All the Madness in the World

“These violent delights have violent ends.” – William Shakespeare

~~~~~~~

Everything felt weird when we got back. Like I was in the building for the first time all over again. Every little thing that I’d taken for granted all this time, they stuck out like fluorescent flyers on a gray lamp post. I should have gone to see Spencer right away, should have tried to get in as much time with him as possible, but there was something more important that I had to do first. I needed to condense the past two months of working at the BAU into some half-assed form of a letter. Sitting down at my desk, I pulled out a pen and ripped a sheet of paper from my notepad.

Spencer, Derek, Emily, Hotch, David, Jennifer, and Penelope;

If you’re reading this then I am most likely dead. I’m sorry. There aren’t enough words in all the languages in the world to tell you how sorry I am for letting this happen. I should have left before anyone got attached, and I am so so sorry. This was not your fault. None of you let this happen. It was always going to end this way. Always. I don’t think I can properly explain how much I love all of you, what you mean to me. You’ve given me more to live for in this short time than any amount of therapy or self-help books have my whole life. Spencer, you were my world and I’m so sorry that this happened. I love you. All of you, so much.

Natasha

I folded it up into a square and kept it in my pocket for safe keeping until the time came. I trusted my body to know when the end was near. In the mean time I went into the surveying room and knocked on the glass for Spencer to come out. There was something different in the way that Luke was composing himself. His shoulders were slouched over, fear in his eyes and a nervous twitch in his foot. Was he in withdrawal? Spencer met me outside of the interrogation room, the two of us looking at this ghost of my past through the small glass window of the door.

“How’d it go?” He asked, the confidence in his voice dwindling with each syllable as he properly took in the look on my face. I just shook my head, counting on him to know that there was nothing good to report.

“What’s up with Evans?” My hands slipped into my pockets, feeling the folded edges of the paper and trying not to think of how little it did justice to everything I was feeling. “He looks different.”

“I think he might have dissociative identity disorder.” He said wearily, cringing at the look I gave him. “While you were gone I tried addressing him by the different names—first as Deimos, then as Luke—and his mannerisms and behavioural ticks changed to match what was required of him. He adapts to fit the environment based on how he’s treated, and I think that somewhere beneath those personalities is…well, whoever he really is.”

“So he doesn’t actually know everything he did to me and watched happen to me? How convenient.”

“I know, I know how it sounds but…I think you might be able to get through to him. The real him, and that he might be able to tell us something we don’t know.”

As much as the notion irritated me, as much as no part of me wanted to grant this person any kind of redemption or sympathy, what Spencer said made sense. More importantly, I know he wouldn’t bring an idea like that to me without being very sure that he was right. For a while I stared at the boy in the room, biting at my lips before begrudgingly accepting.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked, arms crossed.

“Are Hotch and Morgan here?”

“No, why?”

“Because I don’t think they’d let you go inside alone, but I think any presence other than yours will trigger too many conflicting traits and sides of him and he’ll just regress into the most basic instincts which will probably end badly for all of us, or he could completely shut down if he’s being pulled in too many directions.”

“What do I say?”

“You need to make sure you’re talking to Luke first instead of Deimos, Luke is the calmer of the two and there was never any violence between you two. Then you need to try and get the real him to come out. I think you might’ve spoken to him a few times back in university…Can you remember any significant discussions you had?”

“The night he proposed.” I said quietly, hating that I had to go back to that place. Spencer cast a glance at the clock and I knew there wasn’t much time until the others came back. He wished me luck and promised he’d be right outside if anything happened. After a deep breath I walked into the interrogation room, the door closing quietly behind me as I offered a weak smile to the shaking boy. “Hi Luke.”

“You…” For a moment I panicked, his eyes filled with some wildness that only could have been Deimos. But it passed, and he leaned back in the chair, a smirk on his face as he ran a hand through his hair. “Thought you were still mad at me, love.”

“C’mon, you know I can’t stay mad at you…You’re my weakness, Luke Evans. Always have been.”

“Mmm, and you are mine, sweetheart.” He leaned forward as I sat down, the handcuffs scraping against the metal table. He looked down at them and up at me. “Have they told you what I’m in here for? Can’t remember doin’ anything criminal-like. ‘Cept loving you, o’course.”

“Can I ask you something?” I bit my lip, hating how easy it was to lapse back into the actions that had once defined our relationship. He nodded, eyes piercing mine. “Did you ever think about me? When we were apart?”

“Every single day.” He said with sudden sincerity, the arrogance faltering for a moment. This was my point of entry. Use my heart like a weapon.

“Do you remember the first time you told me you loved me? You took me up to the rooftop of the university where we weren’t supposed to be and showed me all the stars.”

“You looked like an angel.” Again, the different tone. “My fairy-tale princess. Oh, how in love we were. You’ve no idea…not a clue in the world…”

“What’s your name?” I asked quietly, sliding a hand across the surface and covering his hand. The gesture made him sob as he shook his head, pressing his forehead to the back of my hand. “Do you know who we’re looking for?”

