Chapter Ten: The After
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He's utterly aggravating, and she tells him so. Over and over and over, and she smiles every time. It's a relieved kind of smile, a scared-to-be-happy kind of smile, because it's been two days since he almost left them, and he's still here.
Almost.
He opens his eyes. Watches them with a distracted exhaustion, then closes them again. This is normal, the doctors assure her. It's a slow process.
Slow process alright; she's about ready to smack him awake if he keeps teasing her like this. She's done waiting. Done waiting to see him smile again, done waiting to hear his throaty voice murmuring her name. She wants. Wants to hear him tell her he loves her, he forgives her, he's coming home to her.
But she can't, not yet, so she paces and she clings to his hand—sometimes he even tightens his grip around her palm, just to remind her he's still here—and she tells him how utterly aggravating he is.
And the one thing she does more than anything is to ignore the worried murmurs of the neurologist assigned to him. She can't. She just got him back. Elliott just got him back.
Stop trying to take this away from us, she thinks furiously when the neurologist is doing his usual cautious we're optimistic but there is some damage. It may be nothing.
It may be something.
It may be everything.
Emily's seen those scans. She's seen the ominous black patches that the doctors peer at.
They may be nothing.
When she looks up, he's staring at her. He looks, for a moment, confused, peering around the room, before his eyes shutter closed.
"Come on, you bastard," she says, jabbing his arm. Hazel eyes flicker open again, his mouth quirking into a lopsided kind of smile, and her heart hammers in her chest. "Oh, you can hear me. Hello, you."
The smile lingers as he drifts off again, but this time she lets him go without a battle. He'll get there. Eventually.
.
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Life becomes a snapshot of white-sharp moments. High voices, hurtful voices, pain, a disconnected kind of wistfulness. Emily is there, sometimes. Her ghost is, anyway. Or all the time, and maybe it's him drifting. Elliott is there, always. Even when not physically, he imagines a phantom hand slipping into his, damp candy-scented lips against his cheek, a soft giggle, a whispered come on, Daddy, come read with me. And he tries.
He tries as hard as he can.
But it's like climbing a mountain made of glass with weights on his ankles. Every movement just serves to drag him down more, exhaust him further. Whatever happened to him—because he doesn't know what or when or anything other than a vague memory of Elliott screaming—it's hollowed him out and left him a mockery of himself.
But then.
It clears.
Just a little. Just enough.
And he listens intently from this glass mountain that's become his mind, encasing him within his own head. He listens and he hears.
Daddy beeps too loud. He can't hear the book.
Yes, he can. He's listening carefully. Come on. We're up to here, where my finger is—read along.
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse—am I real, Mama? —yes, keep reading— "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."—now you read a bit.
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. You're supposed to be reading this, El, not me. Daddy doesn't want to hear me read.
He knows the next line. He doesn't remember what left him stranded on this glass mountain, but he remembers this book. Remembers reading it to Elliott, over and over and over, with Emily pretending not to listen. He mouths the words along without his body responding to his prompting— "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
He wouldn't mind being hurt, if it meant being real again.
.
.
On the fourth day, she scares him. Scares herself.
Scares Elliott the worst.
Elliott's finally been discharged. They were worried about her lungs, worried about her breathing, concerned about whether her bruised ribs are restricting her, but finally she's out. She's hyper with the excitement of being in her own clothes, holding her bag, going home. Rambles about her kitten and her bedroom and her favourite cereal—one with enough sugar in it that Emily had banned it from the house when she was 'alive' previously, and she's wanly amused to know that Reid had used her death to sneak it back in and get their child hooked on it.
"Are we going to see Daddy?" she demands from the wheelchair they're making her ride in until leaving the hospital. Fortunately, she seems to enjoy being wheeled out, her knees tucked up and stuffed cat lolling from the edge dangerously. "Is he coming home? Is he gonna sleep all the time at home too? He can have my bed if he wants, it's comfy."
"Daddy's not coming home yet, love," Emily says, bumping Spencer's door open, and he looks up at her and turns white under the mask.
It's, she realizes later, the first time he's actually recognised her. Post-traumatic amnesia is likely, she'd been warned, and she'd assumed this would mean he wouldn't remember the fall.
Apparently, he it also means he doesn't remember that she's alive.
He panics, of course he does. She has time to realize this after, as she hugs her daughter to try and calm her terror at seeing what happens next. Of course he panicked, she thinks then, hugging Elliott close as she girl hiccups into her chest. Confined to a hospital bed, no idea why, and a dead woman walks in. What else would he think?
