Work Text:
The buzz of the bell signaling a door opening jolted me awake.
What the fuck? Why is my door being opened?
The light streaming in from the hallway, invading my dark little space, was blinding. The only solace was the dark figure shielding most of the light from my eyes.
“What?” I rasped.
“Aundreya Chambers, lovely to see you again,” the voice was coated with sarcasm. While still somewhat unfamiliar to me, I knew who’s face belonged to that type of bitchy sarcasm.
“Majesty Strauss, welcome to my humble home. Would you like a tour before we begin?” I still barely had my eyes open, denying the fact that my minimal sleep was being desturbed. She moved further into the cell in order to stand right in front of me.
“Get up. Your presence has been requested at the BAU.”
“ What? Why do they want me?” I finally opened my eyes enough to stare up at her stone cold bitchface. That was the last thing I was expecting this morning. “Is it so they each take their turn reminding me how much they hate me?”
“Stop whining and get up. They need your help,” she all but rolled her eyes, the sound of her heels clicking back over to my cell door.
“With what?” I insisted.
“I’ll brief you on the drive.” Strauss completely exited my box while I laid my head back against the thin as paper pillow, letting out an irritated sigh. “Are you coming?”
“Do I have a choice?” She gave the tightest lipped, most forced smile I’d seen a human give as one of the officers came to clasp the handcuffs around my wrists.
The first half of the drive was dull. Strauss wasn’t much for small talk, especially with someone like me, and she refused to let me in on what was happening until we were only a few minutes out from headquarters.
It was Maeve. She’d had a stalker for a while, and now there was reason to believe she’s in immediate danger. That’s all she told me.
We finally arrived at Quantico, and I almost wanted to laugh. It’d been… what? Fifteen months since the last time I’d been there? The feeling of walking back in felt oddly familiar, like the first time I entered the building as a convicted criminal who was meeting the team. Despite the three years I’d spent with them, I was standing there as if nothing had changed. Actually, that’s not true. Things had changed. They’d gotten worse. Now, instead of wondering how they’d react to a somewhat normal looking girl who’d had a rough past, I knew exactly how they’d react to a psycho looking, handcuffed, last-time-I-saw-you-I-confessed-to-murder, criminal. And I didn’t want any part of it.
But if that’s how they were gonna see me, I might as well have worn it with pride. I had a reputation to uphold.
I was pushed through the glass doors into the bullpen, and everyone’s eyes snapped to me. I must’ve been quite the sight: disheveled, frizzy braids, cuts and bruises on every visible part of my body (and most non visible parts, too), my orange jumpsuit peeking through the stained, weak excuse they called sweats, not to mention the chains connecting my handcuffs to the links around my ankles. Upon entering, they removed my cuffs, but kept a watchful eye on me as I approached the door to the briefing room. The people behind there were the ones I really cared about. Or, at least, cared even a shard about in comparison to the utter indifference I felt toward everyone else.
I closed my eyes, and took a long, deep breath before forcing the door open. I had barely entered the room, barely made eye contact with Hotch standing opposite me, before both my shoulder blades were shoved against the wall behind me, long fingers wrapping around my throat.
“What is she doing here?” the hiss in Reid’s voice sounded exactly how I’d imagined it in my head, preparing myself for this encounter. He looked almost as bad as me. His curls were going in a million directions, and I could only imagine the amount of times he’d run his hands through them. His eyes were blood-shot and slightly puffy, and the dark bags underneath seemed more defined. The only thing that contrasted all of that, and let me know his head was still in it, was the darkness in them. There was nothing lighthearted or soft about them anymore, at least, not for the moment and not for me. Not to mention the rage I could see boiling at the surface. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror.
Morgan and Hotch made a move to pull him off of me, but I waved them away. I knew this was coming, and the sooner we got it over with, the sooner we could go back to our new normal. “I was invited.”
“By who?” I could hear the betrayal coating his voice before he even knew who it was.
“You didn’t tell him?” It was Rossi that spoke up.
“I was about to,” Hotch stated, “She showed up a bit earlier than I anticipated.”
Reid just stood there, orbs of fire replacing his eyes. “Let go of me,” I forced out through clenched teeth. He did as I asked, taking a staggering step back and just bore holes into me. I replied with a smirk. “So what do you need me for?”
“As Strauss should have already told you, Maeve is missing and there is reason to believe she’s in danger,” Hotch recited.
“Great. So what do you need me for?” I repeated. They were great profiles, I couldn’t see anything I’d add to the group.
“As you know, there have been people in the past that threatened her safety, and they have been people you’ve had a connection with.”
