A.N. I started this before the episode aired, and decided not to alter it, so there are minor differences from what was seen on screen, especially in the first section. It's more of an 'intra-ep' than a 'post-ep', because it felt like it needed just a little something more.
Footprints
JJ hadn't felt this addled since Michael had been a newborn. Briefly, she wondered if she was having a recurrent case of pregnancy brain.
The words wouldn't come together into a sentence, no matter that Emily had just spoken them as one. Her mind would only present them to her in reverse.
Prison. Someone is in prison. For….murder, that's right, for murder. The person…..no. No. No!
She felt the blood drain from her head, and heard the voices begin to fade, her years of experience betraying her by not absorbing the shock. But she also had years of training, and she knew what to do. JJ closed her eyes, and her glottis, and forced the blood back to where it belonged. Her ears picked up the conversation that was in progress around her.
"We don't have enough detail yet. Curiously, there doesn't seem to be much logged into their electronic system yet, so we'll have to get it on the ground," said Emily. "Rossi and Alvez will accompany me, and we'll meet up with our international team in Mexico. The rest of you will stand by. The last we heard from Reid, he was headed to Houston. I may need you to go there. But I won't know until I talk to him."
The unit chief made eye contact with the two men, who nodded and left to gather their things. Garcia ran to her office, determined to make short work of whatever data she could gather, but realizing that the Mexican officials held all the cards. If they didn't upload information, it would remain invisible to her. Tara and Stephen stayed behind in the conference room as JJ followed Emily into the hallway.
"Em…can't I…."
Emily Prentiss shook her head. "We need to keep him calm, JJ. We need to be businesslike about this. You're too upset, and he'll see it in an instant."
"And you're not?"
Emily's eyes became shaded. "Remember, I compartmentalize better than most."
The blonde profiler wasn't having it. "I can get it under control. I just need to see him. I can help him."
This was one of those moments when Emily Prentiss wished the roles of unit chief and sympathetic friend weren't so far apart. But they were, and she had a job to do.
"Then help him. He'll be worried about his mother. Find out what's going on with her, make sure she's taken care of. It will be a major comfort to him, to know that it's you doing it. He trusts his mother to you, and that's saying something."
"But…"
"JJ, I promise, if it looks like you should be there, I'll commandeer another jet and get you down there. But, right now, I need you here. Please."
JJ closed her eyes once again, but the vision of Reid in prison snapped them immediately open.
"All right," she conceded. "Of course, I'll do whatever you want me to do. Just…please….make sure he knows I'm with him. That I believe in him."
Emily gave her old friend a squeeze. "Of course I will. If I have my way, you'll be able to tell him yourself, standing right here, in the BAU."
Fifteen hundred miles away, and nearly a day later, Reid heard someone talking. Something about jimsonweed, and where it was grown. And then he recognized the sound of his own voice. His powerful IQ had beaten him back to reality.
"That's the Reid I know," said the person speaking in the voice of Emily Prentiss.
Emily?!
"Emily? What…..?"
Another voice joined in, and Reid whipped his head to the side to look for its source. But the movement triggered a jack-hammerlike pounding inside his cranium, and his hands went instinctively to his skull.
That second voice sounded more concerned now.
"Spencer? Here, sit down."
Gentle hands guided the young man to a bench, and Reid finally looked up to see their owner.
"Rossi?"
The senior profiler sat down beside his colleague, staring fixedly at the disheveled features of the young genius, probing the depths of his eyes, looking for… there!
Rossi looked up to Prentiss. "The fog is lifting. That means they'll want to interrogate him. We need to grease the wheels a little here." A sense of urgency infiltrating his tone.
The Mexican police were planning to transfer Reid to the maximum, aptly named, 'El Diablo' prison, and the FBI wanted to get their agent out of the country before that could happen. At the moment, the wheels of bureaucracy were grinding far too slowly for Rossi's liking.
"I'll see what I can do." Prentiss left the holding cell, already tapping numbers into her cell phone.
Rossi turned once again to the young man next to him, who was still holding his temples, his brow furrowed in pain. The senior agent began to wonder if Reid had suffered more trauma than they already knew, and he stood up to inspect the top of Reid's head, making an ineffectual attempt at pushing aside the unruly hair. Giving up, he had to ask for help.
"I'm going to touch all over your head. Tell me if anything hurts."
"It already hurts. My whole head hurts." Not understanding, and frustrated. Still not quite there.
Later, Reid would be able to expound on how brain function returns in pieces. For him, eidetic memory was the first to reemerge, followed ever more slowly by recognition, and then orientation, and then true memory, and then understanding.
