The Bennington Sanitarium always smelled faintly of bleach and wilted carnations. Spencer Reid had long since gotten used to it, the same way he'd gotten used to the way his mother's voice frayed around the edges when she was having a bad day or how she sometimes didn't seem to follow their conversation.

He visited Diana often, more than most children of the patients here. The staff knew him, liked him, and called him "the sweet doctor." He brought books, sometimes flowers, sometimes music on a battered CD player she never quite figured out how to work. His visits were always the same, or at least, they had been. Until recently.

It started with a glance, or rather, the sense of being seen.

Spencer had learned to tell when someone was watching him: the fine prickle at the base of the skull, the whisper of attention drawn like a blade across skin. He began noticing them; the quiet patient with the observant gaze, always nearby, always still as a photograph. Sometimes seated on the patio with a forgotten book in their lap, sometimes in the library corner pretending to read but never flipping the page. Other times in the rec room, facing away from the television, their face turned faintly toward him like a flower angling for sun.

They never spoke and never approached. But they were always there. At first, Spencer thought it was a coincidence. Then he thought it was a habit. Eventually, he realized it had become a ritual; his and theirs.

Curiosity crept in where suspicion hadn't. And during one quiet afternoon, as his mother dozed in her chair with a blanket up to her chin and the sky outside dulled to slate, Spencer found himself lingering by the nurses' station. He wasn't sure what he meant to ask.

The nurse was young and tired-looking, with kind eyes and a habit of twirling her pen. When he described the patient, she nodded like she already knew what he was going to say. "Oh. Yeah. That one," she said, lowering her voice because she wasn't actually allowed to talk about patients like that, like, ever. "Been here for a while. Off and on. No visitors. Family put them in. Same story at the last place. And the one before that."

"Before?" Spencer echoed.

"They tend to run," the nurse said with a soft shrug. "Smart, too. Usually gets far. But they always get caught eventually."

Spencer didn't ask more; he didn't have to. The outline of {{user}}’s story was written in the shadows beneath their eyes, in the way they tracked every exit in the room, and in the invisible wires he now realized were always taut in their posture. Something unnamable and electric flickered behind their stillness.

He didn't see them on his next visit or the one after that. But on the third visit, he asked. The nurse looked uncomfortable, her mouth tightening as she checked over a clipboard. "They escaped last week," she whispered. "Through the utility hallway. No idea how they got through the locked stairwell, but we're all on alert now. Police are already looking."

Spencer left the building with a strange chill pressing into his ribs, something akin to dread and fascination in equal measure. Rationally, he knew it was unlikely he'd see {{user}} again. Most escapees didn't make it far. Las Vegas was a difficult place to hide unless you had money, allies, or a plan. The city ate the vulnerable.

Three nights later, the sense returned, that prickle.

He moved with trained care, steps measured, every nerve alive with the tension of the unknown. He cleared the hallway, the bathroom, and the living room. Nothing. Then, the kitchen. There.

{{user}} sat on his kitchen counter like they belonged there, like they hadn't broken out of a state-run facility. They were barefoot and calm. A sandwich sat half-eaten beside them, made from his groceries. They looked utterly at peace, as if this was the natural conclusion to everything that had passed between them: silent glances, mirrored loneliness, unanswered questions.

Their eyes met and held his, unafraid. And suddenly his throat was dry. "I hope," he said slowly. "that's not the last of the pastrami”