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aswallowssong · 4 years

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Second Child, Restless Child

Chapter 4 - Quick to Recognize

@valkyrie-5583

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The first part of a gap fill for 1x13, Poison. TW for illness, hospitals, and drug mentions.

When Reid won't stop sniffling in the office, Kit thinks she might lose her mind. Instead, she find some footing as the team is called to New Jersey. People are being poisoned, and the medicinal side of this case falls right up Kit's ally. Maybe Gideon won't find her a problem if she can use her expertise to help them solve this case. Maybe she can help the team's favorite, stubborn genius in the meantime, too.

Sniff.

“Táim chun m’intinn a chailleadh.”

“Sorry?”

Kit’s head snapped up, meeting Morgan’s quirked eyebrow without a moment’s hesitation.

“Huh?” She said without ceremony, reaching up to rub at her eyes. She was river deep and mountain high into a stack of paperwork for which there was no end in sight. The last case they’d done was one she’d not been required on, and when the team came back, she’d been required to do their post-takedown physicals. Considering she wasn’t there and they could have easily been looked over by the EMTs on site, she was feeling a little bitter.

Plus, they’d hauled her up from the clinic, scrubs and all, into prime stiff-ville to do said physicals instead of having the team just stay on the first floor and meet her at the clinic. She tried to tell this to Hotch, but he said it wasn’t his call, and if looks could kill, the one she got from Section Chief Strauss as she eavesdropped on their conversation would have put the head nurse six feet under.

That was Friday.

It was definitely Monday. Despite their best effort, there was a lack of enthusiasm floating around the office, and the weekend already seemed like a memory.

A beautiful, wonderful, tragically-ended memory where paperwork was nowhere to be seen and the coffee wasn’t tepid at best. Kit had learned in her two weeks on the sixth floor to lean into the slow days at the BAU, especially when they’d left her behind. It had been a super quiet couple of days, and while she was glad not to be practically alone in the bullpen, it was decidedly better than listening to the persistent sniffling coming from her right.

Morgan chuckled at the woman sitting at the desk across from him, gesturing vaguely around the room in a show of his amusement at her confusion.

“Oh nothing, just usually we speak English in here.”

She groaned, running a hand down her face. Kit hadn’t even realized she’d spoken aloud, let alone spoken in anything but English. Down in the clinic no one noticed if someone was mumbling to themselves. There was privacy in the constant flurry of activity, and Kit found herself missing it desperately.

“Right, I didn’t notice.” She stopped and pulled her eyebrows together. “I mean. I did notice. That you speak English. Up here, I mean. I-”

Kit cut herself off with a disgruntled groan, worrying the end of her braids with her hands. She tugged gently, the action always grounding her back to the task at hand as her brain attempted to spiral away.

“Can I try again?”

Morgan was laughing now. They’d found a sort-of-friendship in the time they trained around the track. Kit had started going earlier so that she could go even on the mornings that she was in stiff-ville. Morgan was always there, and while they didn’t always partner up, Kit had decided it was better to train with someone else on occasion than train alone every day. She’d missed the comradery, and honestly, Morgan was a cool guy.

“Sure, Lep,” he responded easily, a teasing smirk on his lips.

Lep. Short for Leprechaun. While she didn’t love it, it was better than him butchering her last name every time he addressed her.

“I meant that I didn’t notice I wasn’t speaking English.”

“Figured, I sort of just wanted to watch you stumble through it.”

She threw a ball of paper at him, having been previously ripped out of her notebook and snowballed until it was unrecognizable. She didn’t think that trying to keep all the notes for their “Fun Friday Health Meetings” would be such a chore, but scheduling was starting to be the most hated part of her new position. Easily.

“That’s-”

Sniff.

Her hand came down and smacked on the desk, eyes darting to the offender.

Supervisory Special Agent Doctor Spencer Reid.

She was going to kill him.

Morgan would assure Elle later that the lasers in the nurse’s glare were assuredly deadly, and that maybe Gideon had been onto something when he’d mentioned on the plane that he “wasn’t sure about that Colghain girl,” and that “there’s trouble in her eyes, Hotch. You can’t tell me you didn’t see it in Wilmington.”

Morgan wasn’t sure about all of that. Kit was, for the most part, quiet and passive. But when Kit’s eyes flashed towards Reid in a frustration he didn’t understand, he thought he might have seen a little bit of what Gideon meant.

“What?” He asked quickly, “What happened?”

“Reid,” she said quietly, trying to even out her frustration and match Morgan’s confusion instead.

Morgan glanced over at the younger agent with a raised eyebrow. Reid was his friend, Kit knew that, and that they’d worked together almost two years. He clearly didn’t want to see the kid in the firing line. The younger man hadn’t even noticed that Kit had said his name, eyes scanning quickly over the page of a book, then the next, the page turning in a fraction of the time it would take any other member of their team. Or any other member of the human race, for that matter.

When Morgan looked back to his occasional training partner and saw that she still had fire in her eyes, he couldn’t help but ask.

“Woah, Lep, what’d he do?”

“He won’t stop sniffling ,” she said through clenched teeth.

Morgan looked over at Reid, then at Kit, and then shrugged a bit.

“Sniffling?”

“Yes, you can’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” she reasoned, coming down a bit. She’d evened her eyes, but there was obviously still tension in her shoulders.

“I haven’t. Maybe it’s allergies,” he suggested, not giving her time to tell him that Reid didn’t have seasonal allergies before he called, “Yo, Reid?”

