Hi there! This started as a prompt for a drabble, and grew exponentially as a result of me avoiding my film essay.
Summary says it all. Will feature Henry who is seven months older than Spencer, and Morgan and Garcia. Later chapters will be Spencer's perspective, and I warn you - bring tissues. Rated T for mentions of sexual abuse and bullying in later chapters.
"She's been dead at least a week." Morgan said from the other side of the room. He was solemn, but there was nothing to suggest this case was anything but ordinary. "There's no sign of foul play here, Jayje. I doubt it's connected."
Morgan held up a bottle of prescription meds. "Oxycodone." He read. "I'm thinking most likely an overdose."
JJ's listened, but her eyes were fixed on the crib. Something about it looked wrong and out of place. The whole room was a mess. There were moldy half eaten sandwiches on the floor, soiled clothing in piles, and various stains and spills over the carpet and bedsheets, but the cradle was empty, save for a neatly folded blanket and little pillow. Poking out from under the bed was a messy, half-eaten sandwich on a plate, and it definitely was not a week old.
Next to the plate were some books in a stack - Vanity Fair, Oliver Twist, a book of poems by Chaucer, and puzzlingly, a box-set of 'Where's Spot?" picture books. JJ bent down to move them out of the way, and investigate further when something else caught her eye. There was a peice of string next to the books, and when she pulled on it, a wooden toy train appeared. It was painted red, blue and yellow with a notch on the front where the string was attached JJ went to grab it, but before she could, a little hand got there first. She jumped back and instinctively reached for her gun.
"My train." She heard a little voice say, whoever it belonged to sounded very young. Another hand appeared, and the mysterious child pulled the train back under the crib.
JJ felt Morgan kneel down beside her. Neither one wanted to scare the child, but they needed to get him or her out of the house and away from their dead mother's body. No doubt he or she had already seen it.
JJ leaned down and looked under the crib. The first thing she saw were a big pair of brown eyes and a mop of overgrown hair. The child was holding on to it's train with one hand and sucking it's thumb with the other. JJ noticed how sunken it's eyes were, and how skinny it's little body was too.
"Hey there," JJ said. "What's your name?"
"'Pence." The child replied with no hesitation, still clinging to his train. "Mommy dead."
JJ reached under the cradle and beckoned the child towards her. He - she assumed he was a boy - automatically went to her, and she lifted him into her arms. He was wearing jeans with a mickey mouse belt, and a single green sock. He looked around the same age as Henry, perhaps a little younger, but it was hard to tell when he looked so ill. He was filthy, he needed a diaper change and a warm blanket, and no doubt something to eat and drink too.
Morgan shrugged of his jacket and put it around the boy, and Spencer stared at him with worry and took hold of JJ's shirt.
She wasted no time getting him to the ambulance downstairs.
Inside the ambulance, the EMT shone a torch in Spencer's eyes while the little boy turned a cracker in his hand. They asked him questions about his mom, and where his dad was. They asked him if he wanted more food, and if he felt okay, but all the boy did was stare up at JJ and hold on to her hand.
"Spencer, does daddy live with you and mommy?" The EMT asked for the third time, he was getting annoyed. Spencer sensed that, and this time he his face in JJ's coat and cried.
"He's upset." JJ explained. Spencer was only little and it was all too much for him. She lifted him up and rocked him a bit. "Look, he's not injured and he's not ready to answer your questions, so I'm going to take him inside and find him some clothes. He's frozen."
She didn't wait for a reply, and promptly stepped out the van and went straight back into the house.
"I know you probably don't want to be back in here." She told the boy when his grip tightened around her neck. "We'll just get you changed and then we'll go back outside, okay?"
She could have asked someone to fetch some clothes for Spencer, but she wanted to give him a quick bath too. She didn't want to draw attention to the fact she was sneaking back in to the house, and didn't want to hear, "JJ, this is an active crime scene, you can take him back to the station" but she knew the warm water would relax him a little bit, and she thought it was best he just go to sleep. The last thing he needed was to overhear a load of scary strangers talking about how his mother had died.
The bathroom was fairly typical. Kind of small. No shower. And while brightly colored curtain hung over the bath, there were no toys or any sign that a toddler lived here too. JJ leant over the bath and started the water. There was no changing table, so she laid Spencer on the bathroom rug and undid his belt, pulling off his jeans. She could already tell this was going to hurt him, he hadn't been changed in a week and his skin was raw and peeling. When she undid his diaper and started to clean him, his face contorted and he started to scream.
"I know, sweetie." JJ whispered, trying to distract him with the only thing she could see - a bottle of shampoo - and failing. "I know it hurts. I'm sorry."
JJ couldn't put the boy through the pain of having a bath, so she opened the side cabinet under the sink to find his diapers. Fortunately, a pack of diapers and a bottle of talcum powder were the only things sitting on the shelf. There wasn't any cream for diaper rash, but Spencer could make do until they left the house. She looked back to Spencer, and that's when she noticed his skin wasn't just peeling, it was scarred. There were marks around his genitals, and down the inside of his thighs. She turned him over on to his stomach, and saw their were scars on his bottom, too.
"Who did this to you?" She asked out loud.
Spencer fidgeted on the floor and kicked his little legs, so she quickly finished changing him, and pulled some clothes out of the laundry hamper to dress him in.
