I know I promised this a while ago, but at least I got around to it! Thnx for reading! WARNING: Although no slash was intended, rather I was aiming for father-son, it can be read as preslash if preferenced.

Defaced

It didn't seem right, nor did it seem fair. I knew that it would happen, but even I hadn't expected it be so bad. I sighed as I dropped to my knees, something that I still found difficult, and I shuffled the items in my messenger bag until I found what I was looking for. Not worrying about the snow soaking my clothes or getting stains, and dropped even further to the ground and pulled out the sponge. I let out a shaky sigh as I began cleaning the stone in swift motions, rotating from the sponge, the towel, the bowl, and then repeating. As I dunked the sponge back in, I silently wondered if anyone else was at the cemetery on Christmas Eve, but I stopped the thought from progressing into yet another full-blown conversation with myself. Instead, I tried my best to focus on what I was doing.

'Demon; the devil himself; rot in hell; should've been burned; twisted mother; deserving of death.'

Sadly, those were some of the nicer comments graffiti-ed on the gravestone, and I even felt a tear fall from my eye as I read them. They didn't know; they didn't know anything! How could they possibly say such mean and awful things about a dead man, an innocent dead man? By now, I was wiping streams of tears from my cheeks, ignoring the sting that the coldness caused.

I scrubbed faster, harder even. It was starting to hurt my hands, and I noted that they were already turning shades of red. I didn't care though; I just had to get that graffiti off. The longer I stayed on the snowy grass, the longer I scrubbed at the gravestone with my already raw hands, the longer and more icy my tears became. I felt wheezy and weak; my knees and hands were bleeding, and I could no longer see what I was doing. I dropped the chemical-soaked sponge to the ground and started coughing, my tears burning my cheeks as they flowed oh-so naturally. I took a minute to collect myself before propping upright again. Hesitantly, I took hold of the sponge and started going at it again.

'Sponge, towel, bowl. Sponge, towel, bowl. Sponge, towel...Cough.

I finally looked down at my hands and realized that I had been scrubbing extremely hard. Now, instead of just being red, they were covered in small scars that were all bleeding. I threw down the sponge and picked up the water-soaked towel. I hissed as the initial stinging made contact with the fresh chemical wounds, but I quickly wiped as much of the cleaner out of them as possible. After what seemed liked hours but most likely merely minutes, I finally gave up. I threw the sponge back into the bowl and wrapped my hands in the towel.

"I'm sorry, but that's the best I can do," Spencer sighed. Reluctantly accepting defeat, he unsteadily stood from his place. At first, he nearly fell over due to his lack of balance, and he promptly sat back down. He offered a pleading look at the grave before standing back up again, this time much more successfully. I uselessly smiled at the inanimate object. "You always knew how to help me. I'll...I'll be back next year- as always." Without another word, Spencer left the gravesite.

Even as Spencer entered his car, his mind kept racing back to what he had seen written on the dead man's grave. Almost immediately, his hands started shaking. He tried to 'shake' it off, but they only kept getting worse. Spencer tried to wrap his hands around the wheel, but he soon realized that even if his hands weren't shaking, the chemical cuts were making it impossible for him to keep a firm grip. Spencer knew he would most likely get himself into an accident if he tried to drive himself home, so he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number he had in mind. Unfortunately, his shaking hands darted over the wrong numbers at first, so he had to re-type in the digits. This time, he was much more successful, and the call went through.

"Hello?" was the immediate response.

"H-hey Hotch-" Spencer stopped to wipe tears from his eyes, covering it up with a half-hearted cough. "Hey Hotch. C-could you pick me up? I mean, I know it's Christmas Eve, and you probably want to spend time with Jack-"

"Jack went to bed for the night, but Haley's sister still here. I can have Jessica watch him for a little while," Hotch offered. "Reid, where are you?"

"I'm at...I'm at the Virginia Memorial Cemetery. I drove there, but...but I can't drive back," he sniffled.

Hotch pointedly ignored asking any further questions, and instead he chose to nod and mumble, "I'll be there shortly." Spencer didn't even say goodbye before he hung that Hotch was on his way, Spencer curled up in a ball, his hands now wrapped in a soft gaze he had kept in his car, and shivered slightly. He hadn't realized just how cold it had gotten, apparently, and he was now regretting his decision to come to the cemetery the day before Christmas. Not only was it the coldest day in Quantico so far this year, but it was also near the holidays, where, Spencer had realized, he tended to be more vulnerable. 'Damn my childhood,' he sighed. 'This is all clearly some psychological experience at play again; maybe someone I knew died near the holidays. Wait, didn't Uncle Dan die a week before Christmas? No, it's much simpler than that. I killed him, and he's gone now. The guilt alone could be an explanation… '

A banging on his car door sent Spencer's body automatically up, but he relaxed once he saw that it was merely Hotch and not some ghost trying to make contact with him. He sighed as Hotch opened the door to his rowdy old pick-up truck, his eyes glancing down at Spencer's hands. "I-uh, I was scrubbing too hard, apparently," he sniffed. "The chemicals got inside the cuts...I couldn't drive home..." he added weakly, lowering his head so his bangs fell over his face.

Hotch placed his thumb underneath Spencer's chin, feeling stray tears trickle down on it. He wiped them away with his other hand, causing the younger man to flinch backward. 'Oh right, he doesn't like to be touched,' he sighed. Then, out loud, he said, "Why are you here tonight?"

"T...Tobias," Spencer sobbed.

"I thought he was buried in Georgia," Hotch frowned.

"N...No. They had to move him because...some...someone destroyed his grave. They...on the request of a relative who lived in Virginia, reburied him here," Spencer replied.

Hotch only nodded before asking another question. "What chemicals were you using?" He let go of Spencer's face to carefully look over Spencer's hands. The rough-edged scars didn't belong on hands as delicate and graceful as Spencer's. They were obviously created by repeated contact with something rough mixed with a weaker chemical, like cleaning supplies. That thought made Hotch frown. "What were you cleaning?"

"The grave," Spencer admitted. "I just...I had to get it off. I couldn't stand it! It was just sitting there, taunting me with what I did!"

"Spencer, stop it. You didn't kill Tobias, okay? You killed his other personalities, and Tobias mercifully went down with them. You know how devastating a loss of personalities as powerful as Tobias' can be. He would have gone insane anyways. You need to stop beating yourself up for this," Hotch gently said. He ran a hand through Spencer's hair before pulling his subordinate into a hug. Spencer gratefully clung on to the hug before letting Hotch half drag- half walk him to his own car. "We can come back in the morning for it, okay? In the meantime, I want you to stay with Jack and me. I'm sure Jessica wouldn't mind, and Jack already thinks of the BAU as part of his family. Is that okay with you?" he repeated.

"Yeah, I just...I want to lie down," Spencer nodded.

"First, let me properly bandage those cuts, okay?

"I trust you Hotch; you don't have to ask me before you do something," Spencer smiled sadly though his tears. Hotch just nodded as he started the ignition. Before driving away, he turned to his distressed agent, a serious look on his face again.

"You know it'll all work out in the end, right?" Hotch asked, a sort of sadness in his voice.

Spencer wiped another tear from his eye, nodding his head. "Yeah Hotch. I know."

~*Defaced *~

A note: I've had 'chemical cuts' before; they're not fun, but they're not, er, deadly? Well, there it is folks! Thnx for reading!