Reid looked up at his name being said louder, eyes snapping to Morgan. They turned quickly to Kit, then back to Morgan again, as if he was trying to piece together the reason he was being called into the conversation. Neither of them gave much to go off of.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have allergies?”

Reid looked puzzled by the question, looking again from Morgan, to Kit, and back again. Slowly, he shook his head, as if the question had thrown him completely. Kit knew what he was probably thinking. First of all, it was winter in DC. What could he be allergic to if nothing was blooming? Secondly, Kit would have known that. She’d read all their medical files.

“No,” he looked at Kit, deadpanning, “You know that.”

Kit’s eyes narrowed slightly, a bit of tension coming back to her. She'd seen that coming, and there was nothing challenging about Reid’s tone. It was obvious that he didn’t mean any harm. He was confused.

And Kit did know that, of course, as she’d read their files so many times through she could probably recite them backwards. That didn’t make his lack of social grace any more tactful.

If anything, his blunt statement just pissed her off all over again.

“We were just wondering, kid,” Morgan assured quickly, glancing when Kit shifted in posture. She didn’t need him to back her up, not if she was willing to stand up to Gideon, and he didn’t know her that well.

The confusion flooding from both men was enough to make her swallow back her frustration and take a breath. If Reid was a habitual sniffler, she could get over it. Some people just did that. And the social grace, or lack-there-of? She could get over that too.

It’s not a big deal, Dakota, cut him some slack. Ever since that night at the metro station you’ve been so paranoid and on edge. You aren’t like that. You’ve dealt with loads of people way less tactful than this. Leave him be and get a grip of yourself. What would Ari say?

Reid, strangely enough, didn’t respond. He waited a moment, then shrugged and gave a wary look Kit’s way before picking his book back up and burying his nose in it once again.

Things were quiet a moment before Morgan leaned forward in his desk, setting his eyes on the red head with her face in her hands.

She’d deflated, relenting to the confusion and the frustration internally, rather than pushing it outward.

“Wanna tell me what that was about?”

Morgan’s voice was quiet and passive, not wanting to pry.

Kit sighed just as softly, taking a second before looking up at him and giving a half-hearted shrug. She could stay calm. Morgan was being nice despite her weird mood swing, and she wasn’t going to freak out.

Save the big feelings for home. When you see Ari tonight, you can lose it.

“It’s really distracting,” she offered, “I need to finish these notes if we’re going to have that health meeting on Wednesday, and the meeting has to happen so I can turn in the paperwork to Ramos. Plus, this paperwork from the case I wasn’t even on is taking forever. I don’t want to get in trouble. I want to fly under the radar.”

Morgan seemed to consider that for a moment before he dropped his voice.

“You’re fine, Kit.”

She focused fully on his words. Morgan hadn’t used her name in days, opting for “Lep” over either of her names.

“Trust me, Hotch would sign off that we did it even if we didn’t. He hates those things even more than we do.”

“Not reassuring,” she said dryly, shaking her head not to disagree, but almost as if to shake the idea off. “And no way. This is a pilot position for the whole bureau. I’m not looking to get in trouble with like, the Director or something. I’m fine, I’ll ignore it.”

Morgan didn’t look quite convinced, his mind obviously flashing the image of her smacking her desk not five minutes ago, but she nodded at him. After taking a breath, she let a small smile cross her lips.

“I’m fine.”

-----

Morgan left her alone after that, turning to his own stack of files. Thankfully, after purposefully blocking Reid out, Kit was able to focus on her notes. She actually was able to focus so well that she nearly jumped out of her chair when a light hand gave her a bit of a shake on the shoulder.

She’d never admit to it, but she might have yelped. Just a little.

“Sorry,” came a rasp that Kit couldn’t pair with one of the BAU team members immediately.

When she looked up and around for her attacker she was surprised. Reid was standing there looking sheepish, his hands twisting gently around each other in front of him.

“Hotch called for us… twice. I figured you didn’t hear him. You know, since you’re reading.”

Kit stared at him for a moment, her eyebrows coming together as she looked at him closely.

He was sort of… pale? Except his cheeks, and the tip of his nose, which were more than a barely noticeable red. Unfortunately for him, Kit was trained to notice. He was also giving off wave after wave of exhaustion, and judging by the dark circles under his eyes, it went bone deep. Everything about him, including the scarf draped around his neck in the not-super-cold bullpen screamed “I feel like garbage, please take me out,” and despite her almost outburst earlier that morning, she was a nurse first. She could be a person with pet peeves and frustrations later.

She’d been shaken out of her hyperfocus, but she was zoned back in now, quick to recognize the failing health of the youngest member of the team. Everything in her settled easily into her calm, gentle professionalism. Whatever the BAU was doing to her was exactly what she’d worked so hard to push down and away, and whatever Gideon had seen was something she was determined not to let him see again.

This, the stillness she suddenly possessed, was how others would describe her. In the clinic, this was who she was. Calm. Quiet. Focused. If there was something she was good at, this was it.

But before she could even begin to speak, Reid narrowed his eyes, physically pulling away from her.

“We don’t profile each other,” he said defensively, crossing his arms over his chest and looking anywhere but her eyes. He cleared his throat in a way that was trying to be inconspicuous, but didn’t get past Kit in the slightest.

