A.N. Post-ep for 9X06, In the Blood. Spoilers.
Communion of Saints
With heavy steps he climbed the stairs to his landing. Spencer Reid fumbled for his key, and finally managed to enter his apartment. He wasn't at all sure whether his body or his soul was more weary this night.
'Dia de los Muertos', they call it. Day of the Dead. More like' night of the missing'. The ones who are missing, and those of us who are missing them.
He pulled off his shoes and sat down on his sofa, keeping the lights off in the apartment so he could look out at the late evening sparkle of the city. He liked to be in darkness. He did his best thinking that way. Except when the darkness was on the inside. Then, he had trouble thinking at all. Not so this night.
For a genius, I sure can be stupid. I used to celebrate this time of year as though it was a festive occasion. Halloween was a time to dress up, and enjoy scaring people, and being scared. Because it was fun. Fun. Not because it was a way to feel like I'd conquered death. After all, if the goblin comes to get you, and you beat the goblin, you're immortal, right? How did I not see that's what it was about? Grasping for the feeling of immortality, because of the fear of death? Twisting it into a fear of the dead.
But I don't ever want to fear her. And I don't fear her. I just miss her. And I would give anything…anything…to be with her again. No, not even to be with her. Just to know she was alive. In the world. Because my world was so much better a place when she was still in it.
He'd placed Maeve's picture on Garcia's mock altar, just as each of the others had done with those they'd loved and lost. If nothing else, it had served to drive home the point that he wasn't alone in his grief. For that, he'd been grateful.
They'd gathered off schedule. Tomorrow night was the real Dia de Los Muertos, but it was also the night he was promised to Henry. His godson had begged to go trick-or-treating as his favorite profiler again this year. But, this time, he also wanted to go with his favorite profiler. Who was more than thrilled to be asked. Reid had been working on just the right costume for the occasion, hoping Henry would appreciate his effort.
So he sat in the dark of his apartment, staring out the window, pondering, wishing, praying, until his eyelids became nightshades and made the darkness complete.
"Are you ready for tonight?" JJ had been at him all week, trying to get him to break down and give her a hint about his costume.
"Ready. I'll be there at six. Are you and Will coming with us?"
She eyed him. "Do you want us to?" Maybe he doesn't want the full responsibility for Henry.
"Only if you want to. I mean, it's something you probably look forward to, isn't it?"
JJ smiled. "You're right. Okay, we'll let Will answer our door and I'll go with you and Henry."
"Deal."
JJ started to move back to her own desk, but then turned around to him again.
"Spence, were you okay…..last night, I mean?"
He leaned back in his chair and started rocking. "You mean about the altar? About remembering?"
She nodded.
He looked at her with curiosity. "Do you ever forget your sister?" The person she'd chosen to honor last night.
She gave a small, wry, laugh. She could see where he was going. "No, I guess I don't. You're right." He hadn't even had to say it. "We never forget, do we?"
He shook his head. "Never. But you know what I figured out?"
JJ sat back down on the corner of his desk, settling into the conversation, having the sense that she was about to have one of those special moments with her best friend.
"What?"
"That the reason we never forget is that they never completely leave us. I mean….look at me. I'm different from how I was before. Because of Maeve. I'll never again be the same person I was before I knew her. And I think it's because I carry some of her with me. I'm changed, because some part of her touched some part of me. We mingled. And that means she'll never really be gone."
JJ sat silent for a long moment, looking out the window at a distant tree, thinking…feeling...connecting with something inside. When she turned her eyes back to Spence's, they held tears.
"I get it, I think. I feel that way about my sister. I have some sense of her being…...being with me, sometimes, but mostly just….being. But there's something else about that, Spence."
His voice was soft, quiet, intrigued.
"What?"
"If we're really a part of each other…if we really mingle….some part of us dies when they do, doesn't it?"
He'd already been there. Reid smiled at her reaching the same conclusion, and nodded his agreement. "We're diminished."
JJ shivered at the thought. "That doesn't sound good."
He sat forward, eager now to explain what he thought. "No, it's okay. We're diminished….but we're still whole. It's hard to understand, I know, but…."
JJ smiled. She'd seen flashes of this in recent months, but this was the first full out Reid monologue he'd delivered since that fateful time in the loft. And it's about Maeve. Or because of her.
She directed her thoughts heavenward, whether to God or to Maeve, she couldn't have said. Thank you.
If Reid had noticed JJ's momentary lapse in focus, he'd decided to pay it no mind. He simply carried on with what he was saying.
"Think of it this way. Our bodies are just cells. They carry on the daily business of keeping us functioning. But they don't make us who we are. I think pretty much all theologians, and most philosphers, would say that it's our soul that makes us a person. That makes us who we are. And the soul transcends the body. When the body dies, the soul simply changes the way it exists, but it's still us. It still carries who we were. Who we are."
She wasn't entirely sure she was following him until she tried rephrasing it.
"So, you're saying that the parts of us that mingle together are our souls? And that part of our soul leaves with them and stays with them, and part of their soul stays behind with us? That's why we still feel them so intensely?"
He jumped up and hugged her, excited. "Exactly! That's what I figured out last night! That we're all connected. That every person we love, and who loves us, is connected with us and with every other person they've loved, or we love. That it all mixes together."
"Just one big soulful mess, huh?" She was joking, but she got it. We're all connected. So, no matter what, it's okay. It's all okay.
He sat back down, smiling at her, happy that she'd understood, glad for the sharing.
And then, suddenly, they were each caught up in an intense mutual gaze. In that moment, each realized they were looking at someone else with whom they'd 'mingled'. Someone whose life had already changed, and was still changing, their own, permanently. And whose death would diminish them.
JJ had tears in her eyes as she spoke. "I'm glad, Spence."
He thought he knew what she meant, but wasn't sure. "Glad?"
"To be mingled with you. I'm glad we'll be a part of each other forever."
He put a hand over his heart, in a gesture that said he held her there. "Me too."
"Uncle Speennccee!" Henry's voice followed from the back of the house to the front, as he ran to the door to greet his godfather. The messenger bag hanging over his shoulder didn't slow him down a bit.
"Henry! How's my little profiler?"
Reid bent down to hug his 'Mini-Me', but Henry pulled himself up several feet short of Reid's open arms.
"Uncle Spence? What are you?"
JJ heard the commotion in the foyer and came down the hallway. "Spe…"
She too stopped short, mouth agape. Then she burst out laughing. "Turn around is fair play, I guess."
"What is he, Mommy?"
"Henry, it's 'who' is he? Does he remind you of anyone?"
Henry stood back, arms crossed, and studied his godfather up and down. The chin-length blonde wig, the Spiderman tee shirt, the short pants, the TMNT socks, the camouflage sneakers he'd begged for…..
"He's me! Uncle Spence, you're me!"
"Righto, little man. I figure, if it works for you, it works for me."
Henry grinned. "Cool!"
JJ grabbed a flashlight and the three of them headed out to scavenge the neighborhood while Will held down the fort at home. Reid and Henry walked in tandem, happily chatting about which houses had the best candy, and how they would devise a resource map for next year's festivities.
"This is the best, Uncle Spence. I'm a little bit you, and you're a little bit me. We should do this every year!"
Forever and ever, Little Man. We'll mingle into eternity.
Reid looked down at him, then back at JJ, and upward to the heavens and the piece of him that resided there.
My communion of saints.