Endgame
"LAUREN" SPOILERS!
Rating is for REAL swearing.
. . . . .
Chapter 10
Emily is surprised to find Spencer sitting vigil when she wakes up.
"I didn't get to do it in the hospital."
His voice is a strained whisper that clenches her chest. She swallows thickly and waits, even as she pushes herself up and turns to face him.
His eyes hold so much pain when he looks up at her. "You left."
Protective custody or not, it means nothing to this man. He's suffered so much abandonment, that whether or not it was for his good or hers, it still feels like abandonment. It still feels like someone he loves walking away from him.
She knows she has to take a different path. "There's nothing you could have done."
"We could have caught him."
"He'd been caught once before," she points out softly. "There's no guarantee this would be any different."
Awareness sparks in Spencer's gaze, an awareness she doesn't like. "You're going to kill him."
In so many ways, she wonders if he's still a child. She wonders if maybe she just sees him like that. Whatever the reason may be, she's pretty sure he won't understand the drive and motivation. He's a do-gooder. He doesn't take well to violence and hell, if he didn't have to, he wouldn't be carrying a gun. He's like Garcia like that.
Not that she, even for a second, considered asking him to put a bullet in Doyle's skull. She'd never ask that of him.
"It's crossed my mind."
"You're going to."
She searches his face. "Would you blame me?"
There's a beat. Then, "No."
That shocks her.
"I think I would have killed Tobias Henkle."
She chuckles, because she seriously, seriously doubts it, but the sentiment is true and genuine. "You won't have to kill Doyle, Reid."
"Because you will."
"Or Hotch." Because she's damn well not stupid and knows that he can be just as dark and ruthless as she can. They can both play by Doyle's rules and they're willing to for this. She's got enough JTF and CIA in her and she's pretty sure Hotch has his own base knowledge to pull from. It wouldn't surprise her anyway.
Spencer shakes his head. "He deserves to suffer."
They're going to agree to disagree, Emily knows this, but she puts up the argument, hoping they'll get to the bottom of things. She wants the air cleared with Spencer because she wants to feel like she can worry about him again. He's already rubbed his left temple three times since she opened her eyes, but she won't ask about the migraines until she's sure he's willing to tell her about them.
"He broke out once," she reminds him. "Out of North Korea."
"So we put him here." But there's doubt in his voice and it's loud. He knows that's not an option. Part of her hates that he knows.
So she cuts to the chase. "I can't be on the run my whole life."
"But you're so good at it."
She takes the jibe in stride. She's never given him an inch so she certainly doesn't expect pity in return. She and Derek may banter and poke like siblings, but she and Spencer fight like them. "Whether you believe me or not, I'm here. And I'm staying."
"I don't want you here."
And somewhere along the line she's become English royalty, she thinks sarcastically, but she won't tell him that he's fiddling with his sleeve, that his toes are tapping. He's a terrible liar that way. "This is home."
"Then why'd you run?"
"Because he would have killed you. I believe that. There's no doubt in my mind."
"And that's enough?"
"Come on Spencer." She's getting fed up. This is getting childish and repetitive, but she understands the need for each of them to question her. They should all get the chance, she knows that, but she's starting to wonder if it would have been easier to just kill all the birds with one stone. "I wouldn't change that decision for the world." Because it kept them safe and that was all she'd wanted.
He opens his mouth, but she pushes on.
"He'd tracked you. Watched you. Knew about riding the Metro. Knew about the busker you throw money to when you get off at Dupont Circle. He knew your routines, knew your route and knew that I would give up anything to keep you guys safe. He played on that. So I played dirty too."
"You shot off a man's ear."
Her eyes go dark, hard, and the way Spencer recoils she knows they're the eyes of the agent she'd once been. It had taken her years to shed that armour, to open herself up again. She had. To these people. And now they were crucifying her. "I'd do it again."
"Because Doyle doesn't respond well to weakness."
"That too," she admits. "And because it was the best way to keep him away from you. If he knew I was fighting like him, he wouldn't focus on you. He would know I'd walked away."
Because Doyle would believe that they wouldn't take her back. Some things are unforgivable and quite obviously, Doyle believed the darkness that resides within her is one of those things.
"You were the bait. The lure."
"I was." And she would be again. "And I kept him talking."
"You gave us time."
She shrugged because she didn't want that credit. "You were my priority."
He knows it's not him specifically but the sentiment can't be ignored. "Would do you it again?"
"In a heartbeat." She leans forward. "I love you guys. I care about you guys. I will not see anything happen to you. Do you understand that?"
"Mostly." He does. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like that she hid, that she walked away.
"Spencer."
Their eyes lock, his vulnerable and mistrusting, hers sad, pained.
"Do you know what it felt like when I woke up and knew I had to walk away?"
The tears come fast and hard and he's leaning into her. She doesn't mind because she's crying too. She's never had to make a harder decision in her life. She never wants to make one like that again.
They're broken. But they can be fixed and she knows as she hugs Spencer to her, that, at least when it comes to the two of them, they've started.
Thank goodness I've got a good chunk of this written already. I've had no motivation to write in the last couple of days, because I've been trying to hunt down a bloody supervisor. Which is difficult when no one wants to return your e-mails and the professor you want to talk to about it is never in her office. Or feels like it. It's a chore, I've decided. And a pain. And I'm cranky.
But I love this chapter. I wrote a bit of a childish Reid here, but I really like it in this aspect. These were the really fun chapters to write where she's trying to start mending bridges. I hope you guys enjoyed it too!