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CHAPTER EIGHT the fall of bernadette ᴏᴄᴛ. 17ᴛʜ, 7ᴀᴍ
ONE EXCRUCIATING HOUR later, her mind swelled with only three single thoughts. The first: Prim's writing was awful. The second: she wanted to see Spencer Reid more than anything. And the last: she had to use the bathroom. Bad.
The second thought lived in her head the loudest. In fact, she was astounded she hadn't seen him more often than the other agents. Of course she understood the delicacy around the personal ties between them both, but if she was going to answer the FBI's questions, there was nobody else she'd give them to if not Spencer. Hotchner and Horan had been in and out of the room, trying to get her to cooperate by dangling flashy prizes in her eyes.
You can get out of here faster if you tell me who you're protecting, and, it will really help your case if you tell us what you know. What they failed to realise on top of it all was that whether by the hand of God or trauma, Bernie couldn't wrack her brain straight enough to give them what they wanted. Nothing fit properly into place. It was all pieces to different puzzles, and she had never been the smartest in class. She had never been the first to put her hand up to answer the questions, even before she was pulled out of academia and into the lonely life of homeschooling.
7am and she felt sick. Her stomach was cramping, she couldn't feel her legs properly and her head throbbed from how hard she had spent the past two days crying. It was the type of sadness that she remembered from fifteen. When, after pleading on the nurse's phone at school for half an hour, she finally convinced Wilhelmina of her agony and her mother agreed to pick her up from school. The pain that Bernie felt in the interrogation room was the same pain that was only felt in the passenger seat of a parent's car as they drove their child back home, a little after noon, in silence.
The air was stuffy and clotted and she was sure she had answered everything she knew. Her cheeks were sweating, thick swelling droplets of sweat curling down onto her neck and oozing into her hair. There was nothing she felt like doing, she rested her head on the table, her sore arms above her head, and she let her body leak into the table. Her mind was a vortex of anguish and ache, a concoction of grief so powerful she could not move.
The door opened so gracefully that she did not hear it.
Spencer Reid slipped into the room with a glass of water and a packed of Twizzlers. The sound was delicate, a soft tap onto the table that had regurgitated despicable photos for the past few days. It was somewhat kinder to have them gone. Bernadette saw the polished shoes under the table, and wondered what sorry face she'd have to raise her neck to meet, when she noticed the socks. Her head shot up, and she met his eyes.
Bernadette had never cried like that before. It was ugly and comical with large warbles and hiccups. Her face scrunched up like a used tissue, and she melted into her seat with some sort of gratitude that Hotchner's daring eyes weren't peeling her open like she were a fruit. Spencer felt something in his stomach crack. Almost, he reached forward to grab her hand, but he stayed put.
