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gryfflepuffinthetardis · 5 months ago

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Valentía: Extreme Aggressor

Season One Masterlist

Previous: Prologue Part Two

Next: Compulsion

Summary: SSA Jason Gideon is called in from his six month medical leave to return to the BAU to go to Seattle to profile a rapist and killer and save his latest victim after she goes missing.

Warning: Typical Criminal Minds warnings; UnSub is a rapist-killer; References to rape; References to murder; Descriptions of PTSD; Mention of real-life serial killer, Countess Elizabeth Báthory; "Supernatural" References

“PTSD: It’s not the person refusing to let go of the past, but the past refusing to let go of the person.”

September 21, 2005

"Zoe Valdez", as she was known around the office, wrote in her crime book, writing her own profile on the killer of Countess Elizabeth Báthory when her phone rang.

"Hello..." She mumbled.

"We have a case and we need Gideon."

Zoe fell off the couch, "Gideon's coming back?" She grinned.

"Don't worry, he knows how you want to be known around the office."

——————————————————————————————————

BAU — Behavior Analysis Training

FBI, Quantico, Virginia

One of the founders of the BAU, Jason Gideon, six months after leaving the BAU on medical leave, was teaching a class of those who may be FBI agents one day.

He clicked through the faces of the victims of the recently caught Footpath Killer (as of six and a half months ago), the victims were always the least known part of serial killer stories

"Anyone recognize these faces?" Gideon asked.

"Victims of the Footpath Killer." A student answered.

"That's what Virginia newspapers are calling him. We refer to him as the Unknown Subject or Unsub. I told Virginia P.D. they're looking for a white male in his twenties, who owns an American made truck in disrepair. Works a menial job. I told 'em, when you find him, don't be surprised if he speaks with a severe stutter." He explained.

A girl raised her pencil-holding hand and voiced, "Not to sound skeptical, but come on... a stutter?"

"Where'd the murders occur?" Gideon asked and realization slowly occurred to the girl as he continued to explain what a young genius he had known since birth had suggested, "Hiking paths. Isolated. If I'm a killer who has to use an immediate application of overpowering force, even out in the middle of nowhere, I lack confidence. I can't charm them into my car like Ted Bundy did. I can't because I am ashamed of something."

Gideon's serial killer class was interrupted when a quite pretty twenty-three-year-old boy with gelled down brown hair and brown-hazel eyes, held up a case file and tapped it. Gideon's protege, Doctor Spencer Reid, the smartest guy Gideon had ever met.

"Excuse me." He told the class and walked out with Spencer, "They're calling him the 'Seattle Strangler'. Four victims in four months. He keeps 'em alive seven days. The handle serves as a crank." He and Gideon looked at a photo of a recent victim.

"Allowing him to control the rate of suffocation." Gideon deduced.

"To prolong it?" Spencer asked.

"To enjoy it." Gideon corrected, "Seattle's hit a wall?"

"Physical evidence is nonexistent. There are no tangible leads."

"And another girl is missing." Gideon said and he entered an office, looking over the case, "I looked the case file over. I'll get some thoughts to you ASAP."

Aaron "Hotch" Hotchner and Derek Morgan entered with the former saying, "you're gonna be with us in Seattle ASAP."

Gideon looked up at the man who now held his former job title of Unit Chief and he took off his glasses.

Morgan held out a picture of a young girl with red hair, "Twenty-two-year-old Heather Woodland."

"Before she left for lunch, she downloaded an email with a time-delayed virus attached. The killer's virus wiped her hard drive and left this on the screen." Hotch said and handed Gideon a printed screenshot with a familiar messy colored hand-writing at the bottom.

"For heaven's sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself."

The hand written note scrawled out the words: William Heirens (Lipstick Killer) December 10, 1945, the second victim, Frances Brown's apartment.

"Uh, Valdez, the new girl that Hotch hired wrote that." Spencer said, gesturing.

Gideon looked at Hotch and knew that meant Zoe.

"He never keeps them for more than seven days which means we have fewer than thirty-six hours to find her." Hotch said.

"They want you back in the saddle. You ready?" Morgan asked.

"Looks like medical leave's over, boss." Spencer said.

"They sure, they want me? You guys have Alexander and… Valdez." He, like Hotch, knew Zoe’s real identity as Alexander’s daughter, having been the second person to hold her after the stressful event that was her birth.

They all looked at him, they all knew, Alexander... well, he was about as crazy as the UnSubs they caught.

"The order came from the director." Hotch nodded

Gideon turned, dramatically, "Then we'd better get started."

——————————————————————————————————

Gideon got out of the car with his go bag and walked towards the BAU jet as Alexander, a forty-year-old man with messy brown hair, stuck his head out, "Ah, Jason. Welcome back."

"Alexander."

Gideon entered the jet to see what he should've expected, Zoe Noble-Valdez had notes all around her and stuck on the walls and there were several stuck in her hair that was streaked with light green and headphones over her ears.

"Of course." Gideon said as Zoe wrote rapidly, having always been an over-achiever due to her brilliant mind and constant need to be doing something especially in the past four years.

Spencer, Morgan, and Hotch got on the jet.

"Jason Gideon, meet our newest recruit, Doctor Zoe Valdez." It hurt the father, only referring to his daughter by his late girlfriend's name but this was what Zoe wanted.

"Zoe." Spencer said, passing her and pulling her headphones off, letting the distant sound of her audiobook be heard.

Zoe looked up, pausing the audiobook and smiled, widely.

"SSA Jason Gideon, nice to see you again." She said, acting as if he hadn't known her since before she was born, as if he hadn't mentored and worked with her mother.

"You know, Agent Valdez." He said, playing along and shaking her hand.

"You two have already met?" Morgan asked.

Zoe looked at him, keeping her cool and said, "Yes." She sat back down, "That is technically true."

Truth was Gideon was like a second father to her along with retired Agent David Rossi but Gideon had more of a healthy idea on what's appropriate to read to a three-year-old child before bed rather than a grisly unsolved crime case as Rossi had gotten bored of children books with no twists or plots and Zoe had annoyed Alexander into doing it.

"How did you get all this done? We were gone for half an hour." Morgan said.

"It's not my fault that you're ordinary and your thoughts go at a normal speed." She smiled.

"How's she doing so far?" Gideon asked Hotch and Alexander.

"Pretty good for a nineteen-year-old." Hotch admitted, "Other than her being, reckless, rebellious, a little violent, refuses to oblige the dress code. Pretty much everything I predicted.”

"Pretty good? My angel is the best agent since her mother." Alexander whispered, proudly as he watched Zoe and Spencer compare notes.

——————————————————————————————————

"His first victim was twenty-six-year-old Melissa Kirsh." Zoe said, "Stab wounds. Strangulation."

“Wait, wait. Back up. Back up.” Morgan interrupted the young medical doctor.

