Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds or any of its characters. I do however own this story, I wrote it and I do NOT give permission for anyone to post it anywhere else. If you want to share it post a link.

Hotch actually looked haggard when he called Spencer into his office the day after they'd arrived back at Quantico. Spencer had brought up the consults he'd already completed that morning and shut the door behind him wondering what Hotch wanted. He'd been disappointed so many times that he didn't even hope it had something to do with their soulmate status or any other personal reason but he couldn't think of a reason Hotch would be calling him up here to reprimand him.

"The LDSK case in Des Plaines, Illinois, why didn't you include your injuries in your report?" Aaron asked.

"They weren't inflicted by the unsub so I didn't think that they were relevant to the casefile," Spencer answered calmly.

"I broke your ribs and you brushed it off as a minor injury," Aaron said severely.

"I did have them checked out professionally, if that's any consolation to you,"

"It is not!" Aaron said heatedly.

He closed his eyes and visibly calmed himself. "You should have included the injuries in your report."

"It would have ruined your career, and potentially hastened the destruction of your marriage just because you kicked a little harder than you intended to in the heat of the moment? It wasn't worth it. I know you didn't intend to injure me and it would have been a lot worse if Dowd noticed you pulling your kicks," Spencer asked.

"You told me I kicked like a nine -year-old girl," Hotch replied unimpressed.

"Yeah! The last time my ribs were fractured before that was by a pack of nine-year-old girls. I was six and had just been placed into their class a couple of weeks after the start of the year. Little girls in their solid leather buckle-up shoes kick hard," Spencer replied candidly.

Aaron closed his eyes in grief, how much had this young genius suffered for being more intelligent than everyone around him.

"Spencer, I'm sorry I hurt you," he said earnestly.

"Yeah, I knew you would be sorry, but you really don't need to feel guilty for saving both our lives as well as all the other hostages," Spencer replied honestly.

Now he knew why Hotch looked so haggard, the pain in his chest from physically hurting his soul mate had finally come to roost. If it was anything like the soul pain from back then it hurt a lot more than cracked ribs and it would continue to hurt until Hotch forgave himself. For a moment Spencer actually felt sorry for the older man.

-o0o-

Garcia was highly stressed as her thirtieth birthday approached. She wasn't sure if she wanted a name to appear or not, on one hand she wanted the magic of a soul mate and definitely believed in relationships that were fated to be and on the other hand she didn't cope well with change and didn't want to deal with it. The idea that she might receive a name on her chest and not be able to find her soulmate didn't even occur to any of them given her ability to find the information they needed for their cases. It would be a misuse of Bureau assets but nobody was naive enough to believe that would stop their computer goddess.

"With a bit of luck it will be somebody you already know," Morgan said.

"No you should hope that if you're unlucky enough to have a name appear, it is not someone you already know," Spencer said.

"Spence, that's a terrible thing to say," JJ scolded.

"Yeah, Pretty Boy I know you don't believe in soul mates but to wish that your friend never meets the perfect man for her is cruel," Morgan said angrily.

Spencer looked incredulously at his friends' naivety. "I didn't say that I hope she never meets him or her, just that it will be better for her if it isn't someone she already knows well. Garcia is single she has been for a while now and she hasn't been waiting for her birthday to see if she was a soulmate before starting a relationship. She has been open to the idea of dating and falling in love. It's not something she keeps quiet about so all her friends know that about her. In that case, if her soul mate is someone she knows then why wouldn't they have already asked her out?" Spencer asked. "It shouldn't have taken a name appearing on one of their chests for them to know they have some sort of emotional compatibility. If they ask her now after they find out she thinks they're her soulmate, she will never know if they were really interested in getting to know her because they like her personality and are attracted to her or if they've just bought into all the stupid soul mate hype and if they're already over thirty she's going to be hurt that they're weren't interested in being more than friends before now because they've known she was their soulmate for a while now."

"Spencer's right. I hate to say it but finding out your soul mate's name isn't always a happy occasion. And it provides a weakness others can use against you if they know or think that they're your soul mate," Emily said sadly.

"What do you mean?" Garcia asked.

