leftinbasketforfbi | 6th Recovery Δ Audio/Action for Violet City Φ Forward-dated to this evening

[He's sticking to audio because he doesn't want anyone seeing him right now, but his Pokemon are mobbing him and he'd have difficulty keeping his hands free long enough to actually type anything.]

Uh, hi there. I, uh, I don't know exactly how many people I spoke to the last two days... [Mostly because the thing possessing him was stoned 90% of the time and he can't remember much of anything.] ...but in case I said any different, my name is Spencer. Spencer Reid, actually.

Speaking of, if I, uh, if I was acting out of character? I was sort of possessed by an animal called a Yamask. Turns out a Haunter thought it would be amusing to steal this Yamask's mask, and then put the mask on me. Said Yamask would actually like to apologize for, uh... rebuking anyone who took her for a man; she didn't realize she was actually in the body of a man. [She's totally not apologizing for anything else. Reid's the only one who gets apologies. Damn kids.]

And... I'd also kind of appreciate it if someone could possibly explain what I did, because I don't really remember all that much? And I'd like to give a blanket apology for offending or being rude to anyone. I'm not--usually, I'm really not like that. So I'm sorry for anything I did or said.

[Private to Albert]
I'm, um, not really sure how reliable my memory is this time, but if what I vaguely remember is real, then thank you. And I'm very, very sorry.

If my memory isn't accurate and you don't know what I'm talking about, please disregard me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He takes a drag and lets it out without ceremony. It's been a long time since he started smoking — back when he was about as young as Reid looks, when he was the new kid on the crime scene who hadn't yet built up his tolerance for the blood and the horror. Nobody handed out sympathy back then; that just wasn't how things were done in the unit. They'd handed him a pack instead.]

Cut that out. It wasn't you, it was the thing inside you. Don't start making it out like that was something you did of your own volition.

[A man sobbing on the wet tile floor — oh, god, I killed her. It wasn't him, and yet it's the same thing victims of possession always seem to say — I did it, I couldn't stop him, it made me hurt them.]

[Reid lowers his hand from his face, resigning himself to an oncoming migraine, and does his best to not sound exhausted when he says,] It feels like it was me.

[He knows it wasn't. He knows he wouldn't hurt himself to hurt someone else. He knows the effect that has on people, and the damage it can do, and that he wouldn't ever want to inflict that on someone.

Yet he remembers doing it, and he remembers liking it.] What was her name? Do you know? I can't... I don't remember that.

[He takes another drag on his cigarette, but then rather irritably smashes it out in a nearby ashtray and watches as the flame dies amongst the mangled paper and ash, twisting the still mostly-whole cylinder for possibly a few seconds longer than really necessary to put it out. It's not the first time he's heard those words before, and he knows where this is going. This is always Coop's burden to bear, too — the inability to let it go when he really, really needs to let it go.

And, it appears, it's Albert's burden to deal with it. As usual.]

Well, it wasn't, so cut it out. Mens rea exists for a reason, remember?

[Smashity smash smash.]

Amanda. She said her name was Amanda. I didn't get a surname, but she had a friend named Mark.

[There are downsides to having a weird synthesis of you and Coop, Albert.]

I know. I know. It's just--

[Wait.

Wait.

He looks at the communicator again, and he suddenly looks very, very awake.] Amanda and Mark?

[...

...

Fffffffffffff

Reid just starts laughing, because he has no idea how else to react. Lol lol lol lol oh God he's so glad he wasn't possessed by the other Amanda he's gotta laugh or else he might pass out from built up anxiety wtf is wrong with this place lol lol] Someone out there has a really, really terrible sense of humor. [No, seriously, an awful one. This is not funny and yet he still laughs, though it's starting to taper down.]

[...Well okay there's really only one thing to say to that, isn't there.]

What the hell?

[SEE THAT'S REALLY STRANGE BECAUSE NOTHING HE SAID WAS ACTUALLY FUNNY.]

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just...

[Reid manages to get his laughter under control, starting to pet Elle again to calm himself down.] A few years ago, I had a case in Texas where someone was tying up men with alpha male personalities, and then proceeding to rape and kill them. Our theory was that the unsub was actually a team; a submissive male and a dominant female who reversed roles when alone with each other. We thought the female lured the men upstairs and tied them up, and then the male would come in and perform the rape and murder. We had two suspects, but they both passed a polygraph.

[He gives a soft laugh again, but it's not a happy laugh.] It turned out that one of those suspects was our unsub, but he didn't know it. Adam Jackson. Because of childhood abuse at the hands of his step father, he developed another personality completely separate from him, and capable of facing the pain he couldn't. Her name was Amanda, and Amanda was carrying out the murders alone.

We caught her when she was in the middle of suffocating her step father. His name was Mark. I convinced her to stop and come in peacefully, but to this day, no matter how many times I talk to her, she's never let Adam out again.

[...SERIOUSLY. TERRIBLE SENSE OF HUMOR.]

Great. And I'm still missing the part where any of that is funny.

[ALBERT, HE'S PRETTY OBVIOUSLY NOT LAUGHING BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY, YOU TOOL.]

But if you're suggesting that the bitch you got stuck with wasn't a coincidence, then that puts a whole new spin on just how much this place knows about us, doesn't it?

I'm just glad that I was possessed by this Amanda, and not the one from back home.

[Albert might be able to pick up that the Adam Jackson case is one of THOSE cases for Reid. You know, the ones that agents and detectives dwell on privately for years.]

But yeah, yeah, that is actually kind of concerning. It implies that there's something sentient behind this that actually knows about our history, but why would it specifically reference that? To communicate something, or just as some twisted joke?

[He knows those kinds of cases. They all have them. All things considered, the one he and Gordon and Cooper are going back to someday is probably going to turn out to be one of them.]

Have you heard the one about the animals we start out with? There's a theory going around that the first thing you get assigned is supposed to be meaningful somehow, too. But outside of that your guess is as good as mine.

Yeah, Cooper told me about that, and told me about everyone's starters. He got a Hoothoot, Gordon got a Whismur, and you got a Poochyena, right?

[And Reid got an Absol. Wonder what that says about him?]

Either way, it implies that we're here for a reason beyond naturally-occurring phenomena.

Yeah. I don't know what magic voodoo a wolf-dog's supposed to say about me, but the others are interesting. Or at least worth a few raised eyebrows.

And if there's anything natural behind all of us getting dragged in here from god only knows where, then I'd say we'd all better hit the deck because the airborne swine will be here any minute.

Cooper described a Poochyena to me as, 'canine creature, known for its bite'. I think he has a theory about what it's supposed to reflect.

[Reid stares at Albert for a moment, then holds Flora up. And she starts hovering above him.]

I think we should hit the deck.

[DOT. DOT. DOT.]

Of course the pig floats.

[Dammit, we just hit Crisis Status: Hip Flask with that one.]

How's your checkbook looking? I hear a bridge in Brooklyn just went up for sale.

[Reid has driven Albert to smoke and now to drink. He might be a health hazard.]

At least she doesn't have wings?

[He takes Flora in his arms again.] I've sort of resigned myself to all the animals here being biologically implausible.

6th Recovery Δ Audio/Action for Violet City Φ Forward-dated to this evening

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