" When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you. "

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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1.2 ; THE ABYSS.

THERE USED TO BE a time where Caroline was normal—happy, even. That was when she had life all figured out—graduate high school at 16,  go M.I.T. or Harvard in order to become something profound, something her parents would be proud of—like a surgeon or a lawyer. That was then when she had parents to be proud of her. This was now.

Before her grandmother passed, she used to recite a quote to her every time she visited her.

"Damned be the person who abandons all faith. For without faith, there is no hope."

Caroline had lost faith a long, long time ago when she was a scared, lost sixteen-year-old girl who thought someone was going to come to save her. When they never did, she broke inside. Nothing anyone could see, but she could feel it inside her—that small space in the back of her mind that is always raw, always painful. It never goes away. It has been eating away at her, stealing everything. It had stolen her hope for something better. She couldn't let that happen to somebody else too.

She needed to have some hope in order to save Heather Woodland.

Caroline leaned over Derek Morgan's shoulder as he stared at Richard Slessman's computer in deep concentration. The only thing pulled up on the screen was the login window asking for a password. At the bottom of the screen, a pale green '6' in bolded text jumped out at her.

"What's the number 6 at the bottom of the screen mean?" She asked him curiously.

He sighed, rubbing his head, agitated. "Number of password attempts before he program wipes the hard drive."

"There could be an email or a journal on the computer, something that tells us where Heather is." She looked over at him, the computer screen glaring a bright blue light at her. "Do you think you can break in?"

"In 6 tries?" He muttered, shaking his head. "No way."

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Gideon said from behind them. Both of the agents turned and saw both Reid and Gideon standing near Slessman's bookcase. In their hands were books that looked worn down and used—probably the unsub's favorites. They had to have just entered the room because they weren't in here earlier.

"Samuel Beckett." Reid told them when he saw their confused faces.

"Try not. Do or do not." Derek replied before turning his attention back to the computer.

Gideon's face scrunched up in confusion when he didn't recognize the quote and turned to Caroline and Reid.

"Yoda." She told him before he shrugged and reached for another book on the shelf.

She glanced around the room, processing what it looked like. The small bed was pushed into the corner, the sheets all tucked in nice and neat. Everything else mimicked that—books alphabetized on the book shelf, clothes folded and organized into drawers, trash picked up and cleaned—and it made no sense. Everything in the profile pointed that the killer was organized and Slessman definitely was, but he wasn't clean about his kills. He didn't pick up after himself after murdering; he still left the belt on their necks and didn't clean up the crime scene around the victims.

Slessman had a classic case of OCD and the Seattle Strangle didn't have any signs of it. It didn't match up.

Another thing that was bothering Caroline was his room. The profile said the unsub would be confident, most likely overcompensating for something. This room looked more like a boy's room than a man's. There were no manly affects anywhere—no playboy magazines, no sign of personality anywhere. This room mimicked Richard Slessman's behavior and it was telling her that he was demure, shy. Even if he was trying to sell a car, there'd be no way he could get a women in the vehicle for a test drive. He wouldn't have the confidence. It made no sense.

So far, the only thing the profile has gotten right was the Jeep Cherokee that Hotch and Gideon found earlier in the garage and that was it. Everything else was wrong and out of place. It almost seemed like two separate personalities at this point.

Then, it was like a light bulb went off in her head. She gasped and reached for the closest thing to her, which happened to be Reid's arm.

She latched onto him with both hands, gripping onto him tightly, her eyes wide and her adrenaline pumping.

"Ouch, Care! What happened?" He asked her, looking slightly concerned for his friend. Everyone looked over at her, confused at her jumpiness.

"We've been looking at this all wrong." She told them as calm as she could manage. "So far, Slessman only matches half the profile, if that. It's like he has two personalities, or—"

"There's a second unsub," Gideon said slowly once he realized what she was saying.

"Exactly."

He looked over at her and nodded. "Caroline, find Agent Greenaway and come with me back to the field office. I think you may have just blown this case wide open."

As Gideon left, she looked down at Reid's arm that she had been holding onto with white knuckles and she blushed as pulled away, embarrassed from her excitement.

"Sorry, I forget how much you don't like being touched." She apologized to him, still blushing.

He smiled at her and like that, she just stopped. Everything around her seemed to freeze like the world had stopped revolving for a moment. She couldn't hear anything except a static buzz in her ear, drowning out everyone's voices but his.

His smile wasn't normal, it was beautiful. So beautiful that it caused her whole world to stop in the one moment because in this big, messed up world they lived in, the horrors they see every day, still haven't affected him. His smile was still his smile and it had rooted her to the floorboards, rendering her useless.

"No, no, it's—it's okay." He chuckled lightly, tucking a small strand of hair behind his ear. "I—I, uh...don't mind if—if it's, uh, you."

