Author's Note: Criminal Minds belongs to CBS, not me.
and no one tells you where you went wrong
Plane ticket. Charger for his work phone. Books. A lot of books. He walked over to his desk past Elle and Morgan, tapping his fingers together, still running his list through his head.
"Oh, there he is," Morgan said with a broad grin. He sat down on the edge of Spencer's desk, a coffee cup in his hands. "Pretty boy. Last chance." Spencer slung his messenger bag over his shoulder, only half listening. "I can get my man to swing you a hotel room for practically nothing. Even you might get a little lovin' out there."
He sifted through a stack of floppy disks, all old cases from the mid '90s- he might as well do some research while he had nothing else to do. "Thanks anyway, "he said absently.
Morgan leaned the desk partition. "Come on, Reid," he cajoled. "Live a little, huh?"
"I have to go," he said, dropping the floppies in his bag. "I'm, uh...I'm going home. Have a good one, guys."
He hurried out of the bullpen towards the elevator, hoping to avoid running into anyone else, but JJ was waiting there already. "I've never seen you rush to get out of work," she said. "Ready for your two week vacation?"
"Uh...yeah," he said, starting straight ahead.
The doors slid open and she followed him inside, pushing the lobby button. "You're going home to Las Vegas, right?" she said. "Spend some time with your parents?"
"Just my mom," he said. "It's been just me and my mom since I was ten, and I-"
His voice trailed off. No one on the team knew about his mother's situation, except possibly Gideon, and he didn't have any plans to change that.
Luckily JJ didn't seem to pick up on his faltering, or at least was too polite to acknowledge it. "Morgan is going to be disappointed that you're not going with him and Elle to Jamaica," she said. "He's been dead set on it."
"Uh-huh."
"You don't seem like much a beach person to me, though," she teased. "I just keep picturing you getting sunburned and complaining that you're getting sand in your books."
"I don't know if I'm a beach person, I've never been," he said. The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. "See you later."
He finished packing and tried to go to bed early, but he couldn't sleep. After a while he gave up attempting entirely and settled down on the couch, propping up his old college laptop to watch episodes of Doctor Who. His alarm went off at six and he was on his way to the airport before seven.
It was already a seven-hour flight, and with delays and weather conditions he didn't land until after three. Technically he could go straight to Bennington, visiting hours didn't end until five, but he wasn't sure if he could make it there in time with traffic. He settled for picking up the rental car and heading to his hotel. After all, he hadn't slept the night before, he was exhausted.
Still, he didn't sleep much. He never slept well in hotels. It was almost noon before he left, but on his way he realized that he should probably get his mother a gift. He couldn't show up empty handed. So instead he drove around till he found a bookstore, and he spent hours roaming the shelves, flipping pages and walking up down aisles, and by the time he selected a book it was well past visiting hours, so clearly he had to wait another day.
He didn't sleep again that night. He found himself staring up at the ceiling, kept awake by the muffled roar of a TV playing through the thin walls and the clank of the air conditioner and the steady plink of the dripping faucet in the bathroom, and he knew he needed to stop fooling himself.
He hadn't seen his mother since he left for the academy. He wrote to her every day, and he made sure to send gifts on Mother's Day and her birthday and Christmas, and he stayed in close communication with her doctors to monitor her progress (or lack thereof), and he talked to her on the phone sometimes, when she was having a good day, but...he hadn't seen her in two years.
It had been hard enough to watch her deteriorate at home. It was harder when he visited her in the hospital. The last time he'd seen her was right before he left for the academy. He hadn't stayed for very long, she wasn't doing well that day. Selfishly he'd hoped for something more from her- some sign of affection, or praise. But she had been too clouded to even speak clearly.
He was good at forcing himself to do the difficult things, though, so he got up and dressed and drove to Bennington, parking right as visitor hours began. For a little while he sat in the car and stared at the building, but he couldn't sit there forever, and at long last he picked up the book and got out of the car.
Bennington was a nice place- as nice as a long term care facility could possibly be. It looked more like a college campus than a hospital. He kept his head down as he walked inside and signed the visitor's log. They told him his mother was in the library- that seemed appropriate.
He had an irrational fear that he wouldn't recognize her, after all this time, but it was like he'd seen her only yesterday. She sat in an armchair on the far side of the room framed in the sunny light of the window, wearing her favorite cardigan and reading a book. Part of him wanted to run over to her immediately. Part of him wanted to run out of the room.
He hovered in the doorway instead, clutching the book in his hands, just watching her. She was his mother, but she wasn't his mother, not the way he remembered.
