Sixteen year old Spencer Reid was exhausted. Today had been a long day from start to finish and he was more than ready for it to be over. All the years that he'd fantasized about going to college, he hadn't ever really thought about this aspect of things. About how it would feel to go to classes, make time to study, and somehow fit a work schedule in there as well. Oh, sure, he'd planned out the practicality of it all. When he set up his classes he made sure to get them all in the morning and early afternoon so that he could work in the evening and night. He'd even found a job that was willing to overlook the fact that he was only sixteen and would allow him to work later. On paper, it had all looked good. He'd even blocked out time for studying.
What he hadn't counted on was how tired it would make him. Last year he'd relied on his scholarships to help him get through the year. There were a lot of people willing to give a scholarship to a teenaged 'genius' and he was smart enough to make sure he used the money he got wisely, with some even left over. Because of that, he'd been able to start college at fourteen. Now, sixteen, he still had those scholarships, but they weren't quite enough to cover everything he needed anymore. He had quite a few bills that he needed to take care of now. Not just for himself, but for his mother as well.
With each passing year, Diana Reid's illness seemed to be getting worse. The woman suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Spencer knew that what she needed was full time professional help. She needed much more care than he or the nurse he'd hired could provide. But Spencer was a minor child; he couldn't force her to get help, and if he pushed it, all that would happen would be that they'd lock her away and throw Spencer into the foster system. Neither were things he wanted to happen. So, he did the only things he could do. He found any way possible to take care of himself and his mother both, including hiring some domestic help to stay at the house and care for her while he was at school, and he saved every penny possible in the hopes of being able to put his mother someplace decent once he reached eighteen. Somewhere that would give her proper care. Not one of those crappy, low-income hell holes that he'd seen.
It shouldn't have been Spencer's job to try and care for so much. No child should be required to take that much care of their parent. But since his father had walked out the door when Spencer was only ten, they hadn't heard from the man at all and the burden of being the adult had fallen on Spencer's slender shoulders.
Finding Emilia had been a godsend. She was close to the same age as his mother, an elderly Hispanic woman who also happened to be a mutant, a telekinetic, and one who was in the United States illegally. He employed her for a wage that he knew, sadly, was less than she deserved, but he also gave her his room to stay in and he made sure there was always enough money in the accounts for food and other necessities. Even if it meant doing some things sometimes that weren't exactly legal. If it weren't for Emilia, Spencer had no idea how he would've managed going to college. She stayed at the house and took care of his mother while he was gone. In Diana's mind, she was a housekeeper, one that she was under the impression William was paying for. Neither Emilia nor Spencer told her the truth. She didn't need to know that the woman was there to watch over her. To make sure she took her meds, that she showered, and that she was simply okay.
Spencer trusted her to keep his secret. To not blow his cover and get Diana put away or Spencer in the system. To not let anyone know that he was a mutant. That was something he kept quiet, knowing how the world viewed and treated mutants. If he let it be known that he was a mutant who could read auras, he doubted it would go over well. Especially if they figured out just what he could see in someone's aura. Most people think of an aura as something connected to emotions, but it's so much more than that. Spencer thought of auras like this invisible field of energy that surrounded every living thing. In it, he could see so much. Not just emotions, but health sometimes too. He could see the evil around someone in their aura. That came in handy for helping him figure out who to stay away from sometimes. He could also see in an aura who was a mutant and who wasn't—and hints about their powers. Maybe not exact details, but generalities. Telepaths have a certain edge to their aura, this silver-ish color rimmed around it that he'd come to associate with mental powers. One pyrokinetic that he'd known had had literal fire in their aura. A teleporter he knew had an aura that blinked a bit, like it was constantly ready to travel from one place to the next.
It was a secret about himself that Spencer fought to keep, and one that Emilia had promised she would never betray. She kept his secrets, and he kept hers. He told no one that he was illegally employing a mutant who was also an 'illegal alien'. If the truth came out, she'd be deported instantly. He wasn't going to let that happen. What little money she made with him, she sent over half back home to her family. She needed this job just as much as he needed her. It was a perfect arrangement.
