leftinbasketforfbi | IC Contact for Route

One need not be a chamber to be haunted —
One need not be a house —
The brain has corridors — surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting --
That Cooler Host.

Emily Dickinson.

Carmen, it's 12:30 in the morning. Why are you up so late?

You shouldn't be so surprised. I do some of my best work at night.

But tonight, I've seen a ghost.

Did one of your Ghost-types cause trouble?

Or someone else's?

[He's getting a little concerned. Not too much since Carmen likes to riddle things, but still, it's late and she doesn't usually message him at this time.]

One of mine. You remember Isabelle, the oddly-colored Haunter I told you about?

The Dex claims that Haunter will sometimes enter a person's dreams and try to scare them to death. For the sake of your research, I thought I'd confirm it for you.

Are you at the farm?

[And if you try making him guess where you are when he's this worried, he will chew you out so hard you have no idea.]

[Strap in for a chewing-out, then.]

She gave me a nightmare, not a full personality reversal. The day I make finding me that easy is the day you know something's really wrong.

Carmen.

[Hopefully, the warning is being conveyed properly through text, because seriously. He is not in the mood for hunting down a friend who may or may not be in danger.]

[Have a small period of delay, and then.]

If you're lobbying to see me, you're certainly getting in on the ground floor.

[tl;dr don't come to her, she'll come to you.]

Don't. Just give me a hint and I'll be right there.

[Because no. He does not want you traveling around when you just suffered a near-death experience.

He is going to be so pissed after he's made sure you're alright.]

[Tough cookies, she's Carmen Sandiego and she does what she wants.]

She got out on her own tonight, somehow. If her ball isn't going to be enough to hold her, then I'm putting her in the PC — away from anyone else she might hurt.

Go downstairs. You'll see me soon enough.

[DAMN IT CARMEN]

I'll be there, then.

[And he will be. And his mouth will be in a grim line, his arms crossed, and his spine straighter than it ever is when he's relaxed. He's not happy right now, and for once, it actually feels like he's commanding a presence.

It's kind of weird. Maybe he's possessed by Amanda again.]

[It's not a long flight into town, and she's a woman on a mission, so Reid's only kept stewing for fifteen or twenty minutes before Carmen comes in the door, bundled up tight against the midnight temperatures with a scarf wrapped snug around the lower half of her face and a fur-lined hood up (with her hat conspicuously missing, for once) to shield most of the rest.

If Reid looks more commanding at the moment, then she looks somehow softer than her usual — equal parts sleepy and contemplative, and missing a fair amount of the usual force of her personality in exchange for a quieter sort of self-reflection.

Gloved hands still in her pockets, she heads over at once.]

"Tis now the very witching time of night", as Hamlet would say — though we're a bit past it by now. I'm sorry for waking you.

Don't be. I was already awake.

[Perhaps strangely, Reid takes charge in the wake of her sedation. He gestures for her to walk into the kitchen and hand over her coat.] I put on a kettle for tea. I can hang up your coat for you; just get comfortable.

[If she takes initiative and tries to make the tea herself, she'll find an array of flavors. Mio likes tea, and Reid's taken to drinking it occasionally with her.]

[She sort of eyes him a minute, almost like she's sizing him up in the face of this newfound confidence and determining how that interplays with her own ego, but then she acquiesces and pulls down her hood, shouldering off her coat and unwinding the scarf from her face.

(The fact that she's relinquishing her coat at all, perhaps, speaks volumes, considering that's her coat and without it, without her heels, without her hat and lipstick, she looks surprisingly unlike the Carmen Sandiego most everyone knows.)

But she does, and then as directed she ambles into the kitchen to poke around the cupboards, more out of her usual insatiable curiosity than anything else.]

Why are you up so late?

[Reid is struck by how un-Carmen-like she looks, but it doesn't strike him as deeply as it would otherwise. Right now, he's not the quiet, shy man people in Route know him as. Right now, he's the man who has worked with horrors day in and day out since he was twenty-one, and he knows what to expect from a person who has just suffered a near-death experience.

Maybe the confidence would be a surprise to anyone at Route. It's not to him.

So he takes her coat, makes sure to hang it neatly by the door, and then hangs her scarf beside it. He walks into the kitchen quietly, checking the kettle to see if it's boiling.] I always have trouble staying asleep. I woke up and was reviewing some notes of mine when you texted.

[He looks back at her poking around their cupboards.] See anything you like? We have plenty of tea.

[She rummages through the available teas a little more, regarding one in particular as she absently remarks: ]

This looks like Mio's favorite.

[Better not to pick that one, then. And since she's not feeling very particular at the moment, she ends up just selecting the one that looks least-used. Unobtrusive.

The clues are there even in something as seemingly harmless as selecting a flavor of tea, aren't they?

She continues her shuffling through the cupboards, making her best guess at where she thinks the cups might be, bringing her choice of tea with her as she does so.]

Are you planning to wait until after I'm settled in before you start interrogating me?

[Oh, he notices the tea choice. Right now, everything Carmen does is being scrutinized by a mind accustomed to mapping people for a living. He wants to make sure she's okay, and concern immediately sets off his profiling.]

I figured you would bring it up yourself, but I'm not going to interrogate you. You're not a suspect or a witness to a crime. I'll end up asking questions, but if you don't want to answer, you don't have to. Do you want me to get you a mug?

[His speech is unusually direct and smooth. No stutters, no repetition, no ums or uhs or ahs.]

Just focus on settling. If you like, I can have Elle come in and start a fire in the living room hearth.