“I’m not a profiler,” she said gently, as if she hadn’t been glaring daggers at him a few hours before. Everything about this second interaction was different. She would have pressed again, but any chance of that was dashed when Hotch leaned out of the conference room, a wave of frustration hitting Kit as if she’d been punched in the chest.

“Reid. Colghain. Now.”

It wasn’t half a second before they were both moving towards the stairs, Reid getting there significantly faster. He had at least ten inches on Kit, she guessed, and a lot of it was leg.

Once they were seated, Reid settled by JJ, and Kit in between Hotch and Elle, a video started on the screen. Kit glanced down at the file in her space and sighed before her eyes flicked back up, watching as a man, Mr. Fisher, answered questions from a detective.

“State trooper took this before the paramedics showed up. He's unconscious, has four broken bones. He's gonna be in the hospital for a month,” the detective was saying once Kit finally got her focus on his words. Her breath caught as she very quickly realized that she’d be going with them. The file should have been the tip, but Hotch’s urgency made sense now.

“I didn't hurt my son,” Mr. Fisher answered.

“You remember removing the tire iron from the trunk?”

“No! No!”

“What's the last thing you remember?”

“I picked Eric up from school. Friday, for the weekend. What day is this?”

Shit.

Hotch paused the video, starting to speak in the even voice he always took when addressing a new case.

“This happened two days ago in Beachwood, New Jersey. Mr. Fisher had ingested LSD one afternoon and didn't come down until eighteen hours later.”

“The hospital reported six other patients who ingested LSD in the last twenty four hours. The hospital called the CDC, the CDC called us,” JJ continued, turning towards the rest of the team as she spoke.

Morgan sat up straighter, leaning a bit into the table. “So, a bunch of people got spiked. What makes it a BAU case?”

“They each received 10 to 20 times the normal dose,” Hotch said, tone never wavering.

Kit felt the breath she’d been holding leave her in a bit too loud of an exhale, causing everyone to turn their eyes her way. She looked around a moment before her leg started to bounce under the table. She didn't speak in the conference room, not during the two other briefings she'd been a part of, but she found the words leaving her mouth before she could stop them.

“We used to see a lot of LSD trips when I was doing my clinicals, but nothing even close to that high. That’s-”

“It's enough to kill a small child.” Reid inserted himself into her sentence. She didn’t seem to notice, clearly deep in thought.

“Or,” Elle added, “cause a grown man to kill him with a tire iron.”

JJ looked up from her file, turning back to the screen and playing a separate video.

“Of the seven victims, there was one death and one coma. This is from the hospital's security footage the same night Fisher lost it.”

The screen flooded with the image of an ER hallway. There were nurses everywhere, and patients taking up the space they weren’t. People were in wheelchairs and there was a man on a gurney. It was chaos.

Kit hummed quietly. It wasn’t the first overrun ER she’d seen. She’d worked in an ER that was busy, often more busy than they were ready for at any given moment. Still, she didn’t know if she’d seen a hallway packed that full, or that many doctors and nurses working towards one event.

“That kind of environment is... panic,” she said. She felt Hotch shift next to her, but she didn’t stop her thought. She looked around the table, seeing that all eyes were back on her. All except Gideon. She took a moment before shrugging. While her voice was small, she wasn’t going to shy away from sharing what she knew. Serial killers were the team's specialty. Drugs and comas and hospitals? Those were her’s.

“There isn’t much space for anything else. Look at the nurses, their body language. They don’t know what they’re looking at, and it’s chaos around them. They’re as scared as those people are.”

There was a moment when everyone was quiet again, but it didn’t last long. Gideon leaned on the back of the chair next to Reid, which he had yet to occupy, and looked up towards the center of the table.

“These people didn't get spiked,” he said simply. “These people were poisoned.”

“Morgan?” Kit called as they left the conference room, her file clutched in her hand. They were grabbing their go bags and heading to the air strip as quickly as they could, but she wanted to make sure she spoke to him. “Hey, Morgan!”

He turned, his gobag in his hand, and responded quickly. “Lep, we’ve gotta go.”

“I know, I know, here, let me just-” She grabbed her coat and threw it over her cardigan before slinging her backpack around her shoulders. With her free hand she grabbed her gobag, hustling the few steps to where Morgan stood. “I wanted to talk to you before we get on the jet.”

“Alright,” he said, walking to the glass doors at a pace she scrambled to match. He was nearly as tall as Reid, and both Elle and JJ were fairly tall. Not to mention Hotch. Gideon was only a bit shorter than the other men, and standing at five-foot-three-inches had never bothered her until she’d started working with giants.

When they’d loaded into the elevator they were the only ones. The others had gone ahead, and Reid had been still grabbing his bag and pulling his scarf back around his neck. Kit hadn’t even noticed that he’d shed it before they’d raced in for the briefing.

“I, um,” Kit started haphazardly, “I wanted to apologize.”

Morgan turned to look at her as her ears started to burn, the entirety of her face and neck bright red. He was confused, she could feel it, which made it worse.

She’d waited way too long.

“Apologize for what?”

“For when I snapped at you. On the jet on the way to Wilmington,” she started talking rapidly, needing to explain her apology and get the anxiety off her chest. She had thought about it every morning when she saw him at the track, but it never seemed like the appropriate time to bring up her slightly explosive outburst.

As they headed to board the jet again, she knew it had to be right then. She didn’t have a free hand to worry at her braids, but her knee bounced where they stood in the elevator.

