When Spencer was five years old, he'd spent a series of idyllic afternoons seated in his mother's lap as she'd read him Troilus and Criseyde, an epic poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. It was her favourite of his major works, and she'd once taught an entire undergraduate course on the subject.
As a rule, Spencer tries very hard not to think about Diana Reid. It requires the utmost caution, not unlike the care and preservation of medieval manuscripts. He lacks faith in his ability to approach things gently, and such valuable artifacts would be degraded by the touch of his dirty hands.
It isn't that he thinks the memories will crumble; despite everything that's faded, she's always vividly illuminated whenever he accidentally catches a glimpse of her. It's Spencer who might fall apart. Openly mourning her death would have left him hopelessly exposed, so he'd glossed over his grief with heroin and unbound his anger instead. It's the only sentiment really safe for him to publicly express when confronted with loss, and he's discovered unexpected volumes of it within himself. Perhaps that's because he is constantly losing.
His rage had been a fledgling thing when he'd left Millburn, but the devoted force-feeding by his first cellmate had let it spread its wings in Florence. It had reached unforseen heights the day his caseworker had sat him down with half-hearted condolences and Spencer was faced with the final results of his ruinous attempt to solve the unsolvable.
Always a thorough investigator, he'd eventually struck upon a way to make it worse.
By the third month of ad seg, his broken emotional machinery was immediately converting almost any sensory input directly into a response on the spectrum between irritation and blinding fury. He'd become intolerably rattled by something as mundane as the radiator clunking to life, and his brain would flush with catecholamines until he hit fight-or-flight over the repetitive abuse of the toilet by his neighbour across the hall. When the felon to his left would start provoking the schizophrenic man to self-harm, the feeling would overpower Spencer more violently than Herzog had managed even in his most tyrannical moods. It would take interminable hours until he'd resurface under the maddening flicker of the cell's fluorescent lighting, hands bruised and throat raw from another profane screaming session. It required longer to suppress the intrusive imagery that had accompanied his unspeakable threats.
Once he was released back to gen pop, he'd tried everything within his means to subdue his temper. The pressure to maintain control only increased his volatility. His explosion on Herzog had been its most spectacular result, but hostility leaks out of him in daily acts of necessary aggression. He seethes at the merciless apparatus of a prison system that produces environments hospitable only to ruthless predators, and his animosity extends towards every BOP employee who dispassionately oversees his devolution. Spencer has lost the credentials to make any claims about the meaning or purpose of justice, but he thinks he might resent the entire concept.
The world he inhabits is no sort of place for Diana Reid, and only the most egregious judicial error could sentence her to occupy the fuming mess of his mind. After sealing her away in Bennington for years on end, Spencer has managed to trap all that remains of his mother somewhere far worse. Knowing how much he'd been hurting her, he had felt a terrible sense of relief at the likelihood she'd forgotten him in the end. In his darker moments, he thinks it would be preferable if the reverse were also true.
His self-restraint disintegrated this morning, so Spencer remembers those afternoons spent reading Chaucer. He recalls the press of his mother's sharp chin against the crown of his head when he'd settled contentedly against her, the warmth of her voice and the oversized sweaters she liked to wear, and the way her long fingers traced the words across well-loved pages as she'd recited them. He's been brought to this place by one particular line of text, and he can still see her hand skimming over it.
"At dulcarnon, right at my wittes ende," his mother had read serenely.
Thanks to Chaucer, the medieval literature professor had lectured to her adoring pupil, being at dulcarnon became a way to describe finding oneself in a state of dilemma or at a loss to proceed. By the seventeenth century it was relatively popular in the discourse of educated circles, but it's since fallen out of common vernacular. Dulcarnon is clever wordplay based on an Arabic phrase that Spencer no longer retains, though he knows it means "two-horned."
Perfectly, impossibly happy in his mother's arms, Spencer had learned that the pair of unappealing options provided by a dilemma are colloquially referred to as its horns. It's of little consequence which one the unfortunate participant chooses, she'd explained while playfully prodding two splayed fingers against his chest. He can't avoid being impaled by the bull.