“You—You’ll make him mad. Don’t make him mad. Don’t stir the beasty-beast-beast…beast…” His eyes focused on the corner of the room as he stayed hunched over my hand.

“Do you know where he is?”

He looked up at me with those great big eyes, and for the first time he looked like a child. Innocent. But I remembered everything he’d witnessed, every lie he said and everything he’d done and he was once again an object of my hatred. And he knew it full well, the knowledge only seeming to wound him more. Like an injured animal with no mother to call for, no father to protect it.

“Please don’t go to him. He’ll be so angry and I-I don’t want him to. Not again. Please.”

“Tell me where he is.” Again, he just stared at me. I waited patiently as he slowly caved, one heartbeat at a time. He lay his head down on the table for a while but when he sat back up he was crying. My phone buzzed and I risked checking it, a text from Spencer.

The others are back; I’m going down to stall them. Emily’s with you.
Spencer

“294 Hulley Street, three blocks north of Lundley.” He said quietly. I nodded, getting to my feet and trying to pry my hand away, but he held me back. “Natasha…he knows.”

“Knows? Knows what?”

“If I’m here, he knows you’re coming.”

Without another word I left, taking a breath when I got outside the room as if there’d been no oxygen inside. Emily came out, placing a hand on my shoulder and nodding to Hotch, Derek, and Rossi coming out of the elevator. We went over to the quickly and recapped, ignoring the look on their faces at the fact that I’d gone in there alone. Hotch ordered us all to be ready to leave in five as a panic worked its way into my chest for what felt like the thousandth time.

“Whatever happens, don’t take off your vest.” He said sternly before rushing off to his office. Derek looked from me to him and then went following after. The look on his face wasn’t a good one and I worried that he would try and talk Hotch out of letting me go. When they made it to the office I waited for the door to close before I went after them, hovering outside.

“Hotch you can’t seriously be considering letting her go with us.” Morgan’s voice echoed from behind the closed door and I froze mid-step.

“I am considering it.”

“Have you lost it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Come on man, you know this case better than I do. You know her, you saw her house. Everything colour-coded and alphabetized because it’s the one part of her life she feels she can control. If something goes wrong—”

“Morgan.”

“This guy wasn’t caught by the cops for seventeen years, and it’s taken us this long to even get close to him! If something happens and he manages to get her, we might not be able to bring her back, Hotch!”

“Do you honestly think I haven’t thought this through, Morgan?”

“From this side of the desk it doesn’t look like it.”

“What if it was you? Would you be okay with things if I asked you to stay behind on something like this?”

“That would be different.”

“No, it wouldn’t. I assumed we were working on a level of mutual trust here, Derek.”

“Aw come on, don’t pull that. You know I respect you Hotch I’m just looking out for the girl.”

“My decision is final. You can continue to look out for her for as long as this arrest takes.”

I held my breath against the silence, my heart thumping furiously as I waited for some sort of response. The carpet would nicely muffle my footsteps in case I needed to make a fast retreat.

“You really think he’s going to be taken alive?”

Silence.

“I sincerely hope so.”

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

“Derek?”

“Yeah, girl?”

He was such a typical male driver. Going a bit too fast, one hand on the wheel, slouched a little: overall, far too comfortable for what we were driving to. The radio was off, the only noise coming from the humming of rubber wheels meeting concrete.

“Do you…think I’m weak?”

“What?” He began a game of trying to keep his attention equally divided between the road and me. “Who gave you that idea? Was it Reid? I swear, I’ll beat the snot outta that kid if he—”

He stopped mid-sentence and just stared at me for a few seconds. I turned away when I realized he knew exactly what I was referring to. I doubted I was the only one to hear Morgan yelling, he had an awfully loud voice. He began some inner battle over what and what not to say.

“You know I don’t. You’re a damn good agent, and you were just as good in Chicago. But I think deep down you’re scared for this. I’m scared for this and it’s not even got anything to do with me. I apologize if I sounded like I doubted you.”

“No, you’re right.” I said quietly. “I’m terrified. I think I knew it would never be over until one of us was dead but…Look, Derek if something goes wrong…”

“Hey, stop that. Don’t you start talking like that, you hear me?”

“No, just listen. If something happens to me I need you to make Spence understand it wasn’t his fault, okay? And…just make sure everyone reads this.”

I pulled the letter out of my pocket and stuffed it inside his, hushing him before he had a chance to stop me. Despite the fact that he asked what it was, I think deep down that he knew. He heaved out a sigh and nodded once, reaching across and taking my hand in his as we came closer to whatever end it would shape up to be. I tried to come to terms with the fact that this might’ve been the last time I saw him, saw any of them. It sparked a pain in my chest, a yearning to rewind back to when none of this was real. We could all be at Maloney’s again.

Anything, anywhere but here.