AN: This was cross-posted AO3 soon after Target Rich and prior to Awake (which I can't say gave me very high hopes for the remainder of Reid's hiatus). I certainly hope this won't come to pass, but with Jane Lynch's other obligations preventing her from reappearing year after year, I can't help worrying they're going to "pull a Gideon"- and/or realize it's been nearly a full season since they last emotionally tormented Spencer Reid. Here's to this NOT happening, more scenes with our characters and fewer with unsubs, and, above all, surviving the wait until our favorite genius returns!

AN Pt 2: I haven't written fanfic in ages and I'm still pretty new to this fandom. This was also a part of my NaNoWriMo "novel" (read: haphazard collection of literally anything I wrote this month) and has only been modestly edited.

Death lies on her like an untimely frost,
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

-William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

It was a light, hazy afternoon with a case they were just wrapping up. The unsub had been caught, leaving behind seven victims and countless grieving family members and friends, but they had saved his last- a girl still in high school who'd emerged from his basement cut up and bloody, but alive. They were filling out paperwork, filling in loved ones, getting ready to go home. In other words, the call seemed to come out of nowhere.

Reid had been back for a few weeks from his latest and longest visit to his mother. The team had missed him while he was gone and welcomed him back with open arms, happy to hear that Diana was doing better. None of them, least all Spencer, could have expected how temporary that was.

JJ saw him reach for his phone automatically and watched him out of the corner of her eye. When he frowned at the voice on the end of the line, she looked up, and when his whole body went rigid, she felt the bottom fall out of her stomach.

She knew immediately, even though she could never have expected it. The look in his eyes was…God, it was like when he was looking at Maeve's body, but somehow still worse. There was nothing else it could have been. She was running before she could think properly, and had her arms around him just before he fell.

The cell phone clattered uselessly to the ground in the otherwise silent police station and she felt panic flutter in her heart as Reid's breath begin to hitch. The local officers and detectives were staring numbly at them. She could see the pain and sympathy already forming in their eyes- these were people who knew about devastating phone calls all too well- but right now they were also the last people she wanted Spence to have to be around as he broke down.

Seeing Hotch approaching out of the corner of her eye, she hauled Reid bodily to his feet and pushed him down the first hallway she could see with the promise of a glowing exit sign. He almost collapsed at one point, but she held firm, maneuvering him with a skill that belied the fact he was a head taller than her and was quickly becoming dead weight against her shoulder.

She pushed them through the heavy metal door, Hotch catching it behind her so it closed quietly, and staggered a bit more with him, down a flight of stairs to a cool, dark landing next to another blank slab of a doorway. There, at last, she slid to the ground with him, and let him collapse completely against her chest.

He was muttering, wildly, chest heaving as tears streaked his cheeks. "No- no- Jayge. They called- they said. I can't. She- she-"

"Spence." She had to choke the words over the lump in her throat as she cut him off, squeezing his hand as tight as she could. "I know, Spence. I'm so sorry."

"-She was doing better!" The words came with his first real sob, and with it came a release, the inability to hold the rest back. She felt his fingernails scraping her back through the fabric of her blouse as he clung to her, but didn't flinch or react at all, because he was keening now, horrible noises that pushed a frightened sob from her own mouth as though a hand had physically torn it from her throat.

There was nothing she could say to make this better, nothing she could do to help him beyond sitting on a cold metal staircase holding him like she would hold her children. Losing Maeve had been a stripping away of the dreams he'd finally let himself have, of a future he had already planned just like she had imagined a future with a baby who was never born. But his mother- his mother had been the biggest part of his life for much of it, and the only thing he had held on to for many years. This was worse than Maeve. She knew it, though she couldn't get her head around it. Couldn't imagine how Reid was going to survive this. The notion that he wouldn't, couldn't, was like a dull horror whispering in the furthest corners of her mind.

She couldn't think about that right now. Right now her only option was to do everything in her power for her little brother. She looked up at the sound of a knock on the door they were now standing near, and frowned at it. It only opened to the parking garage. She gave Reid one more tight hug and lowered him so that he was sitting alone before going to answer it.

