Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Logic was the most important thing in Zack Addy’s life, it was integral to who he was and how he understood the world. Logic was not something that changed from person to person, it was consistent, set in stone. Nothing could change it. You just had to find out the truth.

Human emotions were anther thing entirely, they varied and did not adhere to any kind of consistent rationale. It was hard for him discern them, even his own.

Zack did not like that, he abhorred the feeling that came with not understanding things that others tended to discern easily, and it didn’t help that people tended to make fun of him when he did not understand something. So he tended to avoid thinking about emotions, and stuck to facts and logic.

But he was open to learning new things Zack loved understanding things he had not before and he loved learning fact that were previously unknown to him.

Which was why, when he was offered a trial position as a forensic anthropologist for the BAU he decided to accept.

“What’s that?” Dr. Hodgen’s asked him as he peered over his shoulder looking down at the piece of paper he had in his hands.

“It’s an offer for me to act as a temporary forensic anthropologist for the BAU.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It’s very exciting.” Zack told him.

“Wait, your not going to accept it are you?”

“I think I may.”

“Zack you can’t do that, we need you here, with us.”

Zack shook his head and said

“Dr. Goodman was right, I can’t stay here forever. It’s either I go to the BAU or I go to Iraq, and Agent Booth informed me that I would not do well there. And you will be able to find anther intern, Dr. Brennan has plenty of qualified students that would be ecstatic to fill the role.”

Dr. Hodgins had an emotion on his face that Zack could not place when said

“You’ve really thought this through.”

“Yes, of course I did. And I’ll still be able to go to your wedding.”

“Well it seems like you understand what your getting yourself into. And Booth is right, you weren’t made for working on a battle field. I just want to remember that you always have a place here and that if you decide you want to come back, I’ll back you up.”

“Thank you, but I don’t understand why your still acting like I’m leaving for good. I’m still going to be living in your garage. Oh, and can you please refrain from telling Dr. Brennan about this for the moment, I know how she feels about phycology and I don’t know what her reaction will be.”

“Of course Zack.”

Zack was able to be the best man at their wedding. It had taken Hodgins’s a while to convince him to do it, he had been very worried that he would ruin he and Angela’s special day. But that didn’t end up happening, or at least he did not end up running it.

It turned out that she had been married before and had not ended the marriage. So they had not been able to get married that day.

From what Zack had heard from Hodgins they were looking into asking a private detective to try and track down her husband. He hoped they would found him, they deserved to get married.

Thankfully Hodgins had not kicked him out as he initially feared he would.

He did have to start taking the bus to work after he left though, which he was less then thrilled about.

Zack always hated the bus. It was crowded and the amount and volume of the noise made him want to jam pencil’s in his ears to destroy his eardrums so he wouldn’t have to hear it anymore.

But he didn’t have a car, so until he could afford to get one this was what he was stuck with.

“Did you hear, we’re getting a new team member today.” Penelope said.

“Are you sure baby girl, we just got Prentiss and Rossi. And no one else has left.”

“I know that what’s so interesting. aAnd you know what else I heard, they don’t have a degree in phycology instead they have a degree in forensic anthropology.”

“We’re getting a forensic anthropologist?” Reid asked looking up from the book he was reading.

“That’s what I heard.”

Zack rarely liked being the center of attention. Sometimes he was fine with it, well fine was not the right word he tolerated it, but he usually only did that when it was academic related or if it was important to his family. But otherwise he hated it.

He liked to physically blend into the background, that’s when he felt the best. And he was good at blending into the background of a room or a crowd, people tended not to notice him.

Which was why he wanted to melt into the wall when he was stood in the front of the room next to Agent Hotchner waiting for the rest of the team to come in.

When the rest of the team did come in they all looked at him. He sadly could not tell what expression was on their faces. Maybe he wasn’t going to be good at this job.

“Guys this is Dr. Zack Addy, he’s a forensic anthropologist and he’s going to be working with us for a while.” A women he recently learned was named Jennifer Jareau said.

“No offense to Dr. Addy, but why do we need to have forensic anthropologist? We profile killers, we don’t preform autopsies.” The man who he had quickly recognized as David Rossie said.

“The Bureau felt that it would make more sense if we had someone in the autopsy room who understands what were looking for. It will ecspally come in handy for older cases and bones.” Agent Hotchner said.

“I still don’t see the point, that’s what coroners are for.”

“This is only for a trial bases and of it doesn’t work out Dr. Addy can just go back to the Jeffersonian.”

Chapter Text

They did not need him to go with him for the case that they were working that day, so he stayed at their headquarters with their technical analyst Penelope Garcia. She seemed to be nice, although she did talk a lot.

