Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

SPENCER REID TRIES NOT TO THINK ABOUT CIPHER ALL DAY. He spends the majority of his time avoiding her in a desperate attempt to regain some of his dignity. It doesn’t take very long for the embarrassment he felt upon being discovered in a rather compromising position with her to fade away and shift into anger. Was this her retribution? If so, truly, she’ll have to try again. Her goal of humiliating him was not met, the bell at the top of the high striker remains silent.

And, should he join her childish, petty, idiotic game of revenge, he will win; there’s no doubt about it. He will make her regret the day she joined the BAU. She would be a formidable opponent, but in the end, she would fail.

Right?

As though he submitted a query into a search engine, his brain expands the search to find more results. He sifts through reputable sources and trashy magazines, scouring every… strange interaction they’ve had over the years that would imply she even had a chance of besting him.

To his surprise, the majority of the articles do not favour him. They favour her. 

Exhibit A: The Stitches incident.

Exhibit B: Miami.

Exhibit C: 12PM, October 26th, 2008. 

Fuck.

It’s infuriating. How has she managed to do this, worm her way under his skin and make a home there. A home built out of sticks and dry leaves, one he’d be capable of knocking down if he so pleased. 

Spencer could just tell her to go fuck herself, chase her away until he fully repairs his shield. Until any and all ideas of kissing someone he does not like wither and die. Until he is back to 100%--- and she stands no chance.

But this game, this dance, the pull, the pressure—

It excites him.

The chance of winning a complex game like this, the thought of beating her in any competition at all? It’s too good of an opportunity to deny.

And so, he begins to formulate a plan. 

Eventually, she will be forced to admit defeat, because Spencer Reid does not lose. Especially not when she’s involved.

—

SO FAR, ALL OF SPENCER’S IDEAS HAVE BEEN SHIT. Comically so, and while Spencer has never considered himself one to underestimate an opponent— unfortunately, even he is capable of making mistakes. He has underestimated her up until now— until his mental search revealed things he regrets not having found sooner.

So far, she has the upper hand. He's made a tally chart of their scores.

CIPHER

I- Miami.

II- Her win in regards to the Stitches incident.

III- Her act of salvation at Liberty Ranch.

IIII- Her first act of salvation in Diana Anderson’s living room.

IIIII- Their fight in her hospital room back in August.

IIIII I- This morning.

SPENCER

I- When he pulled her hair in Alaska.

II- When she put her head on his shoulder after Alaska/when he managed to get her to go to sleep without ending up dead due to carbon dioxide poisoning.

III- His act of salvation under the stairs in Wyoming.

IIII- The bucket of water on top of the door yesterday.

There are a couple instances between them that he considers to be entirely neutral, including everything that happened while she was sick because she was most certainly not in her right mind.

She is ahead, yes, but only by two points. Three, really, because Miami should probably earn her some extra credit. Which would make the official score 7-4, with her in the lead, and him trailing behind hopelessly.

Not if he decides to do something about it.

All Spencer would have to do is rile her up— which is not an impossible task. It’s quite simple, really, he’s managed to do just that hundreds of times before. To the dismay of the bau, their rivalry is going to return full-force, and he is going to win it. 

There’s something alluring about the thought, something that makes him want to dive deeper— he’s aware that there may be some warmth beneath the curtain of their room in his mind, though the stream that curls in the air can be attributed to the hot coals everyone on the team has tried to extinguish before.

But in Miami… she won. She made it entirely clear that she was capable of outsmarting him.

He cannot let that happen again. 

Yet, the chance that he might lose is enough to suck him back into her web of intracies, enough to make him rent a room in her house of cards just so he can be the one to topple it.

Spencer Reid does not like Cipher, Cipher does not like Spencer Reid. Their hatred is so pure, so visceral, that it might as well be Newton’s fourth law. And the excitement he feels upon imagining winning a game that she thinks he doesn’t know about is almost enough to make him want to abandon the case. 

Brutal reality slams into his chest, the embers of his high extinguished immediately upon the realization— they have a killer to catch.

And this is why the odds are in her favour. 

She does not allow him to occupy her mind like this.

He does.

A formidable opponent, indeed.

—

THE DAY DOES NOT REVEAL ANYTHING ABOUT THEIR UNSUB. He manages to pry his mind away from thoughts of Cipher, of retribution— even ignores it when one of the female detectives attempts to flirt with her. Either she doesn’t notice, or she doesn’t care, because her face remains neutral the entire time, despite the fact that Detective Laurant is being extremely touchy. He wants to walk over, tell this poor woman not to get entangled with someone like Cipher. Someone who can only make her life worse. That’s the only reason he’d want to get them to stop conversing. 

…Is he jealous?

No sooner than the thought enters his mind does he dismiss it. You cannot be jealous when the person you’d be jealous of in the equation is attempting to flirt with the object of your boundless hatred. He watches the interaction unfold with a schooled expression, or at least that is what he believes his expression to be until a hand on his shoulder yanks his eyes away from the two women.

“Damn kid, who pissed in your cornflakes?” Morgan is standing next to him now, leaning against the countertop behind him with an easy, yet charming smile. Spencer does not let the sight of those pearly white teeth fool him, he knows of the malice and teasing that lies beneath that effortless smile.