Soft footsteps approached behind him; he glanced over to see Dr. Jassen, one of the specialists in his mother's ward. "I heard a rumor you were here," she said with a gentle smile.
He didn't smile back. "How's she doing?"
"Schizophrenia is a lifetime illness," Dr. Jensen said. "The meds stabilize the worst of her symptoms, but she still has bad days." She crossed her arms. "What makes her most happy are her journals and...your daily letters. She is exceptionally proud of you."
The muscles in his cheek jumped. He kept staring at the stranger in his mother's clothes. "She is?"
"Talks about you all the time, to anyone who will listen. Staff, other patients," Dr. Jensen said warmly. "Her journals are filled with the cases you write her about. Calls them your adventures."
"Mom's of the belief that you can find adventure all around you if you just look," he said, and he could remember his mother saying that to him, clear as day. He was three years old and she was holding his hand as she walked him into the library. He tried again to smile, this time with mild success. "That's what happens when you're a professor of fifteenth century literature."
"She's gonna be so excited that you were finally able to get here in person," Dr. Jassen said.
His smile faded. The cardigan she was wearing was older than he was, a purchase during a trip to the UK the year before he was born. Her Cambridge sweater, she always called it. He could still feel the soft cableknit texture. He wanted to scream.
"Maybe it's better if I just let her rest today," he said.
"Rest?"
"Yeah, I'll...I'll come back tomorrow," he said. "But, Doctor... Can you give this to her? It's Margery Kempe. Her favorite."
He shoved the book into Dr. Jassen's hands. "It would be really good for her if…"
He didn't let her respond. "Please?" he said. "Thank you so much."
He was out the door, his hands deep in his pockets, and he hurried out of the ward, out of the hospital, back into the thick Las Vegas heat where at least he could feel something again.
He tried again the next day, after another sleepless night. He got there even earlier this time, waiting in the rental car until the clock ticked over to the start of visiting hours.
She's your mother, he told himself sternly. Everything is fine.
He took the stairs up to her ward at a fast clip, but a voice stopped him in his tracks. "Oh, Dr. Reid," the nurse at the desk called. "Someone delivered this to the desk last night for you."
He doubled back, hands in his pockets. "What?"
She held out a manila envelope with a shrug. He picked it up, turning it around, and then tore it open. There was a smaller envelope inside, addressed to him in tipsy capital letters, and he tipped out the contents into his palm- a single skeleton key, and a note in the same sloppy writing.
She will die unless you save her, Dr. Reid. Call Gideon. He knows.
"Uh...thank you," he said, gathering up the envelopes. "I...I have to go."
He bolted out of the hospital, already fumbling for his keys and his phone. Gideon didn't answer the first time he called; once he was safely in the car he tried again.
This time Gideon picked up halfway through the second ring. "Reid?" he said sharply.
"Gideon, hi, I got this weird key and-"
"What does the note say?
He blinked. "Uh, yeah, there's a note, it says she will die unless you save her, Dr. Reid," he said. "And then it said to call you, and you would know. Is there something going on?"
"Something," Gideon said grimly. "We've all been receiving things. Looks like vacation is getting cut short. Can you get back to Quantico?"
He turned the key in the ignition. "Heading to the airport now," he said.
"I'll have Garcia get your flight taken care of and send you all the information we have so far," Gideon said. "And Reid?"
"Uh-uh."
"Be careful."
"I will," he said, and Gideon hung up the phone, leaving the dial tone jangling in his ear.
He stopped long enough at the hotel to grab his things and check out, and by the time he got to the airport and dropped off the rental car his changed flight information had been sent to him, along with the new case file.
He waited until he was on the plane to go through the file. There was a lot, a lot more than he'd expected. Everyone had some kind of communication- a baseball card, a butterfly, a phone call. A head. He read through the file multiple times, but it was a long flight, and he attempted to doze off. He had a feeling he was going to go straight from the airport into the case, and there wouldn't be a chance to sleep until it was over.
He called Garcia the second he got out of the airport; she answered on the first ring with a surprisingly professional "tech analysis, Penelope speaking."
He paused and frowned. "Garcia?" he said. "Everything okay?"
"Oh, Reid," she sighed. "It's you. I'm so sorry, everything's so...just, blaugh, and I'm not myself right now, and I'm not going to be myself until this is all over, and- how was your flight?"
"Fine," he said. "Garcia, where is everybody?"