Holding his hands out in front of him, stopping her from continuing.

“He stabbed her, and then he strangled her to finish her off?”

“No.” Zoe deadpanned.

“Other way around.” Gideon corrected and he turned to his two proteges, "Why do you think he started using the belt with the second murder?"

“Strangulation with your bare hands is not as easy as one would believe.” Zoe said, "About four-point-four to eleven pounds of pressure."

"He tried, probably realized it took too long..." Spencer speculated.

"So he stabbed her instead." Morgan finished.

“And realized it would be hours cleaning up the blood.” Hotch said.

“Next time, our boy’s got a method—the belt.” Derek said.

“He’s learning, perfecting his scenario. He's learning from his mistakes like the Reaper," Hotch shifted and Alexander flinched, giving Zoe an unreadable glance, "did when his call to 911 actually led to his only surviving victim's survival.” Zoe said, “becoming a better killer.

——————————————————————————————————

They arrived at the FBI Northwest Field Office in Seattle, Washington. They were held back due to Zoe having more weapons than most would think possible on her person at the security check.

"What's wrong with you? Why do you have so many weapons?" Morgan asked as Zoe finally made it through and looked at him.

He never stands with his back to a window and was reholstering most of her weapons. She looked at Morgan with a guarded look in her eyes, "My dad was an overprotective and paranoid guy." She said, vaguely. She never said much about her parents but plenty about her terrifying family which seemed to mostly consist of badass women and valued a variety of Zoe's attributes and feminism.

Zoe walked with Morgan and Spencer when Morgan nudged the older genius, "He never stands with his back to the window. When I was between him and a doorway, he asked me to move."

"That's hyper vigilance. It's not uncommon in post traumatic stress disorder.

"Also paranoia; trust issues; vivid flashbacks; intrusive thoughts and/or images; nightmares; intense distress; physical sensations such as pain, sweating, nausea, or trembling. There's also categories of the different types of symptoms and the symptoms those symptoms have."

"I know what symptoms PTSD causes, Zoe!" Morgan snapped.

"I don't think you do. You most likely had been ignoring yours for years, more than a decade I bet." She said, blankly.

"Don't profile me." Morgan pointed a finger at Zoe who looked at him with a bored deadpan expression. "Just how much disorder are we talking about?"

"Morgan, it's been six months." Hotch said, "Everything's okay."

"Yeah, fuck off, Morgan." Zoe said.

"That's not what I said." Hotch said.

"Essentially it was." She said and Hotch just continued onwards with Spencer, being painfully awkward. “Just because you ignored the trauma your past caused you, doesn't mean Gideon will heal just as quickly." Zoe said.

Morgan was trained not to react when surprised but being off-guard, his eyes widened only briefly before his face went back to neutral but with panic, confusion, and mild curiosity in his eyes. "What trauma?" He asked, defensively which only further confirmed her profile she had unwilling been making over the past six months.

"You're guarded, unwilling to trust that people’ve got your back as well as you've got yours, and protective. You grew up with an absent father and given that he was a officer too, it's likely he was killed in the line of duty. Your compassion for the wounded tells me that maybe you witnessed it. And I'm sorry for that. You were then betrayed by a father issue not too long after." Zoe said and she noticed Morgan stiffen in fear and anger for said father figure and the idea of this nineteen-year-old that he wasn't sure if he fully trusted yet finding out, "I can't quite and am unwilling to deduce the specifics because that's personal and I am already overstepping, I'm aware of that. But you got out and you moved on to make sure that as few people as possible experience what you did." Zoe said with absolutely no effort whatsoever. "Not many people are that strong. They let it control their life. Not you though. Not only did you get out but you're making a difference."

She gave him a hesitant, small smile that only lasted about a second or two with a semi-warmth to it which was more than he had gotten from her in six months and then she walked after Hotch and Spencer.

Alexander walked past Morgan, pretending to have not heard anything with a small, proud smile on his face for his daughter's kindness, even if she tried to hide it.

Hotch introduced the team as they walked, "This is special agent Gideon, special agent Morgan, our expert on obsessional crimes, special agent Noble, special agent Reid..."

"Doctor Reid." Gideon and Alexander corrected.

Doctor Reid, our expert on well, everything, and special agent—Doctor Valdez, our expert on missing persons and medical knowledge and pretty much everything Reid may not know. And after two years busting my butt in this office, I hope you all remember me."

And people laughed. His systems must've malfunctioned.

They looked at the murder board and Gideon observed, "He's willing to travel with the body."

"Then he drives a vehicle capable of concealing one." Hotch added.

"One in seven-point-four drivers in Seattle own an SUV." Spencer reasoned.

"Explorer with tinted windows." Morgan suggested.

"Explorers rate higher with women."

But how do we know it's his car?" Morgan asked.

Ted Bundy drove a VW Bug."

"A what?" Zoe asked. She was more of a motorcycle girl than a car girl. She had a Marine Turbine Technology Y2K motorcycle that she had modified, it went above the average speed of one and was silent due to her modifications, she rode it when they were racing to an UnSub’s location and was usually able to stall or even take down the UnSub.

"Volswagen Beetle." Alexander clarified as Zoe, despite being such a tomboy she considered herself to count as a boy in the boy's club of the team (apart from J.J. and Penelope Garcia, the latter rarely ever traveling with them).

"What about a Jeep Cherokee?

"Jeeps are more masculine." Reid said.

"Yeah, doesn't mean he has one." Zoe said.

"We all know how an unsub feels about asserting his masculinity." Alexander said.

"That's a good point." Zoe muttered before turning to the closest detective, "Most male rapists are insecure about their masculinity and feel the need to assert their dominance as men over women—they also tend to have insulting and distorted views on women—or feel the need to be reassured in their masculinity by raping women, because men are the worst, meaning their insecurities are often present in their behavior."

Zoe raised her eyebrows as if asking anyone to question her but no one dared do so.

"When did the bureau become involved in the case?" Hotch said, ignoring her.

"After the fourth body." The ASAC (Assistant Special Agent in Charge) said.

"Sondra Watts, taken August sixth, killed and dumped August thirteenth." Zoe said, humanizing the deceased victim as she tended to do.

"He dumped that one out of state.”

"On purpose." Hotch added.

"If so, knowledge of law enforcement does suggest a criminal record.”

"Or that he watches television."

"Television usually is widely inaccurate and is based on assumptions and beliefs caused by television. He'd have slipped up by now. Maybe he's law enforcement..." Zoe mused.

"Are you accusing the local police?" Someone asked accusingly.

"There are other law enforcement jobs than police, you know." Alexander snapped, barely restraining himself. How dare someone speak to his little girl like that.

Zoe gave her father a side look and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, or maybe he's associated with law enforcement but not necessarily law enforcement." Zoe suggested.

"Like a prison guard or something." Alexander said with a bitter undertone.