I arched an eyebrow. “So you think that the person responsible for Maeve’s disappearance is some street rat I’d know?”
“If you want to put it that way, sure,” Hotch confirmed.
“Okay, then you guys have seriously lost brain cells since I left,” I let out a bitter laugh, “There’s no way some rando on the street would care about some lame doctor.” I saw Reid’s posture tighten up, and I didn’t really fancy the idea of being slammed into the wall again, so I shot him a quick, “No offense.”
“What makes you so sure?” Morgan asked.
“Look, all I’m saying, is that I don’t see how she’d hold any value to anyone on the streets. Unless she’s all the sudden a drug lord, running a gang, or saw too much, they wouldn’t care about her. And let’s say for fun she is one of those things, and someone on the streets did take her, she’s already dead,” I pointed out. Reid flinched. “People on the streets don’t play with their food.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Reid hissed.
I shrugged. “I’m just saying. But either way, case closed or start over. Neither of which require me.”
“They might, actually,” Hotch said.
“What now?” I grumbled.
“We might still want to utilize your other skills.”
“And what are those, exactly? You can all profile just fine without me,” I scoffed. “Clearly, you’ve been doing just fine these past 15 months. Speaking of, where is my replacement?”
Looking around the room, I didn’t see Doctor Lewis.
“She’s gone for this one, so we could use another person,” Hotch acknowledged.
“Cool. So find another person.”
“Aundreya, we could use your ability to track down people. We can profile all we want, and have Garcia send us all the information she can dig up, but we need someone who can actually locate them. Someone who knows how to find people without a record or paper trail, who don’t want to be found. And based on the other working profile we have, that’s exactly the type of person we’d be tracking down.”
I let out an annoyed sigh and rolled my eyes. There was no way I was getting out of this, so I forced out, “Fine. Let’s find Reid’s girlfriend.”
The whole room of people, myself included, starting moving with a purpose toward something to do. Everyone except for Doctor Reid. He was just standing there, hands shoved in his pockets, staring at me.
I tried so hard to ignore him, and I was about to say something when Morgan beat me to it, placing a hand on his shoulder and murmuring, “Kid, what’s going on?”
His answer was not directed at Morgan. “Nothing else? That’s it, that’s all you have to say?”
I looked up at him and even I could feel the boredom in my eyes. “What else is there to say?”
After a few deafening moments, he sternly whispered, “Was any of it real?”
I could tell by his face the deeper questions behind it. Did you ever actually care about me? Were you just manipulating and using me the whole time? Was the possibility of ‘us’ just an illusion?
“I could ask you the same question,” I snapped. It suddenly felt like he and I were the only ones in the room, like we were moving across a silver screen while the rest of the team watched from their theatre seats.
“I still wanna know why.”
“Why what? There’s a lot I’ve done, you’re gonna have to be more specific,” I deadpanned.
“All of it. Prison, letting me take the fall, Darrell-”
I stopped him right there. “Inmates kill each other all the time. It was a means of survival. I had to, I couldn’t let you die, and I couldn’t let you be the killer either, now could I? You’re not the damaged one-”
It was his turn to cut me off, and I was surprised by his words, “You're not damaged.”
“What makes you so sure?” I was quick to refute, “Only one of us should have to carry that burden around. And like you said, what’s another name to add to my list?”
“Is that what you were carrying around with you all the time?” Prentiss’s question seemed so genuine, I just answered.
“Yes, that and…” then I realized what she’d just admitted to.
“And what?” she probed.
“Wait, were you guys watching me?” I accused. The silence that followed, along with ‘oh shit’ glances were all I needed. “You were, weren't you! That whole time you just watched ? And did nothing to help me?”
“What were we supposed to do?” Morgan joined in.
“Something, anything!” I looked back over to Reid, his hands in his pockets and his eyes still burning up. “Do you even want me on this case?” I was looking for any and every excuse to get out of this room, and away from these people.
“You are a big help,” Hotch intervened.
“I didn’t ask you,” I shot Hotch a glance out of the corner of my eye, then directed my attention back at Reid, enunciating each word carefully, “Do you want me on this case?”
“Why would you ask that?” he dodged.
“Because last time I checked, I was supposed to be staying out of Maeve’s life,” I raised my eyebrows at him.
“You are, but these are extenuating circumstances,” he returned my look.
“So you do want my help,” I clarified.
“I want your skills.”
I let out a disgusted chuckle, venom dripping from my words. “Oh I get it. You only want me around when it's convenient for you . Otherwise you just wanna give up on me and let me rot in there.”