But, for now, he could only live it. He'd barely recognized his two old friends, hadn't quite remembered his newer colleague, and couldn't recall that two members of the international team had been in his cell a few hours ago. The nuances of normal conversation were lost on him. He could only live in the concrete reality of feeling dirty, and exhausted, and in pain, not quite able to focus his eyes, let alone his brain…..which felt like it was trying to pound its way out of his skull.
Rossi completed his inspection, finding no overt evidence of trauma. But that didn't rule out a concussion. Still, he was loath to request any further medical evaluation, not wanting to hold up the extradition, should they receive that most desperately desired permission. He made a decision to defer any further medical care to the US.
"Do you want me to ask them to give you something for the pain?"
Reid started to shake his head, and then had to grab it again. "No. Just…."
As he tilted to the side, Rossi thought he was losing his balance, and made to grab him. But Reid simply swung one leg over the bench and then laid himself back along the length of it, eyes closed. Rossi realized he was trying to sleep it off, and patted his knee.
"Good idea."
He left in search of Prentiss, praying that she would have good news.
"You two are close, aren't you."
A statement, not a question. Walker had already witnessed the affection between his co-workers.
JJ nodded. "We've been through a lot. Somehow, in the process, we became best friends."
The look on Walker's face made her laugh, in spite of the situation.
"I know. Who'da thunk, right? We probably couldn't be more different, but….we get each other, I guess. He definitely gets me."
And he's not afraid to call me out on myself.
But she wasn't quite familiar enough with her new teammate to share that.
Walker smiled. "I don't know Spencer very well yet, but he seems like a pretty good guy."
JJ nodded. "The best." She stared off for a moment. "People don't realize this about him, because all they ever hear about is his brain. But he's strong. He's so strong…."
Her voice trailed off as her mind presented her a series of images of her best friend. Reid, kneeling beside a partially dug grave deep in the Georgia woods. Reid, wearing the pain-filled grimace he'd tried so hard to suppress for months after a bullet shattered his knee. Reid's arms pulling Alex Blake out of danger, even as his neck absorbed the bullet meant for her.
But the most striking image, the one that came to mind so often, and the one that always moved her the most, was that of Reid, her dearest friend, and the kindest man in the world, making the daily, monumental effort of putting one foot in front of the other as he'd tried to come back from losing the woman he'd loved. It had been the effort of resurrection, of coming back to life again, of wanting to, in the face of utter despair. And he'd done it.
To one degree or another, she'd shared each of those events with him. And despite her most sincere, most fervent desire to do so, she'd been unable to help him carry any of the load. Each burden had been uniquely his to bear. All she'd been able to do was to walk along side him, and hope to make him feel less alone. She wondered what path they would be walking together this time. In the dim future, she couldn't see. All she could be certain of, was that there would be two sets of footprints.
Walker smiled encouragingly, recognizing the position of reverie, and the look of worry and concern creasing her features.
"He'll be all right. He's got good friends on his side."
She gave a half smile in return, not at all reassured.
"He's got such a big heart. I just hope it doesn't end up broken."
By the time they boarded the jet, Reid had recovered enough of himself to be relieved that they were leaving Mexico. But he'd also recovered enough sensibility to experience a nearly crushing despair at his situation. He was mortified to have had to be handcuffed in front of, and even by, his friends. He felt foolish at having gotten himself into such an unthinkable situation. And while he might have done so if it had only been Rossi and Prentiss, he couldn't, for the life of him, let down in the presence of the virtual strangers from their international unit, nor even Luke Alvez.
Every fiber in his body longed to relax into a posture of sleep, his mind into the escape of oblivion. The blood vessels in his head reminded him, with each pulsation, that they were angry. But he couldn't rest. Couldn't talk it out with Emily. Couldn't cry. He could only sit, alone, staring out into the ether, seeing nothing but the clouded unknown of his future.
It was Luke who'd put the handcuffs back on, before they left the jet. Neither Rossi nor Emily had had the heart for it. Riding together with him as they traveled back to Quantico, his two old friends had tried to make small talk, only to conclude that there was nothing 'small' to talk about. So they fell back on encouraging him that he would be well represented, and at least he was back in the States, and probably the cuffs could come off after the arraignment, and…..
Reid heard nothing. His brain had become fully operational again, and it was busy lodging recriminations at him.
You fool! You consummate fool! How could you let yourself be in a situation like this? Because you know better than people who've dedicated their entire lives to helping people like your mother? Because the rules don't apply to you, if you 'mean well'? You idiot!
He could almost hear his father's voice berating him.
Such hubris! Well, I guess you're not as smart as you think, are you? And who, exactly do you think is going to look after your mother now?! You won't have a job, you can't pay a nurse. Do you think your friend JJ Is going to adopt her? I have a fool for a son!