"Is that going to happen again?" she asks a doctor, when Rossi arrives with a book and a balloon sent by Garcia shaped like SpongeBob, and promptly abandons both of them to cuddle the exhausted Elliott while Emily finds Spencer's doctor. "The…"
"Seizures can be a side-effect of a hypoxic brain injury," the doctor replies, as calmly as if he's not confirming something she's been busy ignoring. "He hasn't exhibited signs of serious neurological damage, that we can tell so far, so it's likely they may abate on their own. Medication can ease them until that time. They're extremely unlikely to be permanent."
"He hasn't spoken yet," Emily says, closing her eyes for a second and seeing her husband trying to get up in a flurry of tubes and wires, his eyes on his daughter, and instead shuddering into a partial-seizure that seemed to take him by surprise just as much as it had them. Elliott had laughed. For a second.
Then she'd screamed.
Give him time, they all say.
Emily's never been patient.
"Do you still want to see Daddy?" she asks Elliott after, and Elliott cringes back into Rossi's arms and says nothing. It feels like a betrayal, but she takes her home.
Neither of them feel strong enough to face their fears quite yet.
.
.
He's not… hallucinating. Either that, or he's had a complete psychotic break, because others are interacting with Emily. He watches and listens and considers it carefully.
The doctors talk with her about his condition, and he listens to that too. Lung trauma, he asserts, from the non-invasive ventilation mask sealed to his mouth and the agony that's his throat from a previous intubation, as well as the deep-seated wet ache in his chest. He's awake when the nurses change the bandages on his side at some point, studying the bullet wound intensely. And he's seen enough bullet wounds to recognise it for what it is. He's awake for an MRI one day, drifting in and out, and he's awake enough to hear snippets of conversation that float from the control booth.
Sensorimotor cortices… hyper-intensity…
Uh oh, he thinks, and wiggles his fingers. They respond, sluggish, and he watches them carefully for the giveaway twitch that comes moments later, working up his arm. Uh oh.
His vision appears intact. His eyesight is clear. His thoughts are… well, he's seeing a dead woman, but apparently so is everyone else, and he's not sure how he feels about that yet.
It's an odd, fractured kind of diagnosis to make, but if he didn't know better he'd say did I drown?
Elliott visits, and she cringes away from him. Which is also worrisome, but he's not exactly in the place to do anything about it, because even just lifting his arm leaves him drained and shaking. The tremors worsen when he's tired, and he doesn't want her to see them.
He examines her too. The bruise on the crook of her elbow where a IV was set. The careful way Emily lifts her to the bed with one arm behind her back and the other hooked under her legs. Rib injuries. CPR?
That's a horrifying, paralysing thought, but there's a raw patch of skin along her jaw where a plastic mask rubbed on a fidgety child, and he knows what it's from, because he has one just like it. And he's beginning to suspect that if he drowned, he drowned for a damn good reason.
Common manifestations of a hypoxic brain injury, he lists one night, when he's alone.
There's one in particular.
There's one he's terrified of.
But he can't face it yet, so he keeps his mouth firmly closed and doesn't say a word.
.
.
Garcia is rambling delightfully about work and her life and Morgan and Kevin, when she stops with an abrupt and tentatively gleeful, "Hey, sleeping handsome. How are you?"
Emily looks up from her book, finding Spencer studying her with the intent kind of focus he's either been lacking for the past week, or hiding from her. The mask is gone, finally, his mouth ringed by a red rawness where it rubbed against his cheek and his face stubbly from where someone had clumsily shaved him. I should have done that, Emily thinks oddly, before her brain kicks into gear and she leans forward to smile reassuringly at him. "Don't freak out," she says, reaching for his hand, and his eyes flick to his ring loose around her finger and widen slightly. "I'm real."
"Real as me," Garcia says with a laugh, on the edge of her seat and seemingly desperate to inch forward further. "Should I get someone?"
Spencer glances at her, coughs, and stammers out a slurred rush of sound. It stops, suddenly, as he winces, bringing his hand to his throat, and then his mouth, horrified.
"Oh," Garcia breathes quietly, and something in Emily that she'd thought was healing since he'd smiled at her sinks as a little lower. "I'll get… someone." She vanishes, head turned away from them, and Emily notes with concern a trembling kind of panic working up her husband's arms.
"Hey," she says, sharply, leaning over and tapping him on the temple. He jolts and looks at her peculiarly, mouth opening before he seems to think better of it and snaps it shut. "Get out of there. Don't panic. You've been sleeping for almost two weeks, everything is going to be a bit weird, okay? Do…" Her words stumble. "Do you know me?"
