Come Play in My Gardens (Hotch/Reid pre-slash) & Intro
First, we need an intro so:
Name/nickname: Emi (dr_harbinger on here)
Where are you from? Sebring, FL but I'm moving to Tallahassee, FL soon.
What colour is your hair? I was born with ash blonde hair but now I'm a strawberry blonde
What's your favourite Hotch/Reid episode and/or scene? I'm not entirely sure it could be considered a slash moment but in episode 03x19, when Spencer watches Aaron profile (meaning show up) the lawyer that trashtalked their profession, the little smile on his face reminds me of a proud man watching his partner do something he thinks is both amusing and brave.
Is there anything else we should know about you? I really need a beta because any time I have tried to write this pair before it always seemed kinda forced. Even this one feels forced...
Title: Come Play in My Gardens
Rating: FRT
Fandom: AU Criminal Minds
Pairing: Hotch / Reid pre-slash
Warnings: unbetaed, OoCness, supernatural lore, Song!Fic
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of the story I wrote nor do I own the song. The characters are property of CBS and I believe the music is owned by Busch Gardens.
Summary: The team is raiding the house where they believe an unsub is holding Reid as a hostage. The house looks old and is falling apart and the grounds are overgrown and old. When Hotch and Morgan split up from the rest of the group to go through the gardens, they encounter something they didn't entirely expect... or believe in...
Notes: This fanfic was inspired by a song called "Midnight Buffet". If you'd like to listen to the song while you read, feel free to look it up on youtube using this title - Midnight Buffet (Busch Gardens Howl-O-Scream 2011 Theme Song)
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Aaron Hotchner had never been happier to not only be armed but also wearing Kevlar when he stepped onto the grounds of the unsub’s property. The night was dark, the sky lit up only by the moon and the stars that shone around it and that same moonlight cast an eerie glow over the overgrown yard that the team was trying to make their way through. In the distance the team could see the dilapidated house where they believed their unsub had been torturing young men before carving out their hearts at the top of the hill but before that the group new that they had to make their way through this mess of overgrown plan life. Aaron didn’t have to look behind him to see the looks of determination on his team’s faces reflecting his. No one was going to let this nut job simply have their way with the captured Spencer Reid.
Slowly, so painfully slowly they made their way through the wildly overgrown garden. What might have been beautiful shrubbery had branches and leaves sticking out in every direction and old statues seemed half devoured by vines. Their blank marble faces seemed to have their expression permanently set to one of surprise and horror, as if they had borne witness to something truly terrifying. Flowers still bloomed on the branches, most of them roses by the looks of them, but to the eyes of the team, these splotches of red looked like bloody wounds on these figures. The cool air of the night seemed to grow colder with every step they took and the beams of their flashlights canvassing over the grounds became their only real comfort. Thunder rumbled in the distance, making things seem eerier, even as this faint echo of a woman’s giggle rang in their ears.
Now Aaron was not a man who very easily believed in the supernatural. As far as he was concerned, the giggle was just his mind playing tricks on him because this overgrown, old fashioned garden was a seriously creepy place. He knew JJ and Prentiss couldn’t have been the source of the sound as they were approaching the house from the opposite side and even of Morgan tried he wouldn’t have quite managed that high a voice or the tone. Had it been just the giggle he might have been able to brush it off but the same voice continued to speak, the sound of it wispy like the wind as it seemed to surround them, making the air around them so cold their breath condensed in small white puffs in front of their lips and the light of their flashlights flickered eerily. Morgan muttered curses beneath his breath. Hotch found he couldn’t help but agree with half of it.
Whatever the voice was, it seemed to like keeping him and Morgan on edge, even as it seemed to coax them further into the garden , toward the center space where an old fountain (now long since broken and useless) sat. The pair of them had their guns up and ready, just in case but the sight that they saw there made them pause. Instead of the statue in the center of the now empty fountain was a chair that had what had to be Spencer Reid sitting in it, his arms, legs and chest bound to the black hair by a black rope that blended so well into the black clothes the unsub had dressed him in, that it was hard to tell he was tied down at first. His head was bowed, his short hair a mess of darkness highlighted by silver. He seemed unconscious but when Morgan moved to step closer he started to hum a tune softly.
The wind picked up again, pulling dead leaves off the shrubs and hedges and throwing them around the small area. If Spencer noticed them, he didn’t say a thing about them. Aaron took a step closer and called his subordinate’s name, hoping to snap the boy out of it just by the sound of his voice. The humming stopped and Spencer lifted his head to sit up properly in the chair. The way he moved, the serene expression on his face and even the hint of a playful smile, even in a situation so dire all but screamed that the figure sitting in that chair was distinctly not the Spencer Reid he had known for all these years. Even the small, trimmed beard that had built up over the days he had been captured for seemed normal by comparison.
