(I fixed the formatting issue. I have no idea why it was single-spaced, I did nothing different than I usually did in my posting process)
Author's Note: Before you read the chapter, I just want to say I am utterly blown away so far by the response to 'Eunoia'. Over 150 reviews, 350+ favorites, and 580+ follows. I am so incredibly stunned, humbled, and thankful for your continued support and feedback. I'm so honored so many of you like my little story. I want to thank each one of you individually but that would be a very long author's note - even for me. So, I will settle for two incredibly inadequate words.
Thank you.
"We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print... We lived in the gaps between the stories." -Margaret Atwood, the Handmaid's Tale
"You know, I've never been in a real snowball fight." Spencer commented absently as they lazily swung side by side. The revelation held little weight to him, it was just a small factoid about his life that wasn't entirely worth mentioning, but that he felt like saying nonetheless.
It took him a second to realize that Hermione had stopped swinging altogether and was staring at him in open-mouthed shock. Feeling self conscious under her scrutiny but not sure why, he asked uncomfortably, "What?"
Her mouth closed and surprise receded from her expression, replaced with thoughtfulness. "It's funny… I do believe you know more about me than I know about you."
Spencer frowned, absorbing her statement. "What?" He repeated blankly.
She smiled. "It's funny because we just had a discussion about me keeping secrets from you." She treaded that topic lightly but carefully so as to not reopen the subject too soon. "But then you say something like 'I've never been in a real snowball fight' that I have absolutely no context for." She regarded him shrewdly, but still with a smile. "Spencer… this may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone is a profiler, no matter how smart they are." She said without an ounce of conceit.
He shrugged, feeling oddly shy. "I never thought you were profiling me, I just think…" He shrugged again, hating his redundancy, "It feels like you've always known me. I guess I sometimes forget that you haven't."
At this she smiled softly, then asked, "Spencer, what was your childhood like?"
An innocuous question, but the answer was far from simple. Spencer was silent for a long while, inwardly struggling with the idea of telling her about how he grew up. He was inexplicably, irrationally fearful that knowledge of who he was past would affect her feelings of who he was present.
He felt like the awkward kid who just wanted to look cool in front of the girl he liked.
...he didn't want her pity.
A John Ruskin quote floated not-so-randomly to the forefront of his mind. 'It is better to lose your pride with someone you love than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.'
Resolutely ignoring the implications of that one particular word, he inwardly sighed as he recognized the truth of the quote.
"My mom…" The words left him before he was fully aware he was speaking. "My mom had - has schizophrenia." He couldn't bring himself to look at Hermione as he said this. "My dad left us because he couldn't handle her, I guess. She's a genius… way smarter than me. If she wasn't always so afraid, she could have done amazing things…" He trailed off, silently grieving for a life unlived. "When I was eighteen, I had her committed." He still hadn't completely forgiven himself for that. "I write to her every day."
"You took care of her." Hermione said solemnly.
He nodded, accepting that truth. "I took care of both of us. Someone had to." He winced, disliking the bitter turn of his words, and hurried to add, "I mean, okay, it's true that she wasn't much of a parent… but she was a great teacher. She read to me every night. I know she loved me… loves me. She just didn't really... mother me." He admitted, not unkindly.
"You couldn't be a child if she wasn't your parent." Hermione said gently. There was no judgement or pity on her face but Spencer began to regret his words. He was well aware of his mom's faults, but he was fiercely protective of her.
"But I think you're wrong about her… I think she did do amazing things." The conviction in her voice surprised Spencer, and he glanced at her with a hopeful question in his eyes. She smiled. "Loving someone is an amazing thing… and she clearly loved you. And you are quite amazing, Spencer Reid."
It was exactly what he needed to hear. People had so often criticized his mother for having a mental illness, like it was her fault she was sick or worse, that it made her less of a human being. People focused so much on her mental illness that they completely overlooked what an extraordinary woman she was. An imperfect woman, to be sure, and maybe even a limited woman, but an extraordinary one all same.
He grinned at Hermione, whose own smile brightened. "Thank you." He said, trying to fit all of his feelings into those two forever inadequate words.
She squeezed his hand. "You never told me about school." She mentioned, clearly thinking this was safer ground. But Spencer stiffened before he could control his bodily reaction to some very bad memories and her face flooded with concern.
Spencer sighed deeply and heavily. "I graduated from high school when I was twelve." He finally muttered, eyes fixed firmly at the ground. He didn't really need to say anything else.
Hermione was quiet for awhile. Then she said, "For a few years of my life, I had a relatively normal childhood. But I was advanced in academics and liked to read whereas other children preferred to play." She hesitated, then confessed, "I had little tolerance for people I thought had a lesser intelligence than me." She shook her head, curls flying about her shoulders as she sighed, "I went to a public primary school where I was bullied for being smart, and it reinforced my opinion that I was better than them. I thought they bullied me because they were jealous and so I was justified in looking down on them." She snorted. "I was a stuck up little know-it-all."