The lesson had concluded with a pitiless tickling. He flees from the memory before it gores him further.
Cat has made Spencer very familiar with dilemmas, and she's already acquainted him with a version of this evening's game. His first time playing an unwilling matador in the path of an oncoming charge, he'd been facing what is sometimes referred to in the world of criminal justice scholarship as the innocent prisoner's dilemma: the plea deal. Tell the truth at trial and risk the harshest punishment, or lie and accept the lesser penalty.
Studies estimate that anywhere between two and ten percent of prisoners in the United States are wrongfully convicted, and plea bargains likely account for a sizable proportion of those miscarriages of justice. The courts contend that innocent defendants will always choose to fight their cases at trial, but psychological research indicates otherwise when the sentencing differential is significant. The possibility of life in prison had threatened to crush him, and the burden of five-to-ten seemed so naively bearable in comparison.
Spencer hadn't regarded himself as a particularly self-assured man in the past, but he'd had unshakeable faith in his ability to command facts, calculate probabilities, and find solutions. Over the past four years, those skills haven't stopped him from making superlatively terrible judgements. There have been nights where he's lain sleepless in his bunk, mentally rifling through old casefiles while wracked by the anxiety that he may have been overconfident in his profiling ability. Considering the duration of his career, it's statistically unlikely that his conclusions hadn't forced someone else to stare down the raging bull of prosecution, blameless and inescapably fucked by expert testimony. Perhaps he'd managed to fumble a false confession out of Warren Bulwer and then trampled him twice.
Torturous as his stay in ad seg was, at least the punishment was something he'd deserved. He'll never regain the authority required to put anyone in that sort of legal quandary again, and Spencer is now permanently ineligible from innocent games. Both participants in the classic Prisoner's Dilemma are unquestionably guilty, and he's fully qualified to play.
Spencer is slower than he used to be, but he feels like he's barely had a moment to think before JJ tugs at his arm to direct his attention back towards her. She's watching him with wide, concerned eyes.
"Spence—"
"This is very complicated," he interrupts. His voice is still pitching too high, tight with an intensifying sense of fear as he sluggishly achieves comprehension of a simple fact that he's overlooked.
There's nothing easy or obvious about the decision he has to make. This is a dilemma, not simply a predicament. His idiotically bovine reception to Cat's ultimatum is just as backwards as JJ's misplaced certainty that it's an empty threat. Spencer hasn't given any consideration to the other horn.
When he'd revealed his secret, Cat had been disturbingly close to tears at successfully transforming him into an enthusiastic opponent for future play. It seems to imply that she'd appreciate his continued cooperation in that regard. If they work together, the Prisoner's Dilemma offers an equal and minimal punishment to its players. Spencer will face the lawful repercussions of a crime he actually committed. He thinks Cat's penalty must be in leaving the BAU out-of-bounds for the rest of their games.
It looks like the safest choice for everyone who matters to him, and the spectre of Spencer's morality whispers that confession is an ethical necessity.
The unhelpful advice it offers usually ranges between detrimental and suicidal. Choosing honesty and self-sacrifice to protect others is a virtuous act, and that makes it highly suspect. Cat is uninterested in his better impulses. The malingering remnants of his principles almost led to disastrous consequences in this morning's game, and the winning answer was rooted in a purely selfish desire. Her brilliant feint came close enough to success that she might be willing to try it twice.
If her ultimatum is a scheme to gain his cooperation and Cat actually intends to accuse him, Spencer faces the harshest sentence available in the Prisoner's Dilemma. Moreover, she wins the game. He doesn't know what she'll do to reward herself and punish him, but it will be absolutely apocalyptic. Cat is very inventive, and her control over Dalton provided unfettered access to his information—his pitifully short visitors list, every call he'd made, each one of his letters. That means that she has the home addresses of every person he's corresponded with. Current and former members of the BAU, his godsons, Ethan, even his fucking father, just once—he could get any and all of them killed.