Reid broke eye contact with me. “All the evidence pointed to you.”
His words sent a shiver up my spine, as the neurons in my brain started firing at rapid speed. I’d heard those words before; rather, I’d seen those words before, and I couldn’t resist reciting what followed. “But the one thing you can’t stop thinking about is what Hotch said the night we got caught?”
His eyes immediately snapped back to mine, looking astonished. “What?”
I set my jaw, and continued, “That you were manipulating me the whole time and I’d fallen into the trap of a professional criminal, even as a profiler. I don’t want to believe that, but maybe it’s true.”
Derek jumped in, “What are you talking about?”
I ignored him. “Maybe you’re the one who’s been using me this whole time. I don’t have the answers, and I don’t think I ever will. Don’t keep tabs on me. I know you have the means to, in whatever capacity, but I don’t want you tracking my life.”
“Stop, Aundreya, please,” he pleaded. If you didn’t want those words getting out, didn’t want your team to realize how vile you could be, you should have thought about that before sending me that letter.
I wasn’t gonna stop. Instead, I started pulling the paper out of my pocket. “I no longer want you to be a part of it. And stay out of Maeve’s , in case you think that’s some twisted loophole you can use. This is no longer your family.” By the end, I felt just a little moisture coming to the surface, but I choked my tears back down.
“What is she talking about?” Morgan insisted.
Reid’s mouth was slightly open, struggling to find the right words to explain this. I wasn’t going to give him the chance. I tossed his letter, folded up to fit in my pocket, on the table. It slid across and stopped right in the middle. “His letter. The piece of paper you saw me walking around with, this is it. My list on one side, his letter on the other.”
“Aundreya-” Reid attempted.
“You didn’t even sign your name,” I shook my head, “You couldn’t even sign your fucking name. It’s pathetic . And just so you know, the evidence pointed toward me because I helped it to.”
“So you did or didn’t want to go to prison?” he asked me.
“Of course I didn’t want to go, Reid,” I answered like it was the dumbest question I’d ever heard.
“Then why'd you take the fall for me?”
“Because you didn’t do it.”
“But neither did you, right?”
It sounded like more of a mockery than a question, but I answered, “Right.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“Jesus Spence! I did it because I-” Oh shit.
All eyes were on me as he slowly asked, “You what?”
“Nothing. Forget it.” With that, I stormed out of the room using the back door, and made my way up to the rooftop.
The cool breeze hit me in an instant, and I relished in the fresh air. It’s crazy how easily I took that for granted the three years I was out. I leaned up against the railing as I soaked in this feeling. I wouldn’t get to keep it for long.
I heard the door creak open, and knew who it was before she could even say anything.
“You know, I understand why he’s mad. He thinks I let him sit in prison for something I did, you all do,” I quickly tacked on.
“That’s not true.” Emily’s voice could be so soft sometimes.
“It’s okay, I get why you all believe it. I would have too if I were you. I mean, my whole life has consisted of lying, manipulating, and cheating.” I looked over at her once she’d joined me at the railing. Her face was kind, as if she was inviting me to continue. “I hate everything about it.”
“Is that why your name is on the bottom of that list?”
I hadn’t even thought about them seeing that. Fuck me. “Did you know that Aundreya isn’t even my real name?” I offered instead.
“Alionth?” she guessed.
I gave a single laugh. “No. I was born Clara Spade. I was her all the way up until the Slaughterer saw me. When we went into WITSEC, my name was changed to Cassy Sae. I lived as her until our house burnt down, and I begged Gideon to help me disappear. Cassy Sae died that day with her mom and sister, and I changed my name again to Aundreya Chambers. It was Aundreya who hit the streets and joined a gang. It was Aundreya who was The Figure and moved up the ranks until she ran the joint. When the gang collapsed and I started the ring, I don’t know, I guess I just wanted a new name. A new name had marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life up until that point, why not keep the tradition, you know?” Emily nodded along to my words. “I chose Alionth because I’d already been using that as my stage name at clubs, and a lot of the people I recruited I met at clubs. I actually ran my whole operation out of one, so the name just naturally fell into place. Then I made just about the biggest mistake of my life, which landed me in prison. In prison, most people were street rats, so those who did know me, knew me as Aundreya, so I went back to being her.”
“And who are you now?” she asked me.
I sighed. “I… I have no idea. I’ve been Aundreya for the majority of my life, but I just don’t know if she’s good enough anymore.”
“It’s not about the name. I know you think it does, but the name has nothing to do with who you are.”
“I don’t know, it sure feels like that.”
