Fic: "The Faraday Case" (Criminal Minds)
Title: [8/?] The Faraday Case
Author/Artist: colourmebipolar
Rating: FRAO
Genre: Romance, Hurt/Comfort
Characters/Pairings: Morgan/Reid
Spoilers/Warnings: One scene of explicit rape in the first chapter. A few possible spoilers from and up to season 5.
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I am not looking to profit from them.
Summary: A case goes badly wrong and Morgan and Reid are trapped at the mercy of two sexual sadists, Tom and Eric Faraday. Morgan/Reid slash. Focuses on their recovery and relationship after the trauma.
Morgan hit the floor immediately. "Reid!? You okay?" Morgan yelled into the sudden darkness. It seemed one of the shots had struck the ceiling light. The baby had started screeching in his tight grip. There was glass everywhere.
"Owwww." Reid replied mournfully. "I hit my head on the coffee table."
Morgan sighed in relief. It seemed Miller wasn't such a great shot.
"What's going on!?" Mr Davies yelled as he and Mrs Davies ran into the room.
"No time to explain. Come on Reid let's go!" he got to his feet and pressed the child into its father's arms gratefully.
They ran outside to find that Frank Miller had shot holes in their tyres.
"Shit!" Morgan swore.
"Mrs Davies!" Reid called to the woman who was watching them. "May we borrow your car?"
She shook her head. "It's at the mechanic's! We only have a motorcycle right now."
"That's fine ma'am." Reid said. Mrs Davies tossed him the keys.
"You can drive a motorcycle?" Morgan asked warily.
"Sure. Well…this will be the first time but the theory of it seem fairly traightforward."
Morgan wished he hadn't asked.
They climbed onto the bike. Morgan wrapped his arms around Reid's waist without thinking about it, his actions carried by adrenaline (and fear of death). Luckily Reid really did seem to know what he was doing and at least got them out of the suburban road with a body count of zero. Morgan's phone went off in his pocket as they zoomed through a red light and he answered it.
"Hotch, we're chasing him but he's got a pretty good head start. Any idea which way he went?"
"His current address is in Wyoming. If he's going back there to collect Lucy he'll be heading for the interstate. If he has Lucy already it's anyone's guess. We'll head for his place anyway to see if Lucy's there."
"Alright. What car's he driving?"
"An old red Mercedes, licence plate E520 JJV. Backup's on the way, they're sending a helicopter."
"Okay." Morgan hung up and resumed his desperate clinging as Reid narrowly avoided a very solid looking white Chevy which blared its horn at them.
I am too old for this shit Morgan thought.
"Hotch says- WATCH OUT FOR THE PERSON REID! -that he might head for the interstate. And we're looking for a red Mercedes."
"I THINK I SEE HIM." Reid yelled back through the rushing wind before speeding up even further, until Morgan felt like he was about to get sucked off the back by the force of the air.
Frank Miller seemed to see them too, and immediately screeched round a corner through a red light. A couple of cars bumped noses in the confusion but it didn't seem too serious and Reid leaned left and took them round the collision. Luckily the next road was pretty clear since it was late at night, and Miller put his foot down, but so did Reid, matching him every time, not crowding him too much in case he panicked and lost control. Joseph was in there and Lucy might've been too.
For a moment they were almost parallel to the car and it seemed like Miller was slowing, but then he stuck his gun out the window and shot at them, wild desperate shots which didn't find their target and just made the car swerve worryingly into oncoming traffic. Reid slowed down a little and slipped in behind him so it would be harder for him to reach them with the gun.
"HE'S PANICKING. THIS ISN'T GOOD." Morgan yelled.
"WE NEED TO TALK HIM DOWN IF WE'RE GONNA GET THOSE KIDS OUT SAFELY." Reid replied.
"HOW ARE WE GONNA DO THAT FROM HERE?" Morgan asked.
"…I'M AFRAID I CAN'T BE HELPFUL AND CONCENTRATE ON NOT KILLING US BOTH AT THE SAME TIME."
Just then Joseph's face appeared over the back seat, looking pale and terrified, giving Morgan an idea.
"OKAY LEAVE IT WITH ME." Morgan said. He took out his phone and called Garcia.
"This is Garcia, High Priestess of all things electronic, state your-"
"GARCIA I NEED THE CELL NUMBER FOR JOSEPH MILLER."
"No need to shout! FYI I had the volume turned up all the way! That is so not the way to address a High Priestess! 440-679-1120. You're lucky I'm in a forgiving-"
"THANKS BABYGIRL." Morgan cut her off before he forgot the number and dialled it.
….
"Don't touch that phone Joseph! I mean it!" Frank Miller snapped.
"Why shouldn't I? Are you gonna shoot me too dad?"
The question hung in the air uncomfortably. Lucy Davies sobbed through the gag in her mouth on the seat next to Joseph. Joseph held her hand comfortingly, even though her wrists were tied up so tight she couldn't feel anything. The phone continued to ring in the pockets of his shorts. He looked out the window at the two agents on the bike behind them. The black guy Derek was the one calling him. He was scared, of answering and not answering, torn between not wanting his father taken away, and not wanting things to go on like they were, falling asleep at night to the sound of screams. His father thought the basement was fully soundproofed, but it wasn't, not quite. Joseph's room was right above it. He never saw who they were. If he'd known for sure that his father had taken Lucy he would have told Derek straight away what he knew. It was his fault too if she died, he thought. He had to be a man and protect her, even if his father hurt him for it.
He answered the phone, ignoring his father's enraged yelling.
"Derek?"
"Hey kid, you alright in there?"
"Yeah, Lucy's here too."
"SHUT UP JOSEPH! HANG UP! HANG UP RIGHT NOW!"
"Joseph could you put me on speakerphone please?"
"Sure. Hang on." Joseph agreed. "Okay."
"Mr Miller, can you hear me?"