“It was incredibly unprofessional, and rude, especially because you were just being polite. I get really weird about attention and I try to fly under the radar as much as I can, especially now, and I should have thanked you but instead I snapped at you. Which wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I should have been focused on the team but I was focused on the file, and I know I shouldn’t do that because I can’t hear when I read and-”

“Woah, woah, hey. Hey.”

Morgan’s free hand was up, concern flooding off of him. His eyebrows were pulled tightly together, the worry evident as she started to spiral out of control. Kit had kept pretty quiet, other than her apparent tiff with Gideon, so other than that one time, he hadn't seen her lose control before. She didn't want him to again, but she was starting to go further than she'd accounted for when she started her very-rambly apology.

“You’re fine, Kit. You already apologized when we were on the jet," Morgan assured.

Bless the patience of this man.

“I know,” she said quickly, shifting the file in her hand so it couldn’t slip to the floor as her bouncing knee jostled her top half. “But it was only half an apology. My mam always said that half an apology might as well be no apology at all. So… I’m sorry.”

She was clearly really worked up over the whole event, and the last thing she needed was to board the jet as a shambled mess. The numbered days since she'd first met Morgan accidentally at the track had been nice, and if she showed up a wreck it would only give Gideon more ammunition against her, anyway.

They stood in silence for a moment before Morgan let himself nod.

“I accept your apology, and I forgive you,” he said simply.

The relief that spread across Kit’s face was immediate. The tension seemed to leave her shoulders, if just for a moment, and as the elevator dinged on the bottom floor and they stepped out, she knew Morgan didn’t miss her wistful glance towards the hallway that would lead back to the clinic.

Kit sat next to Morgan on the jet, deciding not to hide away from the team as she had on the first case. Reid had already been sitting in the seat across from her when she sat down, and she didn’t miss the hesitant look in his eyes when she peered a little too closely.

He was sick, there was no doubt in her mind about that, but she could tell by the wariness he was giving off that she shouldn't push it. He’d already made it obvious he didn’t appreciate her clinical stare. It was her job to worry about the health of the team, and according to her list of responsibilities, it was also her job to fix them.

She wasn’t sure Reid was going to even get close to admitting anything to her. They weren’t even sort of friends, like she was with Morgan. She didn’t think anyone on the team would consider her a friend, and she didn’t consider them that way either, but of the six team members she’d met she’d spoken the least to Reid. The metro interaction at the red line stop had really thrown her. Ari had suggested she just ask him about it, like she would do easily if it was one of her clinic nurses, but she’d insisted that he didn’t understand.

Spencer Reid was, in her eyes, an enigma. While his medical file had boasted an IQ of 187 and an eidetic memory, she hadn’t really grasped what that meant until he was rattling off statistic after statistic during the Billie Copeland case. He was awkward and unassuming and could read faster than she thought possible. He rambled unceasingly and had an obvious attachment to Gideon.

Kit didn’t want to get within ten feet of it. He had probably already figured out her ADHD if he watched at all the way she either fidgeted and bounced, or was locked in like a homing beacon. She didn’t need to have him give Gideon any other reasons not to trust her.

Because he didn’t. He’d seen trouble in her eyes, and she knew it was going to be almost impossible to change his mind.

JJ brought her out of her own head, reaching over top of her to deposit a picture of an elderly woman onto the table between them all.

“Of the seven victims, Gail Norman was the only death. She was seventy eight. Ran out into the middle of the road, and she was hit by a car. She was DOA.”

Hotch set down another photo on their table, this one of a young girl. Kit’s heart ached as she figured out the gist before he even spoke.

“The other potentially fatal case is nine year old Brittany Canon. She fell out of a tree house and fractured her skull. She's in a coma and the doctors don't know if she's going to come out of it.”

“How do you wanna handle the press?” Gideon asked JJ.

“We still don't even know how these people got dosed. I think it would be irresponsible to issue a warning without specifics. It'll just cause panic. I did notify the local PD, though, to be discreet.

“How is it possible that none of these people knew how they got poisoned?” Morgan asked, and his body turned slightly towards Kit.

She was glad Hotch spoke up, because if he was looking for her to answer him, she hadn’t had an answer.

“None of them remembers anything about the day it happened.”

“These people were so messed up, it's made it difficult for local PD to retrace the victim's steps,” JJ supplied.

Messed up would be the lightest possible way to say it. Those people could easily be dead.

“So, we need to go on precedent,” Gideon said, causing the table to shift and face him. “We know there are four types of poisoners who target multiple victims.”

“There's the True Believer, the political terrorist-slash-religious cult,” Hotch said.

“There's the Extortionist,” Morgan added, “The product tamperer holds the business hostage in exchange for money.”

“Or the Prankster,” Elle offered, “Usually a younger offender who doesn't mean any harm, and it's basically just a big practical joke.”

“And the Avenger,” Hotch finished, “someone with a personal vendetta who chooses poison as their weapon.”

“We need to find out as quickly as possible which type he is, because with the exception of the prankster, all these types commonly test their poison on a small scale before appearing at a larger attack,” Gideon said, seeming to sum it all up.

Kit was pretty sure that the rest of the team knew that, but knew he was doing it for her sake. That also meant the team knew he was doing it for her sake, and the thought was embarrassing. She could hold her own. She was smart. She definitely didn’t need Gideon treating her like everything had to be explained.

