Disclaimer: Criminal Minds belongs to CBS, not me.

before I make a mistake

"Baby, you have to get up. Get up now."

He roused a little, rubbing at his eyes.

"Spencer, get up now."

He blinked blearily. His bedroom was still dark, the blinds drawn tight over the windows. The hands of the clock on his nightstand glowed a pleasantly fluorescent green 1:27. "Why?" he mumbled, pushing himself into a sitting position. "It's not time for school."

His mother flipped on the lights and he covered his eyes in protest. "We gotta go," she repeated. "They told me they're coming so we gotta go."

"Who's coming?"

Diana turned around sharply, grabbed him by the wrist, and forcibly yanked him out of bed. "I said get up!" she barked. He yelped in shock. "Get your shoes on!"

His wrist stung and he wriggled himself out of her grip. "Where are we going?"

"Away." He picked up the clothes he'd laid out for school; she slapped his hand away. "There's no time, we have to go!"

"Why?" he asked, bewildered. He jammed his feet into his sneakers without any socks. "Where's Dad? Is Dad coming?"

She was too distracted peering through the blinds to answer. He grabbed his glasses and pushed them onto his face. "What can I bring with me?" he pressed.

"You have five seconds, Spencer, we have to leave!"

He hastily grabbed the blanket off his bed and the book from his nightstand. Diana grabbed his arm and dragged him behind her out of the house.

Cold night air bit at his exposed skin and he shivered. It couldn't have been warmer than forty degrees and his tee shirt and flannel pajama pants were not enough against the cold. "Mom, can I please get my coat?" he asked, tripping over his untied shoelaces. Her death grip on his wrist kept him from falling. "Mom, I'm cold."

She whipped him around and backhanded him across the face. "What did I say?" she shouted. He stumbled back, his hand pressed to his cheek, too startled to cry. His mother had never hit him before, ever, not even a spanking. "We have to go, Spencer, or they will get us!" She shook him hard, his teeth chattering. "Stop arguing with me and get in the car."

She shoved him into the front passenger seat. "Mom, I can't sit here!" he protested. "I'm not eight yet, I'm not old enough! And I'm not tall enough!"

She ignored him, slamming the door and stalking around to the driver's side. Spencer hunched in his seat. "A child has to be at least four feet, nine inches tall to sit in the front seat," he said, words spilling out of his mouth. Diana ignored him and shoved the key in the ignition. "I'm only three feet, four inches tall. Technically I should still be in a booster seat-"

"Be quiet," she snapped, and she threw the gearshift in reverse and peeled out of the driveway. Spencer hunched down in his seat and buckled his seatbelt. He wrapped his blanket around himself and hugged his book to his chest. Diana sped down the street; the street lamps flickered overhead in a perfect rhythm.

"Where's Daddy?" he asked quietly.

Diana said nothing. She stared straight ahead, her eyes locked on he road.

"Mommy, you're driving too fast," he said.

Diana mumbled under her breath, something unintelligible and rhythmic. He couldn't hear what she said.

"Who's after us?" he asked.

She grunted at him. Spencer hugged his book tighter to his chest, the pages slicing into his fingertips. He didn't want to read.

"I'm scared," he whispered.

The car revved loudly as it picked up speed. Spencer closed his eyes, trying to push back the calculations in his head. They were going too fast, way too fast. If they kept up this acceleration, on this road, for much longer they would-

The semi blared its horn. Spencer's head shot up; everything lit up bright white in headlights. For a split second he saw their trajectory sketched out in front of them in neon lights, and then all he heard was the crash.

If it was a movie he would be knocked unconscious. It wasn't a movie. Spencer gasped for breath, pressure pushing down on him on all sides. "Mommy?" he croaked. "Mommy, I can't move."

She didn't answer him. He whimpered, flexing his fingers and toes against the pain. At least he tried. The fingers of his right hand wouldn't move.

The transmission of the car clunked in a lazy repetition until it settled in a cloud of wet smoke. Spencer stared through the shattered windshield, his eyes tracing the spiderweb cracks. His mother was very still beside him.

He did his best to analyze the situation. The car was sideways, he knew that. They must have flipped into a ditch. The car was dark; the interior lights weren't lit and even the radio had stopped blinking. He was towards the ground; his mother was above him with her hair hanging over her armrest. He was cold. Very cold. His blanket had been pulled away from him and his book was long gone. The air tasted like exhaust and engine oil, bitter in the back of his throat.

It could have been a few minutes or a few hours, but at long last he heard someone banging on the driver's side door. "Ma'am? Ma'am! Are you all right? I've called 911, they're on their way."

Spencer closed his eyes. They'd be all right. Help was coming. Maybe his dad would be there soon.

He opened his eyes again to bright white lights blaring down into the cavern of the car and too many voices echoing in his ears. They were getting his mother out. They'd get him next.

They were asking his mother a million questions and she wasn't answering any of them. "Ma'am, are you all right? Can we call someone for you? Is there anyone else in your car?"

Her voice was faraway. "Just me, I think," she said.

