Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not Criminal Minds, not Batman, not the Riddler, and not Spencer Reid.

Jason Gideon wasn't a hundred percent sure that this was a good idea, but he knew he had to try. He had been doing research for the past six months and felt confident that his plan would be successful, but at the same time he knew he could easily be playing with fire. This could go wrong in so many ways if Gideon's profile was off.

He was walking down the halls of Arkham asylum, the screams, laughter, and muttering of different patients echoing all around him. Gideon had seen a lot in his days in the BAU, but somehow the screaming and laughter that surrounded him managed to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He was following two heavily armed guards until they stopped in front of an interrogation room.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Agent? Riddler's not the worst we've got here, but the man's still nuts," one of the guards warned him.

Gideon nodded. "I'm sure." He had been looking into the Riddler's files for the past six months and was certain that he wasn't as crazy as they thought he was. Sure, he had a compulsion with riddles that stemmed from child abuse at the hands of his father, but that didn't make him like some of the individuals in this prison. He wasn't like the Joker or Ivy or Two-Face. For the most part, Riddler was merely a thief who occasionally would set up an elaborate death trap for Batman or anyone else who was on to him to see if they could get out or not.

Riddler was obsessed with riddles and intelligence. He was arrogant and egotistical and had a compulsion to tell riddles stemmed from the inability to lie properly. Yes, he could deceive by twisting his words or withholding the truth. His therapist absolutely loathed their sessions because when Riddler wasn't talking in riddles, he was telling her exactly what she wanted to hear and getting away with it by never directly applying it to himself or his crimes. He would give her the textbook answers that she sought only for her to realize later that he had found a way to deceive her despite his compulsion. But Gideon had disregarded the idea that the Riddler's cause was completely hopeless. He thought that perhaps Nygma could be cured with the right treatment.

One of the guards who went by the name of Williams opened the door and the three of them went inside. The Riddler sat at the interrogation table. His head tilted up leisurely, looking at them with a vague amount of interest on his otherwise bored face. His eyes were dark and his hair a light brown. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and his hands were cuffed in front of him, but he wasn't in a straightjacket. Riddler sometimes was made to wear a straightjacket, but Gideon had requested that he just be cuffed when they spoke. He wanted to be able to read his body language while they were talking. Right now, Gideon could tell by his posture that the Riddler was as arrogant as his file had said. He held himself with utmost confidence. He knew he was the smartest person in this room, and after reading everything about him, Gideon knew it too.

"Leave us," Gideon told the guards.

"Are you sure, Agent?" both the guards looked hesitant as Williams spoke. "He's crazy, you know."

"I am not," Riddler said, turning his attention to the guard that spoke.

"That's what crazy people say!" the guard snapped at him.

Riddler grinned. "You know what I love about you, Williams?" he said, "all it takes is a few simple words and you explode. You are far too easy to get; you should find another job."

"I am not easy to get, you freak!" Williams shouted at Riddler, who smiled calmly as he yelled.

"Enough!" Gideon snapped. "Leave us. I need to talk to Nygma alone."

Grudgingly, the guards left. Once he was alone with the Riddler, Gideon lowered himself into the chair opposite Edward Nygma.

"So, Agent," Riddler stared directly into Gideon's eyes, "to what do I owe this… delightful visit?"

"I have a few questions for you, Nygma," Gideon informed him.

"Really?" Riddler looked intrigued. "Well, perhaps I will answer them, but only if you can answer my riddle."

"I don't have time for games, Nygma," he said.

"Then perhaps you should leave," the Riddler said, "because I love games."

"What kind of games?" Gideon asked.

"Is this your first question?" he replied, raising an eyebrow. "If so, then I will need to ask you my riddle before I answer."

"Very well. Ask."

Nygma grinned, his dark eyes lighting up as his compulsion took over. "This old one runs forever, but never moves at all. He has not lungs nor throat, but still a mighty roaring call. What is it?"

Gideon could tell by looking at the Riddler that he was eager. His breathing had increased and anticipation seemed to be rapidly building inside him. Gideon wondered if it had been a while since he had asked someone a riddle or if this was how he felt every time he did so.

As for the answer, Gideon was stumped. He kept his expression neutral as he thought through all the possibilities. His first guess was the wind, but the wind moved. A river was also ruled out because of movement.

When a few minutes had passed, Riddler asked, "Do you give up?"

"Never," Gideon said, locking eyes with the Riddler, whose grinned widened until it was almost Joker worthy.

"Never? Really?" Nygma smirked. "Well, looks like we'll be here a while then."

Gideon felt for his phone in his pocket. He could always look up the answer to the riddle online…

"No using Google," the Riddler said the moment Gideon's hand moved toward his pocket. "That's cheating."