“Then, let's hope this one was just a prank,” she said quietly, flipping her file open and gazing at the medical records of the victims. There were several, and for a moment she wished she’d ignored their talk of Extortionists and Avengers in favor of busying herself to read them in the walled off silence her mind created.

“I would suggest we split up the victims, see if there's a pattern in the victimology,” Gideon said.

“Most of them are still in the hospital,” Hotch offered, “I'll call local PD to meet us there.”

“I'll check the lab reports. Maybe there's a clue to the unsub's motive in the specific nature of the poison he used,” Reid said, his words directed mostly towards Hotch.

Hotch sighed before saying, “I can't imagine anybody could want this to happen.” There was a moment before he added. “Take Colghain with you.”

Reid’s reaction was raspy and immediate.

“Sir?”

“Me?” Kit said, the shaking of her leg stilling for a moment in surprise.

Hotch looked between the two and nodded, gesturing to Kit and the files in her hands.

“There could be something in the chemical makeup that reacted differently in different victims. Plus, Colghain’s expertise is exactly why she’s on this case. We’re using everything we have.”

There was silence for a moment, the air thick with tension as emotions started to scramble. Kit took a breath, sorting them and not allowing them to break her calm, but she was surprised herself. Of course, lab reports, chemical readings, all those things were second nature to her. Hotch calling anything her “expertise” in front of the rest of the team? That was what had surprised her. It helped to settle the feelings of inadequacy that bubbled when they were profiling, and she couldn't have been more grateful.

She was valuable. Hotch said that she was the right person for this job.

“Have you read a toxicology report before?” Reid asked her. His tone was straightforward, and Kit had to bite her lip to not react sarcastically.

“Yes, I’ve read plenty.”

“And you understand the slight differences in the compounds used in different strains of LSD?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And-”

“Reid,” Hotch said firmly. The doctor looked over, and Hotch’s still face gave no room for disagreement. “Agent Colghain is equipped for this case.”

It was only a moment of awkward silence before Reid slumped back in his chair, arms crossed over his frame again. It was another entirely awkward forty minutes until they touched down in New Jersey.

Great, this is going well. Gideon is wary of me, Reid doesn’t think I’m capable, and Hotch has had to come to my rescue on the only two cases I’ve been on. What else could this position hold?

-----

“This can’t be right,” Kit said quietly. She and Reid were looking over the lab reports, as ordered, and up to that point they had barely spoken to one another. As Kit put one report behind another and scanned again, she worried her lip between her teeth.

No PCP. Nothing that would normally cause violence. The LSD they were dosed with looked, as far as LSD went, relatively normal. But there was something that caught her eye and made her head tilt in consideration.

She looked up to address it with Reid, but stopped dead in her tracks at the look of him.

He had his eyes shut, a hand gently massaging at his temple, though it didn’t seem as if it was helping whatever headache he was willing away. Somehow he looked even more tired, even more pale, and the sniffling hadn’t stopped.

It took her a moment to speak. She and Reid didn’t talk. They weren’t friends. But this was her job.

Here goes nothing.

“How long have you been feeling like that?”

His eyes fluttered open and he blinked at her before his head shook quickly, posture shifting so he stood up straighter.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Right,” she said, though her tone was gentle. “So you aren’t sick, then?”

“I’m fine.”

Kit’s eyes lit up at that, and Reid’s eyebrows drew together. She knew she had him, she just had to present her case perfectly.

She wasn’t a profiler. That didn’t matter to her, though. She could read them all better than they thought. And if she was reading correctly, especially after watching their last poker game on the jet, Reid couldn’t resist.

“Oh,” she said, letting a small smile work onto her face. “That’s my favorite game.”

Confusion overtook exhaustion, and she watched as he couldn’t help himself. She’d guessed correctly. Reid liked games.

“What?”

“My favorite game. ‘I’m fine.’ We play it in the clinic all the time. And you, Doctor Reid, are going to play it with me.”

He shifted his weight, one of his hands rubbing along his misplaced scarf. It wasn’t cold in the lab, yet he was trembling ever so slightly.

“It’s not really the time to play a game. We’ve got people poisoned and-”

Reid cut himself off by coughing into his elbow, turning away from her just a bit. Exhaustion seeped back into the room, and she raised an eyebrow at him when he got his composure back.

“Right,” she said again, “Anyway. This is how you play. If you say ‘I’m fine’ when someone asks if you’re sick, the game starts. The asker,” she nodded, “in this case that’s me, gets to guess five symptoms. If I get more than half, I win, and you have to relent.”

He sniffled and tilted his head. She could feel him weighing his options.

“And if you lose?”

“I relent, and you’re allowed to pretend you’re fine. I won’t say another word, and these tox screens will be my sole focus.”

They were seemingly at a stalemate. Kit held the lab reports in her hands still, and Reid cleared his throat before wincing.

This is going to be so easy.

“More than half?”

“Three out of five,” she assured, keeping her tone casual and gentle and not at all the way it had been this morning when she was seething to Morgan about his sniffling.

She could feel guilty about that later. In that moment, she was focused on winning a very winnable round of ‘I’m fine.’

He crossed his arms a bit tighter over his chest, letting the scarf fall out of his grip and hang to the side.

“Okay, go ahead.”

Reid would later come to realize he should have noted the shift in her eyes as the figurative nail in his figurative coffin.

“I’ll let you know that you shouldn’t lie. I’ll know. I always know.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said evenly, the rasp growing slightly deeper as they spoke.