"May I?" Morgan asked.

"So you wanna see our suspect list?" The ASAC asked.

"No, we won't look at a suspect list until after we come up with a profile. It keeps our perspective unbiased." Hotch explained.

"When do we sit down with your task force?" Gideon asked.

"Four o'clock." Another agent said.

“An accurate profile by four o'clock today?" Morgan asked.

"That's not a problem." Gideon said and walked to another board.

"Agent Gideon, where would you like to start?" Hotch asked, still used to taking orders from him.

Gideon pointed at a picture, "Let's start at the site of the last murder."

"Do we have a list of those Heather Woodland is related and close to?" Zoe asked.

"Yes," A detective said and produced a list.

Zoe looked over it, "David Woodland, who's that?"

"Her brother. He was the one to report her missing. He's at her house, watching her dog."

"Alright, I'm going to go interview the brother." Zoe declared.

"Uh, not alone you're not!" Alexander scolded, with more emotion than a supervisor would to a new agent. Zoe turned around and gave him a deadpan look that only someone who knew her longer than six months could detect the hint of a glare she was giving him like, don't fucking treat me like a child. I'm a big girl, Dad. “You’re around the same age as the victims.”

“I can take care of myself.” Zoe said, stubbornly.

"Reid and I'll go with her." Hotch said before Alexander did any more damage to Zoe's request that their relationship as father and daughter remain secret for now.

"As long as he doesn't drive." Zoe said, jabbing her thumb at Spencer.

"Deal." Hotch agreed in his usual deadpan, walking past her.

"What's wrong with the way I drive?" Spencer asked, genuinely.

Morgan made a sound between a scoff of disbelief and a snort of amusement.

"Because you drive like a grandma." Zoe quipped, "Come on, Boy Genius."

——————————————————————————————————

At the dumping site, Gideon walked off, observing the crime scene as an officer asked the group, consisting of other officers, Morgan, and Alexander, "so that's Gideon? The Gideon. The one who caught that guy, Adrian Baal, in Boston.

"Yep. That's him. But catching him cost us six agents." Morgan said.

"Gideon, he... he's always been haunted by those he can't save so that hit him pretty hard." Alexander said.

"You co-founded the BAU with him, right?"

"Yeah."

"You, him, and that famous writer, Rossi, and someone else. A woman."

"Zelena." Alexander said, "yeah."

"Didn't you marry her or something?"

"No. No. We never married. Never had the chance. I fell in love with her immediately... when she judo-flipped me. then straddled me, and pressed her forearm against my throat. She took a while, given my... my Bipolar and ADHD but she did and in January of 1985, we learned she was pregnant, then found out it was twins—both girls..."

For a lot of fathers, the day of their child's birth are the happiest days of their lives, even better than their wedding days. Alexander's father didn't see that for Alexander or his younger sister. Alexander's oldest twin daughter, Zarah had been born normally but then... the job really did wreak havoc on his life and Zoe had been born with a number of complications from the circumstances to her health.

"How are they?"

"Oh, they're-they're good.” Alexander mumbled, knowing only where one was as he walked out where Gideon was.

"Twenty-two-year-old Anne Cushing was found right here. Nails clipped just like the others." Alexander said and handed Gideon a picture, "He wants them to fight back."

"But not enough to hurt him. And he left the belt around her neck." Gideon stated as Morgan joined them, "He's probably in his early twenties."

"What's your reasoning?" Morgan asked.

"Youthful arrogance." Was all Gideon said as according to Zoe applied to Morgan.

Morgan sighed, "He clothed the body before dumping it."

"That's a sign of remorse." Gideon said.

"It's not consistent. Look where we are. His opinion of women is pretty clear, don't you think?" Morgan opinionized.

"They're disposable." Alexander scowled, every time the killer's M.O. was even vaguely associated with his girls—he couldn't help but fear and imagine that they were the next victim. Zoe was technically half-Caucasian-Scottish but also half Hispanic but that didn't matter to a single parent of two girls both with childhoods filled with trauma and danger.

"Why show remorse by taking the time to dress her but then dump her here?" Morgan asked.

——————————————————————————————————

Hotch, Spencer, and Zoe were in Heather Woodland's house, let in by her brother, David.

Heather's labrador barked up at Spencer who flinched back.

"Sandy, no, no, no." David scolded the dog and apologized to the agents, "I'm so sorry."

"No, it's okay. It's what we call the Reid effect. Happens with children, too." Zoe snarked, Spencer gave her an unamused look.

"I'm Agent Hotchner. This is special agent Doctor Reid and this is special agent Valdez."

"You both look too young to have gone to medical school." David noted.

"They're PhD's. Three of them." Spencer replied.

"Are you a genius or something?" David asked.

"I-I-I don't believe that intelligence can be accurately quantified—but I do have an I.Q. of one-eighty-seven and an eidetic memory and can read twenty thousand words per minute." Spencer said and David stared at him, “Yes, I'm a genius.”

"Actually, I'm the medical doctor." Zoe said as she wandered around the room.

"Are you a genius too?" David asked and triggered Zoe to go on an absent-minded unintentional brag.

"Well, I never took an official IQ test because I believe tests are bias towards only two kinds of intelligences but it's been estimated to be quite high as I have an auditory memory, I finished high school when I was sixteen, could've done so when I was nine or ten but... circumstances. I was seventeen when I finished medical school." Zoe babbled.

"Seventeen?"

"Yeah, I started getting college degrees when I was six, technically graduated from Princeton, Yale, CalTech, MIT, etc. before age twelve."

"How many degrees do you have?"

"Twenty-four."

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen. I turn twenty next month.”

“But—how-how…”

“I was fully able to comprehend basic language and things like death before six months old, I was fluent in Spanish and English by twelve months. I started taking college classes along with normal kindergarten classes at age five..."

"Zoe, you're doing it again." Hotch interrupted.

"Oh." Zoe blushed, "I'm sorry. I'm ADHD and Cyclothymic, mildly Bipolar, I tend to get distracted and it's a bit difficult to filter my constant thoughts. Uh, May I?" Zoe asked, referring to Sandy.

"Oh, yeah." David nodded.

Zoe crouched down and petted the dog, "You know my family back in Mexico breed Xoloitzcuintle dogs.”

“Is that a breed?”

“Yeah, they’re the national dog of Mexico.”

“I thought that was chihuahuas.”

Zoe ignored this comment. “Xoloitzcuintle are rare nowadays and Mexicans believe they have spiritual abilities.” She went back to petting Sandy, “Sandy, you get a lot of attention, don't you?"

"Yeah, Heather loves this dog. I feed her when Heather's away. Usually, she's fine, but lately, she won't eat. It's almost like she can sense something's wrong." David worried.

"Not sense. Smell. Our apocrine sweat gland releases secretions in response to emotional stress." Spencer explained.

