Home Invasion: Chapter 10
Title: Home Invasion: Chapter 10
Author: ficdirectory
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters JJ, Prentiss, Garcia, Hotch, Morgan, Reid, Rossi
Spoilers: N/A
Words: 9,657 - Chapter 10/11
Summary: The BAU is caught unaware on a night off, and find themselves victims of a home invasion.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle
He cannot be the best at everything. This is something Spencer is learning. That sometimes, no matter how fast his mind is running, it isn't fast enough. Sometimes, victims still die. Sometimes, he can't hold back the nightmares. Sometimes, he can't figure everything out.
There have been times that this knowledge has been enough to crush him. After Tobias. After Nathan. After Adam and Amanda. After the girl in witness protection whose abductor was murdered by the girl's own father. That happened right in front of him. Proof that no matter his intellect, bad things still happened. His mother, too, is that kind of proof. And so is the fact that he has been held hostage and shot up with drugs not once - but twice - in four years.
It is enough to drive Spencer to wish. To hope. To want. To crave. It's ridiculous that his very being should desire something that he knows causes him unspeakable grief and heartache. This last time isn't his fault. The time with Tobias hadn't been his fault either. This, Spencer knows, he can't control. But he's been stuck reconciling the existence of a Higher Power as his program suggests. He lives in a world of facts and of logic.
If a, then b...
His using has no rational logic and he knows it. He can't control it, and he knows it. He needs something bigger to trust in, but he has been searching and no matter how hard he looks - as hard as he wants to believe - as many times as he goes to churches, synagogues, mosques, - nothing strikes him. Nothing reaches for him. Nothing reassures him.
He tries asking others who has been where he is. But that's just it. No one has been where he is. No one knows him well enough and he isn't comfortable opening up about himself.
He has facts about that, too. If he opens up about himself, people will not understand. They will try and fail. There is no one he trusts that much anyway.
--
It's been months. JJ's gone. JJ was his one confidant with this. And he doesn't even tell her that much. But the truth is, she is the only one who remotely seems to understand his terror...his flashbacks...his feelings of weakness...of stupidity... She tells him to call anytime. She tells him she means it.
He knows she does.
And yet he finds himself incapable of acting on it. Instead, he's irritable on cases. Stunningly unfiltered. He snaps at everyone. It's only Garcia who reacts in a way that makes him want to open up, even if he does not know what to say.
"Come on. Shut the files and talk to me." She walks by and tickles his ear with a feather on her pen. It's pink. The pink hurts his eyes and softness in his ear makes him jerk sideways, nearly falling out of the chair.
"I'd rather do anything else..." he mumbles darkly, his leg propped up on the desk, reading through stacks of files there.
"Well, you know what?" she asks, pulling up a chair next to him. "I'm worried about that."
"Don't be." He can't look directly at her. Her hair is too red. Her glasses framed in a garish green. Her dress is bright yellow. There's a purple flower in her hair. A blue topaz ring on her finger. For the first time, he can't remember if Garcia has a winter birthday, much less, what day it might fall on. He has seen her wear any number of rings, with different birthstones, and imagines her collecting them the way he might, and organizing them by color, shape, or something else entirely.
"Do you know blue topaz is not only the modern birthstone of December but also the Arabic, Ayurvedic, Hebrew and Roman birthstone of November, the Hindu birthstone for the month of December. It's also the talismanic stone of Aquarius, and can be used to represent the Sun Sign of Scorpio or Sagittarius, the Zodiac birthstone Sagittarius and the planetary stone for Sagittarius?" he finishes breathless.
"No, I didn't know that," Garcia says.
A silence falls and Spencer tries to absorb himself in work again. But now, all he can think of are stars and the universe and what, if anything, is out there. What, if anything, can help him?
"Did you know I'm still worried about you?" she asks quietly.
"No," he answers honestly. Most of them leave him alone when he is irritated. They won't push him.
The BAU is dark and quiet, and if Spencer didn't know better he might think that Garcia had stuck around just for this chance to talk to him. But he shrugs that thought away. She has other things to do than hang around to talk to him.
Garcia leans forward in the chair and snags a file off his desk. He bites his lip to stop himself from telling her to put it back.
She stretches out, propping her feet in their sparkly gold heels - on his desk.
"This? Is seriously scary," she says, pointing to a picture he doesn't bother to look at.
"Garcia? What do you believe in?"
Maybe it's the quiet. Maybe it's the intimacy the near-darkness brings, but something gives Spencer the courage to ask. He makes himself look at her, which is like staring into the sun, but she has to know he means this. That he's serious.
