2.3
❝I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.❞
J.D. SALINGER
✩
2.3 : the truth
OR
season 7, episode 6 : epilogue
FIN IS SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON PAPERWORK–A REPORT ON THEIR LAST CASE, INVOLVING AN UNSUB WHO KIDNAPPED LITTLE BOYS AND MURDERED THEIR MOTHERS, AND A CONSULTATION FOR THE SALINE COUNTY SHERIFF, WHO THINKS THERE'S A SERIAL KILLER TARGETING OLD LADIES IN SOUTHERN ILLINOIS–BUT IT'S TOO DAMN DISTRACTING IN HERE. She's got Spencer on one side, who keeps muttering to himself inaudibly; Emily and JJ on the other, talking about Henry and Will; Hotch and Penelope, clearly talking about a case in Hotch's office, and now Rossi, who's been preoccupied for days now, sitting over by the kitchenette, staring blankly at a newspaper. When things are this chaotic, how is a girl supposed to get any work done?
Finally, she gives up on her paperwork and looks over at Emily and JJ, gesturing toward Hotch's office. "I think we're about to get a case."
"Yeah, I so don't miss that face," JJ says with a sigh. "No matter how many cases we solve, there's always more."
"Insert Dr. Reid's statistic about active serial killers at any given time here," Emily says sarcastically, glancing over at Spencer expectantly.
But no answer comes.
"Reid?" Emily frowns.
JJ whistles softly, attempting to get his attention. "Spencer..."
But Spencer is staring across the room at Rossi, hand pressed to his mouth thoughtfully. He raises a finger slowly, not tearing his eyes away. "There's something wrong."
"What?" Fin glances over at Rossi. Obviously he's preoccupied, but Emily let slip that he was having dinner with one of his ex-wives a few nights ago, so Fin's not too worried about it.
"Why do you say that?" asks JJ, following Spencer's gaze confusedly.
"He's been reading the same page for sixteen minutes and twenty-four seconds," Spencer replies, moving out of his chair and leaning against the front of his desk, eyes trained on his watch now.
Emily shrugs. "Maybe it's a really good article."
"It's never taken him longer than eleven minutes, seventeen seconds to turn a page," Spencer replies, shaking his head.
"You time how long it–?" Emily begins, and both Fin and JJ give her looks that say, "It's Spencer. Don't ask." She nods understandingly and switches courses. "What's your theory?"
"I'm extrapolating probabilities as we speak." Spencer pushes off the desk and heads toward Rossi, and Fin glances at JJ and Emily, shrugging curiously before following him.
Before they reach him, however, Morgan pushes through the glass doors, a file in hand, and heads toward Rossi. "Rossi, do you think you could help me with a consult for Wildwood PD?" he asks.
Rossi blinks, as if coming out of a trance, and looks up from his newspaper confusedly. "Uh...sure."
"Now, that I noticed," JJ says, shoving her hands into the pocket of her skirt and giving Rossi an observant once-over.
Rossi says nothing, just leans back in his chair, frowning a little.
"Is something going on?" Morgan asks.
"How did it go the other night?" Emily asks with a small smile.
"What happened the other night?" Morgan is entirely out of the loop and he hates it.
"Are you okay?" Spencer asks softly.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Rossi speaks for the first time, glancing up at Spencer.
"You've been preoccupied since Tuesday," Fin replies quietly.
"I'm considering a purchase." Rossi is lying through his teeth, and his lie falls even flatter when Fin sees the newspaper article he's pointing to–and it's an ad for a thrift store.
"Disappointing," Fin says, shaking her head. "You're a better liar than that."
"Come on now, Rossi, you know we're not buying that." Morgan's tone is serious now. "What's really going on?"
Rossi sighs heavily, moving out of his seat to lean against the table, picking up his coffee cup and holding it with both hands. "Look, it was a late night with Ringo and not enough coffee. I mean, the guy's a world class drummer, but don't think I didn't wipe the floor with him in Rock Band."
He seems genuine, even grinning at his own story, but Fin's not convinced. Something's a little off, and from what she can tell, no one else is, either.
"All right, what do you think?" JJ turns to Emily expectantly, who shakes her head.
