Title: Care
By: LoraLee2
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Prentiss POV. Angsty one-shot.

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After seeing everything we see, all the different ways people find to hurt each other, it changes you, it changes something deep inside. Traditional mores fall to the wayside, right and wrong, sin and virtue, even legal and illegal; after a time the only question that matter is does anybody get hurt? Is there a victim?

Every day I look at dead people; photos, bodies. I see families ripped apart, lives destroyed. I see the depths of suffering. One day a young woman is walking home from school, that night she's in the E.R. being violated again by the doctor who has to collect the rape kit. I see the murder victims, beaten, shot, slashed throat, strangled. I can tell you so many ways one human can hurt, kill, another.

So, how can I look at them and then worry about some kid spray painting a subway car? He's committing vandalism, I could arrest him, but I can't bring myself to give a damn about a subway train.

All I think when I see that kid is, is he loved? Is somebody waiting at home for him, ready to scold him for coming late? Or is he out here because there's nothing at home for him?

I start to profile him. It's instinct. I do it all day every day. I can't turn it off anymore. He's about fifteen, much too young to be out here on his own. He's wearing tattered clothes, torn sneakers, ripped jeans, faded black hoodie with a torn pocket. He's dirty, he probably hasn't bathed in weeks, he's scrawny so the showers in the shelters would hold danger.

I wonder when his last meal was? Did he search through restaurant dumpsters looking for scraps? Did he know yet what time the best scraps were thrown out? These kids learned that kind of thing real fast out here. Too fast. Had he sold himself for enough money for a burger yet?

Was he a throwaway or a runaway? What was so wrong at home that he wound up here? Would he go back? Would he wind up in the system; foster care, prison?

I approach the train, in the back of my mind I think about the different ways a can of spray paint can be used as a weapon. Spray it in the eyes and it's very affective Mace, while a simple lighter will turn it into a flamethrower, and of course, there's always the rather crude method of using it to strengthen a punch or just plain throwing it.

He doesn't see me coming up behind him. I prepare myself for any reaction; will he try to run, will he attack? It doesn't matter, I can handle it. I stop when I'm a few feet behind him. I clear my throat, he whirls, freezes.

"Nice painting. My name's Emily, you hungry?"

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