"Yes I can hear you Agent Morgan." he said mockingly. "Finally figured it out then did you?"
"Sir, you don't have to do this, if you carry on you're going to have an accident. I just want to talk."
"So talk! It won't make a difference."
"Look, I know a lot about you sir."
"Oh yeah What do you know?"
"I know that you were only getting payback for what that girl Cassandra did to you."
There was a pause.
"How the hell do you know that!?"
"Believe me sir I understand why you're angry. She humiliated you, destroyed your life. Thanks to her you were barely in your own daughter's life before she died."
"That little bitch lied to everyone." The man hissed venomously.
"Exactly. And she never got punished for it. But this isn't the way to punish her, by putting your own son's life in danger. I know you only want justice for what she did to you and I swear to you now that if you give yourself up I will personally make sure everybody knows what she did to you. The FBI has contacts with the media and we can do that sir. We can get you the attention you deserve. But if you don't stop now then I will make sure that none of the papers print anything about you except that you're a deranged child molester. Do you know what happens to child molesters in prison sir?"
There was a long silence, then the car pulled into a rest stop. Reid pulled up behind it. Morgan climbed off the bike and took out his gun. Reid followed.
"SIR. PLEASE PUT YOUR HANDS OUT THE WINDOW WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM." Morgan shouted.
Miller slowly put out his hands.
"I'll keep my gun on him, you get the kids out."
Reid nodded and opened the back door. Joseph scrambled out, trying to pull Lucy out after himself. Reid climbed onto the back seat and picked her up awkwardly, trying to avoid aggravating her wounds.
"Now take the keys out of the ignition and step out of the car."
Miller didn't move.
"I WON'T TELL YOU AGAIN FRANK. STEP OUT OF THE CAR."
Miller stamped on the accelerator and screeched back onto the road. Morgan's heart was in his mouth as Reid and Lucy only just managed to jump out before the car fully sped up. He shot like a maniac at Miller's tyres, and hit one, but it didn't slow him down much. This was one determined unsub.
"Reid! You alright?" he ran over to help Reid who was carrying Lucy to the side of the road.
"More or less." Reid said, looking a little shaken. "You better call Hotch and tell him Miller got away."
Morgan nodded. He called Hotch again while Reid and Joseph worked at getting Lucy free of her bindings.
"Hey, Hotch, I'm really sorry but he-"
"You don't have to be sorry. He drove straight into our roadblock and is in our custody now. If you give me your location I'll send a car and an ambulance to pick you up."
Morgan gave a sigh of relief.
"They got him." He told Lucy and Reid once he'd hung up.
Lucy started crying hysterically as soon as the gag was taken away. She tried to say something through her sobs but she couldn't get the words out. She put her arms around Reid and cried into his chest, and he told her she was safe and that no one would hurt her again, and other mumbled words of comfort in a soothing tone.
For some reason Morgan could hardly look at her. He didn't want to face the reality of what she'd been through. The scars on her bare arms, the bruises and the look in her eyes like overnight the world had become some frightening place she couldn't understand anymore.
It reminded him far too much of how Reid had looked that night.
He sat down heavily on the side of the road, feeling sick. Probably from that crazy near-death-experience bike ride, he told himself. Joseph stood around, looking quite out of his depth.
The ambulance arrived soon, but not nearly soon enough when the violated sobs of an innocent twelve year old girl still rang in his ears. The paramedics got her onto the bed, but she grabbed Reid and refused to let go.
"Uhh…you should probably take Joseph back to the others." Reid said. "I'll go with her."
"You sure?" Morgan asked concernedly. If this was how being around Lucy mad him feel, how painful would it be for Reid?
Reid hesitated. "…Yeah. It's fine."
"Okay." Morgan held his gaze for a second then nodded and got into the car.
….
"What happens to me now?" Joseph asked in a small voice from the seat next to him.
"We'll probably try to track down your mom." Morgan replied.
"She doesn't want me. That's why she left us." He looked out the window glumly.
Morgan sighed. "Joseph, this may be hard to hear, but I think your dad probably told you that so you wouldn't try to contact her. He actually wasn't supposed to have custody of you, but he took you away from your mom when you were little just after your sister died. We think that's probably when he started…taking these girls."
"Are they going to kill him?"
"Not if he comes quietly."
The boy was quiet for a moment.
"He raped them didn't he." He said, more a statement than a question.
How the hell was he supposed to answer that?
"You don't need to know the answer to that kid." Morgan put a hand on his skinny shoulder. "He's still your father. It's okay to be sad about losing him."
Joseph nodded. He didn't cry. He looked more relieved than anything.
Kids never failed to surprise him.
Once he'd handed Joseph over to JJ to sort out where he was going to live, Morgan joined the others at the roadblock, watching the police officers shove Miller into a car.
"Good job today Morgan." Rossi said.
"You kidding? I almost let that son of a bitch get away."
"Well. You stalled him long enough. We got him in the end." Prentiss said.
"Not soon enough." Morgan said, thinking of Lucy.
No one spoke for a while after that. They drove to the hospital to pick up Reid on their way to the airport. Morgan went into Lucy's room while the others waited outside it to avoid crowding her.
Reid was holding her hand, his back was to the door, but Morgan could tell from the way he sat that he was exhausted. Lucy didn't see Morgan either.
"He told me it was my fault. That it wasn't…wasn't his fault, because I wanted it to happen. He said I deserved it for being a lying bitch." She was saying, her eyes full of tears.
"Lucy," Reid said softly, his voice somehow strong and vulnerable at the same time. "That's what all rapists say. He was what we call an Anger-Retaliation rapist. He wanted to blame you, to make you feel weak so you couldn't fight back. They do it to make themselves feel powerful. You did exactly the right thing, and that's why you're still here."
"What am I going to tell my mom and dad?" she cried.
"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. I'll talk to them for you. But you should probably talk to someone, like a counsellor or something."