"He could be telling the truth. I only played him to the easy level."
"I can't tell," Spencer says, frowning.
"And you never will." Rossi points a finger at Spencer, smirking. Fin grins. Now that's the Rossi she knows and loves.
"Let's get started." Hotch leans across the railing, gesturing to the conference room, Penelope not far behind him.
"Savor this mood," Fin says with a sigh. "It won't last long."
And sure enough, it doesn't, because there are three dead men in Angeles National Forest, buried at the edges of Ridge Canyon Lake.
"All three victims were reported missing last week," Hotch says now, glancing down at his tablet, "and each of the bodies was discovered more than thirty miles from where they went missing."
"Any indication of sexual assault?" asks JJ.
"No external signs, but time in the water might have destroyed evidence," Hotch replies. "Autopsies are being conducted now."
"And I'm gonna make matters worse." Penelope clicks a button on her remote to bring up a photo of a young man. "This is Nick Skirvin, and he was abducted early this morning."
"Witness reports indicate a blitz attack," Hotch adds, nodding.
"His friends were on the water and saw a figure strike Nick from behind just before they lost contact," JJ reads from her tablet.
"Could they give a description?" Morgan asks.
"Probably white, definitely male."
"Which is shocking." Fin rolls her eyes sarcastically, and Rossi snickers quietly.
"Nothing more specific," Hotch says, giving Fin an exasperated, somewhat fatherly look. "They said the unsub had dragged Nick into the woods by the time they reached the shore."
"Fast and efficient." Emily shakes her head. "And he is unafraid of a heavy police presence."
"If he's dumping the bodies in one location, it's a good bet the area means something to him," Rossi says, leaning forward in his chair. "He probably lives in or near the forest."
"Unfortunately, Angeles National Forest is 1,016 square miles of terrain, ranging in elevation from 1,200 to 10,064 feet." Spencer taps his pencil against the table, pursing his lips anxiously.
"Which means that if the unsub is familiar with the area, Nick Skirvin could be anywhere." Emily glances back up at the screen, where Nick's picture is.
"And we don't know the unsub's timetable yet, which means every minute is crucial." Hotch stands up, gathering his tablet and files under his arm. "Wheels up in thirty."
✩
Despite the relatively comfortable temperature outside and the shade provided by the trees surrounding Lake Banter, Fin is sweating like you would not believe. She's extremely thankful to her past self for opting to change into a t-shirt, jeans, and her Converse, since going with Morgan and Hotch to the latest dump site meant scrambling down a steep hill from the road and, if it weren't for Morgan's reflexes, tripping over a tree root and falling headfirst into the lake.
"This is even more isolated than Ridge Canyon," Hotch says. He, too, has traded in his usual suit and tie for a casual navy blue button-down and khaki pants. It's odd, seeing Hotch in normal-people clothes. "He's gotta be local."
"Hey, did your team come this way?" Morgan stops a local police officer in his tracks, and the guy shakes his head before moving on up the hill. "All right, it looks like he dragged Nick up through here." He points to an area just to their right. "That path comes from the direction of the road."
Hotch frowns pensively, staring at the trees, deep in thought. "There's no waterway connecting the two lakes. It's forty-four miles from the abduction site."
"With the forest smack in-between," Morgan adds, nodding.
"There's no way this guy is carrying a full-grown adult male forty-four miles through the woods," Fin says, pulling her hair back from her face into a ponytail. "Especially if he had to drag Nick from the road to the edge of the lake. He's gotta have some kind of vehicle, maybe a van or a truck."
"That would conceal his victims." Hotch nods slowly.
"He might've switched to a smaller target to help navigate his terrain," Morgan says.
"He also didn't weigh this body down," Hotch continues. "Maybe he can't complete his ritual without the proper surrogate."
"And the proper surrogates are tall, muscular brunettes, which are a lot harder to carry," Fin replies, staring out at the lake. If they weren't here on business, this would be a gorgeous place to vacation. The mountains, the water, the clear sky...
"If that's the case, then killing Nick didn't give the unsub his release," Morgan says, utterly shattering Fin's daydreams of vacation. "He's already looking for his next victim."
