Derek remembered so clearly, it was like a film strip in his mind, the last time he ever spoke to Spencer Reid. Emily had come over to visit from London and they were getting together with Penelope and JJ to watch the game at his apartment. Spencer was supposed to show up, but he called him an hour into the night as Derek was getting everyone an extra round of beers and buffalo wings.

"I'm sorry Morgan...uh...I ate something...uh...funny...for lunch...I don't think the meat in the sandwich I bought today was cooked enough, and I don't want to give you graphic details but..."

"Yeah yeah, say no more, say no more," the other man laughed into the receiver, as he heard the girls begin to jokingly bicker about something from the other room.

"I'll see you later, kid. Look after yourself," he said and Spencer mumbled something indistinct before hanging up again.

He'd walked back into the lounge-room, grinning as he passed the three women their drinks, placing the buffalo wings down at the coffee table. Garcia had just recently dyed her hair again and when Emily had turned up at the start of the night, he had jokingly nicknamed them the Powerpuff Girls.

"What are you kids fighting about now?" he asked as JJ reached for another buffalo wing. Penelope turned to him, giggling.

"Emily changed the channel by accident, cause she's completely hammered..." she explained as the other two burst into fresh peals of laughter. "There's some court case on the news and we can't remember the name of...uh...y'know...that city where everything bad happens?"

"Baby girl, there's about a million cities that fit that description..."

"Yeah but we can't remember what it's called!" JJ wailed, and they burst into hysterical laughter again. Derek couldn't help but join in as balanced his beer and buffalo wings in his hand, walking closer.

"To be honest, I think you're all hammered," he said and as he tried to sit down, he tripped over the coffee table and nearly fell over, before he found his feet again. This sent the three women howling.

"Pot calling the kettle black, Morgan?" Emily crowed as he sat back down at the couch, grinning sheepishly. They quickly became completely involved in the game, their previous conversation completely forgotten.

It'd all been so normal.

Years later, he'd strain to remember that little murmur Spencer had said down the phone, before hanging up again.

Trying so hard to remember it.

Needing to remember it.

But he never quite could.

The following Monday when he showed up at work, Hotch had taken them all into his office, his face solemn and drawn. Everyone had noticed immediately that Reid wasn't around. They'd each called him separately, trying to get a hold of him, but he wouldn't answer his phone.

"As we've all noticed, we're missing a member of our team today," Hotch said shortly as they gathered around his desk. "Spencer has returned to Vegas. His mother...passed away on Friday night."

Garcia's eyes widened with shock and sympathetic noises passed around the group.

"Understandably, he'll be taking a little time off. I'm sure we can cope without our resident genius for a few weeks," Hotch told them and everyone else nodded. He dismissed them and they all started exiting the office again, exchanging concerned looks with each other and whispering words of empathy.

Diana Reid had died exactly ten months after Maeve Donavon had been murdered.

Spencer never came back from Vegas.

Three months had gone by without even a word from him.

They rang and texted, left voice messages, knocked at his apartment door. They called him constantly.

All they got was a message that his phone was out of service.

Morgan took a bit of time off to fly up to Vegas. He asked the people at the hotel Reid had stayed in, asked the few people who had shown up to the funeral, met up with the people at his mother's hospital. They reported nothing unusual. That he'd been understandably grief-stricken, hadn't really talked a lot and stayed in his room most of the time, before checking out immediately after the funeral service was over.

It had been four months.

They'd gotten a warrant and Morgan had kicked his door down. What they saw made JJ turn away, bursting into tears and a dead weight press down, hot and heavy against Derek's chest.

The apartment had been picked clean.

All his furniture was gone.

All his books.

Every last trace of him.

The only thing that came of investigating this further, was what they had gotten off the landlady; how she was planning on selling the apartment soon. When asked why, she told them "the previous owner evaporated into thin air, without a word of notice. What else am I supposed to do?"

It had been six months since he'd disappeared.

After searching up and down the country for him, they'd found something in the middle of a lonely old highway, down a long, desert plain; a burnt out car that had been the same type as Spencer's, surrounded by the ashy remains of a bonfire. After spending days nit-picking through the ashes, they found the tattered remains of a photo.

They could just make out Reid's smiling face, with what looked like Hotch and JJ on either side of him. It had been a bigger photo once, of all of the team, back when Gideon and Elle had been with them.

They'd taken it on Christmas.

Garcia rang them and her voice sounded empty...hollow.

"It's...it's impossible to track him. Either he's been hitch-hiking, gotten rid of all his credit cards, become homeless...once he got back home from Vegas, drove off and hit the nearest gas station to you, his trail goes completely cold."

The nearest gas station was thirty minutes away. When they'd stopped by and shown everyone there a photo of Spencer, they couldn't remember him at all.

Almost like he'd never been there at all.

It had been two years since he'd disappeared.

It wasn't like when other team members had left - there was no note, no reason, no nothing. He was just gone.

Morgan remembered crying with Garcia, Blake and JJ in the bullpen, crying with Prentiss over the phone. He remembered sitting with Rossi and Hotch at a bar in complete silence, bunched together on cushy seats, just sitting in silence, they're barely touched drinks clenched in their hands.

He remembered all the different people at the FBI who had tried to find him. How many times they tried to find a trail, tried to find any trace of him, only to come back with the same news over and over again.

The same news that battered him in the chest more painfully every time it happened.

They went back to every residence he'd ever lived in, to his old childhood home, to the crummy apartments he'd rented over the years.

They searched through the remains of his elementary school, which had burnt down ages ago. They checked out his high-school and the college he'd attended.

They went to the shed where Tobias Hankel had tortured him. They went to Gideon's cabin. They visited the graveyard where Maeve was buried - checked Vegas where Diana Reid was as well. Returned again and again to the place where Maeve had died.

It was exhausting.

And nothing ever came of it.

But as Rossi had bluntly put it, "he's a smart man. If he doesn't want people to find him, he'll make sure they don't."

They had to get a replacement for him and to Derek, that hurt almost the most. Kirk Van de Velde was an older man, probably around Hotch's age. An alpha male with grey, curled hair and a hard, lined face. he was serious and driven, a guy of no-nonsense. Derek knew he was being bitter, but he'd disliked him from the start.

Hotch had told him, "we both know you don't like Van de Velde because he isn't Reid. But we all need to move past this Morgan, or we're never going to work properly as a team."

Although Morgan had edged off on the hostility, they could never quite get to that stage of unwinding after a case and joking around with each other, meeting up for drinks, or having a get-together on a day off.

Everything was all harsh and cold and uber-professional now, twenty-four fucking seven.

Nothing casual, nothing easy.

Spencer Reid had been the heart of the BAU.

And Van de Velde always seemed to have a sense of awkwardness about him, like he knew how much this group of people had suffered. How inside they were broken.

How he had replaced someone they had all loved like a little brother.

They never quite felt like a family again.

It had been five years since Spencer Reid had disappeared.

Morgan was at a bar on his own, drinking something way too strong, feeling far too tired. He was investigating a case that was going absolutely nowhere and he remembered back when he was younger, one bad case wouldn't ever affect him to the point where he'd go to a bar and drink.

He remembered back when he was younger, he'd talk to someone on the team about it.

It seemed all he ever did nowadays was reminisce.

As he looked up from staring into his glass, he instinctively searched the bar, eyes pinpointing on every chatting person, every face in the crowd.

An old habit by now.

His heart would miss a beat whenever he saw a lanky figure with shaggy, brown hair somewhere in the distance...

He'd look again and realize he was wrong.

Again.

He looked back down at his glass.

His bones ached so much more then they'd ever had. He always felt so worn out.

He was staring down into the amber liquid, completely lost in his own thoughts. He barely noticed someone pulling up a chair beside him.

"Excuse me?" he looked up with a slight jump. There was a woman looking over at him concernedly. He blinked up at her, vaguely confused.

"You look like you have the whole world on your shoulders," she said with a small smile, and he allowed himself an even smaller smile back.

"The next drink is on me," she told him, voice firm and clearly telling him not to mess with her. "You look like you need it."

He felt the ends of his lips curl up.

"Yes ma'am," he replied teasingly and she grinned.

He focused on her, through the honeyed darkness of the bar. On a closer look, he could see that her curly hair was so brown it was almost black and so long it nearly reached her waist. She had big emerald colored earrings, that made her sea-blue eyes shine bright. Her skin was as pale as ivory and she had an easy, comforting smile.

Their drinks came around and he took it graciously, curling a hand around the glass. She took a sip, wincing as she swallowed.

"I'm Donna by the way," she introduced herself, tucking a slither of her curly hair out of her face.

"Derek," he replied. "Thanks for the drink - just had a rough day at work, y'know..."

She nodded at him, face crinkled up in sympathy.

"Aren't they the worst?"

"Tell me about it," he replied, rolling his eyes and taking another sip from his drink.

"I don't think I need to, you like you know perfectly well yourself," she quipped back and he grinned into his drink. She twirled the liquid around in her cup, looking down at it with a hint of distaste on her face. She obviously wasn't a fan of the stronger stuff, but she didn't bring it up.

"So what dya do?" she asked casually. He braced himself for the usual response whenever he told people he worked at the FBI; first the surprise, then the disbelief and then the demand to see his badge. It happened every time he mentioned what he did for a living.

"Uh..." he cleared out his throat as she quirked an eyebrow at him. "I'm with the FBI..."

Just as he predicted, her eyes widened with shock.

