PROLOGUE:
OF FAITH AND FEAR
( trigger warning: death )

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IF THERE WAS ONE thing boys and girls bred of fear and faith knew deep down to the marrow of their bones, it was this; the world that started and ended their life was a deceivingly wicked place. Evil wore a hydra of faces and switched between them seamlessly without a second thought — men and women, old and young, kind and cruel — without, of course, forgetting everything in-between. The list went on forever, right down to the most rotten. The unbearable pieces that were much better left unspoken.

But evil could not flourish without there being good parts to infect. It was riddled in the roots of wars, sleeping beside the innocent like a wolf in sheep's clothing only to be ripped apart by the serrated edge of a knife, the shattering ache of a gunshot, the permanence of an imploding bomb. Anything could be a weapon when wielded by determined hands. And so good would bleed, and the world would keep turning, and for a while evil was comforting in its familiarity. It was an injustice known and often ignored since the dawn of time, though not always.

Some people grew up to become killers. Some grew up to catch them.

Mick Cadigan was a good man whose one goal in life was to turn the tide. He walked through the doors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation every day for over twenty years and knew that, once night fell again, he had made some kind of difference in the day. Whether that difference was big or small didn't necessarily matter to him — while it drove some people to the brink of no return, what mattered to Mick was that he tried his hardest with every waking moment. He helped. He existed in spite of the evil he saw all around him, and he married a woman and raised their children to be diligent in the face of it, to walk in his footsteps the best they could. To fight against what raised and maimed every child that came before them.

But good people, as Mick was forced to witness, were often the first to suffer an undeserving fate.

Death took his youngest daughter first. It tangled her in the web of a mystery, dangling her just out of his reach. Now, it came for him too.

Mick's lips were coated with blood. His hands were slick with the crimson liquid. On the day he died, evil wanted a front row seat. It pointed and laughed as his boss yelled orders into the speaker attached to his vest, fingertips trembling as he pressed the torn hem of his shirt against the gaping wound on Mick's chest. He swore then that he could see down to the bone, to the making of men like Mick, and it made him sick with horror.

Mick's lungs were burning. His chest refused to expand in protest, blurring his vision at the edges. His lips opened and closed, spewing more blood down his neck in a damning river. He caught the way his boss' eyes closed and reached in vain to cover his hand with his own.

Hotch met him halfway. He shouted something again but it sounded like everything he said was spoken underwater. The world went dark for a blink and Mick's heart seized in panic. Not yet. He had only one thing on his mind and it was a thought he had to voice. If it was the last thing he did, it would be this.

"My—" He forced out the words with every bit of strength he had left. "My family, Aaron..."

Thankfully, Hotch seemed to know what he wanted to say. "They'll be taken care of. I promise."

He thought of Natalie then, who often worried her husband would end up on the wrong side of an unsub's knife. He thought of Thomas, engaged to be married, and Gwen just days away from graduating from the academy. He thought of Noah, just a boy figuring out what life had in store for him, who would lose his father's guidance by no choice of his own. Death would not come for the others just yet, but they would feel its agonising sting once again.

There was no point in denying what was about to happen. However, Mick wasn't scared anymore. The weight of the world seemed to slip off his shoulders at the admission that Natalie, Thomas, Gwen and Noah would have support. They wouldn't be alone. His hand slid away from Hotch's, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. He didn't leave the world with a bang, though it wasn't necessarily a whimper either. Rather, Mick Cadigan — one of the first to join the BAU, a husband, a father, a friend — was granted one final breath into a chasm of silence broken only by the wail of sirens as the rest of his team arrived too late.

He would never be able to comprehend that, this time, his hardest wasn't enough. He'd never find Felicity again. He'd never know what happened to her or return both in heart and mind to the rest of his family, who were now left to grieve both of them only a year apart. There would always be another murderer, another kidnapper, another wicked monster to catch. 

He was merely their latest victim, and he definitely wouldn't be the last.

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A/N: Okay, so I know this doesn't have anything to do with either Gwen or Spencer or the canon storyline of Criminal Minds, but I was feeling inspired and Gwen's father (and his legacy) play a huge role in the shaping of Gwen's story.

For context, Michael (better known as Mick) was one of the first to join the BAU. His death is the reason Gwen decides to follow in his footsteps and I didn't want to just quickly mention it and move on, I felt it deserved some kind of acknowledgement of its own.

Evil is going to be a huge theme as we navigate Gwen joining the BAU and the eventual mention of her sister again, so what do we think so far? I hope y'all are as excited to read it as I am to write it :)