Evolution, a Spencer Reid/Criminal Minds Fanfic

Chapter 41. "Where you go..."

Ana crouched beside Reid.

Bescardi seemed frozen in shock, her eyes staring; fixed and sightless. Reid’s head was bowed. Judging by his whitened knuckles, his grip on the doctor must have been painful. Ana extended her own senses. She felt nothing. A blank. She blinked. That had never happened before. It scared her. Especially where Spencer was concerned; she always felt so much around him and from him. He’s completely absorbed in her.

She recalled Spencer telling her in halting, painful sentences about his search for her little sister, Sarah. She knew he hadn’t told her everything, but she hadn’t pushed. She respected his right to privacy and she acknowledged the kindness that made him edit things he thought would only hurt or burden her. But she also remembered how he’d been lost in the nightmare landscape of a serial killer’s mind. His friend, Hotch, had brought him back. As he’d told the story, Ana had marveled at the courage and insight it must have taken for Hotch to pursue Spencer into the unknown. But as she watched him now, and couldn’t feel him in her empathic way, she understood the true reality of the matter.

Hotch hadn’t thought about courage and insight. It had been a simple matter of love.

She covered Spencer’s hands with her own and whispered what she hoped would be a recurring theme throughout their lives…Where you go, I go, too.

And then,…she did.

xxxxxxx

Reid was wrestling with the half-formed images wedged in the tortured recesses of Bescardi’s mind. It took a tremendous amount of effort to pull them forward where he hoped to see them clearly. Time lost all meaning and he began to feel himself weaken as uncertainty and fear encroached on him. It was like being overtaken by shadows, but these shadows had weight and a peculiar suffocating, sapping quality.

Reid really hated Bescardi’s mind.

He thought the unbearably bright spots that blazed at random corners might be intellect or inspiration. She was indeed a brilliant scientist. But the convolutions and inhospitable atmosphere had a sort of debasing effect, rendering her intellect worthless. For a moment, he wondered what it would be like if someone could do a thorough housecleaning in here…wherever ‘here’ was…and allow the brilliance to become the dominant feature. When he realized that kind of rearranging and customization was probably what Bescardi had been hoping to perform on him and Ana on a genetic level, he became even more desperate to finish and escape. He thought he might have entertained thoughts about ‘improving’ a human mind, because Bescardi’s values and ambitions were starting to affect him.

More like infect. He shuddered.

But it was so hard. What he ‘saw’ of Hotch kept slipping away. Reid realized he might have to abandon the search to keep from being damaged by the force of Bescardi’s warped psyche. A frisson of panic rippled through him. He couldn’t leave without knowing Hotch’s fate.

And then something soft and warm cuddled up next to him, and…

Where you go, I go, too…

Ana?

Yes.

How?

Don’t know.

Reid felt her strength, and her astonishment at finding herself beside him, and all the beautiful things he was just beginning to discover about her slid into place. She meshed with him. She increased him. Mentally, he smiled.

Let’s do this and go home. He felt her presence…coalesce and grow warmer…in agreement.

xxxxxxx