"Uh, translation: Sandy's worried because she knows you are." Zoe said, standing up.

"David, does your sister drive a Datsun Z?" Spencer asked.

"No, but she's in the market for one. How'd you know?" David asked and Spencer showed him a magazine displaying that car, then Sandy barked, "Come on, Sandy." He took Sandy out.

Hotch and Zoe joined Spencer, "There's an immediate relationship established between a buyer and a seller, a level of trust. If I want to coax a young woman into my car..." Spencer theorized.

"Offer her a test drive." Zoe finished, "That's really smart, Spence."

——————————————————————————————————

Back at the field office, Morgan was pacing, Spencer and Zoe were spinning in their swivel chairs as Zoe sucked on an apple-flavored dum-dum.

"Okay, then how about the fact that on one hand, we have paranoid psychosis... but the autopsy protocol says what?" Morgan asked.

"Adhesive residue shows he put layer after layer of duct tape over his victims' eyes." Zoe recited after pulling the dum-dum out of her mouth with a pop!

"He knows he wants to kill them, but he still covers their eyes. He doesn't want 'em looking at him, apparently. Okay, but then he takes the body and dumps it right out in the open, murder weapon nearby."

Zoe turned to Gideon, noting his tense posture and being ADHD, she had hypersensitivity, also known as being a "highly sensitive person" (HSP), which meant she was more empathetic than the average neurotypical person and being raised around profilers plus her own studying and intuition meant she could pick up on what others didn’t and completely missed what everyone else did.

"Not the M.O. of a paranoid convinced he's being watched or surveilled." Spencer said. Twelve minutes in and we're already foreshadowing.

"Paranoid psychosis, but behavior that's not paranoid." Morgan argued.

"Maybe he's schizophrenic." Hotch asked.

"Gideon?" Zoe asked but got no response, "Gideon?"

"Maybe we just don't have enough for a complete profile." Morgan said, pessimistically, as always.

"We have enough to narrow our list of suspects." Hotch said. "You know, we're looking at less than twelve hours to find this woman. We don't know exactly what..."

"Hotch, we don't know anything!" Morgan shouted.

"Gideon!?" Zoe said, loudly.

"All right, enough." Gideon said, quieting the room and Zoe put the dum-dum back into her mouth and started to half spin her chair before using her feet to make her go the other way, never fully spinning around. "Let's tell them we're ready." Then he walked off as Alexander entered with the coffee (and in Zoe's case highly caffeinated Mexican hot chocolate) orders.

"We're ready?" Morgan asked in disbelief as Alexander placed the cup holder tray on the table—Zoe and Spencer taking their respective cups at once—and Alexander followed Hotch after Gideon.

Zoe took a big sip of her hot chocolate and then leaned onto the table to write down a copy of the profile they never really discussed.

"Reid. Zoe. You're good with this? We've got a woman who's only got a few hours left to live, an incomplete profile, and a unit chief on the verge of a nervous breakdown." Morgan complained.

Gideon came in and picked up something as he said the same thing as Zoe, "They don't call them nervous breakdowns anymore."

"Grandma Morgan." Zoe had added, snarkily as Gideon left.

"It's called a major depressive episode." Spencer said, getting back to writing.

"I know, Reid." Morgan snapped.

"Are you sure? Do you know what year it is, gramps?"

"Okay." Morgan said and walked out.

Zoe’s phone rang and she saw her caller ID, reading, MD.

She brought the phone up to her ear as she spoke to her friend, “Hey. MD, seriously, I’m fine. We’re just about to deliver the profile. Well, you’re not a profiler. I know. I know, you are. Alright, I’ll call you back later.”

——————————————————————————————————

Gideon stood in the middle of the room before getting to the profile.

"The unidentified subject is white and in his late twenties. He's someone you wouldn't notice at first. He's someone who'd blend into any crowd. The violent nature of the crime suggests a previous criminal record—petty crimes. Maybe auto theft. We've classified him as an organized killer—careful. Psychopathic as opposed to psychotic. He follows the news, has good hygiene. He's smart. 'Cause he's smart, the only physical evidence you'll find is what he wants you to find. He's mobile, car in good condition. Our guess—Jeep Cherokee, tinted windows. The murders have all involved rapes. But rape without penetration is a form of piquerism, and that tells us he's sexually inadequate. Psychiatric evaluations will show a history of paranoia stemming from a childhood trauma—death of a parent or family member. And now he feels persecuted and watched. Murder gives him a sense of power. Organized killers have a fascination with law enforcement. They will inject themselves into the investigation. They will even come forward as witnesses to see just how much the police really know. That makes them feel powerful, in control. Which is why I also think—in fact, I know—you have already interviewed him."

——————————————————————————————————

They had an officer with the Seattle FBI agent lure a suspect named Richard Slessman into a nearby house where they tackled him to the ground.

Slessman looked like a near-incompetent monster hunter with a lame catchphrase that was just their first name as a verb that would get bitten by a werewolf with dead eyes. As in Slessman had dead eyes, not the werewolf.

They searched Slessman's house as others spoke to the woman who had opened the door for the previously mentioned agent.

"There's no sign of Heather here." Zoe said after jumping over the banister to make room for the agents

"We can arrest him with probable cause, but we won't be able to hold him. Slessman's been at the top of the suspect list." Spencer added.

“Is that the mother?" Gideon asked.

The agent came up to them, "Grandmother. The mother died in a fire when he was thirteen."

“Probably not the only fire in his childhood.” Zoe said.

She looked to Spencer and Zoe, "Hi, Agent Elle Greenaway."

"Special Agent Doctor Zoe Valdez. I prefer Zoe." Zoe shook her hand while Spencer awkwardly and clumsily shifted past them, trying to not make any physical contact with them. "That's Special Agent Doctor Spencer Reid. He doesn't understand social interactions while I understand them a little better but despise them."

Elle chuckled and they walked with Gideon and Spencer as

“Before his Son of Sam murders, David Berkowitz set a multitude of fires.” Spencer said.

"Exactly how much is a multitude?" Morgan asked.

"A multitude." Zoe sassed. Morgan wasn't amused. "A multitude is a multitude many. More than one."

"Zoe's the second snarker on the team. The first is Alexander Noble." Gideon told Elle.

"According to his diary, one thousand-four hundred and..." He trailed off, trying to search through his memories.

"Eighty-eight." Elle and Zoe said.

"Luring him out was your idea, right? Greenway? " Gideon asked.

"Elle. I don't send a SWAT team into a house with children." Elle stated.

"Hotch says your background is in sex offender cases. What can you tell us?" Gideon asked.

"The last four murders show he's an anger-excitation rapist. He'll keep a victim for a couple of days. He probably records or videotapes them so that he can keep reliving the fantasy."

Zoe balled her fists, her fingernails digging in her palms.

"You ok with Hotch being in on the interview?" Gideon continued.