[The look she gives him then is long and thoughtful — similar to the way she was sizing him up before, but this time with an added sort of flicker of something that might just be a sudden burst of clarity about what he's doing, where it's coming from. This is a different Reid than the one she's seen before. The shyness is gone, the stammering and self-consciousness have disappeared. Something's finally pushed him over the hurdle of his personal reservations and into the realm of confidence she's been tempting him toward since the day they met.

He's worried about her.

...Well, that's attractive.]

I'd like that.

[It's hard to say what that's directed toward — the offer of the mug, the suggestion of a fire in the hearth. Maybe even the mention of asking questions.

She comes over, surrendering the bag of tea to him without fanfare.]

I'm going to go sit down, if you don't mind handling the tea on your own.

[Isn't it, though?

He looks up at her and nods, accepting her choice of tea and moving towards the cupboards to get a mug.] I don't mind at all. The living room is to the right of the front door. Make yourself comfortable on the couch.

[He raises his head and makes a soft clicking sound in the back of his throat.] Elle? [A beat. Then there's a soft, slow rustling of a restless fox shaking herself awake upstairs.] She'll take care of a fire for you.

[Quietly, she meanders in the direction indicated, still sort of absently snooping around (old habits die hard, and she's also instinctively marking the exits as she goes) as she makes her way into the living room and finds a seat on the couch.

At first, she's upright and tall, hands folded in her lap as she muses and waits; after a moment, though, she seems to think better of it and silently removes her boots, leaving them near the door and returning to the couch, leaning on the armrest and pulling her legs up catlike beneath her as she settles in.

She gives Elle a smile when she comes trotting in to make the fire, but for the most part she just waits, mind drifting in and out of thoughts of her nightmare as she recounts her old familiar zen principles and starts to once again calm herself down — absently running her fingers over the bracelet concealed beneath her left glove as she does so.]

[After some time, Reid walks in with two mugs, leaving one on the coffee table for her and taking his to his spot in an armchair close to her. Of course, the tea is prepared just the way she likes it--probably best not to ask him how he knows. This is the man who knows how long it takes everyone to turn a page.

He curls up in a way similar to her.]

What happened?

[For a minute, she doesn't say anything — just regards her mug quietly, picking it up and tracing gloved fingertips around the rim. The heat is dampened just enough through the mug and the fabric, and there's something soothing in the sight of the steam rising with the crackling of the fire in the background.

It's good to keep her hands occupied. In moments like this, moods like this, she's prone to fidget if she doesn't have something to do with them.]

Isabelle got out of her ball. I don't know how; I'd had her out because I was working with her earlier in the day, but she was away and secure long before I went to bed. Somehow she managed to break out.

I've never had this problem with Indy, my other Haunter, but he's how I first became aware of it — that Haunter will sometimes enter a person's dreams and try to scare them to death through it. I assume that means Isabelle was hungry, or eager for a midnight snack; supposedly, it's something they do in order to eat.

[She breathes in, then out again, slow and steady and calming.]

I had a nightmare about an old case.

[Reid nods, taking a slow sip of his own tea. He knows what it's like to be eaten by one's own Pokemon, but his ghosts have never gone so far as to try to kill him.

His voice stays soft, calm, and quiet, the same voice he uses with victims or his mother or any deeply upset friend. For once, he's the rock to lean on.] What happened?

Sydney, Australia.

[How many times has she been there? She's almost lost count. The familiar old lines of the Sydney Opera House — the day she'd taken that had been a near-unparalleled triumph. But no, this was more than a decade before then, and this time she was on the other side of the law...

Unconsciously, her eyes fall closed, and her fingers start to move on her mug as she half-fidgets, even with something occupying her hands.]

He was after Jason Jr., the new underwater camera — it was new then. I haven't had a dream this old in years...I don't know what made Isabelle pick this one, if she had a hand in it at all. But it all went the way I remember. I landed on the ship, his thugs came at me with the harpoon guns. I dodged, lassoed them. That's when one of them kicks me into the tank.

[She shakes her head a little, her brow furrowing slightly, her eyes shut more tightly than before.]

I'm underwater. I try to swim to the surface, but something catches my waist and drags me back down. I can't get free — I'm pushing them off, but every time I get rid of one, another takes its place, and I'm running out of air.

[Abruptly, she stops and opens her eyes, staring off into space a moment before lifting her mug and taking a slow drink — probably as much to buy herself time as anything else.]

If it had been a memory, that's when my partner would've shown up and helped me get free. In the dream, the water goes dark instead — the squid shot its ink. That wasn't supposed to happen. But I was drowning, and the water went black, and I saw a blue glow. That's when I knew it was Isabelle, and I woke up almost immediately thereafter.

[Reid is quiet while she speaks, his eyes difficult to read. Harpoon guns. Squid. Darkness. Drowning.

The latter two are common themes in nightmares, though the former two are more unique to Carmen. Already, he's instinctively filing away the information and examining it privately.]

Was there a struggle when you woke up?

You could call it that — though it's hard to say you've really struggled with a Haunter. Waking up threw her out of my dream, I think.

[She continues to drum her fingers on her mug.]

Once I was awake, there wasn't much more she could do.

And how do you feel now?

[It's another soft question, neutral as all the other's he's asked so far, and he takes a careful sip of his tea. He is now fully in 'SSA Spencer Reid' at the moment.]

Frustrated. If I'd known she was going to be this much trouble, I would've named her Sarah Bellum, not Isabelle Touling.

[She knows what he's getting at, but it's still instinct to deflect. It never feels right, making anything about herself too easy.]

The memory she dredged up isn't one I like to relive.

IC Contact for Route

text; | 12:30 am, january 8

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