"Really?" she exclaimed immediately, before going slightly red. "Oh jeez...sorry, you must always get that...wait, wait...rough day at work? Should I be worried?"

He laughed despite himself and her face split into that easy grin, raising dimples high in her cheeks. He couldn't help but feel something small, flittering in his chest.

"No need to worry...I'll protect you," he grinned and she laughed again.

"Hey, I can protect myself perfectly fine thank you very much," she shot back and the smile on his face was the easiest, broadest one he'd had in a very long time.

"Oh I can tell that..."

She sent him an over-the-top-intimidating look, scrunching up her face.

"You better believe it, buddy."

He put up his hands in mock-surrender and she relaxed her face again, giggling.

"I think you're the first person who hasn't demanded to see my badge," he remarked and she shrugged, taking another wary sip of her drink, shuddering as it went down.

"Oh yeah," she replied casually, pushing at the persistent curl of hair out of her face again. "The FBI came to my work yesterday, so I figured you weren't lying. This big guy who never smiled and a lady with blonde hair?"

He nodded, downing the rest of his drink.

"Yeah, they work with me - they had to talk to a student at a high school the other day...you must work there?"

"Yep," she nodded, dimples showing up again as she smiled. "I'm an English teacher."

She shook her head slightly, breaking eye contact, a look of sadness crossing her face.

"Poor girl..." she murmured. "It was her Mother wasn't it? I saw it on the news, she had those awful scars..."

"Yeah...yeah..." he said. He started playing with his empty cup and a silence settled over them.

When she spoke again, her voice sounded a lot softer then before.

"I know you probably don't want to talk about it," she raised her glass. "Here's to better times?"

He motioned at his empty glass apologetically and she immediately tipped some of her drink into his cup. He couldn't help but smile, knowing she was probably very thankful to get rid of the alcohol by any means possible.

He lifted up his glass.

"To better times," they said and clinked their drinks together, taking a sip. Her face pulled up like she was drinking turpentine, before she shook her head slightly and smiled at him again.

The soft tweak in his chest seemed to grow stronger.

They talked, for what seemed like hours, getting steadily more drunk and giggly.

By the end of the night, they'd exchanged numbers and had promised each other to catch up for coffee when they both had the time.

As he watched her leave, he felt something warm and heavy in his stomach, that he didn't think had anything to do with the alcohol he'd ingested over the past few hours at all.

It had been six years since Doctor Spencer Reid, had gone missing.

He still saw his face in the crowds when he walked down the street, only to blink and find him gone again.

Belladonna Branagan had moved in with him a month earlier.

"Don't call me Belladonna!" she growled as he passed her a cup of coffee, half-grinning, half-scowling at him over her English papers. "My parents were doped up hippies and I don't want to be reminded of it!"

He grinned back at her, sipping at his own cup of coffee, before loafing back over to the lounge room of their shared apartment. He flopped down on his couch as their dog, Bale, jumped up to join them. He'd buried Clooney years ago.

He was feeling way too old - he'd turned fifty a few weeks ago and he was having the usual crisis that Donna had described as the, "oh-shit-I'm-half-a-century-old-phase."

Seven years ago, he was forty-three. Spencer had been thirty.

He'd made vague plans with Penelope about what stupid present to get him when he turned thirty-one. They'd had some silly prank gift in mind, that would've made their Doctor roll his eyes and giggle as the two diabolical masterminds crowed about him with glee.

He couldn't remember what that present was anymore.

He could still remember what the other man had been wearing the last day he'd ever seen him. A grey shirt with tiny blue spots, a maroon tie with his usual sweater vest over the top. His hair had been a mess as he said a quick goodbye, gathering up his papers and sliding them into his carrier bag, before swinging it over his shoulder, hurrying off.

He'd had such a frantic walk sometimes...

His fingers were always twitching, he was always saying something interesting, his eyes were always so big and curious.

He was so full of life.

The middle-aged man swallowed roughly around the growing lump in his throat, feeling the coffee cup turn luke-warm in his hands

Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, the faces of all the people he didn't save, all the filthy phrases hissed in his ear when he was a little boy, of Spencer Reid with his face all white and his eyes two black holes, whispering over and over again something too faint, something too indistinct, and he needed to hear what he'd said, what had he told him, what had he said to him before he disappeared?

But he could never quite hear it.

And when he opened his eyes, with Donna comforting him quietly through the darkness, he could hear that little murmur ringing in his head. On repeat, on repeat, on repeat...

It had been seven years since Doctor Spencer Reid, Supervisory Special Agent with the BAU, had vanished into thin air.

There wasn't much left of the old team. A new batch of more excited, more passionate kids had come in and the old team were too worn down, too tired, happily letting them take over. Alex Blake still stayed around - she was lucky enough to have built a friendship with Reid, but not one as deep as her other team mates. Kirk Van de Velde took over Hotch's old place and was running the new team now. He thrived much better with these fresh young agents - he wasn't just some lackluster replacement to them, like he'd been to the old team.

JJ had followed in Rossi's footsteps and become an author. She spent more time at home now, to raise her two boys and her little girl.

The memory of Henry as a toddler flashed through his mind, sobbing into his mother's chest, a couple of months after Reid had disappeared.

"Where Uncle Spencer? Where Uncle Spencer?" he'd screamed, completely hysterical, until JJ had to take him away again, trying to get him to calm down. She'd glanced over at her team-mates in silent apology, tears streaming uncontrollably down her cheeks.

He pushed the memory to the back of his mind again - too raw, too painful.

Hotch had reunited with Beth. They only had Jack with them still, but that was enough. He taught law at a local college and was quietly thankful that he had a more structured schedule now, so he get to his family on time.

Rossi spent a lot more time with his own family. Garcia had a baby on the way and still worked at the FBI, although she had transferred to the Cyber Crime Unit. Prentiss came to visit from London every now and again - she and Rossi were the two remaining singletons of the group, but it didn't really bother them anymore.

Morgan was still with the FBI as well, but he had transferred to the White Collar Crime division. It was still hard work and he thrived off that, but he didn't find it as emotionally draining as hunting down serial killers.

He constantly wondered what Spencer was doing nowadays. Whether he had a family, a wife or children. He'd been great with Henry...he would've made a fantastic Dad.

He was shaken out of his thoughts, as Donna sauntered over to sit next to him on the couch. He put an arm around her immediately and she snuggled in close, sipping at a cup of hot-chocolate. They'd gathered quite a collection of novelty cups and glasses, the few years they'd been together and the kitchen cupboards were literally overflowing with them. Right now she was drinking from a Mad Max cup she'd found somewhere online.

"Benson Yarra got a nose bleed today," she mentioned casually as she turned on the TV. A sitcom was playing and they watched it disinterestedly for a few minutes before she began to channel surf.

"Yeah?"

"I feel sorry for him. His parents are awful...total bigots. He picks on Simon Xie because of it. Well Simon punched him out today and now they're both in trouble."

"It's a real shame how some kids are brought up," Morgan agreed, as she pushed her hair out of her face, falling onto a news channel.

"Oh," she gasped slightly and Morgan blinked as he focused on the screen. He got a brief glimpse of the image; a dark, gloomy city street filled with marching, grim faced police. Then a shot of a panicking, terrified mob of people in alleyways and grimy streets, before the camera crashed down and cut to black.

"We'll keep you updated on these events as they progress," said the grey haired newsreader, and Donna made a noise of frustration. She started clicking her fingers together, trying to remember something.

"Oh c'mon, c'mon...it's that city where everything bad happens...y'know that thing that just happened a little while ago...the billionaire guy that was gone for ages and then he came back...y'know that one...c'mon...goddammit..."

He squeezed her tighter to his side, leaning over to take the remote, switching it off.

"Don't worry about it, gorgeous," he soothed her, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. She sighed and rolled her eyes at him, but a red tinge was creeping over her skin. He grinned and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead

"I'm tired...let's go to bed," he said and she scrunched up her nose at him in response.

"How can I say no to you Dee?" she quipped. He chuckled back as they got up from the couch again, as they started to get ready for bed.

It had been seven years and six months since his old friend had gone missing.

He'd been lying in bed, half-asleep, the first light of dawn glowing faintly through his window, when his phone bleeped loudly from his beside table. Donna stirred next to him, mumbling and groaning with tiredness. He picked the phone up, stifling a yawn.

"Derek Morgan speaking."

"Hello?" he heard Penelope's frantic voice whisper into his ear. He felt something stir deep down in his chest.

"What's wrong? What's happening?" he asked immediately, feeling a cold dread grip his body. Had someone died?

"You've gotta come over...right now Morgan...I've got something, I've found something..."

"Found what Garcia? What's going on?" he hissed back just as desperately. There was a sharp, little wheeze from the other line as the woman tried to get herself under control, tried to find her breath.

"Morgan...you have to come over...I...I think I've found something on Reid."

He wrote a note explaining what was happening to Donna, got dressed so quickly, his hands fumbled at his clothes and nearly raced out the door and into the corridor. When he got into his car, he noticed his hands shaking uncontrollably at the wheel.

He took a deep, shuddering breath in.

Garcia was fifteen minutes away, in a little sunny bungalow where she lived with her partner, a skinny bespectacled guy called Gav.

He tried to breathe evenly as he drove up her flower-lined driveway. When he looked up, he saw her staring out the front window at him. She silently beckoned for him to hurry, before running off again.