“It’s nothing, Morgan.”

“Nothing? Really? Oh, are you jealous of pretty girl?” He watches Morgan’s eyes drift to Cipher, noticing the obvious flirting that Cipher still seems oblivious to. Spencer curses himself for being on a team of profilers. 

“I pity that detective. She doesn’t know what she’s getting into.” Spencer ensures that his tone is flat and even, betraying none of the sizzling enticement that lays dormant beneath his icy voice.

“Interesting.”

Spencer turns to face him. “What is there about what I just said that you deem interesting?” He asks boredly, tilting his head towards Morgan with a not-so-impressed look on his face. Morgan just grins wider, his new smile reflecting his true intentions. 

“I said you were jealous. You defaulted to talking about Laurant instead of our girl.” His heart slows to a stop. Not a true stop, the feeling is caused by an adrenaline rush inducing a premature heartbeat, followed by a more forceful beat, which can cause the illusion of one’s heart stopping and restarting— “...Which would make me think that you’re not jealous of Ci, you’re jealous of Laurant.”

—But if a doctor were to tell him that he’d flatlined for a split second? He’d believe it.

His heart anomaly is followed by soul-crushing dread, and a cooling sensation draping over his body. A warm rush shoots up to his face and neck while the rest of his body remains cool to the touch.

“There’s a rule against trying to profile your coworkers.” He snaps, his voice harsher than he meant for it to be. 

Morgan just chuckles. In that moment, he can see what the man beside him is talking about. Someone had mentioned it about a year ago, he still remembers what they’d said.

“No one goes after me because you look like someone tried to shoot your dog when they do.”

It was what she’d said in Miami. About him.

She was wrong then, and Morgan is wrong now. The sentiment behind the words have not changed, though what is being said itself has fundamentally shifted.

Morgan’s (incorrect) observation is not an accusation. Hers was. That was why he’d gotten so defensive and—

He’s not thinking about Miami right now.

“I’m not jealous,” he sighs. “I just think it’s gross.”

Morgan’s eyebrows nearly shoot to his hairline— or where his hairline would be, if he still had hair. “...Woah.” 

Instantly, Spencer realizes what his words imply— that he is uncomfortable because Laurant and Cipher are both women, not because he believes that every lover Cipher takes is a victim, not a romantic partner. 

“I didn’t mean it like that!” He exclaims defensively, gesturing towards the pair. Laurant is still trying, but given Ci’s body language, he can tell that she’s not having it. She’s tense and dismissive. Whatever Laurant is attempting to do isn’t working. 

How can he explain what he did intend without sounding like a jealous ex-boyfriend? How is he supposed to make their sick, twisted game make sense to Morgan, who would likely ask Hotch to give Spencer a psychological evaluation if he even began to try? It doesn’t even make sense to Spencer yet, and that’s saying something. 

“She’s very clearly uncomfortable with Laurant’s advances.” Spencer decides to play it safe, explain his discomfort with a simple behavioural observation instead of… whatever is making him uncomfortable. “Her posture is rigid, she does not appear to be very relaxed, and her responses seem to be curt. She’s fiddling with the vanilla lip balm she keeps in her right pocket. The one she uses when she’s not having a good day.”

Morgan gives him an incredulous look. “Yeah, I picked up on all that.” Spencer mentally kicks himself. He does this often; getting so used to explaining things that he ends up making people who do know what they’re talking about feel insulted. “-Except for the lipstick.” 

“Lip balm.” Spencer corrects.

“Potato potato." 

Spencer rolls his eyes, relief rushing through him. He’s managed to avoid Morgan’s questioning for now— there’s no guarantee that he won’t try again later. “The differences between lip balm and lipstick are actually quite vast. For example, lipstick can feel waxy when you have dried lips, whereas lip balm would soothe that dryness. That’s actually probably why she prefers it.” Her lips tend to be at their driest from November, something he’s noticed over the two-almost-three years they’ve worked together.

“So you just happen to know everything about Cipher, then?” 

Spencer is about to answer that he probably knows more than most people, given the fact that he is the only one in the BAU to have stepped foot in her home. It’s merely a technical observation, but he stops himself before responding. This is a trap. Morgan is trying to manipulate him into admitting that he “likes” Cipher, or whatever absurd assumption he’s made about their rivalry. He doesn’t want to take her out on dates, buy her flowers, bring her to fancy restaurants— no, he wants to ruin her. He wants to get back at her. He wants to pull all the shit she’s pulled on him, tenfold. Whatever’s going on between them is the furthest thing from a whirlwind romance.

“I am a profiler.” Spencer shrugs.

“Oh, so then you’d know that I like to read case files online instead of on paper because the small font gives me a headache. Right?”

He hadn’t noticed anything of the sort, nor had he made any significant observation in regards to Derek Morgan’s reading preferences.

“As a matter of fact, I have.” Spencer is lying through his teeth. He just has to make it through this conversation without—

“Well, that’s interesting, because I’ve never loaded a case file to a computer in my life.” —Morgan using lies of his own in an attempt to trick him. 

Shit.

