Classified light- a criminal minds fan fiction

Monsters

Cameron spent the next following week after leaving the case at home from work. 

Hotch had ordered her to after the 'passing out' incident, telling her to take the week off for her 'sickness' which she had told the team was just a bug instead of the truth which was that it was just a lie.

She spent her week-off on her sofa, cleaning her apartment and hanging out with Radomir who was more than happy that she was home with him so much. He was also quite pleased that she had so much spare time because that meant she could bake.

Cameron had always prided herself on her cooking skills. Her mother had taught her the skills of herbalism and cooking from a young age, taught her how to forage to create food not just to survive but to enjoy. She was the one who taught Cameron how to use nature to create various medicines and mixtures that would heel people, taught her how to dress wounds and fix any injury she came across which happened often with her father and sisters.

Something she found comfort in however had no survival use at all- baking. She enjoyed it purely for fun, purely for comfort, purely for nostalgia.

Her mother had taught her to bake as well, taught her that all though it didn't have any tactical survival use, baking was very much needed and a crucial part of surviving life. 

Cameron didn't quite understand this until see saw her mother hand a plate of handmade Kartoshka's to her father. She had never seen him so happy, his face lit up like a child at his wife's gesture, the way she expressed her love with a simple kiss on his forehead as he ate. She understood then that survival wasn't just about hunting and living- it was about being able to find joy, the hardest thing to scavenge and forage for. 

Her mother would hum a little tune as the two would roll out the pastries and treats with whatever left over flour they had. Making bread with beautiful carving work in it and braids to sell at the market, keeping the occasional small loaf for the family to enjoy every few months. Cameron took on this duty as she got older, keeping the tradition of making the extra treat for her father once a year. Selling everything she could at the market for extra flour, treading for miles to pick up the right kind of sugars from the fields, foraging through rivers and woods to get everything she needed to make him a plate of Kartoshka's just like her mother made in hopes that she would someday see that light on his face again. 

She never did. 

But she still knew he appreciated the gesture even though he would never say it, she could tell this by the way he ate it, by the way he didn't tell her off for wasting her time prepping and preparing the treat for him. A small moment of silence between the two as he handed her the finale bite for her to eat just like he had done with his wife, a small moment of appreciation, a small moment of love.

Cameron hummed the same tune her mother had when she was a child as she carved a floral bouquet of an assortment of flowers into the loaf of bread that had two braids out of extra dough going down either side of it. She popped it in the oven and cleaned her kitchen sides, popping in the tray of various pastries she had created alongside her bread and boxing up the cookies she had made earlier that day.

She didn't have much to do without work, she didn't know what her 'normal' and 'days off' was meant to look like in this new life. It was the Sunday before she was back at work and she was finishing cleaning up the apartment one more time as something to do- Radomir watching her with his puppy-dog eyes that made her laugh.

"We've been on 2 walks already today Radomir, don't be greedy just because I'm bored."

She looked around her apartment and paused as her eyes gazed over the antique piano that the old renters had left and the landlord had sworn they would get rid of but never did.