Disclaimer: I don't own any character, neither do I own Criminal Minds. I just wish I did.

Mind Matters

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities" - JK. Rowling

Emily Prentiss was feeling dizzy. She was also pretty sure the feeling had to do with the "non-alcoholic" drinks Morgan had given to them; but which later Garcia, in a slip of the tongue, had told her were soaking with brandy.

That was something to think about. Tomorrow. Now she just wanted to smile all around. Everyone needed a smile anyway. They had just gotten home from a particularly creepy case; after being called to the small pacific Readfield town in Maine to investigate a murder that especifically showed signs of phsycological disbalance.

The 911 call had come from a neighbor who had woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gunshots and ended up finding the two Simon children crying their eyeballs out in his garden, knocking on the window and asking for help. Inside their home lay their father murdered with seven shots fired sequentially. Three of them to the face, and four to the chest area, leaving Kirsten Simon, who was 17, and her younger brother Dwayne Simon, who was only 7, orphans.

Luckily the investigation had gone extremely smooth. While normally the solutions required team work, this once all it had required was Spencer to give a look or two around Kirsten's room, and before even explaining anything he had leaped inside the police station where she was being interrogated and asked in a matter-of-fact voice. "He asked for it, didn't he?"

Suddenly the girl was spilling her guts about how she had shot her father with the gun he owned, and how she had cleaned up after it and told her little brother they could never tell anyone about it.

Well, they had been home twenty four hours later and everyone had to thank Spencer for that. The thing is that even though it was a quick case, it was a still a heavy one. A family killing case, was always one of the worst imaginable. After that they deserved a break, and they were getting one.

Morgan was whispering on a girl's ear by the dancefloor and Garcia was failing miserably at 'not noticing' as she talked to JJ, stealing a few glaces to her chocolate masterpiece every few seconds. JJ was laughing openly at her face, what meant she was noticing it too, and also meant she was kind of drunk. Everyone was a bit hazy. To her surprise even Reid had drank Morgan's suspicious drink. Even though...he had sort of disappeared after awhile.

She started to walk around the bar and it wasn't that hard to spot Reid. In contrast to the colorfully dressed crowd, he was sitting alone wearing a light gray cardigan with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He seemed out of it, playing with the straw of his drink while looking distractedly at two girls dancing provocatively some feet away of him. She could tell by his look he wasn't sober, so she thought she could sit with him and spare him from his loneliness.

"Checking out the babes?" She asked in a light tone.

"Huh?" He sounded confused as he turned his head to her direction quickly, strands of hair falling on his eyes. He didn't seem to care.

"Nothing really. Thought I could make you company, you look too lonely all by yourself when you should be partying."

"Doesn't feel like we should be partying, you know?" His voice came out plain sad and for the first time she thought if she should be worried about him.

"There's always something bad happening. If you let everything get yo you, you won't be able to be happy...ever." She managed to offer him a smile and covered his hand with hers on the table. He sighed and she could see the engines turning quickly inside his brain.

"That's not it, really, I'm fine with bad things happening I guess. It's part of the job."

"Reid." The sound of her voice calling his name was enough for him to look up, almost as if someone was grabbing him by his shirt and making him do it. "Is this about the case?"

He looked at his drink again and took a gulp of it before going back to looking a bit unsure. Quickly though he seemed to have dismissed the previous thoughts because he laughed nervously and said. "No, why would you think that, I-"

"You were being different at the jet now that I think about it. But you are a good liar and I'm sorry we weren't paying attention." She concluded before adding. "You can talk to me, you know?"

"You'll think I'm going mad!" He whispered getting closer to her and even though his words slurred a bit she could understand clearly.

"Don't understimate me, maybe I'll understand. Try me."

For a second she though he wasn't going to say it. He leaned on the back of his chair. Leaned away from her defensively. Then he decided to speak. "You know how JJ always indetifies with the victims?"

"Sure."

