InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "all that matters is what we do"

Dr. Spencer Reid (awkwardgenius) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-12-10 23:06:00

Who: L Lawliet and Spencer Reid.
What: A meeting between two lawmen with extremely different views.
When: Day 30, late afternoon.
Where: The outskirts of the forest.
Rating: PG-13.
Status: Active.

The events of the past few days had left Spencer Reid with a definite sense of his own mortality, as well as the mortality of the other captives trapped in this glass prison with him. The powers that be, which everyone seemed to refer to as the Management, were calculated and cruel, and controlled every aspect of their lives here - what they ate, what they did, where they slept, and how much pain they felt. It was the sadist control-freak's dream, and everyone else's worst nightmare.

Having to watch people just like him tortured on screens right before his eyes whilst he, and their friends, were put in a position where they were expected to diagnose them with mental illnesses and come out with reasons for why they acted the way they did under the most horrifying of tortures. Needless to say, he'd been watching his back, living a paranoid mess in this dilapidated little world, hoping that he wouldn't wake up in a glass tank filling with water, or with someone he may have seen around cutting him up piece by piece. He'd been sleeping as little as he could, but you didn't need an IQ for 187 to know that one needed sleep to survive.

It was late afternoon by now, according to Reid's watch, and he was wandering the outskirts of town, near the forested area where he had first arrived. It felt strange to come back here... he could almost smell the clean, fresh scent of Hotch's car as he slowly began to drift off to sleep on his way back from the airport. He closed his eyes, the wind rustling chestnut bangs and tossing them across his face, as he tried to imagine he was back in Hotch's car... or at the B.A.U, or in the jet, or anywhere. Anywhere but here.

He swallowed thickly, before opening his eyes, feeling his heart sink as his eyes met with the overgrown bush around him. He felt homesick, which was actually a stronger feeling than the one of fear and despair at the end that he may meet... well, after being cruelly tortured, if the stories of others and what he had seen were anything to go by. What he wouldn't give to have Morgan ruthlessly teasing him about being a nerd, or to feel butterflies in his stomach when JJ called him 'Spence'. He found himself staring at the ground, misery all over his face and his stomach in knots, and tried to snap himself out of it.

He should head back. Being out here alone was, no doubt, a bad idea. He dragged the baseball bat that he didn't seem to be able to part ways with behind him as he went, letting it pull a path through the dried leaves, as he headed back in the direction of the village.

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inmyownworld
2009-12-12 08:56 am UTC (link)

On the outskirts of the forest, L was considering what his next course of action would be. Though it was tempting, he couldn't simply lay down and die. After almost a month of ill treatment, physical torture, and cruel emotional manipulation, that was doubtless what the monsters in charge wanted from the young genius. Though L hated to admit it, The Doctor was right about the importance of not giving up, the importance of staying strong and fighting back, but it was so difficult to retain an optimistic mindset when living in the glass cage was like attempting to ride a horse up a greased glass pyramid. The only thing a scrawny young man could do without resources, regardless of his IQ, seemed to be distancing himself as much as possible from what was going on. He was intelligent, he had managed to survive longer than many stronger men and women in this place, and the more trivial the plights of the other captives seemed to him, the better things were.

Seeing a speaking Laura dissected had done that much for him, at least. It had put things into harsh but realistic perspective. He couldn't mourn the inevitable, he couldn't cheat uncontrollable circumstances, and he couldn't see past the eventual corpses that now took the places of people in his line of vision. The only difference between a living and dead human being was that the living one was slightly more tedious.

Avoiding people was an art form that L had mastered, and he was busily practicing it now. The last thing he wanted was to run into someone who still thought that there was a chance. He'd start to believe it, more than likely... and then he'd set himself up for another crushing defeat. While he was numb to that sort of thing for the most part, after what he'd been through, it wasn't something he actually wanted to experience, and so for the time being, he tied his three broken fingers as securely as he could into a makeshift sling (of twigs and dental floss) and listened to the eerie silence coming from the forest.

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awkwardgenius
2009-12-14 06:46 am UTC (link)

Reid heard a twig snap, and his heart leapt into his throat. Needless to say, his nerves were on edge in this place, and the tiniest noise when he was supposed to be alone was more than enough to terrify him and forced the adrenaline to pump. The sound had come from his left somewhere, extremely close. He sucked in a breath and held it, ears straining for any sounds that may follow the first. There were none.