But eeriest of all was the blank, calm look in Spencer’s brown eyes that made him look like a doll as he stared out at them as if he really wasn’t there inside his own head. He didn’t struggle against the bonds that held him, even with them present. What was wrong with this picture?
They tried to step closer, trying to pull Spencer out from wherever he went to make him like this but they stepped when Reid spoke, his voice soft but not quiet as he pronounced the words in a cadence, as if the words themselves were a song they didn’t know about. “In the dark side of the gardens there’s so much you will find,” he said before his entire body seemed to jerk in the bonds and his eyes rolled up so that only the white of them was visible. “The only thing you have to lose is a little of your mind.”
A crow cawed in the night and the eerie giggle from earlier turned into a full chuckle. Aaron Hotchner had enough of this. While Morgan stared at his friend, the unit chief rushed forward and began pulling at the bonds that held the younger man in place, trying to get them loose enough to cut through with the switchblade he had in his pocket. But as he tugged at the bonds, Spencer’s body jerked again this time seeming to stop in uncomfortable and twisted positions. Now twisted almost grotesquely where he sat, the younger man seemed to stare at Morgan with his unnerving white eyes as he said “Come play in my gardens” in the same creepy sing-song cadence from earlier.
Of course this is when their flashlights both cut out suddenly, throwing them both exclusively into moonlight, and a flicker of a different kind of light made both men look up. The figure of a young girl, her long black hair hanging forward over her face as her ragged clothes hung off her skinny, dirty shoulder as she stood on the brick pathway in bare feet, appeared seemingly out of nowhere, her body transparent and her image flickering every once in a while as if she was having trouble maintaining it. Even with the hair covering her face they could easily tell she was watching them.
Morgan cursed but Hotch kept working at the ropes that bound Reid to the chair he was sitting in. “Have you come to play in the gardens?” the eerie voice said as if it was part of the air around them, creating this odd Doppler effect as though she was standing next to them despite clearly standing where she was standing. If he had the time, Aaron might have been unnerved by this but he was too focused on getting his agent out of harm’s way.
When the ropes were loosened enough that they were easily able to be cut through, Hotch pulled out the knife and began sawing through them, even as Spencer sat perfectly still in the chair, the whites of his eyes still staring at Morgan. It didn’t take overly long to get the ropes around his chest undone and once they were gone the ropes around the slender man’s wrists and ankles seemed to loosen too. They were easily pulled off, freeing Reid but he didn’t seem inclined to move from where he was sitting. “Reid? Reid!” Aaron called to him, trying not to touch him as to not startle him, “Are you there? Wake up! It’s me. It’s Hotch.”
This time the young doctor rolled his head so that those eerie eyes were turned toward him. “Your boy is not here tonight,” he said, his voice distorted and sounding as if he had two people speaking through him, “He’s gone with the others in the gardens.”
Morgan didn’t take this well. He jumped forward, his hands grabbing onto Spencer’s lean arms, his face inches away from his friend’s. “Reid! Quit playin’ with us man. Wake up! Whatever it is that’s got you you can fight it.”
Spencer seemed to laugh at Morgan’s almost desperate attempt to wake him. “In the dark side of the gardens, there’s so much you will find,” he repeated, still singing softly, “The only thing you have lose is a little of your mind.” He blinked then, his hazel eyes returning but they were blank and empty, almost unseeing and there was a disconcerting smile on his face.
“Morgan, take Reid back to the SUV. We’ve still got an unsub to find.”
The other man didn’t need to be told twice. He bodily lifted his friend from the chair until he was standing on his own two feet. Still Spencer didn’t seem so inclined to move. “You have not found what you need to find,” he said in his distorted voice, “you can not leave until you do.” The girl that had been blocking their way toward the house flickered out of sight but then reappeared within an arm’s reach of the two of them. Hotch, without thinking, picked up his gun and aimed it at her. She didn’t seem to react. “You must play in my gardens,” her voice wispier than earlier.
Echoes of screams seemed to filter through the small bushes, coming from around them, even as the thunder sounded louder, as if the storm was getting closer. Now that he had nothing else to focus on, Aaron could feel the chill creep up his spine. Everything instinctive in him seemed to scream at him to leave while he still could, it was not too late, but why he felt that way he didn’t know. The girl seemed intent on keeping them there until they found whatever it was she wanted them to find and whatever it was Reid was on, he didn’t seem inclined to move much anyway. There was the sound of a wood hitting wood from the house and the sound of the others yelling that they were FBI as they searched the place in his earpiece. Somehow he got the impression that the unsub wouldn’t be in the house. Like it was being implied, the man that they were looking for was out here in the gardens.
