nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

fourteen.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
SICKLY SWEET REVENGE

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The door creaking is what alerts her and makes her turn her head, already smiling because -- well, somehow she'd known he'd arrive at that moment. It's like she could feel him, electricity dancing over her skin, the air tingling with the promise of another person as he ascended the stairs.

Spencer Reid looks different in person. He's much taller than she expected, having only seen him sat down or in pictures, and something about his lean frame -- long legs and arms -- reminds her of a spider. In a matter of weeks his hair has grown; it's tucked behind his ears, parted in the middle. Thick eyebrows pressed close together over a child-like nose with a cherry at the end. And, well, that mouth.

"I wondered when you'd get here," is the first thing he says. His voice is soft spoken, even to her. Touching, really.

He thinks of her? That's pleasing. "You knew I would come?" she asks lightly, stretching her arm over the back of the sofa as a makeshift warning: as predicted, his eyes flick quick as lightning down to the gun she holds coolly.

His hand dives easily down to his own pistol, levelling it on her; she stares straight down the barrel, into his face.

Does he know already that she's here to kill him? Well, he is a genius, after all. But he's not a mind-reader.

"I knew you would," he confirms, kicking the door shut. "So, what do you want?"

Huffing out an exhale that shifts her bangs, she kicks her feet off his coffee table and stands. Her heels click as she rounds the sofa, before twirling to face him, gun dangling limply by her thigh; his has followed her every move. "Complex question, really."

Is it really? Or, like Edelstein said, does she really just want to make herself feel better? Make up for the fact that, thanks to Spencer Reid, she's just had to goodbye to the only person she's ever loved. Satisfy herself with some sweet, sweet revenge before she dives into non-existence in some corner of the world.

"Did you come here to kill me?" he asks, without fear.

"You really think that low of me?"

He flicks off the safety with his thumb. The silence of the apartment is so deep that the sound echoes out between them. "Yes," he says coldly, clearly, and she flicks up her eyebrows.

Clever boy.

"I'm insulted," she scoffs, even though she isn't at all. She's more pleased by his ability to guess so accurately her motives; he really knows her quite well. It's almost admirable, the amount of work he's clearly done on her to understand her in such depth.

But he doesn't know why she's doing it all, does he? The reason why is the one vantage she has on him.

"You profilers. You think you know everything. What -- three PhDs and suddenly you're an expert on why I do what I do, and what I want? What I gain from it. You think you know why I'm here, and what I want from you."