Unfortunately, it also was what necessitated this job. There was a grocery store that was only a thirty minute walk from Spencer's dorm. He spent most of his evenings there, starting anywhere from two to four depending on his classes, and usually not getting out until anywhere from eight to ten.
Sometimes he was lucky enough to catch a bus back. Some nights, like tonight, he had to walk himself home. It was a little after ten o'clock on a Saturday night and Spencer had to bundle himself up a little extra just to stay warm. What he wanted more than anything else was to be back in his dorm room, nice and warm and alone. A benefit of being underage was that he got one of the singles in the dorm. They didn't exactly trust the older students to stay with him. Especially with the crap that a lot of them liked to give him. So, he got a single dorm room, as well as an RA that didn't give a single damn about any of them and most especially not about him. That allowed him a bit of freedom to come and go as he pleased.
He'd just hit Lake Avenue and was crossing the bridge when something just ahead of him caught his eye. Not a person; he wasn't close enough and it was too dark to see that. But an aura. And it wasn't down on the sidewalk like most people were, nor was it traveling in a car or anything like that. No; what he could sense of it, all these dark swirling colors and all that pain, was coming not from the ground, but from above.
The sidewalk of the bridge was covered with a small roof to shelter walkers from the rain. It was also a bus loading area, so it allowed people to wait under cover for the bus to arrive. The only break in it was in the middle where a tall clock tower stood. It was towards the middle that Spencer could feel the aura. The pain and grief in it drew him in. He followed it, unable to help himself. He forgot all about being cold and tired as he made his way towards this aura that he knew, he just knew, belonged to someone who was about to do something very, very stupid.
It was right at the end of the section of roof, right before the center of the bridge, when he finally reached it. Once he got there, he caught his first glimpse of the person that this aura belonged to.
No one else seemed to notice the man in the shadows. He was sitting on top the roof, bent forward with his hands curled over the edge, legs dangling out into open air. Not over the safer side, where it'd be just a short drop to the road, but over the more dangerous side where the drop down to the road below was one that Spencer highly doubted anyone would be able to survive. Spencer was pretty sure that was the point. He imagined the man would be tall if he were standing. His legs were long and so was the rest of him. That much Spencer could tell, even with his body being sort of hidden by dark pants and what appeared to be a trench coat. A hint of light from passing headlights let Spencer see the man's sunglasses, which seemed so odd to wear at night, and the long hair that hung around his face and down to his shoulders. It was either brown or auburn, there wasn't enough light to tell.
His aura was what held Spencer's interest the most, though. Spencer could catch a hint of most auras all the time, though he'd learned to block them out, but sometimes they leapt out at him like this one had. Now, as he turned his full focus to it, as he really opened himself up and looked, he could see so much more. The man was a mutant—there was absolutely no doubt about that. Some sort of energy based power. Energy based powers seemed to always make a certain part of a person's aura crackle, a bit like electricity. This man had a light crackling through his aura that was almost hot pink in color. He had something else, too. Something that was, emotion based? It was a thin thread of something that was ever changing, the color not quite settling on one or another, and yet so very damn appealing. Like he could stare at it for hours and enjoy every single second of it.
But it wasn't his powers that Spencer paid the most attention to. The rest of what he saw was what drew him in even more. The man was ill; hurt, it seemed. Not just in body, but in his heart and his mind, even down to his soul. He was hurt and sick and broken in ways that made Spencer's own heart ache in sympathy. Over it all was a thick cloud of grief, pain, and guilt that were smothering. Not smothering for Spencer—smothering for this mutant. They were pushing him down, breaking him more and more. They were most likely what had brought him out here tonight. Out to a ledge staring down at the distant ground below. If Spencer walked away, he had absolutely no doubt in his mind what would happen tonight. What story he would see on the news tomorrow.
All of a sudden a smooth voice thick with the sounds of the south drifted down to him and drew him out of his very blatant observation. "Y' gonna stand down dere staring all night long, or y' plan on doing somet'ing sometime soon?"
The man didn't even look away from studying the ground below him. He never once glanced over Spencer's way. Yet there was no doubt who he was talking to.