"I just want to forget. I feel so…embarrassed." She wept, hugging her knees and hiding her face as she cried.
Reid stroked her back helplessly.
"I understand how you feel. I really do." He said quietly. She looked up at him through her tears.
"Really?" she asked.
Reid hesitated, then nodded and gave her a wry smile.
"Does it get better?" she asked uncertainly. Morgan found himself desperately wanting to hear the answer.
Reid hesitated.
"Yeah. I think it does." He nodded.
"Reid." Morgan said. They both turned to look at him. "C'mon we've got a flight to catch, and her parents are here."
Reid and Lucy exchanged glances. Reid nodded.
"Okay. I'll be right out."
Reid stood up and followed him out of the room just as her parents arrived into the waiting room.
"Uh, Mr and Mrs Davies…"
"Is it true? Our baby's safe?"
"Yes, but I'd like to prepare you a little before you go in. If that's alright?"
"What are you saying? We want to see our daughter!" Mr Davies said angrily.
"I know that sir. I won't keep you long. It's just that…well there's no easy way to say this but…your daughter was raped by the unsub." There was a stunned silence. "And she can't seem to bring herself to talk about it at the moment, but one day she'll probably need to, and at that point I would recommend that she sees a trained counsellor."
"Our daughter doesn't need a counsellor! She has us! We can talk about anything!" Mr Davies shouted.
Mrs Davies snapped, "Shut up Tom!" He looked at her in shock. "This isn't about us, it's about her!"
He quietened down and looked completely crushed.
"I understand you're angry at the man who did this, frustrated that you couldn't protect her, but you need to forget about him and focus on supporting your daughter." Reid said gently.
He nodded, and Hotch showed them into Lucy's room.
Reid sat down heavily on one of the plastic chairs in the hospital corridor. He looked completely wrung out now he'd done what he considered to be his duty towards the victim and her family, and could collapse in private.
No one knew what to say. Morgan wanted to talk to Reid but he couldn't with Hotch, Rossi and Prentiss there.
Finally Reid himself broke the silence.
"If someone would be so kind as to fetch me a coffee and around twelve packets of sugar that would be super."
Everyone chuckled, and the atmosphere relaxed slightly.
"I'll see what I can do." Hotch said. "Morgan, d'you want one too?"
"Yes please, black with-"
"Black with no sugar." Everyone said in unison and laughed again.
"We really spend far too much time together." Prentiss smiled.
"I don't even remember all my ex-wives' coffee habits off by heart." Rossi complained.
"Come on, you two help me carry." Hotch said to Prentiss and Rossi.
Thank God for Hotch's mysterious hypersensitivity to the group's dynamics, and for instinctively guessing they wanted to be alone.
Morgan sat on the chair next to Reid's. He was just wondering how to begin, when Reid beat him to it.
"She's being put into the children's ward after tonight." He said tiredly, pressing his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger like he had a headache.
"Oh." Morgan said, unsure where the conversation was meant to be going.
"I mean can you imagine that?" Reid raised his head. "Having to sit in a ward full of crying babies and children's toys, animal murals on the walls, when you've been through what she's just been through? It seems like some kind of twisted joke since she's sure as hell not a child anymore. He took that away, just like…Ugh. I don't know. I guess I just wish I could've thought of something useful to tell her."
"Are you kidding? I heard what you said to her. You were great. I'm really proud of you."
Reid stood up and started pacing agitatedly.
"Proud of me? What the hell for? For lying to her? Acting like going to a counsellor fixes everything when I have no intention of even going myself? Or how about telling her it gets better when I clearly know that it doesn't?" he made sharp, frustrated hand gestures along with his words.
Morgan's heart sank. He should have known things were going too smoothly. Should have known that the reason Reid seemed to be healing so well was that they were all in their work mindset, the unhealthy shove-every-personal-problem-to-the-back-of-your-mind-or-you'll-end-up-getting-someone-killed mindset common to every profiler.
"That's exactly why I'm proud of you." He said sincerely. Reid stopped pacing and looked at him. "Because despite what you've been through, what you're going through, you still found it in you to give that girl some hope. You knew that she was too young to be told how hard it will be for her to get through it, so you told her what she needed to hear. So yes. I am hella proud of you boy."
Reid looked down miserably. Morgan knew he looked at the floor like that in situations where he didn't want to cry in front of people.
"So why do I feel like I've betrayed her?" he said when he'd regained some control.
"Well, for one thing you're tired and strung out from withdrawal and I'm guessing insomnia." Morgan laughed. "Look kid, you saved her life. That's more than enough to ask of you. It may sound heartless, but you're not a counsellor, and caring for that girl is not your responsibility anymore."
"You're right, that does sound heartless." Reid snapped, "and d'you want to know what I think? Honestly? I mean you keep having these little talks with me even though you're not a counsellor either. So, as you seem to be so interested in profiling my feelings I'll tell you what I think. I think that girl is going to go to a counsellor and try her best to struggle on with her life and forget what happened in order to please her parents, but then she'll realise that she's never going to be able to forget. And at first everyone'll be sympathetic, but eventually, it may be a few years down the line but eventually, they will expect her to shut up about it and move on with her life so that they can forget how much their daughter suffered. And then where will she be? She'll probably start drinking, taking drugs, acting out just to remind people, to remind herself, that it happened, that she has a reason to be feeling so messed up. But then that'll stop working too, and she'll look back at those years of being forced to talk to a counsellor and taking whatever medication they prescribe, and it'll finally dawn on her that it's all just a con so that other people can feel better about the world. And she will think of me AND SHE WILL WISH I HAD LET HIM KILL HER! At least that way no one would EVER forget her, what the world did to her!"
There was a stunned silence.
"Reid?" came Hotch's cautious voice from where they all stood several yards down the hall, carrying coffee and sandwiches from the hospital café. "Are you alright?"