"How did you-?" Gideon's movements had been subtle and under the table; Riddler shouldn't have been able to see him reaching for his phone.

"Your shoulder shifted," Nygma said. "It was obvious what you were attempting to do. Especially since I could tell the moment you walked in here that you were left handed, after all, you keep your watch on your right wrist. You also used your left leg when taking your first step into the room, which isn't always an indicator, but can be. Your left shoulder shifted like you were trying to subtly slide your hand into your pocket. As you're left handed, you're going to want to be able to reach for your phone easily, therefore you will keep it in your left pocket. I stumped you; you were trying to cheat without me knowing it. You failed. So I ask you again: do you give up?"

"Alright, you win, Nygma," Gideon said, impressed with his immediate and accurate deduction, "I give up."

"The answer's a waterfall, you moron," Riddler said smugly.

Now that he said it, Gideon realized a waterfall made perfect sense.

"Are you going to start asking your questions?" Nygma asked after Gideon was silent for a few moments.

"I thought I had to answer your riddle in order to ask my questions," he said smoothly.

Riddler laughed. "I never expected you to get the right answer. The fun was watching you struggle as your tiny brain tried. Ask as many questions as you want. I am curious why an agent of the FBI has come to see me."

"My name is Jason Gideon," he decided to introduce himself before this conversation went any further, "I'm a profiler with the FBI."

"Profiler? How interesting," Riddler said, leaning forward.

"So, are you going to answer my first question?"

"You haven't asked it yet," Ngyma said.

"Yes, I did," Gideon said, "I asked what kind of games you like."

"That's actually your first question?" he raised his eyebrows. "Is this one of your profiler tricks? You think learning what kind of games I like will help you build a profile on me, discover something my therapist hasn't? Something she can't discover because I make her feel like an idiot every time we have a session by playing her, either talking in riddles or telling her what she wants to hear only for her to realize I'm tricking her several sessions in? What makes you think you can do any better than she can at getting inside my head?"

"Just answer the question, Nygma," Gideon said calmly.

"I think I already did by asking you my riddle," Riddler replied. "That's the kind of game I like. A guessing game… a riddle. Life is full of riddles, you know. And I suppose if I find answering riddles a game, that I find life to be a game as well."

Gideon scrutinized him. That answer didn't help him at all, but something else might. "Do you like chess, Nygma?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Riddler asked.

"Just answer the question," he said.

Riddler shrugged. "I used to play it all the time when I was younger. I beat adults when I was no more than four-years-old. People are too idiotic to play against and playing myself is boring, so no, I don't really like chess."

"I bet I can beat you," Gideon told him.

Riddler raised an eyebrow. "Really?" he sounded more intrigued than he did doubtful, a good sign.

Gideon wondered if the reason Nygma did what he did wasn't because he wanted to prove he was smarter than everyone, but to see if there was anyone out there smart enough to compete with him. But at the same time, with the ego Riddler had, there had to be a part of him that hoped to never find someone truly smarter than him. If Gideon challenged him to chess and won, it could go two ways: Riddler could want to keep playing against him until he beat him, the outcome Gideon hoped for as it would give him a chance to spend more time with him, profiling him, or Riddler could tell Gideon to go to Hell and his plan for Nygma would go down the drain. And then there was the chance that he'd lose…

"Really," Gideon said.

"Prove it," he demanded.

"Very well."

Gideon got the guards to bring a chess board in the room with him and Nygma and they began playing. Gideon would admit that Nygma was the worthiest opponent he had ever played chess against, but after five hours, he still was uttering the words 'check mate'.

As predicted, the Riddler was pissed, but not pissed enough to tell Gideon to go to Hell. He demanded they play again, and again, and again, and again, until Gideon had to leave because visiting hours were over.

"I will beat you," Riddler declared. "Even if I have to break out of Arkham and force you to play on a life size chess board where when you lose, you will die."

"There's no need for that, Nygma," he chuckled. "I'll come back tomorrow. We can play again."

Riddler looked surprised, but said nothing as Gideon exited the room.

As promised, Gideon came back the next day and continued to frustrate the Riddler by beating him at chess. Gideon could tell why he was beating Nygma: Nygma wasn't thinking outside the box. It was interesting considering some of the death traps he had set up before. He certainly had a creative side, but the side of his mind that was intelligent and calculating was getting in the way.

They continued to play for weeks, Gideon coming back every day he could, until one day Nygma eventually asked, "Are you ever going to ask the rest of your questions?"

"Do you want me to?" he asked.

"What I really want is to beat you," Riddler said, "and it's becoming apparent that I'm not going to do so at chess for a while. I've changed my terms on how you get to ask me questions, though. That's what happens when you keep me waiting this long. If you want to ask your questions, which I am certain you still do and are merely stalling, trying to get on my good side, not that I have one, then we'll have to play a different game than chess. I ask a riddle, you answer, and you get to ask a question."

