ABLOCATE ▇▇▇▇ VOLUME TWO
━━ ❛ 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅: 𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒐𝒓 𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 ❜

chapter no. 037!

❝ NO EVIDENCE. ❞
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﹙ FEBRUARY 19TH, 2016 ﹚

     "THE FINAL GASP OF HER SHORT LIFE WAS SICKLY WITH DESPAIR. WHOEVER THOUGHT THAT YOU COULD DIE FROM BREATHING OUTDOOR AIR?" It'd been three excruciating months since their last lead— the last poem. Nothing had happened after the last poem, and each week that passed felt like a lifetime for some.

     They had nothing, and everyone knew it. The poems never supplied any evidence or hint as to where she was or where she could be. Just as the poems appeared out of the thin air, her disappearance had been the same— gone in an instant— disappearing into thin air without a trace of evidence.

     Cara Valentine was merely a ghost, and the only thing that kept her alive was the poems.

     As long as the team kept receiving them, the more they believed it was possible she was still out there. She had to be.

      "What poem is that from?" Derek Morgan asked finally, looking up from the neatly folded piece of paper that had arrived that morning. It lay peacefully on the table, silently mocking all of them and the failures they'd encountered thus far.

     At the sound of Morgan's voice, Spencer Reid's eyes flickered upward as he snapped out of the mindscape he'd fallen into. Morgan had been the first to speak after five minutes of utter silence. No one had dared to breathe a word after Aaron Hotchner had read the verse until now.

     "It's derived from the second to last stanza of Tim Burton's poem Roy, the Toxic Boy. The poem itself is part of Burton's The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories books from 1997. Essentially, it's about a boy misunderstood by those around him. He has a few friends who care about him, but others are repulsed by his presence and refer to him as "that horrible Toxic Boy." In 2008, a short film was created based on the poem." Spencer spoke softly, biting the inside of his cheek as his gaze couldn't help but flutter back to the paper.

     "If the poem is about a misunderstood child, how does it connect to the Red Scorpions or Cara?" Jennifer Jareau questioned, gesturing to the paper as she stood behind Spencer's chair.

     Furrowing his brows, the doctor sighed. "Burton's poems and stories are typically intended for a more mature audience, despite its marketing strategy of advertising it for children. In essence, Roy, the Toxic Boy is a juvenile poem, and the drawings included in it incorporate Burton's macabre writing style. Since this poem, in particular, is relatively short compared to some of Burton's other stories and poetry, there isn't much to analyze, and there isn't much opportunity for conflict. However, there is one conflict, and it includes the portion of the stanza that was sent.

     "At the end of the poem, when Roy is put in a garden, he is, some suggest purposefully, left there to breathe in the outdoor air. This inevitably kills Roy since he can't handle anything but toxic fumes. When looking at this conflict, it appears that Roy has a conflict with whoever left him in the garden, but there's no evidence proving that they purposefully left him there. Therefore whatever ended his life is responsible for this conflict. In this case, it's Man versus Element. Roy is faced with the element, and he is unable to survive. The opposing force, the element, kills him and wins the conflict.

     "But this raises the question, "Why was Roy left in the garden?" The answer to this, most people believe, is the theme of the poem, which is neglect. Roy was left in the garden and neglected to the point that it led to his death. This is all just theory and a critical analysis of the poem, though. There are varying opinions on the true meaning of it, but it's truly up to the reader to interpret what the meaning is for themselves." Spencer finished, clasping his hands together as he glanced up to Hotch and Rossi, who sat across the table.

     Crossing her arms, Tara Lewis, the newest and most recent team member, stepped forward from where she stood beside JJ. "What do you think the poem's meaning is in terms of Cara and the Red Scorpions?" she inquired, raising a brow.

     Spencer turned his head and briefly met her curious stare. "Uh, it could have several meanings," he mumbled awkwardly, not entirely keen on sharing his thoughts. He knew what it meant the moment he'd read it, but he'd kept his mouth shut. The moment he said it out loud would be the moment it could become a real possibility, and he didn't want it to be. His reasoning was flawed as to why he kept his mouth shut; he knew that, but the very thought of her near him made him feel sick.

