⚠️TRIGGER WARNING⚠️
Walking. Keep walking, I tell myself. I look behind me to see if the man is still following me. He's there. Still there. I pick up my pace.
I turn a corner and run into the BAU. I'm breathing heavily and everyone around notices it. I open the doors to the room of my team and sit down at my desk.
I can't breath. I try to catch my breath but I can't. Spencer Reid, my best friend, rushes over to me and comes down on his knees to my level.
"I think you're having a panic attack, y/n" spencer tells me worriedly, "You need to put your head between your knees."
I do as he tells me. My hair falls over of my face in which spencer pushes away. As I calm myself I start to look up, look around me until my eyes find their way back to spencer.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Spencer says, "you have nothing to be sorry for. Just tell me what happened."
I told spencer, with my eyes watering, that I had been walking here from my apartment and all of the sudden a man was following me. Every turn I took he was right behind me.
"He didn't hide, he made sure I knew he was there."
Spencer pulled me close into his arms. I knew he had a thing with touching and germs but there was always an exception for me.
"We deal with people like this all the time but it was just his face, the face of someone I just can't get out of my head." I say as I pull away from spencer, "I have to find him. I can't let him do whatever he was going to do to me to someone else."
As I look at spencer I suddenly smell the scent of what I can only imagine a fairy would smell like.
"Oh my, y/n," Penelope Garcia says as she runs toward me and spencer, "I saw you come in looking more scared then I'd ever seen you before. Here, here. Hold my cup."
"Penelope-" I'm cut off.
"No. Take her."
Penelope hands me her one and only octopus mug. It always comforted me in some weird way. A motherly way almost. I was, of course, the only person to have ever touched it because Penelope knew I would handle it like it was my own child. I did as she knew.
"Now, what happened?"
"Do you mind if I tell you later, Penelope?"
"Of course."
I stand up, out of my chair, and look around me, at the people staring. "I'm alright, everybody." I give a thumbs up and smiled, "Sorry. I thought I was...pregnant." Spencer laughed under his breath. He took my arm and started dragging me to Hotch's office. "I hope you enjoyed the show," I joke to everyone, "I'll be here all night."
Once we enter Hotch's office Spencer closes the door. I turn to Spencer and whisper in his ear, "What are we doing in here?"
"Hello, sir." he says to hotch, "I was thinking we might have a case."
Hotch was ruffling around the top of his desk hurriedly. "That will have to wait. A new case just came in." As he says this he pulls a folder from underneath some papers.
_________________
The team sits around the round table as we all look up at the big screen.
"Nicholas Faye of Ozona, Texas, was beaten to death roughly 13 hours ago." JJ announced, "Blunt force trauma to the head. He's the second young boy in Ozona to die the same death in the last 2 months. Local hunter found his body in the woods. First victim's name, Robbie Davis."
"Are these boys connected somehow?" Derek asked.
"Ozona's population's roughly 2,500. Everyone has some kind of connection."
"Well if they weren't linked before," I say, "they most certainly do now."
"Both murdered by the same offender?
"Who's hunting children." I make a disgusted face. Why would anyone want to hurt children? Sick bastards.
____________________
I sit at my desk, looking over the new case file, wondering how much our unsub needed to be familiar with the area the bodies were found.
It's a large land. You would need to know your way in and out, where the best hiding places are, where to watch kids who might walk through the woods. Then it hit me. The unsub must have experience with finding people. And what's the most common job in Ozona in which you need to find people?
"A police officer." I look over to my right at Spencer's desk, "Spence. I think our unsub is a police officer who works in Ozona. Or he might have some relationship with one."
Spencer looks up at me and says, "Go tell Hotch."
I get out of my chair and speed walk my way to my boss's office. I knock on the door quickly and turn the nob before I could hear a response.
"Sir, I think I know why this unsub has the ability to find these kids so well. I think that his profession is a cop. Or that he is close to someone of that sort."
"Good job, y/l/n, but we have someone we need to look at first. He's someone who lives in that area of the woods. I was just about to tell everyone."
I walk out of Hotch's office and back to my chair.
"Spence," I say, "do you ever wonder what it would be like to be the mycelium under the ground? Maybe you can hear everything other then the plants you're communicating with?"
"No, but, I will now. Why do you ask?"
"I was just thinking of me under the ground hearing those kids run for their life, trying to get to safety. Maybe they were thinking of running into their family's arms. Maybe thinking of having a nice treat when they got home? Or maybe just thinking how much it will hurt to die at the hands of this bastard?"
"'Is it harder to die, or have been the one who survived?'"
"Ruta Sepetys." I say, "In this case it will be both, Spence. He will rot in prison and the children will never see their families again."
I travel to my thoughts, Stop. Stop making it personal. Hotch will take you off the case if he finds out why you're acting like this.
"I'm sorry Spencer. I just finished the walking dead. I haven't got over it yet."
Spencer knew I was lying but he played along with it, he laughed and nodded his head. "I do know how much you love that show."
He looks down, back at his papers, but I don't. I study his face, his posture, the way his eyes move from line to line as he reads. I always found myself in this place where I can't take my eyes off the great dr reid. It's just the way that he's ever so delicate at the way he does everything. Or the way he's always there for me when I say I don't need anyone. Like the time my sister died. I hid my emotions and acted like nothing happened. But he was there, knowing that I wasn't okay, knowing I needed him. I just hope he knows that I'll always need him.