He was slamming the door shut, shivering in the early morning air when she opened up the front door, swaddled in a pink dressing gown and Bugs Bunny slippers.

"Come in, come in," she hissed, turning on her heel and nearly sprinting back inside. He followed her, feeling his heart in his throat and his head race so hard it made him dizzy. This was a dream - some crazy, messed up dream...

As he strode after her through her warm, cozy house and into the den, he felt like he was following her down the rabbit hole. He could barely breathe - he was doused in cold sweat that prickled all over his body.

This couldn't be happening.

Not after all these years.

He sat down on a wheelie chair beside her computer desk - covered in colorful trinkets and fluffy toys, just like he remembered her office, back in the days of the BAU. Her hands were shaking just as badly as his were. Turning to him, he saw that her face had gone totally white, like she'd been drowned in an ocean of bleach.

"Morgan...do you remember Nathan Harris?"

He stared at her for a few seconds, mind twitching at the slightly familiar name. He struggled to remember, pinching at the bridge of his nose in concentration.

"He...sounds like he could've been...some UNSUB? I - I can't remember..."

But the woman was nodding, clicking on something on her keyboard.

A photo of a young man with a shaved head and a pale, skull-like face stared up at him. Again, he felt his memory stirring.

"He came to us...ages and ages ago," she was explaining in a hushed voice. "He was terrified about turning into a serial killer and he...attached onto Reid."

His stomach did something funny. He swallowed as the blank, tired eyes bored into his from the computer screen. The faint memories of a young teen with acne scars, a nervous smile and curly hair blinked away in his mind.

"I didn't pick this up straight away. He...he...was let out of his institution around eight years ago and he had his name changed to Nathan Fields. So he was seeing heaps of different health specialists and psychologists and he was working at a supermarket as a cashier...you know, easing into making a life for himself outside the institution. There were heaps of people checking on him, making sure he was alright...he had heaps of means of support. But then one day...he just disappeared. Into thin air."

Morgan felt something cold trickle through his veins.

"Seven years ago?" he asked slowly.

She nodded. He swallowed again and fought back the shiver that was working it's way up his spine.

"So I managed to track down where he went, immediately after he disappeared..." she clicked at something on the computer and a map of the US showed up. She zoomed in close and scrolled down, before pointing her fluffy pen at the screen.

"Going by the motels he checked into and the gas stations he stopped by, Nathan followed the exact same route as Reid did before his trail went cold, a day after Reid took it. Except with Nathan, his route continues all the way past the border."

Her voice was growing frantic as they both unconsciously moved in closer towards the screen.

"But I noticed something. See...see...the days following his visit to this gas station," she tapped at a point on the map; "which is an hour away from the last one Reid stopped in and remember that..."

"...it was a hot day, so the car had to work harder and would've needed more gas..."

"Exactly. Well Nathan right - before he hit that gas station exactly an hour away from the last one Reid stopped at - whenever he stayed in a motel, he got a room with one bed. But...after he hit that particular gas station, he always got a room with two beds."

She stared at him significantly and he furrowed his brow, mind clicking over. It felt like his brain was whizzing and whirling inside his skull, putting everything together like a horrible jigsaw puzzle.

"You're telling me he met up with Nathan Harris and then went over the border?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying...but...but...there's more, just listen to me..."

Morgan shifted in closer, as her hands shook like leaves at the keyboard.

"...four years ago, Harris reemerged again, and he...he rented this place in this little desert town right on the border and he bought himself a cheap laptop and...and..."

She swallowed roughly, slightly out of breath. When she had gotten herself under control again, she turned around to look at him. Her eyes had become big and wide.

"He was ordering...ordering...Morgan, he was ordering Dilaudid online."

The man blinked, staring at her.

It took him a few seconds for the information to hit home.

His breath rattled in his lungs, exhaling shakily.

No.

Spencer was strong. They could've helped him, why didn't he let them help him...

"...and...and...there's more stuff...more stuff here..."

He forced himself to calm down, turning his attention back to Garcia and what she was saying, before he could let his emotions overflow from him.

She clicked on something and a news article jumped up onto the screen. It was written in a foreign language and the photo showed a crying woman of Latino descent, being comforted by a few grim-faced men.

"Do you remember that case we had around two years ago?"

She clicked on another tab and his stomach did an uncomfortable lurch. On the screen was a young Latino teen, lying in the gutter surrounded by yellow police tape. Garcia zoomed in and the sick feeling in his chest grew stronger.

The boy's face was gruesomely carved up, like a Christmas turkey. On either side of his lips curved a jagged, bleeding smile. So wide, it nearly reached his ears.

Garcia clicked another photo. An overweight man flashed across the screen, again from Latino heritage. He had the exact same scars slashed across his mouth.

"One was a gang member, but the other was just a high-school student."

Morgan nodded, swallowing back the feeling of sickness surging within him. He didn't like where all of this was going.

"Four months later, Harris reappeared in the US. Around the exact time, the murders started happening around here..."

He remembered the case clearly. It was when he had first met Donna.

There hadn't been enough evidence and it hadn't been clear whether the attacks were the work of just one UNSUB, or different gangs picking up on a trend.

The victims hadn't had anything in common - they came from every different class, race and gender imaginable. And every murder was spread thin around the country, happening only a burst at a time, before melting away just as quickly again. By the time they were investigating one city's attacks, the murderer was already long gone.

They had to give it up, as the attacks started growing further and further apart in time.

He focused again on the woman, who was pointing at something on the screen.

"Now look at this...there was a robbery six years ago at a chemist - in that desert town I was talking about before. Someone set a car on fire outside the place, while another guy went in and stole..." she paused to bring up a small list of items, before rattling them off;

"A tourniquet, cotton-balls, disinfectant, bandages and green hair dye. No-one was hurt, but everyone was distracted with the car and they didn't notice the robbery until it was too late."

She jabbed at the grainy, security footage where the chemist customers were running frantically out of the door and into the street. She zoomed in on a figure in a black hoodie, running behind the crowd, the front of his shirt bulging suspiciously, his face turned away from the camera. She scrolled up and zoomed in even closer to a faint, blurry shape in the store window. It appeared only for half a second, before vanishing from sight again.

She went back second by second, until the figure was in the window again. He suddenly realized how eagle-eyed you had to be to notice it, the figure suddenly there and then gone in a blink. Penelope must've poured over this evidence for hours to have found it.

The figure was blurry, but Morgan could just make it out. A man - in a heavy coat with chin-length hair. Garcia zoomed in even closer and they stared as the head-shot filled up the screen.

The whole world seemed to scream to a halt around him.

All his breath seemed to have left his lungs.

It was him.

Unmistakably him.

Reid's face was drawn and his eyes seemed more dark and sunken then he'd ever remembered them before. His head stuck forward and his shoulders were hunched over, making him look like some kind've starving vulture.

He looked nothing like the fresh-faced young man he'd once been.

"What the hell is that?" Morgan said suddenly, pointing at the screen. Penelope readjusted her glasses and looked closer.

There were scars on his cheeks, curving up into a ghastly, bloody smile.

"Oh God..." Garcia whispered in horror.

"Do you think..." Morgan said slowly, after they had both recovered from the shock. "Do you think Harris has...forced Reid to accompany him on his murder spree in exchange for drugs?"

He felt the old, protective feelings stir within him. That brotherly tug in his chest, that made him want to reach into the computer and take him away somewhere safe.

But Garcia's eyes were big and wide, filled with an unshed terror he hadn't seen in her for years.

She clicked on another tab and an audio file came up.

"I got Van de Velde to give me this...it's a case that went nowhere from two years ago..."

She pressed play and there was a brief crackling pause, before the voices started speaking.

"911, what's you're emergency?"

There was frantic, heavy breathing from the other line and what sounded like muffled crying.

"Please..." a voice whispered and Morgan felt a cold chill go through him. "He's gonna kill me, he's gonna kill me, you have to stop him, please, please, please, I don't wanna die..."

"Sir? Sir, who's going to kill you? Where are you? Can you tell me where you are?"

"...I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, please, I want my Mom, where's my Mom, I don't wanna die..."

"Sir, can you take some deep breaths for me? Now...you're going to need to tell me what's going on, okay...?"

There was a sudden creaking noise from somewhere nearby and the panicked breathing went out of control.

"Oh God, oh God, he's here, he's here..."

There was some dark, murmured words that Morgan couldn't make out and the operator was calling frantically into the phone. Then suddenly...there was a resounding crash, a long, spine-tingling scream of pure, primal terror and then...something that chilled the man down to his very bones;

A string of maniacal, screeching laughter.

And then the phone was cut off.

Garcia's eyes were brimming with tears and Morgan felt numb. Every sound, smell and color was too strong, making his mind bubble over with horror and his entire body shake. He felt the bile surge in his throat and every breath was wracked and painful.

There was a deep, animalistic fear rising deep within him. Growing stronger and stronger by the second, until he thought it might just burst.

"G-Garcia...Garcia..." he whispered, voice shaking so hard he could barely get the words out.

"That...that wasn't Reid on the phone with the operator...it didn't sound anything like him..."

When she spoke again, her voice was shaking just as badly as his was.

"Morgan...that was Nathan Harris."

Nathan Harris?

No.

No.

It was impossible.

This was some crazy, ridiculous nightmare.

He could feel the entire world creaking around him, two seconds away from tumbling down around his feet. This couldn't be real...this had to be some horrible dream, it had to be...

