Chapter Text
It took every ounce of self-control to not bolt when David Wymack walked into his lecture. He’d been detailing the psychopathy of a particularly violent killer with a love of knives and hatred of women. The knives had him on edge, too familiar, and the last time he had spoken to Wymack, it’d hadn’t been pleasant. The students filed out with the clang of the bell, thanking him for an unknown reason as if he hadn’t just spent the hour explaining the innermost horrors of the human psyche.
“He was a tough one to catch,” Wymack commented, walking up to Neil’s podium, “we’d have lost him, but he slipped up. We got lucky.” Neil nodded and made a move to the door. “We need your help. There is an unsub who isn't making any mistakes.” There it was. “Come back and help us catch this guy; you could save a lot of lives.”
The worst part was that Neil believed him to be genuine, knew he wasn’t trying to manipulate him. Wymack trusted Neil's ability. Thought he could use it to save people and do good. He would be touched if it didn’t hurt so much.
“I can’t.” Neil turned away, unable to meet his pleading gaze. Wymack, however, was determined.
“You’ve caught the uncatchable before, why is now different?” Wymack knew why, but to him it was just an unfortunate consequence. Wymack couldn’t feel the blade on his arm every time someone touched him, or the lighter pressed against his face, the burn of his skin until he couldn’t feel anything at all. “At least come look at it, offer advice, I’m not forcing you into the field.” Yet hung in the air between them, unsaid.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Come by my office tomorrow and I’ll fill you in.”
Neil tried not to think on his drive home. Last time he helped out on a case it had turned out to be someone who knew him from his life before and he had almost ended up another picture on the crime board. He had a complicated relationship with his life. He didn’t want to die but he also figured it was inevitable. He was already surviving on borrowed time.
Neil wanted to do something with whatever life he had left. So catching the very murders he had grown up with, from the anonymity of an office, was as good an option as any. When his mom had died he’d settled in a lazy town in Arizona, gone to high school, and managed to get accepted to college. He studied and stayed quiet enough to land a consulting and teacher job on criminal psychology. It wasn’t long before he fell in with Wymack and his slightly overzealous team.
Neil parked at the end of his long driveway. His house was nestled away in rural Virginia, surrounded by woods and wildlife. He felt almost safe when he was locked inside with his cats and nobody around for miles. He wasn’t that hungry so after feeding the cats he lit a cigarette and sat on his front porch. The harsh smoke reminded him of his mother and he knew he would be seeing Wymack tomorrow.
Wymack’s office was sparsely decorated. A potted plant courtesy of Abby, his not-wife live-in partner, was wilting in the corner. Neil was sure there was a metaphor for their relationship in there if he bothered to look for it. A photo of his BAU team stood front and center on the desk, hardly any dust on the old frame. The crime board was the clear focus of the room. He steeled himself and walked over to study the board.
Five pictures tacked into place with red pins stared back at him with empty eyes. Five people were reduced to stepping stones to find their killer. Neil hated this part, having to look at them. It only seemed to remind him that one day he would be tacked to a board with an ugly red pin.
“What’s the connection?” Wymack pursed his lips.
“We don’t actually know. They are all younger-looking men, but beyond that, there are no similarities. They work different jobs, go to different schools, live different lifestyles. Five people and we still can’t figure out why they’re being targeted.” He paused. “This is why we need you Neil.” Neil shifted his focus to the bodies. Wymack took his silence as a concession and continued to describe the victims. “A variety of sharp instruments were used: several different knives, a scalpel, a cleaver, and even an axe.” The wounds were pretty consistent across the victims. Deep slashes along the torso, thin cuts up the arms, flesh pulled and carved up in horrible ways. It was then, with awful clarity that he knew who the killer was. With dread curled in his gut he looked back at the first victim: Liam Connel. The second: Logan Verne. Third: Joseph Armand. And the final two: Chris Jensen and Stefan Henderson.
Neils breathing quickened and the room around him fell away. He was going to vomit, collapse, cry. He couldn’t fall apart, everything he’s worked so hard to hide would come spilling out. Wymack couldn’t know. No one could.
He pinched his wrist as hard as he could and dragged the room back into focus. One picture frame, two chairs, three pens on Wymacks desk, four leaves on the plant, and five murder victims. Wymack had stopped talking and was looking at him with an indecipherable expression.
“So Josten, what do you see?”