"What?" She asked, blinking a couple of times as she shook off her stupor. She had been so distracted, she barely heard what he had said.

"Uh, nothing. Nothing."

"Oh, okay. See you later, I guess then?"

"Yeah. Be...be safe."

She gave him a small smile and nodded before she headed downstairs to the SUV where Gideon awaited.

Caroline fought the butterflies fluttering around in her stomach as she jogged down the stairs. After six months, she really thought that all those things had disappeared—the butterflies, the glances. She hoped they had stopped. Even if they didn't work for the FBI, it could never happen. She couldn't because there was no way she could ever be ready. There was no way the He would ever leave her alone. The man who ruined her life haunts her every day—her dreams became nightmares and her mind became stuck in a state of constant fear. He took everything from her, and that included her ability to be with another human being, to be able to love someone.

And that meant Caroline could never be with Spencer Reid and that shattered her heart more than anything else in the whole entire world.

➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴

"A second unsub?" Elle asked doubtfully as she trailed behind Hotch, Gideon, and Caroline walking into the field office. She brushed past agents running around in the central lobby in a rush. They only had a few hours left.

Heather only had a few hours left.

"It's not unusual. Remember Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris?" Gideon prodded her, testing her knowledge.

"1979. They outfitted a van to rape and murder girls in California."

He had been doing that the whole car ride to the field office, asking Elle questions and testing her skills. So far, she had been doing fairly well, maybe even better than expected.

She remembered when she was first brought up for the BAU. It was before Adrian Bale and the bombings when Gideon was the Unit Chief instead of Hotch, but he still worked as a Supervisory Special Agent. Reid and Derek weren't even on the team back then. They first met because of her parents' murder.

She had been groomed for the BAU ever since she was sixteen and the FBI discovered she had an IQ of 178 (according to mandated tests they made her take), could speak several languages and was able to interrogate and obtain information from every person they threw at her. She was too dangerous to not be put anywhere else, and it was the only thing she really wanted to do.

Caroline's life had been fast-tracked after that. She was already graduating high school at sixteen so the government didn't get involved with that, but they did everything else. When she got admissions into M.I.T., she was also enrolled in the FBI training program as well at the young age of seventeen. She broke almost every record there was for every training exercise before graduating from M.I.T. and being transferred into Georgetown to take specialized classes. She even invented a new interrogation technique that helps resurface details from old, or new, memories called a cognitive interview using the senses to aid in memory recollection.

When she turned twenty-one, she graduated with degrees in behavioral education, specializing in body language as well as behavior, and specializing in psychopathy. After that, she was immediately assessed and placed in the BAU.

She could still remember the question Gideon asked her that first day she was placed in the FBI.

"Are you ready?"

It was the first question Caroline didn't know the answer to. Still doesn't know.

Because even after working the job for a year, she wasn't used to the horrible sights she sees every day. She didn't think she ever would. Sometimes, it makes her wonder if she made the right call on her career.

Could she do this for the rest of her life?

"We're looking for someone who fits a similar relationship?" Hotch asked, shaking Caroline out of her daze. She refocused on the conversation.

"They're not equals," Gideon said. "Slessman's smart, but he is a submissive personality."

"So number 2 is the dominant?" Elle inquired.

Caroline nodded, dodging people as she walked down the stairs. "Yes. He will be authoritative, arrogant. Definitely not as smart as Slessman."

"He's like the schoolyard bully recruiting a good underling. He'll be protective of Richard." Gideon surmised. "He'll make him feel like he owes him."

"If Richard has been upstairs in that attic fantasizing about being an extreme aggressor, this guy showed him how to do it." She explained, pulling back her blonde hair with a black hair-tie. "He helped him take the first step."

"I think we should interview him, use this as pressure," Elle suggested to Gideon.

"No, no. We need leverage, a name." He said.

"From the suspect list?"

He shook his head. "That'll take too long. There's gotta be a faster way."

Caroline glanced up and focused on the lobby area, where Ms. Slessman was sitting, wringing her wrinkled hands nervously in her lap while her eyes shifted side to side, watching the agents that passed by her almost obsessively like she wanted to say something.

That was the body language of someone who had something to say.

The blonde girl smiled at her team and nodded towards the old woman.

"There is."

➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴

Caroline stood beside Gideon quietly, the two of them watching Hotch and Elle speaking to Ms. Slessman behind the window blinds of the next room. They had connected a video feed through Hotch's jacket sleeve, picking up the conversation.

"Ms. Slessman, does Richard have any friends?" Elle asked her calmly, her voice sounding a little grainy through the feedback of the mic.

"Richard never had many friends." The old woman told her, her hands clutching the cup of coffee they had given her early. Her hands shook slightly like she was cold, but that was probably from deoxygenation from the cannula laced to her nose.

There had to be someone. Heather Woodland's life depended on it.