"And if I get the riddle wrong?" Gideon asked.

"Oh, you can still ask," he replied, "I just want to beat you at something."

Gideon chuckled. Arrogant as he was, the Riddler had been growing on him the time they had spent here playing chess day after day.

"Alright," he said. "What's your first riddle?"

"What goes through a door, but never goes in and never comes out," Riddler asked. The eagerness that he had the time he asked Gideon the riddle about the waterfall was back.

Gideon thought for a moment before shaking his head. "Riddles really aren't my area of expertise."

"The answer's a keyhole," Riddler told him, smug as a cat who'd gotten the cream.

"Keyhole… makes sense," Gideon nodded, noticing the Riddler sitting up straighter at his victory, his ego that had been bruised from the many times he had lost in chess against him slowly healing as he managed to stump Gideon with a riddle. Gideon reached into his coat and pulled out a file. He slapped it down on the table, opening it and showing the pictures inside to Nygma along with a few documents on how the murdered women in the photographs were killed and what sorts of damages were inflicted on their bodies.

The Riddler raised his eyebrows as he saw the dead women in the photographs. "You carry these around for fun, Gideon?"

"No, Nygma," Gideon said, clasping his hands together as he watched the Riddler closely, "I've been wanting to show these to you for a while. My first question is this: why did the Unsub kill them?"

Nygma glanced at the three photos. One was of a woman who had been stripped naked and sexually assaulted. She was missing several of her fingers and her body was covered in contusions. Another was of a woman who was also naked and sexually assaulted, but her body was covered in slash marks most likely from a kitchen knife. The third woman was still clothed and had been suffocated. She had the word 'whore' written on her face in lipstick.

"Is this a trick question?" he asked, giving Gideon a strange look. "Each woman was killed by a different individual. You can tell because the first two photographs are similar in that both victims are naked and were raped, but one was beaten and had several fingers removed while the other was cut up with a knife. Those are different MOs. The third wasn't even killed by a man, she was killed by a woman. You can tell because she's still clothed and wasn't sexually assaulted. She also has the word 'whore' written on her face in lipstick. It sounds like a female killer rather than a male one."

"Impressive," Gideon smiled. "I was hoping you'd be able to answer correctly. You did."

"This was a test? You wanted to see if I could tell that these were different killers?" he asked. "Why? What's the point?"

"Your mind is an incredible one, Nygma," Gideon replied, "I feel as if it's being wasted in prison."

The Riddler sat up straighter at the praise.

"Ask your next riddle," he told him.

"What word looks the same upside down and backwards?" he asked.

Gideon shrugged. "Don't know. Which one?"

"Swims," Riddler said. "Next question?"

"If you weren't locked up here, what would you do with your mind, Nygma?" he asked. "What would you do for a living?"

The Riddler shrugged. "I've never thought about it."

"What would you say to working with the FBI?" he asked.

Nygma busted up laughing, until he realized Gideon wasn't joking. "Are you sure you don't need a cell here, Gideon? That has to be the craziest idea I've ever heard of. You want to have a criminal mastermind who you all deem insane-even though I'm not-working with the FBI?"

"Well, if you weren't insane, you could be reformed. Plenty of criminals, hackers, assassins… they're offered jobs with the government depending on how heinous their crimes were," Gideon informed him.

"Well, apparently, you think I'm insane, so that's just not possible, is it?"

"I don't think you're horribly insane, Nygma," he said. "I think you can be cured."

Nygma lunged forward and gripped Gideon by the front of his shirt with his cuffed hands. "I am not sick!"

"That's exactly what sick people say," Gideon said equably.

Slowly, Nygma released his shirt and sat back down. "If I am as crazy as you say, then how can you be sure you can cure me?"

"There are treatments," Gideon said.

"Like what? The pills that I'm already on? Shock therapy? You know, shock therapy is usually used to treat depression-"

"And schizophrenia," he interrupted.

"I am not schizophrenic," the Riddler snapped defensively.

"No, but your mother is," Gideon replied.

The Riddler's eyes narrowed. He was seething. "You can't make me. Even if you force me to accept this treatment of yours, I could still choose to stay in jail."

"You're right," Gideon said, rising to his feet, "tell you what, if you change your mind, tell the guards you want to see me. If the treatment works, I think you'd make a decent profiler, Nygma."

The Riddler said nothing as Gideon exited the room.

A month later, Gideon got a call from Arkham asylum. The Riddler wanted to see him.

So, they found themselves once more sitting across from each other in the interrogation room.

"So, you changed your mind?" Gideon asked.

Nygma nodded, staring down at the table with unreadable eyes.

"What changed?"