“Brutality, methodical slashes, utter disregard for human life. The killer probably oscillates between anger and enjoyment in his murders.” Neil drew in a sharp breath, slicing up through his abdomen much like the glide of a knife. “He enjoys- or at least gains pleasure from the pain and suffering he brings these people.”
“And the anger?” Wymack prods.
“It is aimed at someone. I don’t think it's about these people, they are more likely replacements.”
“You got all that from one long look at them. Even Kevin couldn’t come up with that much.” Wymack's voice was awe tinged with suspicion. Kevin was the best profiler the BAU had ever seen. Neil cursed himself for blurting all that out. The more useful he made himself, the harder Wymack would push this case at him. He wanted to be here even less than before.
What Wymack didn’t know was he wasn’t able to glean all the information about the killer just from the pictures. He knew the killer because it was his father.
Wymack drove in silence as they went to talk to some friends of the latest boy to go missing. The most recent was a college student named Alex Chase. Neil felt a bitter laugh bubble up. Maybe there would be no more deaths unless he started going backward through Neil’s past aliases.
The campus they arrived at made Neil uncomfortable. His time in college had been spent looking over his shoulder and keeping his head down. He’d had to strike a tough balance between unnoticed but meritorious enough to get into the FBI academy. He'd done it through and look where it’d gotten him, right where he didn’t want to be.
Their first stop was Alex’s dorm, where they could talk to some of his floormates. Wymack asked the boy who lived next to him some questions while Neil looked around.
“He had a single room, being an athlete and all he had to get up early. I think it was that new sport called sexy or something. Like the weird lacrosse one?” Wymack continued to nod along like the kid was providing useful information. Alex Chase was printed on a sports racquet cut out on a closed dorm door. A black cat sprinted up to the door, balking as he realized it was closed, and then pawing to be let in.
“Wymack,” Neil said lowly, “Get the kids out of here,” and he pushed open the door.
“Wow, Alex had a cat no way…” The kid from before followed Neil into the room and screamed.
What Neil assumed was Alex lay on the floor with conspicuously cat-sized areas bitten out of him. The open window of a first-floor room explained that. Unfortunately, that was the least of it. The mouth was carved into a gruesome imitation of a smile and the left hand was splayed by his head. It almost looked like the mockery of a greeting. Neil glanced up and noticed the wall behind the body, written in dried blood and smattered with chunks of flesh were the words “Hello Junior.”
Neil was going to vomit. The world spun and collapsed around him, or maybe he fell, it was all a blur. A rough hand gripped his forearm, jerking him to his feet, and shocking him back to himself. Once the room came back into focus, he caught Wymack's concerned face and the wary glances of a few of the crime scene techs.
“I’m fine.” He bit out.
“Sure you are.” But Wymack let him go. “Go back to the lab after you’ve checked around here, we’re sending the body to the team.” Neil nodded. The team was three forensic specialists that Wymack had recruited to support his profilers on cases. Neil had met them all on occasion and found the group a little raucous but not the worst company he’d been in. That wasn’t saying much though.
With the body out of the room and on its way to the lab, Neil found he could breathe a bit easier and ignore the words glaring at him from the wall. There was no blood splatter on the walls so either the murderer had cleaned up after himself or Alex hadn’t been killed here. Neil bet on the latter. The boy's room was neat, pictures in frames straight along the wall, clothes hung and folded with precision. Alex was tidy to a fault and his life probably mimicked the care he put into his room.
“He lives on a schedule. Predictable. His day wouldn’t vary much so you can probably ask around to figure out when he went missing. What didn’t he show up to, who didn’t see him that usually does? If we know when and where we can move on to how and why.” Wymack accepts this with a grunt. He let the room lapse back into silence for a moment, maybe waiting for Neil to bring it up first before he speaks.
“What about the elephant in the room, kid? The writing on the wall.” Neil feels a horrible smile tug at his lips. If only Wymack knew.
“Maybe he’s escalating. Getting antsy.” Neil decided on, it wasn’t all he knew, but it was almost the truth.
“And who is Junior, Neil? His son?” Wymack continued, eyes boring into the back of his head. Neil froze. He knew, he knew, he knew. He pinched himself and tried to breathe, anything to calm the panic tearing through his veins. He couldn’t know, he’d been so careful.
“How should I know?” He lashed out, turning round to face Wymack. “Do I look like the killer to you? I’m not a psychic, I can only tell you what the evidence shows.” Wymack gazed steadily into Neil’s eyes, far too discerning, before scrubbing a hand over his face and sighing.
