A familiar face from Spencer's past joins the BAU, his ex-girlfriend, who left him fourteen years, two months, and fifteen days ago.
A slow-burn love story in which she and Spencer figure out who they are together and apart, and whether or not the h...
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George Washington University Hospital, D.C.- Present Day
"You ever cut somebody's hand off with this thing?" Jasper asked over the buzzing of the cast saw, the oscillating blades drawing perilously near her skin as Doctor Osted finished his work. The last layer of the material finally gave way, releasing her arm from the pressure it had been under for the last two months.
The scent of sweat plumed from the cast as he pulled it off her hand. Dr. Osted set the cast on a table and turned her wrist around in his hand, eyeing the new pink scar on both sides of it that led up into her palm and a quarter of the way down her arm.
"Not yet," he told her with a small smile, "but I am getting old. The day that happens, I think I'll retire."
"I'll try to hold off breaking my arm again until you're done."
Osted sighed and gave her a hard look. Jasper tried not to wilt underneath it, but she knew the conversation he was ramping up to.
"This is the third time you've broken it, yes?"
"Yeah," she nodded, and her cheeks began to warm as they flushed. "Once when I was fifteen, another time eleven years ago."
"When you broke it this time we had to remove your old pin and put in a new one. I'm sure you'll remember the scar can itch because of it. If you feel any burning within the arm, you need to come in and get checked for infection. Without your spleen, your body has a harder time fighting such things off."
"I've heard this spiel before, I believe."
"Covering all my bases," Osted said, and he released her. Jasper rubbed the scars with her other hand, the deep pink lines ominously dark against her white ones. Osted watched her carefully before speaking again, "You've got a lot of metal in your body, Mrs. Keaton."
"It's Agent. I'm in the FBI and I'm a widow, Doctor."
"Right, my apologies. I guess that tells me it's not your husband breaking your bones left and right."
Jasper grunted in agreement, her mind flashing back for a moment to the day her father broke her arm for the first time. He had twisted it behind her back during an argument with her mother, threatening Jasper to put her mother in her place, but he had pulled too tightly and the bone snapped under his strong grip.
"Have you thought about retiring?" he asked her. He was sitting on his little rollaway stool, his paunchy stomach hanging over his belt as he watched her. It was making Jasper angry, and her arm pulsed in tandem with the boiling rage that simmered beneath her skin.
"All the time."
"Your body has been through numerous traumas, Agent Keaton," he began, his bright blue eyes piercing her. He was doing his job, and she was grateful for it, but she had a job to do as well. "You have a pin in both of your arms, shrapnel in your chest, three pins in your leg and how many scars in between?"