"I want to take a look at the Ridge Canyon dump site," Hotch says, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I'll catch a ride with one of the rangers here. You two head back to the Ranger station. Reid and Prentiss should be finished at the M.E., and Rossi might have information from Nick's brother."
Morgan nods and offers a hand to Fin. Together, they struggle up the hill, avoiding tree roots and rocks sticking out of the ground, and once on the road, Fin brushes the dirt off her jeans, chuckling softly. "When I got this job, I didn't know 'backwoods trekking' was a skill I'd need."
Morgan laughs, opening the passenger side door for her. "There's a lot of skills that aren't included in the job description."
Once Fin is safely in the passenger seat, Morgan hops in the driver's seat and starts the SUV engine, reversing the car around and pulling out, past the line of government-issued Ranger SUVs and toward the main road.
Unfortunately, the radio doesn't work this far out in the woods, so Fin is subjected to uncomfortable silence. She and Morgan haven't been alone like this in months, and there is so much they haven't talked about. Fin is afraid he'll try to bring It up. She counts the mile markers, every one a beacon of hope, drawing her closer to the Ranger station and safety from prying questions. There are fifty-five markers.
Fin only makes it to marker number twenty-seven.
"So," Morgan says, breaking the silence as though he's leaping into a pool of water–sharp and fast and all at once. "Am I ever gonna know why I had to pick your sister up from a church in the middle of the night?"
Fin's hand tightens on her armrest. She exhales slowly, feeling her heart rate creep slowly upward as Morgan's eyes burn a hole in the side of her head.
"Fin, I've told you before that you can trust me," Morgan continues, not waiting for her to answer. "And I know you trust me enough to call me in the middle of the damn night and tell me that you need me to drive to some shitty church and pick up your sister, throw her in the back of my car, and keep her at my apartment. I wish you could trust me enough to at least give me the courtesy of explaining why once in a while."
Fin does not want to relive that night. And yet, what she wants, she rarely gets. The memories hit like a semi-truck.
Lars, sitting on Morgan's couch, wearing a faded Vanderbilt hoodie that is gut-punchingly familiar, a hoodie that Fin scrubbed blood off of at least twice.
Morgan, expressionless, mouth pulled taut. Arms crossed over his chest. Eyes asking a thousand questions. Her muttered thank yous clearly falling flat. He definitely didn't hear her half-hearted promises that this won't happen again.
He is a profiler, so surely he noticed Spencer in the drivers' seat of Fin's car. Surely he saw Lars' thousand-yard stare. Surely he attempted to pry information out of her. Of course he knew something was wrong.
But all he said was, "Promise me you're safe."
Fin hesitated before shutting the passenger side door. "Thank you again."
She couldn't bring herself to lie.
Not again.
So now, staring out the window at the mountains, alone with the one person who could ruin everything, she swallows hard. Forces herself to look at him. "Did you tell Hotch?" A loaded question, since she told Hotch. It wouldn't matter if he did.
Morgan shakes his head. "Not his business."
"Any of the others?"
"You know I wouldn't."
Fin closes her eyes, inhales softly. "Yeah."
"Reid knows?"
She nods.
"How long?"
Fin doesn't answer. Long enough.
Morgan sighs. "At least tell me it's over. That you're safe. That she's safe."
"I'm...figuring it out," Fin replies carefully, turning her eyes back toward the road. She's starting to feel sick.
Mercifully, Morgan opts not to respond to this.
A mile marker whizzes past Fin's window.
Thirty-two.
✩
Fin can't help but watch Emily and Rossi talking through the window separating the two rooms. The door is shut, so she can't hear them, but clearly, something is not right.
Well, a lot of things aren't right. The unsub killed a woman yesterday, they've just given the profile–he's sick, choosing weaker victims, and his entire M.O. is based around killing and reviving–and things are weird between her and Morgan–obviously.
"Hey." JJ touches her shoulder gently. "Anybody home?"
"Yeah." Fin blinks, tearing her eyes away from the window. "Sorry, I'm just... I'm worried about him, you know?"
JJ nods understandingly. "I know."
"That was Dr. Carroll," says Spencer, walking back toward them, shoving his phone into his pocket. "Preliminary test results show the unsub has cancer of the blood. He's dying."