He stares at her for a long, frozen moment. Nods. His mouth flickers, he lifts his hand to catch hers and run his fingers around the ring, painfully gently. When she goes to pull away, a lump in her throat, her clings on with a weak grip, and brings her hand to his heart. Nods again. Closes his eyes, and she could pretend not to see the tears, but fuck they've kind of earned them.
"You're still here," she breathes, and he nods firmly, eyes flickering back to her face. "Oh Jesus, you scared the fucking shit out of me, don't do that ever, ever again, do you—"
She's not actually sure who leaned into who first, but the kiss is awkward, frantic, and absolutely the best one she's ever had.
"I love you," she gasps into the scratchy skin of his jaw, and feels a laugh rumble in his chest. He nods, pressing his cheek to hers, a silent affirmation. "We're going to be okay."
Another nod.
They are.
.
.
They're careful around him, and he hasn't got the voice to reassure them that he's okay. Ish.
The days grow longer. From snatches of minutes grasped here and there before falling away, to an hour of Emily murmuring endless affirmations of her existence to him, to being able to stand half the morning before crashing. The exhaustion doesn't fade. His silence is prohibitive.
His hands shake too much to hold a pen, and he's so disgusted by his childish attempt to write a message to tell Emily how he's scared he's going to really wake up to her gone again, that he doesn't try again. She brings him books and the first time he edges one open and finds that he can still read, just as easily as ever, he cries from the raw relief of it.
That's not usual either. His emotions are loud, clamouring, cluttered. Close to the surface and impossible to pin down. One minute he's helplessly giddy with love for his wife and daughter, the next he's so frustrated with his inability to be himself that he pulls away from them both and presses his face into his knees so they can't see the anger on his features. Mood swings, he thinks glumly, on a downward spiral he's not overly concerned by, since he'll be manic again within the next hour. Personality changes? Am I different, or is this just a reaction to extreme stress?
It's impossible to tell. Too many confounds. Too many variables. He can't ask anyone, because any concession to his broken voice will draw attention to it.
Garcia is a godsend. She falters once, the first day, and then she blazes into his life with a determined positivity that she only increases whenever he lashes out at her. "Shut up, stop scowling at me, eat your jello," she says, and rams the spoon into his mouth.
Hotch is quiet until the day they're alone. He brings Jack, who doesn't even flinch at the sight of Reid in the bed and happily recounts all the new comic books he's read recently without pausing to breathe unless Hotch gently reminds him. Emily's not there this day, home with Elliott, and Hotch sends his son out with instructions to bring back something 'sugary'. Reid watches him, waiting for what's coming next.
"I'm glad you're back," he says finally, nodding, and Reid knows how much he's not saying in those four simple words. He understands, completely. Stays silent as well as Hotch hands him a file and turns away, letting him choose himself whether he finds out what really happened with Ian Doyle.
He keeps it closed. He knows enough.
Rossi comes in rambling about something unrelated, and slips in a hidden, "Glad you're back, kid. Couldn't handle losing you," in between complaining about the hospital coffee and commenting on the attractiveness of his nurse. Reid knows he doesn't want a reply to that, so he just smiles and looks down at the blankets to hide the kick of emotion in his heart.
JJ brings Henry. The toddler doesn't seem bothered by the unfamiliar bed or room or building, just excited that his Uncle Spence is there and completely willing to submit to being snuggled. JJ doesn't say much, beyond beginning to apologise, and he cuts her off with a shake of his head. He doesn't want an apology from her keeping Emily alive. Not ever. She doesn't seem to understand, but Will looks like he does.
Morgan is… quiet. Hurt, deeply. For the first time since his first awkward attempt at communicating, Reid picks up the notepad the nurses have left for him until he begins to make headway with the Speech Therapist assigned to him.
I'm not dying he writes carefully, and it takes him almost five minutes. And I'm still me. I promise.
Morgan takes it. Reads it. Smiles.
"Yeah, man," he says. "I know. Just… don't scare me like that again, okay? I… I don't know what we'd do without your brain nerding things up around here."
Of course.
And Elliott…
He misses Elliott.
.
.
"No." Elliott clings to her, pressing right against her chest with her arms hugging around her neck. "Don't wanna."
"Want to," Emily corrects automatically, smiling wanly at a nurse. "Stop this, Ellie. How would Daddy feel if he saw this? He doesn't get to go home and see you and he misses you—why are you being like this about visiting him?"
