Chapter 38
Fruit orchard
Somewhere in West Texas
11/22/05
Spencer
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah," Elle replied. "I'm fine Dad."
Gideon stopped and turned back. "Elle?'
"Yeah."
"Don't ever call me dad again." He walked off.
"How do you think he'd feel about Mom?" Elle asked.
"Let me know when you're going to do that." Spencer replied. "So I can, uh, run."
All of a sudden Elle was nervous. "Um Reid, you probably saved my life in there…."
"Probably? I totally saved your life." Spencer chuckled. "And I'm…I'm pretty certain that it was caught on tape."
"You know what you said in there, to Bryer, that…you know what it's like?"
"The guy was a delusional psychotic; I was playing into his fantasy." I cannot do this, Spencer thought. He got up, patting Elle on the knee. "Go to the hospital." He said reassuringly. "I'll…I'll see you there." He needed to talk to someone, and unfortunately that someone was not Elle.
Spencer wended his way around the parked cars and into the orchard until he found a private spot where he could pull out his phone. "Garcia?"
"Hey, very brave junior g-man." She had a knack of sounding just that kind of caring. And of getting right to the point. "How are you holding up?"
"Not…not well." He finally admitted. "First off, Milly and Thom make disarming someone look way too easy."
"Did you ever train with them?"
"No. I may have to rectify that." Spencer sighed. "Were you watching?"
"You know I was. I'm always watching."
"You know how I was able to do that? Because my mother…my mother is a paranoid schizophrenic and I used to talk her down like that. I'd get her to reject he bad voices and listen to the good ones."
"Well, that was good…"
"Did you know that schizophrenia is genetic? It…it usually passes down to male children, who have anywhere from a thirteen to a forty percent chance depending on if one of my grandparents had it too? They're all gone and Mom doesn't remember so I have no way of knowing."
"Oh sweetie…"
His voice was starting to thicken with emotion. "If I do have it I could start manifesting symptoms as young as twenty-five. I could be Bryer in ten years. Morgan asked me once why I left CalTech when we were doing such amazing work there. I left because the Rover project was too slow for me, I didn't have time to see it through. I wanted to do as much good as I could with the gifts I have in the time I had. And I didn't see any reason to…to torment myself by staying that close to Thom and Milly when they were too young."
"Spencer…"
He could feel the tears starting to roll down his cheeks. "What if that was a mistake Garcia? What if I…I wasted the only time I'd ever have with Milly, going across country to be someone else's hero? What if she comes back and she finds me like Bryer?" He wiped at the tears but they wouldn't stop. "What if that's the only way I ever see her again, as a hallucination as my mind falls apart?"
"Spencer, stop." Garcia was quiet and gentle and implacable. "You cannot think this way, all right. You cannot second guess yourself. There is no way you could have known this would happen. Tell me, did Milly know about your Mom, and all of that?"
"Yeah."
"Was she good with your decision to move to DC?"
"She was. She…she always said she was proud of me."
"Then that's all you need to know. It was as much her decision as yours, okay. All you can do is keep moving forward and know, really know, that you made the best decision based on what you knew at the time, all right?"
It was true. They had discussed it, they had all agreed, he wasn't just some selfish monster who wanted to be a hero. He was finally able to sniff back the tears and make them stop, at least for now, "Yeah, all right."
"Now I know, deep in my heart that she is going to come home and she is going to recover from this. And they are going to figure out a test and they are going to test you and they're going to find out that you're fine. And then you and your tribe are going to settle down and make beautiful babies and Auntie Garcia is going to come over and spoil them rotten, all right? Now you just focus on that future and let the past be the past, okay."
"Right." He could do this. Maybe he could do this. "You really are amazing, you know that?"
Garcia purred. "Yes, I know."
53 Glacier Way
Stafford VA
11/23/05
Hotch
By the time they had come home from Texas it had been exceedingly late. Even though Reid performed stunningly well in the field, talking down a psychotic Unsub and getting everyone out in relatively one piece, it was clear that he was still processing on the plane. A heads up from Garcia explained the situation, which was why he'd told Reid not to head back to the city. His go-bag should hold him through the long holiday, and the couch in the basement pulled out into an impressively comfortable bed.
Now it was morning and he awoke to the sucking-slurping sound of Jack having his breakfast. He rolled over and sure enough Haley was resting against a pile of pillows, nursing. "Good morning." He said quietly.
"Good morning."
There was the distinct smell of bacon in the air. "So how is life with teenagers in the house?"
"I'm not sure." Haley replied honestly. "So far Thom's been hiding out in the basement when you're not here. I think he's living off take-out and TV dinners to stay out of our way." The basement had a wet bar with a small fridge and microwave, so this was plausible. "But they want Stephen to have regular meals."