"Do they know how much longer he has?" Fin asks.
Spencer shakes his head, dropping into the chair at the end of the table. "Not yet, but they're still running tests. My guess would be months, although with medication and radiation treatment, he could potentially slow the progression down."
"All right, wait a minute." Morgan's flipping through a file, frowning down at it. "Witnesses said Jake Shepherd, the first victim, was out on a lake for a baptism, right?"
"He was with his congregation." JJ nods.
"Well, those water burials can be seen as a form of baptism, too," Morgan replies.
"Especially when dealing with an unsub who has a god complex," Spencer adds.
Morgan closes the file, leaning forward thoughtfully. "What if there's a religious or spiritual motivation to why the unsub is doing this?"
Hotch, who's standing behind Fin and JJ, pulls his phone out and dials Penelope's number, placing it on the table so that everyone can hear. It rings once and then Penelope answers. "Speak and be heard!"
"Garcia, I need you to pull a list of patients in the area with any form of blood cancer," Hotch says, shoving his hands into his pockets.
"I will make HIPAA my bitch, sir," Penelope replies, and Fin snickers involuntarily.
"I also need information on Jake Shepherd. Religious ties, spiritual background, anything."
"Oh, that information will make for a fast search. Give me a mo..." Penelope pauses, and the dulcet sounds of typing fill their ears. "Spiritual, something heaven-sent, other than my angelic self. Bam." She pauses again. "Whoa."
"What is it, Penelope?" Fin asks, leaning forward, toward the phone so Penelope can hear her better.
"Jake Shepherd joined the church after a near-death experience changed his life," Penelope replies, all in a rush.
"What happened to him?" Hotch crosses his arms over his chest, frowning.
"He was in an ATV accident, he coded for four minutes, he was Life-Flighted to L.A. where they managed to revive him, but clinically, he did die."
"Death and resuscitation," JJ says. "That sounds a little too similar to our unsub's M.O. to be a coincidence."
Hotch nods in agreement. "Alright, Garcia, dig deeper. Jake Shepherd's death wasn't random."
"It is on like Obi-Wan," Penelope replies. "Garcia out!" And she hangs up.
"So a terminally ill unsub targets a man who came back from the dead and then starts killing repeatedly," Morgan says slowly, clearly parsing it all out himself. "I mean, am I crazy, or is this about a guy trying to come to terms with his own death?"
"You're not crazy," Fin replies. "This guy's clearly afraid of dying, or whatever he thinks comes after that."
"Finding out you're gonna die isn't enough to make somebody a psychopath," Hotch counters, shaking his head.
"Well then, what if he isn't a psychopath?" Fin asks, and immediately, everyone's eyes land on her. She feels cold all of a sudden.
"She's right," Spencer says quietly. "How do you find out about death?"
"You ask someone who died," JJ replies, open-mouthed.
Fin's heart pounds against her throat. "He's bringing his victims back so he can talk to them."
There's a tense, heavy silence that follows. Fin's eyes drift back to the window, where Rossi and Emily remain, except they aren't talking anymore. They're just sitting there, saying nothing.
Penelope calls back within five minutes. "Do I still have everyone? If I don't, then get them, because this is juicy."
"You have me, Morgan, Reid, JJ, and Finley," Hotch replies, replacing the phone in the center of the table.
"Okay, so the more I dig, the more peculiar it gets. The first victim, Jake Shepherd, had an interesting life, and I'm using 'interesting' in place of the phrase, 'He was a big hoodlum.' He had a history of truancy, petty theft, domestic disturbances, all of which landed him in the juvenile hall for some stints during high school, as you can imagine."
"Was there trouble at home?" asks Morgan.
"Not that I can tell. From what I can see, Jake just hung out with the wrong crowd."
"What kind of crowd?" Hotch frowns, arms crossed over his chest once again.
"The drug and sexy parties kind. But he is absolutely a completely different person now."
"You mean after the accident," Fin says.
"Exactly. Jake Shepherd saw the light–literally. He spoke of a 'gentle light' and a 'silhouetted figure bathed in warmth' who welcomed him, but told him it wasn't his time."
"Garcia, who's Jake Shepherd's next of kin?" Hotch asks.