"Oh, that's right, you've been flying across the country for the last eight hours," she said. "They got a lead, they're in the field, about four miles from Quantico, let me send you the address...but be really, really safe, okay? This guy is batshit. And I mean batshit."
"I'll be safe," he said. "Thanks, Garcia."
She texted him the address as soon as he hung up. The drive was fairly short, and he read through the case file again on the way. The cab spat him out in front of a rundown house in a rundown neighborhood; multiple black SUVs were parked on the could hear the team's voices echoing through the abandoned house as he climbed the stairs.
"The hour be none?"
"Midnight is zero-zero hundred hours in 24-hour time. Would that be none?"
"Midnight wouldn't cast a shadow."
"Hour be none."
He walked into the room and took in the scene quickly- the body, the sword, the quotes written in blood on the wall. "Three pm," he said. They all turned to stare at him. "Hi, uh...Garcia told me where to find you."
"Three pm?" Gideon repeated.
"It's medieval," he said. "The days used to be broken into hourly intervals. The canonical hours of the breviary. Prime- six am. Terce- nine am. Sext- twelve noon. None- three pm. And vespers- six pm."
"Reid, do not ever go away again," Elle said emphatically.
He grinned despite himself. "Medieval," Gideon said. "That's why the language changed."
"Everything this guy does is a clue," Hotch said.
Morgan frowned. "Okay, but guys, it's 4:35. What do we do? Leave the blade in 'til three pm tomorrow?"
"Not if we can block that window out," Spencer said. He turned to the CSI agent kneeling by the body. "Do you have any spotlights in your car?" She nodded and got up.
Once they had the curtains closed and the spotlight retrieved, Spencer put on a pair of gloves and started playing with angles. "The sun is right here at five pm," he said. "Morgan, follow the shadows as I move the light higher."
Morgan did, shifting things around to follow where the beam pointed to the wall. "Okay," he said. "And do what?"
"Tap," Hotch suggested.
Morgan ran his hand down the wall, tapping his fingers against the striped wallpaper until he stopped in surprise. "It's hollow," he said.
"Definitely an Indiana Jones movie," Elle quipped.
"Feels like the wallpaper's been replaced."
"Tear it open."
Morgan did, tearing the paper and prying at the thin plywood until he reached the inside of the wall. "It's a box."
"Take it out."
"Oh, wait, are we sure it's safe?" Spencer asked.
"What, you think it's a bomb?" Hotch said. "You think he'd be playing this game just to blow us up? He'd have already done that as long as we've been standing here."
Spencer shrugged. Morgan set the box down on a small end table and fiddled with the lid. "Locked. You want me to break it?" he offered.
"No, we should process it first," Hotch said.
"The youngest holds the key," Gideon said quietly, and he met Spencer's eyes. Morgan and Hotch followed his gaze. Spencer frowned, fumbling with his pockets until he withdrew the iron skeleton key. It fit in the lock and he turned it gingerly, jumping back as the lid popped up and started playing a charming little melody.
"Schubert, the Trout quintet," Gideon said.
"Five people fishing," Hotch added.
Spencer lifted a small note out of the music box, the same paper that had been used for his letter. "Never would it be night, but always clear day to any man's sight," he read aloud.
"Well, that was worth it," Elle sighed, sarcastic and tired.
"The lid," Gideon said, and he nodded towards the music box. "Little tab right under the lock."
Morgan tilted the box and pulled the tab. The false lid tipped out, revealed a silver CD and a lock of blonde hair tied with a pink ribbon.
"Oh, god," Elle sighed.
"Thy quest," Morgan said dryly.
Hotch frowned. "Let's get this back to Quantico and see what's on that disc," he said.
Spencer studied the information pinned to the board, a coffee cup balanced in his hand. Elle snored lightly from her spot on the couch; Morgan sat at the table with his head in his hands. He didn't dare sit down- he knew he'd fall asleep too if given the chance, and that couldn't happen, at least not now.
They had already watched the disc's contents multiple times; he could remember every word of the unsub's message. He was holding a girl captive, they knew that, but the rest of the pieces weren't falling into place. And they knew the girl was Rebecca Bryant, who had gone missing two years earlier.
And of course, now there was the newest letter- the string of numbers delivered to Hotch's wife.
Spencer ran the numbers through his mind, tumbling them backwards and forwards and upside down. It was a coded message- a book code, but he didn't know what book. It was a book that inspired many an adventure, but that could be anything. The numbers ran across the board in neat strings- sets marking a page, a line, and a word.