Spencer panicked, his heart seizing in his chest. "I'm here!" he tried to shout, but no sound came out. "I'm down here, come get me!"

They didn't hear him. He realized that the driver's seat had crushed in such a way that they couldn't see him crumpled up underneath. He was too small to sit there, after all.

"Help me!" he screamed. This time a small shriek broke his throat. They were still walking away and he tried again. "Help me!"

One of the responders paused. "You hear something?" he said.

"Help me!" Spencer screamed, and this time his voice was loud and high-pitched.

The lights turned brighter towards and he squinted at the responders. "Holy shit, she has a kid in the car. Ma'am, who's the kid?"

"A kid? I didn't...oh my god! Spencer! My son, that's my son! I didn't know he was in the car! Oh my god!"

His mother's voice spiraled higher and higher till it sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Spencer struggled weakly, but his right arm was pinned against the crushed door of the car.

"My baby! My baby's down there, he's only six! You have to get him!"

"Ma'am, we will, just stay calm, okay? Stay calm. The ambulance will be here soon."

The car shifted in its precarious cradle and Spencer flinched. "Hey, buddy," a male voice said. "You okay? Anything hurts?"

"I'm okay," he said. "I just want to get out of here."

"We'll get you, buddy," the man said. "Hold still."

Spencer obeyed, staying stiff as a board. The man reached into the car and unbuckled his seatbelt, then wrapped an arm around him to lift him out of the car. Spencer's right arm shifted, the bones clicking together, and everything went black.

The next thing he remembered was something cool and slightly scratchy against his skin. Sheets, but not his, and not his comfortably lumpy mattress. And there was pressure on his arm, something stiff and unfamiliar.

He tried to open his eyes, but they felt so heavy. But he forced himself anyway.

He was in a hospital bed, the fluorescent overhead lights digging into his eyes. And he was alone, stiffly starched sheets drawn up tight to his shoulders. He looked down at his right arm to find it wrapped tightly in a cheerful, nausea-inducing green cast. He wiggled his fingers experimentally. They could move again, but it didn't feel right.

He laid there quietly for a while, staying very still, listening to the soft buzz and crackle of the overhead light and the chatter from the nurse's station outside his curtained-off quarters. There were no windows- maybe it was still the middle of the night, maybe it was morning. Maybe it was the next day. He didn't know.

He had just finished counting the cracks in the ceiling (seventy-two) for the third time when the curtain drew back. "Oh, someone's awake," a nurse in purple scrubs said cheerfully. "How are we feeling?"

"I feel okay," he said.

She bustled around him, checking him over, and he wished she would stop. "Do you remember what happened?" she asked.

He paused. "Car accident," he said finally. "Is my mom okay?"

"Oh, she's fine," the nurse said. "She's getting patched up, just some little cuts and bruises. But your dad's here, do you want to see him?"

He nodded and the nurse stepped out of the room. There was a brief murmured conversation and William walked into the curtained off area, haggard and dressed in his badly wrinkled work clothes from the day before. "Hey, Spencer," he said. "Hey, buddy, are you okay?"

Spencer nodded. "Can I go home?" he asked.

"Not yet," William said. "You broke your arm and the doctor thinks you might have a concussion, so they want to keep you here for observation."

Spencer looked down at the cast on his arm. "What kind of fracture?" he asked.

"What?"

"What kind of fracture?" he repeated.

William sighed heavily and dragged his hand over his face. "A transverse fracture, I think?" he said. "It'll heal easily, don't worry about it."

"At least it's not a compound fracture, that's when the bone breaks the skin," Spencer said. "Transverse means it's a horizontal break. And it's probably stable which means-"

"Spencer," William interrupted. "I'm not in the mood for trivia." Spencer leaned back against the flat pillows, his eyes dropping. His vision was blurry without his glasses; he wondered where they were but he didn't dare to ask. "Spencer, where...where was Mommy taking you?"

"She didn't tell me," he said. "She woke me up and told me to get in the car." He looked up. "Where's my book? Is it still in the car?"

"Don't worry about the book," William said. "So she didn't tell where you were going? Or why?"

He hesitated. "She said they were coming for us," he said.

"Who, buddy?"

He bit his lip. "She didn't tell me," he said. "Just that people were coming to get us."

William exhaled slowly. He seemed a million miles away. "You rest, okay" he said at last. "We'll see how soon the doctors will let you go home."

Spencer nodded. William patted him gently on the knee and left him alone. He picked at a loose thread on the blankets. He was tired, but he wasn't sleepy. But he closed his eyes, and after awhile he began to drift. Not really asleep, but almost- hypnagogic, that's what it was called. It was reassuring to know that even with a concussion he could remember things. He started running through facts in his head, calming himself, until he heard voices outside his curtained-off corner.

"What the hell were you thinking, Diana?"

"I don't know! I don't remember!"

"Spencer says you told him that someone was coming after you."

"I don't remember that."

Spencer rolled over into his side and curled his knees up to his chest. Arguing was nothing new. He'd learned how to fake sleep when they argued in whispers in the next room. But this seemed different.