"Um... Looks like there's no father in the picture, but I've got a mom who lives locally and a sister in Oregon."
"Alright, thanks, Garcia." Hotch hangs up the phone and glances at JJ. "JJ, get Jake's mother in here. I'll have Rossi and Prentiss talk to her and see if Jake's story is true."
It is a nearly unbearable hour of waiting before Rossi and Prentiss emerge once more from the office and confirm that everything Penelope told them was true. Fin can finally breathe a sigh of relief, but that doesn't mean the conversation gets any easier from here.
"If this unsub is so obsessed with death, then Jake Shepherd was the perfect person to talk to," Hotch says, arms still folded across his chest. Fin wonders if the subject is as touchy for him as it is for her. She has always wondered what her father and Oliver saw when the bullets pierced them. Surely Hotch wonders the same thing about Haley. "He'd been there and back again."
Morgan shakes his head disbelievingly. "Come on, guys. Gentle lights, shadowy figures? Those are the lights in the emergency room and the doctors hovering over the patients, and we all know that. No one actually sees the afterlife."
"I did."
Every eye snaps to Spencer. Fin's breath catches in her throat. She has never heard this.
Spencer, suddenly feeling the pressure of everyone staring at him, swallows hard before continuing. "Before Tobias Hankel resuscitated me, I had that exact experience. And I wasn't in an emergency room. I was in a shed."
Morgan says, "Reid, you never told me that," just as Fin whispers, "Spencer." Her hands are shaking.
"I'm a man of science," Spencer continues, staring down at the floor. "I–I didn't know how to deal with it. There's no quantifiable proof that God exists, and yet, in that moment I was faced with something that I couldn't explain. I still can't."
Fin aches to hold his hand, to hold him, and she knows he wants that, too, by the look in his eyes, but it is the wrong place, the wrong time. Not now, in a California ranger station, when the unsub is surely out searching for his next victim. Perhaps he's even found one already.
"What if this unsub has had a similar experience and this is his way of looking for answers?" Hotch breaks the tense silence, voicing what everyone's thinking.
"If that's the case, why kill Jake Shepherd?" Rossi counters. "Why not just talk to him?"
"He wanted to see if he had the same experience as before," Emily says, very slowly, carefully.
"Once isn't enough?" JJ asks quietly, leaning forward slightly in her chair.
"Not if Jake didn't see the same thing the unsub did." Emily shakes her head. "He wants to know if the experience can change. I can relate to that."
The atmosphere changes again. Fin inhales sharply. No one wants to respond. So she does the hard thing for them. "What do you mean, Emily?"
Emily sighs heavily. "Reid felt a warmth and saw a light. When I coded in the ambulance, all I felt was cold and darkness." She pauses, looks down at her hands. "And I would like to think that there's a different future waiting for me."
"You actually died?" Spencer's question is quiet, a gentle whisper, and yet it carries infinitely more weight than anything else in the room.
All of a sudden, Fin begins to wonder, just like she has for the past thirteen years, what happened after that gun fired. Their eyes closed.
But before Emily can respond, Morgan cuts in, and the moment is gone. "All right, but resuscitation is hit or miss. He can't guarantee that he can actually bring anyone back, let alone that anyone will remember what happened in their moment of so-called death."
"Reid, what's the best way to make sure his victims had an experience?" Rossi asks.
Spencer pauses, swallows. "Keep them dead longer."
The phone rings. JJ is the first to reach it. She picks it up, holds it to her ear. "SSA Jareau. Hold on, let me grab a pen." She quickly scribbles on the nearest pad of paper, before replacing the pen on the desk. "Yeah. All right, thanks." Turning back toward them, she says, "An SUV's just been found abandoned near Ridge Canyon Lake. The car belongs to a Samantha Braun. Park log shows that she was there with her son Evan."
Hotch's mouth flattens into a thin line. "Let's go."
✩
They catch him. Chase Whitaker, a fear-inspired killer with three months to live, obsessed with what happens after death. He attempts to drown Samantha and Evan, but they both survive. He would've drowned himself if Emily and Spencer hadn't run into the water after him.