"If Nathan Harris rang 911 then...then...who was the laughing man? It...it can't be Reid...it can't be...it's...it's not...Penelope tell me it isn't, okay?"

Garcia looked down at her hands and her glasses were steamed over with tears. She started tapping away at the computer again, breath hitching with silent sobs.

"An...an hour after the call, N-Nathan...Nathan turned himself into the police. He...he admitted to the stabbing of six prostitutes in M-Mexico City and Las Vegas. But...but he didn't talk about any accomplice, although they tried to ask him who that laughing man was, when he called 911. He refused to tell them anything..."

Like he'd never even been there...

"...and - and...last year, he finally went to court...in that...oh I forget the name...in that city...you know, the one where everything bad happens...um..."

She was straining to remember, biting at her trembling lip.

"Y'know...they had those mad riots six months ago...and that crazy guy running around in a cape and...and the Government have tried to clean it up so many times and it never works...it's like...the worst place in America..."

Morgan stared at her as she raked through her mind to try and figure out the name of the place.

"Anyway, it's not important...look, Harris was certified insane and taken to an asylum by this psycho Doctor...what was his name again..." she tapped at her chin for a few seconds, before it came to her.

"It was this guy called Jonathan Crane, who turned out to be completely messed up in the head."

She was getting on a roll now, her breathing heavy and panicked.

"And...and...in the riots, a heap of the inmates broke out and because that city is so awful, barely any of them have been recaptured..."

"What happened to Nathan?"

Garcia paused, pushing her glasses up her nose. He had never seen her look so scared before. She was shaking uncontrollably and each one of her breaths was thick and labored. She swallowed, clenching her eyes shut before she clicked on another tab.

And seeing it was like a gust of wind against the stack of cards, everything finally crumbling down around him.

Nathan's dead body, lying spread-eagled in an alleyway.

With a wide smile sliced into his face.

Eyes were bulging, in a look of pure horror.

He had died terrified, like a lamb in the slaughterhouse.

"Morgan..." she said slowly and it sounded like she was saying it underwater, her voice faint and faraway. He forced himself to tear his eyes away from the picture of the dead man, feeling his throat tighten and something almost deafening ring in his ears.

"Morgan...have you...have you been watching the news lately?"

She got out of her research, her face so white, she looked like a ghost and got onto Google. In the search bar, she typed in the words GCN, and clicked on the first result.

The headline on the page screamed in bold black letters;

Disturbing New Footage From Madman Terrorist, Threatening Lives of Gotham Citizens.

And under that, was a video.

Garcia clicked on it.

A chubby, sniveling man appeared on the screen, tied to a chair. He seemed to be in some walk-in freezer, with slabs of meat hanging on hooks behind him.

Suddenly a nasally, giggling voice started up from behind the shaking camera;

"Tell them your name."

The man stared down at the floor as he replied shakily; "Brian..."

"Are you the real Batman?"

Morgan glanced at Penelope in utter confusion. What the hell was going on?

"Noo..." the man mumbled, trembling, close to tears.

"No?" the voice cooed.

"Then why do you dress like him?

"Garcia, what the hell is this?" Morgan nearly shouted, feeling the panic exploding out of him all at once. This wasn't real...this was ridiculous, this was just utter insanity, this couldn't be happening, it couldn't...

He watched on, his vision blurring, as after a few seconds, the camera turned around.

"Garcia...Garcia, it isn't him...it can't be him..." he half yelled and Penelope started to cry, big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

There was a ghastly white painted face filling up the screen, with messy, mid-length hair, dyed a filthy, blotchy green.

And his mouth was torn up into a wide, infected smile...

And through the glaze of sadistic glee in his eyes...Morgan thought he saw something horribly, repulsively familiar.

Feeling like everything inside him was screaming, he finally allowed himself to tune in to what the psychopath on the screen was saying.

"...oh and everyday he doesn't, people will die," he licked his lips, and the memory came to him so hard, of Spencer Reid bending over a map in the BAU Conference Room, face furrowed in concentration, tongue slipping out to swipe over his lips.

It couldn't be him, it couldn't be him, it couldn't...

"Starting tonight," the man finished before pursing his lips up at the camera. "I'm a man of my word..."

The screeching, hysterical laughter shrieked through the speakers and orange teeth filled the screen. Identical to the laughter from the 911 call. And there were cries of terror in the background as the camera went to static.

And before he knew it, he was stumbling to his feet, needing to get away, needing to get away...and his head spun and waves of sickness crashed over him and he was lurching, panting, heaving for the door, lumbering like a drunken rhino down the corridor, before he pushed himself into the bathroom.

Reid's face was all he could see...his doe-eyed, nervous, smiling face with his twitching hands and floppy hair.

And the vomit exploded deep down from the depths of his stomach, splattering all over the shiny, white porcelain of the toilet bowl as the hopeless sobs tore through his body.

...

...

...

"Hello, Reagan National Airport..."

"Hello, hi...oh, uh...sorry for interrupting, sorry...uh...good morning. Um...um...I need to catch the first plane to Gotham City, New York and I was wondering if I could arrange the flight details over the phone...?"

"Unfortunately sir, no-one is allowed into Gotham City at this time because of the da..."

"Oh no, you don't understand, just...just hear me out...I have a friend in Gotham...he's like...he's like my little brother and...and I need to get him...need to get him out of there...I have to, please ma'am...you understand what I'm saying right?"

"Sir, I am very, very sorry but flights into Gotham hold too much of a risk right now and we have strict orders from the Federal Government, not to let anyone in..."

"Look, I'm with the FBI...Senior Agent Derek Morgan at the White Collar Crime division, I used to work at the BAU, I used to be with the police, please you have to let me in...he's going to get himself killed, you don't understand..."

"Sir, I suggest you talk with one of your superiors or ring the Gotham City Police Department, who may be in a better position to help you..."

"...oh - okay...okay, okay...I can do that...I can do that...I'm sorry...I'm just...I'm sorry..."

"It's alright sir. I'll keep you're friend in my prayers."

"Th-thank-you..thank-you..."

"Morgan, they've sent so many fucking feds into Gotham over the years, ain't done it any good, okay? It's a shithole. Anyway, the cops over there hate the FBI...they'd rather get terrorized by some freak in makeup then call us in to help. It's beyond our jurisdiction. Leave it be..."

"Do you remember Doctor Spencer Reid?"

"Oh what are you on about now?"

"Do you remember Doctor Spencer Reid?"

"The little twit in the cardigan, went missing like Gideon?"

"Gideon left a note. Reid disappeared into thin air..."

"I knew the minute I saw him the BAU would break him in two..."

"I think it's him."

"Eh?"

"That psychopath in Gotham...it's him. It's Reid. And I can help him."

"Morgan...listen to me. Gotham's. Fucked. Up. One, they ain't gonna let you in. Two, they ain't gonna let you touch their criminal, they are hellbent and dealing with their crooks in their own fucked up way and three, when they catch this goddamned guy, it don't matter if it's Spencer Reid or fucking Ghandi, they are going to strap him to the chair and fry him up like bacon. Okay?"

"I need to get to Reid...!"

"Reid. Disappeared. Everything on him disappeared. We looked for him. We looked everywhere in the country for him. Nothing showed up. Morgan, he probably died years ago."

"I know it's him...he's lost his fucking mind, I have to help him..."

"Morgan I'm not gonna tell you again. Gotham won't let you in...how many times have you rung them anyway?"

"...for a week straight now."

"What did they do? Didn't give you the light of day? And anyway, I heard on the news that other whack-job caught your guy a few hours ago..."

"What?"

"The freak was trying to kill some politician and that maniac in the cape got him."

"They got him?"

"Yeah... You've been ringing them lately?"

"I rang earlier, it just went through..."

"Maybe if you ring 'em now, you can talk to the freak or whatever...I dunno...they're probably really busy..."

...

"Morgan?"

...

...

...

"Morg...Morgan? Oh you poor fuckin' bastard."

...

...

...

...

"..."

"Hello, this is Senior Agent Derek Morgan with the FBI, I rang earlier today to enquire about the current state of the situation with the terrorist known as the...wait...uh...hello? This...this is the Major Crimes Unit right?"

"...

...

..."

"Uh...hello?"

"Heelllooo."

"...

...

...

Who is this."

"I'm sorry, nobody at the MCU are in the right position to talk right now...but trust me, they're simply blown away by your call."

"Spencer what have you done...?"

...

...

...

"Spencer? Spencer? Spencer!"

"Derek...baby?"

The man's head cracked up, from where he'd been hunched over the miniature TV set as the woman walked into the room. Donna sat down on the bed, a cup of coffee in her hand which she passed over to him.

They were both silent as they stared down at the static-filled TV screen. She put an arm around him, but he stayed as rigid and blank-eyed as ever.

"Does the rest of the old team know?" she asked gently and he nodded. Garcia had brought everyone else over, to show them what she'd found. She'd even gotten Prentiss on Skype.

Hotch had called the Gotham City Police Department at once and got the same "we don't need your help, we can handle this ourselves" line, that Morgan had received from them before. Rossi had taken the phone and shouted about what a bunch of incompetent idiots they were and they'd hung up immediately.

And then, like clockwork they'd all run into each other at the Ronald Reagen National Airport. Blake had taken time off work to show up and try to help, Prentiss having got off a plane from London. Rossi and Garcia had both been separately hissing to a member of staff, how they had to get on a plane right now goddammit, and Hotch and JJ had been separately chasing after anyone who looked like authority, to try to get them to listen to reason.