Play it safe. Spencer tells himself. Don’t give him any other reason to think you’re lying. “Are you having a dry spell?” The fact that he notices things about her but not anyone else isn’t out of the ordinary; the same thing happened with Elle before she left. It was because she sat in the desk across from him, not because he liked her.

Morgan tilts his head to the side, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“You haven’t… er…” he’s regretting his decision to bring sex up now that he actually has to talk about it. “-Gotten laid in a while, so now you’re obsessed with my sex life.”

Morgan lets out a soft chuckle, placing his hand back on Spencer’s shoulder. “Sure thing, pretty boy. You keep telling yourself that.” 

“There’s nothing more to it.” Spencer tries to convince him, but he can tell that Morgan isn’t going to change his mind. All he can hope for is that he won’t recount this interaction to anyone else.

“If you say so.”

“You’re being purposefully obtuse. You know what you’re implying. I know what you’re implying. And I am telling you that you’re wrong.” Spencer argues, but it’s fruitless. Morgan isn’t going to believe him, no matter what he says. 

“And if I tell you that it’s raining cupcakes, does that make it true?” Typical Morgan, using exaggerated idioms in order to prove a point. 

“The expression is raining cats and dogs.” Spencer corrects him again, the second time he’s had to do so in one conversation.

“Tomato tomato.” Spencer doesn’t even have to look at Morgan’s face to know that he’s wearing a shit-eating grin. He’d almost forgotten how infuriating Derek Morgan could be. Spencer sighs, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. He doesn’t dare look at Laurant, or Cipher, and that’s just because he intends to keep his sanity intact.

It’s not because he’s jealous, he really isn’t. Morgan suggesting that he might like her? That is entirely absurd.

And something he intends to prove by winning a game. 

—

THE FIRST THING CIPHER NOTICES ABOUT DETECTIVE LAURANT IS THAT SHE’S PRETTY. The second thing she notices is that this woman either adores conversation, or she finds Cipher attractive. It becomes clear that the sentiment behind the words that seem to flow endlessly from Laurant’s mouth is, indeed, the latter of the two when she engages in a simple five-word exchange with one of her coworkers. 

Detective Vivian Laurant is, objectively, an attractive woman. Her hair, soft and brown, curls into loose waves that stop at the tip of her chin. She’s rather tall too, if Cipher had to guess, she’d say 5’10 with heels. 5’8 without. Her eyes are the kind of colour that makes you do a double take, because you could’ve sworn that they were brown a second ago.

Green. She asked. Detective Laurant said green with a laugh that could’ve made a faerie jealous— which, upon further consideration is probably not a good thing. 

It doesn’t matter. She’s gorgeous, Cipher is intrigued— but her face is familiar in a way Cipher cannot place until late at night, when they’re having one of her extra long conversations. She’s inquiring about how Cipher came to be called Cipher, and Cipher is trying to think of a reason that won’t violate about 100 rules in the FBI code of conduct when it hits her.

She looks just like Spencer.

If Spencer were a woman. Which, decidedly, he is not, but their resemblance is quite uncanny. Now that she’s really looking for similarities— she can see his face in the sculpt of her cheekbones, in the messiness of her hair, the shape of her shoulders— even the shade of her lips. She can’t help but get lost in their closeness, and undoubtedly, that is what makes Detective Laurant think Cipher is interested.

Guilt hits her like a freight train, so powerful it almost makes her double over. In that moment, all she can see is Kally— her face, her smile, her laugh, her, her, her, her everything. The details swirl in her head, but she’s unable to catch them as they spiral past her face and hit the ground softly, like scraps of paper.

It takes a few seconds for her to figure out how to breathe again, but once she does she’s taking in too much air, choking on oxygen. She stands up straight, and Laurant seems confused at the sudden shift. She reaches out to touch her arm— Cipher is not having it, she can’t. She just can’t.

It’s not fair to this woman. What does she want out of this? A date? A night spent together? A relationship? A house? A wedding? Kids? A future?

Wants shift whereas needs remain the same. Food, water, clothing, shelter— those are all needs. They never cease, never buckle and bend and warp as their meanings change over time like wants do. Cipher, if she had to be placed in a category, dropped into one of those two boxes in someone else’s life, she’d be a want. Not a necessity. 

Wants change, like perceptions. And where she is concerned, when someone’s perception of her changes, so does their want for her presence in their lives. A fact that she has learned over time. 

People find out the truth, and they no longer want her. It’s happened time and time again. She scared off Carson’s friends because they were afraid of her. The nurses at the facility started giving her the cold shoulder when they found out. 

This detective will be no different. She’ll find out, and she will recoil, and her wants will change. 

Cipher is an idiot for even thinking about it.

The conversation continues, but she’s no longer paying any attention to the words that flow out of Detective Laurant’s mouth. All she can think about is the guilt. Her hand drifts to her right pocket, fingers tracing over the letters of the vanilla lip balm that resides there, trying to bring herself some comfort, something to latch onto, lest she delve headfirst into her guilt. It’s less of a journey and more of a cliff in the night. She cannot see the depth, only that she is standing at the edge, risking her sanity by watching as the rock crumbles beneath her feet. Should she jump off, there’s no way to tell if she’d live to tell the tale. 