"You sure?" Hotch asked her, equally as calm. "There has to be someone."

"Well..." The old woman began to speak slowly like she was thinking. "There was—there was this one young man. I think his name was Charlie."

The moment she heard that name, ice shot through Caroline's veins, freezing her in place.

Charlie, she thought to herself, Oh, Charlie...

Suddenly, she was brought to another time, the FBI field office melting away in front of her before being replaced with a large, fenced-in backyard with tall green grass and a flower garden pushed to the side, filled with yellow daisies. A little boy was running through the grass wildly, his fingers glazing over the tall blades of grass. He was laughing to himself, probably about some stupid joke he made up all by himself. He was so happy.

He looked serene, like a child out of the movies. His smoothed back blonde hair glistened in the sun and his green eyes sparkled with childish delight. He couldn't have been older than ten, maybe younger. He was dressed in his Sunday-best: a buttoned-down white shirt, tailored black slacks and shiny, and polished black dress shoes. He kept getting his nice clothes dirty with mud as he ran through the grass, caking his pants and shirt, but she couldn't bear to scold him. He was just having some fun. He deserved to have some fun with what he's been through.

The boy smiled at her, revealing his small, white teeth. He laughed and motioned her forward. "Come play with me, sissy!"

But, like before, she was rooted in place. She so badly wanted to reach out and dust the dirt off of his white shirt, but she couldn't reach him. He was too far away.

"Care-bear, come on! Come play with me!"

She smiled a little as she watched him dance around, running like a little Indian in the wild grasslands. She just wanted to touch him, to feel him, one more time. Just so she'd know he was real. That he used to exist. Just one more time...

"Charlie..." She whispered softly to herself, her body riddling with guilt. "I'm so sorry. It was all my fault—all my fault."

Then, the sound of Gideon's voice shook Caroline out of her dream. The full force of reality hit her mind and eyes like bricks, weighing heavily on both.

Suddenly, she was back at the FBI field office in Seattle with Gideon. She sighed, disappointment and anguish revolting inside of her.

She had lost Charlie. Again.

"What was that, sir?" Caroline asked Gideon as calmly as she could manage, trying to shake herself out of it.

"I said cross-reference Charlie for the second unsub." He told her as her fingers began to type the name into the computer in front of them. She was vaguely aware of him staring at her, assessing, but she ignored him.

She was allowed one break from reality, but that was it. She had to focus.

An image of a tall, balding man with large biceps popped up on the screen. He was holding a jail identification card and he wasn't smiling.

I wonder why, Caroline thought to herself as she began to read the information on the screen.

"Charlie is probably Charles Linder," she said as she skimmed through the files. "He was Slessman's cellmate and received a dishonorable discharge from the military."

"He's bigger, tougher. He could have protected Richard in prison. Where were they incarcerated?"

She clicked through a few more files until she found what she wanted. "Uh...Cascadia. Less than a mile from here."

Gideon looked at her and nodded. "Let's go."

Caroline exited out of the screen as fast as she could and followed the profiler out. They had a serial killer to catch.

➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴

The sound of metal weights hitting the tiled floor of the prison rang in Caroline's ears, while the smell of dirt and sweat almost made her eyes water. She glanced around from the balcony where she and Gideon were standing, quietly watching all the orange jumpsuits go about their daily activities during free time. A lot of the prisoners chose to do some form of exercise, like lifting weights or doing push-ups, but a couple of them were cowering in some obscene, dark corner with their noses in a book. Just like Richard Slessman would've done. It would've been easy to gain his trust—a skinny white boy in a tough block prison. He would've been the weakest link, the easiest to pick on. The most afraid.

Until the unsub protected him and helped him commit murders.

"Is there anyone who can tell us more about Slessman?" Gideon asked the prison warden beside him as his eyes scanned the crowd.

The prison warden scratched his balding scalp and his beady eyes squinting tightly as he thought. "Tim Vogel was the security guard covering Slessman's block." He pointed a wrinkled, knobby finger at a tall, blond and reasonably buff security guard with a tight face and wary eyes in the corner of the prison lobby. "That's him over there. I can get him for you."

Just then, her phone began to ring. Caroline reached for it, digging through her leather jacket pocket for her cell. She pulled it out and pressed the answer button before being the phone up to her ear. She brushed some of her blonde hair out of the way and plugged her other ear, canceling out the long clangs of metal clashing in the background so she could hear.

"Caroline?" Hotch's voice buss through the receiver. "Are you at Cascadia?"

"Yes, sir. We're just about to talk to the security guard in charge of Linder and Slessman's cell block." She informed him.

"Yeah, about Linder. Reid found his name on a police report." Hotch paused at the other end. She could hear him breathing into the receiver before he spoke again. "He died in a car accident 2 months ago."

And just like that, her resolve crumbled.

"You got to be kidding me." She muttered, mostly to herself.