If he's responsible for that sort of outcome, he'll abandon any pretenses about minimizing collateral damage. Spencer will play another game, and he knows he'll burn the world to the ground to win it.
By accusing Cat, he puts the BAU in danger of being dragged into the quagmire of investigation and litigation that will follow if she points the finger back at him. JJ and Emily could both see up to fifteen years in federal prison for their current attempt at aiding and abetting him. If he makes a decision to cooperate, the aftermath could include both of them in its body count. Cat gets what she wants either way, and Spencer jeopardizes everything no matter how he chooses.
For all her strength, JJ has a softness that seems indestructibly resilient. Spencer has always loved her for it, along with her incredible determination to maintain their friendship despite their differences and then their distance. Right now, they are her worst qualities. His weaknesses weren't the only ones that Cat had discovered in the letters he's been exchanging. She's used JJ against herself, knowing that she'd reach out for him if it looked like there might be a path of escape. This reckless decision to be sitting with him has placed her directly into two paths of danger.
Spencer isn't a matador at all. Furious, wounded, easily goaded, and prone to violent acts of stupidity—he's the bull. He has no idea how he can avoid maiming JJ now.
"There's nothing complicated about this," she says, still steadfast in her misconceptions and blind to the crisis at hand. She has that look in her eyes that's always made her seem so implicitly reliable, and the warm press of her shoulder is deceptively reassuring.
"It's a gambit; she's bluffing you. She hasn't got any access to the outside world without Wilkins. The BOP are locking her down too tightly to communicate with anyone else she could be working with. She's already lost, Spence."
Think, he berates himself, scrabbling for a solution. Things only lined up this morning because of Connect Four, so JJ's gambit analogy may deserve further analysis. He's woefully out of practice; Ben Williamson doesn't play chess. He lacks the patience to be competent at that type of game, and Spencer wasn't interested in faking losses when his cup was already overflowing with genuine ones.
In chess terminology, a player's pieces on the board are referred to as material, and it's a given that some of it will be traded away during gameplay. Her psychopathy makes Cat regard other people in a similar manner, and today has seen her willfully discarding pawns. She's exchanged Wilkins and Dalton to set up her endgame, and her accomplices in the kidnappings face potential capture. Deliberate sacrifices have to be made if they'll establish a position strong enough to win a match, even when the forfeited pieces have great value.
It hadn't been Spencer's intention to lie at the time, but Cat is catching him in a broken promise. He'd said that he was ready to focus on a singular objective, yet he's totally unwilling to cede any pieces he might have influence over. He stares at JJ and knows that despite his moral tailspin, he doesn't have any material. His value for others extends beyond their utility. Though throwing Nixon under the bus would offer a tempting resolution to the little arsonist's incessant complaints, Spencer wouldn't even be capable of strategically trading away the lives of his criminal associates in Florence.
Another yank at his hand pulls him from his focus, and it's more forceful this time. JJ scans his face fretfully, brow furrowing.
"Declining a gambit doesn't end the game. It happens at the opening of a match," he explains testily. JJ probably thinks he's exhibiting irrational anger. His fear usually manifests itself through aggravation, and he is very afraid.
Refusing the Queen's Gambit conserves his pawns, but only temporarily. There's no way to play chess without risking pieces, and very few paths to victory that don't lose any.
He can't lose any.
Fool's Mate, he considers. It's a notorious pair of blunders that ends the game in two moves, but it's mostly a theoretical checkmate. Only the most clueless amateur could make the decisions necessary to be defeated with that much efficiency. Gideon had opened with it on the jet once, just to see if Spencer would catch him in something so absurd. He still remembers the way Gideon's eyes had crinkled when he'd deliberately taken his second fatal move. They'd reset the board with every chessman still in play, nothing but smiles exchanged between them.