Reid froze, shocked by his own outburst and scared of what they'd heard.
"I need some air." Was all he said, picking up his coffee off the tray Prentiss was holding as he walked past them towards the exit.
"Wow. If I'd known his need for caffeine was so urgent, I would've had it waiting for him when he got here." Rossi joked weakly to break the tension, but nobody laughed this time, even him.
"Is he okay?" Prentiss asked, confused about what the glances between the three agents meant.
"He's fine. He just needs sleep." Hotch said.
"Like hell he is!" Morgan snapped. They all looked uncomfortable but he didn't care. There was some truth in what Reid said, he realised. People avoided talking about uncomfortable things, swept them under the carpet so the victims were made to feel like they were imposing on other peoples happiness. A part of him knew that it was an unfair contradiction since neither him nor Reid really wanted anyone to know about it anyway, but he didn't know how else to reason out why he was suddenly so angry at them.
He stood up and went after Reid, who was standing outside in front of the building, leaning against the white concrete hospital wall with his eyes closed. He looked too perfect to exist in real life standing there bathed in the pale blue fluorescent glow of the hospital strip lighting. Morgan walked over, his feet crunching in the gravel, and leant on the wall next to Reid. Reid opened his eyes and looked at him, part defiance, part anxiety. Sorta like: 'I'm not going to apologise but I'd really appreciate it if we were cool now.'
"Hey there pretty boy. D'you wanna leave?" Morgan said casually.
Reid smiled and looked up at the stars, which were unusually bright for such a well lit area. Morgan bet he could tell him every constellation in the sky off by heart. Hell, he could probably name every star ever discovered.
"You called me pretty boy again. I wondered if I heard you right the first time."
Morgan blinked. It had slipped out without him noticing. He thanked God that he was black so no one noticed when he blushed. And wait, was he imagining things or did Reid just flirt with him a little bit?
No…
If he did it was probably by accident.
"Sorry…I call Garcia pretty girl a lot and I call you lover boy whenever girls flirt with you...I guess I just get my pet names mixed up sometimes."
Reid turned his head to look at him and pouted.
"You mean I'm not pretty?" his eyes twinkled mischievously.
It only lasted a split second but Morgan was speechless, bowled over by the sheer unintentionally seductive power of that pout. That pout could end wars and feed starving orphans purely with its powers of adorableness.
That's just not fair pretty boy.
Before he could even try to think of a socially acceptable answer, Reid looked at the floor and smile-mumbled, "I'm sorry. That was awkward. Blame the caffeine." He pointed to his coffee cup like a naughty child blaming a sibling for the mess.
"No!" Morgan said.
Reid raised his eyebrows in confused alarm. "No?"
"No. I mean…No I'm the one who said it in the first place." Morgan said. He tried not to smile at the sudden awkward-first-date kind of vibe which had appeared between them. "So I'm to blame I guess."
Reid laughed, and it looked so natural and happy that it was hard to imagine that just ten minutes ago he'd been talking like he had nothing to live for. With anyone else he would normally comment on their bipolarity, but he knew mental illness was a touchy subject for Reid, so he just shut up and enjoyed the smile.
It was normal to have ups and downs when you were recovering from something like this, he guessed.
"Anyway." Reid said. "I'm a little tired. We should probably go."
"Okay."
"Could you do me a favour?"
Anything.
"Sure."
"I left my jacket in Lucy's room, and I really don't think I can go back there. Would you mind…?"
"Not at all." Morgan said.
...
Lucy looked up when he walked in, then looked disappointed. She was obviously very attached to Reid in a very short space of time. It was understandable. Lots of the people they saved, especially children and teens, latched onto the first person who showed them kindness. They wanted to keep that secure feeling they got when they'd just been saved by someone. He'd had it happen to him several times. He knew it could lead to trouble, and it made him uneasy but he couldn't bring himself to turn anyone away, and iF he Couldn't then for Reid it would be impossible to detach himself.
"Hey sweetheart I just came for Dr Reid's jacket."
"He's leaving?" she looked upset.
"Yeah, he's real sorry he couldn't come say goodbye in person, but he told me to tell you…"
Tell her what? Good luck? Hope you get better soon? Ugh. He really needed to think his lies through before he said them. Every phrase he thought of sounded totally artificial or lame, and completely unlike anything Reid would ever say. She'd guess he was lying.
He settled on, "To take care of yourself." just in time to stop the sentence sounding unnatural.
She nodded, not really listening anyway. Morgan picked up Reid's jacket and slung it over his arm. He turned to leave but Lucy called out to him, "Agent Morgan?"
"Yeah? What is it sweetheart?"
"Um…It's just that Dr Reid said if I ever needed to talk to someone I could contact him."
Well that was bending the truth a little going on the conversation he'd heard.
"Would you please give him my cell number and ask him to text me some time?" she asked, holding out a slip of paper.
He couldn't do it. He couldn't explain to this broken child that Reid could get in trouble, that Reid had his own set of problems and it wasn't fair on him. It wasn't fair on her either. It was just a stinking pile of unfairness with no direct cause, no one to blame or punish satisfactorily and no one to save them all.
So he took it and he smiled, gave her a Reid-substitute hug and then he said goodbye.
He hovered outside the door for a moment, debating with himself. The trouble was, he knew if he told Reid, he would be compelled to save her. That was just who he was. He would take on her problems as well as his own until he sank like a boat full of rocks.
Either way someone would get hurt, but Reid was the one he needed to save.
But he still felt crappy when he screwed the number up and threw it in the bin.
"What was that?" asked Prentiss.
"Nothing. C'mon let's go. I need my bed. And failing that I need a night wedged into the seat of a reasonably comfortable airplane." he put his arm round her shoulders and they started towards the exit.
"Amen to that." She laughed.