"I'd like him to lead, actually." Elle said.

"Fine. But hold off. Slessman's done time, and he knows the process. And all you will get now is a demand for a lawyer." Gideon said. "Hotch, let's check the garage, then show me what you got.

"Next time, show a little leg." Morgan flirted.

"Spence, you wanna go check out... not here." Zoe said, deadpan.

"Yeah, that-that sounds like a good idea." Spencer said and they went up the stairs at a quicker pace than Morgan and Elle and went to a room at the end of the hall.

"Morgan, the only time you're gonna see a little leg from me is when I'm about to kick your ass." Elle said.

"I still teach hand-to-hand over at Quantico if you need a little brush-up training."

"Yeah, because I passed up so I can humiliate him when Hotch asks me to join. He loses every time." Zoe called to them, much to Morgan's chagrin. "It infuriates him to be beaten by someone who's only been in the FBI less than two years and has only been at the BAU six months and is thirteen years his junior."

"Don't you have a room to search, Doogie Howser?" Morgan asked, irritably.

"Okay, first off, I'm a woman. You'll need to find a girl name, Chicago. Second of all, Doogie Howser is improbable, the youngest people to graduate from medical school were the same age. Balamurali Ambati and me. They'd never have a ten-year-old start medical school, even if he was the legen-dary Neil Patrick Harris."

Spencer appeared next to Zoe to add his criticism to the legendary Neil Patrick Harris' breakout role. "Even if he knew all the information since his emotional development would be taken into account."

"You two ruin everything." Morgan said.

"Elle, you think you're ready for it?" Zoe asked, "the job. You'd have to deal with all of us all day. And we got Garcia who flirts with Morgan even less shame than him."

Zoe moved back into the room with Spencer before Elle strode over, "Zoe, wait. You're the newest member, also somehow only nineteen. The cut off is twenty-three."

"Well, for geniuses, we were given exceptions. I joined the BAU when I was twenty-two." Spencer said.

"I trained with Maze Valdez, no relation,” Absolutely relation, “for a year and a half before..." Her mouth was about to form one word but then she changed, "The BAU requested my transfer. But I'm fully qualified." Like most people Elle assumed Zoe had said that due to her age and not her blood relation to two of the founding members of the BAU.

"Zoe, seriously I want that opening at BAU. You got any advice?" Elle asked.

"My advice? Just trust your instincts. Be intuitive. Be empathetic. Restrain your impulses. At all times, try to understand the Unsub's point of view, including their backstory, their mentality, their family, everything. Put yourself in their shoes as horrible as it is. Be perceptive. Be observant. But most of all, trust your instincts. They're telling you something for a reason."

——————————————————————————————————

Elle found Spencer, Gideon, Zoe, and Alexander upstairs; Alexander seemed to be fussing at Zoe about something in a manner that Elle hadn't experienced in twenty years; Spencer in thirteen.

Zoe irritably snatched a bottle of water and reached into her side satchel that carried her ADHD fidget toys and her antidepressant, ADHD, PTSD, and Cyclothymia (a combination of a variety of pills) pill bottles and she took out only a few of the bottles to take and washed them down with the water.

Elle didn't comment on this as she had figured Zoe had some kind of mental illness due to her constant fidgeting, oral fixation, distractibility, hyperactivity, forgetfulness, and her bag of fidget toys.

Then she spotted a game on a wooden platform with white and black markers.

"What kind of game is it?" Elle asked.

"In China, it's called wei-chi. Here we call it 'Go'." Spencer said.

"It's considered to be the most difficult board game ever conceived." Zoe said, having mastered the game by two and a half.

"Chairman Mao required his generals to learn it." Gideon said.

"It also looks like he's playing himself." Zoe observed, kneeling down beside the game board, nearly knocking it over with her knees, making Spencer's hand fly near it before pulling them back. "Sorry."

"How can you tell?" Elle asked.

Zoe gently pushed the board into a spin, revealing that it was on some kind of rotator wheel.

"My uncle taught me how to build these, I've got a few at home." Zoe said.

"I will come back to that later." Spencer promised her, "This might provide an advantage, actually."

"Yeah, Go is considered to be a particularly psychologically revealing game. There are profiles for every player—the conservative point counter, the aggressor, the finesser. And with what little psychological research that has been done of 'Go' against other games. In Go the large search tree, knowledge, and pattern recognition is more important than in other strategy games, it's theorized playing this reduces the risk of Alzheimer's and dementia and I can already tell I'm doing the off-topic thing again..." Zoe said and saw Elle looking at her, wondering how she knew so much about the psychology of a game Elle didn't know existed five minutes ago, "My, uh, one of my cousins introduced me to it when I was a year and a half." She pursed her lips together, recalling a brief memory where her thirteen-year-old cousin had been pinned to the floor by mental institution security officers and forced into a straightjacket in Las Vegas when she was about three years old.

"A year and a half?" Elle asked, certain she must've heard that wrong.

"What kind of player is Slessman?" Hotch asked, noting Zoe's discomfort which told him it was either one of her criminal relatives or mentally ill relatives.

Zoe stood back up once again, carelessly, bumping against the board game, making the markers jump but no real damage done. "Sorry. Sorry. Need a few angles." Zoe tilted her head as visualizations only she could see formed rather cinematically, putting mental notes on the different players. Her eyes darted up to meet Alexander's first, before darting to the next person's eyes and so on, "Extreme aggressor."

——————————————————————————————————

Elle, Gideon, and Zoe walked into the boy room where Morgan was with the laptop.

"Oh, fake password?" Zoe asked.

"How'd you guess?" Morgan asked.

"Garcia's not the only hacker, I just prefer the field." Zoe shrugged.

"Well, ladies first." Morgan said, pulling the chair out.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" She sassed. Spencer snorted in amusement behind them as Zoe sat down, flipping her streaked dark brown hair.

"Well, then what's the number six at the bottom of the screen?" Elle asked.

"Number of password attempts before the program wipes the hard drive." Morgan said.

"There could be an email, or a journal in the computer, something that tells us where Heather is." Elle said and looked at Zoe, "Do you think you can break in?"

"In six tries?" Morgan asked, skeptically.

Zoe tilted her head back and looked at Elle and the others upside down, Zoe asked, "I don't know if there's any other viruses on the laptop if I try to hack into it which would wipe the hard drive.”

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Gideon quoted and Elle, Zoe, and Morgan just stared at him.

"Samuel Beckett." Spencer recalled.

"Try not. Do or do not." Morgan said.

Gideon looked at him confused before Spencer turned to him, "Yoda."

Zoe was hesitant; while she may be reckless when it came to her own safety; she was so filled with self-loathing and utter conviction that people wouldn't care all that much if she died; but they only had six tries.

"I'm all for taking risks but not when it holds the life of another person. Zoe Valdez." Zoe sassed. "The password likely means something to him. Our best chance is to either get it out of him or to profile him.”