He did not get to talk with any of the other team members though, which was disappointing. He was uncomfortable around people he did not know very well and he was horrible when it came to making small talk, so Zack had desperately wanted to get it out of the way.

But there was always the next day.

“Hey Penelope, you talked to the new guy yesterday right.” Derek asked her. Emily was trailing behind him.

“Yep.”

“What’s he like?”

“He seems nice, he is definitely shy. He actually reminded me a bit of Reid, but with slightly worse social skills.”

“Ah, ok.”

“Hey, Derek I did want to talk to you about something. I met this guy, Colby, at a cafe...”

“Bridge Water Florida, a local girl, Abbey Kelton, 19 years old, left her parents home to go to the local college. And she never came home. Three days later joggers found part of her in a nearby park.” Agent. Jareau said.

“What did that to her?” Prentiss asked.

“She was found in a place called alligator alley by locals. For reasons that are know apparent.”

“That does not look like it was done by an alligator. I can’t be sure until I look at her bones, not appears to be too clean a cut for an alligator to have done it. Most likely they were cut off.” Zack said as he stared at the picture of the young women’s body.

“Are you sure?” Agent Hotchner asked.

“I can not be sure until I look at the body in person.”

“She has a pentagram carved onto her chest. And it says that her fingers were cut off.” Dr. Reid said.

“Locals believe that it’s the work of a satanic cult.”

“Some things don’t change.” Agent Rossi said.

“Killer satanic cults don’t exist, they were debunked as an urban myth.” Agent Prentiss told him.

“What’s with that look.”

“Rossi’s the one that debunked them.” Agent Hotchner said.

“I talked about how we debunked them in one of my books.”

“I read your books, I did not like them very much. They were very informative but I found your writing style to be nearly unreadable.” Zack said.

They all looked at him and after a few seconds Hotchner said

“Cult or not, this killing was ritualized. And this will turn serial if it has not yet.”

“So killer satanic cults don’t exist but satanic killers do?”

” Spem omnem deserite, qui huc intratis.”Dr. Reid said.

“That doesn’t clear anything up.” Agent Jareau said.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. He was quoting Dante’s Inferno in Latin.” Zack added hoping to clear everything up.

Dr. Reid smiled at him and he smiled back. He was afraid that it may have looked a bit awkward though, hopefully it did not.

“There’s two of them.” Agent Prentiss said.

“Two of what? I don’t understand.” Zack said confused.

“So that was a yes to my question.” Agent Jareau said.

“A big yes, we never evidence of killer satanic cults. In reality there are only two types of violent satanic criminals. Type one is teen satanist who assume the satanic identity to rebel. They commit minor crimes like theft and vandalism, to churches, schools, symbols of authority. But when combined with drugs and alcohol they may turn violent and it extreme cases deadly.”

“That was word for word out of my book.” Agent Rossi said.

“Oh, trust us, we know.”

“The killings are accidental, a result of their hobby getting out of control. Killings won’t turn serial.”

“Hey, Reid.” Agent Hotchner said.

“Sorry.”

Zack wished that they had not made him stop talking. Dr. Reid actually made listening to Agent Rossi’s book bearable. Maybe he should ask him to narrate his audiobook.

“Ok if that’s the first type what is the second?”

“The adaptive serial killer is the one that you have to worry about. He rationalize his killings by believing in satan, he doesn’t kill because he believes in satan he believes in satan because he kills.”

“Well then let’s hope it was the teens.”

The plane ride was fairly quick after that. He did not talk to anyone during it though, he had meant to but he found it hard to strike up a conversation with a stranger during the best of times, and it seemed like almost everyone on that plane knew each other very well, so it was even harder for him too.

After they landed he went with Dr. Reid and Agent Prentiss to the morgue to look at the body.

“Dr. Fulton?” Agent Prentiss asked the man who the lab coat.

“Yes?” He said turning away from the computer that he was presumably doing paperwork on.

“I’m Agent Prentiss, this is Dr. Reid and Dr. Addy. We’re here with the F.B.I.”

“Ahh, yes. Here’s the body.-“ he said moving over to it. “-as you can see the gators chewed her leg off in the night.”

“No they did not.” Zack said as he looked at the area were the women’s leg should have been.

“What?”

“This was not done by alligators. The cut is too smooth to be done by there teeth, when they chew something off it is always more jagged then this is. This was done by a man made tool, I’m not sure what though. I’ll have to try out different options.”

Dr. Fulton looked at him with an odd look on his face and said

“I thought you were an FBI agent?”

“I’m a forensic anthropologist, I’m working with the BAU on a trial bases.”

He stared at him some more, Zack averted eye contact with him due to the fact that he was feeling exceedingly uncomfortable.

“The cause of death was a cut throat that happened eight hours before her body was discovered. And her nose was broken 48 hours before before.”