Elliott snuffles wetly, leaving a trail of ick on Emily's shoulder. "Don't wanna," she repeats, so Emily crouches, setting her on her feet and frowning at her.
"Explain your reasoning," she says, channelling Spencer, and Elliott's eyes well up at the reminder.
Shuffling her feet, Elliott peers up at her through the short bangs curling cockily over her eyes. Emily still hasn't quite adjusted to the drastically short haircut her daughter now sports but its… growing on her. "Daddy doesn't talk," she says finally, biting at her lip. "Is cos he's mad at me. I wasn't good."
Emily pauses. She hasn't… with everything that's happening with Spencer and the hospital and…
They haven't talked about those days yet.
And they need to.
"When weren't you good, love?" she asks, aware that people are looking at them strangely, kneeling on the floor of the hospital corridor. Trying to think if she's been acting oddly since getting her home, the past few weeks a blur of hazy misery and little of clarity.
"When your friend took me," Elliott says after a long pause, and Emily's heart skips a beat. "He said I was nasty because I cried and cried and he said Daddy didn't want me and—" She stops, gulping, finishing with a whimpered, "He was nice otherwise, but."
Emily wishes she'd killed him slower.
"That's ridiculous," she says, biting back the sharp anger that Elliott will misconstrue as being aimed at her. "That man hurt Daddy and took you—Daddy and I, we came and got you back. Does that sound like we don't want you?"
Elliott thinks about that for a long moment. "No," she agrees finally, the misery being replaced with a wide smile. "Would you look for Sergio if he comes and takes Sergio away?"
Mouth twitching, Emily can only reply with, "Of course," taking her daughter's hand and leading her into her father's room, now the fear has momentarily slipped away. It'll be back. She hopes Spencer's having a good day, because then maybe they'll be able to chase the fear away for good.
He's not.
Morgan's there, still awkward around the friend he'd prepared to lose, but pushing through. He stands as they walk in, smiling warmly at Elliott. Spencer is hunched over, his gaze moodily locked on the window and hand tracing broken patterns on the blanket. There are books scattered around him, tossed aside in disgust, and he's clearly hit the end of his patience with being locked in a bed.
Elliott stops yammering, hides behind her, right as Spencer looks up and sees Emily with a cautious half-smile. Looks down and sees Elliott, and his face fucking lights up. He gestures her over, almost bouncing on the spot, and Emily is wary. Morgan is smiling.
They're planning something. The sneaky shits are planning something.
Scooping Elliott up and ignoring her muffled no, Mama, she plonks her firmly on the bed and scoots her butt closer to her daddy, ignoring her wide eyes. Spencer holds his hand out, pleadingly, relaxing minutely when Elliott accepts it and curls her hand around two of his fingers with a shy smile.
He gestures Emily closer, tilting his head back, a clear kiss me, and she rolls her eyes at him with a sigh and leans closer. He draws back before their lips touch, grinning cheekily.
"Hi, hello," he rasps, his voice slurred and unfamiliar, and she bursts into tears. Completely pole-axed, unexpected tears, and Elliott whoops. Spencer laughs hoarsely, devolving into ragged coughs that has Morgan pressing water to his mouth.
Through her tears, through the fucking relief that's sweet and overwhelming all at once, she manages a sobbing, "Was that worth it, you bastard?"
He does nothing but laugh and cough, and that's their turning point.
No more falling, not anymore.
.
.
He watches the moon drifting across the bedroom window, on his side on the bed that's been half-empty for far too long. It's a calm kind of night, peaceful, and he's… okay.
Exhausted. But okay.
"Hey." Rolling over, Emily leans against the doorway, her hair damp from the inevitable 'post-bathing Elliott' shower that seems to be a requirement of have a daughter that's part otter. "You looked pretty gone at dinner, you okay?"
"Yeah," he says, holding his hand out to her, still not over this, and she moves forward to crawl onto the bed, robe falling open. "Jus… jus… tired." He winces as the words stumble and trip grossly from his lips, but she doesn't seem to notice or care, just curls her body flush against him and presses their mouths together. "Elliott wanted to chas… shh." He closes his eyes, huffing, feeling the trembling stress begin in his hands and work its way up. "Run. Fuck."
"Stop that," Emily scolds, taking his hand and pulling it close against her chest. "It's not going to go away overnight. Speech therapy takes time."