"I kept insisting that I wasn't sick, Gideon," the Riddler said, "I was wrong."

"You broke out recently," he said, "what happened while you were loose?"

"I never intended to come back to Arkham, Gideon," Nygma said. "I wasn't going to leave Batman a clue at my latest crime scene… but I couldn't help myself. I had to leave him a clue. So I had to come back here; I came willingly… because I think I might actually be crazy."

"And you want help?"

"I do," he said, swallowing hard. Grudgingly, he added a small, "Please."

Gideon's eyes widened fractionally. For someone with an ego like Riddler's to ask for help had to be the hardest thing he could do. Nygma probably preferred being beaten at chess-hell, he probably preferred being beaten to a bloody pulp-to asking Gideon for help. Uttering that simple please was proof that Edward Nygma indeed wanted help this time.

"Okay."

A week later, after a change of medication and shock therapy, the doctors ran several psyche evals on the Riddler, only to deem him sane.

Nygma and Gideon left the insane asylum once the last psyche eval was finished and Nygma had signed a contract and taken an oath to work for the FBI.

"You know, I never thought the guards would willingly let me out," Nygma glanced back at Arkham with an unreadable expression. His head was cocked slightly to the side, as if pondering a question. "I mean, there are several different ways to break out; it's rather easy, actually. And as for my cell, there were exactly forty-six ways out of it. Four that you could use to get out in a matter of minutes."

"And what ways were those exactly?" Gideon asked curiously. Riddler and Joker were both known for being able to break out of Arkham whenever they wanted and now Nygma seemed willing to tell him exactly how.

"Hitting the glass perfectly at the shattering point would be the easiest, but I usually opt for the hole I carve into the wall of every cell they put me in to rewire the door through," Nygma said. "That's how I got out last time."

"Damn," was the only response Gideon could think of as he headed up to his car. He opened the door, sliding into the driver's seat. "Alright, get in. It's a long drive to DC."

Nygma climbed in the passenger seat.

Gideon started driving. "The BAU wants to do a trial run with you just working with me to start. If all goes well, they want to move you to a team. No one needs to know about your past if you don't want them to. You can even change your name. You'll have to pass an evaluation to become a profiler, but I have a feeling that you'll pass that with flying colors. Is it true that you have three PhDs?"

Nygma nodded. "Yes. I graduated high school at twelve."

"Impressive, kid," he said.

"I am not a kid," Nygma replied.

"You're twenty-years-old," Gideon riposted, "that's a kid to me, Edward."

"Don't call me Edward," Nygma said suddenly.

"Sorry, you prefer Eddie?"

"No, yes, well… Yes, I did go by Eddie, but I don't want to anymore," Nygma said. "Eddie was merely a diminutive of Edward and Edward is the name my father gave me. After what he did to me, I don't want anything from him, let alone a name."

"So you do want to change your name. What do you want me to call you?" Gideon asked.

"My mother wanted to name me Spencer," Nygma said. "She…" he smiled, "she actually calls me that whenever I see her or whenever she sends me a letter. She forgets things sometimes… like that Dad wouldn't let her name me. Or maybe she simply refuses to call me by that name. I'm not actually sure."

"The Riddler isn't sure of something?" Gideon teased.

The younger man shook his head. "I'm not the Riddler anymore. But I'm not Edward Nygma either. My mother wanted to name me Spencer, so that's what I want to be called. I'll be glad to change my name. And her maiden name is Reid. I don't want anything from my father, so…"

"Spencer Reid," Gideon nodded. "That's a good name, kid."

Spencer smiled, this time not protesting being called a kid. "Thanks."

Gideon could tell he was thanking him for so much more than simply complimenting his new name. He was thanking him for saving his sanity.

AN: This idea was swimming around in my brain and would not go away. Ever since I found out Matthew Gray Gublar voiced the Riddler in Assault on Arkham, this idea has been kind of haunting the back of my mind. Especially considering Reid is super smart and so is the Riddler. The idea of Gideon getting the Riddler treatment for his sanity and bringing him into the BAU as Spencer Reid was just too exciting of an idea for me to not start writing. After talking with a good friend about it last night at this baseball game where neither of us were paying attention at all, lol, I knew I had to get the first chapter up as soon as possible :). Also, I thought I read somewhere about Gideon being left handed, so I rolled with it in this story, but I'm not certain if it's canon or not. And as for those who don't know the Riddler's back story very well, which I sort of implied but didn't really go into detail with, his father would beat him up because he thought he cheated in school as he didn't believe his son could be as smart as he was. When Nygma tried to defend himself, because he didn't cheat, his father would continue to beat him for lying to him. That's what formed the Riddler's compulsion to never lie and is why he leaves clues at his crime scenes.

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed the start of this. Please review! :D

-DragonsintheMoonlight