This story is dedicated, with affection and gratitude, to Reidemption. Without her, and Spencer Reid as my muses, it would not have been attempted.

Ample make this bed.

Make this bed with awe;

In it wait till Judgment break

Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,

Be its pillow round;

Let no sunrise' yellow noise

Interrupt this ground.

~ Emily Dickinson

Chapter One

The aisle of the airplane is a smoky abyss. Spencer grabs the seat in front of him and pulls himself to his feet. He watches enormous tongues of flame licking at the outside of the craft, feels their terrific heat through the intact windows. It occurs to him that an explosion may be imminent. He covers his mouth and nose with his scarf, and pulls himself blindly toward the front of the plane. She was seated just a few seats ahead of him, he knows it without a doubt. He feels into the darkness ahead as he moves - one hand out in front, the other groping the seats -knowing he will surely run into her if he just keeps moving.

And then he sees her, standing in the aisle. She is staring at him, mouth slightly agape, fear in her eyes. She is wearing a gown of some sort and not her street clothes, which strikes him as very odd, and as he approaches, she is backing away. Don't back away!...let me get to you! Let me get you out! The words scream through his mind, but he can't tell whether he has screamed the words out loud, or whether she hears him. She shakes her head, almost sadly, and backs away, Spencer, I love you so much. I'm so sorry. So sorry Baby. I have to go now…have to go….

As he watches her back away from him into the darkness, he feels a sting in his eyes and realizes he can't see. The smoke, the smoke stinging his eyes. If he can't see he can't get to her. His eyes are searing from the smoke, tearing up and overflowing, and he reaches up to wipe them dry and stabs himself in the eye with his finger.

Suddenly he is torn from the dream, back into the cold reality of his bed and his room. "Ow! Goddamn it!" He is sitting up then, holding his face in his hands, waiting for the pain to subside. And even long after it is gone he sits there, holding onto the limbo between the nightmare of his sleeping, and the impending nightmare of his waking reality. He screws his eyes shut tightly, willing it away, holding it at bay. Five minutes more. Five minutes more. Spencer eases himself back onto the damp sheets, eyes still closed. He thinks about a time when he would have leaned back into the bed to be greeted by warm, welcoming arms. She would pull him close in her sleep, willing him to stay near her a while longer, skin to skin, face to face, breath to breath. She would argue when he finally pulled away to go shower for work, smiling coyly at him …no Spencer, stay with me, just a few minutes, just one kiss …

Work. Maybe it's almost time. Work chases away his thoughts. Work fills his mind with other people's horrors, canceling out his own. He turns his head toward the nightstand and brushes his hair from his eyes. 5:00 am. Almost time. He could get up, make coffee, watch the morning news. He could get there early, again. No one would have to know how early he had arrived. He could be neck deep in files in no time.

Then it hits him. It's Sunday. He feels his stomach tighten. Unless they get an urgent call, a case that can't wait, he will be on his own today. Work will not offer any distractions this day. And the day will be . . from 5 am to 11 pm, eighteen hours during which he will have to find an escape from his thoughts. Eighteen hours during which he will have to talk to himself, about the normal grieving process, about allowing himself time to heal, about cleaning her clothes out of the closet and drawers, where he has left them untouched for nearly nine months now. For eighteen hours he will list for himself all the reasons he wants to live. Eighteen hours until he can crawl back into bed, hide in the sheets and the darkness. He sighs. He is already exhausted.

His eyes travel from the numbers on the clock to the bathroom door. He mentally measures the distance from his bed … perhaps five meters, to the bathroom cupboard. Five meters between himself and certain relief. His breath quickens. He imagines the vials of Dilaudid in the darkness of the cupboard. A box of unused syringes waiting there beside them. A rubber tourniquet where he had carefully placed it the last time he added more vials to the stash. Several mentions to his doctors, of pain from a previous shooting injury to his knee, had ensured that he collected enough of the drug to feel that he could be well-provided with it for some time, should he need to be. Everything just waiting there for him. Keeping all this on hand had felt good during his years of sobriety. Like a hidden badge. Under the counter the vials called to him and he ignored them, scoffed at them. And finally conquered them.

Spencer bites his lip and thinks. How long now? He ticks off the years, then the months. Three years, ten months, sixteen days. He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, then stares at the floor for a long few minutes, still except for an occasional hand rising to tuck stray hair behind his ear. Finally, he opens the nightstand and reaches into the back of the drawer, taking out a silk nightgown. He raises it timidly to his nose and draws a deep breath. Then bunching it all into his long fingers, he covers his face with it. He waits for the pain to subside, remembering that it hasn't ever done so, but hoping against hope. "Please…" he whispers to no one, willing the silence to miraculously give him an answer, and then listens as the sound of his sobbing rises and echoes against the walls in the quiet bedroom.