Caroline gritted her teeth and refrained from tearing her hair out. There was no way Linder could be the unsub, not even for the past murders, much less Heather Woodland's disappearance. The timelines didn't match.

They had one lead. One. The one lifeline they had for Heather Woodland was gone, just like that. They were back to square one.

"Just continue with the interview of the jail guard," Hotch told her. "We'll keep looking on our side. Good luck."

Caroline pressed the end call button aggressively and shoved the phone back into her jacket pocket, trying her best not to seem agitated as she approached Gideon, who had been oblivious to the whole phone call.

"That was Hotch. Linder's name came up on a police report."

"And?" He prompted, his face expectant.

"He's dead," she replied, trying to seem indifferent. She couldn't let a set-back cloud her judgment. Until she found Heather, dead or alive, she needed to be objective. "Car accident, 2 months ago. Linder is dead."

She watched Gideon's face fall and she saw, for split second, the same disappointment she felt plastered onto his face before disappearing behind a calm facade. At least she wasn't the only one who felt bad about it. Somehow, that made her feel better. The feeling didn't last long.

That sicko was still out there and they didn't have much time left. It was hard to feel optimistic, especially when Reid spouts odds about kidnapping cases to her like he's an encyclopedia. Odds were this case was going to end with a death, and that was how she and the team were going to find the unsub.

Caroline was going to have to accept the fact that this case might end up in Heather Woodland's murder.

➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴

"Too bad you guys came here for nothing," Vogel, Slessman's former prison guard, told Gideon and Caroline as he escorted them out. The questioning went as well as drying paint—boring and uneventful. It didn't help that Timothy Vogel was as boring and helpful as a wet paper bag. "I mean, talk about scum. I can't remember how many times I put Linder in solitary for causing trouble with us."

The guard reached for his keys hanging off his belt as they approached the gate. They were connected to his belt with a thin metal zip tie, the chord only going about as far as a foot away from his body. Caroline's eyes focused on the assorted keys and keychains in his hands as he unlocked the gate. He had way too many keys necessary—all of them clustered together, clinking together. Something caught her eye, but Vogel had already unlocked the gate and was putting away his keys before she could ask him about it. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"You'd think the inmates would try to stay on our good side, right?" He continued to mumble as they walked through the prison. She was starting to feel something deep in the pit of her stomach, something pulling at her. "Especially since half our job is protecting them from each other."

"You protect them?" Gideon asked curiously. Vogel hadn't mentioned any of this in their interview. This was all new information.

"If you're a little white guy, especially in a prison like this." He told him, staring him dead in the eyes. Caroline's hairs stood on ends and her heart began to race. Her instincts were telling her to run, but she stayed rooted beside Gideon.

"Linder was 6'4". Are you talking about Slessman?"

Vogel glanced back at him from unlocking the last gate and nodded, muttering, "Oh, yeah."

Gideon and Caroline exchanged a look before she curtly replied to the guard with, "Thanks for your help."

The moment the two profilers stepped outside, they began to work.

"Vogel befriended Richard, protected him, made him feel like he owed him," Gideon told her, walking quickly to the car. "He's our unsub."

"He fits the profile." She agreed as she began to fish for her phone in her pockets. "Did you see his keys? There was a keychain for a Datsun Z hanging off of it."

She found her phone the moment the two of them reached the car. She speed-dialed Hotch's number as she unlocked the car and climbed in the driver's seat, pressing the phone between her shoulder and ear while the phone rang. He answered on the third ring.

"Caroline?" Her boss's voice came over the phone as she started the car, Gideon sitting in the passenger's seat. "What did you get?"

"Hotch, we just found your leverage." She told him. "His name is Timothy Vogel."

Just then, she saw a bright orange Datsun Z drive out of the guard's parking lot, leaving the prison. She glanced over at Gideon, handing him the phone. He pressed it to his ear before speaking.

"He's on the move. Nobody moves until we say so."

And with that, he hung up and handed her phone back to her. The two shared a quick look before Caroline put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot, following Timothy Vogel into the night.

We're coming, Heather, she thought to herself, Hang in there.

➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴

Caroline bit her lip as she thought. They had been following Vogel for fifteen minutes now. So far, everything seemed normal. And that gave her a weird feeling in the pit of her stomach. This wasn't right.

"There's something wrong." She told Gideon as she followed the orange car down the street. "We have to pull him over. I can feel it."

And when she felt it, she felt it hard. After years of dealing with psychopaths and killers, her instincts had grown to be entwined with them, alerting her to when something wasn't right. They were never wrong.

"Do you want to know the word the word used to describe you in your file?" Gideon asked her. She glanced over at him, taken back.

"You've read my file?"

"Impulsive. You follow your instincts, not facts. You wanna stop him, you give me a reason first."

