nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

twenty.

"Morgan, go check if Prentiss is okay," Hotch says, without even looking at him, eyes on Reid.

Almost out of shame, Spencer keeps his eyes on his shoes as he feels Derek move past them both and head down the corridor.

He doesn't quite know why he's so concerned or guilty, but he knows that showing these feelings to the team has been his mistake. They're profilers -- they could have figured it out themselves, but for some reason the feelings are so strong that he can't help but be obvious about them. And, thanks to his own lack of a filter, he's either in for another speech from Hotch about obsession and professionalism, or he's going to get an attempt at a fatherly chat that makes him want to scoop out his own eyes with a melon baller.

"What the hell is going on, Reid?" Hotch asks in a lower voice, still stern, when Morgan has left.

"I don't know what you're talking about--"

"Yes, you do," grits Hotch. "What is this morbid obsession you have with her? And why does she feel the same for you?"

Fatherly chat it is, then. Much more preferable to the other option, but still, Spencer sighs in defeat as he drops to sit on one of the waiting chairs. Folding his arms, Hotch stays standing above him, pursed-lipped and waiting.

"At first I felt nothing," Spencer confesses. "And then... It just hit me. I started to obsess. I rewatched footage of her constantly. I studied cases of people she's killed. Even found the news footage of her father's trial."

"Why?" His boss' voice remains blank, unreadable.

"I just wanted to get inside of her, y'know. Just wanted to understand why our paths crossed, and see if there was some way that I could have changed where she ended up."

"Why do you care?"

Because You are me, don't you fucking realise that?

Because I've related to unsubs before, but not like this. Never like this.

Because You should be curing cancer, Nina. So should I.

"I just see a little bit of myself in her," says Spencer, eyes on the floor, and although it isn't entirely a lie, it's simply the tip of the ice-berg. Because mentioning the attraction, the magnetic fucking pull, the depth of his morbid understanding? He doesn't dare to explain all that.

If he tells Hotch now about how he gets her ambition, and understands her hatred of her father to the point where he doesn't even judge her ruthlessness -- well, the whole team will be questioning his sanity. And he's already questioned his own sanity enough.

Because, as terrible as it is, he can't judge her, because he understands how strong her hatred of her father is, and he can't blame her for that. And she has been wronged by the system -- and as much as everything she's done is inexcusable, all his research has shown him that murder was only a natural conclusion to her life story. She would either hurt somebody else, or she would hurt herself.

(And, in my opinion, good for her for finding a way to monetise it.)

Understanding unsubs always does make you feel a little crazy -- he knows that. But this is on a whole other level, and he's been questioning himself since the day he first saw her in Florence. Cross-examining himself, checking for murderous urges of his own (which, trust me, he knows that's a ridiculous thing to do, but he can't help it). How can he understand her so deeply? There has to be something wrong with him.

"Are you sure that's all it is?" Hotch asks, like he's a mind-reader. Maybe he is -- profiling is sort of the elementary school version of mind-reading. He comes to sit beside Spencer, and although Spencer can't get himself to look at the man, he can see the round white shape of his face in his peripheral vision. "You said it yourself. She gets inside your head. Maybe she already has."

"I think she got inside my head a long time ago," Spencer mutters in defeat.

"Hey!" a voice calls, and they both look up in an odd symmetry at Morgan, who's leaning into the waiting room. "Come and look at this."

After sharing a glance, they eagerly follow Morgan down the hallway to Nina's room, where a few nurses from the opposite end of the corridor dash inside. Spencer, starting to panic, speeds up, and overtakes Morgan just before he bursts into the hospital room.

It's populated with a female doctor in a lab coat, three nurses in scrubs, and Emily -- and, now, Spencer, in the doorway. And, of course, Nina.

She's slumped on the floor, back to Spencer, on her side as if she's looking under her bed; her left arm, handcuffed to the bed rail, is held above her head by the steel cuffs and dangles limply at the wrist. Using a stretcher, the nurses are trying to lift her up without causing her any pain. Her body is limp, unmoving.

Dead.

"What did you do?" Spencer yells, pacing forward and shoving past Emily to look at her body.

But Emily catches his arm, then seizes his jacket with the other hand. "No, no, Reid, she came at me --"

"WHAT DID YOU DO?"

"She fainted," Emily's voice says, and in surprise, with a sharp inhale, Spencer tears his eyes from Nina's unconscious body to Emily's pale face. Her face is twisted with desperation, brows furrowed over her nose, and he's panting, he realises. "She fainted," she says again, tugging Spencer out of the way of the nurses, shaking her head vigorously. "I didn't even touch her. I didn't touch her."

Then, as Spencer's vision clears, Emily's becomes confused and slightly concerned -- an expression he loathes. His display of panic has clearly worsened his team's already precarious view of him and his wavering feelings for their 'unsub'. Brilliant.

"C'mon, Reid," Morgan says, and him and Hotch are already on him before he can even process how much he's just embarrassed himself. The bulk of their shoulders hide Nina from sight, and though he tries to crane his neck to watch her be pulled up and onto her bed again, and he's almost lifted clean off his feet as they both force him out of the room.

Just as he's pushed into the corridor, Hotch's phone begins to ring and, glancing at Morgan as if it's an order to keep Spencer under control, he steps away to take it. There are quick words exchanged, before he comes back to them.

"That was Dave," he said. "They found Nina's hotel room. Apparently there's something we should see."

authors note:
unedited lol

hotch calling rossi dave is my favourite thing in the show so i had to include it at some point

okay but sidenote: where is the appreciation for my boy rossi in the cm fandom?? after spencer and emily he's EASILY my favourite character and there are NO edits, NO tiktoks, etc etc. PUT SOME RESPECT ON MY MANS NAME

but yeah, spencer being concerned for nina's safety even though his team and HIMSELF are judging his decisions is 💕🤪✨💕 good shit