Making the opening move means that Cat is playing White, and the Fool's Mate ends in a win for Black. There's a mirrored version of the play that inverts things, though. It allows White's queen to force a checkmate on Black in three moves, and Spencer is disquieted by the recognition that this is their third game together. Cat's never been certified as a genius, but between the two of them it's painfully obvious who the fool is.
"You're not going to keep playing, Spence. She's toying with you. She wants you obsessing over her and her games the same way she's fixated on you." JJ's using a deliberately slow, level sort of tone with him. He can still hear the stress that suffuses it. "You have to stop this or she wins."
Checkmate derives from the Persian term shah-mat. Shah for king, and mat meaning stupefied, frozen, or at a loss. Having such intimate familiarity with being cornered and out of moves, Spencer sympathizes with the king.
In Chaucer's poem, Criseyde utters her dulcarnon line while mystified by proving the Pythagorean theorem. The math was very simple when he was five, but basic trigonometry seems exponentially more difficult these days. Spencer is a creative thinker, so he's approached his problems from all kinds of angles. Head-on, sideways, backwards, underhandedly, so fucking obtusely—it's never mattered. Things haven't added up correctly in years. He finds himself at a loss far more often than he solves anything.
Some losses are more costly than others. The real dilemma is what he's willing to give up. The calculus that Cat has laid out is unforgiving, but it's designed with a simplicity even he should be able to comprehend.
"Stop thinking whatever you're thinking and listen to me," JJ insists, anxiety lining her face as she jostles him with her shoulder. The deliberate physicality provokes a momentary flare of his temper, but he reminds himself that she's always been a tactile person while he counts out an exhale.
"You're going to follow Fiona's instructions tomorrow. Afterwards, you aren't going back to Florence. Emily's already convinced the BOP to transfer you to a medical facility, and you're going to get treatment and stay out of trouble there while we solve the Ramos case."
As she weaves her fairytale, she clutches at his hand like he might be somehow capable of offering her reassurance. Spencer is unaccustomed to providing comfort, so he just looks at her and her worried, expectant expression.
Spencer doesn't tell her that with Herzog permanently out of the picture, he'd much rather stay in Florence than endure the Bureau of Prisons' mental health facilities. He'd done custodial interviews at federal medical centers in the past, and those experiences had been quite enough. Arguing would be unproductive; his opinions on his incarceration are worthless.
He also doesn't have the heart to dive into what things look like from the opposite side of the law she works so hard to uphold. Even if they did catch a break in the Ramos murder, he had to waive the right to appeal in his plea bargain. He could submit a writ of habeas corpus, but the district and circuit courts are both flooded with them. Jon-Jon waited almost two years for his evidentiary hearing and it's been nearly another without any ruling back from the judge. If the petition wasn't outright dismissed after the wait, JJ would need to provide incontrovertible physical proof to get his sentence vacated based on actual innocence. His plea means that he's guilty until proven otherwise beyond any reasonable doubt, so the evidentiary requirements are far higher than they would have been if he'd taken the case to trial by jury. Not much other than DNA could exonerate him.
Even if they could find the proof and he could just sidestep the murder he's actually responsible for, it's irrelevant. He can't gamble with her freedom for the faint possibility of his own. Spencer can't risk accusing or cooperating. This is an impossible game, and he's being asked to solve the unsolvable.
He frantically scrapes at his dessicated grey matter for anything about the Prisoner's Dilemma that he's overlooked. Unless he and Cat happen to be quantum-entangled, the information he finds is useless.
JJ isn't finished storytelling. She takes an uneasy breath before the narrative continues. "Once you're free, you're going to check yourself into a hospital so that we can get you the help you need. Somewhere close to home," she promises, "where we'll all visit you."
From a foggy corner of his semantic memory, a fact slides back into view. There is, he recalls, a rarely-studied iteration of his current game with Cat called the Optional Prisoner's Dilemma. It's generally used as a hypothetical model for more complex analysis of the evolution of cooperation, or to simulate situations like elections. Subjects are allowed to abstain from participation rather than being forced to make a selection.