“Where do we look, then, to find what we need to find?” Hotch asked the girl, whose image flickered as she turned her head to look at him through the veil of her long, dark hair, “Where do we look to find the man who did this to you and so many others?”
Aaron could feel Morgan’s stare on him when he made that comment but he was far more focused on what he could only explain as the ghost of a victim of their unsub. It was the only way he could explain to himself at least why she was here and dressed the way she was. Her dirty, too thin hands swept her hair back and away from her face so her face was clear to him. He didn’t flinch when her empty eye sockets focused on him or her gaunt face pulled into a twisted looking smile. This time when she spoke, Reid did too, her voice intermixing with the two he seemed to be speaking with.
“Follow the trees to where the angel weeps
and find the hand stained with tears
The hand will show
All wrapped up in a bow
Where one you seek weeps in fear.”
Morgan and Hotch looked at each other, wondering what best to do. Should they leave Reid here and go after the unsub or do they try to take him with them and possibly hinder them? If one of them where to try and take him back to the SUVs, it looked like this ghost was going to do everything she could to stop them and with Reid not in his right mind there was no guarantee he would be of any help. Yet to leave him here was dangerous too as whatever it was that was making him not himself might go after them. In their earpieces, they heard Prentiss say that the house was empty of anyone alive although they did find some bodies in the walls. Good. That meant more victims to tie to this nutcase.
“JJ and Rossi, you two stay in the house with the bodies in case the Unsub heads that way,” Hotch said into his wrist bound microphone, “Prentiss, you and Morgan need to go check out the gardens of this place. If he’s not in the house than chances are he’s out here somewhere.”
“And where exactly will you be?” Rossi asked.
“I’ve got Reid but something’s not right about him. I need to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t tip the guy off.”
The girl seemed to consider this plan of theirs and nodded in approval, which made Morgan twitch and start heading in the direction of the trees described in the eerie cue. He used his own microphone to coordinate a point for Prentiss to meet him but what exactly he said Aaron didn’t notice. He was too busy watching the ghost and Reid who shifted where he stood so that he could seemingly watch him go. Even the way he moved look wrong, the movements themselves jerky as he was a doll being manipulated by someone else. It wasn’t until Prentiss and Morgan had met up and gone out of sight that Aaron found himself facing the ghost and his possessed subordinate by himself and they both were staring at him with their eerie, unseeing eyes as if contemplating him. The girl turned her attention to Reid for just a moment then flickered out of existence, as if deciding she was no longer needed. To be honest it made Hotch feel a little better about all this but not by much.
“You like the boy whose body I hold,” the multi-voiced being said using Spencer’s body, “in a way that society does not easily accept.”
Aaron stared the figure down, although he was a little startled by the insight. He wasn’t aware that he was doing anything that might imply that much. “What makes you say that?”
A thin hand jerkily reached up and tapped Reid’s temple, making him look like an old doll whose mechanisms were not properly oiled. “We can see his memories,” it said, “and we can hear his thoughts. The boy is fond of you too. Has been for years.”
“That doesn’t mean that I like him the way you’re implying.”
With very stiff movements the being within Spencer made him step closer to Aaron so they stood only a few inches apart. The wide, blank eyes were even more unnerving up close, the pupils full dilated and those thin lips pulled into a cruel looking smile that seemed unnatural. “We can see the truth. We can see how you watch him, how you want to save him from us. But we will not give him back, not until He is put to rest.”
“My team is searching for the man who hurt you and we will ensure the man is brought to justice. We have the police on their way now and the bodies in the walls of the house, your bodies, will be properly laid to rest.”
The being laughed in it’s twisted way. “There are many more bodies on these grounds than just those in the walls.”
As the building was once used as a small local asylum, Hotch didn’t doubt it but those didn’t tie into the unsub they were hunting now. “The rest will have to be properly buried another time. Right now we have to ensure that this man is brought to justice for the crimes he personally has committed.”
The smile faded from Spencer’s face and his hands snapped up suddenly to grab Aaron’s, readily pressing them against parts of his body at Hotch happened to know for a fact it was illegal to touch without express permission. The being laughed at how he fought to get his hands back but whatever it was must have made Reid stronger than he normally was. “You are not that different from Him,” they said, “Although you have better control over your needs. You have not taken him to bed yet.”
After a few more seconds of fighting the hold he gave him and just let his hands rest where they were placed, trying not to feel overly embarrassed about it. “I have not and I never will, not like this, not with Spencer so unwilling.” He needed to make whatever it was understand. If these really were the spirits of this unsub’s victims, then they had been locked away for months in darkness and endured hunger, cold and the brutality of rape every night for months until they starved to death. Not all of the victims had been women either. “Not all men are like Him.”
