At first, the dilaudid had been the only way to forget.
Now... now, he needed it to remember. To remember why he was alive, to remember what it felt like not to be the man for whom life had come at a high price. A time when, instead of looking constantly behind, into the sinuous, ever changing darkness, he'd looked forward, into the light.
It let him remember Tobias, too.
Not Raphael or Charles -sharp bile and terror clawed their way into his throat at the thought-
Tobias. Tobias who was really just a little boy, a lost child. A victim of his own mind as surely as a victim of his father.
A victim of his mind like Spencer's mother. A victim of the fate Spencer feared with a sickening awareness of his own mortality
-you're a ticking time bomb, Doctor Reid.-
Because, surely, a mind such as his...
-It's inevitable, don't you know? You can only stave it off for so long. Only be fractured in so many ways...-
Eventually, it would come to collect its due.