Hotch was on the other side, his eyes dark with shared grief as he looked past her at his youngest agent on the ground. "I brought the car around" he said quietly, handing her the keys to the SUV they'd driven to their case scene, just an hour away from Quantico. "And told the hotel we'd be staying at least an extra night. You can take him there. The rest of us will come around when we can. Take care of him, JJ."

"Thank you." She whispered. She tried to smile as Hotch leaned over and held her hand, but the gesture was beyond her ability. He dropped the hand and his own gaze at the same time and strode away.

She knelt near Reid, put her hand on his back. He had gone silent now, and when he turned to her, the look in his eyes threatened to destroy her. He was so far gone, looked empty and lost and like a child. A child who just wanted his mother.

"Come on, Spence." she murmured, pushing a soothing, comforting voice past the swell of pain. "We're going back to the hotel. We're going to get out of here and rest."

He didn't object. Not as she stood up and he rose with her, own his own, unsteady legs. Not as she pulled him back close to her and steered him to where the SUV waited. Not as she opened the passenger door, deposited him on the seat, buckled him in, and closed the door again. Not as she got in him next to him, started the engine, and drove off. He didn't say a word.

The journey was silent- painfully so- and by the time they arrived at their destination, the realization that he had dozed off, his mind presumably too overwhelmed to deal with what was being thrown at it, came as a relief. She hated to wake him up, but had little choice.

They made it to his room without encountering anyone. She fished out his wallet and then his key card, and let them both into his room, knowing she would be spending the rest of the day and night there herself. The room was already packed, ready for a last minute departure, and the bed was neatly made when she dropped him into it.

"I don't want to sleep" he whispered as she moved about, leaving him fully clothed but pulling the blankets down from underneath him and then tucking them back over his body. It was the first thing he'd said since the stairwell, and she frowned at the words.

"Spence-"

But he cut her off before she could say more, shaking his head. "I don't want to dream."

She sobbed again at that before she could get a hand over her mouth to smother the sound. Of course. He didn't want to see his mother- not alive and happy, the way he'd left her, not knowing he would never see her again. And certainly not as she was now.

"I don't…" he tried again, but she could see sleep pulling him under, no matter how hard he tried to fight it. Her shoulders were shaking by then, tears spilling down her own face. She drew all her concentration to bringing herself back under control as she lay down next to him, on top of the covers around him.

"I know, Spence. Honey, I know." She was relieved to hear that her voice was only a little hoarse. "But you need to rest; you're exhausted. And I'm going to stay right here with you. You won't be alone."

"You shouldn't…" he was fading fast, almost gone already.

"Don't you dare. We're all going to be with you through every step of this. You hear me?"

He didn't. He had slipped away, none too soon, chest moving gently with soft, even breaths, eyes closed, his fingers entwined with hers.

Knowing he was in too deep a sleep to notice then, she couldn't stop herself from crying more, her free hand pressed against her lips and trembling. Spence had been so happy. All signs had said Diana was on the road to improvement. She had no idea what had happened- probably something like a heart attack, the kind of thing that could happen to anyone at any time- but that didn't really matter. All that mattered was that Diana Reid was gone.

She remembered the days after Emily, after Maeve, of constant worrying about Spence and the desire to bring him back and make him smile again. She knew she wasn't going to see that smile for a long time now.

The fear was still there, dark and cold. This seemed like the one thing Spencer Reid, who had survived so much, wouldn't be able to overcome. But with it came a steely hard determination. Whatever it took, Spence would survive this. Whatever it took, he would get through it, against all odds. He had lost his mother, but he still had his family. An odd collection of siblings and uncles and extended members who they rarely saw anymore, but who were still as close as flesh and blood. Two godsons who did now and would soon think that their Uncle Spence was amazing and brilliant.

They would all make sure he continued to wake up every morning, until he was able to do so on his own again.

She wasn't going anywhere.