The grip on his hands loosened just a bit as though the spirits were distracted. “Prove it,” they said, “Prove you are not like him.”
Without thinking on it too hard he lifted his hands to gently cup Spencer Reid’s face and pulled him closer, pressing a soft, sweet kiss to the lips he never thought he’d be able to kiss. At first it disturbed him how stiff the other was but eventually the other relaxed and he felt hands on his hips, pulling them closer together and allowing the kiss to deepen just a bit. The air turned icy and the wind picked up around the pair of them , whipping about the bushes and pulling leaves from them yet none of these leaves cut into them. Aaron’s hands moved unconsciously to instead wrap around his partner’s back and rest gently on the prominent shoulder blade that stood out so sharply. By the time he broke the kiss, the wind had calmed and the blank look on Spencer’s face looked confused, despite the fact his eyes were still unnaturally wide.
“You are not so rough,” the voices said in wonder, “perhaps you are right.”
A series of shouts and the sound of a gun going off not too far away made Aaron look in that direction, his hands falling away although the hands that had been resting on his hips stayed, tracing a line over his abdomen when he turned. The female ghost from earlier reappeared not too far from where they were and Spencer’s head rolled in her direction. She said something but this time her words seemed to wispy for Hotch to understand. The beings inside Reid’s body understood though. “We have Him now,” they said with far too much glee in their words, “He will pay for what he has done.”
Aaron barely had time to react when all of a sudden the stiffness in the young doctor’s body seemed to disappear and he collapsed like a house of cards. It was only some really quick reflexes that let him catch the younger man before he hurt himself in the fall by hitting the brick path hard. Wide brown eyes had fallen shut and his brows were knit together as if he were concentrating hard to solve a problem. In the moonlight, Hotch could see a black shadow standing just behind where Reid had been standing, towering over them. The unit chief got the impression it was watching them for a few moments before it disappeared and the girl ghost from earlier flickered out of existence too. With them gone the added chill of the night seemed to leave too.
Good thing they did as the sound of police sirens approaching the property grew louder and he knew that in a few minutes the place would be crawling with cops. Adjusting his hold on the slender frame, Aaron lifted his wrist with his microphone and asked Morgan for his status. He was not all that surprised to hear that they had had no choice but to shoot the unsub dead when he had tried to go after Prentiss. In the distance he could hear the faint echoes of a man screaming and the voices of women laughing -presumably at his pain- but it was so faint that he could have easily have explained it to himself as another trick his mind was playing on him. He was having a hard enough time coming to terms with the fact that apparently ghosts were more real than he had thought they were.
Morgan and Prentiss stepped back onto the brick path a few minutes later and with them seemed to come the first of the cops from the other direction. They immediately looked to Hotch as he was the one holding Reid in his arms still and he shook his head. “He’s fine. No major damage. Agents Prentiss and Morgan will take you to where they were forced to neutralize the unsub and you’ll need to get your CSI team to the house ASAP. Apparently, this guy enjoyed literally living amongst the dead.”
Prentiss motioned for the locals to follow her out to where the man was but Morgan stayed behind as Hotchner adjusted his hold on the taller but more slender young man to lift him. He was heavy but that wasn’t surprising. It was a weight he could handle until they got to the SUVs at least. Morgan, however, didn’t seem 100% certain that his friend was alright. “Is he okay? Whatever it was that got him goin’ is gone now?”
Hotch nodded. “It left him when you killed Marshalls. Apparently it had other obligations to keep.”
“You sure it’s gone now?”
“I watched it leave myself.”
Derek Morgan sighed in relief at this, tension visibly leaving his body. Honestly Aaron would not have been surprised if he caught the man thanking the god he so rarely believed in for this small miracle. He would have made a comment if it was any of his business but as it was he had to get Spencer to the hospital to be checked out by a doctor to make sure that there wasn’t any permanent damage. Why he personally had to make sure of this, he didn’t look too deeply into. He’d just accept that he felt personally responsible for his team and the boy who had featured in more than a few of his less-than-appropriate fantasies was no more than a coworker he had felt especially close to.
As he left the scene just long enough to get Spencer into the ambulance that had just pulled up, Hotchner tried not to shiver as he felt the piercing eyes watching him that didn’t feel entirely human. He heard a faint giggle in the winds and the air felt colder for just a second. A voice, the same voice from the female spirit that had kept them in the clearing where Spencer had been, whispered in that same sing-song voice from earlier “Welcome to my Garden.” Yes he had never been happier to be wearing kelvar and carrying a gun that night onto the unsub’s property. It made the trembling of his limbs now seem perfectly justified.