"Of course you don't remember. How convenient."

"I told you, I don't remember! I was watching TV and the next thing I knew they were pulling me out of the car."

"How did you get in the car in the first place? Who was after you? A real person, or just your delusions again?"

A long pause. "I don't have delusions, William."

"Oh, really? Then what about when you covered all the mirrors in the house so this mysterious they couldn't spy on you?"

"That was different."

"How? How, Diana? You told me you can handle things. You told me that the schizophrenia wasn't going to change anything. And yet here I am again, cleaning up your messes."

Another long pause. Spencer rolled the new word around his mind. Schizophrenia. He didn't know that one yet. But he could probably spell it.

It was still silent in the hallway until his father spoke. "Spencer was in the car, Diana. You woke up our son in the middle of the night, put him the car with a horror story about how people were after you, and then you nearly killed him."

"I didn't! I didn't mean to-"

"But you did. You did, Diana. Do you know what the police told me? That if the car had turned a half turn farther in that ditch, Spencer would have been crushed."

He heard his mother sob. "I didn't mean to do it. I promise. I don't remember it at all."

"Too bad!" William barked, and Spencer flinched. "As it is you totaled the car, and how the hell am I going to buy a new one now? And what are we going to do if you total that one too?"

"I don't know!" Diana shouted. She wasn't crying anymore. He had never heard her sound this angry before. "What do you want from me? I'm doing my best!"

Spencer sat up, the room swimming a little bit. He had to get them to stop fighting. He had to give them a unifying cause, something to distract them and make them work together.

"Mommy?" he called. "Daddy? My head hurts."

The argument stopped and the curtains drew back, the metal rings scraping along the poles like nails on a chalkboard. His father's usually tidy shirt was untucked and rumpled and his mouth was pressed in a hard line; his mother's clothes were streaked with dirt and her eyes were red rimmed. "Honey, are you okay?" she asked.

"My head hurts," he repeated. It wasn't exactly true and he wasn't a very good liar, but he found it easy to pretend. He imagined a headache sinking into his skull, pressing down on his eyes, and it must have been convincing because his father leaned over him in concern and brushed his hair back from his forehead.

"Are you okay? Do you want the doctor to come check you out?" he asked.

"No, I just think I need some water," Spencer said. "I'm probably dehydrated. That causes headaches."

"I'll get you some water," William said.

Diana sat down on the edge of the bed and touched his shoulder. "How's your arm, baby?" she asked.

He squinted up at her. "Still attached," he quipped.

She didn't seem to find it funny and traced her fingers along the soft skin of his inner elbow, just above the cast. "I picked the color for you," she offered. "Green is still your favorite, right?"

He looked down at the acid green cast wrapped around his arm. "Yes," he said. He was getting better at lying. Green had never been his favorite color.

His mother was smiling at him anxiously, the corners of her mouth trembling. He didn't like it. "It's okay, Mommy," he said. "I'm all right. I promise."

Her smile strained into a grimace. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I don't-"

She broke off midsentence as William walked in with a cup of water decked with a striped straw. "Here, buddy," he said, handing it to Spencer. "Don't spill."

He sat down on the opposite side of the bed, away from Diana. Spencer sipped the cool water and tried to suppress the horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him that something was very wrong.

The doctors let him out of the hospital in the early evening; his father carried him to the car and buckled him into the backseat. His injuries allowed him a day off from school, which was fine- first grade was boring. But his next day at school he went to the elementary library during lunch and walked up to the circulation desk.

"Excuse me," he said politely, standing on his tiptoes to see over the desk. "I need to find a book about schizophrenia."

The librarian, who was already familiar with his questions for books outside of Dr. Seuss and Boxcar Children like other first graders, didn't look up from her work. "That's in the 800s," she said absently.

"Thank you," he said. He walked down the aisles to the 800s and scanned up and down until he found the right subcategory.

"Eight nine eight," he mumbled to himself as he pulled an old, dusty volume off the shelf. He sat down on the floor, balancing his casted arm against his belly, and opened the book. He started to read, and when he finished he read through it again. He missed the bell and read straight through his next class. After the third read-through he finally stumbled to his feet in a daze and shoved the book back into the shelf. He felt like he'd been hollowed out on the inside, like nothing would ever be the same again.

Author's Notes:

And the angst begins in earnest!

This is one of the first things I wrote, originally on the notes app on my phone. The show has hinted at how chaotic Spencer's childhood was, but I really wanted to delve into that a little bit farther. Of course, this story is going to end up going all the way to about season 10, sooooo...it'll be a progression from childhood to adulthood.

(I'm currently writing the Tobias Hankel chapter, so hold onto your butts.)

Special thanks to Allie, nitrogen tulips, 2CoyoteBlue, ahowell1993, and fishtrek for reviewing! As always, let me know what you think or message me on Tumblr (themetaphorgirl) if you'd like to chat!

Up next: Spencer skips a few grades, but life doesn't get easier