september , seattle washington , 2005

RICHARD SLEZMEN'S HOUSE WAS small, cramped, and over-occupied.

After the arrest was made with the help of an undercover agent, the Slezmen house was searched, but no Heather Woodland was found.

Ruth was staring at the pictures on the wall in the hallway, her eyes narrowed in the slightest as they scanned over the photographs of young Richard Slezmen.

"There's no sign of the girl here." Reid was saying to Gideon as the two walked up behind Ruth. "We can arrest him with probable cause, but we won't be able to hold him. Slezmen's been at the top of the suspect list..."

Gideon looked past Ruth to the elderly lady sitting at the kitchen table a room over. "Is that the mother?"

Before Ruth could answer, the girl who had been the undercover agent stepped up to them, and answered for her. "Grandmother. His the mother died in a fire when he was thirteen."

"Probably not the only fire in his childhood." Ruth said, giving the agent a side glance as she followed Gideon and Reid.

"Before his Son of Sam murders, David Berkowitz set a multitude of fires." Reid said as Morgan set down whatever files he was looking at and joined them.

"Just exactly how much is a multitude?" Morgan said.

"According to his diary, one thousand, four hundred and..." Reid trailed off, as if he didn't remember.

"Eighty eight." Ruth finished. Reid glanced over at her and nodded.

"Luring him out was your idea, right?" Gideon asked the agent. "Greenaway?"

"Elle." The agent, Elle Greenaway, said. "I don't send a SWAT team into a house with children."

"Hotch said your background is with sex offender cases. What can you tell us?"

"The last four murders show he's an anger excitation rapist. He'll keep a victim for a couple of days, he probably records or videotapes them so that he can keep reliving the fantasy."

"You okay with Hotch being in on the interview?" Gideon asked.

"I'd like him to lead, actually." Elle said.

"Fine. Then hold off? Slezmen's done time and he knows the process.
Now all you will get now is a demand for a lawyer." Gideon said. Then he turned to walk away, calling for Hotch.

As they watched Gideon leave, Morgan turned back to Elle with a slight smirk. "Next time, show a little leg." Then he walked off.

"Morgan, really?" Ruth called after him, a slight scowl on her face. Then she glanced back at Elle, who followed Morgan with the same smirk.

Ruth watched them leave, shaking her head to herself. She glanced around the room, standing there awkwardly. Reid's voice snapped her back into focus.

"I heard Selzmen spends most his time in the attic, rather than his room." Reid said. Ruth turned to him. "Wanna go check it out?"

Ruth stared at him for a moment before she glanced around again and nodded slightly. "Yeah. Let's go."

The two of them trudged up the stairs to the second story of the house, and then the second smaller staircase that let to the attic. When they entered, they found it was dark, messy, but also somehow organized. There was a TV on, multiple shelves holding who knows what, and a table in the middle of the room with a go board on it, two chairs on each side.

There were already a few detectives in the room, along with Gideon and Hotch, but Ruth ignored them, her attention already focused on the game of go on the table. She knelt down to observe the pieces better. The game was in progress, and that confused her.

"Who's he playing?" She muttered, mostly to herself, finding it odd that a man like Slezmen would have a game for two set up like this.

It was a moment before Reid answered. "Himself."

Ruth looked up at them, then back down at the board. Before she could speak, Elle appeared behind them.

"What kind of game is it?" She asked.

"In China it's called Wei Chi." Reid told her. "Here we call it Go. It's considered to be the most difficult boardgame ever conceived."

"Chairman Mao required his generals to learn it." Gideon spoke from a few feet away.

"It also looks like he's playing himself."

Elle furrowed her eyebrows. "How can you tell?"

Reid just reached down and pushes the board with his finger; it was on a spinner, making it easy for Slezmen to switch sides depending on turns. "This might have provided an advantage, actually. Go is considered to be a particularly psychologically revealing game. There are profiles for every player; the conservative point-counter, the aggressor, the finesser..."

"What kind of player is Slezmen?" Hotch asked.

That's when Ruth stood up from examining the board, turning to the others. "Extreme aggressor."

Upon walking into Richard Slezmen's room, Ruth realized just how much nothing was making sense. It was childish - childish wallpaper, childish interests. She almost didn't believe it was the room Slezmen slept in.

Morgan was already in the room, trying to reboot Slezmen's laptop after a faulty password had disabled it. Ruth and Elle came up on either side of Morgan as he managed to pull up a lockscreen with words that read "Deadblot Defense" with the number six in the corner.

"What's the number six at the bottom of the screen?" Greenaway asked.

"Number of password attempts before the program wipes the hard drive." Morgan told her.