She swallowed, still a little startled by the fact Gideon had been reading up in her file, but she got herself together.

"His behavior. When we left Vogel, he was nervous, unsettled. But now, he's stopping at every stop sign, he's using his blinker at every turn, he's slowing at yellow lights." She explained to him as she tailed the car through abandoned road. "This is not someone who is rushing to kill and dump a body."

It was silent for half a second as he deliberated.

"I forget that your file also says you're one of the most brilliant agents in the Bureau." He told her. "Go on, do it."

She smiled a little as she sounded the sirens and turned on the flashing red-and-blue lights.

Did her file really say that?

Vogel started slowing down the moment Caroline had turned on the lights. He carefully pulled onto the shoulder of the road before coming to a complete stop. She pulled up right behind him, reaching for her holstered gun hanging on her right hip as she and Gideon got out of the car slowly.

She raised her government-issued gun at eye-level with Gideon coping her movements beside her. She put on foot in front of the other as she carefully walked towards the stalled car.

"FBI!" Caroline called to the car. "Put your hands up where we can see them!" When there was no movement, she repeated the command. "Put your hands through the window now! Now!"

Then, a pair of hands slowly raised from inside the car, sticking up straight, almost defensively. After checking that he was clear with weapons, she looked over at Gideon, who nodded for her to continue.

"All right, now, with your left hand, I want you to open the car door from the outside."

Immediately, the guy obeyed, his left hand carefully reached down and grabbed the silver door handle from the outside. He pulled the car door open and that's when Gideon snaked forward and yanked the door open, throwing the driver on the pavement. He pinned him down, his gun trained at the back of his head.

Immediately, Caroline could tell this wasn't Vogel. This guy had short black hair and had a smaller stature than the unsub. He escaped.

"It's not him." She told Gideon, bolstering her gun back on her hip.

"Where is he?" He yelled at the guy pinned underneath him. "Where is he?

"Who?" The poor man sounded terrified.

"Vogel!"

"I don't know!"

"What are you doing driving his car?"

"He came up to me in the garage after our shift ended." He groaned in pain, moaning in discomfort. "He asked if he could borrow my truck."

Ice ran through her veins and stood frozen in her place. Gideon looked up at her and they both came to the same conclusion.

"He's dumping the body." She told him. His face immediately shifted, becoming more panicked, more angry.

"What's the make?" He yelled at the man, pressing his gun harder against the back of his head. "What's the make?"

"Dodge! Dodge Dakota!"

Caroline and Gideon didn't waste anymore time. They both took off towards the car, leaving Vogel's coworker lying on the ground.

Suddenly, it became a race against time. And if they lost, Heather would be dead.

Caroline shot down the roads, hitting over sixty miles an hour as Gideon answered a call from Derek Morgan.

"Heather's alive!" Derek's voice buzzed through the phone intensely.

"How do you know that?" Caroline asked him as she exited the woods by making a sharp right turn that caused her stomach to drop.

"Because we're watching her right now." He told them. "Reid and I were able to hack into the computer. Slessman has a camera set up. It looks like they're keeping her on some kind of boat."

"A boat? Where?" Gideon asked.

"We—we can't tell! There's no markers."

She groaned. She had absolutely no idea where she was going. She couldn't keep driving around in circles, Seattle is a coast city. There's docks and piers everywhere. By the time the get through all of them, Heather will be

"What about Hotch?" Caroline questioned him, her nerves fraying. "Has he questioned Slessman yet?"

"We told him the information, but he hasn't gotten back to us—no, wait!" Derek exclaimed. "Hotch cracked Slessman. He says go to Allied Shipyard."

Caroline checked the GPS and glanced over at Gideon, relief almost filling her body.

"Send in backup, Morgan." She told him as she blared the sirens. "We're five minutes away from the shipyard."

They got him.

➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴

Caroline shut off the car as she parked at the shipyard. Everything was quiet, almost peaceful. If only. Gideon nodded to her as they both pulled out their guns and got out of the car.

The place reeked of sea salt and fish. The dock boards creaked and crackled under her heels, threatening to give in. There were boats docked everywhere—ranging from yachts to fishing vessels. It wasn't boating season yet in Seattle, and that made it harder to determine which boat was the unsub's. But, given neither Vogel nor Slessman were rich, the boat had to be low class. They couldn't afford anything else.

Her heart pounded as she shut her door softly, trying not to alert the unsub of their presence. If Vogel knew they were here, he could kill Heather before they could get to her. That wasn't a risk she was willing to make.

The blonde girl looked over at her superior and the man nodded his head towards the ramp heading towards the back of the shipyard, giving her a clear view of all the boats docked at the yard. And, if it came down to it, she could fire a clean shot if she needed too. She was the trained sniper on the team.

Caroline nodded back to her boss and began trekking up the dock as Gideon headed straight. He disappeared behind a stack of rotted crates and she suddenly felt all alone. The silence overwhelmed her, consumed her...