JJ's initial reaction was right. He can't play.
It's a very difficult realization, the type that steals all the oxygen from the room. It wouldn't take a trained profiler to see it hit him. The concern on JJ's face intensifies, and the part of his mind that isn't processing his significant revelation knows that he has to proceed with extreme caution. The grip on his hand becomes uncomfortably tight as manicured nails press crescents into his skin.
"You'll do that, right? Agree to go to a hospital?"
She's misunderstood his sudden distress, attributing it to his fear of mental illness. Underneath the oppressive weight of his dread, Spencer faintly acknowledges the underlying threat in her words. JJ had signed the paperwork to become his power of attorney after Hotch had left, like he'd inherited the task from Gideon. Spencer had needed someone he trusted to make medical decisions for him if he'd had a schizophrenic break. After he'd turned thirty and the outcome was unlikely, it was still important paperwork to have in place in the event of an incapacitating injury at work.
She'd go through the process of having him committed if he refused. With the evidence on tape from this morning, it probably wouldn't be difficult to get the court order.
Spencer isn't particularly upset by the concept of living in a psychiatric facility that the BOP doesn't administer. He'd hate it, of course, but it would be a better future than the one currently closing in on him.
"Yeah, I'd do that."
It's an evasion, and JJ doesn't fall for it. Her eyes narrow at the conditional he uses in his word choice. Spencer's fingers are going numb in her constricting hold.
"You would?" she asks sharply. "Like how you'd maybe burn down a building?"
She shakes her head at him, temporarily speechless. He's not sure whether it's from horror at the lines he's already crossed, uncertainty at how much further he'd go, or if it's an objection towards what she may be interpreting as a pathological compulsion to lie. He watches her grappling with something, and she must be trying to reconcile the person next to her with the one she'd known for years. He's had plenty of similar experiences in self-reflection.
"Spencer, I can't imagine how you're feeling right now, but it doesn't matter," she says forcefully. "You aren't allowed to give up. You're not going to choose her. We'll get you help, and you will get better."
The worst things he's done aren't the result of an illness, but the prognosis is hopeless anyway. JJ's misguided impulse to save him is a familiar one. She's trying to cure the incurable, just like he had with his mother. He's learned that miserable lesson, and he won't let her make the same mistake and suffer the disturbingly symmetrical consequences. He doubts women's prisons are much superior to men's facilities.
There is an expanse separating the two of them, so vast that it seems impossible for Spencer to be so physically close to her again. There's no way to cross, and it's clear that JJ recognizes the distance too. There are tears in her eyes.
"No, you will. Maybe it'll take time, but I swear we aren't going to give up on you. Tell me you're going to walk away from this."
It would be an outright lie, and he's very tired of telling them to her. She'd probably see through it anyway.
"You're right. The Nash Equilibrium of the Prisoner's Dilemma is to accuse Cat. It's the only strategy there's no incentive to deviate from after considering my opponent's options. Cooperation risks the worst punishment and can't achieve a positive payoff," he says.
JJ isn't attempting to hide the overt indications of anxiety in her body language, and her microexpressions are uncontrolled. Her degree of frustration with him is nearing anger, and JJ's anger is always threaded with hurt. It makes it hard to look at.
"Stop it," she demands. "Stop lying to me. I need you to promise that you're not going to say anything to the SIS tomorrow, Spence."
Spencer killed a man using something that should have brought him pleasure. Serotonin syndrome is not a kind way to die, but this will undeniably be the cruellest deception of his life. Unlike with Herzog, the guilt is immediately gut-wrenching. Any choice he makes now is going to result in JJ's significant suffering, and all he can do is pick which way he'd prefer to cause damage. Sometime in the very near future, she's going to hate him for this. He'll deserve it.
