THE VIRGIN SUICIDES ── Spencer Reid.

𝒊𝒊𝒊𝒊. prim's purity

There was a stirring from Constance's room, the girl contracting senses that Prim was upset▬▬ the girls had connections, but those two were inseparable. It often baffled Bernadette, how Anne and her could fight for weeks, refusing to even turn to each other at the dinner table to get the butter, decimating whatever appreciation they had built up in the span of a five minute conversation, and Primrose and Constance had never bickered a day in their lives. Constance's face appeared in the doorway, eager eyes, traced with sleep, and hair sticking out from every corner of her head. Her lips puckered, sloping down in the corners into a natural frown. Bernadette met her eyes, eyebrows crinkling in a stitch as she shook her head.

"How about I bake you some bread?" Constance asked, "you know I make the best bread." Primrose was immobile, grunting a response as her gaze remained tirelessly on the glass bowl. The wing twitched, and Prim's hopes deflated. Her mother would be up soon, telling her that it was all just melodrama, that she was thinking too much into it. Her eyebrows frowned, and subconsciously her grip on Bernadette's hand got tighter.

The butterfly was dying, Prim knew that. Nothing pure lasted forever.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

When the door opened this time, it was neither Emily Prentiss or Derek Morgan, but two older men who had firm creases folding in both of their foreheads. The first was shorter, and had warm eyes that narrowed and rounded as if he was trying to read what thoughts were bubbling in Bernadette Blanchard's head, and the second was much taller and slimmer, sporting no emotion or joy, simply stern and severity. He reminded Bernie of her mother, the brutally penetrating gaze, the authoritative silence, a presence poisoned by dominance. Bernadette shifted, wondering on whether to say hello to them or not. They put a sheet of paper, back side showing, down on the table, and seated themselves where Prentiss and Morgan has once been sat. Briefly, she wondered if Spencer was still behind the glass.

"My name is David▬▬"

"Rossi," Bernadette finished, nodding quickly. "I know who you are, sir. My father has bought all your books. They're up in his study, not to mention▬▬ never mind. Sorry." There was a delighted glint in Rossi's eyes, but he kept to himself and nodded, gesturing to the agent beside him.

"SSA Aaron Hotchner," He said. He clasped his hands together, placing them on the table and pointing his eyes firmly at the girl in front of him. "Bernadette, can you tell me about what happened with your sister Primrose? How did you discover her body?"

There was a beat of silence, a glint of something neither of the two agents could say before she finally mustered up her response. "I found Prim before Anne." Bernadette said quietly, "Prim was how I put together what was happening. She was turning all the oven dials frantically, she was crying, too. I tried to grab her wrist, pull her away from the oven, but there was the chime of the kitchen knife unsheathing from the wooden block and I knew Anne's actions would be fatal quicker than Prim's." As she told the story, it didn't occur to her of the nail marks on her wrists were as violent as they were, and from the lack of eye contact, the way her body leant back into her chair, they way she kept stuttering and pausing, Rossi and Hotchner knew they had struck the start of the interrogation.

They had reached Bernadette's first lie.

Rossi nodded, turning over the white file they had brought in. "Forensics found one of your nails in her wrist. It was pretty deep." He glanced down to her hands, trying to see if one had broken off, and was met with Bernadette's furrowed disbelief.