“Blitz attack.” Dr. Reid suggested.

“Any signs of sexual assault?” Agent Prentiss asked.

“The state of the body makes it impossible to tell.”

“And the pentagram?”

“It was done postmortem.”

“The the fingers?”

“All severed at the first knuckle.”

“When? I don’t know, I was unsure when the fingers were removed until I found this..”

He held up a bole of finger that appeared as though they had been particularly digested.

“The contents of her stomach. The condition indicates that they were fed to her prior to his death. All ten of them.”

“They fed her her own fingers?” Agent Prentiss asked disgusted.

“No, they weren’t all her own fingers.” He said.

“How can you tell?”

“Six of these are index fingers. So at most he only fed four of her own fingers.”

He was in the police station when Dr. Spencer Reid approached him.

“It must be really interesting to be a forensic anthropologist.” He said sitting down next to Zack.

“It is, one time I helped identify an 800 year old skeleton.”

“I heard about that. It was at the Jeffersonian institute right.” He said excitedly.

“Yes, it was. I must admit, I do not knew w as much about profiling you seem too about forensic anthropology.”

“It’s not as difficult as it looks on paper. All it is is determining human behavior and the reasons why people do things.”

“Those are not my strong suits, in fact some have called them my weaknesses.”

“They aren’t my strong suits all the time either, but it’s different when your profiling someone. I can’t explain why, but it’s is.”

“Well I will take your word for that.”

“I can help with profiling of you want.”

“Sure, that sounds nice.”

Agent Morgan walked into the room and said

“There is no evidence that any of the local kids were into devil worship or the occult.”

“No this is not a group of teenagers, this the work of a serial killer.”

“And considering what he did he was a sadistic one.” Agent Prentiss added.

“I wouldn’t say that just yet.” Agent Rossi said.

“He cut off her legs and fingers, then he made her eat someone else’s fingers. If that is not sadistic then I don’t know what is.”

“And those are the only signs of sadism at the crime sene. If he was purely a sadist then there would be more signs of torture.”

“If he was not trying to torture her, then why would he cut off her fingers and legs. What other reason would someone have to do that?” Zack asked.

“He’s eating them.” Dr. Reid said.

“It appears as though she was frozen after she was killed. No signs as sexual assault. She was unfrozen 72 hours ago.” Zach said advert he finished looking over the body that Agent Morgan had found in the town’s church.

“So he’s definitely eating them.” Agent Prentiss said.

“I can’t tell. This body does not have any bit marks are missing limbs.”

They did end up finding one of the missing women. The other one though, Zack was just glad that he had not gone to the search party.

He was grabbing all of his possessions when Dr. Reid came up to him and asked

“Do you want to come over to my apartment, I can help you with profiling.”

“Sure. You will have to drive me though, I don’t have a car.”

“Yeah of course. Come on, I’ll take you to my car.”

Chapter Text

Spencer’s apartment was nice. Nicer then his had originally been when he had first moved to the city. It was also larger then Hodgin’s garage was. He could not say that he was surprised about this though.

The average salary of an F.B.I agent was much higher then what he had been making as an barista at a coffee shop, which was the job that he had been doing before he was officially hired at the Jeffersonian. DC was a fairly expensive city to live in.

“You have a very nice apartment.”

“Thank you.”

“No."

“Ok, I’m going to get some coffee if that’s ok with you.”

“I don’t care either way.”

He walked with Spencer to the kitchen and waited to the side while he set up the coffee machine.

“So how long have you worked for the FBI?” He asked him out of curiosity.

“Four years. How long did you work at the Jeffersonian?”

“About seven months, but before that I was a College intern there.”

“You worked with Dr. Brennan?”

“Yes.”

“I enjoyed her book, although I don’t agree with her views on phycology.”

“I had already assumed that you did not agree.”

“Do you agree with her views.”

“I don’t like phycology because I find people and human emotions difficult to understand. But I do think it has merit in the world of science. I wouldn’t be here if I did not believe in it in some way.”

“That’s good.”

The coffee machine pinged to let everyone know that the coffee was ready. As he was poring the coffee he asked Zack if he wanted some, he declined him again.

Spencer had been excited when he learned that they were getting a forensic anthropologist as a new team mate. Forensic anthropology had always been something that had interested him, but he was not as knowledgeable on the subject as he was with others.

He had read a few textbooks on the subject and he had gone to a few conferences and took a few classes. But it was not a subject that he persuade academically, it was more of a hobby/interest.

So when he learned that they were going to work with someone who was a professional in the field, he was happy that he could learn more about it. And he could talk about one of his non-profiling interest with someone at work.

Zack was very nice, he was a bit quiet and did not seem to like the spotlight. He was brilliant though. Similar to Spencer, in a way.