He can't possibly keep meeting her eyes. Retrieving his tingling hand despite her tenacious grip, he turns away with an involuntary shudder. The little logical piece of himself that isn't asphyxiating on shame knows that his overwhelmed reaction won't be a problem; she's going to be misled by it. It will look like he's still struggling with the dilemma and his regrets, and that only maintains consistency with his earlier behaviour.
Most of him, though, is preoccupied by despair.
No," she says, pressing on his shoulder with a panicked hand. "Look at me. You aren't going to choose Cat Adams. You have to come home. I need you to promise me, Spence."
Spencer takes a series of deliberate, agonizing breaths before he turns to face her. He looks her dead in the eye, and he does what's necessary.
"I promise I won't say anything to the SIS tomorrow. I won't talk," he swears.
It isn't a lie. He watches her scrutinize him for a long moment, and sees the way that relief starts to ease some of the tension from her shoulders when she believes him. It doesn't stop her tears from beginning to fall.
Spencer doesn't look at the necklace she always wears, the one her sister gave her.
With Fool's Mate, a player's own pieces are the real reason the king has nowhere to go. They block him in while simultaneously opening up an easy line to victory for the opponent's queen. He could never blame the BAU for bringing him here today, and he loves JJ and Emily for trying to help. It doesn't mean he can deny the parallel. Spencer sees another one in Gideon's intentional defeat on the jet. He just needs to finish maneuvering his pieces out of the way, and then he'll tip his king over without losing anyone else.
The night they'd met, Cat had taken time to specifically mention two of her victims to him. It was an attempt at intimidation, but it was also because they were her proudest accomplishments. Spencer had already read their files. It took remarkable planning and impressive control—perfect play, really. It's by no means an accident that Alan Dalton is dead today at his own hand, and that gives Cat three in a row.
This will be the first and only time that Spencer loses at Connect Four.
He must look very frightened. JJ reaches out towards him, and her embrace doesn't fit them together in the ominously perfect way he had with Cat. Some of her hair ends up in his mouth when she presses her face into his shoulder. She's soft and warm, though her hold on him is surprisingly strong. His swollen nose picks up the faint scent of very expensive shampoo, familiar once but temporarily forgotten. Spencer has no idea what to do with his hands, which he has frequently used for violent purposes.
"I'm so sorry this happened," she says, muffled against him. His shirt goes taut as her trembling hands collect the fabric on his back in fistfuls. "You should have never been here. I should have figured it out."
Spencer is petrified, perpetually selfish, and critically lacking in self-control, but when he snakes his poisonous arms around JJ he tells himself it's to console her. He rests his cheek against the top of her head and tries to hold his shit together a little while longer.
"You couldn't have known," he says, unable to stop the quiver in his voice. "It was impossible to tell what was actually going on."
He hopes JJ understands that tomorrow. She'll probably be angry with him when she does. The way she's currently shaking indicates that she's swallowing back sobs, so he pats her back clumsily.
"It's going to be okay," she gasps. It will be, he tells himself, at least in the ways that matter most. "You're going to be okay."
This is going to revert into an interview again very shortly, so he doesn't say anything in response. He's too close to the cusp of another breakdown, and it isn't how he'd like to spend his remaining time with her. He's already wasted too much of it being a combative jackass and getting distracted over game theory.
Before he accepts his conclusion, Spencer has an entire night to kill with attempts at solving a paradox. Right now, he concentrates on the miraculous fact that JJ is with him. She still cares. He focuses on her breathing as it slowly levels out and finds it much more pacifying than any of his pointless anger management techniques ever were. His racing heart begins to steady, and some of his perpetual tension eases when she rubs circles on his back. Where her eyes are hidden against his shoulder, his shirt is growing damp.
He's accustomed to his time moving with an agonizing slowness, but their ten minutes evaporate in an instant. When Emily steps back into the cell, something razor-sharp twists inside his chest over the fact that he won't get the same chance to speak openly with her. He's often admired her professional bearing, but he'd have preferred to talk to his friend rather than the FBI.