Link to chapter 7: http://colourmebipolar.livejournal.com/2352.html
Link to chapter 9: http://colourmebipolar.livejournal.com/3130.html
Author/Artist: colourmebipolar
Rating: FRAO
Genre: Romance, Hurt/Comfort
Characters/Pairings: Morgan/Reid
Spoilers/Warnings: One scene of explicit rape in the first chapter. A few possible spoilers from and up to season 5.
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I am not looking to profit from them.
Summary: A case goes badly wrong and Morgan and Reid are trapped at the mercy of two sexual sadists, Tom and Eric Faraday. Morgan/Reid slash. Focuses on their recovery and relationship after the trauma.
Morgan hit the floor immediately. "Reid!? You okay?" Morgan yelled into the sudden darkness. It seemed one of the shots had struck the ceiling light. The baby had started screeching in his tight grip. There was glass everywhere.
"Owwww." Reid replied mournfully. "I hit my head on the coffee table."
Morgan sighed in relief. It seemed Miller wasn't such a great shot.
"What's going on!?" Mr Davies yelled as he and Mrs Davies ran into the room.
"No time to explain. Come on Reid let's go!" he got to his feet and pressed the child into its father's arms gratefully.
They ran outside to find that Frank Miller had shot holes in their tyres.
"Shit!" Morgan swore.
"Mrs Davies!" Reid called to the woman who was watching them. "May we borrow your car?"
She shook her head. "It's at the mechanic's! We only have a motorcycle right now."
"That's fine ma'am." Reid said. Mrs Davies tossed him the keys.
"You can drive a motorcycle?" Morgan asked warily.
"Sure. Well…this will be the first time but the theory of it seem fairly traightforward."
Morgan wished he hadn't asked.
They climbed onto the bike. Morgan wrapped his arms around Reid's waist without thinking about it, his actions carried by adrenaline (and fear of death). Luckily Reid really did seem to know what he was doing and at least got them out of the suburban road with a body count of zero. Morgan's phone went off in his pocket as they zoomed through a red light and he answered it.
"Hotch, we're chasing him but he's got a pretty good head start. Any idea which way he went?"
"His current address is in Wyoming. If he's going back there to collect Lucy he'll be heading for the interstate. If he has Lucy already it's anyone's guess. We'll head for his place anyway to see if Lucy's there."
"Alright. What car's he driving?"
"An old red Mercedes, licence plate E520 JJV. Backup's on the way, they're sending a helicopter."
"Okay." Morgan hung up and resumed his desperate clinging as Reid narrowly avoided a very solid looking white Chevy which blared its horn at them.
I am too old for this shit Morgan thought.
"Hotch says- WATCH OUT FOR THE PERSON REID! -that he might head for the interstate. And we're looking for a red Mercedes."
"I THINK I SEE HIM." Reid yelled back through the rushing wind before speeding up even further, until Morgan felt like he was about to get sucked off the back by the force of the air.
Frank Miller seemed to see them too, and immediately screeched round a corner through a red light. A couple of cars bumped noses in the confusion but it didn't seem too serious and Reid leaned left and took them round the collision. Luckily the next road was pretty clear since it was late at night, and Miller put his foot down, but so did Reid, matching him every time, not crowding him too much in case he panicked and lost control. Joseph was in there and Lucy might've been too.
For a moment they were almost parallel to the car and it seemed like Miller was slowing, but then he stuck his gun out the window and shot at them, wild desperate shots which didn't find their target and just made the car swerve worryingly into oncoming traffic. Reid slowed down a little and slipped in behind him so it would be harder for him to reach them with the gun.
"HE'S PANICKING. THIS ISN'T GOOD." Morgan yelled.
"WE NEED TO TALK HIM DOWN IF WE'RE GONNA GET THOSE KIDS OUT SAFELY." Reid replied.
"HOW ARE WE GONNA DO THAT FROM HERE?" Morgan asked.
"…I'M AFRAID I CAN'T BE HELPFUL AND CONCENTRATE ON NOT KILLING US BOTH AT THE SAME TIME."
Just then Joseph's face appeared over the back seat, looking pale and terrified, giving Morgan an idea.
"OKAY LEAVE IT WITH ME." Morgan said. He took out his phone and called Garcia.
"This is Garcia, High Priestess of all things electronic, state your-"
"GARCIA I NEED THE CELL NUMBER FOR JOSEPH MILLER."
"No need to shout! FYI I had the volume turned up all the way! That is so not the way to address a High Priestess! 440-679-1120. You're lucky I'm in a forgiving-"
"THANKS BABYGIRL." Morgan cut her off before he forgot the number and dialled it.
….
"Don't touch that phone Joseph! I mean it!" Frank Miller snapped.
"Why shouldn't I? Are you gonna shoot me too dad?"
The question hung in the air uncomfortably. Lucy Davies sobbed through the gag in her mouth on the seat next to Joseph. Joseph held her hand comfortingly, even though her wrists were tied up so tight she couldn't feel anything. The phone continued to ring in the pockets of his shorts. He looked out the window at the two agents on the bike behind them. The black guy Derek was the one calling him. He was scared, of answering and not answering, torn between not wanting his father taken away, and not wanting things to go on like they were, falling asleep at night to the sound of screams. His father thought the basement was fully soundproofed, but it wasn't, not quite. Joseph's room was right above it. He never saw who they were. If he'd known for sure that his father had taken Lucy he would have told Derek straight away what he knew. It was his fault too if she died, he thought. He had to be a man and protect her, even if his father hurt him for it.
He answered the phone, ignoring his father's enraged yelling.
"Derek?"
"Hey kid, you alright in there?"
"Yeah, Lucy's here too."
"SHUT UP JOSEPH! HANG UP! HANG UP RIGHT NOW!"
"Joseph could you put me on speakerphone please?"
"Sure. Hang on." Joseph agreed. "Okay."
"Mr Miller, can you hear me?"
"Yes I can hear you Agent Morgan." he said mockingly. "Finally figured it out then did you?"