He ended up kneeling on the chair like a little kid, leaning over the table and examining everything closely. "A pale clouded yellow butterfly indigenous to Great Britain," he said aloud, hoping that hearing it would help trigger a revelation. It didn't.
Hotch strode into the room, his tie slightly rumpled around his neck. "How's it going?" he asked.
"The answer to what book we need has to be in here," he said.
"Yeah, but we sure as hell can't see it," Morgan quipped, a ziploc evidence bag dangling from his hand.
"Yet," Spencer said, frowning at the framed butterfly.
Hotch leaned over Elle and she jerked awake. "I'm sending you home," he said.
It took a second to register before she scowled. "No," she complained.
"You need to get some rest. We won't do anything without you, I promise.
"Elle, seriously, we're not any closer than we were," Morgan said. "Get out of here. Go home."
"But-"
"That's an order," Hotch said. "Let's go."
She gathered her things with a heavy sigh and Hotch ushered her out of the conference room. Spencer shifted from his perch on the chair, still frowning, and looked back over the info board. There had to be something in there that could crack the code.
Morgan yawned heavily. "Twenty-four hours ago I was living it up in Jamaica," he said glumly. "Didn't think I'd end up back here so soon." He stretched and rubbed the back of his neck. "What about you, kid?"
Spencer flipped the butterfly's frame over. "Hm?"
"How was Vegas?" he asked.
"Hot," he said. "Crowded. You know, Las Vegas is one of the biggest tourist destinations in the US, but it still doesn't come close to the number of international visitors who travel to Orlando each year."
"How was your mom?"
His fingers slipped on the frame. "My mom?" he repeated.
"Yeah, JJ said that's who you were visiting," Morgan said. "Just your mom, huh? No brothers or sisters?"
"No, just me," he said.
"Huh," Morgan said. "I've got two sisters myself." He sifted through the plastic ziploc bags. "When'd you lose your dad?"
Spencer glanced up. "My dad?"
Morgan kept sorting through evidence. "I lost my dad when I was ten," he said. "He was a police officer. He was gunned down in the line of duty."
"Oh," Spencer said. He sat back on his heels. "I was ten, too, except...my dad left."
"That's rough," Morgan said. "Just you and your mom after that, huh?"
"Mm...yeah," he said. "And then I left for college when I was twelve." He cleared his throat. "What year was the baseball card Gideon got?"
Morgan leaned over to check. "Uh...1963," he said. "You think that's important?"
"No idea," Spencer shrugged.
He kept rotating from the board to the table to the list of numbers. At this point he should have been tired, but he didn't feel it. He kept working, barely noticing when Hotch joined them or when Garcia popped in and out to check on them.
"Reid, how many books do you think are published in a year?" Hotch asked, leaning back in his chair with his hands on his head.
"In the whole world?" Spencer said. "Thousands."
"Great, and all we gotta do is find one," Morgan said. He had turned his chair around and straddled it like he was a cool substitute teacher in a tenth grade English class. "You know, I can see this unsub gettin'our phone numbers and addresses from the bureau personnel files, but come on, man. It really says in there that Gideon digs Nelly Fox?"
"Or that JJ collects butterflies?" Hotch said, his eye half-lidded.
"I didn't even know these things about us."
Spencer frowned. "Never would it be night, but always clear day to any man's sight…"
"Reid, not again with the poem from the music box, please," Morgan sighed.
"There's something familiar about it," he said. "I think I've heard it somewhere before."
"Thought you had a photographic memory," Morgan said.
"Eidetic memory, and that's primarily related to things I read," Spencer corrected. "Like I said, this is something I think I've heard."
"Which leaves us…" Hotch started.
"Nowhere, that's where it leaves us," Morgan said flatly.
Gideon walked into the conference room, catching the last bit of their conversation. "Not necessarily," he said. "How would we proceed if we didn't have all these clues? What's the first thing we'd look at?"
"Victimology," Hotch said.
"Why this particular victim in this particular place at this particular time?" Morgan added.
Spencer dropped his hands in his pockets as Gideon walked over to the board and pulled down a photo. "We have a victim, don't we?" Gideon said.
"Rebecca Bryant."
"Missing out of South Boston, Virginia," Gideon said. He tossed the photo down on the table. "You can get there in a few hours if you hurry. Take JJ. Find out everything there is to know about this girl."
Morgan climbed up from his chair. "You got it."
"Been letting him lead us around like he's something more than he is," Gideon said.
Hotch stood up, shaking the wrinkles from his jacket. "He's just another unsub. Let's start putting together a profile."