Name/nickname: Emi (dr_harbinger on here)
Where are you from? Sebring, FL but I'm moving to Tallahassee, FL soon.
What colour is your hair? I was born with ash blonde hair but now I'm a strawberry blonde
What's your favourite Hotch/Reid episode and/or scene? I'm not entirely sure it could be considered a slash moment but in episode 03x19, when Spencer watches Aaron profile (meaning show up) the lawyer that trashtalked their profession, the little smile on his face reminds me of a proud man watching his partner do something he thinks is both amusing and brave.
Is there anything else we should know about you? I really need a beta because any time I have tried to write this pair before it always seemed kinda forced. Even this one feels forced...
Title: Come Play in My Gardens
Rating: FRT
Fandom: AU Criminal Minds
Pairing: Hotch / Reid pre-slash
Warnings: unbetaed, OoCness, supernatural lore, Song!Fic
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of the story I wrote nor do I own the song. The characters are property of CBS and I believe the music is owned by Busch Gardens.
Summary: The team is raiding the house where they believe an unsub is holding Reid as a hostage. The house looks old and is falling apart and the grounds are overgrown and old. When Hotch and Morgan split up from the rest of the group to go through the gardens, they encounter something they didn't entirely expect... or believe in...
Notes: This fanfic was inspired by a song called "Midnight Buffet". If you'd like to listen to the song while you read, feel free to look it up on youtube using this title - Midnight Buffet (Busch Gardens Howl-O-Scream 2011 Theme Song)
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Aaron Hotchner had never been happier to not only be armed but also wearing Kevlar when he stepped onto the grounds of the unsub’s property. The night was dark, the sky lit up only by the moon and the stars that shone around it and that same moonlight cast an eerie glow over the overgrown yard that the team was trying to make their way through. In the distance the team could see the dilapidated house where they believed their unsub had been torturing young men before carving out their hearts at the top of the hill but before that the group new that they had to make their way through this mess of overgrown plan life. Aaron didn’t have to look behind him to see the looks of determination on his team’s faces reflecting his. No one was going to let this nut job simply have their way with the captured Spencer Reid.
Slowly, so painfully slowly they made their way through the wildly overgrown garden. What might have been beautiful shrubbery had branches and leaves sticking out in every direction and old statues seemed half devoured by vines. Their blank marble faces seemed to have their expression permanently set to one of surprise and horror, as if they had borne witness to something truly terrifying. Flowers still bloomed on the branches, most of them roses by the looks of them, but to the eyes of the team, these splotches of red looked like bloody wounds on these figures. The cool air of the night seemed to grow colder with every step they took and the beams of their flashlights canvassing over the grounds became their only real comfort. Thunder rumbled in the distance, making things seem eerier, even as this faint echo of a woman’s giggle rang in their ears.
Now Aaron was not a man who very easily believed in the supernatural. As far as he was concerned, the giggle was just his mind playing tricks on him because this overgrown, old fashioned garden was a seriously creepy place. He knew JJ and Prentiss couldn’t have been the source of the sound as they were approaching the house from the opposite side and even of Morgan tried he wouldn’t have quite managed that high a voice or the tone. Had it been just the giggle he might have been able to brush it off but the same voice continued to speak, the sound of it wispy like the wind as it seemed to surround them, making the air around them so cold their breath condensed in small white puffs in front of their lips and the light of their flashlights flickered eerily. Morgan muttered curses beneath his breath. Hotch found he couldn’t help but agree with half of it.
Whatever the voice was, it seemed to like keeping him and Morgan on edge, even as it seemed to coax them further into the garden , toward the center space where an old fountain (now long since broken and useless) sat. The pair of them had their guns up and ready, just in case but the sight that they saw there made them pause. Instead of the statue in the center of the now empty fountain was a chair that had what had to be Spencer Reid sitting in it, his arms, legs and chest bound to the black hair by a black rope that blended so well into the black clothes the unsub had dressed him in, that it was hard to tell he was tied down at first. His head was bowed, his short hair a mess of darkness highlighted by silver. He seemed unconscious but when Morgan moved to step closer he started to hum a tune softly.
The wind picked up again, pulling dead leaves off the shrubs and hedges and throwing them around the small area. If Spencer noticed them, he didn’t say a thing about them. Aaron took a step closer and called his subordinate’s name, hoping to snap the boy out of it just by the sound of his voice. The humming stopped and Spencer lifted his head to sit up properly in the chair. The way he moved, the serene expression on his face and even the hint of a playful smile, even in a situation so dire all but screamed that the figure sitting in that chair was distinctly not the Spencer Reid he had known for all these years. Even the small, trimmed beard that had built up over the days he had been captured for seemed normal by comparison.