As frightened as he should have been for himself, he was actually more frightened for his mother, because he'd left Mexico without the very thing he'd gone there for. It wouldn't matter, now, whether Rosa's concoction was effective, because he no longer had any of it to give to Diana. And there was no longer a Rosa to make more, because Rosa had been murdered, and…
The flashback came without warning. He was lying on a floor, his head turned to the side, looking into the unseeing eyes of Rosa Medina. And there was….there was…..
His brain wouldn't capture it. Something or someone else had been a part of that scene, but the image eluded him. He wasn't fool enough to think he would escape without more flashbacks. Perversely, he wished for them, even knowing they might bring him to relive a moment of terror.
They might be my only way out.
Reid hadn't been able to make eye contact as Alvez had replaced his handcuffs. But he'd managed to mumble a word of thanks when Luke had thrown an FBI windbreaker over his linked hands. Now, riding the elevator to the sixth floor, he cringed Inwardly, to think of what the others were about to see when he exited into the BAU.
The elevator doors opened, and Reid's eyes went everywhere but to his friends, all standing in wait for him. His gaze took in the bullpen, and the desk he would no longer be sitting at. The mezzanine windows, and the view he would no longer look out toward. The busyness of the Bureau in action, of his fellow agents working in service of others. Of a life fighting the very kind of crime of which he was accused. All lost to him now, as were the people in front of him.
Finally, with nowhere else to lay them, his eyes fell on his friends. The new ones, Tara and Stephen. The barely contained Garcia. And, finally, his gaze fell on the one he'd been most sorry about disappointing. His BFF. JJ.
She moved ahead of the others, arms opened for a hug. He closed his eyes in sorrow when he realized he couldn't return it, and she did the same. The familiar comfort of her embrace almost undid him, and he had to fight for control. She felt it, and released him.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice hoarse. About the handcuffs, about the secrets…..about everything.
She'd let go of his shoulders, but was still holding tightly to his forearms, trying to ignore the icy feel of the metal at his wrists.
"It will be okay, Spence. We'll find a way to make it okay. You're not alone in this anymore. Can you please remember that? You're not alone. And...just…no more secrets, all right? Please?"
She'd kept talking until she'd seen his control return. She'd given him enough time to recover his voice, and the fact that she'd known to do so, and that she'd understood his embarrassment, and his isolation, and the fact that she wasn't going to let him suffer it...just that much connection between them had given him the assurance he'd so desperately needed. He was no longer alone.
He nodded. "No more secrets."
Garcia moved in for her moment, and JJ stepped away. But Reid had entrusted his best friend with his mother, and he had to know.
"How's my mom?"
Both women spoke at once, Garcia happily announcing the food she'd had delivered, and JJ telling him she'd visited herself, as promised.
"She's okay. I even brought the boys by, and she loved it."
Not mentioning that Diana had mistaken them for Spencer's playmates. She'd even mistaken Henry for Reid at one point, when the youngster had put his glasses on to show off his burgeoning reading skills.
Reid narrowed his eyes at his best friend, almost certain she was holding something back. But whatever it was, it wasn't something he was about to get into with an audience, and certainly not in his current situation. He could only nod, and respond, "Who wouldn't?"
Moments later, before any of them were ready, it was time for Reid to be brought for arraignment. Emily looked her apology to each of her team and, placing a hand on Reid's back, pushed him gently in the direction of the door. She could only hope they were headed off for a formality, and that he would be released on his own recognizance. But it was a murder charge, and there had been drugs, and his memory for the events was shaky at best. She could hope for better, but she was steeling herself for worse. She hoped her team knew to do the same.
JJ grabbed Reid's arm for one more reassuring squeeze, and then he was gone. She stood there, staring at the space where he'd been, remembering the look of his usually erect shoulders pulled forward into a defeated slump by those repulsive handcuffs.
Oh, Spence!
Her heart was broken for him. For the situation, for whatever he'd already been through, for whatever lie ahead. For the burden she knew he carried so heavily, as he watched the only person who'd loved him for his whole life slip away. For the very idea that he might not be able to be present to her, at the end.
She'd already had pushback from Will about the amount of time she was spending taking care of someone else's family. But Reid was family too, and, in the moment, JJ vowed to herself that she would see whatever needed to be seen, right through to the end, whatever that meant. She would walk whatever path needed to be walked, in whatever direction it took them. And she was pretty sure they would have plenty of company along the way.
The image reminded her of a modern parable, the one where the single set of footprints doesn't mean the traveler has been abandoned. They mean he's been carried.
Reid had embarked on an unfamiliar, dangerous journey, and JJ wasn't at all confident she could carry him on her own, no matter how badly she might want to. But she was quite certain she would never have to. This time, she was sure, they weren't on the path alone.
This time, the footprints would be many, and firm, and placed side by side, in solidarity, the burden shared among many. Just like a team.