ONE SHOT: I don't believe you're my father.
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds or any of the characters mentioned in this story!
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William had stayed to help Reid take his mom back to Bennington. The y drove her in the brand new Nissan that he owned. After Diana was back in the care of the hospital William offered to drive Reid back to the hotel where he would meet up with Morgan and Rossi. The car ride had a very awkward silence, one that neither man was willing to break, although William Reid did make the first move.
"So, how have you been?" He asked, trying to break the tension.
"Fine." Reid answered, the generic question annoying him as did his father's presence. Even though William Reid had told him the truth Spencer wasn't about to forgive him. You don't just leave a ten year old kid to look after his schizophrenic mother.
"Oh. So the FBI, huh? I read you were the youngest person to be admitted, that's very impressive." William commented, again trying to break the thick ice that was stuck between father and son.
"Stop it." Spencer exclaimed suddenly. "Stop trying to act like my dad, because clearly you gave up that luxury a long time ago." William winced as his son took up arms with him.
"Spencer I'm so, so sor..."
"NO! I don't forgive you, and I don't even care for your apology! You left alright? You're the one who left me, a ten year old kid, with my schizophrenic mother. I had to take care of her, all the time; I didn't even have time for a life! I was ten, father, ten." Spencer snapped and looked sharply out the window.
"I know and I can't even begin to imagine what that was like, but you need to understand that I couldn't live with myself after what I did, and I'm so sorry for it." He tried again, but Spencer wasn't having any of it.
"Well that is too bad, do you even care about me? Do you even know what has happened to me in these past seventeen years?" William slowly shook his head no.
"Exactly! You have no right to be fatherly with me; the only father I have known got me into the FBI, and helped me for a big part of my life. You are not my father." Once again Reid turned away to face the window and watched as they drove past all the blinking lights of Las Vegas.
"What have you been through?" William asked in a small yet worried voice. The way Spencer had exclaimed the sentence made it sound as if something horrible had happened.
"Why do you care? You left right? Why should you care?" Spencer huffed, changing his focus back to his so called father.
"I have always cared about everything you do, Spencer, just because I wasn't there for a lot of it doesn't mean I stopped caring about you." William snapped back. Reid just sighed, he didn't overly care for what his father had to say, but he sounded sincere.
"I sort of dated a movie star for a while." Spencer finally said after a long pause. William cracked a small grin, he had heard about that from a tabloid he had seen in a grocery store. He still had that magazine at his house.
"Really?"
"Yeah, she was so beautiful, and actually liked me for me. I sort of kissed her in a pool too..."
"Well Spencer, you either kissed her or you didn't, where does 'sort of' fit in?"
"Okay, yeah, so it was full on kissing, but she totally started it, and during our case too!" Spencer rambled. His father chuckled in the seat next to him.
"So what else?" William pressed. He then learned about how his mother had helped solve a case. How Spencer had caught his buttock on fire. He learned about how his good friend Elle had to resign from the BAU with extenuating circumstances. He learned everything he had missed, minus a few details he knew his son was hiding from him.
"Wow, you have led quite the impressive life." William said, they were now sitting across from each other in the old park where Spencer used to play chess. Reid had his hands on the table in front of him and one them was playing with the sleeve of his shirt.
"Is there anything else?" William questioned, noting how his son seemed to become uncomfortable.
"I, um, no." Reid muttered, returning into himself. He really did not want to bring up the kidnapping with his father.
"Spencer, you're lying, even if I haven't seen you in all these years, I know when you are lying." William told him. Spencer looked at his father, almost profiling him.
"About two years, more like a year and a half, ago, we were tracking this unsub in Georgia. He was a religious killer who stalked his victims through their web cams to find out how they had sinned." His father had a taken aback look to him, but Reid continued anyway, "We found that someone had witnessed one of the murders while he was walking his dogs. This man, Tobias Hankle, lived a little on the outskirts and on a farm. Hotch told JJ and I to go check him out. He had denied ever witnessing anything and even told us that he had no dogs." Spencer had to take a small breath, even after all that time it was still hard to explain it.
"What happened then?" William asked, completely immersed in Reid's story.
"I went around to the side of the house and looked in the window. I was looking straight into this room with all these computers set up and I could even see that some were watching people through their web cams. I called out to JJ just as Tobias saw me and ran from his house. We chased him to the barn, where I stupidly suggested we split up, I went around to the back and she went through." Another quick breath, "There was this huge corn field behind the barn, and I saw that someone was running through it, so I followed. Halfway in I heard JJ scream and that's where I messed up big. I yelled out her name, which obviously gave away my position and next thing I know I'm being punched across the face. I hit the ground and saw Tobias standing over me. He, he..." Spencer paused. Suddenly a hand was over top of his own, he looked up into his father's eyes and saw trust and unexpected parental love in them.