This was what Heather felt. That debilitating sense of loneliness. It smothers you until you can't feel anything, leaving you almost senseless. There's no noise, there's no tears, there's just nothing.

And every second she was here on this dock, Heather was alone and terrified. She had to find her.

Caroline felt her phone vibrate against her leg. She exhaled quietly, not realizing she had been holding her breath, before pulling out her phone and pressing the answer button. She kept her gun trained in front of her, not shifting her focus.

"Hello?" She whispered in the phone, checking behind a stack of boxes.

"Caroline? Are you at the shipyard already?" Derek asked her, sounding worried.

"Yes."

"Listen to me. You need to wait for backup."

"If we wait, Heather is dead." She murmured, continuing to make her way through the dock. So far, nothing suspicious.

"And if we had waited in Boston—"

"I can't, Derek!" Caroline exclaimed. "You told me a long time ago that I should trust my instincts. Well, they're going off like crazy. If we don't find her now, she's dead."

"But Boston—"

"Was a tragedy. We lost 6 agents. But, this, Derek, is not one of those times. I won't let it be."

And with that, she hung up the call and stuffed her phone back down in her pocket, ignoring the incoming calls from her coworker.

When she reached the back of the shipyard, she canvassed the area. Where was Gideon? He was supposed to send a signal if he found something. Suddenly, she was terrified if something had happened to him.

No, she told herself calmingly, he's fine. Just find the unsub.

And that's when she saw it. Gideon was standing a deck below her with his gun trained on Vogel, who had a crying Heather in his arms with a gun aimed at her forehead. The adhesive tape he used to cover her eyes had been pushed to cover her forehead and she limped on her left leg like she had injured it somehow—maybe from attempting to escape? She had a little blood on her shirt, but nothing too concerning. Besides being terrified, she seemed okay, physically at least. She was alive.

Caroline clambered down the deck as quickly and as quietly as she could, hiding herself behind a stack of barrels behind Vogel, not daring to make a sound. She rested the butt of gun on the top of a barrel and trained it on Vogel's back, waiting for the right moment to take the shot.

"Get back!" Vogel screamed at Gideon, pressing the gun harder into Heather's temple. She whimpered. "I'll shoot her. I swear I will."

"I wouldn't. If I were you, I'd aim the gun at me." He told the unsub calmly, his gun still aimed at him. "You shoot the girl, you got nothing."

The unsub's teeth clenched together. "Get...back!"

"Shoot me instead." Gideon taunted him. "Come on. What, are you a lousy shot?" He raised his hands up in the air, his gun facing away from Vogel. "50 feet away. You got a perfect shot. Shoot me."

Caroline swallowed, watching him expose himself to a shot. She knew he was just trying to distract him, but it made her nervous. Just one wrong move...

But she kept her gun trained on Vogel's back. In a year of being in the BAU, she had never killed anyone. She definitely had shot people, she was a trained sniper and marksman. She was trusted with all the weapons, and that included high-power rifles. She's shot unsubs from a mile away with deadly accuracy, but she wasn't aiming for a fatal shot. The moment she takes a life, she was afraid she would become just like the monsters she fights so hard to put away.

Would this be the night she had to kill someone?

"You think I'm stupid?" Vogel spat at Gideon, tightening his grip around Heather as she tried to struggle her way free. She cried out when he squeezed a little too tight.

"I think you're an absolute moron." He said, laughing. "I know all about you, Tim. You're at the gym 5 times a week. You drive a flashy car, you stink of cologne, and you can't get it up."

Vogel was seething. His hand wrapped around the gun aimed at Heather was shaking, and his face twitched—his eyes narrowing with rage. Gideon struck a nerve.

"Not even Viagra's workin' for you. You know what that tells me?" He asked him, taunting him. "That tells me you are hopelessly compensating, and it's not just in your head. It is physical. What did the girls cal you in highs school? What'd they come up with when you fumbled your way into some girl's pants and she started laughing when she got a good look at just how little you had to offer?"

"Shut up!"

"Short stack? Very little Vogel? No, wait, I got it. Tiny Tim."

Vogel became enraged. He shoved Heather out of the way, and focused his gun on Gideon. A shot rang out and Caroline tensed. She quickly adjusted her aim to Vogel's legs, and fired twice, knocking Vogel down on the dock. She fired a third shot through his right hand, making him drop the gun.

She couldn't do it. She couldn't kill him. Not when there was another way. She still wanted to hold on to that part of herself.

She emerged from her hiding spot and assessed the scene. Vogel was sitting on the dock, clutching his hand and moaning in pain. She walked over to him and kicked his gun out of his reach before reaching down and whacking him on the top of his head, knocking him out. He stopped moaning as his body went slack.