But eeriest of all was the blank, calm look in Spencer’s brown eyes that made him look like a doll as he stared out at them as if he really wasn’t there inside his own head. He didn’t struggle against the bonds that held him, even with them present. What was wrong with this picture?
They tried to step closer, trying to pull Spencer out from wherever he went to make him like this but they stepped when Reid spoke, his voice soft but not quiet as he pronounced the words in a cadence, as if the words themselves were a song they didn’t know about. “In the dark side of the gardens there’s so much you will find,” he said before his entire body seemed to jerk in the bonds and his eyes rolled up so that only the white of them was visible. “The only thing you have to lose is a little of your mind.”
A crow cawed in the night and the eerie giggle from earlier turned into a full chuckle. Aaron Hotchner had enough of this. While Morgan stared at his friend, the unit chief rushed forward and began pulling at the bonds that held the younger man in place, trying to get them loose enough to cut through with the switchblade he had in his pocket. But as he tugged at the bonds, Spencer’s body jerked again this time seeming to stop in uncomfortable and twisted positions. Now twisted almost grotesquely where he sat, the younger man seemed to stare at Morgan with his unnerving white eyes as he said “Come play in my gardens” in the same creepy sing-song cadence from earlier.
Of course this is when their flashlights both cut out suddenly, throwing them both exclusively into moonlight, and a flicker of a different kind of light made both men look up. The figure of a young girl, her long black hair hanging forward over her face as her ragged clothes hung off her skinny, dirty shoulder as she stood on the brick pathway in bare feet, appeared seemingly out of nowhere, her body transparent and her image flickering every once in a while as if she was having trouble maintaining it. Even with the hair covering her face they could easily tell she was watching them.
Morgan cursed but Hotch kept working at the ropes that bound Reid to the chair he was sitting in. “Have you come to play in the gardens?” the eerie voice said as if it was part of the air around them, creating this odd Doppler effect as though she was standing next to them despite clearly standing where she was standing. If he had the time, Aaron might have been unnerved by this but he was too focused on getting his agent out of harm’s way.
When the ropes were loosened enough that they were easily able to be cut through, Hotch pulled out the knife and began sawing through them, even as Spencer sat perfectly still in the chair, the whites of his eyes still staring at Morgan. It didn’t take overly long to get the ropes around his chest undone and once they were gone the ropes around the slender man’s wrists and ankles seemed to loosen too. They were easily pulled off, freeing Reid but he didn’t seem inclined to move from where he was sitting. “Reid? Reid!” Aaron called to him, trying not to touch him as to not startle him, “Are you there? Wake up! It’s me. It’s Hotch.”
This time the young doctor rolled his head so that those eerie eyes were turned toward him. “Your boy is not here tonight,” he said, his voice distorted and sounding as if he had two people speaking through him, “He’s gone with the others in the gardens.”
Morgan didn’t take this well. He jumped forward, his hands grabbing onto Spencer’s lean arms, his face inches away from his friend’s. “Reid! Quit playin’ with us man. Wake up! Whatever it is that’s got you you can fight it.”
Spencer seemed to laugh at Morgan’s almost desperate attempt to wake him. “In the dark side of the gardens, there’s so much you will find,” he repeated, still singing softly, “The only thing you have lose is a little of your mind.” He blinked then, his hazel eyes returning but they were blank and empty, almost unseeing and there was a disconcerting smile on his face.
“Morgan, take Reid back to the SUV. We’ve still got an unsub to find.”
The other man didn’t need to be told twice. He bodily lifted his friend from the chair until he was standing on his own two feet. Still Spencer didn’t seem so inclined to move. “You have not found what you need to find,” he said in his distorted voice, “you can not leave until you do.” The girl that had been blocking their way toward the house flickered out of sight but then reappeared within an arm’s reach of the two of them. Hotch, without thinking, picked up his gun and aimed it at her. She didn’t seem to react. “You must play in my gardens,” her voice wispier than earlier.
Echoes of screams seemed to filter through the small bushes, coming from around them, even as the thunder sounded louder, as if the storm was getting closer. Now that he had nothing else to focus on, Aaron could feel the chill creep up his spine. Everything instinctive in him seemed to scream at him to leave while he still could, it was not too late, but why he felt that way he didn’t know. The girl seemed intent on keeping them there until they found whatever it was she wanted them to find and whatever it was Reid was on, he didn’t seem inclined to move much anyway. There was the sound of a wood hitting wood from the house and the sound of the others yelling that they were FBI as they searched the place in his earpiece. Somehow he got the impression that the unsub wouldn’t be in the house. Like it was being implied, the man that they were looking for was out here in the gardens.