So she stays. Teetering on the tightrope of feeling and not feeling, if she tilts either way she’ll never be able to go back.

“There’s this coffee shop I’ve always wanted to go to—”

Now she has to stop it. As nice as indulgence has been, human relationships are a ticking time bomb, a singular leaf dropped into a hole in the ground in an attempt to cover up something that is a hundred times larger than itself.

“I should go.” Cipher watches detective Laurant’s face change from anticipated to confused, then to hurt. That’s not fair. She never meant to sound interested, she just…

She’s running away, like she always does. 

“It’s getting late,” she continues, and Detective Laurant doesn’t respond. Laurant glances at the ground, not at Cipher, and she hates doing this, but she has to.

Lying will only make the guilt increase tenfold. Gritting her teeth and telling little fibs in order to keep her name out of the mud.

Cipher really does feel bad for leading her on.

“Right.” At least she isn’t pushing it. 

She gives Laurant an apologetic smile. Laurant does not return her pleasantries, which is fair enough. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Morgan and Reid talking to each other.

They exchange awkward goodbyes, and Cipher returns to her motel room.

—

THE EVENING PASSES AS ANY OTHER; LONG, YET SIMULTANEOUSLY DRAGGING, as though it wants to present her exhausted body to the stars like a prize. It must keep her alive, of course, she is no use to anyone if she is dead.

Despite her rather lengthy rest, exhaustion has made a home in her body, claiming every crevice as its own. It cannot be expelled, no matter how many times she tries. Cipher has learned to live alongside it, giving it just the corners of herself so it can fester. As long as it stays behind the barrier she’s created, as long as it does not infect her eyes and force them shut forever, it can stay.

It’s now half past ten, and she has yet to fall asleep. She is not going to. She can’t, physically, not right now. It’s not the right time. (It’s never the right time, is it, though?)

She has to hold the memories back. They play anyways, infinitely on loop in the darkest corners of her head, repeating over and over again until the words warp and the record player slips off the table. 

The ache is back again. She has a journal to contain it, but she has not opened it. (For fear that the pages will fill up far too quickly, spill off the paper as their ink coats her skin like grease.)

(For fear that she is nothing but a word, and once the page where she is printed has been read, she will cease to exist.)

(A common word, unimportant. Unnoticeable.)

She does not remember walking (running) back as the pages of her journal curled as though they were on fire.

They might as well have been on fire.

She poured the gasoline, she lit the match, because?

Expression is useless, no one cares. There are six people who know of her existence and want her to live. Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

None.

That is what will happen when they find out.

That is why she cannot stay. 

(But if she leaves, they will kill her. Shoot on sight. Flight or fight, but if she dares to fly she will be deemed a threat and she will be shot. Killed, her body will decay and she will be nothing. Nothing does not hurt as much as something, she thinks.)

By twelve, she feels nothing, nothing at all.

Not in her dreams, or in her nightmares.

Not as she’s awake, and not as she’s asleep.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

A nice change.

—

THE DAYS HAVE YET TO BLUR TOGETHER IN CIPHER’S MIND. They feel monotonous, like endless repetition. By the time morning comes, nothing has grown cold. She reaches out with ice-tipped, frozen fingers, grasping at something to replace it. Any emotion will do, for nothing is not just the absence of something, it is a void. Rien, complètement abandonné. Il n’y a rien qu’elle peut sentir dans ce vide, dans cette obscurité. Les émotions sentent les graines du sable, elle est incapable de le saisir comme elle veux. Le vent frôle sa main au lieu de ses rêves. Et ses cauchemars, ils percent sa peau comme éclats de verre, même s'ils n'étaient pas un éclat physique. 

She does not get out of bed when she wakes up.

—

ACTING LIKE NOTHING IS WRONG IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE. Especially with Agent Hotchner’s newfound yet incessant hovering, which is undoubtedly being caused by an order from someone higher on the food chain than both of them. The only thing about this arrangement that she dislikes specifically is his reluctance to tell her the truth. Cipher knows that something has changed; Hotchner knows that something has changed— hell, she works with a team of profilers, there’s no way they haven’t yet noticed the oddness of his behaviour, with or without the ‘don’t profile your coworkers’ rule that nobody seems to be capable of following. In short, everyone knows that something has changed.

For fucks sake, he isn’t even trying to hide it.

In fact, no one is trying to hide it. The air has shifted since Emily’s discovery yesterday, one that she has undoubtedly told the others. Cipher expected as much, she’s prepared a list of answers should they decide to question her. 

Cipher tries to distract herself with the case like she has many times, but she simply cannot ignore the feeling of two sets of eyes burning holes in the back of her skull. Two. As if one overly attentive human hyperfixated on her behaviour wasn’t enough.

If this is still going on by lunchtime, she’ll be throwing Spencer Reid off of the tallest building she can find in fucking Iowa.

She’s just starting to read the case file when a thought slams into her at 200mph. 

You were attracted to Detective Laurant.

Yes. That’s true. But she’s not thinking about that right now, for god’s sake, she is thinking about the psyche of a man who took it upon himself to use liquid nitrogen as a means to shatter women’s heads.

Because she looked like Spencer.