"There could be an email, or a journal, on the computer, something that could tell us where Heather is." Elle said. "Do you think you could break in?"

Morgan looked up at her with a raises eyebrow. "In six tries?" He scoffed quietly and shook his head.

Gideon spoke next. "Try again, fail again...fail better."

There was a pause from every one, and then Reid spoke. "Samuel Beckett." He quoted.

Morgan glanced at Ruth before looking back to Gideon. "Try not. Do or do not." He turned back to the computer.

Reid's eyes turned to Gideon. "Yoda."

"Actually the line is 'do or do not, there is no try'." Ruth corrected, causing everyone to look at her.

"You watch Star Wars?" Reid said, eyebrows furrowed, seemingly surprised.

"Yeah. Star Wars is awesome." She said, like it was an obvious fact.

Reid pursed his lips into a thin line. "I actually prefer Star Trek."

Ruth just stared at him eyes narrowed, and after a moment, Reid did the same. To everyone else in the room, they seemed to be having a standoff - minus the western music, tumbleweeds, and cowboy hats.

Gideon glanced between Ruth and Reid, and then turned away, seemingly fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

Ruth left Morgan and Elle's side, moving to walk around the room in search of anything that stood out. Before she could find anything, she turned at the sound of Gideon's voice.

"I wanna talk to him." Gideon said to Reid, before walking out of the room with a book in his hand.

Ruth watched him leave with furrowed eyebrows, and stepped up to Reid. "What happened?" She asked.

"Slezmen has one of Gideon's books." Reid told her. "There was a newspaper clipping inside of the bomb explosion last year."

She raised her eyebrows. "...The...one..."

Reid nodded. "He's been following him."

It was Gideon and Hotch who first realized Richard Slezmen had a partner. It made sense, going back and thinking about it; the holes in the profile, the deviations in Slezmen's behavior. All that was left was to find out who the partner was and find him, and hopefully Heather.

After questioning Slezmen's grandmother, they determined Slezmen's partner to be Charles Lender, Slezmen's former cellmate. Lender was big, strong, and likely the dominant one in the partner ship.

Now they just had to find him.

Ruth was sat back in the station with Reid, running Lender's address when Hotch walked in asking for it.

"It's on the way." Ruth said, not bothering to look up.

"Did the senior manager want a field assessment on Gideon?" Reid suddenly asked before Hotch could walk off again.

Ruth looked up now, and Hotch paused and turned. "Don't worry about it." He said.

"Are they nervous about him being in charge?"

"Aren't you supposed to be on your way back to the Slezmen's to help Morgan?" Hotch deflected. "Both of you?" Ruth just stared at him as he started walking away again.

"Do you know why he always introduces me as Dr. Reid?" The young man called.

Hotch was silent for a moment as he walked back over. "Because he knows that people see you as a kid and he wants to make sure that they respect you." Hotch's eyes turned to Ruth who was still sitting down. She glanced away silently taking in a deep breath. "What's the address?"

Ruth picked up the paper that had just been printed. She started to read, then paused, furrowing her eyebrows. "...He's dead."

Morgan had this genius idea that the password to the deadbolt on Slezmen's computer had something to do with the hundreds of CDs he owned. It seemed like a good idea at first, until they went through almost every single one and found no hint whatsoever.

Ruth has given up on the CDs a while ago, resorting to going through books and drawers, but nothing seemed to catch her eye. She moved to join Morgan in the attic after a while, hoping that maybe if two people who were clueless about this were put together, something would miraculously give them the answer.

"Come on...I need a password..." Moegan was pacing back and forth. Ruth was sitting down, staring at the computer, which was now sitting on the table where the Go board once was, lost in thought. "What am I lookin' for? What could I possibly be lookin' for..." He sighed and sat down across from Ruth.

Ruth was broken out of her trance when she heard Reid's voice, and turned to see him walking up behind her, twirling a bent paperclip with his fingers.

"I've been thinking about the CDs." He said.

Morgan sighed again. "Oh, Reid, come on we tried the CDs. Searched, shift, and sorted through every one of this guy's head bangin' heavy metal collection." Reid knelt down to be level with the computer. "We gotta find something or this girl is dead."

"I think we may have missed the obvious." Reid said, prodding the CD player in the computer with the end of the paperclip, popping it open.

"What're you doing?" Morgan said. Ruth watched, sitting up more.

Reid pulled the tray all the way out, revealing a Metallica CD inside of their song Some Kind of Monster. All three of them exchanged glances.

Ruth was quick to take the CD out, looking it over. "Holy shit."

"Reid, what made you think of this?" Morgan asked, stunned.

Reid held up the case the CD went in, with the St. Anger album cover on it. "It was the only empty case."

Ruth took it from him, shaking her head. "Metallica...that doesn't make any sense..."

