Criminal Minds x Reader

Sympathy for the Devil [A.H]

The abused becomes the abuser. This is what you have been told ever since you were a little girl. No apologies for what had happened to you, for what they had done to you, one pat on the back, and for them it was all solved.

The abused becomes the abuser. A statement you had heard so many times you were now beginning to believe it. Were you really as different from them as you thought? Or were you just the same but in different fonts?

The abused becomes the abuser. As a child, you thought you were better than those who hurt the people they swore they loved. You still thought so now, indeed, as you were finally in a healthy relationship. But sometimes you felt the weight of your past so much, that in your own body, there was no more room left for you.

Aaron never minded that part of you that you kept hidden, that part of you that you didn't want to talk about and that you were afraid of, too. He never minded sitting on the bathroom floor with you when the world was too heavy to even hold you up, much less backing down when all you did was lie in bed with your face beaded with tears.

"Your eyes remind me of the ocean" he would always repeat to you as he gently stroked your hair with his hand, his body like a weighted blanket on you.

You would look at him, half of your face hidden by his pillow. "But the ocean doesn't fall apart"

And in that moment, like a loop that never ended and never changed, he would smile, drawing even closer to you. "Have you ever seen the sea in a storm, darling?"

The worst moment, however, came with a case where the unsub turned out to be a boy psychologically abused as a young man who sought revenge by hurting all those parents he thought were doing the same to their children.

"The abused becomes the abuser. It's a tragic progression" one of the officers told your team after the interview and just like that, your heart shattered on the floor of the police station.

You felt Aaron's eyes on you, his hand sooner finding his way to the small of your back as he guided you out of the room, offering you a safe place beside him.

Words hurt more than weapons. A sentence you don't understand unless you haven't been there, unless you never heard the words of others rumbling inside of you. And god, how you wish you never grasped it.

"It's okay to feel bad" he whispered handing you a cup of coffee, your knees touching due to the proximity where you two sat.

You lowered your gaze to your hands, fiddling with your fingers, his stare too strong to sustain. "That's not exactly what I feel right now though"

"And what do you feel?"

"Sympathy" you murmured so softly you almost didn't hear it yourself, as if it was a secret told in the dark, away from everyone but the two of you.

You looked up and found his eyes already fixed on yours. He took your hands, cupping them in his, his thumb drawing circles on the back of them. "There is nothing wrong with that. It's called empathy and it's what differentiates us from them"

"Is it? Because right now I feel like I'm exactly like that man sitting in the interrogation room"

"But you're not. He had no qualms, he didn't think twice about hurting people he didn't know. You, on the other hand, work hard so that people like him can never do it again"

You smiled sadly, leaning against his touch. "Yeah. I do"

"Then think no more about it. You are a strong woman, resilient and kind. It takes courage to fight like you do every day. And honey, no one blames you for feeling sorry for a bad person if you know what led them to commit those heinous acts. You see right through the appearance. Only those who hold a pure soul are capable of that"

And maybe that was true. No one judged you because you felt sympathy for the devil. No one except yourself.