That was all Kit needed.

“Well then. Let’s play. Sore throat, definitely, unless you suddenly picked up a smoking habit,” she started, feeling as his emotions flooded from annoyed to desperate.

One.

“And you’re congested. The sniffling gave you away. It was driving me crazy earlier, but I was hoping you were just a habitual sniffler.”

“I am,” he said, tugging at his scarf again.

“That’s worse,” she assured, “Because that means when whatever this is runs its course, it won't go away and I’ll still have to listen to it.” She sighed, feeling a bit of her own dread at that, but continued, “But your nose is red and raw looking, so I can assure you that you’re congested.”

She raised an eyebrow at him then, a small smile playing at her lips. The files she was holding were set down in favor of one fiddling with the hem of her cardigan, and the other playing with the end of her right braid.

“How am I doing?”

Reid’s eyebrows pulled together as he gave off a wave of skepticism. She grinned wider.

Two.

“This is pointless,” he said quietly, now avoiding her eyes.

“That means I’m winning. You’ve got a headache. Right behind your temples. Not stemming from the front and spreading like you’re assuming, because that’s the congestion. The actual headache comes from further back.”

No response.

Three.

“I’d bet you’ve got a fever. The flush in your cheeks is really prominent against how pale you are, plus I’m sure you know you’re shaking. And you’re exhausted. The fatigue coming off of you is palpable.”

She didn’t offer anything else, watching for him to respond to her. She’d made her five ‘guesses,’ though she knew all five were true of him. He was probably dizzy too, unless that wasn’t the reason he was grounding himself with his scarf. She had been wrong before, of course. She wasn’t a mind reader.

Reid took a full thirty seconds before his arms dropped, posture slipping slightly.

Four and five.

He looked defeated in a sad sort of way, and for the first time, Kit found herself actually caring about Spencer Reid past the fact that she was sort of responsible for him. He had no social grace, he was a know-it-all, and he was Gideon’s obvious pet project. But now? As he stood in front of her looking young and sad and unwell? She found a soft spot for him.

“So?” she coaxed, tilting her head just so. “How’d I do?”

He let out what sounded suspiciously like a whine before running a hand down his face.

“You know, I always win when we play games as a team.”

“Maybe poker,” she shrugged, “but this is my game. My… what did Hotch call it? My expertise?” It was definitely a light effort at teasing, something she did with academy cadets when they were in the clinic. Still, she might have put a little more meaning behind her words. Reid underestimated her, and now, she was going to have a little bit of a victory.

He rolled his eyes at her before scrunching his nose, sniffling dejectedly.

“Okay, message received. You win.” He ran a hand down his face again, and Kit noted that his hands were shaking a bit. “So what? You pull me off the case? Am I grounded?”

Something in his tone gave way to bitterness, and Kit shook her head slowly, an eyebrow raising.

“No? Has that happened before?”

“Last year,” he said, but didn’t offer anymore. There was hesitation, and while Kit didn’t want to pry, she figured right now was the only time she was really in a position to get any information. They weren’t friends. When was she going to have him this open again?

“And it bothered you?”

“It bothers me when I’m treated like a child that doesn’t know their own limits.” He shifted his feet a bit, and when she didn’t answer right away he pulled his arms across his chest again.

Defensive. He thinks I’m going to treat him like a baby.

“Well I’m not a peds nurse, and I’ve never been one, so as long as you don’t act like a child, I won’t treat you like one.” She watched his face for a moment until he dipped his head, worry seeping from his being. He didn’t believe her, that much was clear. Why would he? They didn’t know each other.

It wasn’t long before Kit was making a choice. Probably not one she was allowed to make, but one she was going to make anyway. She was hired in part for her bedside manor, so the way she treated them was going to be on her terms. If anyone had a problem, she would have no problem defending herself and her decisions.

“I’m not going to tell Hotch, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not worried,” he rasped, his eyes coming up to meet hers. He was squinting, tongue darting over his lips.

“Yes you are,” she said, avoiding his gaze to pull her medical pack off her belt and pull at the zipper. “And I mean it. I’m not going to tell Hotch if you just do what I tell you. I’ll keep it discreet.”

She dug her hand inside, fishing for a moment before pulling out a pack of bright orange capsules. A small hum of victory escaped her, glad that the object of her search was in the pack and not back in the SUV, nestled into her backpack. A small victory is a victory all the same.

“Okay,” she started, “here’s the deal. You’re going to take these, and then,” she pulled out a travel size pack of tissues, “you’re going to keep these in your pocket. And if you feel worse, you’re going to tell me.”

She nodded as she finished, waiting for him to respond.

He squinted at her further. “And?”

“What do you mean, ‘and’? And I'll give you more pills later? I’ve got a bunch in my backpack. I don’t have a whole water bottle in here, but this is a hospital, and I’m a nurse. I’ll find one.”

“Wait,” he said, a certain amount of relief flooding off of him, “You’re really not going to tell Hotch?”

She shook her head seriously, not sure what about her tone or demeanor made her unbelievable.

“I said I wouldn’t.”

“But, why?”

“Because,” she said with sincerity, looking right into his eyes. “I, too, know what it’s like to be treated unfairly because of my age. I’m one of the clinic’s head nurses, and I’m twenty five. Last Thursday I was questioned about my ability to do this job and that one at the same time, and my age was the biggest argument. You're not the only one that hates being treated like a child."