What an absurd implication. Her brain is deliberately torturing her, doing anything and everything to keep her from her objective, which is solving. The. Damn. Case. 

She’s not having it. Like a hostage negotiator, she’ll have to make a deal. Cipher will address her thoughts later, not now. For now, the case is her primary focus. She’d sign a contract if the person who kidnapped her capacity to think straight wasn’t her own mind.

So. In order for someone to have access to that much liquid nitrogen, they’d have to work for a lab. Her eyes scan one of the photos, grimacing at the chunks of half-thawed flesh scattered across blood stained white tile. The contrast of the colours makes the scene even more sickening, the whites and the reds and the skin tones plus the pinkish tint of the actual flesh all blend together to create a rather disturbing effect.

The FBI should pay her extra for having to look at something this gruesome. 

The Unsub would have to be strong to submerge someone’s head in any sort of substance for over forty five minutes. She’s already come to this conclusion, so why is she still dwelling on details that have already been confirmed?

The feeling of being watched is still lingering over her, but she tries to ignore the intense sensation. 

Combine force with the knowledge of how to properly turn liquid nitrogen into a murder weapon, then add opportunity—

A lab assistant, maybe? There is a lab in the entire town; one that is both underfunded and understaffed. Hotchner spoke with the person who owns the building, and he said that the majority of people who go there are scrawny, high school kids.

So the killer would stand out. A point in favour of the BAU, since there are no leads other than this… suspicion. Hunch. 

Opportunity. The M.E put the time of death for all six women at somewhere around ten to midnight. Plus, there were no signs of forced entry, which would indicate that the person doing all this has a key.

Cipher makes a mental note to ask Morgan to call Garcia and have her compile a list of everyone who has keys to the lab. 

—

“WE’RE LOOKING AT SOMEONE WHO IS WHITE, IN HIS LATE TEENS. MALE. He doesn’t strike you as the type of person who would commit murder. He helps out around the town but nobody really notices him. A little too pushy when he talks to women.”  This Unsub is nothing new, the only thing unique about him is the way he kills. The profile remains the same; a misogynistic, white asshole who thinks he has a right to kill innocent women because mommy didn’t hug him enough and daddy told him not to cry.

It’s bullshit, in her humble (correct) opinion. From what she can remember, her parents were horrible, and she didn’t—

Well, technically…

And there’s that question again, the one that everyone asked her in the hospital, and in the police station, and in pristine offices—

“Did you have a choice?”

She thinks she can hear Morgan giving the rest of the profile as her own paper joins Kally’s shred on the cold, hard tile. 

Did she have a choice? It’s a question she’s had on her mind for years, ever since March of 2000. Ever since everything fell apart. If you’d asked her ten years ago, she’d say yes. Absolutely. Everything she did was autonomous, she chose to hurt people of her own accord. She picked out her future with the same two hands that she uses to save people now— quite ironic. 

So many things have happened since then. 

It’s still true, what she told Aaron Hotchner back in ‘00. “I could’ve said no.”

“And you didn’t?”

She had laughed. “Of course not.” 

There had only been two choices, and she hadn’t entirely understood what she was signing up for that day in the parking lot.

But lack of knowledge only covers one of her choices, the rest she made knowing what she was doing. So. Did she have a choice? Yes.

And she chose the option that resulted in human lives lost each time. And for what? Why did she choose to do all of this— she still doesn’t completely understand the rationelle behind her decisions. She supposes that trying to decipher why a nine year old girl would choose to entrust herself to a stranger is worthless; she won’t be able to find an explanation that justifies her behaviour.

Cipher could have said no.

But she didn’t. 

That gives her full— or at least near-complete responsibility for her crimes. It’s a rational conclusion, it makes sense, but then—

“There’s been another murder.”

—

“HER NAME IS JANE.” The room smells heavily of rot. The scent clings to everything in the room, seeping between the tiles and the cracks in the walls that are spattered with blood. As usual, chunks of flesh are scattered across the floor almost lazily, yet deliberately, like the person who put them there admired their original formation too much to change it. It’s coated in a thick layer of precision. 

It’s sick.

Jane, according to one of the officers, was a twenty five year old woman, about to leave the town to pursue a degree in medicine. A deviation from the Unsub’s normal; all the other victims have been prostitutes. Add the fact that the time between kills is supposed to be four days, not two— and it’s confirmed when she glances knowingly at Emily, who nods. 

The Unsub is escalating.

—

“DO YOU THINK THERE ARE MULTIPLE UNSUBS?” Morgan’s voice cuts through the heavy silence draped between members of the BAU. Seven women are dead, and they have no leads as to who could have done it. Garcia’s search for people who had keys to the lab revealed nothing; none of the employees in the lab matched the physical profile.

Cipher thinks about it for a moment. That could make sense, yes, but the manner of the crime scenes have suggested so far that there is one culprit, and he’s been profiled as controlling. The odds of him being willing to “share” his kills with someone who he has deemed “beneath him” are very, very low, but it could be—

She’s snapped out of her train of thought when she feels a harsh smack to her knee. 

“Would you stop that?” Reid hisses. She ignores him, continuing to bounce her knee under the table, chewing on her lip. He taps her again, an action to which she pays no mind. Then, he smacks her.