“Go home, Josten. Check-in with the team tomorrow and we can make our game plan then.” Neil gave a curt nod and left like something was chasing him.
The next day the team was in the basement, crowding around the dead body and doing their best to outshout each other. Matt spotted him first.
“Hey Neil!” He called, somehow even louder than before. Neil just hid his cringe at the noise and raised a hand to wave back. “Long time no see, dude. How’ve you been?”
“Fine.” Neil shrugged. Matt just grinned and rolled his eyes.
“Of course you have. I owe Allison ten bucks now, I thought after a few months you’d have a little more to report.” Allion tsked from the other side of the body.
“Not our Neil. You really should know that by now Matty.”
“Anyway Ali and I were just discussing the victim and having a bit of a disagreement. She says the victim doesn’t matter to this killer, just the way they look, but I can’t imagine there is no deeper connection. The way this body is carved up, it’s sick and personal.” Matt turned a bit green at the end. He wasn’t the most comfortable with corpses, his specialties tended more toward particle analysis, and he was pretty handy with blunt force trauma. Allison on the other hand was very familiar with lacerations.
“I take it you just want the deats, babe?” She said to Neil, straightening her already immaculate lab coat. He nodded. “Poor boy was tortured gratuitously before his throat was slit ear to ear. The mouth was cut post mortem, but not much else. They used a variety of weapons; different-sized knives, a cleaver, and I’m pretty sure scissors at one point. There’s also the burns, probably done with a hot poker.” She kept speaking but Neil’s mind wandered off into a much darker place as he took in the body below him.
Alex was covered in slices. Skin was torn in so many areas it seemed impossible he was still in one piece. From his neck down to his thighs, he was a patchwork of injuries, even a gunshot. It didn’t add up. His father preferred knives for torture, not this myriad of abuse.
Neil briefly shut his eyes hoping to kickstart his brain, there was something he was missing. He rubbed at his sore neck, brushing by his own gunshot wound. If he could just see the whole picture it would make sense.
He moved to the end of the table, stepping up on a stool he forced himself to take in the whole body. To understand what happened to Alex.
It was him. Oh my God it was him. The scars he desperately tried to ignore whenever he was unfortunate enough to catch a glimpse in the mirror, the blue eyes and auburn hair he detested and hid. His father had given an innocent boy Neil’s scars and then slaughtered him to send a message. I’ve found you.
“Hi, I’m Nicky Hemmick, but you can call me anytime.” A stranger said to him with a wink and wide smile. Neil blinked. He hadn’t noticed anyone else come in.
“Uh, what?” Nicky laughed. Neil grimaced.
“You didn’t tell me he was so cute!” He squealed to Matt. Matt grinned and gave Neil a thumbs up. Neil felt like he was living two realities, one as Neil Josten where he was friends with Matt and Allison, and the one his father had just dragged him back into. The one where he was the son of The Butcher, Nathaniel Wesninski.
“I have to go.” He made for the door. He needed to get out of here, the walls were starting to close in on him, the people crowding too much.
“But you haven’t even met my cousin yet.” Nicky pouted.
“Josten, just the man I wanted to see.” Wymack stood between him and the door.
“This is him?” A voice from behind Wymack said. It was all too much. He was gonna lose it like he had at the crime scene. Kevin Day stepped out from behind Wymack and Neil almost shattered. He had meticulously avoided being seen by Kevin Day. They emailed and conversed indirectly through Wymack about cases, but it was absolutely imperative that Kevin never saw him. If anyone could unbury his past, it was Kevin. “He’s shorter than I expected.” Neil was sure he swayed on his feet, Kevin didn’t recognize him. Now to leave.
“I really have to go.” He put his head down and walked as fast as he could to the door, determinedly not listening to what anyone shouted after him. He could deal with it tomorrow. Tomorrow he would be okay. He had to be.
He barreled out of the lab- and into solid rock. Neil fell flat on his back, gasping for breath for the hundredth time that day, and glared up at his obstacle. An impassive man stood above him with features carved from stone, and apparently a body too.
“Oops, looks like you fell.” He drawled. Neil spluttered. The blonde man was unimpressed. “You’re Neil Josten. I’ll be seeing you later, got to make sure Kevin doesn’t pitch a fit when he realizes you’re actually gone.” He gave Neil a mocking two-fingered salute and walked away.