The moment he heard him talk on the plane he knew that he wanted to be his friend.

It was different to teach someone about profiling one on one then it was to teach a group.

But Zack was a very fast learner.

“I understand it in concept, but I don’t ever know if I’ll be able to understand human emotions and how they react to those.” Zack said.

“That is the hardest part to learn, it requires more hands on experience.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to understand them.”

“It took me a while to understand that part too and I still have trouble with it when comes to day to day interactions, so I know how difficult that it can be. But I am sure that you will be it eventually.”

“Thank you, that means a lot.” He said, and Spencer could tell that he meant it.

He glanced at the clock and saw that it was 7:30.

“Hey Zack, do you want to go get dinner?It’s 8:30 and I don’t have enough food for both of us. Or I could drop you off at your house?”

“Dinner sounds nice.”

“Were do you live?” Spencer asked him as they were driving to the restaurant.

“In my friends garage.”

“Did you work with him at the Jeffersonian?”

“Yes. I don’t tend to make friends outside of work.”

“Me too.”

Dinner was nice. Although apparently not a lot of places were open at 9:00 on a week night. So they ended up going to a fast food restaurant.

They were there for 46 minutes, much longer then it usually took for Zack to eat but he and Spencer had talked for the majority of the time.

After that they decided to go walk around a nearby park. After that Spencer would take him home. He doubted that Hodgin’s would be up by the time he got back.

The park was nice, although it was a bit cold outside. He enjoyed talking to Spencer. He really did. It was nice to talk to him.

“Is that Garcia?” Spencer asked him pointing to the women who was in a sparkly dress, standing next to a man in a suit.

“She looks like her.”

“Should we go say hi to her?”

“Maybe, it looks like she’s on a date.”

They did not end up having to make a decision about that though, because they ended up coming to Spencer and him instead.

“Hi Reid, hi Zack, what are you guys doing here?”

“We were just going on a walk, who’s this.” Spencer said pointing at the man who was presumably her date.

“This is Colby.”

“Do you have an identical twin?” Zack asked him.

“What, no.” He said.

“It’s just that you look and sound like a police officer that we worked with back at the Jeffersonian, Jason Clark Battle, and I was wondering if that’s your twin because Colby is not traditionally a nickname for Jason.”

“I don’t know what your talking about.”

“I never said you did.”

Penelope clapped her hands together and said

“Colby, I had a great date with you but I think I’m going to drive home with Spencer and Zack. I need to update them on our newest case.”

“Alright. I’ll see you again Garcia.” He said, with a dangerous look in his eye.

Chapter Text

The car ride to agent Garcia’s apartment was what Zack felt Hodgin’s would call awkward. No one was talking, Zack was not usually opposed to this but he could tell that it was unusual for the two other people in the car. Ecspally Garcia.

She got out of the car, turned to them and said

“Bye guys.”

“Bye Garcia.” Spencer said waving goodbye to her. Zack waved to her too.

“So, I never got your address.”

“Hey Garcia, how was your date last night.” Morgan asked her when she got into work the next day.

"It was great at first, but then something weird happened at the end.”

“What happened?”

“I ran into Zack and Spencer, and Zack recognized Colby. Only he said that his name wasn’t Colby, that he was actually a police officer named Jason Battle.”

“That is weird.”

“I just don’t know what to think, Zack wasn’t lying so he really did recognize him. But there has to be anther explanation other then Colby lying about his identity.”

“I don’t know Baby Girl. I don’t know.”

Zack had to get to work by using the bus. This meant that by had to leave home at five in the morning. The bus ride was two hours long, he had to get to the office building before seven thirty.

Spencer was the first one to notice this.

“Why do you take the bus to work?”

“Because I don’t have a car.”

“Why don’t you have a car?”

“I don’t have my license.”

“Why?”

“I just haven’t gotten it yet, I had one back in Michigan but I just have not gotten one in DC.”

“Oh, you're from Michigan.”

Zack nodded.

“That’s cool.”

Spencer scratched the back of his head nervously and asked

”You know, I can drive you to work if you want.”

Zack smiled and said

“I would like that very much Spencer.”

“Garcia tells me that you recognized her date last night.” Agent Morgan told Zack.

Zack had not talked to Agent Morgan very much, but he seemed to be nice. He reminded him a bit of Agent Booth if he was being honest.

“Yes, he’s a cop. We worked with him once at the Jeffersonian.”

“Penelope said that he told her she was a lawyer.”

“Maybe he had a twin he did not know about, or he lied to her. He was going by a different name.”

“What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know, I’m not very good with the question of why.”

“Well, thank you for telling Garcia. He could have been very dangerous.”

“Come on guys we have case. And it’s pretty gruesome.” Agent Jareau said.