     "But what do you think the meaning is?" Hotch pressed, raising a brow. The Unit Chief was curious about what was running through the doctor's mind. He was the best chance they had at finding Cara Valentine. Everything he knew about her was critical. He'd been the only one able to get her to crack and open up. He knew stuff that the rest of them would never know, and that knowledge was valuable to the case, as were his thoughts.

     "Well, there's no evidence that explains what exactly happened to her, just as there is no evidence that whoever left Roy outside did it intentionally. That portion could just be a taunt to us, rubbing in the fact that we have nothing, or it could be a message saying there will never be any evidence leading us to her. If we were to take the conflict of Man versus Element and apply it to the case, she would be Roy, and the Scorpions would be the element. Roy is faced with the element and is unable to survive. The same could have already happened or will happen to her. When it does, or if it already has, the Scorpions will have officially won.

     "The theme of the poem is neglect, though, so there's also the possibility that they're neglecting her to the point where she is slowly dying. But I, uh, I don't know. It could mean a million different things, but it still waves the white flag of "there might still be time left, but regardless, we've already won." It just— I-I don't— I-I'm sorry, I just need a minute," the brown-haired man breathed before shakily standing up from the round table. Without another word, he left the room, closing the door behind him.

     Through the window blinds, the team watched as the doctor swiftly grabbed his satchel and breezed past other agents, exiting the main office.

     "He hasn't been able to say her name since the day she went missing," JJ whispered, the sound of her voice causing everyone to look at her. "This is destroying him."

     Wiping away the couple of tears that'd managed to slip from her eyes, Penelope Garcia nodded in agreement. "The two-year mark is in less than three months, and I don't think I'm ready," she mumbled, clearing her throat.

     Morgan's frown deepened, and he placed his hand on top of the blonde's. "None of us are, baby girl, but we'll find her. She's still out there," he reassured her. Despite personally believing that the chances of Cara being dead were higher than their chances of finding her alive, he was persistent in being strong, reassuring, and positive for the team.

     Everyone had been doing their best to stay optimistic, but as time passed, that hope was wearing thin, and the bright attitude was barely there. The director of the F.B.I. and Mateo Cruz had been trying to get the team to close the case for months, and officially declare it cold and inactive. However, nobody in the BAU would budge. Until Cara Valentine was found dead or alive, the case remained active. At least that was what Hotch had told Cruz months ago and kept repeating whenever it was brought up.

     Out of everyone, Hotch, Blake, and Spencer had taken Cara's disappearance the hardest. Blake felt she had played a hand in the situation because of the familial connection between Cara and her brother. Something she and the team had come to learn two months after she'd been missing. The guilt led her to take a teaching position at Harvard and leave the FBI. As for Hotch, he had been unofficially designated as her protector and promised that she was safe, and nothing would happen to her. A promise that never rang true. And Spencer had become attached to the woman and began to finally accept his budding feelings for her. She and his mom meant everything to him, and not having her around affected him more than he showed or thought it would.

     "Hotch," Morgan cleared his throat, capturing the man's attention. "I don't think Reid will come back today."

     The Unit Chief nodded, taking in a deep breath. "I wasn't expecting him to," he muttered.

────

     PINNING THE FRESHLY PRINTED-OUT COPY OF ROY, THE TOXIC BOY, ON THE MASSIVE CORKBOARD, SPENCER TOOK A STEP BACK. Beside it, to the right, was a smaller corkboard. On the first one, copies of all seven poems sent over the last two years were pinned up along with newspaper clippings, Reddit posts, articles from blogs in Virginia and Arizona, and pictures from video surveillance feeds. On the smaller second one, there was a timeline dating everything from Cara's childhood to the present day. Well, moments from her childhood that she'd shared. Which, unfortunately, didn't yield any clarity.

     Red, purple, blue, and yellow strings, sticky notes, and scribbles of the man's chicken-scratch handwriting decorated the first board. He'd color-coordinated the yarn strings to each represent a different element of the case. Red stood for confirmed Red Scorpions activity; purple for potential sightings of the Founding Fathers, blog posts, and rumors posted online in regards to their activity; blue for the poems, how they connected to one another, and how they related to the Scorpions; and yellow for obscured information that he'd gathered but couldn't make head or tails of.

     Darting his gaze over everything, a lump rose in his throat. He inhaled sharply, willing himself not to cry.