“Where do we look, then, to find what we need to find?” Hotch asked the girl, whose image flickered as she turned her head to look at him through the veil of her long, dark hair, “Where do we look to find the man who did this to you and so many others?”
Aaron could feel Morgan’s stare on him when he made that comment but he was far more focused on what he could only explain as the ghost of a victim of their unsub. It was the only way he could explain to himself at least why she was here and dressed the way she was. Her dirty, too thin hands swept her hair back and away from her face so her face was clear to him. He didn’t flinch when her empty eye sockets focused on him or her gaunt face pulled into a twisted looking smile. This time when she spoke, Reid did too, her voice intermixing with the two he seemed to be speaking with.
“Follow the trees to where the angel weeps
and find the hand stained with tears
The hand will show
All wrapped up in a bow
Where one you seek weeps in fear.”
Morgan and Hotch looked at each other, wondering what best to do. Should they leave Reid here and go after the unsub or do they try to take him with them and possibly hinder them? If one of them where to try and take him back to the SUVs, it looked like this ghost was going to do everything she could to stop them and with Reid not in his right mind there was no guarantee he would be of any help. Yet to leave him here was dangerous too as whatever it was that was making him not himself might go after them. In their earpieces, they heard Prentiss say that the house was empty of anyone alive although they did find some bodies in the walls. Good. That meant more victims to tie to this nutcase.
“JJ and Rossi, you two stay in the house with the bodies in case the Unsub heads that way,” Hotch said into his wrist bound microphone, “Prentiss, you and Morgan need to go check out the gardens of this place. If he’s not in the house than chances are he’s out here somewhere.”
“And where exactly will you be?” Rossi asked.
“I’ve got Reid but something’s not right about him. I need to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t tip the guy off.”
The girl seemed to consider this plan of theirs and nodded in approval, which made Morgan twitch and start heading in the direction of the trees described in the eerie cue. He used his own microphone to coordinate a point for Prentiss to meet him but what exactly he said Aaron didn’t notice. He was too busy watching the ghost and Reid who shifted where he stood so that he could seemingly watch him go. Even the way he moved look wrong, the movements themselves jerky as he was a doll being manipulated by someone else. It wasn’t until Prentiss and Morgan had met up and gone out of sight that Aaron found himself facing the ghost and his possessed subordinate by himself and they both were staring at him with their eerie, unseeing eyes as if contemplating him. The girl turned her attention to Reid for just a moment then flickered out of existence, as if deciding she was no longer needed. To be honest it made Hotch feel a little better about all this but not by much.
“You like the boy whose body I hold,” the multi-voiced being said using Spencer’s body, “in a way that society does not easily accept.”
Aaron stared the figure down, although he was a little startled by the insight. He wasn’t aware that he was doing anything that might imply that much. “What makes you say that?”
A thin hand jerkily reached up and tapped Reid’s temple, making him look like an old doll whose mechanisms were not properly oiled. “We can see his memories,” it said, “and we can hear his thoughts. The boy is fond of you too. Has been for years.”
“That doesn’t mean that I like him the way you’re implying.”
With very stiff movements the being within Spencer made him step closer to Aaron so they stood only a few inches apart. The wide, blank eyes were even more unnerving up close, the pupils full dilated and those thin lips pulled into a cruel looking smile that seemed unnatural. “We can see the truth. We can see how you watch him, how you want to save him from us. But we will not give him back, not until He is put to rest.”
“My team is searching for the man who hurt you and we will ensure the man is brought to justice. We have the police on their way now and the bodies in the walls of the house, your bodies, will be properly laid to rest.”
The being laughed in it’s twisted way. “There are many more bodies on these grounds than just those in the walls.”
As the building was once used as a small local asylum, Hotch didn’t doubt it but those didn’t tie into the unsub they were hunting now. “The rest will have to be properly buried another time. Right now we have to ensure that this man is brought to justice for the crimes he personally has committed.”
The smile faded from Spencer’s face and his hands snapped up suddenly to grab Aaron’s, readily pressing them against parts of his body at Hotch happened to know for a fact it was illegal to touch without express permission. The being laughed at how he fought to get his hands back but whatever it was must have made Reid stronger than he normally was. “You are not that different from Him,” they said, “Although you have better control over your needs. You have not taken him to bed yet.”
After a few more seconds of fighting the hold he gave him and just let his hands rest where they were placed, trying not to feel overly embarrassed about it. “I have not and I never will, not like this, not with Spencer so unwilling.” He needed to make whatever it was understand. If these really were the spirits of this unsub’s victims, then they had been locked away for months in darkness and endured hunger, cold and the brutality of rape every night for months until they starved to death. Not all of the victims had been women either. “Not all men are like Him.”