"When I was at Interpol we would attempt to find out the name written over our highest profile targets' hearts if there was one, we'd search carefully through their lives for someone who matches the name, and if they hadn't met their soul mates we would use their names as our cover identities to try to find a way in and build trust more quickly," Emily explained.

"That's so wrong," Garcia said.

"That's dangerous, just because their soul mate is not part of their lives you cannot be sure they've never met. You could be made immediately," Spencer said. "There's also the risk that if they haven't met their true soulmate and their soulmate dies, you'll be made when the name on their chest fades."

"I think that if their soulmate isn't part of their lives they'd be relieved to find out that they might not have been their soulmate after all. They would feel like the universe was giving them a second chance, and you're going to break their hearts all over again," Penelope said sighing.

"You think that it is more wrong than letting an arm's dealer arm the IRA or half a dozen other terrorist group with military grade weapons that they're going to use on civilian targets?" Morgan asked her.

"No but soul mates are personal and magical and precious and not tools to be used against someone," Garcia protested half-heartedly.

"And the children's and other people's lives saved by getting those weapons out of the hands of the wrong people are also precious," Emily said.

"You're right but it still feels icky," Garcia agreed reluctantly.

"And it can backfire, deep cover investigations can go on for years, and if you're not careful you can lose yourself in, your new identity, or you and your handler might forget you need to be pulled out before your 30th birthday" Emily said.

"What happened?" Morgan asked sympathetically.

"They chose me because I was his physical type, they didn't tell me that my cover name was his soul mate's name, looking back with what happened my handler might not have known but the co-incidence of that is highly unlikely. He was a high ranking member of the IRA and a very successful arms dealer for several other terrorist organizations so it was a high priority mission. I approached him with a business proposition but we soon became lovers. It was my first long term assignment and I got lost in my cover identity and fell in love. I hadn't betrayed my team even after he said he loved me and I told him I loved him but that was because I didn't have any information that I felt would damage him to share, he was slow to trust. I was able to identify some of the smaller players in his organization and amongst his rivals and hand over evidence against them but Interpol wanted to get them all in one clean sweep. The day I first saw the name over his heart was the day he proposed to me. I wanted to believe that I was his soulmate I wanted to be that woman more than I've ever wanted to be Emily Prentiss, I wanted to say yes that I'd marry him more than anything I'd ever wanted before. I nearly did, nearly turned my back on my training, my friends and colleagues, my family, everything I believed in, but then he introduced me to his son. The son that due to his lifestyle he couldn't even publicly acknowledge. The rest of the world thought he was his housekeeper's son to keep him from being assassinated or used against him, even Interpol hadn't been able to find the truth about the child. I couldn't help but love him too. He was a beautiful happy innocent four year old boy but he was surrounded always by servants and guards. He had no friends his own age he almost never left the compound was kept in hiding for his own safety and so he couldn't be used against Ian and Ian was planning on bringing him up to take over for him eventually. He would have spent his whole life not truly living and always having to look over his shoulder due to his father. I knew that any children that we had would be subjected to the same isolation and constant security and that I would be too, I couldn't bear the thought of it.

I found the evidence they needed and Ian was arrested. He didn't receive a public trial but was quietly sentenced to life in a political prison out of the reach of the IRA where he'd be interrogated. I got the kid and the housekeeper away quietly and they changed their names and went into hiding, that was the end of it. But three years later I turned thirty and Ian's name appeared over my heart. I contacted my former boss in a panic but he was able to confirm that the name over his heart is still that of my cover identity, not Emily Prentiss. So I'm safe, but that doesn't change the fact that my soul mate is an IRA terrorist who I will never see again because I put him in prison for the rest of his life. A man I've come to despise as much as I once loved him, and I have to see his name written on my skin forever and I will never truly be trusted by interpol or any other antiterrorism taskforce again because of it."

By the end of the story JJ and Garcia were hugging her, and Morgan looked devastated and Reid sympathetic.

"That would explain why you would hate the idea of soul mates but it's Reid that can't stand even the mention of them," Garcia said.

Spencer got up, grabbed his bag and walked out even though the workday hadn't finished.

"I don't know what's up with him, whatever it is he refuses to discuss it. It's probably something intensely personal so I don't feel that we should pry, he'll tell us if he wants to," Emily said.