Spencer smiled despite himself, imagining a tiny, frizzy-haired, freckle-faced Hermione scowling over a book at mean children, like a little terrier facing down a Rottweiler.
Hermione continued in a tone of detached morbidity, "If God is real, then he must have marked me like Cain, for I got what was coming to me seven times over." She absently rubbed her forearm, then upon seeing Spencer's probing look explained cryptically, "The boarding school I transferred to was apart of a very... closed society. They don't like outsiders." She said shortly. "Once again, I encountered bullies, but they weren't mean to me because I was smart, they were mean because I was born. Those people didn't care how smart I was as long as I was a mud - I mean, as long as I was of low birth." She said bitterly.
She was silent until the bitterness faded into a thoughtful sort of sadness, like the clouds that remain after a storm. Then she spoke in a distant voice, and he knew her mind was not with him in the playground but far away in her past. "Cruelty is the inevitable outcome of someone believing themselves to be superior."
Spencer felt a bone-shaking, blood-boiling revulsion at the thought of what this brilliant and beautiful woman had experienced, for by her body language it was far worse than her words let on.
He managed to keep his reaction inward. He hadn't wanted her pity; he didn't think she would look kindly upon his.
"Low birth?" He decided to focus on that odd part of her explanation. "Did you go to school with kids descended from royalty or something?"
Her nose wrinkled. "Not at all. But many of my peers were born to some very old and powerful families, and they bloody well knew it." She said darkly, but then her voice and face cleared somewhat with nostalgia. "I was luckier than some people of my station. I had two very close friends who were open minded, loyal, and very protective." She laughed in a short burst. "But I spent so much time trying to keep them out of trouble that I didn't have time to worry about petty squabbles with ignorant children. Our problems were far greater than that. We had to grow up so fast..." Her voice trailed off into a melancholy pause.
"What were their names?" Reid asked, curious.
"Ron and Harry," She whispered, and in those names he could hear years of unfathomable intimacy and shared life experiences. The gratefulness was now tinged with an irrational envy. He said that it felt like he had always known Hermione, but the fact was he hadn't, and he really wished he had.
"We still have a lot to learn about each other, huh?" He said.
"Indeed! Like learning that someone hasn't ever been in a snowball fight!" Hermione teased him with a grin. Spencer was glad she was in a better mood, even if it was at his expense. Then she remarked, "Although it seems like we have more things in common than we realized. We both had rather unconventional childhoods."
"Unconventional? I think you mean bad." Spencer joked.
"Unconventional." Hermione said firmly, swatting at his arm.
Spencer didn't argue the terminology further, instead he asked thoughtfully, "Do you think we missed out on anything?"
Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Clearly you did, if you've never been in a snowball fight."
Spencer sighed. "You're never going to let that go, are you?"
"It's a rite of passage!" Hermione insisted.
"And how would you know, Miss Unconventional Childhood?" He retorted.
She opened her mouth, finger poised indignantly in the air, then paused and cringed slightly. "Fair point." She conceded. "I don't have much room to talk, given that probably missed quite a few 'rites of passage' myself."
"What, do you want to draw up lists and compare?" Spencer joked.
Hermione lifted her eyebrows as if she were considering this. "Maybe!" She said with a touch of playful defiance.
Spencer laughed. "No way! That's like writing invitations to come to our pity party... I mean, it's not like we can redo our childhood. So why focus on things we never did; things we'll never do? I'd rather focus on the present." He finished with what he hoped was a charming, romantic smile.
But Hermione didn't seem to be paying attention to his final declaration of carpe diem and was studying him with a expression of concentration and a glint of creativity and determination in her eyes.
Spencer felt oddly suspicious under her keen gaze. "What?" He asked warily.
Her lips curved into a slow, wide smile that was nearly feline and definitely mischievous. She sprang to her feet, easily avoiding the resulting chaotic movement of her swing. She tugged on his hands until he also stood and grinned up at him with a schemer's delight. "You have the next two days off, correct?"
"Yes..." He confirmed, the word coming slow in his confusion.
"Well, I just came up with the perfect way to spend it, but we've got a lot to do so there isn't any time to waste!" She declared, beginning to once again drag him off somewhere.
"What are we going to do?" Spencer asked blankly.
"We're going to experience the childhood we never had!"
Spencer blinked, still utterly baffled. "...Right, okay. And how are we going to do that?"
She replied matter-of-factly, like he should already know the answer. "Well clearly we can't rely on our own life experiences to go about this properly, so we've got to do a bit of research first."
"Which means..." Spencer prompted.
"We're going to the library!"
"For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons;
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."
-T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Author's note: I've been sitting on this little chapter for a few weeks, believing it to be unfinished but unable to add anything to it. And eventually I had to stop pretending that being an author means you control the story, when we all know the story controls itself and I am just the vessel. So I have accepted this chapter as finished, and now I can move on to the next one. It will be a fun one, I promise.
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