She’s going to kill him as soon as her knee stops stinging, she’s actually going to fucking—

“I know who the killer is!” He shouts.

—

SCOTT JONES IS A GOOD KID. Straight A’s, plays basketball, goes to church every Sunday. He’s a good kid— or at least, his shell is. Whatever is actually inside of his body could be more accurately described as a monster.

And Cipher is currently staring down the barrel of his gun. It’s a revolver, and there are bullets scattered across the tile beneath his feet. His hands are shaking. His eyes are feral and darting across the room rapidly, like a caged animal willing to do anything to escape a bear trap, even if it means clawing its own leg off. Or someone else's.

The only reason they are here is because Reid remembered a kid hanging around the lab. After a couple of questions to one of his friends (who happened to have a key to the lab), the kid cracked and admitted that he had a copy made for Scott.

After that, everything began to fall apart. His room was searched. Trophies were discovered. Bloody clothes. Now she’s in the very same lab where he’s been killing people; risking her own life to stop him.

Her eyes flick back to the bullets resting on the ground. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Six.

A revolver can only hold six bullets. Which means that the gun in Scott’s hand is empty. She could be wrong. He could just have more bullets in his gun. But it’s too strange to be a coincidence, his scared demeanor and the bullets on the floor point to one thing— he is armed with a facade.

Cipher doesn’t think as she steps towards him, signaling to Morgan, who’s pointing a gun at Scott to lower his weapon.

“I’ll— I’ll shoot you!” Scott’s hand is resting on the trigger as she steps closer, but she knows that nothing will happen if he fires. There are no bullets in his gun. 

“You’ll shoot me?” She parrots. He narrows his eyes. She can see the anger behind his eyes, piercing through his “good kid” mask and splintering it into pieces.

And then, in a fit of confidence, she grabs for the gun.

—

“STRAUSS WANTS YOU OFF THE FIELD.” The words echo in the silent hallway, though thankfully, there is no one here other than her and Hotchner to hear them. Cipher thinks she misheard him, she has to have misheard him, there’s no way Strauss is this fucking incompetent.

“...What?”

“She thinks you are a danger to yourself and others.”

“A danger to my— that’s bullshit! Since when does she care about my life?!” Since it would bore Cipher out of her mind, increase her chances of doing something stupid. After all, all she’s wanted since Cipher joined the BAU was to get rid of her. 

“I don’t make the decisions.” He’s calm, cold— how can he be this… expressionless? He sounds bored, almost, meanwhile her entire life is about to collapse. It’s been teetering on the edge of a fucking sinkhole for weeks, yes, but she didn’t expect Erin Strauss of all people to be the rain that eroded the soil beneath her feet and pushed her in.

“She’s decided that not having a firearm makes you an unnecessary liability on the field. Combined with your rash decision making, she believes that you’re not fit to travel with the rest of us.” But it had all worked out just fine, she was right, the gun had been empty and Scott Jones ended up in handcuffs within five minutes. “As of now, your position on this team is not in question, but whether you will or will not be joining us on our next case is.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it!” Why is he acting like this— like he doesn’t care at all? Why did she expect anything more when he knows who she is.

That was the real liability. Believing he cared. 

“There’s nothing I can do about it now,” Oh, for the love of god. He’s the unit chief, he has to have some say in which of his agents go with him on cases. Strauss is not the only problem, he’s complicit.

Hotchner straightens, his posture reflecting the image of someone calm and collected. Poised to deliver propositions for unnecessary protections phrased as necessity. “While I do not agree entirely with her position,” he says carefully, eyes flicking across her body because he’s assessing her. He’s sanitizing the news because he doesn’t think she can take it. The prosecutor in him is shining through his polished BAU personality.

She’s going to scream. “-I do believe that you put yourself in unnecessary danger too frequently for it to be coincidence. The… incident that occurred at Liberty Ranch is not something I find a proper example of that behaviour. But it is concerning. You could have died today.”

Cipher can’t do this right now. He’s obviously worried or something, but he’s wrong, the only times she’s ever willingly put herself in danger has been to save other people. It’s a clause in her contract, for fucks sake. She is not allowed to use deadly force to protect herself, only other people. They’ve made it abundantly clear; her life does not matter to them. Why, then, does Hotchner seem to care so much?

“What are you saying.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement. She knows exactly what he’s implying, that she’s one of those agents he’s seen cycle through the bureau time and time again. That she’s just waiting for a stray bullet to kill her. That she would not care if she died, which is an assumption nothing short of absurd. 

More bullshit. He’s a profiler, really, he should know better.

“That you have not seen a counsellor or therapist in years.” He notes the expression she has on her face before he continues, “This isn’t because of your past. The job we do affects people in horrible ways, and you are no exception.” He’s lying, she’s never once seen him tell anyone to go see a therapist because he thinks they want to die before. Not once has he ever spoken to her colleagues like this; she is the exception to almost every rule Aaron Hotchner has. He thinks that, because he has a profile on her, he doesn’t need to be professional. It’s bullshit, everything is bullshit, she’s going to burst a blood vessel—

“I think you should seek professional help.” He says plainly.

“So you think I’m crazy.” She spits.