"His parents were soul mates and it didn't stop his Dad from walking out on them when he was a kid, his Mom never got over it," Morgan offered. He also knew that Spencer believed he had been rejected by his soul mate, but he'd never told the others.

-o0o-

When Spencer began to get headaches he tried the things that had always worked for him in the past. He had the oculist straighten out his glasses frames and became more meticulous about keeping them clean. Then he saw the optometrist and updated his contact lens prescription. When that didn't work either and he realised how photosensitive his eyes were becoming he started wearing sunglasses as much as possible. When that didn't work he tried to ignore it and hope it went away but when the pain got bad enough that he started craving Dilaudid again to take the edge off it he started to worry.

His doctor referred him for an MRI and then to a neurologist who couldn't find a cause for the headaches and suggested they were stress related. Spencer couldn't deny that he was stressed but he also honestly didn't believe that was the cause of his headaches. If stress was going to cause him migraines they would've started soon after he started at the BAU, or immediately after Hotch rejected him as his soul mate or while he was dealing with the double stress of withdrawal and overcoming his PTSD from being abducted. He'd been under some form of chronic stress from the time his father had left when he was ten. There was nothing to precipitate sudden stress headaches in his life at the moment they started. Of course, he could now add the depression from losing Emily like that, killed by an unsub from her past because she didn't trust the team to help, but the headaches had started before that. In desperation he saw another neurologist and then a third and fourth, before consulting a neurosurgeon.

When each one suggested that the cause could be psychosomatic he even took himself to a psychiatrist who was at least able to reassure him that he had none of the other symptoms of developing schizophrenia or paranoid delusions or any other diagnosable mental health problems other than a mild depression which was normal with the natural and expected grief caused by the death of a friend and colleague, and then referred him to a pain management specialist.

The pain management specialist wanted to put him on medication which he refused to take but also referred him to an Feldenkrais therapist to attempt to ease at least the physical stress on his body, which helped a little though he had trouble attending the sessions due to being called away by cases on short notice.

In the end the true help came from a university colleague he was working on a chemistry project with who knew someone who had heard of someone who was studying the effect of vitamin and mineral deficiencies on brain function and when Spencer contacted them they were willing to try to help if Spencer would send them the test results he'd had done and also ask his doctor to have some more specific blood tests done for various levels of nutrients and vitamins in his blood.

She prescribed him several supplements and through their discussions about his headaches and general health they became friends. His new friend was almost a shut in, isolating herself to avoid the attentions of a stalker. Spencer begged her to let him help identify the stalker and allow her to resume her normal life just as she had helped him get back to his normal work and studies, but she refused. She wouldn't even tell him her real name for months and he had to use a pseudonym for his letters as well. The anonymity helped them both be completely honest and open about their thoughts and feelings as they discussed literature from the last five or six centuries up to more modern (by that they meant written as recently as fifty or so years ago as popular contemporary fiction really didn't hold their attention at all). They also discussed their work though Spencer spent more time talking about the research projects he was involved in and the forensic linguistics lectures he'd agreed to give for a friend's class after sitting in on it the semester before, than he did the cases he worked with the BAU. He'd learned the hard way that most academics didn't find the behavioural intricacies and individual signatures of serial killers as fascinating as he did.

They'd forged a firm friendship between their letters and weekly phone calls always from a different public phone booth and Spencer found that those letters and calls were becoming increasingly important to him. Enough so that he snuck away on Sunday afternoons even during a case unless the unsub had a hostage they believed could still be alive. Maeve understood the times he couldn't call her, even when he was unable to sneak away for even a moment to let her know he wouldn't be calling, of course as she said it wasn't like she was staying home just to wait for his call, she would've been home all afternoon in any case. When she rang off telling him that she loved him, he was too shocked to reply, not shocked that she loved him though he was a little surprised that she'd said it, but that the statement resonated in his heart soothing some of the emptiness there the way it did. He loved her! He was in a relationship with a woman that he loved! For the first time since that horrible night in the FBI carpark, happiness seemed to be possible for him. He regretted not having told her that he loved her back but they made plans to meet and he wanted to tell her in person.

