The Waste Land, 32/44
Title: The Waste Land
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Team-centric - gen
Genre: Drama/Suspense
Summary: Part Three: George Foyet has returned. He isn’t going to let the BAU forget his legacy. Ever.
Warnings: Character Death
The Waste Land
Part Three: The Reaper’s Gambit
And then-the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little-less-nothing!-and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
Robert Frost - Out, Out-
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
William Shakespeare
Chapter Six - Left Behind (Reid)
Reid’s chest is a mess of stitches and bandages: several hundred stitches in all, because an all-seeing eye carved into human flesh is no small wound.
3000 B.C. is the earliest reported use of surgical sutures, but there have been a lot of advancements since then. If there’s no infection, and he doesn’t exert himself too much, then the stitches will be removed in seven to ten days.
By that time, he reasons, the team will have captured Foyet, rescued the missing girls, and flown home to Quantico. By that time, they’ll all be on either medical leave or stress leave, because Section Chief Strauss takes reappearances of nemeses very seriously. After what had happened to Elle and to Gideon, nobody’s taking any chances.
Aside from the massive scar that will be with him for the rest of his life, there’s little other damage. Physically speaking, at least.
He’s read enough textbooks to know the dangers of PTSD, and even though he won’t admit it to anyone, chances are he’s probably experienced it, too. As much as everyone would like to pretend they’re fine after a harrowing experience, fine is probably the least appropriate word.
Freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional, is what Garcia would say, and it’s not all that far from the truth.
Still, he’s going to miss Foyet’s takedown, and that’s something that he wistfully regrets. Even if he does get left behind at police stations that much more often than the rest of the team. He wonders if deep down, Hotch is trying to protect him from something, because Reid is the brains, not the brawn, and he failed his physical and his gun qualifications one year, and really, chicks only dig scars on shapely, muscular men, no matter what Morgan says.
He calls a nurse over with the button beside his bed, and asks - carefully, because he’s refused all meds and it hurts to talk - if he can go visit JJ. The nurse gives him an almost maternal frown, but goes off to fetch a wheelchair anyway. He wonders how many of her patients have been carved up by serial killers.
JJ’s room is just down the hallway, but for all the steps Reid can actually take of his own accord, it might as well be a hundred miles.
Will’s asleep in the chair by the bed, snoring softly. It’s mid-morning, but the chairs don’t look particularly comfortable, so it’s easy to believe that actually getting to sleep had taken most of the night.
‘Hey, Spence,’ JJ whispers, her voice hoarse and a little softer than usual. The nurse gives him a small smile, and leaves, telling him in no uncertain terms not to wander off without calling her back.
‘Hey, JJ.’ He edges the wheelchair a little closer to the bed, wincing at the strain across his chest, and puts a hand on her. Her own wounds are, for all intents and purposes, much worse than his. She might not have several hundred stitches, but the knife had plunged deeper, damaging organs and causing massive blood loss.
She’s lucky to be alive.
Luck, of course, doesn’t factor into it. It’s all a matter of timing, geographic location, and the fact that their original unsub didn’t have the medical training to execute an accurate - fatal - stab.
George Foyet might believe in fate, but Spencer Reid believes in science.
A different person might say that, based upon the law of averages, they’re due a death sometime soon, because it’s been six years since the last ones and really, maybe it’s time. That’s the gambler’s fallacy, and for Spencer Reid, it falls into the same category as things like “everything happens for a reason” - speculation based on the human need to find meaning.
Previous attempts have no impact on future, independent trials, unless they do. The roulette wheel can land on red three times, and then on red again. A butterfly flaps its wings, and causes a hurricane months later, but that’s chaos theory, which is based on math and science and interconnectivity, not just chance.
Every single moment of his life so far has led him to this hospital room, rather than anywhere else in the world, but that’s not fate. Maybe in another universe, he’s teaching English Literature and sporting a ponytail and wearing jeans, but not in this one.
In this one, he’s in a wheelchair in his friend’s hospital room, with a bandaged chest, and nerve impulses firing rapidly. Pain signals travel at around two feet per second, slower than both touch (250 feet per second) and muscular movement (390 feet per second). Speed of the nerve impulse had been his very first college Psychology experiment, but that’s not to say he hadn’t already known the answer.
Sometimes, thinking about these things, going over the facts and figures in his mind, helps distract from that deep seated urge, like bugs crawling beneath the skin (formication, derived from the Latin formica, meaning ant. A symptom of menopause, diabetic neuropathy, skin cancer and syphilis. In addition to this, formication is a side effect of prescription drugs as well as cocaine and amphetamines. It is also a withdrawal symptom. Not to be confused with fornication).
Medically speaking, the itch he gets isn’t from formication, but sometimes it feels that way.
Will wakes with a yawn and a stretch, and it doesn’t take him long to see Spencer there. ‘Hey Reid,’ the man says with a smile. ‘How’re you holding up?’
