blue. criminal minds

three...chicago cid

BLUE.

chapter three — chicago cid

VERA BARR IS ABOUT TO CRUMBLE from stress, she is drowning one moment before she breaks to the surface, and a short, sharp breath is all she is allowed to take before she is suffocated again. It hurts her sometimes to know how much rests on her shoulders, to know of the lives that have been lost under her orders, but that's the job, and honestly, no one could do the job quite as she could.

At 47 years old, Vera Barr is the longest-running  Section Chief that the Chicago Criminal Investigations Division has ever seen, for six years she had fought tooth and nail for this position, that was fourteen years ago.

Fourteen years of blood and guts, threats showing up in boxes with decapitated heads (it's only happened twice, but still the fact that it's happened that many times is astounding), hell they've had agents placed in WITSEC pretending to be government officials end up shot dead on their porches.

So in the years, she had been head of the CID she had never seen someone fuck up a case more than the woman she had just gotten an angry phone call from.

Jude Levy had been subjected to the teachings of Barr for fifteen years. Fifteen years of 'if you crash the whole team burns', this was all when she was eighteen as well, eighteen and unable to drink, unable to relieve the weight off of her shoulders even for just a moment.

When Jude was seventeen she had found her dog skinned alive on her rug and then she ran, her parents weren't home, they were out on a business trip. So she ran, for twenty minutes until she arrived at the revolving front door of the CID.

Vera Barr hadn't been expecting to see a runny nose, hot-headed, crying seventeen-year-old Jude Levy shouting at the receptionist, (that woman's name had been grace and she was a right evil human). Wanting to calm the girl down, Verabrought her into the then section chiefs office and sat the girl on one of the plush couches.

The woman of now 47 refuses to admit it, but she had quickly found herself becoming overly protective of the girl, and when Jude had turned eighteen with not a thought of a future ahead, Vera had offered the girl an Apprenticeship position, in which she would learn everything about studying criminals with more fieldwork cases than any other FBI traineeship anywhere.

So Vera knows everything about Jude, she knows that she got her stomach pierced at sixteen as an act of rebellion against her parents, she knows that her first (and only, its a bit sad) girlfriend of three years was kidnapped and tortured by people who her baby daddy owed money, hell Vera is the one who looks after Mason whenever Jude had a case (because fuck Richard Nicks).

And because she knows everything about Jude she can't help but be extremely confused when she gets a phone call saying that she had been picked up by the FEDS and needed a lawyer.

During the training they hadn't focused on codewords as much as they did language, for example, Jude said FEDS instead of FBI, which meant she wanted Vera to look into the group that was holding her, and the fact that Jude had said lawyer instead of attorney meant that while there was a case is was circumstantial at best, at least it would be circumstantial as long as Barr was able to get the director to put a stop to the investigation, and quickly.

Because Jude and Atlas were supposed to be on the first flight back to Paris tonight, to continue with their own investigation. It had been under the radar so far, but now with a division of the FBI has caught two of the most influential members, well, Vera was having doubts about sending them back at all.

"So they've been compromised then," Freddie Pakett says from behind the pages of his book, he's one of those people that refuses to slouch, even if it means you get a sore arm, and it isn't even a good book, it's one of the books that retired athletes write because they're fuck out of money.

"Most probably" the woman sighs, running a hand across her face out of annoyance.

"Two years and the FBI ruined the fucking case" when Pakett laughs it sounds like a scratchy old record, playing for the first time in years, and more unfortunately than not, that sound is heard a lot throughout the day.

"Even if it has been compromised it isn't the end, besides we have more than enough to drive Odessa's crew into the ground three times over" Finnon Jone, for all of his scared kid exterior was in all seriousness, an optimist, which was definitely out of place with the realists in the CID.

"We might have Odessa's crew" Vera starts, allowing the rest of the team to fill in the blanks.

"But we don't have Odessa"

"Exactly," the woman says, pointing a sharpened pencil at every one individually. It was hard work, to be undercover agents on the job, even harder when two of the best agents they had could potentially be lost from the job, the very job that had caused Atlas Stanton and Jude Levy to leave their lives for two years, not just their lives but everyone and everything in it.

"Wasn't the whole point of sending Jude there to get information on Odessa?"

"Yeah well, trust takes time and that's exactly what Jude needed, time" Vera claps back. The woman struggles to let anyone talk badly about the girl she views as a daughter, and it was hard enough to deal with the thoughts of Jude being alone for extended periods of time, she didn't need her own team adding to that stress.

"So were you able to speak to the director?"

Vera shakes her head, "I only got on the line to Barnes, and you know how she is"

"Right, so we're relying on a woman who hates everyone to tell the director she is trying to overthrow?"

"Yep"

"Wonderful" Pakett murmurs.

BLUE.