“I never said that.”

“It was implied!”

“More often than not, when someone talks about an implication, their assumption reflects the thoughts—” She doesn’t even let him finish, he’s not going to profile her, she won’t let him. He’s only treating her like this because he thinks her past gives him some sort of special connection with her. He can save her. He’s wrong. She’s beyond saving.

“God, you sound like Reid.” She gives him a bitter laugh, but his face does not change. Cipher is going to die. Just keel over. Goodbye, fuck life, why does she even try.

“Let’s talk about Reid, then.” No. He’s trying to piss her off, he has to be. 

“I don’t want to talk about Reid!” The words come out too loud, she shrinks away from their impact. He notices this too, she can see the gears in his head turning as he files away every bit of her body language into his profile.

Cipher has known that Agent Hotchner profiled her since the beginning of their first interrogation. He told her so. He read parts of it to her, parts that made her laugh in his face. His response to that? He figured she’d do something of that nature, that she’d deflect. “An art,” he’d said, “you’ve perfected over the years.” It isn’t fair. He knows things about her that she doesn’t even want to know. 

Why does he get to crawl into her brain? Make a home there, claim a space for himself, for science, for a profile, like she’s an interesting creature he brought back to a lab. Like he has any right to do this now, pick her apart as though she’s nothing more than a criminal.

It makes her want to claw her skin off. Get all the black gunk out from beneath her flesh, go into surgery and have them remove it. Then, she’ll be stitched back up, and will be sent home with nothing left to worry about. Healed. Fine. Happy, maybe.

Never going to happen.

“Then what do you want to talk about? You don’t seem very keen on discussing your health. So, let’s discuss your feud with Reid. Is that on the table, or are you going to lie to me about that too?”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” Her anger, no, her desperation gets the better of her, spilling out onto the concrete between them in the form of a snarl.

“Like what? Like you’re lying to me when all I’m trying to do is get you out of the disaster you created?”

“Like I’m an unsub you need to profile.”

“Don’t act like one and I won’t have to.”

“That’s not fair.” She sounds like a petulant child, and she knows it.

“You walked towards an unsub who was pointing a gun at you. A gun that, at the time, we all thought was loaded. How am I supposed to interpret that?”

“I saw the bullets on the floor.” Her protests are useless; she can see the hardness of his features. He’s already made up his mind about her intentions in that basement. He’s curated an entire narrative around it— and he’s decided she is guilty of each count of reckless endangerment he’d be prosecuting her for if he were still a lawyer. 

Except the only person she’s ever put in danger was herself. No disregard for the life of others, only her own. The charges would be dropped. There would be no conviction. 

“There were five bullets on the ground. Not six.”

What? She’d counted six, seen six, she knows there were six, that’s why she— 

This can’t be happening. She did not miscount, that’s not possible. She made sure that there were six bullets on the ground, if there hadn’t been, she would not have risked her teammate’s lives.

“You’re lucky that gun wasn’t loaded.” No, she isn’t. If the gone had gone off, she would be dead. It’s a simple calculation, a bullet plus the life she lives equals tranquility, not luck.

But she doesn’t want to die, Agent Hotchner has it all wrong. Abolition, please free me from the sinner that lies deep within, abolition, please free me from the sinner that lies deep within, abolition, please free me from the sinner that lies deep within—

She is not religious, she never has been, it isn’t feasible for her to be—

Abolition, please free me from the sinner that lies deep within, abolition please free me from the sinner that lies deep within, abolition, please free me from the sinner that lies deep within, abolition, please free me from the sinner that lies deep within, abolition—

The voice is so alluring. Are you sure you don’t want to obey?

Hotchner is just staring at her, moving his lips in an awkward fashion. It’s awkward because there are no words coming out. Why is he moving his lips if he doesn’t intend to make a sound? Why? Why is she—

Pain flares beneath her skin, and immediately, she knows why. He is speaking. 

She just can’t hear it. 

It takes everything within her not to yell, even as the pain begins to overtake her, it’s too much, she can’t—

Answer and it’ll go away. Obey and you will not be prosecuted. Obey and they will not nail you to a cross, the blood that seeps from your wounds will not drip into their chalice, they will not call it wine when your body grows cold and rigid.

You are no god. You are not even good.

Anguish cleaves her wrist open, delving into the branching veins of her palm, flickering under her skin, wrapping around that vein and squeezing until it feels like every blood vessel in her arm is bursting.

Obey.

Obey and you will be senseless. The divine will intervene and that pain will leave you, perhaps it will leave behind a hollow shell, too, but your vivacity is not for you to judge.

Obéir, ma belle, et tout le monde ne serait rien dans tes mains, c’est pour vous à détruit ou saveur. 

You are no god. You are not even good.

Ces délires seraient tout ce que tu es, il n'y a rien dans ton corps si la lumière te frappe vraiment.

Obey.

“What?” The posture of her response makes no sense; it’s built on shaky ground, just like her. 

“Do you want to die?” He repeats, his word-posture just right, stable, stable stable stable stable

He is stable.

You are weak.

Your mind is a frayed rope, one tug and it will disintegrate, turn to dust between well-meaning fingers. Intent does not matter if the end result is destruction.