Unfortunately, he got spooked by the guy in one of the booths and cancelled the meeting at the last minute and then before they could reschedule and meet up Maeve went missing. Spencer went straight to Hotch all but demanding that he help him find Maeve which Hotch agreed to do even though Spencer had no address or last name or even proof other than his own profile and desperation that Maeve was missing. By the time he saw the woman he wanted to become the new love of his life it was to try to exchange himself for Maeve to save her from the rejected PhD candidate who had taken Maeve rejection of her clearly delusional research proposal way too personally. Spencer hadn't even been able to talk to her without her stalker/abductor listening much less tell her that he loved her.

Maeve hadn't been his soul mate, she wasn't thirty yet but he wasn't delusional enough to think that Hotch was mated with another Spencer Reid much as he wished it could be true, but he'd honestly begun to think that he might have had a future with her any way, might have been able to have someone to come home to at the end of a difficult case and a family. Spencer had been honest with her about the situation and Maeve hadn't cared that he knew he had a soulmate that wasn't her, she didn't know whether she would have one and she was in love with Spencer anyway. The emotional connection they had together was special though they hadn't met before today he felt that she knew him better than anyone ever had before, he had opened up to her about everything he felt and thought.

Instead he'd had to deny their love in an attempt to save her life. He knew she'd understood that he didn't mean it but he could see that hearing it had still hurt her. And worst of all it hadn't worked, he hadn't been able to make Diane believe it and when she'd killed herself she'd killed Maeve with her. Spencer's heart had broken as he watched the only person other than his mother to truly love him die and felt his last hope of ever being happy die with her. His only consolation was in spite of not being able to say the actual words to her he believed that Maeve knew that he loved her before she died.

-o0o-

Aaron had been shocked when Spencer asked him for help to find a missing friend and even more shocked by how much it hurt him to realise that this woman had the potential to be more than a friend to Reid. No, if he was being honest he had to say she was already more than a friend to his soul mate, it was obvious Reid was falling in love with her even though they were yet to meet in person. Aaron knew he was being hypocritical, not only had he rejected his soul mate in favour of trying to save an already troubled marriage but even after Haley left him, the guilt he felt from his failed marriage had prevented him from approaching Spencer. Of course, the young man would have given up hope and looked for love elsewhere. He couldn't blame Spencer for that it was all his fault. He'd been aware of the young man looking at him hopefully when he first brought up the subject of the divorce and of the hurt look in his eyes as Aaron maintained his Hotch persona treating his soul mate strictly as he would any other subordinate, or perhaps even a little worse he was at least on bantering terms with Morgan, Prentiss and JJ and protectively friendly terms with Garcia. Hell he'd even given in to the peer pressure from Dave and asked his running partner out on a date recently. He had to admit it was nice to have a friend outside the Bureau or the Soccer Mom's he had to deal with at his son's school and activities, but he really couldn't bring himself to feel anything other than friendship for Beth. Unfortunately, due to Dave's enthusiasm and Morgan's teasing, Spencer had learned of the relationship in one of the worst possible ways, from those who believed it was more serious than it was, and that his friends were all supportive of the idea believing it was a very good thing and then Spencer been forced to meet the woman when he failed to warn him that Beth planned to come to cheer him on at the Triathlon even though he knew the team would be there and planned on dragging Spencer along. Now hearing that Spencer himself had a potential girlfriend Aaron became aware of how much his relationship with Beth might have hurt his soul mate, to say nothing of hearing about his wife and son.

-o0o-

"What happens when a person's soul mate has died before they turn thirty? Will the dead person's name still appear over their heart?" Garcia asked worriedly.

"Only if the two of them have met," JJ replied.

"Oh... ohh! So if Maeve was... then when he turns thirty... poor Buttercream…" Garcia rambled.

"It's going to be rough. We'll have to keep our eyes open and offer him our support," JJ replied.

"You really think that she was his soulmate?" Morgan asked. "He never even met her until the day she died. Half the relationship was in his head."

"You expected Reid to have a relationship with his soulmate that wasn't based on intellectual communication. The whole old fashioned courting through letters really suits his personality," JJ said.

"It was so romantic," Penelope sighed.

"Neither of you would have put up with a relationship like that for more than a few weeks," Derek pointed out.

"Well no, but we're not Spencer, this girl sounded like she'd be perfect for him," JJ replied.

A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.

Please stay safe everyone and don't forget to get your vaccination booster when it's due.