Everyone seemed to catch each other's eye at the exact same moment.

And everyone looked too tired, too scared, too desperate, too old.

As if suddenly realizing how pathetic this was...how useless this was...the crowds of people rushing endlessly around them.

Even when they went up to the main desk as a group, they were refused entry onto a plane. Turned away, despite their demands, their pleas, their raised voices.

And they got into their cars, Emily hopping into JJ's and they all drove wordlessly home again.

To start the long, never-ending process of making phone-calls.

"Derek...you need to get some sleep," Donna told him firmly as the man's eyes stayed fixed on the television screen, sipping mindlessly from his coffee cup.

"...maybe...maybe..." he whispered back. "Maybe...we got it wrong. Maybe it isn't him..."

She squeezed him tight and he rested his head on her shoulder, telling himself not to cry, telling himself to be strong.

"They won't let me in..." he said, his voice dull and dead. "They won't let any of us in. They won't let us help him."

"Look," she told him soothingly. "All they need to do right now is catch this guy, whoever he is, make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else. When they catch him, then they'll let you in...you just need to wait. You just need to be patient."

He nodded and clenched his eyes shut, not even caring as she leaned over to turn the TV off.

"Now you need to get some sleep," she said, in that no-negotiating tone she always took on when she got protective.

He let her fuss over him, as he plodded around, getting ready for bed. He brushed his teeth and stripped down to his boxers as she took away his empty coffee cup. Finally they lay together in bed, wrapped up in blankets, just holding each other, just breathing each other's breath.

"Donna?" he whispered through the dark, trying to hold back the emotion that threatened to overflow from him. "You're the best...best thing's that's ever happened to me."

She squeezed his hand tight under the blanket and pushed in closer.

"You too Derek," she said back and her lips brushed against his with every word. "I love you."

"Love you more."

And the warm scent of her hair soothed him into the deepest slumber he'd had, in a very long time.

He watched as more people died on the news and in the papers.

He watched as finally, he got caught for real and was hauled into custody.

He watched his ever trial and court case.

And he watched as the judge sentenced him to death to a standing ovation from the watching crowd and jury.

But when he rang Gotham, they still wouldn't let anyone see him.

Derek wasn't even aware of it...but at this final refusal, he sank deep down into something dark and heavy. A black pit of quick-sand that he couldn't pull himself out of.

Everything hurt too much.

Everything was too difficult.

All he wanted to do was die, so nothing would hurt anymore, make everything easy again.

He was too old. He was too tired.

He couldn't do this anymore.

Donna was like the faint figure at the end of his tunnel. Calling for him, screaming something faint and indecipherable. All he knew was that she was trying to help him...but her voice was too far away and he couldn't make out what she was saying. Couldn't run to her. Could only sink down further and further into the dark.

His dreams were filled with dead children mumbling something he couldn't make out, over and over again as their cheeks dripped with blood. Of a sad-eyed ghost with messy brown hair and caramel eyes walking towards him, just like he'd remembered him from so long ago, just like he used to be...before he opened his mouth and through his broken black teeth came the demonic, shrieking laughter that would shake him awake in a cold sweat, heaving and shuddering and sobbing.

The other team members might've tried to help, they might've been in the same state he was in - he didn't know. Couldn't remember.

He didn't know anything.

Nothing mattered anymore.

And so the weeks and the months and the years went by.

And inside, he died more and more everyday.

It had been five years since the SWAT team had found Spencer Reid hanging upside down from a building, when one day Derek Morgan got a phone-call. The man had been lying in bed, scratching his dog's belly mindlessly and staring up at the ceiling for what seemed like forever, when the phone rang at his bedside table.

"Agent Morgan?" a calm, professional voice said from the other end of the line.

"Speaking," he replied flatly.

"Good evening. I am Victor Zerhard, warden at Blackgate Petitionary."

It didn't even register in his mind and he allowed the silence to grow between them. After about half a minute, the man cleared out his throat a little awkwardly, uncomfortable at the other man's disinterest.

"At Gotham, Agent Morgan," he said more forcefully. "I have a prisoner that you once enquired about quite frequently a few years ago."

He felt like he was sinking further and further into the sludge by the second. He was quiet for a long stretch of time, feeling empty inside, just staring up at the ceiling. When he spoke again, everything was in it's usual slow motion.

"What do you want?"

The man on the other end seemed slightly surprised by his abruptness.

"The subject of this call isn't about what I want," he said in a clipped tone. "The prisoner in question is scheduled to be executed, two days from now. He's asked to see you."

"Excuse me?"

The other man was starting to sound increasingly annoyed. When he spoke next, his voice was sharp and irritated.

"I said the prisoner has asked to see you, Agent Morgan. He wants you with him at his last meal and he wants you in the viewing room when he dies. Now I know that you and you're former coworkers insist that my prisoner is some kind've former colleague of yours, but frankly I don't care. It doesn't matter to me who the prisoner used to be - all I care about is getting rid of him, so the public can move on and forget. Now are you coming down, or will I not bother booking you a motel room?"

He felt like he was fighting through some horrible dream.

Like he was trapped underwater, trying desperately to get to the surface again.

Like something dark and leaking and foul was pouring down into his lungs, choking him, filling him up with filth.

The world spun and roared and clicked it's grimy teeth, as he took in one deep, choking breath and said down the line;

"Yes. Yes I'll come and see him."

"Good morning, Agent Morgan," the warden greeted him, as they shook hands, two alpha males bristling against each other suspiciously. "Come this way...you've been searched thoroughly, I presume?"

"As thoroughly as you can get," he joked weakly back, as they began to walk through the grey, concrete hallways. The warden didn't allow himself a smile as he strode on.

"Now I'm sure you can understand why we've kept you from the prisoner for so long..."

"To be frank with you sir, I can't...but I'm sure you have you're reasons."

The warden raised an eyebrow at him in response and swelled up even larger.

"Well...it's nothing personal Agent Morgan, but the prisoner has a certain gift for corruption. We don't want to allow him any chance at forming allies and gathering a means of escape," he told him and the words stung, contrasting sharply with his visions of a sweet-faced boy who'd always tried to help people, who never seemed to have a shred of darkness in him at all.

He knew that his memories were getting tinted with nostalgia over the years...but he couldn't have missed something that dark in his old friend, could he?

Had he been that blind?

"In the three years he's been with us," the warden was continuing and he forced the usual thoughts out of his head again; "he's made two of our guards commit suicide and warped the mind of a young psychologist until she became nothing more then his drugged up groupie. We thought it best he only be allowed visitors during his final hours. Which is why we combined his last visit with his last meal together...also to shorten time and fry the bastard as soon as possible of course."

He didn't think that followed any protocol he'd ever heard of, but he couldn't be bothered to argue with the man. Every particle in his body was focused on what he would meet at the end of the corridor.

They seemed to march on forever, the warden slightly straining for breath beside him. As they travelled further and further along, he felt every part of his body wind up until he was as tensed and unyielding as concrete. A strange terror was filling up his lungs and clouding his mind and he breathed in slow and steady, forcing himself to stay calm, forcing himself to stay professional.

What was he going to see in that room?

The warden came to a sudden stop as they finally reached a huge, reinforced steel door, with about six more guards then usual flanking it's sides. The sight filled Derek with a deep, unshakeable kind've dread.

"Good luck, Agent Morgan," said the warden with a slight incline of his head. One of the guards started going about opening up the door. He nodded back at the swollen man, as he stood sharply to the side, hands clasped behind his back.

"Don't let the freak worm his way into your head," another guard warned him and the others nodded grimly. "We've all lost friends because of it."

Something was growing larger and blacker in his chest by the second, like a pustule about to burst, filling him with sickness...

"I'll keep that in mind," Derek replied stiffly as the door finally swung open.

He walked into the room, feeling the door slam shut behind him. He looked around the stripped bare surroundings, feeling his head buzz with a million angry bees. On a bolted down table was a cheap birthday cake, with white frosting melting down onto the silver bit of card-board it was standing on.

A grimy looking woman was sitting on a chair, her hair dyed a ratty blonde, wearing a ridiculously short, red dress. Her lacy black underwear was showing and she was giggling girlishly, her pink lipstick smearing down her chin.

But the man across the table looked barely interested, focused squarely on his slice of cake, eating it sloppily with a plastic fork, wiping at his torn lips with the back of his hand.

He wasn't as skinny as Morgan remembered...a little bit broader around the shoulders and hunched over, like he'd suddenly become incapable of sitting up straight. His hair was hanging around his face...dirty brown and stringy with sweat. He was wearing a white t-shirt, orange pants and an orange jacket tied around his waist. He could see that his face was scrubbed clean of the makeup he'd had on constantly during his crime spree and without it, his eyes had black tired bags under them and his skin was disgustingly waxy.

Even without all that warpaint on, he didn't look anything like Spencer Reid. Not the one he remembered. Sure...his facial features were startlingly similar and he moved like him, twitching his fingers and licking his lips...

But that doubt was still there inside him.

There was a cold, calculating cunning in his face...like a fox plotting it's next move.

He'd never seen anything like it in the Spencer he had known.

Could they have made a mistake?

Maybe it wasn't even Reid?

Maybe he really had died all those years ago.

"Who are you?" the woman finally realized he was there and turned to glare at him, her eyes sharp and distrusting. The man turned around as well and grinned up at him with greasy orange teeth.