Gideon turned around and spotted a familiar book spine on the shelf that was written in 1984, he pulled it out and Spencer read the title aloud, "Journal of Applied Criminal Psychology..." Zoe cut herself off from her conversation with Morgan when she heard Spencer say the title and turned to look at them, "Co-written by David Rossi, Jason Gideon, Zelena Valdez, and Alexander Noble."

Her eyes landed on the book and Zoe stood up from the chair and made her way over, Gideon glanced at her as he started to flip through the book before it landed on a newspaper article about the incident from six months ago.

Shrapnel Blast Kills Six

"I wanna talk to him." Gideon said and walked off.

Zoe took the book and a slip of paper fell out, landing on the floor Zoe picked it up and read it. Her eyes grew dark and she stormed out of the room, slamming it into Alexander's chest. He looked at it and his eyes also grew dark.

Zelena V.

Alexander N.

Zarah N. V.

Xiomara N. V.

Zelena and Zarah were crossed out.

——————————————————————————————————

Gideon approached Slessman and placed the book down on the makeshift interrogation table which was really the cheap dinner table.

"You read my paper. Learn anything?" Zoe and Alexander ran down the stairs, Gideon turned and held out a hand out, making Zoe stop and turned back to Slessman, "go on."

"Heirens said a man living inside of his head was the one who committed the murders. You said he was lying, that there'd never been an actual case of multiple personalities." Gideon gestured for Alexander and Zoe to come in and Slessman's eyebrow raised when he saw them, his eye glued to Zoe.

"I assume you know who these two are?"

"Alexander Noble, co-founder of the BAU in 1983, you were nineteen. Same age as your daughter here, Xiomara Noble-Valdez."

"No one calls me Xiomara and don't call me Noble-Valdez either."

"What? You rather go by the surname of the mother you killed?"

"What did my mother say on Heirenz?" Zoe asked.

"She disagreed. Saying that it was more than likely many serial killers had multiple personality disorder. What do you think, Xiomara?"

"About what?"

"Heirens' diagnosis."

Zoe sat back in her seat, sensing the test and she looked down as she shifted through her thoughts

"Nothing was ever confirmed but it's been theorized that he could've had some sort of personality and/or schizophrenic disorder. Hysterical Personality Disorder. Dissociative Personality disorder. Dissociative Schizophrenic. His mother however, had hysterical paralysis and conversion disorder, formerly known as hysteria, is genetic so most likely HPD but still possible he had DID." Zoe shrugged.

"You have an academic interest in dissociative identity disorder, or you just planning your defense?" Gideon asked and Slessman just chuckled/scoffed. Gideon pulled out the article he found in the book and placed it in front of him. "You a fan of Adrian Baal's work?"

"No. I'm a fan of yours." Slessman said. "You know they never give you the real facts about CPR that outside of a hospital, it's only effective seven percent of the time." Slessman mocked but Zoe had already found that he was arrogant in his intelligence but he wasn't as smart as he thought he was. "Your friend had a ninety-three certainty of dying, but you kept trying even after you'd broken his ribs, even after his blood was all over your hands.

"How are you still alive? Are you learning medical knowledge off of a sitcom or the back of a cereal box? That was deeply inaccurate." Zoe deadpanned. "So you can't figure out how to get into the laptop to Google it either?"

A flash of irritation flickered upon Slessman's face and leaned forwards on the table, "I've heard about you. The daughter of the Scottish FBI agent, never afraid, always mocking others. I bet you're afraid deep down."

Zoe leaned on the table too until her nose was only an inch from Slessman's nose and she spoke in a soft but rather tauntingly intimidating tone but also so a certain nearby agent wouldn't hear, "I once looked a well-known serial killer who derived sexual pleasure off of the fear he inflicted up all twenty victims before brutally killing them, likely he couldn't perform otherwise. I stared him right in the eyes and I knew I was the only one to ever show him no fear and I was twelve years old. I am nineteen years old now and you look like a dentist turned supernatural monster hunter who was so incompetent at his job that he turned into a not-at-all-scary werewolf. I made my first kill when I was thirteen and he was a family member and I never regretted it because he hunted me like an animal for nearly two weeks. So, you don't scare me, so why don't you tell us where Heather Woodland is?"

He tried to cover up the fact he was unnerved and shaken now and he sat back in his chair.

"Woodland?" He feigned vague recognition at the name, "isn't she the girl that went missing a couple days ago?"

Zoe smirked, confusing Slessman and she got up, spinning on her heel dramatically out of her chair and strode out.

Gideon's eyes darted around the kitchen, noting a recurring theme in the kitchen. Good boys. Growing up in an environment like that wasn't exactly likely to mold a dominant criminal; but the kind to mold... a submissive.

"Get him out of here." Gideon said and he left.

——————————————————————————————————

Hotch found Gideon, Alexander, and Zoe, Gideon wasn't speaking while Alexander once again was fussing over Zoe to put on her sunglasses.

"I'm not putting my sunglasses on. It's fucking dark out here. You know who wears sunglasses at night? Blind people and no-talent douchebags!" She hissed at him

"Hey." Hotch said.

Gideon turned to him, "He said 'isn't she the girl’. If he'd already killed her, he would have said—"

"'Wasn't she the girl'."

"She's alive. We don't know for how long." Gideon said.

"Is it true what he said about CPR? I mean, I didn't know." Hotch said, gently.

"You want statistics on CPR, ask Reid or Zoe. She's the medical doctor. Zoe, what's the real statistics on CPR?"

"Forty-three percent survive." Zoe said, "Fifty-seven don't."

"I wanna know if you're okay." Hotch told Gideon.

"I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"Think I can't do the job?" Gideon asked.

"I think you can't be two different people at once." Hotch said and Zoe flinched.

"Conflicts in the profile." Zoe said.

"What?"

"Slessman's behavior fits a submissive of a duo. Part of the profile but another part conflicts it.

"Two different behaviors." Hotch said.

"Two different people." Zoe added.

"There's a second killer."

——————————————————————————————————

Apparently, the only friend Slessman had was his ex-cell mate, Charlie Linder. Alexander had refused to let Zoe go to the prison and for once she didn't fight him too hard on it. He told Hotch to make sure she didn't sneak off. Zoe was messing with a cube puzzle, sitting in a chair next to Spencer who was on his phone when Hotch approached.

"We get an address on Linder?"

"It's coming right now." Spencer said and turned to Hotch when he went past him, "Does senior management want a field assessment on Gideon? "

Hotch stepped towards the boy genius, "Don't worry about it."

"It's Morgan who's been worrying." Zoe muttered, still doing the cube.

"Are they nervous about him being in charge? Aren't you two on your way back to Slessman's house to help Morgan?" Hotch said and Zoe left to get the keys since Spencer drove so slowly.