It was soon revealed that Spencer Reid's mother, Diana, had been a paranoid schizophrenic and although she had regularly forgot to take her medication, she was addicted to oxycodone and took anything she could get her hands on. She had been dead for a six days before they found her body, and during that time her resourceful yet neglected two and a half year old had managed to keep himself alive. They doubted he would have been able to for much longer, however, as he'd already cleared out the fridge, and the chair he'd pulled up against the cabinets was too small for him to have been able to reach the higher shelves.
Spencer's father, William, hadn't been able to cope with his wives failing mind or his precocious toddler, and had walked out on them both just over a month before Diana's death. He very narrowly avoided being charged with child abuse, and once the debacle was over, he was all to happy to relinquish all parental rights and put the child up for adoption. Hotch slammed photographs of Spencer's scars down on the table in front of him and demanded to know what had happened. William played ignorant, and because they had no evidence to suggest it had been he who had inflicted them, and not Diana, he was free to go. Not once did he ask how the boy was, or what would happen to him.
With no other family, Spencer was placed into the foster care system. During that time, JJ couldn't stop thinking about him. When she had taken him back outside after dressing him, a lady from Social Services was there to take him away. He was still howling in pain, and the lady pulled him from JJ, not even trying to soothe him. JJ waved goodbye to Spencer as the lady carried him down the driveway, and watched his little hand reach out to her over the women's shoulder. JJ couldn't help but think that some part of him already knew he'd struck out in life. JJ had a son of her own, Henry, who was seven months older than Spencer. If something happened to her, she'd want Henry to go to someone who would love him. She wouldn't want him to spend his childhood being passed around to people who saw him as nothing more than a meal ticket. She wondered what Diana would have wanted for Spencer.
Every time JJ looked over to the photo of Henry sitting on her desk, she thought of Spencer. One Thursday afternoon, while the rest of her team sat in the bullpen filling out paper work, she called Las Vegas Police Department from her office. At first they didn't know who she was asking about, but after some prompting the women on the phone gave her the number for the children's home Spencer was staying at. Maria at the children's home informed JJ that Spencer hadn't been well treated at his first or second foster home, and as a result had ended up in their group home facility. Maria was certain it would be an extended stay, as traumatized nearly-three year olds weren't exactly sought after for adoption. She told JJ that Spencer spent most days under his bed, flat on his stomach and in complete silence, and only ever came out when someone removed him by force. She said he didn't get along with other children, and if the staff made him go into the playroom, he would sit in the corner with his face to the wall.
"He's scared." JJ reasoned, wondering if the homes budget allowed for Spencer to have some kind of therapy. "He just lost his mom, I'm sure in time he'll-"
"He's disturbed!" The women interrupted and then she laughed. Actually laughed.
And that's when JJ said she'd take him. It came out before she could stop it. She told the lady she could email the paper work through and do all the necessarily checks, but as far as she was concerned that boy was already hers and they better treat him right until she could pick him up.
The day JJ went to pick Spencer up, Auntie Garcia in toe with a giant stuffed dolphin under her arm, and an equally giant grin on her face, she was starting to have doubts. Up until this point, she had only thought about Spencer - how badly he needed a new home, how terribly he was being treated in the foster care system - she hadn't even thought to consider how his presence would disrupt Henry's life, as well as her own.
"I'm already a single mom, Pen." She said. "What in the world possessed me to think I could take on another child?"
"Because your a good person," Garcia replied, reassuring her friend as they walked up the long driveway to the children's home - the worst possible time to question the decision. "And you know he needs a home, and mom and a whole bunch of people that will love him."
JJ forced a smile.
"What if I can't look after him?" JJ sighed. She stopped mid-way down the driveway and ran a hand through her hair. If she walked away now, before she signed the papers and made Spencer her son, it wouldn't be as bad as giving up later. "The caseworkers told me he's not well. He doesn't speak to anyone, he won't play with the other kids, and at night he stands in the corner of the bedroom and slams his head into the wall. He doesn't cry for his mom or ask where he dad went, and he won't talk about them either. Pen, he's been abused, and he watched his mother's dead body decompose for a week before we got to him. He's traumatized and I don't know if I can take that all on."
"Well." Garcia started quietly. JJ had watched her peppiness and excitement die down as she had spoken about Spencer, now the women looked angry. JJ hadn't seen her like this before. "Walk way now. Before he thinks someone cares about him, then you decide you can't handle it and he loosed another mom. I thought the reason you were adopting him is because you could give him the help he needs, better than he'll get at this place at least!"
Garcia calmed down a bit, her voice was quiet. "We'll help you, Jayje. Whatever you guys needs."
JJ nodded. Now she felt like crap. She wasn't going to reject a traumatized little boy. She didn't want to reject him.
Garcia wrapped her free arm around JJ's shoulder and they both continued towards the house. "Come on. He's probably waiting for you."
Spencer was waiting for JJ. Actually sitting on the porch with his toy train in his hands, and staring down the long driveway. When JJ and Garcia approached him slowly, he offered Garcia his toy train. She took it, smiling from ear to ear. Then the boy turned to JJ and held his arms up to her. She picked him up, and that was it. JJ had two boys now.
Please leave a review if you want me to continue :)