The grip on his hands loosened just a bit as though the spirits were distracted. “Prove it,” they said, “Prove you are not like him.”
Without thinking on it too hard he lifted his hands to gently cup Spencer Reid’s face and pulled him closer, pressing a soft, sweet kiss to the lips he never thought he’d be able to kiss. At first it disturbed him how stiff the other was but eventually the other relaxed and he felt hands on his hips, pulling them closer together and allowing the kiss to deepen just a bit. The air turned icy and the wind picked up around the pair of them , whipping about the bushes and pulling leaves from them yet none of these leaves cut into them. Aaron’s hands moved unconsciously to instead wrap around his partner’s back and rest gently on the prominent shoulder blade that stood out so sharply. By the time he broke the kiss, the wind had calmed and the blank look on Spencer’s face looked confused, despite the fact his eyes were still unnaturally wide.
“You are not so rough,” the voices said in wonder, “perhaps you are right.”
A series of shouts and the sound of a gun going off not too far away made Aaron look in that direction, his hands falling away although the hands that had been resting on his hips stayed, tracing a line over his abdomen when he turned. The female ghost from earlier reappeared not too far from where they were and Spencer’s head rolled in her direction. She said something but this time her words seemed to wispy for Hotch to understand. The beings inside Reid’s body understood though. “We have Him now,” they said with far too much glee in their words, “He will pay for what he has done.”
Aaron barely had time to react when all of a sudden the stiffness in the young doctor’s body seemed to disappear and he collapsed like a house of cards. It was only some really quick reflexes that let him catch the younger man before he hurt himself in the fall by hitting the brick path hard. Wide brown eyes had fallen shut and his brows were knit together as if he were concentrating hard to solve a problem. In the moonlight, Hotch could see a black shadow standing just behind where Reid had been standing, towering over them. The unit chief got the impression it was watching them for a few moments before it disappeared and the girl ghost from earlier flickered out of existence too. With them gone the added chill of the night seemed to leave too.
Good thing they did as the sound of police sirens approaching the property grew louder and he knew that in a few minutes the place would be crawling with cops. Adjusting his hold on the slender frame, Aaron lifted his wrist with his microphone and asked Morgan for his status. He was not all that surprised to hear that they had had no choice but to shoot the unsub dead when he had tried to go after Prentiss. In the distance he could hear the faint echoes of a man screaming and the voices of women laughing -presumably at his pain- but it was so faint that he could have easily have explained it to himself as another trick his mind was playing on him. He was having a hard enough time coming to terms with the fact that apparently ghosts were more real than he had thought they were.
Morgan and Prentiss stepped back onto the brick path a few minutes later and with them seemed to come the first of the cops from the other direction. They immediately looked to Hotch as he was the one holding Reid in his arms still and he shook his head. “He’s fine. No major damage. Agents Prentiss and Morgan will take you to where they were forced to neutralize the unsub and you’ll need to get your CSI team to the house ASAP. Apparently, this guy enjoyed literally living amongst the dead.”
Prentiss motioned for the locals to follow her out to where the man was but Morgan stayed behind as Hotchner adjusted his hold on the taller but more slender young man to lift him. He was heavy but that wasn’t surprising. It was a weight he could handle until they got to the SUVs at least. Morgan, however, didn’t seem 100% certain that his friend was alright. “Is he okay? Whatever it was that got him goin’ is gone now?”
Hotch nodded. “It left him when you killed Marshalls. Apparently it had other obligations to keep.”
“You sure it’s gone now?”
“I watched it leave myself.”
Derek Morgan sighed in relief at this, tension visibly leaving his body. Honestly Aaron would not have been surprised if he caught the man thanking the god he so rarely believed in for this small miracle. He would have made a comment if it was any of his business but as it was he had to get Spencer to the hospital to be checked out by a doctor to make sure that there wasn’t any permanent damage. Why he personally had to make sure of this, he didn’t look too deeply into. He’d just accept that he felt personally responsible for his team and the boy who had featured in more than a few of his less-than-appropriate fantasies was no more than a coworker he had felt especially close to.
As he left the scene just long enough to get Spencer into the ambulance that had just pulled up, Hotchner tried not to shiver as he felt the piercing eyes watching him that didn’t feel entirely human. He heard a faint giggle in the winds and the air felt colder for just a second. A voice, the same voice from the female spirit that had kept them in the clearing where Spencer had been, whispered in that same sing-song voice from earlier “Welcome to my Garden.” Yes he had never been happier to be wearing kelvar and carrying a gun that night onto the unsub’s property. It made the trembling of his limbs now seem perfectly justified.