“It’s not true. Falling into that trap is unwise, it’ll hurt you more than it already has,” her eyes were wide, and I could tell she was trying to read me.
“So you think I’m stupid?” I asked.
“No, the exact opposite actually. I think you are so smart and are looking so many steps ahead, that you can no longer see what’s right in front of you.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you’re afraid.” I scoffed at her, but she was completely serious.
“I am not,” I insisted.
“You are. You’ve been hurt so many times, betrayed even, and now you won’t allow anyone in.” She sounded like she was speaking from experience. The silence hung between us before she said what I’d been waiting on the whole time. “Just tell him.”
“What?” I tried to play it off.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Emily said, in that stern but caring tone she’d mastered. We both knew I knew what she was talking about, and I’d been too hopeful she’d ignore my near-confession only minutes earlier.
“I can’t,” I said, my voice dropping.
“Why not? I think he deserves to know that you lov-”
“Don’t say that,” I cut her off like my life depended on it, “Emily, I’m telling you, I can’t. I can’t do that to him,” my eyes were wide with pleading, and I’m sure I looked like a wild animal in headlights.
“Give me a good reason why.”
You say that as if I haven’t already compiled a list in my head of all the reasons we wouldn’t work over the past three years.
But I opted only for the biggest reason, the one at the very top of my list. “Because I’m terrified that it will kill us both.”
“Huh?”
“Look at us. We’re a disaster ! I mean, hell knows, we’ve both already almost died for the other. I don’t want to take the chance that next time we won’t be so lucky,” I explained. And if we aren’t, at least one of us should be able to get out and that person is not me. I could tell there was something else lingering on Emily’s face, but I filled the airspace before she could. “No, I need him to hate me. It’ll be easier this way, because when this goes south, and it will go south, it makes it that much easier for him to just forget about me and move on, move on with Maeve, his great girlfriend who can actually be there for him in a way I haven’t been able to, in a way I don’t even think I’m capable of.”
“I would call going to prison for him ‘being there’ for him, even to an extreme, and I think you should let him make his own choice about how he feels about you,” she gave me a pointed look, “knowing all the facts.”
I shook my head. She just wasn’t getting this. “It’s better this way, trust me, I’ve seen it before, been there before, too many times. It’s better if he already hates me going into this. It would be unfair of me to lay that on him, knowing what I’m going to have to do.”
“And what is that?” I stared at her, open-mouthed, and once she realized I wasn’t going to answer her, she asked, “This is about more than just Maeve, isn’t it?”
Yes. There are people who are hunting me down, and I’m scared shitless that you, and Spencer, and the rest of the team will get caught in the crossfire, and yet again, it will be my fault that practically the only people on this planet I care about, who’ve actually cared about me at some point, will be dead. I wanted so badly to tell her, to get everything off my chest, but I just couldn’t. The less she, and the team, knew, the better.
“Is this about those other two names on the list?”
“You saw that, huh?”
“Yeah. Is that what this is also about? The whole ‘end of the world, protecting Reid’ vibe you have going on?”
I didn’t know how to answer, so again, I just stood there silently.
“It sounds to me like you’re giving up, expecting to die,” Emily filled in the silence.
“I am definitely expecting to die, and I’m expecting it to be nasty, and hateful, and to completely ruin me, yes. But like hell I’m giving up.” I wanted to make that perfectly clear.
“Good. So while I don’t know what else is going on, and you clearly aren’t open to telling me, I do know that Maeve needs our help. Yours specifically. And I can’t imagine how much this sucks for you, but-”
“I know,” I said, nodding, “We have a case.”
While Emily and I were out, the rest of the team had gone back to trying to put pieces together. The moment I walked in the door was the same moment Reid left. JJ walked out after him, but not before giving Emily a knowing look. It’s like they were tag teaming us or something. I tried to blow it off.
“Get anything?” I huffed.
“Maybe…” Derek trailed off.
“What does that mean?”
“We have a list of people we want you to look over,” Rossi said, handing over his tablet.
“Damn, already?” I questioned.
“Have you already forgotten how quickly I work?” Penelope looked over at me with an amused face.
“Well, time hasn’t exactly been my friend as of late so I might be a little rusty, but no, my liege, you just never cease to amaze me.” And with that, I felt some of the tension release from the room. Not much, but I’d take it. I think everyone would take it.
We worked well into the night, looking over people and sending pairs of agents out to question the promising ones, and as I expected, every single one was a dead end.
Until one of them wasn’t.
The boys had just got back from interviewing Robert Putnam's, Maeve’s fiancé, parents.