Spencer flushed in embarrassment and straightened himself up a little. He took a small step to the side, right up against the short cement wall and the tall bars connected to it that were supposed to keep people from going over the ledge. Apparently they hadn't counted on someone scaling them to sit on the roof. Spencer curled one hand over one of the bars and then tipped his head enough to better be able to look at the man. "I'm sorry." He apologized. "I wasn't trying to be rude."
He heard a snort from the man above him. "Right. Well, y've had y'r fun, y' stared at de freak, now move it along."
If Spencer hadn't been able to see just how bad off this man really was, he might've backed away at the heavy sarcasm and venom dripping from those words. But he knew better. He could see just how deep the depression was that hung on him and he knew what would happen if he walked away. That knowledge gave Spencer the courage to stay where he was. He held onto the bars and debated his words for a moment before finally deciding that blunt might be the way to go about this. "Are you planning on jumping or are you just admiring the view?"
That had the man turning to look at him and Spencer caught a faint glimpse of red out of the corner of the sunglasses before the eyes underneath were once more hidden. "Does it really matter?"
"It does to me." Spencer said immediately.
The man snorted. He didn't look at Spencer again; in fact, he seemed to be purposely avoiding looking at him. "Right." The word was said so softly Spencer almost didn't hear it, but it was packed with so much disbelief. When the man spoke again, his voice was just a little louder, with only a trace of mockery to it. "Y' can ease y'r mind, mec. Remy's just sitting here admiring de view, dat's all. Now, scurry on home b'fore y'r Mama comes wondering where y'r at."
He wasn't going to make this easy, was he? Well, if that's how he was going to be about this, that left only one thing for Spencer to do. He wasn't going to just leave the man here. Drawing in a deep breath, he shifted his grip on the bar beside him and then use it to pull himself up a little until he could plant his foot on the cement base that held the bars in. From there, he lifted his hand higher, going to the top of the metal bar, and he pulled, wishing all the while that he was just a little more physically fit. It wasn't easy and was slightly embarrassing just how much he had to scramble and tug just to get his foot up to the thin metal bar that ran horizontal across the other metal bars. It was about three quarters of the way up the railing and Spencer had to reach out with his right hand to grab the post of the other building just to get enough leverage to haul himself up.
"What de hell are y' doing?"
Spencer ignored the man's surprised demands. All of his attention was focused on not falling. Feet barely braced on this thin bar, he was sort of bent over, clutching the top of the metal bars that went up. Okay, okay. He was halfway there. Now, for the next part. He blew out a breath and gathered up what courage he could. Then, holding on until the very last minute, he straightened himself up. For one heart stopping instant his hands were completely free and he was almost falling backwards; right up until his fingers closed around the edge of the roof, just feet from where the man was sitting.
God, oh God, he was going to fall. He was going to fall and get himself killed trying to save someone from killing themselves. The irony of it was not lost on the young genius.
He ignored the sudden cursing from above him. Curling his fingers over the slight lip on the edge of the roof, he prepared himself for the hardest part of all. He gripped tightly to that little edge and brought his other hand up, gripping with that one as well. He ignored the sounds of the man and just focused on gripping tight before he lifted his foot off the horizontal bar and lifted it up to the top of the metal fence thing. It was just a bunch of vertical bars, all thin and spaced just four inches apart, held together by the horizontal bar that ran through it all. Braced on that horizontal bar, he lifted his foot to the top and placed it on the poles, praying he'd be able to keep his balance.
Just as he pushed up, wobbling way too much for comfort, a firm hand closed around his wrist. It tugged at him, giving him the balance and the extra pull that he was able to scramble up onto the roof. As he did, he practically fell against the other man, actually grabbing onto him to brace for a moment so he wouldn't end up sliding right back down. The guy held on to him as well, keeping him braced, while all the while cursing up a blue streak above his head in a steady stream of French. Eventually he wound down, though he didn't fully let go of Spencer, and he switched back to English. "What de hell was y' t'inking, y' little idiot? Y' could've fell!"
"You wouldn't come down." Spencer closed his eyes, trying so very hard not to look down. He hadn't realized just how little he liked heights. Wasn't that something he should've known about himself? Shouldn't that have come to his notice before now?