"I just knew. Right when I entered Kirsten's room it was so obvious. She is interested in art Emily, she actually tried to sketch some of Berthe Morisot's work and they looked fabulous. Inside her drawers there were all these notes, along with three art collections, clearly second handed." He stopped for awhile, but didn't look down. "It was all...hidden. No art in the walls, no art books in the shelves. Her shelves were full of Middle Age History Books, and just general history. Those were brand new. That's what her father wanted, he wanted her to learn history, not art. He wanted her to be something she was not."

"So she killed him because her father didn't enjoy her drawings?" Emily asked skeptical.

Reid's brown eyes looked at her filled with frustration, as if he was trying to say much more than the words coming out of his mouth. "Yes! Can you imagine doing everything, doing your best...and that never being enough? Kirsten could be a renowned artist, but leaving it up to him she would probably end up a teacher. Like himself. And that's all right for him because he liked it, but...it didn't appeal to her. And that's not all of it, she couldn't even go on a date, because if her father didn't like him, it would be hell. She was never to be trusted and always treated like a menace, everything she did was a failure, and she didn't even had that much of a bad grade in school. She was average. She was ok!"

Emily looked at her friend and wondered how many years had passed since she had seen him so lost. He wasn't ok, and even after all the talking she had no idea what was really behind all that rambling.

"Why was she so sure her seven-year-old brother would protect her?" She asked trying to dig for something that made sense.

"My father coached my little baseball league when I was a kid. I hated baseball, I'm not a sport kind of guy and I wasn't a sport kind of kid; but when you are a kid you don't care about friend's opinions, all that matters it's you father's acceptance, love and general support. You want them to be proud of you, and I played baseball for years even though I sucked at it. He didn't like it when he saw me reading, it was too fast, freaky, I was too young and etc, so I tried not to do it around him." He raised his eyebrows at her and let out a bitter laugh. "You start pretending to be someone else completely, because if in then end of the day he at least likes you, it would be worth it; but when you grow up you realize that's absurd, parents should like their children for who they are. It took Kirsten 17 years to figure it out, when her younger brother wasn't as strong. He failed the year, he was being bullied mercelessly, and she laid all the blame on her father." His voice got to a whisper but he was still looking at her, like a scared child. "And I understand."

"Reid life comes down to choices. She chose to kill him. You didn't."

"It's not a choice, it's a breaking point. Maybe I didn't reach mine, but I have...I could have so easily been one of them, a serial." He bit down hard on his lower lip.

"And are you worried we wouldn't be able to catch you?" She tried to lighten the conversation with a smile.

"Yes. I have too much inside information." He ran a hand through his hair. "I have the worst background in this team, a decent serial-killer background. And our job is think like them, sometimes it just feels like I'm betting too high."

"Hotch, Morgan, Garcia...they are all alive to prove that broken homes and traumatic experiences don't turn people into assassins."

"Not people without a history of mental illness in the family maybe." He mused. "But that's not it you know, if anyone would look me up and I hadn't been smart enough to keep myself of the radar I'd probably have a file just like them. Foster homes, Juvie and everything you can imagine. I could be just like them, I know that."

"I bet you never did anything too bad." Emily tried to remain unaltered by the new information. Reid and illegal activity didn't mix; but he seemed to have read her mind.

"You really think they would allow me to live with my mother if they knew her state of mind? Since I was ten I pretty much turned into a lying industry. I falsified letters to banks and took care of the bills. You can download a voice modificator for free anywhere, and I talked to the principal of my school, made up excuses. You say people have options, but sometimes you don't. Unless you count allowing them to take your mother away to some skanky loony bin and be shipped to a foster home an option." He sounded shaken, but she could see he was doing his best to keep his voice steady and was winning the battle.

Emily could only stare at him for a few seconds. Spencer Reid was their kid, and he had so much innocence in him it was unbelivable he had survived so much. Maybe appearences can be deceiving.

"You did what you had to do to survive, no one would blame you."