“He look good for this?” I asked as soon as Hotch stormed into the room, Rossi and Morgan right on his heels. Reid hung back, like we were repelling ends of a magnet.
“I want you on him.” Hotch had barely gotten the command out before I reached for the door handle.
“I don’t.” The words were hot and dry and coming from none other than Doctor Reid.
I stopped to face him. “Why not?”
“I don’t trust you. Who’s to say you won’t just run off? Then we’d let a high-profile criminal walk free and let Maeve…” he cut himself off, and I saw him swallow, probably choking down the tears with it.
“Reid,” Hotch barely drew his attention away from me.
“It’s okay,” I assured Hotch, “I get that you don’t trust me. None of you do. But I need you to make up your mind. Either you want me helping or you don’t.” When I got no more than a few blinks, I continued, “Look, you don’t have to trust me , okay? All you have to trust is my skills . Like you said, I’m a professional at things like this, so I can handle tracking one simple weasel. Not to mention, that if I didn’t want to be here, or I wanted to’ve escaped, I would have done it already. And if you’re worrying about my capacity to actually treat this case with some care, don’t. I already blindly tried to get myself shot for her before I even knew who she was, remember? So if you don’t wanna trust me, great. Don’t. I’m fine with that. But trust my abilities and what I know, what you know, I can do.”
I stared at him so long, that I wondered if small roots started pushing their way into the ground below me.
“Okay. Go,” was all I got, but it was all I needed.
I gave him a single nod, and headed for the door.
I got just a few feet out when Hotch’s voice caught me, “Chambers.”
I spun around to face him. Once he pulled the door shut, I asked, “What’s up?”
“He’ll come around.”
I snorted, “You’re funny, Aaron,” I spoke through laughs, “Got any other good jokes before I head out?”
“I’m serious.” I don’t know what it was in his tone, but it snapped me completely out of it.
“He won’t. I fucked up, real bad, and I broke a promise to him,” I lowered my voice so I was whisper-yelling the next part, “Hell! I killed a man in front of him!”
“We all have,” he nonchalantly stated. The disconnect I was feeling had to have been obvious, and he proceeded, “We shoot people in front of him all the time. We do it to save other people, we’ve even done it to save him a few times. How is it any different?”
My eyes went wide, and I couldn’t believe it was Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner who was saying these things to me right now. “No you don’t understand. I promised people, I promised myself , that that wasn’t who I was anymore. But that's exactly who I am. I said that I wouldn’t do things like that again, and then I did, breaking my promise and proving that I’m exactly the same as I was all those years ago. Someone you, and he, can’t trust.”
“We both know that’s not true.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he just kept going without me, “The way he reacted to you getting arrested that night is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget. He looked disgusted with me, after I aided you in your plan to get him out. He said to me, ‘You can’t do this, Hotch, you can’t let this happen!’ He was so hostile that he cussed at me and tried to hit me,” I audibly gasped at this information. I could never see Reid acting like that, but I would know just how much prison changes a person. “Morgan had to restrain him before all the work you’d just done to get him out of prison went to waste on something as stupid as him acting out.”
I didn’t know what to say, “Hotch, I…”
“I knew what you were doing, so while Morgan tried to get him to calm down, I told him that you were giving him an out. We knew that there was a very high likelihood that he was going to die in there, but we knew that you wouldn’t.” He offered a small chuckle then, which totally threw me for a loop.
“What is it, what’s funny?”
“Spencer said that we couldn’t know that, and it was Morgan who said, and I believe he used these exact words, ‘She’s strong. Plus, they’ll want her in solitary, worried that she’ll do much more damage to others than they’ll do to her.’”
Even I had to crack a smile at that. “He’s not wrong.”
“He definitely was not. I think he was still recovering from that nasty black eye you gave him.”
I offered a not-so-regretful grimace.
“One more thing,” I looked up at him as he spoke, his tone returning to that of seriousness. “It doesn’t have to be right now, or within the next couple of months even, but he deserves to know the truth.”
I don’t even know why I tried, but it was my natural reaction to deflect. “What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t take a profiler to know that memorizing and reciting the only piece of contact you’ve had with him verbatim shows how much you care about him and what he thinks of you. And based on the sole fact that you don’t really seem to care at all what anyone thinks of you, that speaks volumes.”
I stood there blinking at him for a moment or two before having my wits come back to me. I started to shake my head, but he continued to speak.
“Do you really want to prove that you’re not like that anymore, that you’ve changed?”
He always seemed to know the right questions. I nodded my head, “Yes.”
The great Aaron Hotchner looked me straight in the eyes, “Then go catch this killer.”