"Agent Morgan!" he crowed delightedly, gesturing wildly with his arms. "Sit down, sit down! There's nothing more sad then a man eating birthday cake by himself, dontcha think?"

Morgan looked the stranger up and down. He spotted immediately the thousands of old bruises and pinpricks up and down his arms, where he had them raised welcomingly in the air.

Track-marks.

Remember when Reid started wearing long sleeves all the time? When he was in hospital from the anthrax case, and he'd only had about a dozen of them up one arm? Nothing compared to the amount he had now.

But it couldn't be Reid.

These two filthy creeps belonged to a seething disgusting world of violence, that he wanted nothing more than to see destroyed. Spencer Reid didn't belong in a world like that - he belonged somewhere clean and safe, full of books and knowledge and not here, never here with this leering woman...

He heard a guard moving forward through the door behind him.

"Miss Quinn," he growled and the woman fluttered her eyelashes at him. "It's time to leave."

She rolled her eyes and turned back towards the man across the table. She grabbed him roughly by the collar, smashing her mouth together with his, practically sticking her tongue down his throat. The guard made a disgusted noise and strode over to pull her off him and she giggled hysterically as she was dragged away.

Something cold had settled in Morgan's stomach.

No-one else had noticed in that brief moment, how the man's shoulders had coiled up and his whole body had tensed uncomfortably. No-one noticed now, as his fingers fluttered nervously against the table for a brief second, before rising up to smooth his hair back in an automatic motion. In a blink of an eye, he'd reverted immediately back to his usual perfectly composed self.

He remembered all at once, years and years ago how the team had been watching some movie-star's house and she'd taken a shine to Reid and don't you remember how she pounced on him in the pool and he'd smoothed his hair back uncertainly and fluttered his fingers and it was him, it was him, it was him...

Even after all the people he'd killed, he was still the same nervous Reid when a woman made advances on him unexpectedly.

Oh god, this was all completely insane...

"...they won't give me a real knife," he was saying as Morgan sat down ahead of him, slicing up a hefty amount of birthday cake, that smirk playing at his ragged lips.

"I can't imagine why."

He pulled the slice of sticky cake out with his bare hands and offered it towards him. Morgan took it and watched as his eyes grew darker.

"Y'know I've been offering this cake around to every Tom, Dick and Harry and you're the first guy to take a piece," he remarked, as he went about cutting himself another slice. "They must think I rubbed my balls in it or sumthin'..."

He looked up at the man through his curtain of messy hair, snickering as Morgan put the piece of cake down again.

"I'm just messin' with ya Mister Agent," he grinned. "I only poisoned it."

He winked and Morgan took a deep breath in. Reid had disappeared from the man again, disappeared into thin air. Suddenly he had another accent, a messed up sense of humor and a curling, rotten-toothed grin.

He wandered what he'd have to do to see him reemerge again.

"You told the warden that you wanted me here with you...and to be in the viewing room when you die. Is there a reason for that? Can you tell me?"

The stranger tossed a hand around dismissively, as if that barely mattered.

"We had a nice phone call back in the day, don't you remember? You wanted to check up on me? That really touched me, Derek. Touched me deep down inside this black ol' heart of mine..."

"There was another reason why you called me here, Spencer."

He watched the other man's face carefully after he said that name - the name that still made something sting like a knife deep down in his chest. But the stranger across the table didn't even react, munching messily at his mouthful of cake. All he did was raise one eyebrow at him.

"Spencer? Really? You're really bringing that up again?" he said with his mouth stuffed full of food, fingers moving in a rhythm at the table. "I don't wanna...uh...cast your detective work into any doubt here Derek, but I think you might just be getting me mixed up with someone else..."

But Morgan was prepared for that.

The man started picking at his ragged scars with one dirty fingernail, as he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a folder. He made a low, interested noise as Derek placed it on the table.

"Look at this, Reid. You know these people," he whispered as he passed the photo across the table. It was of the team on a day off, when they'd gotten together at a resort. The girls were in swimsuits and Hotch and Morgan were in board shorts, gathered around the pool. Rossi had made everyone laugh by turning up in a suit, but Reid had made them laugh even harder by showing up in his usual cardigan and sweater vest ensemble.

"Now that's a good looking bunch of people," the man across the table drawled, looking down at the photo, the end of his nail caught at the red, inflamed scar tissue across his cheek.

"I know you remember them, Reid. You worked with them. You were at the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI for ten years before you disappeared..."

The man let rip a wild peal of laughter, half choking on his own spit.

"Really?" he exclaimed in a low growl of mock excitement, before bursting into giggles again.

"Your name is Doctor Spencer Reid," Morgan refused to get angry, refused to break eye contact as the other man shook with mirth, nearly sliding off his chair.

"You were a child prodigy - you have a eidetic memory and an IQ of 184..."

"Oh you're makin' me blush Derek..."

"You hold a Ph.D. in Mathematics, Chemistry and Engineering and two B.A.s in Psychology and Sociology. It explains your fascination with human nature, seen with you're failed boat experiment the night you were captured, you're manipulation skills, you're ability to rig all kinds of buildings and vehicles with handmade explosives and how you managed to pull off poisoning Commissioner Loeb. Being with the BAU for a decade explains how you knew all the ins and outs of the Major Crimes Unit, the night you blew it up..."

"Okaaaay, okaaaay you got me," the stranger interrupted him, shrugging like he'd admitted to eating the last cookie, leaning forward to look over the photo again.

"So which one of these gorgeous folk am I supposed to be then, huh? Am I the fat Italian one?"

Morgan kept his face stony and cold as he pointed him out. The other man started giggling even harder as he looked the skinny, doe-eyed figure up and down.

"He looks like a rule-follower," he said, forgoing the plastic knife and just sticking his entire hand into the messy mass of dessert. "Y'know you can have another piece if you want Derek, I was just talking figuratively about the poison 'n all."

He started picking at his handful of cake and frosting, licking his fingers and smacking his lips as he ate. Morgan fought back a shiver and pushed forward;

"Do you remember back in the interrogation room at the MCU? Do you remember what you said to Detective Stephens? Guns are too quick, aren't they? You can't savor all the little emotions?"

"You're askin' too much of me Agent Morgan," he smirked, leaning back in his chair, foot tapping on the ground. "I can barely remember two days back."

He was just playing with him now.

Like a cat with a mouse.

Morgan reached back into his briefcase and the stranger made that low interested noise again. He pushed the photo across the table top. It was of a smiling young woman, with dark brown hair and he watched carefully for any reaction, any sign of recognition from the twitching figure across from him.

"And who's that supposed to be?" he asked, cocking his head to the side, giving the photo a quick one-over.

"You know who that is," he replied, voice low and dark. "She died too quick, didn't she?"

The man just raised an eyebrow again and looked at her more closely.

"She woulda made a pretty little corpse," he replied and his voice sounded so nonchalant, so uncaring, that Morgan was filled with doubt all over again. This couldn't be the same man who had been torn to pieces over her murder, who had sobbed like a baby when she died...

"Reid, listen to me. You know who this is. Maeve Donavon was the first woman you ever fell in love with, wasn't she?"

And all at once, the man eyes darkened and his face looked drawn, thoughtful. He felt the leap of excitement surge through him. Had he finally broken that barrier? Had he finally gotten through?

"I knew a girl called Maeve once..." he said slowly and Morgan leaned in close, ignoring his stale, unwashed smell and foul, reeking breath.

"I know you do, Spencer, I know you do. You can remember her, can't you, I know you can remember her..."

"Yeah...yeah...Maeve," he started nodding, clicking his fingers and rocking back and forth on the legs of his chair. "It's all comin' back to me now...back in Mehico...my buddy brought home this prostitute for my birthday...Maeve Herrera..."

And when Morgan slammed his hand down on the table top in frustration, he burst into another round of wheezing laughter. He felt like throttling the mad bastard until his eyes popped out of his skull and he stopped goddamned messing with him. But he forced himself to stay calm, forced every screaming muscle in his body to relax.

"But I bet I know what you told him when his pretty little girlfriend got shot, Agent Morgan," and there was something suddenly so dark and vicious in his eyes that it almost frightened him.

"Oh I know...I know what you all said. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, or some other quaint cliche," he motioned with his fingers and put on a exaggeratedly cloying voice. In a blink of an eye, that cold, composed barrier went down across his eyes again.

"I know...I know...humans say the same old thing whenever anybody dies, don't they. It makes you stronger. Gives you character. Oh now you can be all sad and have emotional trauma like some shitty story in a soap opera. Now all she was to someone like you, Agent was a prop to make Spencer Reid sad, give him character. Because that's all they are to you, aren't they? Who cares what dreams they had, what they were gonna be, who cares right? All they were meant to do in life was to die, so someone could be sad over it. That's all they are. That's all she was. They weren't even people, were they?"

Morgan just stared.

Maybe he had broken something after-all.

"And you can be sad and you can be traumatized, but society only says for this amount of time only," he punctuated each word by thumping the side of his hand against the table-top, dark eyes sparking bright and his voice going high-pitched and manic.

"And you can be sad in only this way and if you don't follow the rules, you're weak, you're pathetic, you're crazy..." his voice went ridiculously high-pitched at the last word as he waggled his hands in the air, eyes nearly bugging out of their sockets. It was like watching a bug on a wire...like watching a jumping, scratching video, on repeat, on repeat, on repeat...