"Do you know why he always introduces me as Doctor Reid?" Spencer asked.

"Because he knows that people see you as a kid, and he wants to make sure that they respect you." Hotch told him.

"But he never corrects people for Zoe and she's four years younger than me." Spencer said.

"You're about to be in a car alone with her for ten minutes. Ask her then." Hotch said as Zoe came back.

"It's here." She said.

"What's the address?" Hotch said as Zoe held the paper so they all could read it.

"Don't think it matters anymore." Spencer said.

——————————————————————————————————

Winston Churchill said, "the farther backward you can look, the farther forward you will see.

"I heard you ask Hotch why I never insist on being called Doctor and Gideon or Alexander never correct people when they call me 'Agent'." Zoe said and Spencer looked at her as he clutched his seat, tightly with her reckless driving, "It's because I know they see me as a kid and I want them to. I have always had the element of surprise. I have twenty-four degrees. I finished a four-year medical school in two years. I finished the FBI training in six weeks. I'm a five foot two, nineteen-year-old girl with dyed hair and I refuse to dress as professionally as everyone else. I want them to underestimate me. I prefer to show them up, you don't because you're better. You're... honestly, you're one-of-a-kind, Doctor Reid, I've never met anyone like you. And you should be respected for that." Spencer smiled, warmly at her. She glanced at him, "What?"

"You finished your FBI training in six weeks? That's a twenty-week program." Spencer asked in amused bewilderment.

——————————————————————————————————

Spencer sat on Slessman's bed, spinning a CD while Zoe tried listening to the music with his CD player to get into his headspace. She pulled off the headphones.

"Ugh, this is much too loud."

"I'd think rock was your style." Spencer said, in an attempt of conversation. Something he was terrible at. But Zoe had always been easy to talk to while simultaneously terrifying. She never judged him for being awkward or different. She never interrupted him when he went off on one of his rants like literally everyone else but his mother had but Zoe often had her own inputs of her own knowledge.

"Alternative rock is. Very rarely in the metal section. The only Black Sabbath song I ever heard is Iron Man. What music do you like? School House Rock?" Zoe asked as she took the CD out of the CD player.

"I like Beethoven."

"Ugh. I'll never understand how people can stand classical music." Zoe rolled her eyes as she picked up the nearest CD case. "It's boring and old and there's no story..."

"You gave me the CD case." Spencer reminded her,

Zoe looked at the case she was trying to put the CD in, "Oh, yeah, this isn't the right case..." An idea came to her. "He already had a case empty."

"Like he was using it. Nothing was in the CD player..." Spencer came to the same conclusion.

——————————————————————————————————

Morgan was pacing in the attic, "Oh, come on! I need a password. I need a password. What am I looking for? What could I possibly be looking for?"

"Zoe and I've been thinking about the CD's." Spencer said as he and Zoe entered as he turned a stretched-out paperclip in his hands.

"Oh, guys, come on. We tried the CD's. We searched, sifted, and sorted through every one of this guy's head-banging heavy metal collection. We gotta find something, or this girl is dead."

"Think we may have missed the obvious." Spencer said, using a paperclip to eject the CD holder.

"What are you doing?" Morgan asked and the ejector popped out, revealing a Metallica CD. Morgan picked it up, "Reid, Zoe, what made you think of this?"

"If you're putting this kind of protection on your computer, then you probably use it a lot, it's easier to use the laptop and listen to music on it at the same time." Zoe said.

"And it was the only empty case." Spencer added, handing Morgan the case.

"All right. I'm an insomniac who listens to Metallica to go to sleep at night. What song could possibly speak to me?

"Enter Sandman." Zoe said so at once. "Trust me, I come from a family of sociopathic and violent insomniacs." Morgan put the password in as she added, "Or as we call ourselves 'independent women'." The home screen popped up, "Morgan, let me. I can find anything relating to Heather fastest."

Zoe pushed Morgan out of his chair and started to type at lightning speed, sticking a bit of her tongue out. Until a box popped up saying: "Are you sure you want to connect to T. Vogel's live camera?"

Yes.

Their eyes widened at what they saw. "Morgan, get the cops. The cops! Get the cops!" Morgan ran out, shouting for them. "Phone, where's my phone!"

She pulled it out of her pocket but dropped it. Spencer grabbed it, fumbling and handed it to her and she called Gideon, "Gideon, Heather's alive."

"How do you know?

"'Cause we're watching her right now."

——————————————————————————————————

They still didn't know where Heather was.

"Zoe, did you see that?" Spencer asked.

"Yeah."

"What?" Morgan asked.

"Zoe, can you show me the last twelve images lined up next to each other?"

"Yep." She said, popping the 'p', typing a few keys and bringing up the twelve.

"What?"

Zoe spoke just a fraction of a second before Spencer, "Right there."

"Right there." Spencer said, "You see that? The light bulb hanging from the wire? Yeah, what about it? It's shifting positions like it's swaying like the Earth is tilting."

"Not the Earth, doc." Zoe said, "The ocean."

"I'll call, Hotch." Morgan said.

——————————————————————————————————

"According to Zoe, he wouldn't be able to transmit the webcam image from the middle of the ocean. It's the best we got, Hotch. Even if we're right, getting the exact location's on you, my friend. To work me a little magic."

——————————————————————————————————

Zoe sat in front of laptop and she messed with a glow in the dark spinning pen while Spencer absentmindedly messed with a puzzle box of hers.

"Zoe, would you knock that off, I feel like I'm going to have an epileptic seizure." Morgan complained.

"Technically, an epileptic seizure is caused by flashing lights." Spencer corrected.

Morgan snatched the pen from Zoe and she pulled out a shape-shifting fidget cube.

"Guys, look." She said, "he's inside." They saw Vogel unlocking the cage, "get Elle on the phone, Morgan!" She snatched her spinning pen back as he walked off to make the phone call. On the screen, Vogel started to pull Heather out of the cage when she kicked him in the face.

"Ooh." Spencer and Zoe said as they were getting their things together to leave.

"Good instincts, girl. But she won't get far, he's been starving her and raping her with various objects on a boat." Zoe said, "Let's just hope Gideon and Elle get to her in time. I'd better drive."

——————————————————————————————————

Gideon had angered Vogel until he threw Heather aside to shoot him, allowing Elle to get a shot in, killing Vogel. Zoe had rushed over to check on Heather's condition at once, comforting her with Elle in hushed whispers, doing what she could with her portable mini-medical kit until the ambulance arrived.

Morgan sat with Hotch when the impulsive former cop asked, "So what kind of report do they want on him?"

"I suppose whether he's fit to be a field agent." Hotch said.

"Same one they wanted on Zoe?" Morgan asked.

"Same one they want monthly on Zoe." Hotch corrected.

"Think he'll pass?" Morgan asked after a chuckle at the jab towards the department's wild card.

