𝕬𝖓𝖙𝖎-𝕳𝖊𝖗𝖔 - [𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗶𝗱]

𝕬𝖓𝖙𝖎-𝕳𝖊𝖗𝖔

 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 more deceptive than an obvious fact. Nothing more deceiving than the apparent standing right before one's very eyes. Those plagued with all-seeing eyes and a sense of intellect beyond imagination could be ever so blind to most simplest of things. They could spot something petit within a person's arsenal; a false smile, a twitching finger, a thudding heartbeat... but they could stray away from emotion. They could miss sympathy within a gaze, they could bypass utter devotion and adoration...

 Because that was simply the way, wasn't it? Those with minds whirring like gears, churning out information like a pitiful computer... emotions were ill-advised, scarcely loved and sought after at all; for how could somebody so aware of the world, so aware of a humans actions and the smallest and vilest details hidden within them... how could somebody like that ever allow emotion to overrule and let them truly see the world and all of its miserable wonders?

 This was something Selena Hayes pondered often. While nursing the sugariest can of chilled tea, while reading a novel in seven minutes flat, while solving a case not even the best of the best could possibly untangle... that was all she thought of. How could she allow things to weasel through her thick skin?

 She had been taught from a young age that emotion was a catalyst for fear and terror and sadness... those were things she could not shoulder, those were feelings that simply didn't belong.

 Selena Hayes was a puzzle; broken pieces that seemed as though they could never slot together, as though they could never truly be solved and stored away in perfection. She looked closely at others, and yet the moment eyes fell upon her flesh, scouring for secrets and insight, well, she turned away and put on her mask made of stone-cold steel.

 Selena Hayes may have been a puzzle, but she was also a puzzle solver. Each case that landed upon her desk, be it stamped with the familiar seal of Scotland Yard, or marred with ink that read 'TOP SECRET', was nothing more than a page of sudoku, a board of chess pieces, a puzzle with a thousand pieces — something almost trivial.

 She may have wanted to help people and see that no other human being could ever feel the sorrow that hollowed out her insides... but Selena Hayes used them as a distraction, as a drug. They helped to blur the world around her, they helped to secure her within the delicacy of tunnel vision. All she would see were the red lines connecting victims, and crime scenes and blood and gore... until they were solved.

 Until she finished them off with a neat little bow.

 That was when the world would flood right back in, like a tidal wave only seeking to drag her to its depths and fill her lungs until she begged and pleaded for release. Selena did not breathe, she drowned. Every walking hour she swallowed mouthfuls of water tinged with the taste of blood, laden with the colour of crimson.

 Selena Hayes was haunted.

 There was nobody that could ever know such a truth more than Jason Gideon. The man that had become a mentor, a slice of solace and air amidst her crashing waves. He had once reached out a hand and pulled her back to land... He had waited as she gasped and swallowed, readjusting to the world that had consumed her whole, and then he had stayed.

 He had stayed when no other had dared to. He had kept her nose just above the water, never quite capable of keeping the tides from dragging her far, but always there when she managed to come paddling back.

 Jason Gideon had met Selena when she had been just fourteen years of age, and even then he had stared astounded by the knowledge she had spouted — of the way she had clicked her pink-polished fingers and the unsolved case right beneath his nose wrapped itself up like a present on Christmas morning.