"Okay, I'm an insomniac who listens to Metallica to go to sleep at night..." Morgan trailed off. "What song could possibly speak to me."

Ruth stared down at the case ans the CD, her eyebrows furrowed. Then she looked up. "Enter Sandman." She said, at the same time as Reid. They both looked over at each other, then back to Morgan. "You have to literally enter Sandman." Ruth grinned slightly.

She pulled the laptop towards her and typed the word sandman into the bar. The deadlock disappeared, and the computer was opened.

Ruth let out an astonished laugh. "Holy shit, it worked." Morgan and Reid stood up and came up on each of her sides, watching as she went through the laptop. "Okay, okay...anything suspicious, anything suspicious...Oh...That's suspicious."

"What?" Morgan said.

"This." Ruth opened a tab left open on the laptop. Immediately, her eyes widened. "...Oh my god..."

It was a video of an unknown room. There was something cage-like in the middle of the room, with a girl inside of it.

"Is that..." Morgan trailed off.

"It's Heather." Reid said.

"Morgan call Gideon." Ruth said. "Now."

Morgan stood up, taking his phone out of his pocket. He dialed Gideon, holding his phone to his ear. "Gideon, Heather's alive."

"How do you know?" Came Gideon's voice from the other end.

Morgan knelt back down beside Ruth and Reid. "Because we're watching her right now."

Thanks to Gideon and Elle, they knew the Slezmen's partner was Tim Vogel, a prison guard where Slezmen and Lender used to be locked up.

The multiple different camera angles of Heather played constant live feed to Slezmen's laptop. Ruth was watching it intently, trying to find any clue as to where Heather was. Morgan was sitting beside her, also watching, and Reid was pacing back and forth behind them.

"Ruth, can you show me the last twelve images lined up next to each other?" Reid suddenly asked, leaning over her shoulder.

"Yeah." She pulled the last twelve Images up like he asked.

Reid narrowed his eyes as he looked them over. "Right there...right there, you see that? The light hanging from the wire?" He pointed to the light hanging from the ceiling in one of the images.

"What about it?" Morgan said.

"It's shifting positions." Reid said. "Like it's swaying, like the earth is tilting."

Ruth sat up, leaning closer to the screen. "It's not the earth...it's the ocean." She looked back at Reid at the same time he looked at her. "I'll call Hotch." She quickly pulled her phone out of her pocket, flipping it open, and called Hotch.

"Hotchner." He answered almost immediately.

"Hotch, it's Ruth." She said, then quickly got to the point. "Listen, Reid, Morgan, and I figured it out. Heather's on a boat."

"She's on a boat? Where?" Hotch repeated.

"A pier or a dock. You can't transmit a webcam image from the middle of the ocean."

"You're sure about this?"

"Hotch, have you ever doubted me before?" Ruth said. "Look, we don't have the exact location, that's up to you. In the words of our good friend Penelope Garcia; 'Work me a little magic'. Rutherford out." Then she ended the call and closed her phone.

"Rutherford?" Reid questioned, furrowing his eyebrows.

Ruth and Morgan exchanged a glance and then said together; "Long story."

Hotch was able to pry the whereabouts of the ship out of Slezmen, informing the others that they were looking for a shipyard. Gideon and Elle were headed there already, and Ruth, Morgan, and Reid stayed in Selzmen's attic.

The images on the laptop flickered by every few seconds in black and white, causing Ruth's attention span to get shorter and shorter until she finally spotted movement on the screen.

She sat up straight, eyes widening as she saw frozen frames of Tim Vogel walking near the cage Heather was in. "Boys." She said, grabbing their attention. "He's in there." They both leaned over her shoulders, the three of them watching as Vogel started to unlock the cage. "Get Gideon or Elle on the phone."

Morgan pulled his phone out of his pocket and paced the room as he called Elle. Ruth and Reid stayed watching the video feed intently. They only looked up when Morgan stopped talking and stared down at his phone in exasperation.

"What?" Ruth said.

Morgan turned to them. "She hung up on me."

"What?" Ruth said again with more of an edge to it. "They're gonna get themselves killed."

"I know. That's why we're leaving. Right now." Morgan said as he pocketed his phone and picked up his coat.

Ruth and Reid watched him go down the stairs before they glanced at each other and jumped up from their seats, bringing the laptop with them as they hurried after Morgan.

In the car, as Morgan drove well above the speed limit with the sirens on, Ruth stared at the laptop screen anxiously.

"Guys, they're both gone." She said suddenly.

"What?" Morgan said, glancing over.

"I don't know, the images are coming in slow. I think she kicked him out of the way, but I couldn't really tell." Ruth explained. "But it doesn't matter, they're not in the ship anymore." She looked up from the computer. "Back up is on the way too, right?"

