Spencer's Gift
I did this one thinking about 6-12.
Disclaimer - I do not own Criminal Minds, or "The Dead Zone."
Spencer walked hurriedly down the hall and briskly left the hospital. He had thought about calling his father to pick him up, then dismissed the thought. How did I know my father was in town? Why would I even think such a thing? The sun was shining brightly, and the sunglasses weren't helping him very much. Just then, a middle-aged woman with black hair and piercing gray eyes bumped into him.
"So sorry, ma'am." Spencer apologized.
"I bumped into you on purpose, Spencer Reid. We'll talk again when you're ready," the woman replied.
"Wait! Who are you, and how did you know who I am?"
But as soon as Spencer turned around, the woman was gone. Spencer wondered, How did she know my name? Was she even there to begin with, or was it a manifestation? Spencer quickly hailed a cab and went home.
He kept tossing and turning, not getting any sleep that night. His headaches were returning, this particular one worse than usual. He kept on seeing the woman from outside of the hospital over and over again, her screaming for Spencer's help in the night. Then the headaches grew more intense, and the next hallucination showed the woman in an alleyway, accosted by a few men. Spencer was unable to take it anymore and left his apartment and went into Washington, D.C. He wasn't sure where we was going, but after an hour, he was the woman in an alleyway, backed into the corner by three large men.
"FREEZE! FBI!" Spencer shouted, brandishing his firearm, and the men quickly disbursed.
"Thank you, Spencer. My name is Anya, by the way," the woman said.
"Um, Anya, could we possibly take this conversation elsewhere? Those men looked mean, and they might come back, with, let's say, a small posse?" Spencer asked anxiously.
"Of course. I own a nice home in Georgetown. I think you'll love it," Anya replied.
Anya hailed a cab that took the pair back to her house, an two story, old, Victorian-Style cautiously followed her in. Once they entered the house, he looked around in complete awe of the place.
"Nice, huh?" Anya asked.
"So what exactly do you do, Anya? I must say, I am impressed," Spencer said, still admiring the house.
"I help other people with their newly discovered powers," Anya replied with a large smile. "Oh you mean, about the house. I won a rather large sum of money on the lottery."
"How much?"
"Only around 100 million dollars."
Spencer gulped.
"I don't normally use my powers for personal gain, but, what the hell, live a little I say."
"You know, you could have been injured or killed out there in those streets tonight. What were you thinking?"
"That my prince in shining armor would come and rescue me. AND I was right. You were there beofre I was harmed."
"Statistically, the odds of me finding you in that particular alley at that exact time..."
"Are astronomically low and very unlikely to happen. But you found me due to your new gift." Anya interrupted.
"New gift? I don't know what you are talking about."
"You're what 29-30 years old now? Once you stop growing, your newly acquired gift starts to show in those few privileged to have it."
"Well, um, I need to leave, Anya."
Just then, a intense headache started, and within a few seconds, Spencer was on the floor, curled up in the fetal position, hands on his forehead. Anya bent down beside him, and started rubbing his back. After a few minutes, the headache was beginning to subside.
"Who did you see?" asked Anya.
"A-a-a-a young girl, Caucasian, blonde, no older than seven, maybe eight years old, She was screaming for help. There was a man beating her, and there were in some sort of dark place. What is going on? Why am I seeing this?"
"When Julio said that you had ghosts in your head , to a degree he is right. But these are not just ghosts, and are a part of your special gift," she explained.
"Special gift?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes, and it can be a wonderful gift. Some people call it a second sight, ESP, a sixth sense, or being physic. Most of us just refer it as 'The Gift.' Many people have it in varying degrees, with most dismissing is as a premonition, or a feeling of Deja Vu. You have a very wonderful gift, although you may not realize it now. With your line of work, and your intelligence, you can utilize your new gift to help a lot of people whom you have never met before."
"I don't believe in what your saying. There is no scientific studies supporting this."
"Not everything can be proved or disproved through science, genius."
Spencer slowly stood up. HE looked at Anya, still skeptical of what was going on.
"I can tell you things about yourself that even your teammates do not already know, although with some of them they may have suspected, but never asked about."
"Like what?"
"Well, there was that bout down in Georgia, say, about four years ago now. I'm glad you've been clean now for over three years, although if I was in your shoes, I still might be using that cocktail that you took from Tobias. Dilaudid and PCP, if I remember correctly. And with what was going on did call you and you responded. That is the first step to alleviate your headaches. You need to act on your vision, or at least learn to filter them."
"Filter?"
"Yes. And it is almost dawn, you need to go back home. You will receive notice once you arrive at work about a case in Bloomington, Illinois, regarding some missing blonde girls you utilize your newly found gift, you should be able to find the next girl before she dies."
