The man dropped Spencer off a block from the police station telling him to remain until he was found. He made his way there without much trouble, though he almost bumped into several people on the street before he found himself at the police station, where he placed himself into a corner of the building. The area was not very busy though, and no one paid him much mind.

He stayed there for over an hour before JJ and Morgan came out of the police station, silent and thoughtful, off to go and get some food that no one felt like eating. JJ looked back at the station when she heard something, more of an automatic reaction than anything else, and nearly turned away completely before she registered what she had seen. Reid was curled into the building, his hands occasionally jerking against the wall and creating a very dull and trill sort of a thump as a ring on his finger hit the wall. She dropped her purse.

"Spence." She breathed, her mind blank as she saw him curled into the side of the building, his eyes glazed and distant. Abruptly Morgan turned around too. He hadn't heard her, but he had heard the sound of her purse hitting the ground. "JJ, what-" then he saw Reid, and immediately he found himself running forward toward him. Reid's face whipped towards them and a confused expression overtook him. It was clear that he had suffered the same fate as the other victims, and he was twice as confused. Reid shrunk away from the approaching Morgan, who immediately made an effort to control himself. It wouldn't be good for Reid to have a panic attack or something because he couldn't handle himself. JJ (who had taken a second to grab her purse, remembering that there were, in fact, things in there she would have difficulty living without, like her room key) was beside him in only a few more moments. Both stopped mere feet away from Reid and watched him watch them with glazed eyes. JJ sank to the ground, staring at him.

"Spence? Is that you?" He slowly turned his eyes to her, and for a moment, something like clarity shone in his eyes.

"JJ..." and then it was gone. He stopped looking at her and started looking through her.

"Go get the others." Morgan told her in a low tone. "I'll look after him." Knowing better than to argue, JJ headed right back into the station and to the team's conference room.

"JJ, did you and Morgan even leave?" Hotch asked as he heard the telltale click of her heels coming back to the room. JJ ignored the question.

"Spence is outside. Just...sitting right outside. Right now." It was a rare thing that Prentiss, Hotch and Rossi moved so fast in synch, and JJ would have appreciated witnessing it if she hadn't been so preoccupied. When they got back outside, they found that Morgan had not succeeded in managing to get a response out of Reid, who continued to stare through everything, clearly lost in his own mind. Carefully, the others joined Morgan, who was less than a foot away from Reid, though he looked reluctant to move further.

"Reid? Can you hear us?" Hotch asked once he was in position next to Morgan.

"Hear a lot. Screaming and whispering and talking. Hear a lot." His voice was full of preoccupation, a tone they were not unused to hearing from Reid, though he sounded more distant than usual. Reid continued not to look at anyone in particular, though his eyes moved around the semicircle of his friends. It was almost like he sensed they were there, but could not see them.

"Spencer are you okay?" Rossi asked. Reid closed his eyes and remained motionless. Then he opened his eyes, and they looked clear for the first time, clear and innocent as he blinked several times. Then, hesitantly, he reached forward and poked Hotch's nose. Hotch jerked back a bit at the unexpected contact, but this did not deter Reid. Brow now furrowed, Reid moved over and gave JJ the same treatment. Then Emily.

"Everything okay Reid?" Emily asked gently, reaching toward Reid's hand which was just hanging in the air there, while Reid stared at it and her, completely baffled.

"You're real?" he asked, genuinely surprised. He cocked his head and frowned, his tone making him sound impossibly young. "I'm sorry, it can be so hard to tell sometimes, when the assimilation is strong." He turned to Morgan, grabbed his hand, squeezed it. "It isn't your fault." He said. Then he forced himself into a standing position, swaying even as he clutched at the wall beside him. The others all abruptly stood or straightened and did so just before Reid collapsed, falling into himself before bouncing off of the wall and into the team. Rossi and Morgan were the ones to grab him. They tried to call out to him but Reid was long gone. His mind was on another world, a different place with the same people.

...

What you thinking about, Daddy?" Reid asked and snapped his bubblegum.

"My endgame," Hotch sighed.

"I don't have one. Doesn't seem to me that you can really plan for anything in this world. It's all random."

"Like the people you shoot."

"Yup, though it's funny. You're the only one I didn't kill. Everyone else got a bullet first time which is highly improbable," Reid shrugged his shoulders and kicked his feet up on the dash. "Like we were meant to be together. It's what made me laugh so much."

"I remember. I thought you were fucking crazy," Hotch said with a smile.

"I am."

"Whatever, kid. I don't want to drive straight. Give me a winding road to take."

...

"What can I say? You've got me clean and I've reverted to being a germaphobe." Hotch just smiled broadly and squeezed in next to Reid across from JJ who was settling Henry into his high chair and giving him a dinosaur colouring sheet while they waited for dinner.

"What you got there, buddy?" Hotch asked the young boy.

"Dinoswar," Henry held the scribbled over page up for inspection.

"It's a triceratops. They lived during the late Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, around 68 to 66 million years ago in what is now North America. The term Triceratops, which literally means "three-horned face", is derived from the Greek..." Spencer rambled and everyone at the table stared at him including Henry who seemed enamoured with the young man's voice, which petered off as he realised that he was being stared at.

"He's so lifelike," Emily joked and prodded at the young man's cheek which became impossibly redder.

...

A not so good world, but not an unhappy one, where the people were kind or he killed them, where there was a warm feeling and he still had what he should have. But it was different. Some endings aren't meant to be happy.

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They brought Reid into the conference room and laid him on the couch. Reid clung onto Rossi in his pseudo-sleep, causing Rossi to begin muttering in Italian as he tried to get Reid to release him. Reid looked sort of sad in sleep.

"He's going to need a doctor." Hotch said as he studied the light burns on the side of Reid's head.

"We'll have to bring the doctor here though Hotch." Prentiss said. Hotch turned to her. "If he's anything like the others, he'll panic as soon as you mention taking him away to a doctor."

"He'll probably be calmer and easier to question too." JJ added.

"Plus, He'll want to stay here."

"Stay." Reid's hand shot out unexpectedly, grabbing onto Hotch's suit jacket. They all turned to him. His eyes were distant again, but he said the word insistently. "Stay." He tugged hard on the jacket. "Stay here."

"You can stay here Reid." Hotch related. "But now we'll have to find a doctor to make a house call."

This is the first time that I have used anything from another fanfiction, and as promised, I must send you to Hitchin' A Ride by Tifer14 an excellent work, though it is definitely a Hotch/Reid fic. The link will be on my page shortly after this is published. I would like to remind you that I did recieve permission from the authors before I did this, and all of their work will always be shown through the italics as not mine. I have no more claim on them than I do criminal minds.