Eric Hoffer said, "Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there."
His old adversary, a once much feared opponent, has long been his only solace from the hell of his profession.
And, tonight, that is a hell of his own creation. The long, narrow slopes of his body throw no shadows on the walls; shadows would require light to be present. He can't bear to think about what must look like in the light. How red his eyes must me, as swollen as they feel. He can't bear to see the bandage wrapped around his arm, bloody and in need of changing. He would be sporting an impressive set of stitches for quite some time but that meant nothing to him. Life wasn't holding a lot of meaning, at the moment.
The love of his life took a bullet. (eight hours, scene still replayed in his head, how he cursed his eidetic memory.) Maeve Donovan died at the hands of a jealous stalker. His precious Maeve was gone. No more letters, secret phone calls at a different payphone, Thomas Merton quotes, nothing. It was all over. Every single letter, phone call, every thing she had ever said to him (intonations, nuances, emotions) swirled in his head. His vision had begun swimming around the fifth stitch, whether it was the memories, the trauma, or the pull of his skin as the doctor stitched his wounds, he couldn't say.
He couldn't say anything. It had taken a combination effort on the parts of Morgan and J.J. to drag him to the car, his catatonic state rendering him incapable of functioning normally. He hadn't said anything in eight hours. Not since his scream, his desparate scream, for Diane not to do it. For her to just wait. He didn't feel like talking. There was no one to talk to; nothing to talk about (not true but denial is his new best friend.)
Except for her. Except for everything.
Maybe he could...oh, but she was in London, with a life of her own, a job at Interpol. He couldn't bother her. But, then again, she had told him not to be a stranger. It just didn't seem right to burden her with his pain, with his grief, with all of his bitterness. He just...he needed to talk about it. Everyone would tell him that. His entire team would tell him that. Talking about it helped, got it all out so that it wasn't building up to a catastrophic explosion of emotions. Talking about it made it real and he couldn't handle reality at the moment.
In spite of his internal debate, and maybe even the universe at large telling him it was probably a bad idea, he finds himself dialing her number and holding the phone up to his ear with a shaky hand. He waits, even though the dial tone irritates him, and he worries his bottom lip between his teeth, fear that she won't pick up joining his mental debate over whether or not he should be doing this. It's too late.
"This is Prentiss."
Crisp, smooth, and so very Emily Prentiss. The undertone of warmth, though, that's what gets to him. His bottom lip quivers and he feels tears in his eyes once again, but he clears his throat and forces himself to greet her. "H-hey Em, it's Spencer."
"Spencer!" the crisp professionalism drops and she greets him like the best friend, she always was to him. "Hey! How are you?"
"I'm fine, Em." Spencer pretends, for the sake of not breaking down, that he's fine, even though he wants to cry and scream and tell her everything. "How's Interpol treating you?"
"Oh, you know, the usual bureaucratic nightmares and some new terrorist to deal with." Emily brushes his question off with a casual laugh. "Are you at work?"
"What? Oh, no. Not at work. Not going in today."
He stumbles and trips over his own words. He's never been very good at pretenses. He's too straight-forward and direct to put up a false front. And right now, he's too empty to hide anything. There's nothing to hide. It's all right there and, god, it hurts so much. But, she's Emily and he can't make himself tell her, not yet.
"Why not?" a simple enough question, and he can think of every plausible excuse, right down to the statistics to back up his story but there's only one that Emily is likely to believe.
"Headache."
And, it was true, he did have a headache - just, not for the reason she would think. He had told her about his headaches a long while ago, before Ian Doyle and before she took Clyde up on his offer to run the interpol office from London. He hadn't told her that he had found someone who solved his problem. He hadn't told her about Maeve. He feels guilty for not telling one of his best friends that he was "seeing" someone (so what, if he hadn't actually seen her until tonight?) but he had wanted it be between him and Maeve. For a while, it had worked, until Blake and Garcia had pieced together the puzzle that was his odd behavior - trust Garcia to compare him to a forest animal.
"You still have them?" Emily's voice is softer around the edges, reverent in a way he's never heard before. "Reid, you should - "
"Doctors all think I'm crazy, that it's psychosomatic." Reid interrupts her before she can finish that spiel. "And, the team would just worry."
Her days as a profiler are long behind her, having left the BAU several months before but she still knows a pretense when she hears one. If there's one thing that she always loved about Spencer Reid, from the beginning of her time at the BAU, it was his straight shooting personality. He couldn't fake anything and he was a terrible liar. She liked his honesty, always relying on his uncanny ability to see the truth in any given situation. That personality trait had solved many a case. Right now, though, he's lying through his teeth.
"How bad?"
"Bad enough."
"Reid," she almost sings in that little way she does when she wants to get his attention. "It's me."
His cheeks dampen quickly, long before he realizes he's started crying, and he barely manages to squeak a broken response. "I lied, Emily."