His anger rises too, as he realizes yet again how he hates the sound of his own despair. So weak. So helpless. Ridiculously pathetic. The last thought causes him to sharply inhale. He stops crying abruptly. He shoves the nightgown back into the back of the drawer, blinking to see through the tears still blurring his vision. As he leans, they fall on the gown, into the drawer, onto his notepad, her favorite book. He doesn't care. He slams the drawer closed. Wiping at his eyes with the side of his arm, he stalks quickly to the bathroom, avoiding the mirror as he kneels and tears open the cupboard door.

Spencer dumps the vials on the bathroom rug, and sits on the floor beside them, studying them. He imagines the liquid is sweet, sugar-water, its promise enticing. He knows the promise, and he knows it is a true one: he has tasted it many times. No one could say he hasn't tried. Four years ago he was lost, so lost. The job at the BAU was still a difficult one: he was always the underdog, the baby of the group, the last to be told, the last to figure it out, the last to be allowed to participate. The constant struggle for legitimacy, the need to feel valued, beat him down. Then came Tobias Henkel. Spencer was kidnapped, tortured, killed and revived by a madman. Two days that seemed to have no end. And even after they ended, they didn't. The ordeal simply morphed into something worse. Bad dreams, flashbacks, questions, doubts. But Henkel had provided one light in the dark fog that was Spencer's captivity: Dilaudid.

After his rescue, Dilaudid still beckoned, enticed, seduced. He had told himself that without it he had no hope of regaining his grip, of climbing out of the hole of memory. And all the while Spencer had tried to keep his footing; grateful that the team had come looking for him at all, he had struggled to deserve it. It hadn't been a struggle with a beginning and an end. It was not a struggle with a continuous but tedious uphill direction. It was crazy and twisted, littered with boulders and pitfalls. He fell again and again. It hadn't been pretty. He had disappointed his fellow team members – his only real friends – and he had disappointed himself. That was the worse of it, disappointing himself. Lunch hours spent locked in the restroom at the BAU, staring into the mirror at his sunken cheeks, his unkempt appearance, his eyes hollow with apathy and self-loathing. And then huddled on the floor riding out the high, before returning to his desk fighting to hold his head high, his hands steady, avoiding the curious glances of his colleagues. He had known that they knew…he still didn't have any understanding of how successful he had been at hiding his drug use. But they had mentioned it to him only cautiously, subtly, allowing him his space to play. They had trusted him, perhaps.

And now they knew him better. They had seen him control it, preserve his ability to work, stop it when he chose to in the end. They knew him, knew he could do it. Even if they saw it now, they would surely trust him again. After all, now they knew him to be competent, an equally valuable team member with the rest. Now he mattered more. The risk was less. Spencer knew Dilaudid created dependency slowly. He could play with it again, but with more care this time. He would be better at it. Yes.

He grabs a vial, and leans into the cupboard to retrieve the tourniquet and syringes. He stands and sets his tools on the countertop, and looks into the mirror. Hope. He runs water over a washcloth and washes his face, combs his hair back with his hands. He could do this. And find a little respite once in a while. After all, it had been months, and he isn't moving ahead…isn't finding any way to climb out of the living grave that Aubrey's death has flung him down into. This could buy him time. Yes. He sees a light spring suddenly into the large hazel eyes staring back at him, a light for the first time in weeks, and he smiles slightly. He takes a syringe, uncaps it, and tips a vial upside down, carefully inserting the needle into the rubber stopper, then drawing out the promise. He sets the syringe on the counter, rolls up the sleeve of his pajamas, picks up the rubber tourniquet and ties it onto his arm above his elbow. He flexes his arm and watches the familiar rise of his veins. Then he picks up the syringe, walks back to his bed and sits on down on the edge.

For just a minute, he stops, staring into space, his beautiful mind recalculating the risks and the benefits. Spencer Reid, who knows himself to be a genius but has never considered himself terribly creative, repeats to himself all of the best arguments he has created in the past ten minutes for medicating his despair into oblivion. He feels more hopeful about his future than he has in months. Then he pops the needle into his vein and pushes the plunger.

Nimble fingers quickly release the tourniquet and the drug bombards his brain. He falls against the pillows, back into the arms of a sweet, sweet dream.

/~~/

This story is to be continued in the coming days! Please stay tuned….and I welcome comments. I hope you enjoyed it.