Time is all he has now. Time to slowly enunciate every word. Time to stammer over a sentence that should take him half a second to verbalize, not a minute. Time to play with his daughter and have to sit down after fifteen minutes because the world begins to tilt and his body begins to tremor and he feels the warning worrying spark beginning in the base of his spine. He'd only pushed that exhaustion once; after coming home from a counselling session with Elliott when she'd finally began to talk about those days. She'd still been shaking, still haunted, and he'd wanted to distract her.
He'd managed to get to the kitchen before the seizure hit, but it was a close thing. He's still not entirely sure if she saw it. But it was a lesson firmly learnt.
"Love you," he says, the two words he's managed to practise over and over and over until his clumsy mouth can shape them perfectly.
"Duh," she responds, kissing him again. Slow and long, and he relaxes into it. The sex that follows is painfully careful, unhurried and steady, and he has to pause three times to catch his breath, but it's utterly perfect. Both on their sides, arching her back tight against him as he judiciously controls his body enough to slide into her tilted hips from behind, mouthing at the back of her neck. She keeps a shoulder cocked back against his chest to judge his heart-rate, her torso twisted, eyes watching his face carefully for any signs of fatigue. Practicalities they've never had to take before, and he feels old and frail, almost, with this new state of things.
A reminder of what he'd lost. What he'd regained. If the tremors and the slurring are the price he pays for this, he'll pay it seven times over.
He's thankful for all the time left to him.
.
.
She's five today, and as Daddy tells her in his funny skippy kind of talking, that means she's got 'responsibilities' now.
Elliott doesn't think that sounds like much fun, and she tells him so. He just laughs at her, which isn't a very nice thing to do to her if she's got responsibilities, but telling him that only makes him laugh harder.
Adults don't seem to take things like being five very seriously.
She's not allowed to get up before the sun this morning, despite knowing that there's presents coming, so she stares out the window until there's a small bit of light meaning it's time.
But—not because she's five, because some things have to happen every day, like this and like brushing your teeth and eating dinner—she picks up her book on the way to her parents' room.
Both her parents. She pauses after pushing the door open a little, peering in and making no noise. As quiet as Sergio. They're still sleeping. Daddy is all curled up tight and close like a ball, Mama with her arms around him.
There's a feeling that comes with seeing them together, a feeling that makes her happy and sad and confused all at once. It starts in her belly and works its way up to her brain, and she wants to see more and less all at once.
"It's because you're happy Mama's home," Daddy had told her slowly, when she told him about this feeling, "but you're also sad that she went away at all. That's what feelings are like, Ellie. They're messy."
Elliott doesn't like messy.
But she likes this.
She creeps closer closer closer, and pushes her nose against Daddy's. He scrunches his mouth up, hmmphing in his sleep. "Daddy," she whispers, earning a sleepy-cranky nuh back. "Daddy. Wake up. I'm five now."
He doesn't. She rolls her eyes. Leans closer. "Daddy!"
"Wake up," Mama mumbles. "She's only gonna get louder."
"Going to," Elliott corrects her, and when Daddy grumbles something that Elliott can't quite understand, she follows up with a sighed, "Enunciate, Daddy."
"You've created a monster," he says, and says that perfectly. She's pretty sure he's faking being asleep. "This is all your fault."
"You helped," Mama replies, opening her eyes and looking over at Elliott, her hair all messy and eyes squinted. "Oh my god, it's not even five am. Elliott, why."
"Because I'm five," she says, obviously. "And because you said I don't get presents until the sun comes up."
Now Daddy opens his eyes, glancing to the window. "The sun doesn't come up for another eighteen minutes," he says, and Mama makes a soft noise that could be a laugh.
She knows that. "I know that," she says, grumpily, scrambling onto the bed and accidentally elbowing him in the tummy. He guhs, and rolls backwards away from her bony bits, letting her slide into the warm between the covers he left. "But we gotta read first, so you can practise."
Just like when she was learning to read, except Daddy can read just fine. It's just his brain gets all cross-wired between his eyes and his mouth and the words come out funny, sometimes.
But she's helping with that. Thrusts the book at him. "Come on," she coaxes, and he takes the book with hands that shake only a little. "Your turn, then my turn. Quick, because presents."
"You should be flattered," Mama says, hooking her arm over Daddy's side and belly and rubbing Elliott's arm. "She's prioritizing you over presents. Egocentric stage, my arse."
"I a-am a high priority," he replies, flipping the book open. "Okay, El. H-here we go. 'There is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.'"
She smiles at Mama, a secret smile just for them, and settles in to listen. When he reads, he hardly stammers at all.
And she never forgets this one small moment.