Inconsequential

Chapter 10

The team trudged back into the BAU, exhausted. They would complete their preliminary reports and then head home early to rest. Tomorrow would afford them a full day of work to get the details down.

"I can't remember the last time I was this tired," said JJ. "Oh, wait, that's not true. It was when Henry had colic for the first three months of his life. You should have seen me then. I was a virtual zombie."

"Did you know that both the CDC and the Pentagon have developed strategies to combat a zombie apocalypse?" offered their walking Wikipedia.

Morgan frowned his disbelief. "Right."

"No, really. All right, maybe they're not actually preparing for zombies, but they have plans in place for if we should face some type of internal threat. But they're filed under 'zombie apocalypse'."

JJ laughed at her friends. "Well, Morgan, I can tell you that zombies do exist, because I was one. For three months. And, Spence…you get entirely too excited about the strangest things."

"Well, I can't exactly relate to the feeling of being a zombie. Guess we lucked out in that regard."

"You sure did, and my little goddaughter is the best little baby in the whole world. But don't tell Henry I said that, okay?"

He smiled. "He'd be jealous? Not my little man. Although Maeve is a bit jealous of how much Nora loves her godmother."

"She is not! Why don't you guys all come over for brunch on Sunday? Will's dying to do some breakfast sausage on his new grill….says it will give it that special flavor. And Henry can't wait to introduce Nora to chocolate chip pancakes."

He smiled. "I'll check with Maeve. She's got a paper she's trying to finish for a deadline. If she's made enough progress, we'd love…."

"Spence!"

He followed JJ's gaze to the doors behind him. The glass was supposed to be impenetrable. They shouldn't have to worry anything coming through. Except a person. Wearing an FBI badge…and the face of John Curtis.

Curtis had already scanned the room and found Alex Blake in the cubicle next to Reid's. He raised his gun and took aim. Reid had time to do nothing except launch himself at Alex, hoping to take both of them down and out of range of the Replicator.

Time slowed, and Reid found himself in mid-air, suspended, able to hear the whine of the bullet as it traveled toward them. Time had slowed so much that the whine fell in pitch until it sounded like a buzzzzz…

He startled to the sound of his alarm. Reid's eyes shot open immediately, verifying that he was not in immediate danger. Not immediate danger. He was home, alone, in his apartment, as he had been every time he'd had some version of this dream over the past several weeks. Each time it began with promise, and seemed an omen of success in his proposed endeavor. And, each time, it ended, unfinished, with the threat of imminent danger. Or, more specifically, his imminent demise.

I can't wait for this to be over. This waiting is as bad as the actual vibrations.

It wasn't just the dreams that were getting to him. Every morning he walked into the BAU and noticed all of the others noticing him…..and then exhaling sighs of relief. The tension was only eased when they were away on a case, and then only because he'd promised Hotch that he wouldn't leave them in the middle of an active investigation. To the others, it always seemed as though the emergence of an active serial killer was keeping their colleague alive. In the most paradoxical way, the death of a victim was directly associated with the life of one of their friends, and vice versa.

Reid began to rethink his decision to stick with the team until Los Alamos was ready to pull the trigger on sending him into the past.

Maybe it would be better for everyone if I was just gone. They could move on, and I would be the only one stuck in this limbo. Which feels a whole lot more like purgatory.

Whether or not he would have actively left the team became a moot point when Reid's phone vibrated. The caller ID was protected. Most of the time that meant the call was coming from Los Alamos. Reid anxiously pressed the call open.

"JJ, has he said anything to you?"

It had been weeks since the 'goodbye', and Reid was still among them. Morgan couldn't help but wonder if his 'little brother' had taken all of their unsolicited advice to heart, and changed his mind.

He'd also noticed a thawing of the unintended cooling off in the relationship between his two colleagues. He recognized it as being good for both of them, but wondered if Reid was now confiding only in JJ.

Not so. She shook her head. "He hasn't said a thing. And, to tell you the truth, I've been kind of afraid to ask."

As much as it had cost her, she'd said she wouldn't fight him on it, and she couldn't very well retract that promise now.

Morgan agreed with her. "I know what you mean. If we ask, and they're just not ready, it seems like we weren't really supporting him in the first place."

"And if we ask and we find out that there's some kind of snag….that maybe he won't be able to go….really, Derek, I don't think I'm good enough at hiding my feelings. He'd know in a second how happy I was."

Dave Rossi demonstrated just how good a profiler he was when he passed by, caught only the final few words from JJ, and knew exactly what they were discussing.

"Is there a chance he won't be going? Has he heard something?"

JJ shrugged. "He hasn't said a thing. And we're afraid to ask him."

Rossi smiled. "What, you don't want him to think you're anxious for him to leave?"

Morgan snorted. "Yeah, right. We're worried he'll think we want to be rid of him."

JJ acknowledged the nonsense of it. "But, seriously, Rossi…do you think we should ask? I know how bad he feels about leaving us, and, God knows, I don't want to hurry him along. But what if something's gone wrong? What if it's postponed indefinitely? He'd be hurting about that, wouldn't he? And he couldn't talk about it."

Morgan agreed. "JJ's right. After everything…..well, if it's postponed….or maybe cancelled altogether…I think he'd have a hard time telling us."

JJ didn't completely agree.