"Hmm..." she muses. She puts her feet down, like she needs to anchor herself for this. "Karma...the universe...love..." She lists them, smiling softly to herself.
"God?" It's tentative.
"Yep. Him, too."
"How can you believe in all those things and still have room to reconcile the existence of God?" he asks, not able to hide his own bitterness. He feels prickly around her, because she is one of the only people next to whom he feels exceedingly ordinary, as well as exceedingly heard and respected. It is something he has always wanted. But it is something he needs to get used to.
"I don't know. Oh wait! There's one more thing I believe in!"
"Of course there is," he says, smiling a little. She makes it easy. Her inherent cheer and optimism, despite her own pain and loss.
There is silence.
"Well?"
"You."
"Garcia, I'm not a thing," he objects. "I'm not a principle or a moral code or a deity--"
"Hey. You wanna know something? I don't care. You make your own rules in this life. You make your own way and you figure out where to put your time and your energy. You're right. You're none of those things you mentioned. You're more. You're a friend I know I can always count on to be honest with me. To make me laugh. To figure out the most complicated cases. To offer your help without me even having to ask..."
"Yeah, but that case I volunteered my help on didn't get solved. I was too slow. We were too late." His tone sounds empty, like he feels inside.
"Sunshine, that's not what matters," she tells him gently. "What matters is that you put yourself out there! That's awesome! And what you practice? You'll become that. You are that. It's not the results - I wish I could convince you of that - it's the heart behind them Excellence is a habit, somebody important said that--"
"--Aristotle." he interjects.
"Right. So are you gonna argue with a brilliant mind like Aristotle? Excellence isn't all of a sudden, poof, and we're there. We're all works in progress. So practice it."
"...Other things are habits, too..." he mumbles darkly, not able to meet her gaze.
"Yes, they are. But it's up to you what you do about those other things. You have a choice. This is your life. What do you want out of it?"
He considers, silent.
"Definitely, excellence," he says, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
"That's my boy," Garcia smiles. She stands up. Stretches. "Good luck on your search. Remember, searches are my specialty. Come to me again if you need any help."
"I will. Good night, Garcia."
"Night," she echoed, bending down to give his head a kiss, and disappearing in the dark.
Author: ficdirectory
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters JJ, Prentiss, Garcia, Hotch, Morgan, Reid, Rossi
Spoilers: N/A
Words: 9,657 - Chapter 10/11
Summary: The BAU is caught unaware on a night off, and find themselves victims of a home invasion.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle
He cannot be the best at everything. This is something Spencer is learning. That sometimes, no matter how fast his mind is running, it isn't fast enough. Sometimes, victims still die. Sometimes, he can't hold back the nightmares. Sometimes, he can't figure everything out.
There have been times that this knowledge has been enough to crush him. After Tobias. After Nathan. After Adam and Amanda. After the girl in witness protection whose abductor was murdered by the girl's own father. That happened right in front of him. Proof that no matter his intellect, bad things still happened. His mother, too, is that kind of proof. And so is the fact that he has been held hostage and shot up with drugs not once - but twice - in four years.
It is enough to drive Spencer to wish. To hope. To want. To crave. It's ridiculous that his very being should desire something that he knows causes him unspeakable grief and heartache. This last time isn't his fault. The time with Tobias hadn't been his fault either. This, Spencer knows, he can't control. But he's been stuck reconciling the existence of a Higher Power as his program suggests. He lives in a world of facts and of logic.
If a, then b...
His using has no rational logic and he knows it. He can't control it, and he knows it. He needs something bigger to trust in, but he has been searching and no matter how hard he looks - as hard as he wants to believe - as many times as he goes to churches, synagogues, mosques, - nothing strikes him. Nothing reaches for him. Nothing reassures him.
He tries asking others who has been where he is. But that's just it. No one has been where he is. No one knows him well enough and he isn't comfortable opening up about himself.
He has facts about that, too. If he opens up about himself, people will not understand. They will try and fail. There is no one he trusts that much anyway.
--
It's been months. JJ's gone. JJ was his one confidant with this. And he doesn't even tell her that much. But the truth is, she is the only one who remotely seems to understand his terror...his flashbacks...his feelings of weakness...of stupidity... She tells him to call anytime. She tells him she means it.
He knows she does.
And yet he finds himself incapable of acting on it. Instead, he's irritable on cases. Stunningly unfiltered. He snaps at everyone. It's only Garcia who reacts in a way that makes him want to open up, even if he does not know what to say.