Reid smiles back. ‘I’m fine,’ he says.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Team-centric - gen
Genre: Drama/Suspense
Summary: Part Three: George Foyet has returned. He isn’t going to let the BAU forget his legacy. Ever.
Warnings: Character Death
The Waste Land
Part Three: The Reaper’s Gambit
And then-the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little-less-nothing!-and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
Robert Frost - Out, Out-
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
William Shakespeare
Chapter Six - Left Behind (Reid)
Reid’s chest is a mess of stitches and bandages: several hundred stitches in all, because an all-seeing eye carved into human flesh is no small wound.
3000 B.C. is the earliest reported use of surgical sutures, but there have been a lot of advancements since then. If there’s no infection, and he doesn’t exert himself too much, then the stitches will be removed in seven to ten days.
By that time, he reasons, the team will have captured Foyet, rescued the missing girls, and flown home to Quantico. By that time, they’ll all be on either medical leave or stress leave, because Section Chief Strauss takes reappearances of nemeses very seriously. After what had happened to Elle and to Gideon, nobody’s taking any chances.
Aside from the massive scar that will be with him for the rest of his life, there’s little other damage. Physically speaking, at least.
He’s read enough textbooks to know the dangers of PTSD, and even though he won’t admit it to anyone, chances are he’s probably experienced it, too. As much as everyone would like to pretend they’re fine after a harrowing experience, fine is probably the least appropriate word.
Freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional, is what Garcia would say, and it’s not all that far from the truth.
Still, he’s going to miss Foyet’s takedown, and that’s something that he wistfully regrets. Even if he does get left behind at police stations that much more often than the rest of the team. He wonders if deep down, Hotch is trying to protect him from something, because Reid is the brains, not the brawn, and he failed his physical and his gun qualifications one year, and really, chicks only dig scars on shapely, muscular men, no matter what Morgan says.
He calls a nurse over with the button beside his bed, and asks - carefully, because he’s refused all meds and it hurts to talk - if he can go visit JJ. The nurse gives him an almost maternal frown, but goes off to fetch a wheelchair anyway. He wonders how many of her patients have been carved up by serial killers.
JJ’s room is just down the hallway, but for all the steps Reid can actually take of his own accord, it might as well be a hundred miles.
Will’s asleep in the chair by the bed, snoring softly. It’s mid-morning, but the chairs don’t look particularly comfortable, so it’s easy to believe that actually getting to sleep had taken most of the night.
‘Hey, Spence,’ JJ whispers, her voice hoarse and a little softer than usual. The nurse gives him a small smile, and leaves, telling him in no uncertain terms not to wander off without calling her back.
‘Hey, JJ.’ He edges the wheelchair a little closer to the bed, wincing at the strain across his chest, and puts a hand on her. Her own wounds are, for all intents and purposes, much worse than his. She might not have several hundred stitches, but the knife had plunged deeper, damaging organs and causing massive blood loss.
She’s lucky to be alive.
Luck, of course, doesn’t factor into it. It’s all a matter of timing, geographic location, and the fact that their original unsub didn’t have the medical training to execute an accurate - fatal - stab.
George Foyet might believe in fate, but Spencer Reid believes in science.
A different person might say that, based upon the law of averages, they’re due a death sometime soon, because it’s been six years since the last ones and really, maybe it’s time. That’s the gambler’s fallacy, and for Spencer Reid, it falls into the same category as things like “everything happens for a reason” - speculation based on the human need to find meaning.
Previous attempts have no impact on future, independent trials, unless they do. The roulette wheel can land on red three times, and then on red again. A butterfly flaps its wings, and causes a hurricane months later, but that’s chaos theory, which is based on math and science and interconnectivity, not just chance.
Every single moment of his life so far has led him to this hospital room, rather than anywhere else in the world, but that’s not fate. Maybe in another universe, he’s teaching English Literature and sporting a ponytail and wearing jeans, but not in this one.
In this one, he’s in a wheelchair in his friend’s hospital room, with a bandaged chest, and nerve impulses firing rapidly. Pain signals travel at around two feet per second, slower than both touch (250 feet per second) and muscular movement (390 feet per second). Speed of the nerve impulse had been his very first college Psychology experiment, but that’s not to say he hadn’t already known the answer.
Sometimes, thinking about these things, going over the facts and figures in his mind, helps distract from that deep seated urge, like bugs crawling beneath the skin (formication, derived from the Latin formica, meaning ant. A symptom of menopause, diabetic neuropathy, skin cancer and syphilis. In addition to this, formication is a side effect of prescription drugs as well as cocaine and amphetamines. It is also a withdrawal symptom. Not to be confused with fornication).
Medically speaking, the itch he gets isn’t from formication, but sometimes it feels that way.
Will wakes with a yawn and a stretch, and it doesn’t take him long to see Spencer there. ‘Hey Reid,’ the man says with a smile. ‘How’re you holding up?’
Reid smiles back. ‘I’m fine,’ he says.