"He was arguing with himself, he had DID, dissociative identity disorder. I had dropped my gun when he punched me and he had it in his hand. I hardly remember him hitting me with it, all I knew was that the world around me went black. I wasn't unconscious for as long as he'd had liked and I came to in his truck. I didn't know what he did but the next thing I know I'm waking up and I am tied to a chair in this little shack."
"You were kidnapped?" William asked, shocked. Reid nodded quickly.
"Tobias had two other personalities than himself, one was his extremely abusive father, and the other was Raphael."
"The arch angel." William supplied.
"Yeah," Reid paused here, "Tobias' father, he, um, he hit me, a lot. And Raphael liked to play Russian roulette of 'God's will'. He actually pulled the trigger on me five times. I was lucky, for five times. But the worst part was that my team watched me go through his tortures." William was so shocked at what he was hearing. It was disturbing and alarming.
"I was stuck there for two whole days. Tobias, he, he took care of me, if you could call it that. He brought me water and food, but he also..." Reid then shot a look straight into his father's eyes for he had been starring off into space while recounting the story, "Dad, don't hate me or be disappointed or anything, alright?" He said suddenly.
"What? Why would I do that, Spencer I could never be disappointed in you, not after all the good you have done."
"Tobias drugged me with Dilaudid." Reid said quickly while his father gasped in surprise. "He told me it made things better. He actually drugged me a lot, I'm not entirely sure if I was sober the whole time or not. The Dilaudid was cut with this crazy hallucinogen and I kept reliving my memories, like the day you left." Spencer added in a small voice. William was about to cut in when Reid raised his hand to stop him, he had to get the rest of his story out.
"You know, at one point, I was beat on by Charles, Tobias' father's personality, I was beat so bad that I had a seizure on the floor and died for about five minutes. I think now that it was also from the drugs in my system." Reid took a shaky breath, "I had been giving my team clues every time the camera was on and when they finally figured it out and were coming to rescue me, I gave up."
"What do you mean?" William questioned.
"Tobias had drugged me again and I remembered when I had to institutionalize mom. And then I confessed that my sin was getting rid of my own mother. Raphael, or Charles, I didn't even know who it was at that point, decided to make me dig my own grave so he could bury me alive." Reid's breathing grew shakier as he tried to keep himself from crying.
"He always carried the gun in his pocket of his coat. And when we were outside and I was digging he threw it to the ground and was keeping me a knife point. I found a distraction when I saw lights of my search part in the distance, so as noticeably as I could I stared at them. It made Charles, or Raphael turn around and I went for the gun. He, Tobias, ended up getting hit with 'God's will', and he died. The team found me soon after that and got me out of there, but..." Reid trailed off, not sure he should continue.
"But what Spencer?" William asked in a worrisome tone.
"Before I left, I took the Dilaudid from Tobias' pocket. I took the drugs that he got me addicted to." Spencer whispered. The words from his small sentence washed over William like a tidal wave. His son, his own flesh and blood was a drug addict.
"You used them?" It was a sort of statement type question.
"Yes, for about three months maybe?" He once again quietly muttered, "They just helped make everything go away. I was so hooked, but I knew if I wanted to continue my job, I had to quit. So I did, and that was probably worse than being kidnapped. The withdrawal..." Reid shuddered as the memory of him hunched over a toilet, dry heaving while Morgan and JJ constantly held his head above the toilet flashed through his mind.
"The withdrawal was something I will never want to face again and I have been clean since." Reid finally finished. He then snuck a quick look at his father, hoping to heaven that it didn't show disappointment. It showed nothing of the sort, instead it showed, sympathy, sadness, anger, admiration and most of all pride and love.
"You are so brave, Spencer, I am so proud of you." William stated. Reid felt a small smile light up his face. He had wanted to hear those words for so long and he finally got them.
"I should drive you back to your hotel now, huh?" His dad muttered.
"Maybe we could go get a coffee or something first." Spencer suggested. His dad smiled and agreed. They wouldn't ever have the traditional father son relationship, but this time, they were going to stay in touch more than they ever had.
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So that was a lovely little one-shot inspired by the episode "Memoriam". I hope you all liked even if it was a little not exactly 'Spencer' and 'William' in some places. Also to any Into the Darkness of the LV Mob fans, I am writing the next chapter, it's just taking a lot longer than it should because of some conflicting ideas I have. It will hopefully be up in the next couple of days. Please feel free to R&R!
~Love SpiderKate