"Come on. Shut the files and talk to me." She walks by and tickles his ear with a feather on her pen. It's pink. The pink hurts his eyes and softness in his ear makes him jerk sideways, nearly falling out of the chair.
"I'd rather do anything else..." he mumbles darkly, his leg propped up on the desk, reading through stacks of files there.
"Well, you know what?" she asks, pulling up a chair next to him. "I'm worried about that."
"Don't be." He can't look directly at her. Her hair is too red. Her glasses framed in a garish green. Her dress is bright yellow. There's a purple flower in her hair. A blue topaz ring on her finger. For the first time, he can't remember if Garcia has a winter birthday, much less, what day it might fall on. He has seen her wear any number of rings, with different birthstones, and imagines her collecting them the way he might, and organizing them by color, shape, or something else entirely.
"Do you know blue topaz is not only the modern birthstone of December but also the Arabic, Ayurvedic, Hebrew and Roman birthstone of November, the Hindu birthstone for the month of December. It's also the talismanic stone of Aquarius, and can be used to represent the Sun Sign of Scorpio or Sagittarius, the Zodiac birthstone Sagittarius and the planetary stone for Sagittarius?" he finishes breathless.
"No, I didn't know that," Garcia says.
A silence falls and Spencer tries to absorb himself in work again. But now, all he can think of are stars and the universe and what, if anything, is out there. What, if anything, can help him?
"Did you know I'm still worried about you?" she asks quietly.
"No," he answers honestly. Most of them leave him alone when he is irritated. They won't push him.
The BAU is dark and quiet, and if Spencer didn't know better he might think that Garcia had stuck around just for this chance to talk to him. But he shrugs that thought away. She has other things to do than hang around to talk to him.
Garcia leans forward in the chair and snags a file off his desk. He bites his lip to stop himself from telling her to put it back.
She stretches out, propping her feet in their sparkly gold heels - on his desk.
"This? Is seriously scary," she says, pointing to a picture he doesn't bother to look at.
"Garcia? What do you believe in?"
Maybe it's the quiet. Maybe it's the intimacy the near-darkness brings, but something gives Spencer the courage to ask. He makes himself look at her, which is like staring into the sun, but she has to know he means this. That he's serious.
"Hmm..." she muses. She puts her feet down, like she needs to anchor herself for this. "Karma...the universe...love..." She lists them, smiling softly to herself.
"God?" It's tentative.
"Yep. Him, too."
"How can you believe in all those things and still have room to reconcile the existence of God?" he asks, not able to hide his own bitterness. He feels prickly around her, because she is one of the only people next to whom he feels exceedingly ordinary, as well as exceedingly heard and respected. It is something he has always wanted. But it is something he needs to get used to.
"I don't know. Oh wait! There's one more thing I believe in!"
"Of course there is," he says, smiling a little. She makes it easy. Her inherent cheer and optimism, despite her own pain and loss.
There is silence.
"Well?"
"You."
"Garcia, I'm not a thing," he objects. "I'm not a principle or a moral code or a deity--"
"Hey. You wanna know something? I don't care. You make your own rules in this life. You make your own way and you figure out where to put your time and your energy. You're right. You're none of those things you mentioned. You're more. You're a friend I know I can always count on to be honest with me. To make me laugh. To figure out the most complicated cases. To offer your help without me even having to ask..."
"Yeah, but that case I volunteered my help on didn't get solved. I was too slow. We were too late." His tone sounds empty, like he feels inside.
"Sunshine, that's not what matters," she tells him gently. "What matters is that you put yourself out there! That's awesome! And what you practice? You'll become that. You are that. It's not the results - I wish I could convince you of that - it's the heart behind them Excellence is a habit, somebody important said that--"
"--Aristotle." he interjects.
"Right. So are you gonna argue with a brilliant mind like Aristotle? Excellence isn't all of a sudden, poof, and we're there. We're all works in progress. So practice it."
"...Other things are habits, too..." he mumbles darkly, not able to meet her gaze.
"Yes, they are. But it's up to you what you do about those other things. You have a choice. This is your life. What do you want out of it?"
He considers, silent.
"Definitely, excellence," he says, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
"That's my boy," Garcia smiles. She stands up. Stretches. "Good luck on your search. Remember, searches are my specialty. Come to me again if you need any help."
"I will. Good night, Garcia."
"Night," she echoed, bending down to give his head a kiss, and disappearing in the dark.