Spencer fidgeted as they prepared to leave him behind. "What you want me to do?" he asked.
Gideon paused. "Just keep working on this," he said. "If anybody can put it together, you can."
Spencer looked down at the photo of Rebecca Bryant. They were counting on him, and he had to come up with something, and soon.
He cleared off a space on the whiteboard and scribbled POSSIBLE BOOK TITLES across the top in his teetering handwriting, the capitals twice the height of the lowercase letters. "Thousands of books published every year," he said to himself. "This is impossible."
He paused. "Year...every year…" He scrambled through bagged evidence and grabbed Gideon's baseball card. "1963."
He bolted out of the conference room down the hall to Gideon's office; the door was open and he ran right in. "The book has to be the right volume and the right publication date, or the code won't work, right?" he blurted out.
Gideon glanced up from the case file he was reading and raised an eyebrow. "Okay," he said.
"When you talk about Nelly Fox, it's in regards to the 1959 White Sox. That's the year that's important to you, but for some reason, this is a 1963 card," he said.
Gideon regarded him over the rims of his reading glasses. "Well, maybe he couldn't find a '59," he said.
"You think a pale clouded yellow butterfly was easy to find, or a... Or a music box that specifically plays the Trout Quintet?"
"So a book published in 1963?" Gideon said.
"It has to be," he said. He paused, scrunching his face. "Maybe."
He darted out of Gideon's office, nearly barreling over Hotch in his haste, and jogged to Garcia's lair. She didn't answer when he knocked so he peeked in cautiously. "Hey, Garcia?" he said.
"Just a second, my cherub," she said absently, her fingers working quickly over the keyboard. He crept closer, watching her rolling screens. "This guy is infuriatingly good. He routed his IP through major corporations, crisscrossed it through countries, bounced it off satellites-"
"I thought you tracked the hacker."
She rolled her eyes. "No, I only found what he wanted me to find. An apartment where Giles was dead." She turned around to another screen. "Reid, a hacker capable of getting into my systems is going to have amazingly sophisticated equipment. Did Giles's apartment have that?"
"He didn't have a couch."
"Exactly," she said. "Giles was a smokescreen I should have seen through. But now I have this glorious program I wrote, tracking the hacker through his other identity…" A new window poped up. "Sir Kneighf."
He leaned over her shoulder. "K-N-E-I-G-H-F," he read aloud. "That's an odd spelling."
She paused, then turned to look at him. He hadn't realized that he was inches away from her nose. "Do you need something?" she asked.
He backed away, frowning. "Yeah, is there a database which lists all the books published in a given year?"
"Individual publishers have lists, but, I don't think there's anything like a master one, plus it would depend upon the year, because the further back you go, the less likely there'll be any database at all," she said.
"1963?"
"Yeah, okay, that would be an example of extremely less likely," she said.
His frown deepened. "Could you do me a favor?" She shrugged. "Type something into a search engine for me?"
She pulled up the window and waited. "Never would it be night, but always clear day to any man's sight," he recited.
She typed quickly. "That's from a poem, 'The Parliament of-'"
"Fowls!" he exclaimed, and she jumped in surprise. "Yeah, yeah! Chaucer! My... " He hesitated. "My mom use to read me that. It's widely considered as the first Valentine's poem."
Garcia smirked. "Your mom read you Valentine's poems?" she said. "Hello, therapy."
Spencer paced back and forth, only half-hearing her, his thoughts turning fast. Chaucer- Parliament of Fowls- 1963- a British butterfly- medieval-
"There was a contemporary British author, Fowles," he said. "John Fowles. Will you type it into a search engine?"
"Uh…." Garcia said. "He wrote the Magus, he wrote the French Lieutenant's Woman…"
"Anything in 1963 published in Great Britain?"
"The Collector?" she said.
"Collector," he repeated, the pieces clicking around his mind like a handful of dropped puzzle pieces. "Baseball cards, skeleton keys, music boxes. These are things that are collected."
Garcia pulled up the cover image of the book and her mouth dropped open. "Reid?" she said.
He gaped at the picture- a butterfly, a key, and a lock of hair tied with a bit of ribbon. "That's it," he said. "That has to be it."
"So that's it, that's the book with the code?" she said.
"It's highly likely," he said. "But I'll need to reference a 1963 edition. And it has to have been published in Great Britain."
"I'm on it, I'm on it," Garcia said. She pulled up multiple windows across her screens. "I will get in contact with every library that might have a copy, let me just narrow it down." She sighed heavily. "Maybe this will bring me back into the good graces of Agents Hotchner and Gideon."