Something shifted a bit in his eyes, the smallest whisper of a grin falling on his lips.

“You’re twenty five?”

“Have been since June. I’m surprised you didn’t assume I was younger. My sister Ginny always says that I could pass for sixteen.”

He shook his head a little too quickly, noticeably wincing.

“You could, I guess I just thought they would have picked someone older, like in their thirties.” There was a moment before he offered, “I’m twenty four.”

“I know. You said it earlier, right? I’ve read your file.”

For the first time maybe ever, his eyes softened at her. Guilt flooded the air, and he worried at his bottom lip.

“Right. Sorry about that. I was trying to-”

“Play it off like you weren’t sick and hope I wouldn’t notice.”

“Yeah.”

She found herself chuckling, shaking her head at the idea that she wouldn’t have noticed. As if it wasn’t her job to notice.

“Well, like I said in the bullpen, I’m not a profiler. I am a nurse, though, so assume I’ll always notice.” She held out the blister pack of pills and the tissues. “Here, I’ll go find my way to a water bottle. Take another look at those tox screenings. I saw something… weird.”

Kit turned and was halfway out the door before she heard him call her name.

“Dakota?”

She blinked for a moment. There were very few people in the world that called her by her first name.

Pick your battles.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

She smiled at him, a real smile too, and nodded.

“Of course. Be right back.” She moved to step out of the door.

“Dakota?”

She took a breath.

“Yes, Spencer?”

“What exactly did you think you saw buried in the tox screen?”

She thought for a moment before giving her braid a tug, mind starting to pull away as she remembered back to the reports.

“I might have been mistaken.”

He nodded her forward, saying, “But what did you think it was?”

She shrugged, feeling her eyebrows pulling together as she looked up at him.

“Rohypnol.”

-----

Kit and Reid walked into the hallway when they heard Gideon passing about an hour later. She’d found a water bottle with the help of one of the women at the nurses’ station, and Reid looked decidedly more with it. He was less pale for sure, and there was an energy he didn’t have before as they trailed behind the rest of the team.

“Well,” Gideon was saying of Mr. Fisher, “he's raw, broken, and seriously pissed off.”

“He didn't hurt the son to get back at the mother?” Hotch asked, and Gideon shook his head.

“Not consciously, no. Rage was real but understandable, and he never apologized. When he lost control, he didn't even say, "Eric, I'm sorry." He said, "Eric, why'd this happen to you?" He never even confessed to hurting the kid.”

Hotch thought about that for a moment.

“So, the drugs tapped into the rage but didn't cause it?”

“That's my guess.”

The two men and Elle slowed to a stop, causing Kit and Reid to swing around the side. Their group formed a sort of circle in the hallway, blocking traffic if any were to come.

Normally Kit would have asked them to move, but the information they had was pressing.

Reid spoke for the pair of them, sounding congested still, and a little rough, but definitely better than before.

“That's consistent with the information we just received from the lab tox screens. They didn't find any trace of PCP or any other drug indicating the unsub was intentionally trying to make people violent. But they did find traces of rohypnol in all the victims.”

“A central nervous system depressant,” Kit filled for the sake of Hotch’s wave of confusion. “Similar to valium, only ten times more potent.”

Elle nodded, adding, “It's commonly known as a "roofie" or a date-rape drug.”

“Right, and one of its side effects is amnesia, which explains why none of the victims remember how they were poisoned,” Reid finished.

“We compared notes on the victims we talked to. So far there doesn't seem to be any pattern as to who got hit. Maybe the drugs themselves could explain what type of offender we're dealing with.” Morgan shrugged a bit as he explained. “A lot of kids are using LSD and rohypnol these days. Fisher is a high school teacher.”

“So it may be a prank after all,” Gideon said, now learning against the wall.

“Yeah, one that went horribly wrong,” was all Hotch offered.

Elle suddenly pulled her coat around herself, nearly knocking Kit in the temple with her elbow as she did so.

“I'm gonna get a list of students from Fisher, I’ll see you later."

Hotch’s phone rang just as she left. He looked disinterested in answering it, but did so as he looked around at them.

“Hotch. Okay, we'll be right there.” He shut the phone without saying goodbye, looking up at them with new interest. “Cops may have figured out where everybody was dosed.”

He started off down the hallway, speaking as he did so.

“Gideon and I will go with JJ to the possible lead. Morgan, do some more digging with Elle on the high school kids. Reid, Colghain, stay here and work victimology again. There has to be something we’re missing.”

The way they moved was fluid, all turning to go to different places without hesitation.

Kit and Reid took off down a hallway, Kit glancing around at placards before she grinned,

“Aha!” she cried, yanking the handle open and coming face to face with a pseudo conference room. She turned to Reid, handing over the tox screen reports she was still holding. “Here’s these. I’ll track down the head nurse on rotation and see if their files have any more information than the ones I was given by JJ.”

He nodded, settling down immediately and starting to fan out the reports into categories she figured only he knew the rhyme or reason for.

Kit took off into the maze of the hospital feeling comfortable and confident. This is what she was good at, and for the moment things weren’t uncomfortable with Reid. And Gideon hadn’t given her a look of annoyance when they were talking about the rohypnol.

Things could be looking up, Dakota. You’re helpful after all.

-----

It was hours later when half the team found themselves in the viewers part of the interrogation room back at the local precinct. Kit had never been on either side of the glass before, and it was strange for her to know that the interviewee couldn’t see them as they all stared inside.