Fin is pleasantly surprised by this. Spencer used to hate water, but since he was shot in the knee and had to undergo a lot of aquatic therapy, she supposes maybe he's acclimatizing. He's growing.
He changes clothes on the jet, but his hair is still damp. Fin likes it that way. He reads on the sofa while Fin attempts to sleep, Radiohead playing softly in her ears.
But sleep refuses her. There is too much going on in her mind. She watches Emily, playing cards quietly with Morgan and JJ. Watches Rossi, alone at the other end of the jet, already on his second glass of scotch.
Secrets seem to be the currency of the BAU. They are traded back and forth, often in exchange for one another. They are held tightly, locked far beneath the surface, covered by the façade of being fine and kept there by the belief that no one would truly understand. Fin suspects she does not truly know anyone here. Not even Spencer. She didn't know that he died.
And they do not truly know her. They do not know that she spent eight months grieving them. They do not know why she spends every waking hour chasing serial killers. They do not know why her soul seems bound to Spencer's with an unbreakable chain.
It's safer that way. It has always been safer. Once people know you, they can hurt you. They can cut you with your own memories and make you bleed trust and love and honesty until you are empty, and there are always more where they came from.
Fin glances at Spencer. The way his mouth moves slowly as he reads, tracing the words silently with his lips. The way his hands tap out Bach on the cover of the book. The curve of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the softness of his skin...
He remembers her birthday. The way she takes her coffee. He knows that her hands shake when she is afraid. He knows that three taps mean I love you. He knows her darkest secrets.
Perhaps the risk is worth being known.
This is a scary thought. Fin breathes out shakily, forcing her eyes shut so Spencer won't notice her pulse rising, her skin flushing.
She opens them again. Glances around the jet.
There is Hotch, staring out the window in silence. She has seen him with bloody hands two times, once attempting to give life, once attempting to take it. He has only succeeded once.
Morgan, laughing as Emily loses another hand. He plays at being strong, but inside, Fin knows he is just as broken as the rest of them. Perhaps someday he will let her know why.
JJ, eating M&Ms and smiling. There is a story to the heart necklace she often wears, the one she touches when she is thinking hard. She doesn't know she does it, but everyone notices.
Rossi, swirling the scotch, his back turned to her. There is something weighing on his mind tonight, something heavy, and Fin suspects Emily is the only one who knows.
And Emily... Perhaps with the most secrets of all. She has lived and died an entirely different person from the Emily they know, has forsaken family, friends, even life, for justice's sake. But she still smiles, still laughs, still finds time to love.
Fin trusts all these people with her life.
But not with their own.
Lars's words come back to her like an echo, that phone call from a thousand years ago. "Talk to them, Fin. Let them help... You don't ever know how long you have with the people you love... Your team deserves to know what they're up against. And if they love you, all they want is to help you."
Fin's hands shake all the way off the plane and all the way back to the BAU. People can do remarkable things in love. She repeats this to herself over and over, like a mantra, a lifeline she can cling to with both hands.
It is only when Morgan yawns widely, resting his arm on Penelope's shoulder, and announces that he hopes Hotch doesn't expect them in early tomorrow morning that Fin realizes she must act quickly. She clears her throat.
Every head turns toward her expectantly.
"Um..." Fin swallows hard. "I–I need you guys to stay."
"Is everything okay?" JJ frowns, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder.
Spencer's eyes widen. His grip on his own bag slackens.
Fin closes her eyes, shakes her head. "No. No. It's not."
"What's wrong?" asks Rossi.
"I–I've been keeping something from–from all of you, and–"
"Fin." Hotch has appeared in front of her, arms crossed. His eyebrows are furrowed warningly.
She shakes her head again. "No. It's okay. I'm ready."
"Ready for what?" Penelope whispers.
Fin is ready to do something she has never fully done before.
"Telling the truth."
~
AHHHH finally!!!! some gosh-darned character development!! i'm so proud of my girl fin.
i just couldn't wait to post this, so enjoy it a day early! this was a long chapter, but it felt weird to break it up.
also, for the purposes of the plot, carolyn died several days before they left for california </3 it just felt weird to keep rossi at the bau while fin's dropping a massive bomb and his wife is dying in a hotel room. poor rossi though :(
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