"He's younger and not used to being on his own. They probably want the stability for him. But Thom could be on his own at this point." Hotch decided that being able to laze about in bed for a few and watch his wife and son was pretty much heaven.
"Well Thom and I have been having coffee every morning to check in. Yesterday afternoon he picked up Stephen in the city, and they came home and did all their laundry and went out and picked up everything we'll need for Thanksgiving. Now today they're planning on raking and bagging the leaves, mowing the yard, cleaning out the gutters, cleaning the house…"
Hotch chuckled. "Okay, Reid is not taking care of my honey-do list for me."
"He's planning to. They said they want to help out to say thank you for all the trouble we're going through." Haley laughed gently. "Thom said Spencer really wanted to tell you to go play golf today but he wasn't sure how to say it to his boss."
"I'll take it under advisement. So it's been all clear sailing?"
"Not entirely. Yesterday Thom took his new friend Joey to the library…"
"Joey Grossman. He's enrolled at CalTech in the fall, in the Galois program. That probably makes him a little brother."
"But they were gone five hours. Who spends five hours at a library and comes back with two books?"
"Maybe they went somewhere else, explored DC."
Haley shook her head. "He keeps insisting they just went to the library. They got gas and lunch at the Wawa station, went to the library, and then he picked Stephen up, dropped Joey off and came home. This is not going to work if they're going to lie to us, Aaron."
Aaron considered this. "I don't think it's lying."
"Then what is it?"
"At CalTech they were given a great deal of personal freedom to pursue research wherever it led in exchange for behaving relatively conservatively and maturely for college students."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying I think the answer is downstairs."
Eventually they had to get up, Jack was done and breakfast smelled ready. Sure enough they came downstairs to find Stephen setting the table, Thom scrambling eggs and Spencer in a t-shirt and glasses, sitting with coffee and a very old, extremely thick book, absorbing away. "Is he…" Haley asked.
"Yes, he always reads like that." That was not remarkable. Hotch went for coffee. "Good morning. So you and Joey went to the library yesterday?"
"'Morning. Yes, Sir." Thom answered easily and honestly.
The devil is always in the details, Hotch thought, I learned that from Reid, "Which library?"
"Johns Hopkins Medical Archives."
"Johns Hopkins!" Haley was shocked, "In Baltimore?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"That's two hours from here!"
"One hour and fifty-eight minutes." Spencer said absently, "Depending on traffic."
"Why?" Haley asked.
"'Cause they didn't have the books we needed at Georgetown, or any of the other libraries in DC." Thom replied mildly as he put the eggs on the table. "Hey, brother bear, stop reading." He told Spencer sternly. "There are people coming to the table." Spencer obediently set the book aside.
Hotch just laughed. He had suspected that Thom and Spencer were cut from much the same cloth. Given a gold plated opportunity to drink or debauch or pursue any other vice they would turn it down flat, the Honor Code was that deeply ingrained into their systems. Even with their odd choice of living arrangement they were quite content living quiet lives devoted to research and public service. But when it came to that research, to protecting the public, all bets were off, getting into the car to drive ninety-two miles to pick up a book or taking off your vest to talk down an armed paranoid schizophrenic wasn't worth more than a moments consideration. He, on the other hand, was the boss and had to consider. But when he sat at the head of the table he absently looked at the title of the book Spencer had been reading and his objections dried up. He was never going to rein them in, he couldn't even try. He gave Haley their 'we'll discuss it later' look. "From now on if you take Joey leave a detailed itinerary, and don't take him out of the metro area."
"Yes, Sir," Thom replied easily enough. "Stevie, sit, before you get bacon on your head."
"Stephen."
"Stephen. Sit."
"So, what did you all do for Thanksgiving?' Haley asked as the food started going around.
"We always had dinner at the Langham," Stephen told her. "Sharon didn't like big family dinners and she didn't cook and Dad wanted to give Marta the week-end off."
"I always went with them." Thom added. "Back home Dad would take us all to Sherman's so Mom and my sisters wouldn't have to cook."
"I went home." Spencer admitted. "Mom and I would go to one of the casino buffets."
"So none of you ever had a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner before?" Haley asked.
"No, Ma'am." Thom replied. "But we've been talking about changing up traditions now that we're all in DC."
"I think this would be more like starting one." Spencer pointed out.
"Milly always wanted to do holidays at home." Stephen admitted.
"Sounds like I have kitchen slaves for the week-end." Haley said to her husband.
"Good." Hotch replied, "Because I'm going to go play golf.
.
Some dialogue taken from Criminal Minds 01x09 "Derailed". No copyright infringement intended.