He clears his throat uncomfortably as JJ pulls away, both of them caught under Emily's somber gaze. JJ's hand seeks him out again on the mattress, and he weaves their fingers back together.
"Okay?" Emily asks.
JJ nods back, wiping at her eyes with her free hand. Emily regards him for an extended moment before she switches the recorder back on.
"I apologize, Dr. Reid." It's Unit Chief Emily Prentiss who says it, though her expression is too soft for her typical interaction with a murderer. "Is it alright if I continue where I left off?"
"Of course," he replies. JJ's thumb rubs along the side of his hand.
"After your interview with the SIS tomorrow, you're being transferred to the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts. You'll receive an assessment and treatment for your mental health, and there's a rehabilitation program for opiate addiction you'll be enrolled in."
There's a pause, and it takes a moment for him to register that she wants a reply. Spencer's consent holding any value to someone in a position of power is a strange novelty, even if it's an empty gesture.
"Okay," he agrees.
There's an eagerness to the nod she gives him that threatens to crack him open.
"Due to Alan Dalton's involvement in many of your behavioural infractions, there's going to be a review and adjustment of your disciplinary transcript. The incident with Warren Bulwer won't come under consideration at your release hearing."
She stops again. Maybe she's wishing they could have a real conversation too.
"Thank you," he offers lamely. He hopes she hasn't damaged her career or wasted useful leverage by fighting for him.
"If our findings in the Ramos case uphold your conviction and the BOP declines to move forward with charges against you for your actions today, your sentence will likely be complete in thirteen months. Do you have any questions for me?"
Nothing he can ask on tape. He needs to clean up the argumentative mess he'd made of the earlier recording for her sake, though.
"You told me you'd take an impact statement? It's important."
It would let him spend more time with her.
"It's getting late," she says. Emily's always been good at hiding it, but she does look tired. "I'll have an agent take it from you tomorrow morning before you speak to your lawyer."
"That's fine," he lies. It's for the best. He might give something away if he talks much more.
"We'll be in touch with the administration at FMC Devens to work out an interview between you and Dr. Lewis if it becomes necessary during our investigation. That should be all for now. Thank you for your time, Dr. Reid."
Emily switches the audio device off, and her remarkable ability to compartmentalize seems to vanish with the red recording light. The iron melts out of her spine, and she chews at her lower lip while regarding him with uncharacteristic uncertainty. The thing coiled in his chest winds tighter.
"It's really good to see you." His voice is strained around the lump in his throat. It's a totally inadequate summary, but at least it's the truth for once.
Her hug is an unexpected and ferocious thing, though the angle while she stands and he remains seated makes it challenging. She bumps against his broken nose hard enough that his vision whites out from the ensuing bolt of pain, but it hardly matters. He's dealt with a lot worse, and he'd happily accept more if it meant he could hold onto Emily a little longer. He rests his chin on her shoulder and forces himself to focus as hard as he can on right now. Her heart is pounding against him, beating out of step with his own. When her hand settles in his hair to cup the back of his head, the rush of warmth he feels is as good as opiates. Spencer tries not to think about the past or the future.
"We'll talk later," she says against his temple. "We'll talk a lot."
He nods into her shoulder, and she squeezes him tightly before pulling away.
They can't linger, he knows. If there's an investigation, she needs the timestamps on the audio and their appearance on hallway cameras to lack discrepancies that might indicate misconduct. JJ's already out on a precipice, and further risk-taking could lead to disaster.
Desperation lances through him as they step towards the exit. Resisting the wave of loss that threatens to sweep aside his resolve, Spencer tries to entrench himself in that angry place he goes to bury his weaknesses.
It doesn't work. Old neural pathways for more complex emotional processing seem to have emerged from hibernation. His eyes are pathetically wet, so he swipes away the tears with his knuckles. The awkward wave goodbye that his hand produces afterwards is a peculiar act of vestigial muscle memory.