    Ever since May second of two-thousand-and-fourteen, he spent every waking moment working on Cara's case. All he ever wanted was to protect her, and he failed. She'd been taken from right under his nose, and he was grasping onto thin strands of sanity, desperate to keep himself together to track her down.

     Despite working with the rest of the team on the case, Spencer had begun working on it solo, two weeks into her disappearance. The man knew he was the best chance Cara had at being found. He knew more about her than the rest of the team combined and was using that knowledge as best he could. However, much of what he knew didn't help the case until today.

     Roy, the Toxic Boy, was the poem Cara explicitly mentioned to him two years, one month, and twenty-nine days ago. Michael Le, the principal leader of the Red Scorpions, would read poems by Tim Burton to Cara as a child. Roy, the Toxic Boy, was one in particular that the blonde remembered him reading to her the most.

     "It wasn't until he started reciting Tim Burton's poems to me and heavily investing in the story of Paradise Lost that I began to feel uncomfortable. The one poem I remember him reciting the most was Roy, the Toxic Boy. A part of me still believes that he found it comical, in a twisted yet incomprehensible way."

     So, when the poem reached the team that morning, Spencer knew exactly what it meant and who'd sent it. Le had sent it himself. Everything that ever happened between him and Cara was kept a secret. He'd made sure of that.

     From what he knew and gathered from the details Cara blatantly told him and dropped about Le, their history, as she had put it, was ugly. An opinion he considered a fact. For five years, Le had invaded her home and her life when she was only a child. Then, for four years, he condemned her to repeated sexual abuse that nobody knew of until Ross Valentine walked in on them.

     Due to his fixation on her, she was initiated into the Red Scorpions against her and her father's will. She never had a say in anything that happened to her and was forced into silence and submission to keep their bond a secret. Her life was built around silence, solitude, secrecy, lies, and burdens. Something Spencer Reid often thought about.

     Especially the idea of Cara being taken advantage of as a child— teen— in general— would always make Spencer feel sick to his stomach. And knowing that she was being held hostage by the man responsible for destroying her confidence at such a young age— destroying her innocence and happiness, and everything that ever happened to her infuriated him. He couldn't even go down the road of entertaining the idea of what was happening because the very suggestion of her being harmed made him want to put a fist through the wall.

     Sending that particular poem was a message aimed directly at the brown-haired man, and he knew it. Roy, the Toxic Boy, was Le's way of telling him that the woman he loved was alive, but barely. The timestamp placed on her life was running dry and thin, and it was up to Spencer to rescue her before time ran out.

𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒆   ───   ❪ CRIMINAL MINDS ❫
act two:     𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚁𝙴𝙳 𝙿𝚁𝙸𝙴𝚂𝚃𝙴𝚂𝚂,       ²
╱ ✹     ▬▬     ❛ © CARDIIAC      2023. ❜
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𓄹 ━━━ 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝒌𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒓! ࿐ ໋₊ ˖

     hey everyone!! i hope you all enjoyed the thirty-seventh chapter!

     poor spencer :(((( i feel so bad for him.

     the first few chapters of Volume Two aren't longer than 3,000 words, which means they're fairly short in length. later on, some will be longer and more detailed as events progress. this act has a lot of chapters that aren't excessively long. this is mainly due to the fact that i've decided i'm not going to mention cases/episodes from season 11 in-depth or explicitly. morgan being abducted and leaving will be mentioned, and there will be that 6-month time jump just like there was in the show. also, i will be putting the date in a few chapters for the sake of tracking time.

     (in case anyone was curious (no one is, bffr), i recommend going back and rereading chapter 22 if you'd like. it is littered with clues and details that are prevalent in the ongoing plot. that chapter was quite literally designed and written with this back half in mind.)

     also! HAPPY SATURDAY!! I HOPE EVERYONE HAS AN AMAZING WEEKEND!

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˒⠀𝑹𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑫𝑬𝑹. . . ▬⠀⤸

Thank you all for taking the time out of your day to comment on this story. It means a lot and helps the story be spread to a broader audience &&& allows me to grow as an author. All I ask is that people vote on each chapter, please. As a creator, it takes time to write and develop stories. Especially ones such as this that take a while to write and dedicate time to. So please, vote on every chapter. It means a lot more than I could ever express.

Don't forget to vote & comment!

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˒⠀𝑪𝑶𝑷𝒀𝑹𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻. . . ▬⠀⤸

❝ All Rights Reserved.
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