Work Text:
Mirror Eyes
by Goddessof7s
Derek was riffling through the stacks of files on Reid's desk when he accidently hit a stack and sent the files spreading across the floor in a fan. "Shit!" Elle and Hotch looked up from their desks in unison.
"What are you doing Derek?"
"Well I was looking for the file on Glaudini."
"Who?" El questioned.
"The rapist/murder suspect from 6 weeks ago."
"Oh yeah, you know I think I might have it."
Derek sighed from his position of kneeling on the floor, "figures," and continued to gather the files into a pile. A paper slipped from one onto the floor and as he picked up Reid's name on the transcript jumped out at him and he leafed through the file itself. Intrigued he settled back on his haunches. "Who was Eric Miller again?"
"That man." Hotch sneered, "Reid interviewed him, it was, unique."
"To say the least." El added.
"Well what happened?"
"Reid fell back on what he knows best, facts about Miller's life. It was a picture of dichotomy, the aggressor and the aggressive. And Reid just says, `I know you were sexually abused as a child, what I want to know is if you continued the pattern with your children.' The guy flipped, but Reid figured out that he really cared about those kids."
"Huh."
"What?" asked Elle.
"There's no mention of sexual abuse in this file."
That made them both sit up and pay attention. "What do you mean?" Hotch asked.
Derek shot Hotch a scathing look, "I mean that there is no record in this file that Eric Miller suffered from sexual abuse." Elle and Hotch stood up and walked over, El's heels clicked in the silence of the room. Everyone shuffled through the pages of the file silently and El finally sighed and shook her head.
"I don't see anything about it."
"Neither do I."
"Told ya."
"The question is now, how did Reid know?"
"Are you sure you want to ask that question?" All three jerked and turned toward Reid and his soft spoken question, fidgeting and looking guilty. Reading the curiosity from their eyes he started to speak, "I-I smelled something, or saw something that I recognized, something that I've seen before, I-I knew what it was."
The silence fell into the room thickening the air till Reid felt like he was breathing in a sponge. "Where?" And the silence shattered like a glass dropped from nerveless fingers.
"Wh-where what?" Reid was never more obtuse than when he wanted to be, his eyes darting around look everywhere but the people, friends in front of him. He fidgeted and was clearly agitated, Hotch would put money on the fact that Reid would have wanted to be back in that ER with a gun at his head then here, but he stood and faced his reality determined to conquer these demons whatever they may be.
"Where did you see what you recognized in Miller?"
Reid swallowed with a wet sort of *gleick* his adam's apple bobbing, "are you sure you want the answer to that?"
"Yes."
****************
Gideon walked into the bull pen with his nose buried in a file, lifting his head with a query dying on his lips as he takes in the scene. The tension in the room was palatable as he listened and watched, not really saying anything, but wanting too. Wanting to tell them to stop, to tread no further, Here There Be Monsters, but he didn't. His job was to understand, to make connections, to see, not intervene, and maybe, just maybe this would be good for Reid.
Reid swallowed with a wet sort of *gleick* his adam's apple bobbing, "are you sure you want the answer to that?" Gideon felt like his heart would break, no no no No NO, I know what lays back there, and if you say it out loud you make it so much more real. I know you can handle it Reid, but can the rest of my team? Truth like this hurts everyone, especially the speaker.
"Yes." Hotch is starting to catch on, he suspects, but doesn't want to admit it. Wants whatever Reid is going to say not be what he thinks it will be. Thinks he can change the truth, change the world, with sheer will power. Hotch hadn't been around enough to know the foolishness of the idea. Gideon knew that terrible, terrible things happen to people, good people, great people and the only thing one can do is catch the ones that did the terrible injustice. And then put the victim back together piece by piece, shrugging in helplessness when a few pieces didn't quite fit back to where they should. But Gideon didn't say any of this, instead he stood and watched the world fall apart.
"I saw in him, the sa-same thing I-I see every time I look in the m-mirror." No one moved, no one even seemed to be breathing, Reid wasn't crying, but his eyes shined suspisously, and no one had a response to what Reid had just said. Just as sure as any coroner took a scalpel and laid a person open, Reid had with that one sentence exposed his psyche to the world.
"Reid." He said softly breaking the silent pall over the room, and just like that people started to move and Reid turned and fled, ghosting along the hallways, the only sounds he made of shoes hitting the floor and flap of his bag moving. Flap, flap, flap. Somehow Gideon knew that Reid would be back tomorrow. After all, Reid had been around long enough to know that the only thing left to one was to catch the criminals and morn for a few broken pieces that had no place left in the world.
end