"I could have survived in foster care, and Kirsten and Dwayne could have survived with their father." He argued and the sheer desperation in his face killed her. "We both chose drastic options to survive the way it was worth surviving. I could see everyone freaking out when Kirsten admitted to killing him, because she had already testified she had never been abused, but she was lying. Those kids suffered extreme psychological abuse, they were pressured all their lives to allow their father to live through them. If anyone had a real option, no one would be born in the dysfunctional family."

"My mother always tried to make me be more like her...maybe not in such a drastic level." Emily said, slowly remembering the pampering. She had never been girlie enough to understand what her mother wanted from her.

Spencer looked tired. He loosened his tie slightly and propped his chin on his palm. "I even am a drug addict. That can trigger mental illness too, it's like I'm waiting for something to make me snap."

The kid was defintely buzzed. Reid never talked about drugs, unless it was absolutely necessary. Now it rolled out of his tongue like it didn't even required an effort, so Emily decided that was going too far. The conversation was absurd and she knew it, it was a sad thing her friend couldn't see it. Spencer Reid was the sort of person people admired, everyone wants to be smart and have it easy; but Reid himself only managed to sell himself short in every possible situation. And that had to end.

"You were a drug addict because you were forced to. You didn't chose your dad, and you didn't chose the way you had to grow up. It sucks, but it's over. You had to help your mother- what I'm going to say is probably not right for a federal agent to say so I hope you'll forget it by tomorrow, but you did the right thing. We are human, we protect the ones we love, it's only natural. Still, I don't think you bought yourself a 44 to finish off the problems you had with your dad. You never hurt anyone. That's the choice Reid. While you are only putting yourself on the line that's your problem, but when you make the decision to end someone else's life then you have to deal with the consequences."

He didn't say anything. She felt like she finally had his full attention.

"I know the rules about profiling collegues, but you know it's not something we do willingly sometimes. So I won't pretend I don't know you are utterly scared of what goes up in there sometimes." She put a finger to his forehead. "But you should also know it's normal. Eveyone has dark thoughts, everyone was angry once. Sometimes we look at a crime scene and we can find ways to perfect it, but that's our job, don't let it drive you mad!"

"I know. I just...don't like it when I can't control it." He was still visibly upset, but sounded calmer, and that gave her strength.

"No one can control thoughts." She reassured him. "You are special. We try to follow you on your explanations, your ramblings and sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. But that's how we understand how you do your thing, you go through processes light speed. So obviously the small things we can't control may turn into big things for you because I'm pretty sure you can deduce in one minute, what would take me ten." She gave him a sympathetic smile. "You could be doing anything you wanted, and you are here helping people to catch the bad guys."

"I never thought of doing anything else." He shrugged.

"You chose this. You went though a miserable childhod maybe, people left you when you needed them, you have mental illness in you family; yes you do; and you went through several traumatic experiences while doing this job." She had the impression he wouldn't be able to stop looking at her if he wanted to. "But you are here because out of all of the options you had in your life you chose to help. And that shows who you are more than anything."

She got up and stopped right by his side. He opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but he needed more than one try to ask. "Really?"

And he sounded innocent and vulnerable again. She could only smile as she grabbed the glass from his hand. "I see you've had one too many, so I'm stealing your alcohol." And then looking down she rolled her eyes. "And of course I'm serious, I'm proud of who you turned out to be."

He didn't say anything, but smiled at her. A real smile this time.

"There's one more thing you can do to make me feel even prouder though."

"What?" He asked now souding like himself again. The weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders.

"There is a girl looking at you since we got here. Why don't you let her teach you how to dance?"

Spencer Reid flushed, but in an automatic responsed he had looked the way Emily had signaled. That was enough. The girl smiled back, taking a sip of her drink as her friend giggled by her side and soon left to the dancefloor.

Her job was done, she'd better go back to the other side of the bar to help Garcia maintain her last shred of dignitiy. If it depended on drunken JJ, all the years of carefully concealed platonic feelings would be lost. She looked over her shoulder at the general direction of the dancefloor and saw the brunette was now saying something on Reid's ear, which was making him half-smile. Emily smiled too.

Everybody would be partying after all.

***

I'm not sure about this one, but thanks for reading! :D xoxo