Anya called for another cab, which came, and then took Spencer back to his apartment. He was unable to sleep after what she said earlier, about his gift. He was still unsure about believing her, but how else would she have known about him so well. It was not as if the whole drug deal was a well-known fact. Plus she knew about his visions back in Miami.
He went to work, as usual, and it was not even fifteen minutes before Garcia summoned the team to the conference room on a new case. What Garcia was stating about the case, about 5 missing blonde girls in the Bloomington area particularly disturbed Spencer, and did not go unnoticed by the team.
"Are you alright, Reid? You look as though you've seen a ghost?" asked Prentiss.
"Oh, it's nothing, didn't sleep too well last night is all," Spencer replied.
"Well, get some rest, then. It will be a couple of hours before we get there anyway."
As much as Reid tried to rest, his headaches prevented him from doing so. He settled, instead, of going to the darkest area of the plane, which was also, coincidentally, the closest to the coffee machine as well. He avoided the team as much as he could, and was finding it harder to control his headaches, and the symptoms of. Morgan started noticing Spencer acting even more stranger than usual, and as soon as the deplaned, Morgan corned him.
"What is wrong with you, kid? You haven't said much in the past two cases, and I may not be a doctor, but it doesn't take a doctor to tell that you are suffering from some serious headaches there. So what is wrong? You know you can tell me anything," Morgan coaxed Reid.
"N-nothing, Morgan. I mean, well, I have been having some headaches, but the doctors said that there isn't anything wrong. So it must not be that bad, otherwise they would have found something," Spencer reasoned.
"As long as you've had those checked out. I hope, for all our sakes, that they pass."
"I hope so too."
They arrived at the Bloomington Police Department without much fanfare, and went through all of the files regarding the missing girls. Within twenty-four hours, Spencer was able to use his visions to help the last missing girl reunite with her family, and was able to provide closure to the other families. He claimed using his genius IQ and scientific works to find those girls, but he still couldn't admit to his team the real reason as to why he found them in almost record time.
As the team arrived home, Spencer excused himself from participating in their usual bar, citing having headaches and that he would pass this time. Instead of heading home, however, he hailed a cab and took it back to Anya's instead. Anya was waiting patiently for him to come over, anticipating his questions.
"How did I know you would come over here within only two hours of your arrival back in the D.C. area? That is my own intuition, or gift as I have put it, at work," Anya explained.
"How do I make them disappear?" he asked.
"Simple. First, you need to accept them. Your mother has some of the same gifts that you are exhibiting now. NO, I don't mean the schizophrenia. The intuition part is what I mean. Remember she told you during the at Vegas case? You know, the one before you reopened the Riley Jenkins murder case?"
"You don't remember the other boy's name's? The main reason why the team went to Vegas in the first place?"
"This isn't exact. Sometimes, there are what we call 'dead zones'. There is too much often for even the best of us to see."
"The best of us?"
"Yes, your gift is stronger than most, which is why your headaches get so intense. That is the second rule. You need to harness your power, otherwise it could get mistaken for something else. You don't want to end up in a mental hospital like your mother, right?"
"NO! What kind of question is that?"
"Just checking. The third and most important rule is to never talk about it in public and never, ever, rat out on our fellow people. That will only bring you trouble. As long as you remember what I will teach you, you should be fine."
Spencer nodded, still trying to process everything that Anya had just told him. How would the team react to my newly found abilities? Would they accept them? or dismiss them? Would they start to believe he was crazy?Would they try to place him in a mental institution?
"You might want to refrain from telling your friends about your gift. I highly doubt they would be very understanding, especially David Rossi."
"You stated that there are others."
"Yes, and they are often misunderstood. There was once a case in Maine,where a man by the name of John Smith tried to assassinated a politically ambitious man by the last name of Stinson. Ring a bell, there, Spencer?" He nodded. "Almost everyone thought that Johnny was completely insane, but what really happened is that he saw a very bad vision or visions involving Stinson, and decided to stop them from happening. But they eventually blamed it on Johnny's growing brain tumor."
"So they never discovered the truth?"
"NO, they never did. And sometimes it's better that way. Now you must be going home. Your father is going to try to call your house number in about an hour. Have a nice evening."
Spencer left Anya's and went directly home, a short time later, he heard his home phone ring.
"Hi dad. I hear that you're in town. Would you like to meet up with me tomorrow?"
A/N - I was going to call this Spencer's Sixth Sense, but I liked calling it a gift instead. Him being psychic is far better than being insane.
This story can either be perceived as being part of the canon, or as part of my Gideon-Reid storyline. That is up to the reader's interpretation. Reid and Review please.