"Sir, you don't have to do this, if you carry on you're going to have an accident. I just want to talk."
"So talk! It won't make a difference."
"Look, I know a lot about you sir."
"Oh yeah What do you know?"
"I know that you were only getting payback for what that girl Cassandra did to you."
There was a pause.
"How the hell do you know that!?"
"Believe me sir I understand why you're angry. She humiliated you, destroyed your life. Thanks to her you were barely in your own daughter's life before she died."
"That little bitch lied to everyone." The man hissed venomously.
"Exactly. And she never got punished for it. But this isn't the way to punish her, by putting your own son's life in danger. I know you only want justice for what she did to you and I swear to you now that if you give yourself up I will personally make sure everybody knows what she did to you. The FBI has contacts with the media and we can do that sir. We can get you the attention you deserve. But if you don't stop now then I will make sure that none of the papers print anything about you except that you're a deranged child molester. Do you know what happens to child molesters in prison sir?"
There was a long silence, then the car pulled into a rest stop. Reid pulled up behind it. Morgan climbed off the bike and took out his gun. Reid followed.
"SIR. PLEASE PUT YOUR HANDS OUT THE WINDOW WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM." Morgan shouted.
Miller slowly put out his hands.
"I'll keep my gun on him, you get the kids out."
Reid nodded and opened the back door. Joseph scrambled out, trying to pull Lucy out after himself. Reid climbed onto the back seat and picked her up awkwardly, trying to avoid aggravating her wounds.
"Now take the keys out of the ignition and step out of the car."
Miller didn't move.
"I WON'T TELL YOU AGAIN FRANK. STEP OUT OF THE CAR."
Miller stamped on the accelerator and screeched back onto the road. Morgan's heart was in his mouth as Reid and Lucy only just managed to jump out before the car fully sped up. He shot like a maniac at Miller's tyres, and hit one, but it didn't slow him down much. This was one determined unsub.
"Reid! You alright?" he ran over to help Reid who was carrying Lucy to the side of the road.
"More or less." Reid said, looking a little shaken. "You better call Hotch and tell him Miller got away."
Morgan nodded. He called Hotch again while Reid and Joseph worked at getting Lucy free of her bindings.
"Hey, Hotch, I'm really sorry but he-"
"You don't have to be sorry. He drove straight into our roadblock and is in our custody now. If you give me your location I'll send a car and an ambulance to pick you up."
Morgan gave a sigh of relief.
"They got him." He told Lucy and Reid once he'd hung up.
Lucy started crying hysterically as soon as the gag was taken away. She tried to say something through her sobs but she couldn't get the words out. She put her arms around Reid and cried into his chest, and he told her she was safe and that no one would hurt her again, and other mumbled words of comfort in a soothing tone.
For some reason Morgan could hardly look at her. He didn't want to face the reality of what she'd been through. The scars on her bare arms, the bruises and the look in her eyes like overnight the world had become some frightening place she couldn't understand anymore.
It reminded him far too much of how Reid had looked that night.
He sat down heavily on the side of the road, feeling sick. Probably from that crazy near-death-experience bike ride, he told himself. Joseph stood around, looking quite out of his depth.
The ambulance arrived soon, but not nearly soon enough when the violated sobs of an innocent twelve year old girl still rang in his ears. The paramedics got her onto the bed, but she grabbed Reid and refused to let go.
"Uhh…you should probably take Joseph back to the others." Reid said. "I'll go with her."
"You sure?" Morgan asked concernedly. If this was how being around Lucy mad him feel, how painful would it be for Reid?
Reid hesitated. "…Yeah. It's fine."
"Okay." Morgan held his gaze for a second then nodded and got into the car.
….
"What happens to me now?" Joseph asked in a small voice from the seat next to him.
"We'll probably try to track down your mom." Morgan replied.
"She doesn't want me. That's why she left us." He looked out the window glumly.
Morgan sighed. "Joseph, this may be hard to hear, but I think your dad probably told you that so you wouldn't try to contact her. He actually wasn't supposed to have custody of you, but he took you away from your mom when you were little just after your sister died. We think that's probably when he started…taking these girls."
"Are they going to kill him?"
"Not if he comes quietly."
The boy was quiet for a moment.
"He raped them didn't he." He said, more a statement than a question.
How the hell was he supposed to answer that?
"You don't need to know the answer to that kid." Morgan put a hand on his skinny shoulder. "He's still your father. It's okay to be sad about losing him."
Joseph nodded. He didn't cry. He looked more relieved than anything.
Kids never failed to surprise him.
Once he'd handed Joseph over to JJ to sort out where he was going to live, Morgan joined the others at the roadblock, watching the police officers shove Miller into a car.
"Good job today Morgan." Rossi said.
"You kidding? I almost let that son of a bitch get away."
"Well. You stalled him long enough. We got him in the end." Prentiss said.
"Not soon enough." Morgan said, thinking of Lucy.
No one spoke for a while after that. They drove to the hospital to pick up Reid on their way to the airport. Morgan went into Lucy's room while the others waited outside it to avoid crowding her.
Reid was holding her hand, his back was to the door, but Morgan could tell from the way he sat that he was exhausted. Lucy didn't see Morgan either.
"He told me it was my fault. That it wasn't…wasn't his fault, because I wanted it to happen. He said I deserved it for being a lying bitch." She was saying, her eyes full of tears.
"Lucy," Reid said softly, his voice somehow strong and vulnerable at the same time. "That's what all rapists say. He was what we call an Anger-Retaliation rapist. He wanted to blame you, to make you feel weak so you couldn't fight back. They do it to make themselves feel powerful. You did exactly the right thing, and that's why you're still here."
"What am I going to tell my mom and dad?" she cried.
"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. I'll talk to them for you. But you should probably talk to someone, like a counsellor or something."