Spencer's blurred vision catches the corner of JJ's sad little half-smile at his gesture before the door closes. The automatic lock slams it's bolt in place with suggestive finality. He listens, barely breathing, until even the sound of their footsteps have left him. A guard approaches to double-check the lock and peer at him through the narrow window, then likewise fades into the distance.
Spencer buries his face in his hands, beset by a sudden hollowness as vacant as the hallway. Apart from the faint hum of the overhead lighting, everything is disturbingly quiet. Gen pop is always noisy with the sounds of other men, and the unceasing clamor of ad seg was one of its greater torments. The disconcerting silence is making his skin crawl. His breath hitches in his chest at his intense and irrevocable loneliness.
He's not alone at all. Somewhere, right now, Cat Adams is thinking about him. He feels her attention settle on him the same way he used to sense the burn of Herzog's glare even when his back was turned. Scopaesthesia is unverified parapsychology, but he doesn't particularly care. He's certain that Cat feels it too.
She must be incredibly satisfied with her performance today.
Spencer thinks of a little mouse in the yard, glued on its side, immobilized but for the pitiful heaves of its tiny chest and the twitch of its half-stuck whiskers. He remembers the way it felt underfoot, and wonders why he couldn't see where this was heading from the moment Cat had mentioned it.
Even when he was winning his prizes today, Spencer knew it was an outright defeat. Every step closer to success in Cat's games requires a leap over a line that she always pushes further. He's already an unfathomable distance from where he started, and he won't ever make it back there again. He knows he has to stop moving forward. Spencer is all out of choices.
That's the moral to the story, of course, the one she wanted him to understand so badly that he was forced to vocalize it in the interrogation room. Cat always gives him a choice. She wants to play more games with him, but only if he's the type of man who'll do anything to win. The one he promised he was. Spencer wonders tiredly if it will come as a disappointment when he proves himself a liar one last time.
He doubts it. The inherent challenge of the Prisoner's Dilemma is that it's impossible to know what the other participant will choose. For her, it's child's play. They'd met only once, and she'd seen things in him that an entire team of behavioural analysts hadn't imagined. Cat knew what decisions he'd make when there were fifteen hundred miles between the prison walls that separated them. She didn't need to see him or speak to him once to give him every tool he needed for his monumental self-defeat, and she never checked his heart rate or tracked his pupil dilation while she did it. Cat's better at predictions than he was with a head stuffed full of reliable statistical analysis, and those days are long gone.
Spencer, on the other hand, has charged blindly into every trap she's laid. He couldn't see her hand in the infuriating coincidences or his plague of misfortunes—he only ever saw his own. He didn't interpret Dalton blocking his escapes any differently than a locked door or an electrified fence. He didn't view Hughes as anything more than an opportunist, and then as an opportunity when he wanted more heroin. Spencer misconceived everything he noticed, from the administrative errors to Herzog's broken arm. He misses things. He overlooks details. He makes bad choices.
Right now, it's the only thing he has going for him. He used to be so certain when he'd found his answer, but Spencer's become the type of man who always needs to double-check his math. It's an exercise in futility. Calculating a different answer won't mean it's the right one either.
He'd just really like this to be the wrong one, and he's not done thinking yet.
He might be very soon.
A/N:
Readers, there's no easy way to put this. I've got to go away for a little while.
No, not to prison. An opportunity that 2020 swallowed up is back on my plate for this summer and I'm really excited about it, but it unfortunately means I'm going to need to put this on hiatus for a few months. I'm going to be very busy and have infrequent internet access, so I won't be able to focus on writing during that time.
I will try to get the next chapter out the door before then, but if it isn't posted by the end of June then you'll have to hang in there til the fall. I thought I'd be done this thing a while ago and legitimately had no intent to leave the plot hanging like this...sorry.
I'll keep thinking about Spencer while I'm away, and Spencer will have to keep thinking a little longer too. I'll miss you guys, and I really appreciate those of you who have taken the time to comment. Thank you for all the kind and motivating words!