His chest unknotted and he relaxed ever so slightly. And then there was another snap, louder and closer, and Reid lost his nerve. He turned, dragging the baseball bat behind him with both hands, and ran in the opposite direction. He was in no mood to deal with whatever or whoever had made that sound, and the large forest was already starting to creep him out, and all he knew was that he wanted back in the village as soon as possible. Find Stephen, or Willard, or Kimberly and Connor... he didn't really care who, he just didn't want to be alone anymore. He didn't want to... feel this exposed.

His navy Chucks scraped through the dry leaves, kicking up dirt behind him, and he dragged the bat with one hand as the other clawed at the air in front of his face, trying to protect it from branches and twigs that slapped at him as he rushed past. He wasn't watching where he was going, he was reacting purely out of fear, fear and panic - emotions that, usually, he could control, but given the circumstances he was falling victim to. He just ran, heading for the village, desperate to get out of the --

Reid's shins and feet slammed into something solid, solid but not too hard, solid enough to trip him. He fell over it, scrawny body hitting the floor elbows-first, whatever it had been that he ran into successfully dumping him on his stomach on the ground. Yelping, he fought to crawl backward on his hands and knees, eyes staring harshly through his bangs to try and locate what it was he had stumbled over.

It was... someone. A who, not a what. Reid's stomach twisted and he backed up a little further, hand reaching out desperately to try and find the baseball bat... just in case.

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inmyownworld
2009-12-17 08:43 am UTC (link)

Well... it seemed that L could get a little better at avoiding people, after all. While it was encouraging to know how well he was apparently capable of blending into the scenery, there was something a bit startling over being tripped over. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot with someone new. No... not new... L recognized the young man from being liberated from the liquor store that had been turned into a prison following the experiment. He twisted slightly from under his unintentional attacker; though Reid was reaching for his baseball bat as a precaution, L didn't think he'd need his shovel once the young man got over the initial shock and, in turn, recognized him.

They were different from each other, but with their preferred weapons, they had the potential to cut a striking image and present a study in contrasts and contradictions. L looked young for his age and possessed childish mannerisms, but there was something flint-hard in his dark eyes and unsettling about the solemn way he gripped his shovel when he held it. Reid, on the other hand, looked and dressed like an adult, with a quiet shyness that didn't seem quite used to handling a weapon. He was just like L, had been when he'd first arrived; give him a few more weeks to let his soft, fine-fingered hands develop callouses, and to let his cheeks grow a little more gaunt and hungry, and the two would resemble each other strongly.

"If you hit me, I'll bite you," L warned, in a good position to sink his teeth into Reid's leg should the fancy strike him. Despite the warning words, his tone was not threatening. It could best be described as tired, worn-out, and bored. After all, there was no guarantee that Reid would stay here for very long even if he and L did get along.

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awkwardgenius
2009-12-21 05:43 am UTC (link)

Reid's fingers wrapped around the handle of the bat, but once his eyes recognized the face of the (boy?) he had tripped over, he relaxed at least a little and his hand loosened around the potential weapon. He hadn't gotten to know the other man much during their brief meeting, though he did conclude that he seemed very cold, very bitter, and very wise beyond his years despite his childish mannerisms. Reid was good at reading people on first impressions, but for some reason, this man's profile and personality had slipped through Reid's fingers.

The threat of a bite surprised Reid, though he actually could picture the other man being the type to fight with his hands rather than a weapon. It was eerie, the way he was looking at him in the glow of the sunset. Swallowing to calm himself, Reid loosened his grip on the baseball bat and worked to untangle his skinny frame from the other man's.

"L... isn't it?" Reid was bad with names, but this man's had stuck in his head as it had been not a real name, but a letter. His voice was a tad uncertain as he scraped himself to his knees, dusting dry leaves from his vest.

"You probably shouldn't... sit out here alone," he said, glancing around briefly before looking back at the Asian man. L seemed the type who could take care of himself, but then again, this was no New York street or high school party. This was the kind of place where even those who could watch their own backs needed the help of others to keep themselves safe. "Especially after what..." His voice trailed a little. He had an eidetic memory, and had easily linked the man's face to a screen, and an event during that experiment. His chest inflated, deflated, and he ran a shaky hand through his hair.

"I'm heading back - to the village?" he said, an open invitation. "If you wanted to come back with me...?"

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inmyownworld
2009-12-23 06:18 am UTC (link)

As Shannon had aptly told Willard at one point, the world they currently inhabited was currently split into two groups. One seemed to be composed of the Doctor and his friends, as well as people who had been here for less than a week. They were convinced that there was at least a chance that survival wasn't completely hopeless. Then there were the opposite: people who had resigned themselves to the inevitable fact that they would stay here until death took them beyond the glass walls. Even then, it was highly likely that their bodies would be used to further horrify and disturb their former companions, as L knew all too well. Of this second school of thought, L considered himself the most thoroughly convinced, and so Reid's impression of him as being bitter and cold were apt. As for wise, that was purely a matter of perspective. Though L knew he was highly intelligent, wisdom was something one needed years and experience to attain. L was good at objectively seeing and evaluating things; though he'd struggled more with it lately as the events and people within Vas Captio had battered against his limits for actually feeling the type of human damage that he was so often subjected to, along with all the others.