"You know, Haley and I were looking at a baby names book. Guess what Gideon means in Hebrew." Hotch said as Spencer and Zoe walked up behind them.

"Mighty warrior." Spencer said and walked off before turning back to them, "Appropriate."

"Also, 'great destroyer'; 'great warrior', 'woodsman', 'one who cuts down'." Zoe said, "But apparently in the bible, Gideon was the name of a judge in the Bible and the angels called him a 'mighty warrior' or as Spencer explained to me for five full minutes, so indeed spot on."

Morgan rolled his eyes at the two geniuses.

"So what are you gonna tell them?"

"About Gideon's report?" Zoe questioned.

"What would you say?" Hotch asked Morgan.

"Gideon saved her life. That's good enough for me." Morgan said and walked off.

"Seemed not to be good enough for him when we got here." Zoe murmured with a hint of teasing sarcasm in her tone.

"What do you think?" Hotch asked.

"I think... there may be setbacks due to the whole Adrian Bale situation, we may have a bomber eventually and he'll have to deal with that. But... he's the best and unless Rossi comes out of retirement or as I call it 'hiding from his dozen ex-wives', we could use a founder of the team who is not constantly worried about his daughter's safety and keeping the fact that the newest member of the team is his daughter a secret and the stress that his other daughter has been missing for four years now." Zoe sighed, "It's been four years since I escaped and I still have nightmares of the stuff I allowed myself to remember but eventually, I'm going to have nightmares of the stuff we see again, cases that don't end as well. He can't wait until the guilt stops because then he'll be waiting forever. The only way to stop feeling so guilty is by helping others, he can't do that on medical leave."

"You know you're too wise for nineteen."

"Yeah, the graduations from Yale, Harvard, MiT, and CalTech before I even graduated high school kind of tipped me off to that." She sassed, playfully, though she had an embarrassed blush on her cheeks.

——————————————————————————————————

On the plane back, Morgan was asleep in a chair, still clutching the file. Spencer was asleep on a couch, rather adorably which Zoe definitely did not think or care about and if she were awake she would not think his turning in his sleep was adorable either, nor would she care.

Only Alexander, Gideon, and Hotch were awake, Gideon sat in a seat on a laptop while Alexander sat on a couch diagonal to the older founder with Zoe asleep on the other side of the couch with her head laying on her balled up leather jacket in his lap, making the occasional noise in her sleep, usually it was incoherent mumbles or soft groans or moans but every once in a while, she muttered something.

"Mary... Mary Bell, ten years old... Scotswood... Newcastle... Tyne... nineteen-sixty-eight..." She muttered, apparently dreaming about one of the youngest female serial killers.

Alexander couldn't help but chuckle, having long since lost his concern of her growing up to be what he hunted.

"She still sleeps like she did as a toddler." Gideon remarked as Hotch sat in the seat across the aisle from Gideon.

"Hey."

Zoe suddenly stirred, her groans rising before she rolled over and hit the floor. She woke up, smacking her lips as she saw the three men looking down at her, all rather amused at how she could be both the definition of innocent and the antonym.

"Hey, guys. Uh... you and Haley pick the baby's name yet?" She ignored what happened as she lifted herself back onto the couch. Alexander wrapped his daughter into a fatherly one-armed hug, pulling her against him, kissing the top of her head.

Hotch smiled briefly before saying, "It's funny Haley liked the name Charles—but, you know all I could think of..."

"Manson." Gideon chuckled.

"Then there was Henry." Hotch said.

"Lee Lucas." Alexander supplied.

"Uh... Jeffrey."

"Dahmer." Zoe filled in the blank, sleepily.

"There's just too many of them."

"That was the problem when Zelena and I were coming up with names for this one and..." His eldest daughter's name died on his lips, "you know, luckily they both turned out to be girls and there's not as many girl serial killers."

"You wanna bet?" Zoe tilted her head up, giving him a challenging look. “Plus, you and mom picked the most bizarre names ever. Zarah and Xiomara.”

"Kind of hard to feel good about catching one when you know there are fifty more still out there." Gideon said.

Hotch looked away for a moment and the father and daughter exchanged looks, having a feeling he was thinking about that one serial killer who got away seven years prior.

"How's your report going?" Gideon said, having not been on the case due to his son Stephen having his appendix removed but knowing it weighed heavily on Hotch's shoulders. Hotch chuckled at Gideon, knowing this, "Didn't think you could hide that from an old profiler, now, did ya?"

"Oh, Gideon, you're not old. Not compared to Rossi, he's always been a cranky sixty-year-old man at heart." Zoe teased.

"You know, you saved that girl today. You can feel good about that." Hotch told Gideon.

"It is good. It's a good thing." Gideon said.

"Zoe, you need to go get some sleep. Go." Alexander said and pushed his daughter off the couch and towards the side of the plane where Spencer and Morgan were.

"Or else what? I'll turn into an UnSub?" She muttered, sarcastically before toppling herself in a couch beside Spencer's.

"She's good." Gideon said,

——————————————————————————————————

Late February to Early March, 2005

Dumfries, Virginia

Nietzsche once said, "when you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you."

Soon before the Boston bombing case, Gideon was driving back to Quantico, talking to Zoe Noble-Valdez on the phone as a test run to see if she could get an interview was to create a profile for the Footpath Killer, theorizing a white man in his twenties, most likely an American van, a menial job that was most likely isolated containing few visitors and little to no possibility for witnesses, and a possible stutter.

He had already made the profile but she was doing it on her own which turned out to be a bit more detailed than his.

Zoe had been through a recent traumatic event just a few weeks before but Zoe had always been better at compartmentalizing and dealing with trauma better than others.

He hung up on the young girl he had helped his co-founder raise when he stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere to get gas. He filled up his car tank and went inside the gas station for some unnecessities.

He took a single candy bar and placed it at the counter, "I'll take this."

As the gas station clerk rang up the purchase, Gideon's eyes wandered behind him to the wall of photos, noticing several but not all were of the Footpath Killer's known victims, they were up-close and personal.

Gideon turned to see the cashier's truck, it was an old, dingy American truck, maybe a Chevy, looking like it could use some repairs.

The cashier's gas station was in the middle of nowhere, isolated enough for the occasional customer with little to no risk of a witness.

He turned back to the cashier, a white man who seemed to be in his mid-twenties. Only one characteristic remained.

"Have a n-n—a n-n-n-nice day." He stuttered. He had a stutter. He fit the profile to a "T"

Gideon looked at the clerk for a long time and then the clerk glanced down to see Gideon's holster. He was law enforcement but he didn't react with Gideon watching him.

Gideon took the money and left the store as the clerk moved quickly inside the shop and reappeared behind him with a shotgun. Gideon spotted him in the reflection of a sign, pointing the gun at him, ready to fire.

*Spencer Reid Gif Source: @borahaes*

*Edited November 8, 2024*

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