"I think if it was cancelled….if he couldn't go at all….I think he'd tell us. So we'd know that it was over. All it takes is one look at his face to know that he feels terrible putting the team through this long goodbye. He'd want us to know…..wouldn't he?"

In the intervening weeks, JJ had traversed the gap in her relationship with her best friend. Having confided, at last, in Reid, she was no longer trying to convince herself that she was untouched by their cases. She'd vented to Spence more than once during their long plane rides back to Quantico. And she'd seen the conflicting emotions in him. The longing….and the regret. She'd come to realize that he regretted putting the whole team through this extended period of waiting. And he regretted knowing that JJ would, one day, have to vent herself to someone else.

Rossi was the acknowledged voice of experience in the BAU. Now, both JJ and Morgan anxiously awaited his judgment on the situation. He took so long considering that Morgan asked the question again.

"Do you think he'd tell us if it wasn't going to happen? Or do you think we should ask him?"

Rossi stood, looking through the window and into the distance. Finally, he seemed to reach a conclusion.

"Hard to say."

It went on like that for several more weeks, with each other member of the team seeming to be hoping that another member would broach the subject with Reid. Most of them hoped Hotch would assume the responsibility. But his role as unit chief didn't give him jurisdiction over what his agents did on their own time, of their own accord. Considering they were a cadre of people who spent their lives analyzing and addressing human behavior, the team'sreluctance to be direct with Reid confounded even them.

After the long Memorial Day weekend and Reid's begging off attending a barbecue at the LaMontagne household…..not to mention failing, for the first time, to help with one of Rossi's favorite veteran's groups…..JJ had reached her saturation point.

I know it's not a surprise that he's keeping to himself. After all, this has become so awkward, ever since he made his final goodbyes to all of us. But it's not healthy. I can't let this go on and on and on. Henry thinks Spence is mad at him. And poor Spence is just left there, on his own, in his own private limbo. I have to talk to him. I'll figure out a way….

She became determined to pull him aside at her very next opportunity, but struggled with exactly what to say.

Hey, Spence, aren't you ever going to take that trip back into time? Or Hey, Spence….I notice you're still around….what gives?

When the moment actually presented itself, JJ was no more prepared….but much less facetious.

They'd been called out immediately after the long weekend, to a very small town on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Three bodies had been found in a nearby area of marshes, each female, one a known prostitute. The identities of the other two had proven hard to come by, until Alex noted a similarity in their tattoos.

"Not the same subject matter, obviously. But there's a turn of the hand that I see in how this rose was formed….see, it's almost exactly like that vine…..do you see?" she'd asked, as they all studied projections provided by Garcia.

David Rossi was impressed. "This must be the linguist's version of artistic deconstruction…..or something like that."

The others had chuckled at his obvious struggle with the comparison. But they'd also recognized that he was right. The tattoos had clearly been created by the same artist. Which would make their victims easier to identify.

From there, things had moved quickly, as Reid traced the symbolism of their epidermal artworks, and found the common thread. Their reluctant pimp had caved to Rossi's predictions of future losses of 'inventory', should he not assist in identifying their common customer. And, with a combination of good detective work, profiling, and knowledge of the arcane, they'd found and apprehended their unsub.

They arrived back to the BAU in mid-afternoon, under direction from Hotch to complete their preliminaries and then call it a day. None had been able to get much sleep the night before.

He's at it again, noted JJ. For a while, after he'd confessed his plans, Reid had resumed the pattern of completing his work back at his desk In the bullpen. But now he had disappeared again. JJ had seen him climb the stairs and head in the general direction of the round table room. As she finished her final preliminary report, she pushed the files away and decided to seek out her best friend.

You can do it, she tried to psych herself. He won't mind. He'll know you're only worried about him, and trying to look out for his best interests.

As she neared the room, she could see the pile of paperwork in front of him, ignored, as Reid leaned his head on his hand and looked out the window…..clearly engaged in no task other than thinking.

Not wanting to intrude, even on Reid's own private thoughts, JJ knocked on the door jamb before entering the room. It took a second, louder round of knocking to pull his attention back from the distance into which he'd been staring.

"Huh? Oh, hi, JJ."

"Hi yourself. Boy, you were pretty far away. Sure you're back?"

He smiled, that smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Do you need me for something?"

JJ tilted her head, studying him as she approached the table.

"No…...yes."

"No, yes?" He smiled at her, and she couldn't help but return it.

"No, there's nothing urgent. Not about the case, anyway. But…..yes…..I did want to talk to you."

There was a change in his posture that indicated he was on alert.

"Is everything okay? Did something happen? Are you okay?"

Now that she'd committed to the conversation, JJ wasn't quite certain how to get it to proceed. She hesitated, prompting a solicitous response from Reid.

"It's just me, JJ. You can tell me anything. I thought you knew that."

She was about to respond with 'I thought you did, too', when it struck her.

There was something….something in the way he held himself, something in the timbre of his voice…...and, most tellingly, something in his eyes. And suddenly she knew. Immediately, she knew.

JJ threw all effort at subtlety and nuance out the window. This wasn't subject matter for that. She could only get right to the point.

Even before she asked the question, she was certain she knew the answer. But she was totally unable to disentangle the conflicting emotions she was sure his answer would bring.

"Oh, my God, Spence…..has it already happened? Have you already been there?"