When he had first arrived, biting would have been out of the question, due to concerns about sanitation and disease. By now, however, such petty things only stood in the way of survival. L was more than willing to use his body, his hands, his teeth, if it meant living just a little longer and protecting himself. L was many things as of late, but suicidal wasn't one of them.

Since Reid was working to untangle himself, L contributed to the effort. L had been thin when he'd arrived here, and usually appeared to be slightly malnourished, but his time in Vas Captio had taken its toll on his body. "It is," L confirmed, when the other man correctly recalled his name. "And you're Dr. Reid, if memory serves, which it should. It's not like there's been anything else to remember here." Or, at least, anything that wouldn't hurt a person to think about too much. "As for being solitary... isn't that what you were just doing, yourself?" L asked, raising an eyebrow. Quick to criticize even when at fault himself, wasn't this Reid? The intent became clear after the man awkwardly referenced earlier events. Understandably, he was worried. L shrugged, holding up his left hand and three broken fingers. "This is nothing," he said. "They've done worse to me, and worse to others. Comparatively, I got off easy." He didn't mention the difficulty of seeing Laura again, of course. This wasn't the time or the place for sentimentality or vulnerability. He might as well paint a clear target on his chest.

"I'll come back with you," he said, after a moment of careful thought. "I've been meaning to head back that way myself, as I've heard that there is decent food at the gym. Do you know the way?"

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awkwardgenius
2010-01-04 02:11 am UTC (link)

As the small Asian man accused him of hypocrisy, Reid opened his mouth to respond, but was unable to find any words to counter what he had said. He'd never been that good at conversations that weren't simply him spouting out knowledge, and he was terrible at confrontations, and tended to avoid them as best he could. In the end he just closed his mouth, pulling a face a little, and nodded jerkily in agreement. It probably wasn't a great idea for him to be wandering around alone, and he wasn't overly excited about the premise of spending night after night by himself in this creepy place, but was there really much of a choice that he had?

The young profiler winced a little as L held up his hand, wanting to take it and examine it, but he kept his hands to himself. They were jammed into his pockets, thin shoulders drooping a little, messy and now rather greasy hair slicked back behind his ears as he stood somewhat awkwardly in the middle of the forest and observed the other man.

Reid was a little surprised that L agreed to come with him. He was a criminal profiler with a sharp mind - reading and psycho-analysing people was what he did. However, this place was certainly pushing his skills to their limits. No one acted how one would expect them to when they were faced with death every day of their lives. He nodded sharply, a little excited almost at the prospect of having someone with him and not having to walk back through the woods alone, and quickly pulled his hands out of his pockets and half-stumbled back to give the other man room to stand up.

"No, not - not really, but I have wandered the village on occasion and my mental map is definitely coming together, so I could probably navigate my way back to the gym purely using senses and previous knowledge of the area."

He stepped backward with renewed energy, half-turning to start leading the way back into town. "It's really interesting, actually - the subconscious mind is capable of far more than one would imagine, and far far more than the conscious mind. It's like that, that feeling you get when you think you know a place, or you manage to operate a gadget or machine purely from feeling, with no former memories of it whatsoever? Freud investigated the subconscious mind, or the 'unconscious' mind, and drew a lot of interesting conclusions before explicitly condemning the word 'subconscious' in 1915 as incorrect and misleading!" He grinned and laughed a little, apparently amused.

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inmyownworld
2010-01-04 03:10 am UTC (link)

L had been doing some profiling of his own, studying Reid as they interacted. Clearly, he was intelligent; L would have to be a fool to miss that fact in spite of the man's awkwardness. He didn't seem to be much for words, and something about his posture was... fearful? Trepidatious? This was not an abrasive man who liked to argue or pick fights. For better or for worse, this type of personality tended to bring out L's controlling nature. L stared hard at Reid, knowing that it would likely make him uncomfortable.

L stood, avoiding letting his battered hand make contact with the ground as he used his intact one to brush leaves and bracken off his faded jeans. When the man gave a harried assurance that he could probably guide them back to the gym successfully, L sighed, suppressing an eye-roll. He hung back as Reid started enthusiastically leading the way back towards the town.