She looked over at Heather, who was screaming a few feet away from Vogel's unconscious body. She was terrified, her eyes completely trained on him like he was going to hurt her.

And then there was Gideon, leaning against the docks, his face scrunched up in pain.

No.

"Gideon!" Caroline called out, racing towards him. He leaned over, cradling his left arm, taking deep breaths. She could see the small, bloody bullet hole in the center of his arm. Over Heather's sobs, she could hear sirens in the distance. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He told her, smiling contently. He looked over and nodded to Heather. "Go look after the girl."

Caroline stood up once she knew Gideon's wound was superficial and jogged over to Heather. She was sobbing and shaking, pacing across the deck.

All she did was wrap her arms around the poor woman, and Heather turned and began to sob in her shoulder. She could feel her shaking, her whole body shivering as if she was cold. Caroline petted her dirty, greasy hair soothingly, holding her like she would a child as she screamed.

She was alive, but at what cost? What happened to her, she will never forget. Always paranoid, always terrified. She will never be able to trust anyone ever again. But she was alive.

And that was the only thing that will get her through this. She survived, she won.

That was the only way she would be able to live again.

➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴

The chatter from the police radios and the flashing red and blue lights coming off the ambulance rang in Caroline's ears. She leaned against the railing on the dock, her eyes locked on Gideon and Heather talking near the ambulance. The paramedics had wrapped her in a gray fleece blanket and cleaned up her wounds to where she looked somewhat normal again. There was still that empty, tired set to her face, but nothing was going to fix that. She would know. But, somehow, the paramedics were able to convince Gideon to get his arm looked at, it was bandaged appropriately and cleaned.

She was just grateful it was a superficial wound and not a serious one. She couldn't bear for someone else to get hurt.

Caroline heard someone approach her and she felt the railing on her right give in a little as someone stood beside her. She glanced over and saw Hotch, who was standing there with his arms crossed and his eyes on Gideon.

"So, what kind of report do they want on him?" She asked as the wind started to pick up, her blonde hair swirling around lightly with the wind. The sun had risen a couple of hours after back-up arrived and the morning was just now starting and that included the windy weather.

Hotch looked over at her, his face somber. "How did you—? You know what, I should've known you would find out about it."

"So it's true? There is a report?"

"It's just an assessment of whether he's fit to be a field agent." He sighed and looked over at her, tugging on her jacket as the wind picked up. "You know, Haley and I were looking at a baby names book. Guess what Gideon means in Hebrew."

"Mighty warrior. Seems appropriate." She told him, smiling a little when she saw how taken-aback he was with her answer. "What? I've been through that book with Haley a million times. I don't need an eidetic memory to know things."

He chuckled and shook his head. Off in the distance, the seagulls cawed at the early morning sun.

"So what are you going to tell them?"

"What would you say?"

Caroline watched Gideon standing beside Heather, checking on her still. Somehow he had managed to make her smile.

The blonde girl felt something flutter in her heart, chasing away all the darkness that she sees daily clustered around there. She felt her face lift slightly, her mouth pulled into a small smile.

"Gideon saved her life." She told Hotch calmly. "That's good enough for me."

And then, she stood up and walked towards the vans, ready to go home.

Before climbing into the black SUV, she stopped and turned back around, her hand resting on the car door handle.

Besides all the crime scene tech people and the ambulance, the scene was almost peaceful. The still water, the bright white sun hanging in the sky, reflecting its rays on the ocean. There weren't many calm days like this anymore.

Today was a good day. Days like today made life bearable for her. Days like today chased away the bad ones, all the bad memories, and crimes. Days like today made life worth living again. Days like today give her hope. Days like today made proved being alive was worth it. That it can be worth it.

Today was a good day.

➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴

The sound of Reid's snores kept Caroline awake on the plane. The loud intake and the soft exhale of his breath was starting to drive her wild. They had another five hours on the plane before they landed in Quantico, and she wanted to spend all of them sleeping.

She stretched her arms outwards, interlocking her fingers and pressing them forward. She felt her fingers pop and she relaxed them back at her sides, resting back in her chair. She shed her blazer and tossed her heels in the chair beside her as she curled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

Almost like she couldn't help herself, Caroline found herself watching Reid as he slept. His long legs were bent, his knees hanging off the couch because he was too tall to stretch all the way out across. His hands were tucked neatly under his head, using his leather bag to prop his head up. She could see his eyes moving against his eyelids like he was dreaming. Even in sleep, Dr. Reid doesn't stop thinking. And every time he exhaled, his breath stirred a stray hand of hair that hung over his face, and she so badly wanted to reach across and tuck it away from his face, but she stayed rooted where she was.

She glanced around her, checking to make sure if anyone was awake. Derek was asleep on the couch across from Reid, his headphones plugged in and blasting some contemporary music, probably to lull him to sleep. Gideon was too busy reading to pay attention to what she was doing and Hotch was working on the paperwork for this case, both of them on the opposite end of the plane.

