heart like yours (jennifer jareau)

2. twenty six

AN: i hope you're all enjoying this little update spree this weekend bc i am

two chapters of this will be published on our regular schedule tomorrow (monday) and one of take me to church

and our next chapter after this is just jj and delilah, my gals🥰 

but i do think i'm gonna end up doing update sprees like this until we reach season 3 because i fucked up massively in lining the chapters up, but you guys reap the benefits and we get closer to trauma in s3 wayyy faster this way so i'm all for it

enjoy my dudes🫶

•

"a beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel." - fyodor dostoevsky

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Delilah sat in the computer room with Penelope the next day, twisting her rings around her fingers as she tried to figure out a timeline in her mind about what events could have caused the third personality to emerge, hoping that might give her an indication of who it was.

"Dad died six months ago," Delilah muttered to herself. "Which is the stressor."

"What?" Penelope looked up from the computer.

"Talking to myself," Delilah said.

"That's a sign of something," Penelope said.

"That's specific," Delilah said.

"My brain is only half working. I'm exhausted and hitting a roadblock," Penelope said.

"Same," Delilah muttered. "Okay. Dad dies. Tobias spirals. Raphael presumably makes his first appearance some time between then and the first murder, long enough to establish the computer network and build up his whole victim list," Delilah said.

"He keeps diaries," Penelope said.

Delilah grabbed a few of the diaries off the floor, flicking them open.

"They're filled with religious ramblings. He writes hour by hour and it goes on for pages until it just stops. It stops for days," Delilah said. "Tobias wrote these diaries. The third personality didn't have to. Which is why they stopped."

She quickly glanced at the date for the last entrance, then grabbed the other diaries, flicking through them quickly.

"Uh, guys? I think Lilah's onto something!" Penelope called.

The team slowly trickled in, minus JJ and Emily who were talking to the narc guy, all looking at Delilah as she flicked through the pages.

"December 6th. Father sick. Wants me to put him down. I say thou shalt not kill. He says, honor thy father. Must pray for guidance," Delilah said. "This was two months ago."

"So, he kills his father as an act of mercy?" Hotch asked.

"Hankel's dad had been dead for four months at this point. The journal matches the dad's handwriting, but it was written after he died," Delilah said.

"What are you saying?" one of the officers who had followed the team asked. "That one of Tobias' personalities was his father?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Delilah said. "His father asked Tobias to kill him. Something had to give. His brain couldn't handle the moral contradiction after being raised with a strict religious code, so, it split into two personalities to keep his father alive."