nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

twenty-seven.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:
THE FINAL GIRL

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Nina Scott's entire life has felt like the built up to being the final girl.

You know the trope, The Final Girl: Sally Hardesty in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Laurie Strode from Halloween, Sidney Prescott in Scream. Life has been hitting her down constantly, everyone she loves is dead or gone, she's covered in blood, and she's a virgin -- oh, wait, no, not that last one.

But she is the last man standing to tell the story of her and Ed, the last one alive (or rather, around) to confront the enemy -- and here she is, confronting the enemy, by wobbling through the gaping jaws of the hospital she had so narrowly just escaped.

She's haemorrhaging. She doesn't have long. She needs drugs and a bed and sleep.

And yet, here she goes, playing the hero. Becoming a trope. She can practically see the imaginary camera crew trailing her, focusing on her unsteady feet and the heaving of her back; maybe there'd be a quick pan in on her bloody left hand as it clutches her stomach like she's trying to stop her intestines from spilling out onto the floor.

Somehow, she makes it, but in the hectic rush of hospital business, hardly anyone notices her when she staggers onto the linoleum of the waiting-room floor. Her hand trails the wall, keeping herself upright, smearing blood along the faint lilac paint.

A nurse down the hall makes eye contact with her just as Nina opens her mouth to yell out for help, and she's lucky that someone's seen her because no sound comes anyway. The woman in scrubs makes enough noise for her, shouting for help, as she pounds forward toward Nina -- and the relief makes Nina's legs give out.

She pitches forward, and seems to watch from above as she falls painlessly, soundlessly, to the floor. She feels nothing, can say nothing, as nurses and doctors alike begin to swarm her like cockroaches.

This can't be how the movie ends. This is the bit before the glow-up montage, surely. This isn't Scream -- this is Clueless, or Legally Blonde, and Elle Woods is about to teach her the bend-and-snap. Surely. God, please let this be Legally Blonde.

Which girl do you want to be, Nina? The Final Girl, or the Girl Next Door; Elle Woods or Sydney Prescott. You have to choose. You have to choose, and then you can stop running.

She manages to murmur, Spencer, before she blacks out.

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Sat in the waiting room of the familiar hospital, waiting for the doctor stitching up JJ to finish his work, Spencer reads the blood-stained letter for the fourteenth time.

It's Nina's familiar swirling, sprawling handwriting. He knows this because, being Spencer Reid, he'd easily memorised the swing of her Gs, the jagged peaks and pits of her Ps and Ds, from reading and rereading her diary. Bent over, elbows on his knees, holding it tightly in both hands so that his fingers don't tremble, his eyes water as he reads and thinks and reads again.