"You know... Reid..." he said, biting his lip, "I've been here for a month now. I wasn't asking you to show me the way, only if you knew it, yourself." he put his good hand in his pocket, the other hanging limply near his hip as if the habit persisted but he was unable to indulge it completely. He listened to the man suddenly start to go on... and on, and on, about something. While it wasn't irrelevant, L had no interest in it or patience for it, but Reid seemed like a sensitive sort, so L tried to work out his empathy.

"Um. I don't care," L said bluntly. "Besides, if it was incorrect and misleading, that's hardly funny," he added. "Why would someone spend their professional career advocating something that turns out to be false? I always thought that Freud's views were dubious, but the idea that the man was that unstable is highly depressing."

L's empathy hurt. He must have worked it out too hard.

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awkwardgenius
2010-01-04 03:47 am UTC (link)

The harsh eyes alighting on him was not something that Reid could've missed, even as he walked. Unable to make eye contact himself, he offered a brief half-smile, quite obviously forced, and continued to move through the thick bush before noticing that the other man wasn't following him, and pausing to look back.

His thin, pale cheeks flushed a little as L stated that he didn't really care about Freud's work, or the fact that he had condemned himself something he had been working on, which honestly Reid found intriguing and amusing in its irony. The grin was immediately gone from his face; even Reid, who was renowned for not quite getting it when someone was trying to talk him down, couldn't miss the sheer almost cruel bluntness in L's voice. He swallowed thickly, glancing down at the floor before nodding and attempting to recapture at least some of the bright enthusiasm that he had felt before.

"Well, Freud was, um... he was renowned for a great many other things besides his theories on the unconscious mind, such as repressional theories, theraputic techniques, and his redefinition of sexual desire, he... he did a great amount of work on psychology and psychopathology."

The young profiler nodded again, as if confirming what he had just said, fingers toying with the seams of his pants inside his pockets. "Bruce Feirstein once said, 'the distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success'." He glanced up, as if looking to gauge some kind of reaction from that.

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inmyownworld
2010-01-04 04:25 am UTC (link)

It was ironic; L and Reid's similarities seemed to be the barrier that kept them from fully understanding one another. While Reid was silenced and saddened by such a blunt approach, L rather preferred it. It didn't behoove him to take offense; merely to register a difference in opinion and make adjustments as necessary. He assumed that Reid would have taken it much the same way, so he was surprised when Reid seemed to inwardly curl up in a hurt shell.

Still, L wasn't expecting Reid to just... keep talking even after he'd blatantly expressed disinterest in the topic. Though he half tuned out Reid's continuing discourse regarding Freud, the last words caught his attention. He continued to stare at Reid as they walked. "Are you implying something? I assure you, there is no distance between genius and sanity once you've spent some time here. None at all. And success is being alive in the morning." L didn't have a cigarette to light, though now might have been an opportune time. Instead, he brought a lollipop from the convenience store out of his pocket and started sucking vigorously at it. "Freud's name is mud, you understand. Dabbling in theoretical psychology is all well and good when it's part of your job, Reid. But sometimes... a cigar is just a cigar, and a bad situation is just that. Babbling won't make it better." he switched gears abruptly, as he often did, with little regard for the smoothness or continuity of a conversation.

"What do you think? Are you a genius, or are you insane? Or are you just successful?"

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awkward_genius
2010-01-04 05:55 am UTC (link)

The blunt approach had never really worked well with Reid. It unnerved him, made him feel uneasy and caught him off guard when he was expecting, for the most part, a friendly reaction from whoever he was conversing with.

As L started to walk, Reid nearly tripped over an exposed root on the ground turning sharply to follow. He wasn't entirely sure he enjoyed this man's company just yet, but it was better than the two of them wandering through the forest alone, especially given the fact that the Management had recently displayed their enjoyment of kidnapping members of the small prison community, locking them in cages and torturing them. He walked alongside L, falling ever so slightly behind out of habit, and kept his hands spread to his sides a little as he walked so as to avoid tripping on anymore debris.

"I wouldn't call it dabbling, exactly, but humouring and quite often applying theoretical psychology is definitely one aspect of my job," he said, naively continuing the conversation to defend himself and his team despite L's obvious hostility. "If it weren't for the revolutionaries like Freud, we would still be measuring the circumferences of criminals' skulls and the ratio of their facial features in order to gauge their sanity and sentence them."

The question stumped him a little, and he blinked over at the other man. "I, uh... I think... I think there's a little insanity in genius, and a little genius in insanity, honestly. You don't get one without the other, at least in some respects." He glanced down, and then back over. "What about you?"

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