The Ghost of Princeton ||Spencer Reid||

triple-checked

CRESSIDA

"What do they want from there? Do you have any specifics?" Morgan asked, immediately sitting up straighter. All I could do was shake my head. "You don't know?"

"Again, I wasn't cooperative. I didn't get all of the information but I can tell you what I pieced together from psychological profiles." I said, he nodded. Suddenly the door opened and Rossi walked back in, the purpose in his step was enough for any thoughts of a word coming out of my mouth to dissipate.

"Okay, first step from here is we will take you to Garcia and you can check the systems to see if they're in." He said, looking at me. "If they are, kick them out. If they aren't, make sure they definitely don't have the ability to." I nodded as I stood from the table. "The rest of us are going to get the briefing room ready with all the information we have, as soon as Dr Stiel is done she will be helping us figure this out." He said.

"Rossi-"

"This was already worked out between Hotch and Strauss. I've triple-checked the paperwork. This is happening." Rossi cut Morgan off, I looked at the still seated Spencer who seemed both in shock and in pain. "Reid, take Stiel to Garcia then meet us back at the briefing room." He said before turning to me. "Garcia will walk you to the briefing room once you've finished, we'll have your consultant badge ready for you when you get back." I nodded as I saw Spencer standing out the corner of my eye.

This was happening. Whether I was ready or not, this was going to happen. We were going to take down the Horsemen.

Morgan and Rossi left the interrogation room and Spencer moved towards me, rubbing his eyes again.

"Are you okay?" I asked, he shook his head. Probably to try and dismiss my question. "I know, I should have told you I was coming-"

"No, you did the right thing. There wasn't any time for you to waste a single minute." He said as he led me into the hallway.

"Okay... it's just, you..." you seemed repulsed by my touch.

"I've just been getting migraines lately and needed to sit down." He said as if he knew what I was thinking. But I guess that was his job, to know what others were thinking.

"Oh, okay."

"And I'm in shock. Seeing you in person." He said.

"Feeling is mutual." I said, reaching out to poke his arm. "It's strange being able to touch you instead of just... watching and talking to you."

"I haven't seen your face since..."

"February 2007. Tobias Henkel." I said, knowing it was still a tough topic for him to talk about. He hid it, but I knew it still hurt. He thought he failed Tobias in some way, but surely he knew that there wasn't anything he could do.

"I've been trying to figure out why since it happened. Why you were speaking to me and then showed me your face for the first and last time." He said, running a hand over his face as a sigh left his lips.

"It's because I saw you fracturing in front of me." I said, looking into his eyes as we stopped in the hallway before Garcia's door. "I knew Gideon had talked to you, but I knew it wasn't enough. Although I couldn't do much, I gave hints to Garcia as to where he was, where you were and... when I couldn't do anymore I ran out of options. I don't know if you remember all of that time or not because of the Dilaudid but..."

"I remember pretty much all of it."

"So you remember throwing out hope that I was watching and asking me to help you? Saying that you didn't want to be alone..." I trailed off, the way he furrowed his brows gave me the answer I needed. "The way you said you didn't want to be alone terrified me. So I started talking to you, and when you started to lose faith that anyone would be able to find you in time, that was when I knew that I had to show you my face. I knew I had to promise-"

"You promised you wouldn't ever let me be alone again. That you weren't going anywhere. That you would stay even if I couldn't see or hear you." He said, I nodded.

"And I did, right up until he took you outside to dig your grave. I didn't know you had made it until... until I could find the hospital records for you. I had a watch for your name in both the emergency department and the..." the coroner's office. "It was more terrifying than any other experience I've had." I said, looking him in the eyes as I spoke.

"But your family, the Horsemen..." He said to counter my words. I crossed my arms over my chest and took a slow step backwards from him.

"You were my shot at getting out, I'd been talking to you for a nearly a year. The Horsemen were never going to kill me, I knew that, so that didn't scare me. My family, yes, I was scared but I think that deep down I knew they were gone, there wasn't the amount of terror I should have felt and when you told me they were gone I almost felt relieved. It meant that the Horsemen couldn't torture them. But I couldn't do a fucking thing to stop your pain, if he would have killed you all I would have been able to do was watch." I took another step away from him before I continued talking.

"That terrified me, that I couldn't do anything. I couldn't get a GPS location, an IP, his system was advanced and I did everything I could to trace it all back but I couldn't think straight. Not when I had you broadcasted to me on one screen while I was working on the one next to it and having to listen for footsteps coming down the hallway towards my glorified cell. It terrified me that they might actually kill me if the found out I was trying to help the people I was supposed to be monitoring and finding weaknesses for. That if they did then you would have no one with you while Tobias..." I trailed off and shook my head.

"Cressida, if you were putting yourself in that much danger you shouldn't have been trying to help me." He said, I scoffed and tore my eyes away from his. My hand ran through my hair almost without my control and I flinched at the oily touch of it. And suddenly the feeling of dirt and dried sweat covering my body overtook my senses.

"You don't get it, Reid. Helping you was the first and only positive thing I had a chance to do while they held me prisoner. And if they had killed me maybe they never would have gotten as far." I said, crossing my arms over my chest again and squeezing them against my body.

The clothes on my body had been the clothes I had been stuck in for a week. I had no belongings of my own, and they regulated the clothes I wore. I got a change of clothes once a week, and unfortunately they were supposed to swap my clothes today. It was also the one day a week where I was able to take a shower. The lack of personal hygiene was probably second to the starvation. It made me feel like an animal instead of a person, being dictated to when I could have clean clothes and bathe.

It was another thing they withheld when they kept food from me.

It continuously made me feel inferior, exactly how I felt now as Spencer looked at me with furrowed brows.

"We have lockers here, with showers. And we all keep go-bags so maybe Seaver will have a change of clothes that you can borrow, or Emily." He said, I nodded slowly. "Would you like that? I'm not saying that you're disgusting or anything, it's just-"

"No, I know. But yes. That would male me feel a bit more human again." I said, he nodded.

"And uh..." He looked at his watch. "You came pretty much dead on lunch so I'll get you a serving of whatever we get today. Okay?" He said like the mention of food was for everyone and not just for me. I nodded as I bit back more tears. I couldn't cry again, not in front of him. "Garcia will be in there do you want me to go in with you?" He asked but I shook my head.

"No, I'll be okay." I said, he nodded.

"I'll see you when you join us in the briefing room, and I'll have food ready for you." He said.

"Thank you... for everything, Spencer." Before he could respond I walked through the door and closed it behind me. Letting out a slow breath I walked into Garcia's office, filled with computers and trinkets galore.

It felt welcoming.