"And if you don't use these dead people as props to make yourself a stronger person, like they died just for your benefit, then there's something wrong with you and not society. Chin-up buddy, it'll be okay, keep on truckin', everything happens for a reason, you'll be fine. Get back on your feet, go back to everyday life, go back to your job, be normal again, forget about it, act like it never happened, act like everything's fine, like everything's going to plan, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all, does it...?"

And suddenly it wasn't so ridiculous to think of him slicing up another person's face. Or blowing an innocent woman up sky high. Or kidnapping, torturing and filming a civilian's last moments. It didn't seem so unimaginable at all.

Because his eyes were so wild and his voice was so crazy and Morgan felt the terror gripping every fibre of his being. And all he could think of was that this was the last face so many people saw before they died.

"...cause society hates anything out of the ordinary," he hissed like it was the a hundred per cent truth and nothing would change his mind. "Everything has to go the way it's supposed to. Everything has to be smooth sailing. Bad things aren't allowed to happen just because. It has to happen because of reasons."

His voice was dripping with contempt as he gestured and flailed and licked his lips and it made him want to get out and run away, far, far away and never look back.

"All I did was ask people, how much can you take before you accept there are no reasons? Bad things don't happen just for you. Bad things happen and nothing comes of it. The world just keeps on dying, baby. No explanation. No master plan. Just because."

And he sat back in his seat and grinned and Morgan didn't know what to do. He'd came to Gotham to find his old friend Spencer Reid. But Spencer Reid was gone. Replaced with this angry, seething, violent thing.

The thought chilled him down to his very blood.

But he couldn't give up on him...

He couldn't die a monster...

So he fought back his blind terror and he leaned in close, so close he could've grabbed him around the shoulders and brought him in against his chest. So close he could've just held him, just embraced him until all his hatred shuddered out of him, like venom from a wound and left only the Spencer Reid he'd loved behind.

"All the people we've seen die...your Mother...Maeve...all the people the UNSUBs took...they did all die pointlessly, without any good reason, and no-one ever just expected you to accept it, Reid, no-one ever said they just died to toughen you up," he said and he just wanted to hold him close until he was okay again, until he was clean and good and pure again...

"But you were a good person. You fought against the people who were behind all those pointless deaths. But now you are that person. You're nothing more then one of those people you once hunted. You know what Spencer, you're no better then the person who killed Maeve now. You're worse."

"Oh you cut me deep, snookums," the other man sneered back. "Isn't the whole world just peachy Derek, sweet as pumpkin pie? I think it scares you that I moved forward, instead of staying still in your perfect little fantasy land..."

"Reid, you didn't become who you are just because. You chose to do what you did. You could've stopped all this meaningless violence from happening, but you chose to take a part in its continuation..."

"If I wasn't around, someone else woulda done it."

"Spencer...something made you do the things you did. It didn't just happen out of nowhere. You did it because you couldn't handle all your emotional pain anymore," Morgan hissed back desperately and the other man's eyes were so dark now, they were almost liquid black.

"You couldn't handle everything horrible that's happened to you in your life, your mother's illness, your Dad's abandonment, your school life, what Tobias Hankel did to you, your drug addiction, Gideon leaving, JJ and Hotch covering up Prentiss's death, your headaches, everything the UNSUB's have ever put us and their victims through, Maeve's murder, your mother dying. You couldn't handle it anymore. So you punished innocent people for it. Because they hadn't suffered like you had and you resented that. Because you thought they deserved to suffer like you..."

"Noooo, nooo actually, the real reason I did it was because there's always a reason, isn't there?" he hissed, smacking his lips as he moved in closer, so close they were nearly touching, so close he could've just wrapped his hand into his hair, brought him close and whispered into his ear it's gonna be okay, I've got you, I've got you...

"Well my mother...she died giving birth to me and...my father...oh my father...never quite...uh...forgave me for that. He made this - friend - who was, well what can we call it...disturbed. And this friend never quite liked me, oh no...no, no, no. Not. At. All. So one day he came over while my father was out - found me all sad eyed in my room and he didn't like that, oh no - came up to me - screamed in my face, ""why can't you be happy, for your Daddy? You don't deserve to be sad, you little shit..." grabbed my face...took a knife...and said ""I'll make you happy...you'll never be sad again..."" did this to me..."

He motioned at his leaking smile, grinning at him with his orange teeth.

"...and now...well now I'm always happy."

Derek stared at him and there was something cold and heavy sitting in his chest. He felt numb. Like he was in some awful dream

"Spencer...Spencer, listen to me," he whispered and he felt something inside him begin to panic, as he stared into those icy, emotionless eyes. "Spencer...your mother was a paranoid schizophrenic..."

"Oh that's a good one, that is a good one, let me roll with that..." he looked up at the ceiling, clicking his fingers and licking his ragged scar tissue, his eyes two dull, shiny coins.

"My mother was...uh...a paranoid schizophrenic...had needles and drugs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But she could barely afford her...vials full of liquid bliss. Had to play hide the sausage in the middle of dirty alleyways to get it. But one day, not even that was enough. So one day, her special friends came over...and...uh...made an example of me. And well let me tell you sumthin'...she was never late for her payments again..."

He started to giggle, the harsh sounds filling up the room and it made Derek's stomach roll, the bile surging in his throat. He watched as his eyes began to flicker back and forth, his fat, pink tongue flicking out of his mouth every few seconds.

"No, no, no...wait, wait...I've got one," he was rambling now, rocking back and forth, the manic energy bubbling up like electricity within him.

"I wasn't exactly the type of kid with a lot of friends y'know, back when I was fifteen, sixteen. I only had one guy...Toby...spent my time with him back in the good old days of high-school. We'd lend each other dirty magazines...sneak into all the adult movies...shoot ourself full of drugs in his shed. But oh how he was scared of his father. A real religious man...real scary guy. Well one day he caught us in the shed...high as kites of course and oh...was he angry. Told me to confess to my sins...told me I had to accept the lord into my life. But of course his idea of accepting the lord was swinging a pick-axe at me and well...I wasn't quite fast enough..."

He quirked his head and bit into his lip, looking up at the other man through his greasy brown hair. It was like he was putting on a show, with a million people watching on in bated breath.

"And I'm not sure if that li'l sermon stuck with me too well...maybe if he saw me now, he'd do more then just swing an axe at me, dontcha think?"

Oh god, he felt sick...

He could see the little movements and mannerisms that used to belong to his old friend, being played out in this stranger's body.

Like Spencer's dead corpse was being controlled by some perverted puppeteer.

It wasn't him.

It wasn't him.

"Spencer stop it..."

"Oh no I've got something real bad," he cut in, ignoring him completely and his voice was getting darker and heavier by the second, losing it's grating, nasally quality as he raved on and on and on.

"I was quite the exemplary student back in the day, studied my little heart out, was always in the library getting my work done. And wouldn't you know it? caught the eye of this old man in law enforcement, ironically enough. Wanted to give me a job and oh how flattered I was, li'l ol' me. Until I realized...that if he was to do me a favor, well...he was going to expect something back. Told me how lonely he got in his old age..."

The nausea surged through him like toxic poison and he felt his breathing grow tight and his heart grow heavy.

He was playing with him. He was just playing with him.

But how did he know what story was a complete fabrication, what was fact and what story had both elements mixed together?

Just playing with him. Just fucking playing with him...

"...and one day I put a razor in my mouth...I knew he'd be asking for a...little favor soon. And when I...uh...got on my knees to pray, well he got a little bit more then he bargained for. Well I changed jobs soon after that and I heard he's had to piss through a bendy straw ever since."

He let out rough snort of laughter at his punchline, tugging at his shirt collar with his grubby fingers. His smile was so greasily wide now, he thought it might just engulf his entire face. Like some fairytale monster from a nightmare.

He couldn't get through to him.

Was this all just a goddamned waste of time?

He couldn't just leave.

"Gideon didn't do that to you, Spencer," he told him and he hated how his voice was beginning to shake. "Your mother wasn't some drug-addled prostitute, your father left when you were a kid and you weren't friends with Tobias Hankel in high-school. You need to stop this..."

"Oh let me tell you a story much more cliche then..." he cut through him in a heart-beat, leaning in so close Derek could count every last one of his rotten, orange teeth.

"Believe it or not, I was a bit of a...uh...hooligan in high school. Got myself into quite a bit of trouble back in the day. I'd do anything to uh...take my inner pain away, y'know, after Daddy got shot. And wouldn't you know it...the guy who ran the youth centre took me under his wing. Cleared my records...made me a sport star. But I didn't know he'd want something in return. Didn't know he wanted to be my daddy, in quite a different way then I'd ever imagined. I just wanted to make the pain go away. I just wanted to make him stop hurting me, stop loving me so much. So I carved up my face...made myself ugly...and he never touched me again. But still...I can't deny I'd just be a little street-kid without him. Maybe I shoulda just sat back and taken it like a good boy, eh Derek?"

He let out the harsh rattling breath he hadn't known he'd been holding in. He felt like crying, felt like punching, ripping, tearing until all the pain went away forever.

But he wouldn't raise up to his bait.

This wasn't Spencer.

This was someone else. Something else.

This wasn't him.

He had to get through to him, break past all his vile hatred, he had to, he had to, oh God his big brown eyes were so familiar, so goddamned familiar, but it wasn't him, wasn't him at all...

"I'm trying to help you Spencer...you can't die like this. Don't you understand?"

