Chapter Text
Reid walked with a practiced pace from his car. To an onlooker, he was simply taking his time or enjoying the unhurried stroll. These observations could not have been further from the truth. His whole body, all of his limbs, his eyes, all felt weighted. With each clap of his vibrant orange and white Chuck Taylor sneakers against the hard pavement, a hammer sounded against his skull. Nervously, Reid adjusted the strap of his bag and pushed his sunglasses up with his index finger. In an odd way, he felt as if he was right back to where he was over three years ago. This had always been the most difficult part of his drug addiction. It wasn't the withdrawal and it surprisingly wasn't the horrific memories of his captivity. The most challenging and most excruciating aspect of it all was having to come into work each and every day as if everything was completely, 100%, normal. The thought of his days under the influence of narcotics tugged at the back of his mind. The sensations that were received after each dose playfully danced at the edges of his being, luring him, calling his name.
Reid shook off the horrible temptation and again focused solely on his appearance. He did not desire for his team members to believe something was wrong, especially now. So much had happened that year. JJ had left and in doing so took with her a piece of him. He had never told her this of course, but she was his rock. She was his constant; unflinching and unchanging. Reid, of course, knew that Derek Morgan was the best male friend he had ever had in his life and deep down thought of him as a brother. Jason Gideon had been the closest thing Spencer had to a father figure or a mentor. He was profoundly close with all of his teammates and losing any of them would have been a significant blow, but still, something was different when it came to JJ. He had accepted the fact that they were not meant to be together long ago. He had truly been happy for her with her marriage to Will and the arrival of her son. But there was always something about her, about their relationship. It landed somewhere uniquely in between brother and sister, best friends, and lovers in some unexplainable way that always just felt normal to Reid. She was there when he needed advice. She never looked down on him or treated him like a child and managed to be the only person on the entire team that called him by his first name, let alone shortened it to the endearing "Spence".
Now, well, now Emily was gone too, and for good. She couldn't come back and visit like JJ. He couldn't meet her for coffee on the weekends or catch up through emails or letters when things got busy. She was simply, gone.
Reid was well-versed in a lot of areas of studies, but one of them was not loss. Sure, he witnessed people dead or dying almost every day on the job. He watched his dad walk out on him at a young age, and his surrogate father Jason Gideon, up and left without so much as a verbal goodbye. Still, death was different. It was, well, permanent. He tried terribly to separate himself from it all. To look at it like a case, or one of his beloved statistics. People die. It happens. He knew how many on average a day, he could recite each gender's life expectancy, the top causes of death and among which gender or age group. Still, Emily Prentiss was no statistic. She wasn't found in the pages of one of Reid's books nor was she simply another picture, another face on a wall of cases. She was his coworker, his friend. Now all of that was gone. He couldn't help but remember how he first treated her when she joined the team. He wasn't himself and she recognized it with hardly even knowing him. She tried to be there for him, to talk to him, to help. Yet in Reid's addiction and clouded judgment, he continually and callously pushed her away. Not once though, did she take offense or lash back at him. Not once, did she give up on him or overcrowd him with help. She stood her ground, remained present if needed, and then let him make his own choices. That rough start was the beginning of a friendship that would grow and overtime strengthen into something only death could break.
Spencer could not think of things such as this. He could not personalize it, even though it was highly personal. He couldn't grieve, even though his heart felt sick. The extensive thinking and denial and suppressed sorrow did nothing to help his headaches, but only quickly added to the pain.
Not only had he been deeply affected his Emily's death, but her murder had sent a massive shockwave across the entire building, hitting his team the hardest. This was yet another reason to continue to hide behind his glasses, behind his feigned smile. The team had enough on their hands and hearts to be burdened by his headaches. The very last thing Spencer Reid wanted to be was a worry.
Pulling at the strap of his messenger bag yet again, Spencer continued on his routine walk into the building. As was also normal, he managed to run into Derek as he did so. They shared a brief and friendly nod.
"Any pain?"
Reid glanced up at his friend and the sudden inquiry curiously.
"Huh?"
"Anything?"
Reid shook his head and mentally kicked himself for his paranoia and hearing impairment due to the cranial throbbing he was at that moment experiencing.
"Haven't heard anything," Reid shrugged.
"Hey," Morgan teased, "maybe we'll get lucky and be in for a nice boring day of paperwork."
Reid paused and searched for something normal to address as to avoid attention. "How was your, uh, date last night? Hannah?"
"Anna," Morgan corrected with a sly grin.
"You two have been going out for like a week now, this is serious for you."
Derek chuckled and turned to see Hotch rounding the corner just in front of him.
"Personal talk later," he frowned, "Get your go bags. Wheels up in 20. Debrief on the plane."
Reid and Morgan exchanged glances and hurriedly gathered their things before joining the rest of the team in the rush.
"Christina and Anthony Schultz were both found murdered in their home less than an hour ago by a neighbor," Garcia explained via webcam once the team was aboard the plane. Their daughter, four-year-old, Tatum Schultz is now missing."
"How's our clock?" Dave glanced at his own watch.
"Parents were killed around 1:00 am, so about 6 hours." She paused as she pulled photographs up on the screen. "Christina, 38, was found in the daughter's bedroom and died from blunt force trauma to the head. Anthony, 40, was found in the hall with several lacerations and two gunshot wounds to the chest."
"Gunshot?" Seaver titled her head, eyeing her own tablet. "How come no one in the neighborhood heard them?"
"They did," Penelope nodded. "but it is Chicago sweetie. They didn't live in the best neighborhood and neighbors who were interviewed said they heard the shots around 1:00, but didn't think anything of it –"
Reid partially listened to his teammates as he stared down wearily at the photograph of the young and grinning redhead girl. He then moved on the shots depicting the parents' beaten and bloody corpses. The pictures pressed into his mind and swirled with all the other masses of images and information that relentlessly tortured him day and night.
"99% of abducted children don't survive the first 24 hours," Reid interjected mindlessly to give the illusion that he was paying full attention.
Statistics and facts spewed out of Reid most times before he even thought about it anyway. They just came to him naturally. He attempted to hold them back or dilute them every now and again to avoid the stares and jeers, but his teammates would have found it perfectly natural for him to say a fact and nothing more.
"Reid, Morgan and Dave go to the house. Seaver and I will go to the station. Reid, the girl is your assignment. I want to know everything about her, where she played, went to school, everything. Dave, focus on our unsub. Get a profile. Morgan, you take the parents. See if they had any enemies, anything. It looks like the child was the focus but let's be sure. You all know the drill. Work quickly. This girl is running out of time."