Chapter 10

JJ and Emily walked into the sterile white hospital room. They looked onto the bed with white sheets that covered the too pale white broken body. The brokenness in the boy the had never noticed now seemed so clear. So apparent. The lines scarring his upper arm, fresh pink and dark red lines marring skin. Others so faded and pale they almost blended in.

They stared at the person they had failed. The person they had abandoned because they thought that they were going through oh so much. Problems with their families. Marital problems. Planning anniversaries. They had overlooked him. Completely passed him by to solve their own small problems.

They had left him to rot in his own mind.

They sat beside the scared, sad, scarred man. A man who had never gotten a childhood. Growing up to her fast because he had no one there for him. The boy who was terrified that everybody would leave him and was surprised if someone stayed with him. Surprised they cared. The genius that no one could ever understand, could never hope to understand. So why try, it left him alone. Always alone. With no one who would stay with him or for him.

JJ took the hand of the person she considered her little brother. The brother she left behind so that she could further herself and her life barely taking a moment to glance behind herself. Leaving behind the person who made her who she was today. The brother she didn't protect and forgot to help. She had left him in the dust. She hadn't helped him. Hadn't noticed that struggle that must have been so apparent in his eyes. He'd been through so much that he didn't deserve. This was her fault just like Rosalie was.

Emily wiped his hair off his sweaty forehead as she took the seat on the opposite side of Reid. This was her little brother. Her little brother who was lying there pale and barely breathing. The boy who had her back even though she didn't have his. She should have noticed sooner but no Doyle had to come back, taking her focus away. The focus she needed to keep the people she loved alive. She'd should have seen anyway. Should have seen the pain. Should have seen herself echoed in his eyes. In his face. She should have noticed but she was stuck in her own head.

She had cast him aside, trying to keep the team safe and in doing so put Reid in even more danger. This was her own fault. Not for the first time that night Emily wanted to tear her pale skin on her forearm apart with her manicured fingernails.

And the boy laid there. Breathing in and out. Oblivious to the two women in the hospital room with him. Oblivious to the fact he had failed. Oblivious to the fact that people lowered his self esteem so much that he didn't even realize people cared for him. They cared so much for him. He was their glue. Their friend. Their brother.

This man was a friend. A son. A brother and he was an uncle. A hero. He was a broken hero.

The two women stared at their friend. They stared still in shock. With anger at themselves. In sadness for their friend. In hope yet fear.

The genius lay connected to a multitude of machines. An IV drip in his arm. A bag of blood slowly disappearing through the tube into the body lacking its own blood. Because his blood had leaked out of the cuts on his arm onto his bathroom floor. His arms covered in gauze hiding the stitched knife cut lines hidden from sight. The lines Emily had seen pouring blood and JJ could only imagine what it looked like. The handcuffs chaining his hands to the bed for when he woke up on suicide watch. A ventilator on his face because damn it he couldn't even breathe well on his own.

Their friend had cracked. He had broken and shattered. He was only 29. He worked at the BAU for 7 years. He never got his childhood. Gideon and his father both left him. His mom didn't recognize him half the time. He was brutally bullied and the teachers rarely stepped in. He was a genius. An IQ of 187. Maybe higher, his IQ hadn't been tested in years. Hr had given everything he had to helping others. He thought he wasn't enough. Because how could he be enough if people kept leaving. Leaving him, he pushed them away.

To him all of the above were facts. To others they were. All facts except for the last one. How could Spencer Reid not not be enough? He was a candle bringing light to everyone else. But everyone else had forgotten. The longer a candle burns the faster the wick, the life burns up, the faster the wax, the support melts down to a stub eventually to nothing. But no one notices for they are entranced by the light the candle brings. The flame was still burning bright.

They took the light. They used it when needed. They received it yet never gave any back in return.

Once Upon a time…

That's how stories are supposed to start right? Well then, Once Upon a time that boy, that genius that was lying unconscious in that hospital bed had worked hard. He had worked so hard his entire life. He had strived to do good. He was brave. He was intelligent and caring. He made all the good choices. Yet the good choices seemed to have ended up… wrong? It had all backfired. He ended up drowning. Drowning under every decision he had ever made.

Because if it was the right choice why hadn't it worked, was he just simply not good enough? That must be it. So the boy pushed himself to be good enough. He got anthrax and didn't stop working so that he could find the cure for the others. He split off from JJ at the farm because if they caught Hankle he'd be good enough. He truly would.

In return the boy got addicted to something new. Dilaudid. An opiod. A drug. It made him feel good. He wasn't sad, he just wasn't really there. He was floating. But the boy stopped. He had a new label for himself. Addict. He was addicted to drugs. That couldn't be the right choice. He couldn't be selfish.

So the boy stopped. He got clean because if he made the right choices this empty feeling would go away. The bright choices would make him good enough. So the not had tried and tried. He worked hard.

Once upon a time the boy gave up. He stopped trying. He put his affairs in order, slit his wrists, downed some pills. He thought he had finally made the right choice. Peace.

But once again the boy had failed. He had fallen into the voices they lay in his head. He suffocated beneath their heavy weight. That got heavier and heavier every day. The boy was lost. Wandering because there's not much else you can do when you're lost. What else can you do when you have no guide. This boy could never complete his map because no one cared to help him complete one. After all, how do you create a map without knowing where you are?

The women sat beside the boy's bedside, their hands resting on his, trying to give comfort. Trying to give him the peace he craved. The peace he thought he could only discover if he died. Tried giving him comfort and peace ro know death isn't the only way. Because death is final. Family is not.

Families are made, they are created. They end. They start. They break. They're malleable, flexible. Families mandrel peace and mandrel warzone. The eye of the storm. Families are a home.

Waiting for the women back in the waiting room was a brown leather bag that could too reveal the secrets of the doctor with an IQ of 187. The doctor entered the room ushering them out. They left silently one last look to the peaceful face of their little brother.

(A/N So, I'm like kinda grounded, I won't be able to type up the story as often for like the next week or so. Hopefully, I'll have the next chapter up by like the 29th 30th, I should be able to write more after that though. Please R and R.)