"I know, Spencer." Emily soothes him. Her lips quirk as she offers a light, "You were never very good at pretenses."
"I, um, I had a girlfriend, Emily." Spencer speaks and it's thick and strangled and he doesn't know if he can continue. "I loved her."
Emily is silent for only a moment. "Tell me everything, Reid."
"Her name was Maeve Donovan." pain, grief, bitterness, love, everything. It's all there in his voice when he tells her the whole story. "She was geneticist. She contacted me about an article I wrote and we started talking. She even helped me get rid of my headaches. But, our communication was limited to letters and calls from a different payphone every Sunday." he pauses, needing a minute to compose himself. "She had a stalker. And, I tried to help her but she wouldn't let me. Then, her stalker kidnapped her..."
"Reid - "
"I tried. I tried everything. I found her, Emily." Spencer's voice cracks and breaks, reminiscent of that pubescent boy sobbing into his mother's shoulder about the bullying he was forced to endure. "And I tried to talk her stalker down but it didn't work. She..."
"Spence," she shushes him easily, "Listen to me. You did everything you could. You know that. And she died with the knowledge that she was loved and that you tried. To me, dying knowing that Spencer Reid loved you more than anything is a peaceful death."
"But she was - "
"I know." Emily soothes him, "But, Spence. Would you have rather that happened without her knowing that you loved her?"
"I guess not." Spencer concedes. Same Emily. Always right, even when he's in pain and being stubborn. "She was just so accepting of what would happen to her. It was like she knew what her stalker was going to do. She even said that Thomas Merton was one thing that couldn't be taken from us."
Emily laughs softly and offers him solace. "Then, you hold onto that. She was accepting her fate and as hard as it is to understand Spencer, she gave you something special. Hold onto that, not the confusion behind her death." she remains silent for a moment, collecting her thoughts and speaks again. "She taught you how to love, Spencer. You learned to love from the inside out and that is as special as anything else that could have happened before her death. You never needed to see her to love her. Hold onto that."
"I loved her so much, Emily."
"You love her." Emily corrects him softly. "Just because she's gone doesn't mean you've stopped loving her."
"So," his voice cracks and he sounds like a pre-pubescent boy again but he doesn't care. "What do I do now?"
Tears sting her eyes and her bottom lip quivers. She doesn't know how to answer that. She didn't know what to do after her own death; living in Paris had thrown her off balance. Now, here, helping him, she has no idea what to say. She could barely piece herself back together, how is she supposed to put him back together? He's so broken and so fragile. He's always been this way. He's always been a little bit more sensitive than anyone ever realized. Even here. "I don't know, Spencer. I really don't."
"I feel...empty, Emily." his shoulders tremble and his breathing is shaky. He's sobbing, now. Openly crying. He's never been good at hiding how he feels, especially with Emily, and for once, he finally feels like it's okay to be that open with her. To show that vulnerability.
"You will, Spencer." Emily whispers gently, "And it will feel like you can't breathe but I promise, it's not the end. You are just lost. It doesn't mean you can't be found again."
"What if I don't want to be found?" Spencer inquires brokenly.
"I thought I didn't want to be found, either." Emily tells him. "But, something changed my mind."
"What was it?"
"It was you." Emily informs him, laughing when she hears his sharp intake of breath. "Don't be so shocked, Spencer. We were close and I loved that about us. J.J. called me and told me that you were taking my death hard. I knew that if I ever came back it would be for you. I wanted you to know that I was okay."
"Could we ever be that close again?"
"I like to think we still are that close." Emily smiles, even though he can't see. "You can call me anytime you want. I don't mind. If you need me, I'm always right here."
"I know," Spencer nods. "Thank you. You always seem to know what I need."
"I would be a bad friend, if I didn't."
"If I call again, will you answer?" Spencer asks her timidly.
"Always." Emily assures him. "Go get some rest, Spencer."
With that, he brings the conversation to a close. When he drops his cell phone on the nightstand, he sinks down under the covers and closes his eyes. He dreams of blood spatter and of desparate screams but when morning finally comes and the sun pulls him from his fitful slumber, Emily's words return to him. Yes, Maeve is gone and it is okay for him to feel lost and empty, but he should remember the precious gift that she had given him. He had learned to love a person, not for how they looked, but for who they are and that is something that no stalker could ever take away from him, even if Diane Turner had taken Maeve from him. She would no longer be writing him letters or on the other end of a payphone every Sunday, but she was still there with him. She always would be, in some way, because he loves her.
And, that would never change.
I wrote this because after the episode, '200', and the decided lack of Reid/Emily interaction, I needed something, anything! It took me a while and I wasn't entirely sure I would ever finish. I started this a little after '200' aired, I think and it's taken me up until now to finish it. Hope you like it! Leave me some love, Dolls!
Love,
RobertDowneyJrLove