Chapter 37- Oh Crap, She Gonna Snap

891 24 13
                                    

Isabel was laying on her bed, occasionally looking over at her phone that was still barren of notifications. What else had she been expecting? For the past five Saturdays, she had gotten nothing from him. Nothing at all. He always texted her on Saturday, but recently, she had gotten nothing. She had checked to make sure her phone wasn't the problem, but the texts from her partner and the other members of her team came in just fine, so she knew he really was avoiding her. But why? What had driven him away? Her friend sat beside her, hand on her shoulder, attempting to console her. But without knowing what it was that drove him away, Isabel couldn't be consoled. She didn't care that he was ignoring her. She could deal with that. She just wanted to know what she had done wrong.

*************

"A-kilah, we've got a case!" Ciara called from the kitchen where she had been preparing to make a meal, but as soon as she got the text, she started putting all of her supplies away. At least the text hadn't come in as she was cooking. That would have bothered her to no end. Of course, this still wasn't okay since it was disrupting her routine. It was currently 8:43 on a Saturday night, and in seventeen minutes she was supposed to be sitting down to eat whatever she had made that night, and fifteen minutes after that, she was supposed to start the water to wash the dishes. The BAU knew all of this and knew that she would be stressed and pissy until the next day when she could strike up her routine again, so to interrupt it meant that the case was urgent. Ciara knew this, but that didn't mean she liked it. But she was already stressed and pissy. She had been for the past five weeks.

The first Saturday it happened, Ciara chalked it up to Reid being busy and just forgetting to tell her. But when it happened the Saturday after, and the one after that, and the one after that, she realized it wasn't just Reid being busy. He was avoiding her. Ever since the case in Towanda, they had gone out every Saturday to work on her social skills, but they would have fun doing so. They never really planned what they were going to do, they just met up whenever Reid texted her and let the wind guide their path. But for the past five Saturdays, he hadn't texted her, and he never explained why not, and Ciara never had the chance to ask, since it wasn't just in their personal life he ignored her. At work, Reid only ever spoke to Ciara when it was necessary and busied himself with whatever he could find so that she didn't have the chance to confront him about it. He had effectively completely cut her off from his life, and she was left wondering what she had done.

She was used to people leaving her. Who would stick around her for very long? She was... well, she was Ciara. It seemed everyone she really cared about always left. So far Akilah and one other person were the only two that hadn't. She scratched at the bandage on her arm as she waited for Akilah to come out of her room so they could go. She couldn't remember exactly where the bandage had come from or what was under it. She assumed that she had to fight another monster again. She called for Akilah again, since she was the only one in the apartment with a license. Ciara checked her phone again to see if there were any other texts, but there was nothing, and she sighed. She wasn't going to tell anyone else, but she was hurting. She thought she was used to being left in the dark and that she'd be okay when Reid started to avoid her, but for some reason, Reid ignoring her severely hurt. The first Saturday it happened she had started to feel a sharp pain in her heart that she couldn't identify.

Not understanding the feeling, she tried to squash it, but this feeling wouldn't be squashed. She was used to pain and could work through it, but this wasn't a physical pain. She had never felt this kind of pain before and she didn't know how to handle it. Marina had profited off of Ciara's uncertainty and had made her do things she thought she wouldn't do again. The next week after Ciara had both a meltdown and a major episode, two things that rarely happened with close proximity to each other. Thankfully she had been at the hotel each time and not in front of the police force they were working with and only Akilah had witnessed both events. But as the Saturdays continued with no word from Reid, the sharp pain had turned into a dull ache, something that Ciara could better handle. She was okay with Reid avoiding her. In fact, she had been wondering how long it was going to be before the first member of the BAU turned on her. All she wanted to know was what she did wrong, but Reid was not giving her that opportunity, and that hurt.

PsychosisWhere stories live. Discover now