Please, someone get her out.

“Do you want to die?” It plays on repeat repeat repeat repeat until the words finally register, slide themselves into a crisp, neat file folder titled A. Hotchner.

Do you want to die?

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

No?

Yes?

“No.” Unstable, unready, unmade, nothing and everything all at once, a supernova and a void. Light and dark. It all pales in comparison to silence, to repetition, to everything she will be and everything she already has been. 

Life or death, russian roulette, hopscotch— everything is a game and nothing is a game because games are tricks of the mind and we are all falsehoods on shaky ground; a house built of lies and built to collapse.

To death, life does not matter.

To life, death is everything.

The gilded lilies of life are tarnished by death, with the intent to improve, of course, because people only ever want more more more more. Intent does not matter if the end result is destruction.

Mildew fills the cracks of her open would, sealing it shut with rot. It’s fixed, but it’s still broken.

Blood spits like a fountain out of the holes in her corpse; the mildew is effective but it cannot fix so much destruction.

Mold is left to fester until health is a wispy memory, a soft exhale on a cold day, destined to reappear with each heaving gasp as she chokes on herself, as a reminder of what could have been. A glimmer of hope on the horizon of the moor of despair. 

“Stop.”

Everything is quiet. The haze lifts as quickly as it descended upon her, dripping off her frigid corpse body. Slowly, Cipher remembers how to move her arms, then her legs, then the blood that had poured out of her is thrumming through her veins again, as though it had never left. 

“You should get some rest.” Hotchner’s voice breaches the barrier of silence and sound, reaches the parts of her that are still half submerged in the dirt of the graveyard. 

“Okay.”

As quickly as she became something, she returns to nothing.

—

CIPHER HAS AN ITCH BENEATH HER SKIN. She’ll try to scratch it, but it resides deep in her flesh, so she can’t, not without tearing her skin off.

She’s unsettled. Agent Hotchner threw her off guard— her mind spinning and she can’t stop it.

But she can try. She can try. Anger helps to pacify the burn of her nails fruitlessly scraping against her reddened skin, not her anger— someone else’s.

Someone like Spencer.

Spencer is the perfect target.

All she has to do is figure out how to make him feel everything she’s feeling.

—

SPENCER’S NOT SURE WHY HE’S IN THE BASEMENT. He wants to go home. He should go home. He shouldn’t be listening to her like this— she does not hold any real power over him, so why is he—

All she had to do was ask, and he couldn’t help but oblige. 

In another life, Cipher would be comparable to an angel. A divine creature, innately inhuman in the best of ways, flawed yet iridescent. But here— on this earth, it’s like she’s here against her will. A fallen angel. Something that once held otherworldly power in her palms, now forced and contorted into a human-like shape.

Divine. Absolutely divine. In every life, she is divinity incarnate— there is no questioning that. She is divine and he is human— destined to fall for her lies every time.

She has her hands on his tie. It was too easy to convince him and he knows that. He places the burden of his acceptance to her whims on his dreary nature, perhaps exhaustion is what has made him so naive and pliable. 

Infuriatingly divine is all he can see when her eyes catch the fluorescent light, their pigment sparkling like kaleidoscope glass, melting every single colour under the sun into one, perfectly imperfect, inhumanly human shade.

How does she do this?

Divine. Spencer Reid has always refuted the idea of an all-powerful creator, something who controlled everything— an inexplicable explanation for every wrong and right of the universe rolled into one impossible ideal.

And yet, looking at her… perhaps divinity was beside him all this time.

His back is pressed against the wall. He can see her up close, now, and god, she’s looking at him like she’s going to devour him. Like she’s going to show him her true form and he will be nothing but ashes on the floor, swept up into her presence and trailing behind her forever, despite being completely and utterly worthless.

Divine.

Is she going to kiss him?

He is supposed to say no. He is supposed to be logical. He is supposed to push her away and tell her that she’s an idiot for thinking he wanted anything to do with her.

And yet, he isn’t doing anything. He’s paralyzed. Lost. Gone. Completely destroyed. He can’t even remember pi, for fucks sake— there’s nothing keeping his thoughts anchored to his body, the screws are stripped raw and he can’t—

Her lips are about to touch his when it hits him. Quite literally. 

Water.

Of course. Retribution. Spencer should’ve expected as much, but clearly his confusion is displayed on his face for her to see because she laughs and it’s the most aggravating, beautiful thing he’s ever heard—

“I don’t know what’s more pathetic,” she drawls, and the sound is borderline intoxicating, momentarily sweeping away all of his anger just so he can pay attention to every inflection and bump in her tone, memorize it—

“The fact that you thought I wanted to kiss you, or—” her nail is scraping across his chin now, and he can’t—

Divine. There is no other explanation.

“The fact that you were going to let me.” And then, as quickly as it was there her touch is gone. And she turns away from him. She walks away, and—

He lets her. He doesn’t even try to stop it. He lets her walk away, he doesn’t try to kiss her, he does nothing as anger and a sickening sense of enticement fester deep within him. 

One thing has been made clear. He does not hate Cipher.

He despises her. He wants her.

And he will do everything in his power to ruin her the same way she has ruined him.

—