Maybe it was because they saved Heather or she was feeling epic for some reason, but Caroline was ready to talk to him about what happened six months ago. Now was the perfect time because everyone was too preoccupied to listen or interrupt. This was her chance.

Caroline wasn't scared or nervous to bring up the subject, which was strange to her. She just felt...calm.

Maybe it was because she knew that no matter what happened, he was still there. He was still her friend. If Heather could move on with her life after the Seattle Strangler, she could talk to Reid.

Caroline reached over and balled up a piece of paper that had been laying on the table in front of her. She held it carefully with her thumb and forefinger, aiming the wad of paper carefully. She flicked her wrist and the ball of paper thumped Spencer Reid in the head, bounding off his forehead, then his arm, then finally to the floor.

He peeked one eye open and saw Caroline staring at him. He groaned and rubbed his face tiredly as he groggily opened both of his eyes.

"What's up?" He asked her, yawning.

She smiled at him as sat up, stretching his body out. His hair was sticking up wildly in the back, making him look like he had a mohawk. She thought it was probably one of the cutest things she had ever seen.

"Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you."

Reid almost immediately perked up, sitting up straight and focusing on her. He waited for her.

She swallowed. She felt her confidence waiver but she held her ground. She had to get this over with.

"I just...I just wanted to talk about what happened six months ago. You know, between us."

He reached down and scooped up the paper ball she had thrown at him earlier and turned it over in his hands, almost nervously. "Okay."

"I know it's been a while since we've seen each other, but I really feel like we need to talk about it." She began to ramble, her heart fluttering. He was staring at her, his brown eyes piercing hers with startling intensity. She bit her lip, wracking her brain. "But we work together, and I don't want what happened to get between what we do. People depend on us and—"

"Care," Reid said, rubbing his arm nervously, like a tick. She immediately felt bad for putting him in this situation. She should've thought beforehand that this was going to make him uncomfortable. "It—it was just a kiss. It's...it's not a big deal."

She felt her face falter. It was just a kiss? Was that what he really thought? That it wasn't a big deal?

Six months ago, Caroline stayed late at Quantico one night to get ahead on paperwork so she wouldn't have to do it on the weekend. Reid volunteered to stay and help her do half of it so they could both leave early. They had spread the files all across the floor and they sat in the middle of it all, just talking and doing work. Everything was harmless until she accidentally reached for the same file he did. Their hands met and that's when she felt it.

That spark that made her heart race whenever she saw him. The spark that created all those butterflies in her stomach whenever she was near him. The spark that made her felt light-headed whenever they touched. It was that strong, intense attraction she felt every second of every day she was with him.

Her eyes met his and the next thing she knew his lips met hers and she saw fireworks—literally. She had remembered stories her mother told her about her first kiss with her father. She used to say that she felt fireworks and that was how she knew he was the one.

For Caroline, she felt it all. The softness of his lips, the taste of coffee and mint from his breath, the gentleness she felt as they kissed. Her heart was pumping so hard she was surprised he didn't say anything about it. It felt like her heart was going to beat out of her chest at any moment. And she loved every second of it.

But then, she remembered Him. How the man who ruined her life was still out there. How no matter what she does, she couldn't be free of that man. How she knew if Reid knew what she had been through, he wouldn't want her anymore.

So, she pulled away, terrified to admit what happened. No, more like she was terrified to admit she had feelings for him.

And she did. Sometimes, it was unbearable how much sometimes.

She could still remember what he looked like when she pulled away—shocked, hurt. If she stayed with him, he would be hurt even worse. She couldn't risk Reid.

"Yeah...no big deal," Caroline repeated softly, glancing down at her hands folded delicately in her lap. "Well, I guess I just wanted to see if we—if we were still friends."

She heard Reid chuckle and she peeked up through her blonde hair to see a small, half-smile that took her breath away on his face.

"Of course, we're still friends, Care," he told her. "Who else would teach me how to cook lasagna?"

"The internet?"

He laughed. "Maybe. But I like your way better."

She smiled and everything felt normal again. Except she didn't want normal. She wanted him.

She wanted Reid so bad she could hardly stand it. She wanted to tell him that she liked him and that kiss was a big deal to her. She wanted to tell him everything.

But she knew she couldn't.

Because what happened to her couldn't be reversed. She could never fully give herself to Reid and that's not what he deserved—someone who's there half the time. He deserved so much more than her.

She wished life could be different and she could be with him. She'd give anything to be able to be with him.

But, sometimes, if you look long enough into the abyss, the abyss will look into you. Caroline fell into that abyss six years ago when she was sixteen and she knew those weeks trapped would haunt her forever, taunting her.

She refused to be the person the abyss of darkness destroys. She was going to survive.

Even if it is the last thing she does.