"I just want to forget. I feel so…embarrassed." She wept, hugging her knees and hiding her face as she cried.
Reid stroked her back helplessly.
"I understand how you feel. I really do." He said quietly. She looked up at him through her tears.
"Really?" she asked.
Reid hesitated, then nodded and gave her a wry smile.
"Does it get better?" she asked uncertainly. Morgan found himself desperately wanting to hear the answer.
Reid hesitated.
"Yeah. I think it does." He nodded.
"Reid." Morgan said. They both turned to look at him. "C'mon we've got a flight to catch, and her parents are here."
Reid and Lucy exchanged glances. Reid nodded.
"Okay. I'll be right out."
Reid stood up and followed him out of the room just as her parents arrived into the waiting room.
"Uh, Mr and Mrs Davies…"
"Is it true? Our baby's safe?"
"Yes, but I'd like to prepare you a little before you go in. If that's alright?"
"What are you saying? We want to see our daughter!" Mr Davies said angrily.
"I know that sir. I won't keep you long. It's just that…well there's no easy way to say this but…your daughter was raped by the unsub." There was a stunned silence. "And she can't seem to bring herself to talk about it at the moment, but one day she'll probably need to, and at that point I would recommend that she sees a trained counsellor."
"Our daughter doesn't need a counsellor! She has us! We can talk about anything!" Mr Davies shouted.
Mrs Davies snapped, "Shut up Tom!" He looked at her in shock. "This isn't about us, it's about her!"
He quietened down and looked completely crushed.
"I understand you're angry at the man who did this, frustrated that you couldn't protect her, but you need to forget about him and focus on supporting your daughter." Reid said gently.
He nodded, and Hotch showed them into Lucy's room.
Reid sat down heavily on one of the plastic chairs in the hospital corridor. He looked completely wrung out now he'd done what he considered to be his duty towards the victim and her family, and could collapse in private.
No one knew what to say. Morgan wanted to talk to Reid but he couldn't with Hotch, Rossi and Prentiss there.
Finally Reid himself broke the silence.
"If someone would be so kind as to fetch me a coffee and around twelve packets of sugar that would be super."
Everyone chuckled, and the atmosphere relaxed slightly.
"I'll see what I can do." Hotch said. "Morgan, d'you want one too?"
"Yes please, black with-"
"Black with no sugar." Everyone said in unison and laughed again.
"We really spend far too much time together." Prentiss smiled.
"I don't even remember all my ex-wives' coffee habits off by heart." Rossi complained.
"Come on, you two help me carry." Hotch said to Prentiss and Rossi.
Thank God for Hotch's mysterious hypersensitivity to the group's dynamics, and for instinctively guessing they wanted to be alone.
Morgan sat on the chair next to Reid's. He was just wondering how to begin, when Reid beat him to it.
"She's being put into the children's ward after tonight." He said tiredly, pressing his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger like he had a headache.
"Oh." Morgan said, unsure where the conversation was meant to be going.
"I mean can you imagine that?" Reid raised his head. "Having to sit in a ward full of crying babies and children's toys, animal murals on the walls, when you've been through what she's just been through? It seems like some kind of twisted joke since she's sure as hell not a child anymore. He took that away, just like…Ugh. I don't know. I guess I just wish I could've thought of something useful to tell her."
"Are you kidding? I heard what you said to her. You were great. I'm really proud of you."
Reid stood up and started pacing agitatedly.
"Proud of me? What the hell for? For lying to her? Acting like going to a counsellor fixes everything when I have no intention of even going myself? Or how about telling her it gets better when I clearly know that it doesn't?" he made sharp, frustrated hand gestures along with his words.
Morgan's heart sank. He should have known things were going too smoothly. Should have known that the reason Reid seemed to be healing so well was that they were all in their work mindset, the unhealthy shove-every-personal-problem-to-the-back-of-your-mind-or-you'll-end-up-getting-someone-killed mindset common to every profiler.
"That's exactly why I'm proud of you." He said sincerely. Reid stopped pacing and looked at him. "Because despite what you've been through, what you're going through, you still found it in you to give that girl some hope. You knew that she was too young to be told how hard it will be for her to get through it, so you told her what she needed to hear. So yes. I am hella proud of you boy."
Reid looked down miserably. Morgan knew he looked at the floor like that in situations where he didn't want to cry in front of people.
"So why do I feel like I've betrayed her?" he said when he'd regained some control.
"Well, for one thing you're tired and strung out from withdrawal and I'm guessing insomnia." Morgan laughed. "Look kid, you saved her life. That's more than enough to ask of you. It may sound heartless, but you're not a counsellor, and caring for that girl is not your responsibility anymore."
"You're right, that does sound heartless." Reid snapped, "and d'you want to know what I think? Honestly? I mean you keep having these little talks with me even though you're not a counsellor either. So, as you seem to be so interested in profiling my feelings I'll tell you what I think. I think that girl is going to go to a counsellor and try her best to struggle on with her life and forget what happened in order to please her parents, but then she'll realise that she's never going to be able to forget. And at first everyone'll be sympathetic, but eventually, it may be a few years down the line but eventually, they will expect her to shut up about it and move on with her life so that they can forget how much their daughter suffered. And then where will she be? She'll probably start drinking, taking drugs, acting out just to remind people, to remind herself, that it happened, that she has a reason to be feeling so messed up. But then that'll stop working too, and she'll look back at those years of being forced to talk to a counsellor and taking whatever medication they prescribe, and it'll finally dawn on her that it's all just a con so that other people can feel better about the world. And she will think of me AND SHE WILL WISH I HAD LET HIM KILL HER! At least that way no one would EVER forget her, what the world did to her!"
There was a stunned silence.
"Reid?" came Hotch's cautious voice from where they all stood several yards down the hall, carrying coffee and sandwiches from the hospital café. "Are you alright?"
Reid froze, shocked by his own outburst and scared of what they'd heard.