But he just burst into manic peals of laughter, rocking back and forth violently in his seat, heaving and choking and cackling as the tears poured down his face. Laughed so hard, he wheezed like an old man, laughed so hard, he doubled over and sunk down in his seat towards the floor.

Yet his eyes were still dead and empty.

And even when Derek finally got up, biting back the sob building in his throat, even when he walked back out of the room again, he was still howling hysterically on the ground. But it sounded almost painful now...

...like every breath was hurting him.

Like he was crying out in agony.

But he just kept on walking.

And Derek Morgan left his old friend behind to die.

Four hours later, he sat in a dark viewing room, with only a few reporters and some local billionaire to keep him company. And he watched as Spencer Reid was marched over towards the electric chair, his bald head making his scars show up harsher then ever against his waxy, white skin.

It had been five years since he'd been captured.

Eleven years since he'd gone to his mother's funeral and never come back.

He was forty-two years old.

And he didn't look scared.

In fact, he was yelling something at the top of his lungs as he limped slightly across the room.

Do you remember how he had to use a cane for months after the bullet shattered his knee...?

But he shook it from his mind, because each memory hurt even more painfully then the last, until he felt like all he was, was a aching bundle of bleeding, burning nerves.

"Me and Batsy ain't so different y'know!" he was saying as the officers tried to get him to shut up, forcing him down heavily on his chair. "I figured out who he really is, ain't that difficult y'know! We both died and came back to life, better then ever! We both know the secret to immortality! You think you can kill a symbol?"

He looked through the window, giggling even harder. Derek felt someone shift uneasily beside him and he glanced over at the strong-jawed man by his side, who had gone very white in the face.

"Y'know if I had any regrets in my life...I think I shoulda made my last meal sumthin' different, like...like...maybe a strong, black cup of coffee that packed one hell of a punch...coz that's exactly how I like my men, eh Derek?"

He burst into screams of laughter and Morgan felt his skin crawl, like there were a million bird beaks pecking endlessly under his skin. He just stared unblinkingly forward, refusing to rise up to his taunts. He thought he felt the man next to him, shudder as well.

The viewing room was deadly still, the man wheezing uncontrollably as the big, burly guards moved around him.

Tightening his restraints.

Preparing for his incoming death, which was sweeping closer and closer like a buzzing black swarm of flies.

He watched as he was strapped down.

And he just felt numb inside.

All he could see was a wide-eyed young man, who had asked him nervously for advice on his nightmares.

Who had been tied down to a chair just like this one and beaten senseless before his eyes.

Who he had nearly died in a hospital bed, as the other man waited patiently for him to wake up again.

Who he'd had a prank war with, who he'd played baseball with.

Who had opened up to him about his headaches, revealing the more creeping terror deep down within him, of the day when he'd lose his mind.

"Any last words?" said one of the guards as Spencer's eyes slid like a dead fish towards him. He licked his lips and grinned and his face had a deathly, sweaty shine to it, pallid and grey and hollow.

The silence hung heavy and still around them, the air tingling with electricity. They waited for him to say something.

Anything.

And after what felt like a lifetime, he finally spoke;

"Joke's on you," he drawled, before staring smugly forward, with a little crooked grin at his lips; a sick mockery of the young, nervous man from so long ago, with his tiny, awkward smile and his big, soft eyes.

Spencer, Spencer, Spencer was the only word that filled up his mind.

I loved you so much...we all loved you so much.

I love you, I love you, I love you...

It all happened so quickly, he didn't have time to think.

As soon as the guard touched the lever that would've killed him, there was a huge crackle of lights.

Definitely out of the ordinary.

With a thump, the guard fell in a heap to the ground. The reporters all looked around as the lights were cut out completely. But just before that happened, they all saw the man through the window.

His face was split apart in a wide, triumphant grin.

Reid what have you done?

There were terrified shouts and screaming, people fumbling blindly for the door, and through the window a harsh, choking sound, sounding like cymbals through the glass. And all at once, Derek was at his feet and he was running, he was running for him, running to him...

Spencer, Spencer, Spencer...

I love you, I love you, I love you...

Down the corridor...past the screaming reporters...past the bumbling, confused guards...until he reached the room of death where Spencer Reid was waiting. The guy who had been sitting next to him and a guard who had caught on to what was happening were behind him and they all rushed in, all protocol forgotten.

The guard shined his torch into the man's face.

And Derek saw something that he knew would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.

As the light shone across his skull-like face, he saw that his tongue had been bitten clean through, hanging out of his mouth by a thin, wet string of membrane. Blood flooded down his chin in a clotted, unending stream of fluid.

Spit was bubbling and frothing out of his mouth, like an overflowing cauldron and his eyeballs were rolling up in their sockets showing only the yellowing, bloodshot whites of his eyes. He was jerking spasmodically against his restraints, his head cracking back and forth so hard, he thought he might just snap his own neck.

The ghastly, choking noises filled up the room, filled up Morgan's head with noise.

Spencer, Spencer, Spencer...

"We have to get a medic in here right now," the guard said into his walkie-talkie, his voice gruff and full of authority. "The prisoner's been poisoned..."

And Derek remembered...only four hours earlier.

The woman leaning across the table and pulling him in close, forcing her tongue deep down into his throat.

Oh God, Spencer what have you done?

But the man only twitched like an insect in response, before his last breath rattled out from his throat. The bloody froth started drying at his neck, his eyes staring lifelessly forward. And something in those eyes seemed to be talking to him. Seemed to be telling him something...

Something mumbled and indistinct...

Checkmate, Derek. Checkmate, checkmate, checkmate...

And the guard just turned away and the other man looked like he was about to cry when he took Spencer tight into his arms. Held his still-warm corpse close, close, close to his chest, pushing his chin to the top of his shaved skull, just him close and whispered in his ear;

"I love you Spencer...Spencer I love you, I love you, I love you, oh God, Spencer I love you so much, oh God pretty boy, I love you so goddamned much."

"I heard...I heard on the news they saw him escape..."

"...I heard he killed five guards with his bare hands to get out..."

"Don't you talk about him! Don't you ever talk about him!"

He wanted to tell people that he'd seen him die, had seen the life ooze out of his with his own eyes, but he knew they wouldn't believe him. Talk of his death had already been labelled as a 'government cover-up.' Too many people were talking about 'sightings,' of 'seeing' him on trains, in crowds, just a glance and then he was gone.

As the months went by, even mentioning him started to become a taboo. Already he was becoming less of a man and more of a symbol of terror. The bogeyman that they told their children about; be good or the clown-man will slip you a smile.

Derek Morgan couldn't get away from that wretched city fast enough. He flew out of that filthy wreck of a place without turning back.

Spencer Reid really had found a way to live forever after all.

Coming home to Donna was like waking up from a nightmare. As the plane touched down and he walked through the airport to find her waiting for him, he felt like he had come up from his underwater world to breathe at last. They wrapped their arms around each other and he buried his head into the crook of her neck.

And he silently began to cry.

"It's okay," she whispered, as she held him close. "It's okay baby. You're home now."

It had been twelve years since Spencer Reid had disappeared from their lives forever.

And sometimes he only felt like a memory, like someone they had once known lifetimes ago in a dream of a dream, from the nostalgic old lanes of childhood.

He'd gotten a frantic call from the guy who'd been in the viewing room with him, a month after he'd flown out of Gotham. He'd demanded to know how he'd known that 'freak' before bursting into harsh, grating sobs and hanging up again.

And one of the people who had been at a party that he'd attacked, had secretly filmed what had happened on her phone. Later on, she said she didn't know why she had done it - maybe she thought it'd all been so unbelievable, she had to have proof it had really happened.

She gave the phone to the police, because she had hysterically claimed "it was tainted now," before leaving the station in tears. It had been kept hidden away in Archives with the rest of the old evidence, from that awful time that no-one spoke about any more.

Derek had asked to see it and it took some negotiating to get his demands met. Why bring up that time again, when everyone just wanted to forget?

That put a feeling of panic in him - that if he left it for too long, one day every trace of the man would be wiped out forever.

He watched the short little clip with the rest of the team around him, as Garcia brought up the video on her computer in her den.

They were all there. Hotch with his greying hair, Rossi with his his extra paunch and bad leg. Prentiss looking more and more like her sharp-faced mother every day, Blake with her tired wrinkles and crow's feet. Garcia pregnant again and JJ with her hair cut to a more manageable length around her ears.

Everyone so much older now.

And tears poured down everyone's cheeks as the fuzzy, pixelated clip flashed across the screen. The woman filming was breathing heavily and through the crowds of trembling socialites, a greasy green head could be seen, holding a knife to a young woman's face.

Garcia managed to separate the heavy breathing to the man's faint voice, heightening it so the rest of the team could hear it;

"So, I had a wife...she was beautiful...like you, who tells me I worry too much, who tells me I oughta smile more..."

And the memory of Spencer Reid's face, blurred with tears as the ambulance took her body away, the bullet hole leaking blood all over her calm, dead face flashed before his eyes, sharp and harsh and violent.

I love you, I love you, I love you...

Their Spencer Reid.

Their beautiful boy with his gorgeous soul and his bright intelligent eyes and his endless, bubbling life.

Their little brother.

His pretty boy.

Gone.

Gone and never coming back.

They'd loved him so much.

And they all cried helplessly together, until the old video ran out of footage.

Cried together, a battered group of old, tired people.

Cried until the clip flickered into black, stealing their dearest friend, their precious beloved friend away from them forevermore.