The cafe had proved fruitful in getting the name of a local high school kid, and Elle had been more fruitful in getting the kid himself.

Hotch, Gideon, Reid, Morgan, and Kit were standing and watching Elle and Detective Hanover as they grilled the kid, Danny Wallace, but it wasn’t proving as fruitful as the rest of the day had been.

As he described the fact that he and his girlfriend actually had consensual sex before she was ‘freaking out’ was looking less like he was the unsub, and more like he was consoling a victim in need.

“Look,” Danny said to Elle, “she was on something, and if it was acid or something, I've taken that. You give that to someone without telling them, it doesn't exactly set the mood.”

Morgan spoke from his position in the back of the room, attention pulling away from the other side of the glass.

“Kid is right about that. If he wanted to slip her a date rape drug, why'd he give her LSD, too?”

“This boy seems too scared not to be telling us the truth,” Reid agreed, crossing his arms over himself. He’d taken the scarf off as the pills had taken effect earlier on, but Kit knew he was due for some again soon.

She hadn’t told Hotch, just like she’d promised, but she’d be damned if she wasn’t keeping tabs on Reid the rest of the case.

“So, Samantha was just the eighth victim and the boyfriend working in the cafe was just a coincidence,” Hotch said, discouragement written in the air.

“But, even so, there may be an explanation why the two drugs: LSD to hallucinate and rohypnol to forget,” Gideon said, ever the optimist.

“Forget what?” Kit asked before she could stop herself. Her tone wasn’t challenging like it had been in Curtis’s house, and the look Gideon gave her was searching, but not suspicious.

Morgan responded to her, but in the form of a question himself.

“What they were hallucinating?”

“No,” Gideon said, moving his eyes to Morgan, “how they got dosed.”

“Then, the unsub's covering his tracks. It's much too organized for a high school prank,” Hotch agreed, shifting into the conversation.

“And there still hasn't been any kind of ransom demand,” Morgan said, not following Hotch’s lead, instead choosing to stay in the back of the room.

Kit was officially not helpful anymore, watching as the men went back and forth, whittling down their possible poisoning precedents.

“Which rules out the Extortionist,” Reid said.

“Or any visible political group or cult in the area,” Hotch continued.

Morgan picked up, “Which rules out the True Believer.”

“And leaves us with the Avenger,” Reid finished.

There was a moment in which Kit looked around and felt awe. These men all knew exactly what they were talking about. It seemed as if they had one hive mind, working together to solve as many pieces of the puzzle as quickly as they could.

She wished for a moment she could do the same, but was quick to scold herself.

If you were a profiler, you would work for the BAU. Monty and Ari both told you a million times, Dakota, you’re there because you’re different. Come off the self pity for a moment and let go of your ego.

Hotch looked around at them, even Kit, and nodded.

“We can give them a profile.”

Kit looked down at her watch and raised an eyebrow. It was nearly nine, and while she didn’t want to be the one to ask or challenge, especially with Gideon right there, she said quietly, “Now? It’s almost nine.”

Gideon’s eyes bore into her and he turned towards her as he said, “Do you think the unsub cares what time it is?”

Her subconscious wanted to glance at Reid, knowing he needed to sleep. Knowing they all needed to sleep if they were going to be mentally sharp enough to catch the unsub Gideon was talking about.

She didn’t know why it was so easy for her to challenge Gideon, but she felt the annoyance of his dismissal swirl in her chest.

“No, of course not,” she said evenly, not allowing anything in her tone to indicate her annoyance, “but people are in their homes by now, sleeping, and odds are if he was going to poison someone else today, he would have already done it, right?”

Before Gideon could respond, probably to dismiss her, Hotch spoke in his ‘unit chief’ voice.

“Agreed. We’ll give the profile first thing in the morning. I’ll have Hanover gather his men early. For now, let's go back to the hotel. Gideon, you take Morgan and Elle. I’ll take Reid and Colghain, and we’ll grab JJ on our way out.”

For exactly one moment, Kit thought Gideon was going to disagree. Then, he didn’t. He simply put his hands in his pockets and nodded at Morgan.

“Go get Elle and meet out front in five.”

They moved quickly, Kit and Reid walking behind Gideon and Hotch as they marched through the precinct. Kit could have sworn she heard Gideon say something like “see, right there” and “eyes,” but she couldn’t really tell. Not with Reid mouth-breathing next to her. Either way, it was obvious Gideon was annoyed with her. They’d had such a good day in comparison to the end of the Billie Copeland case, and Kit found herself annoyed by the idea that he was now complaining about her to Hotch. She’d been quick to recognize there was something wrong with Reid, helped him without losing his thin trust, and she’d been helpful in reading the tox screens and identifying the rohypnol. So why was her comment about the time and the probable rest of the unsub taken with such hostility?

She couldn’t sigh aloud, that would probably alert not only Reid, who was right beside her, but Hotch and the man in question. She settled for letting her hands wander a bit, antsy now that her medication had started to wear off. She just hoped they didn’t notice that, either.

So much for things looking up, Dakota. Way to go.

#Brenna writes things #or at least she tries #Second Child Restless Child #SCRC #Criminal Minds #Criminal Minds fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #gaelic #OC #female OC #Spencer needs a hug so bad #1x13 Posion #gap fill #TW illness #TW hospitals #TW drug mentions

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