"So y' just try an scramble on up here an almost crack y'r fool head open? Couillon!"
Finally feeling steady, Spencer made himself very carefully let go of the man he was clinging to. He sat up slowly and, when he didn't start to fall, he felt brave enough to open up his eyes. He found the man right there in front of him. He was a lot closer than Spencer had expected and the colors of his aura stood out even more. They swirled around him, pressing against Spencer's own aura, twisting around it and mixing together in weird and random ways that left him kind of dizzy. But it was the red and black eyes that caught his attention the most. They were right there in front of him, sunglasses down low enough for him to stare right into them, and there was so much pain in them, but there was also so much life. This man had so much life inside of him. Spencer couldn't just walk away and let him snuff it all out. Staring at him, he found himself saying exactly that. "I couldn't walk away, knowing what you'd do if I did."
"Remy said he was just admiring de damn view." The guy—Remy, it seemed safe to guess here—insisted.
Spencer raised his eyebrows and didn't flinch back at all from Remy's stare. "We both know that's not true."
There was a small flinch in those eyes. A hint of the person inside that wasn't entirely torn down by the grief and pain and still had room to feel things like embarrassment. Suddenly, those devilish eyes couldn't seem to quite meet his anymore. They moved over his nose, his cheeks, his forehead, everything but his eyes. Finally, after the silence around them grew longer and heavier, they finally met his once more, as if Remy couldn't stop himself. There were no walls there this time, nothing whatsoever to hide what was being felt inside, and the grief in his aura grew so thick it almost choked Spencer. "What's it to y', homme? Why de hell does it matter to y'?"
"Because everyone matters." Spencer said softly.
"Y' don't know what I did." The words were soft, just barely a whisper on the night air. "Y' got no idea what I let happen. De deaths I'm responsible fo'. De fuckin' massacre."
"No, I don't." His hand, which had never entirely left Remy's arm, curled in to press ever so gently. He kept his eyes on Remy's, though. This was important. Very important. He needed to make sure that Remy saw the truth of what he was saying. He needed to make sure he was heard. "I'm not claiming to know your story here and I won't ever dare even suggest that I know what kind of pain you're going through. What I do know is that you are in pain. So much pain. I'm a mutant, just like you are, and I can see people's auras. Yours is screaming with how much pain you're feeling. And I can't just leave you here to it. No one deserves to be alone when they're hurting like this. No one deserves to feel so much pain that they feel this," his free hand gestured out to the open space near them, the space leading down to the road, "is their only option."
"Y'r fuckin' crazy." Remy said.
"Maybe. But I'm not the one who was contemplating jumping off a bridge, now am I?" The words were harsh, Spencer knew, but they worked like a verbal slap to the face. They definitely got Remy's attention, snapping him out of his own grief enough to bring him into reality. That was what Spencer had been going for. Now that he had Remy's attention, he took full advantage of it. "I know things seem horrible for you right now, but I promise you, it does get better. It does. It just takes time, Remy." He gave Remy's arm a soft squeeze. "I'm not asking that you believe me. You don't even know me. But I am asking for a chance to prove it to you. Let me prove to you that this isn't the answer. That, even though you're hurting, life does go on." Sliding his hand down Remy's arm, he let his hand rest over top of the other man's, a soft presence, a gentle promise. "Let me help you, Remy. Please."
"Why do y' care?"
Spencer smiled softly. "I just do. Does there have to be a reason?"
"There always is." Remy said cynically.
The smile Spencer wore grew a bit wider. "Then come with me and figure it out."
That startled a soft laugh from him. Spencer absorbed the sound, the gentle warmth in it and the resulting echo through his aura. Those eyes met his once more and the grief wasn't gone, that would take a long time to happen, but it was just a tiny bit less. The hand underneath Spencer's twisted until their fingers were lacing together. "Okay." Remy said softly. "Okay. I'll come with y'."
Spencer beamed at him and squeezed his hand. "Thank you."
It wasn't much, it wasn't a guarantee that he would be able to help or that this mysterious man wouldn't end up right back here a few days from now. But it was a chance. A chance to show him that the world could get better than the pain he felt right now. A chance to show him that maybe, just maybe, there was something worth living for.