chaos theory | a spencer reid fanfiction

three.

The pictures flashing on the board were gruesome, truly. There was blood absolutely everywhere, so much that the walls almost looked like they were painted with it. It made your stomach churn because of the damage done to the bodies, but otherwise you seemed unfazed.
"Last week, the Anderson's were all brutally murdered in their home in Orlando, Florida. The children were both beaten with their father's golf clubs and then strangled with their mother's pearl necklaces. The parents were then stabbed repeatedly and left to bleed out in front of their dead children." As you looked at the pictures up close in the virtual case file, your eyebrows furrowed. Pictures of the children's faces flooded your vision, their faces caked in blood with streaks visible from tear tracks. Their eyes seemed to stare vacantly and blindly, glazed over while their mouths lay open and breathless. Their necks had a ring of sickly purple dots, pearls laying in their hair and on their bodies. Their clothes were bloody and torn in places, and bruises adorned the otherwise pristine white skin. Your eyes went vacant as you then looked at the parents, red pools of blood spread around them like a bedsheet. The mothers hair was caked in blood, the blonde strands now dip dyed a hideous red. The father's beard was stained with it, his white button up torn to shreds. You swiped again and a new family popped up on the screen, every picture more gruesome than the last.
"Y/n?" Prentiss' voice snapped you out of your daze, hands shaking a bit as you closed the tablet. You'd never seen anything like this where you worked before, and you didn't think there'd be a shortage here. You noticed the room was empty except for Penelope, who was still standing at the front of the room.
"We're heading out. Got your bags?" You felt around for your messenger bag you'd packed full of essentials the night before.
"Yeah, I got it." You offered a weak smile before standing up, following her as she walked to the door at the end of the room. Penelope stopped you as you walked.
"It gets easier after a while, trust me." She gave you a comforting smile in an effort to reassure you. You sent a meek one back.
"I hope so."
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The jet ride seemed agonizingly long, especially since those crime scene photos were engrained in your mind. It was like time was slowing down as you stared at the clouds outside your window, legs pulled to your chest as your hands picked nervously at the fabric of your pants.
"You okay?" You were startled a little bit by a voice, looking up into the aisle to see a concerned looking Spencer with his hands in his pockets. You just shrugged. He sat down across from you, almost waiting for you to say something. "You aren't used to this, are you?" You shook your head.
"Hell no. I worked for a lame ass police department who could barely afford proper lab equipment before this. My whole day was spent trying to figure out what drug was on a person's t-shirt."
"That big of a jump?"
"Yeah. I mean, I expected to jump into things right away but...not this. Not this brutal. And not this young." There was a moment of silence between the two of you, your eyes and mind drifting off to a place hidden deep in your mind that you didn't want to go again. Finally, your mouth opened and you spoke what you were thinking aloud. "How many cases with kids do you guys have?"
"I'm pretty sure we've all lost count by now." Another silence.
"See, I took this job to get away from the boring. It was like every day was planned out for me, and when I got this job opportunity it was like life would finally be exciting. This is not what I meant by exciting." The two of you let out a small laugh before Prentiss asked everyone to come together to look over everything one more time before the jet landed.
"Okay, so, let's look over this again before we land. Garcia, did you find any connection between both families?" Garcia's face popped up on the screens of the jet.
"Nothing I can see. The Anderson's were easy going people, father was a lawyer, mother stayed at home, went to church every Sunday. The Kirkland's were similar except the kids were teenagers, the mother worked at a bank and the father was a mechanic at a local garage."
"The unsub has to be using some type of ruse to get into the house. Social worker, sales rep, cleaning service." Alvez spoke with certainty and confidence; you felt like you didn't fit in with everyone since they were so experienced at this and you got shaken up over some dead kids.
"It's also possible both families knew the unsub. Maybe a teacher or a church goer."
"Wouldn't be anything associated with church or school, neither of the families attended the same ones." The team talked in amongst themselves and threw out theories before Garcia spoke again. "Uh, guys? A third family was just found this morning. The Davidson's. Mom, Eleanor, was 38, father James was 40, daughter Carol who was 16, and son Adam who was 12." You decided not to look at any of the pictures, knowing full well you'd just have to go anyway. They continued talking for a moment before Emily started giving out assignments.
"-and Reid, you'll go with Y/N to the crime scene." He gave you a small smile and you smiled back, staring out the window again as the plane approached its landing.
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"So you've never been out in the field before?" Spencer asked you the question out of curiosity as you two stepped out of the large black sedan.
"A few times, but nothing as brutal as this. Mainly just shootings and overdoses." You wrung your hands nervously as you approached the sealed off house. The looming police tape gave you a sense of dread that hung over you like a dark cloud.
"So how'd you end up getting into the bureau?"
"My boss sent in an application for me a few years ago since I was 'outstanding in my field' as he put it. Basically I could analyze almost 100 pieces of evidence a day as opposed to my coworker's 60, and successfully reconstructed over 50 crime scenes." You opened the door to the house, noticing the bloody footprints leading into the house from the door. You bent down to look at it, evidence markers next to each one. "First glance I'd have to say it's a size 8 work boot, most likely rubber soles." You walked further into the room, Spencer trailing behind. He looked over the scene.
"There was some sort of struggle. Picture frames are knocked over and the lamp is broken." You walked over to the center of the living room, looking at the four bodies laying on the ground. The sight repulsed you, and you momentarily looked away. You shook yourself out, remembering you had a job to do.
"The mother and father were positioned here, and the children across from them. He made them sit across from each other and bound their hands with barbed wire it looks like, based off the puncture wounds. It would make it impossible for them to struggle with hurting themselves further in the process."
"He grabbed the statuette from the table next to the couch." Reid walked over to the table, looking at the empty space. "He beat the children with it almost to death, before strangling them with the father's neckties." You crouched over the two children's bodies, lifting up their clothes in spots.
"He knew exactly where to hit them to inflict maximum pain but prolong the death until the exact moment he wanted to kill them. He avoided hitting the head so they wouldn't be knocked unconscious, but he broke almost all their joints. No doubt it was so the parents would hear their screams." Spencer walked to the parents, leaning over their bodies as you stood across from him.
"Then he cut the parents, avoiding every major artery so they wouldn't bleed out as fast. The unsub has to have extensive medical knowledge or experience to know this much about how to prolong his victim's torture." You took a moment to collect yourself from the gruesome scene, looking at the trail of bloody footprints. You followed it, stopping at a chair that sat in a corner in the foyer. You noticed a smooth bloody glove print on the side of the chair. Your eyes trailed to scuff marks on the floor, sliding the chair to the end of them.

The chair landed right in the middle of the hallway, looking directly at the family.
"He watched them as they died."