Morgan sighed and nodded. "Yeah, but none of us are gonna make it there in time. Gideon and Elle are on their own."

And he was right, because by the time they arrived at the shipyard, Vogel was dead, Heather was being loaded into an ambulance, and Hotch was already there. According to him, Gideon had only suffered a bullet to the arm, thanks to Elle, who killed Vogel before it could become worse.

Ruth stood with Morgan and Hotch, their eyes on Gideon as he walked away from the ambulance Heather was in.

"So what kind of report do they want on him?" Morgan looked over st Hotch.

"I suppose whether or not he's fit to be a field agent." Hotch said. Then he added, "You know, Haley and I were looking at a baby names book. Guess what Gideon means in Hebrew."

Ruth opened her mouth to answer, but Reid walked up to them and did it for her. "Mighty warrior." He said. Ruth sighed to herself and closed her mouth. "Appropriate."

Ruth watched Reid walk off again with a mildly annoyed expression. "He's gonna be stealing my thunder now, isn't he?" She muttered.

There was a chuckle from Morgan, and just an amused smirk from Hotch.

"Does that mean you're coming back?" Morgan asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. Ruth gave him a look. "Arnie misses you~" Morgan said in a sing song voice with a grin.

Ruth sighed. "Well, life was pretty boring without this..." She smiled a little. "Yeah...I guess I'm coming back."

As the jet flew back to Quantico, throughout the rest of that day and then into the night, everyone slept.

Everyone except Ruth.

Insomnia - despite what many belived - actually came in handy when Ruth needed to stay up late for a case. That was most times, but currently - at about two in the morning - it was proving to be a huge pain in the ass.

It was after her first case in two months, and she couldn't even sleep on the jet ride back home.

After several hours of tossing and turning, pretending to sleep, Ruth eventually sighed and sat up, rubbing her face in frusteration.

Quietly, she stood up and walked past Morgan's sleeping form, making her way to the coffee maker beyond the seats. She sighed quietly to herself as she started the machine so it would brew, and she leaned against the counter tiredly.

"You really shouldn't be drinking coffee this early."

Ruth jumped and spun around, spotting a disheveled looking Spencer Reid standing behind her. She exhaled in relief when she realized it was just him.

"Reid, god..." She said quietly, staring at him. "You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were asleep."

"I heard you get up. I'm a light sleeper." He told her.

"Sorry." She said, and turned back to the coffee machine, rubbing her burning eyes again. There was a moment of silence before Reid spoke again.

"Something traumatic happened to you when you were younger, didn't it?"

Ruth turned back to him, an eyebrow raised. "Excuse me?"

"You startle easy." Reid said. "When we were at Heather Woodland's house, you jumped everytime her dog barked. And you jumped just now."

"My dad had a scary dog when I was growing up, and I didn't know you were behind me." Ruth said, almost defensively. "I don't startle easy."

Reid shut his mouth and was silent for a moment before he spoke again.

"Why did you and Hotch look at each other when he said everyone sees me as a kid?"

Ruth sighed, this time a bit irritably. "Do you stop asking questions?" She asked. Reid just stared at her, waiting for an answer. Ruth sighed again before speaking. "Look. Hotch looked at me like that because I used to be like you. I started out at the BAU when I was really young, and I wasn't that well respected until about a year ago."

"How young were you when you started?" Reid asked.

"Twenty two." Ruth answered. "I'm twenty four now. I've been here for two years and I still have people underestimate me. But it's gotten better...From the looks of it, you're already settling in fine." She said. "Morgan told me you and Arnie get along really well."

"Arnold Dunford? Yeah." Reid said, glancing down for a split moment. "He's like that buff, jock guy who's nice and gets his one nerdy friend out of trouble with the other jocks in high school movies."

Ruth let out a quiet chuckle. "Yeah. That's Arnie. He's probably my bestfriend."

"He's been out for a week." Reid told her. "He hasn't told anyone but Hotch why, though."

"It's probably his dad." Ruth said without thinking, pulling the coffee pot away from the maker as it finished brewing. "I know that he's been in and out of the hospital the past few years, brain hemorrhages and rebleeding, or something. Arnie was never specific."

"Well, it's not our place to pry, is it?"

"No, it is not." Ruth agreed, pouring the coffee into a mug for herself. Then she paused and glanced up at Reid. "Do you want a cup? Or are you too good for two a.m. caffeine?" She smirked a little.

Reid stared at her for a moment before he smiled just slightly. "I don't think anyones too good for that."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

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this gets better i promise i swear
episode two is scrumdillidumpious i promise

- Dan<3