"I need some air." Was all he said, picking up his coffee off the tray Prentiss was holding as he walked past them towards the exit.
"Wow. If I'd known his need for caffeine was so urgent, I would've had it waiting for him when he got here." Rossi joked weakly to break the tension, but nobody laughed this time, even him.
"Is he okay?" Prentiss asked, confused about what the glances between the three agents meant.
"He's fine. He just needs sleep." Hotch said.
"Like hell he is!" Morgan snapped. They all looked uncomfortable but he didn't care. There was some truth in what Reid said, he realised. People avoided talking about uncomfortable things, swept them under the carpet so the victims were made to feel like they were imposing on other peoples happiness. A part of him knew that it was an unfair contradiction since neither him nor Reid really wanted anyone to know about it anyway, but he didn't know how else to reason out why he was suddenly so angry at them.
He stood up and went after Reid, who was standing outside in front of the building, leaning against the white concrete hospital wall with his eyes closed. He looked too perfect to exist in real life standing there bathed in the pale blue fluorescent glow of the hospital strip lighting. Morgan walked over, his feet crunching in the gravel, and leant on the wall next to Reid. Reid opened his eyes and looked at him, part defiance, part anxiety. Sorta like: 'I'm not going to apologise but I'd really appreciate it if we were cool now.'
"Hey there pretty boy. D'you wanna leave?" Morgan said casually.
Reid smiled and looked up at the stars, which were unusually bright for such a well lit area. Morgan bet he could tell him every constellation in the sky off by heart. Hell, he could probably name every star ever discovered.
"You called me pretty boy again. I wondered if I heard you right the first time."
Morgan blinked. It had slipped out without him noticing. He thanked God that he was black so no one noticed when he blushed. And wait, was he imagining things or did Reid just flirt with him a little bit?
No…
If he did it was probably by accident.
"Sorry…I call Garcia pretty girl a lot and I call you lover boy whenever girls flirt with you...I guess I just get my pet names mixed up sometimes."
Reid turned his head to look at him and pouted.
"You mean I'm not pretty?" his eyes twinkled mischievously.
It only lasted a split second but Morgan was speechless, bowled over by the sheer unintentionally seductive power of that pout. That pout could end wars and feed starving orphans purely with its powers of adorableness.
That's just not fair pretty boy.
Before he could even try to think of a socially acceptable answer, Reid looked at the floor and smile-mumbled, "I'm sorry. That was awkward. Blame the caffeine." He pointed to his coffee cup like a naughty child blaming a sibling for the mess.
"No!" Morgan said.
Reid raised his eyebrows in confused alarm. "No?"
"No. I mean…No I'm the one who said it in the first place." Morgan said. He tried not to smile at the sudden awkward-first-date kind of vibe which had appeared between them. "So I'm to blame I guess."
Reid laughed, and it looked so natural and happy that it was hard to imagine that just ten minutes ago he'd been talking like he had nothing to live for. With anyone else he would normally comment on their bipolarity, but he knew mental illness was a touchy subject for Reid, so he just shut up and enjoyed the smile.
It was normal to have ups and downs when you were recovering from something like this, he guessed.
"Anyway." Reid said. "I'm a little tired. We should probably go."
"Okay."
"Could you do me a favour?"
Anything.
"Sure."
"I left my jacket in Lucy's room, and I really don't think I can go back there. Would you mind…?"
"Not at all." Morgan said.
...
Lucy looked up when he walked in, then looked disappointed. She was obviously very attached to Reid in a very short space of time. It was understandable. Lots of the people they saved, especially children and teens, latched onto the first person who showed them kindness. They wanted to keep that secure feeling they got when they'd just been saved by someone. He'd had it happen to him several times. He knew it could lead to trouble, and it made him uneasy but he couldn't bring himself to turn anyone away, and iF he Couldn't then for Reid it would be impossible to detach himself.
"Hey sweetheart I just came for Dr Reid's jacket."
"He's leaving?" she looked upset.
"Yeah, he's real sorry he couldn't come say goodbye in person, but he told me to tell you…"
Tell her what? Good luck? Hope you get better soon? Ugh. He really needed to think his lies through before he said them. Every phrase he thought of sounded totally artificial or lame, and completely unlike anything Reid would ever say. She'd guess he was lying.
He settled on, "To take care of yourself." just in time to stop the sentence sounding unnatural.
She nodded, not really listening anyway. Morgan picked up Reid's jacket and slung it over his arm. He turned to leave but Lucy called out to him, "Agent Morgan?"
"Yeah? What is it sweetheart?"
"Um…It's just that Dr Reid said if I ever needed to talk to someone I could contact him."
Well that was bending the truth a little going on the conversation he'd heard.
"Would you please give him my cell number and ask him to text me some time?" she asked, holding out a slip of paper.
He couldn't do it. He couldn't explain to this broken child that Reid could get in trouble, that Reid had his own set of problems and it wasn't fair on him. It wasn't fair on her either. It was just a stinking pile of unfairness with no direct cause, no one to blame or punish satisfactorily and no one to save them all.
So he took it and he smiled, gave her a Reid-substitute hug and then he said goodbye.
He hovered outside the door for a moment, debating with himself. The trouble was, he knew if he told Reid, he would be compelled to save her. That was just who he was. He would take on her problems as well as his own until he sank like a boat full of rocks.
Either way someone would get hurt, but Reid was the one he needed to save.
But he still felt crappy when he screwed the number up and threw it in the bin.
"What was that?" asked Prentiss.
"Nothing. C'mon let's go. I need my bed. And failing that I need a night wedged into the seat of a reasonably comfortable airplane." he put his arm round her shoulders and they started towards the exit.
"Amen to that." She laughed.
Link to chapter 7: http://colourmebipolar.livejournal.com/2352.html
Link to chapter 9: http://colourmebipolar.livejournal.com/3130.html