scene is from David Rossi's introduction to the series in season 3, the second scene (cancelling plans) takes place sometime in season 4, and the final scene in this chapter and the start of the story proper is in season 5. I will occasionally reference cases and episodes from the show, but this is the only case we will (sort of) see the inside of as I don't love writing serial killers.
If I missed any trigger warnings, please let me know!
A first chapter to dip our toes back into the world of CM, and to wet the appetite for a new story with the characters we love.
Please give Alena a chance, she has so much room to grow and so much history to overcome
and once again I hope you stay hydrated, eat well and keep facing the sun