He frowned. "They're mad at you?"
"It's my fault Sir Kneighf, or whoever is, got into the system in the first place," she said. "There. I have contacted four separate libraries about a 1963 edition of The Collector. Now we just wait to hear back."
Waiting, it turned out, was awful. The case flipped upside down, leaving them in chaos. The unsub- the Fisher King, Sir Kneighf, called them, and then they found out he'd shot Elle. It was chaos in the bullpen for a while, but Gideon and Hotch left for the hospital and Spencer stayed behind with Garcia in the conference room, waiting to hear back from JJ and Morgan about Rebecca Bryant's family, or from one of the librarians. Or at least something.
"There is way too much stuff in here," Garcia say, looking from the whiteboard to the table to the evidence board.
"And still not enough to make any headway," he said.
She sighed heavily. "I'm going to get coffee," she said. "Do you want any?" She shook her head. "What am I thinking, of course you want coffee. I'll be right back."
He sat down and leaned back in the chair, stretching out his long legs as he surveyed the rows of numbers. All he could do was wait for the call about the book. There was nothing to be done in the meantime, nothing to keep his mind busy and distracted.
He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and jerked up. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't realize you'd dozed off," Garcia said. She pressed a cup in his hand. "I apologize in advance, it's not going to be any good, but don't look gift caffeine in the mouth, all right?"
The cup was almost too hot to hold. "I dozed off?" he said, scrunching his face.
"Out like a light," she said. "I bet you didn't get any sleep last night, did you? You were surrounded by...all this madness."
He stared down at the cup, thinking about the sleepless nights in the Vegas hotel. "Yeah, I guess I didn't sleep last night," he said. He took a cautious sip and made a face. "You're right, this isn't great." He looked up at her. "But thanks for getting it."
"I added as many sugars as possible." She sighed heavily. "I'll just be glad when this case is over. I mean, I'm always glad when a case is over, but this one seems particularly shitty."
"Well, it's personal," he said. "Typically we fly in, we work the case, we leave. We haven't had a case come to us before."
Garcia drummed her red-painted fingernails on the sides of her cup. "You're right about that," she said. She paused. "Are you hungry? I'm hungry."
He bit his lip, thinking back. He'd had pretzels on the flight. "Uh...yeah, I think so," he said.
"I'll see if someone can get us lunch," she said. "Or breakfast? I don't know what time it is, I usually-" The phone rang and they both jumped. "Oh, god, I hope that's a librarian!" She picked up the receiver hastily. "Penelope Garcia, who's calling?" She paused to listen, then covered the receiver. "Praise baby Jesus, it's a librarian. Mary Valez, from Vanderbilt University."
"Put her on speaker, put her on speaker," Spencer said, nearly spilling his coffee in his haste.
"Mrs. Valez, I'm here with Dr. Reid from BAU, we're going to put you on speaker, okay?" Garcia said. She set the receiver down and he pushed the button.
"Mrs. Valez, are you there?"
"Yes, Dr. Reid, I am. I have a first edition of the collector, published in Great Britain in 1963."
Garcia started taking down pages from the whiteboard and picked up a marker. "Wonderful," he said. "Mrs. Valez, I'm gonna read you a set of three numbers. The first is going to be a page number, the second, a line number on that page, and the third, a word number in that line. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, I understand."
He walked over to the board, nervously tucking his hair behind his ear. "All right, the first is page 222."
"Page 222, got it."
"Line twenty-three."
"Line twenty-three, got it."
"What is the sixteenth word on that line, Mrs. Valez?"
"The."
He turned around and waved his hand at Garcia; she nodded and wrote it on the board "The, great," he said. "Page ninety-one, line eleven, word thirteen."
"Path. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah, yeah, that absolutely makes sense!"
It was slow going, transcribing each set of numbers into a word, but eventually they reached the last word and he was staring at a complete poem on the whiteboard.
"The path to the end began at his start, to find her first calm her long broken heart, she sits in a window, with secrets from her knight, is it adventure that keeps him out of her sight?" Garcia read aloud. She frowned. "Another puzzle?"
"It's a riddle," he said.
He ran the words over and over in his mind, staring at the evidence pinned to the walls, and
The youngest holds the key.
The key, left for him at the desk.
Sits in a window.
His mother sitting by the window in the sanitarium library.
Secrets, adventure. Secrets from her knight.
The doctor smiling at him. "She calls them your adventures."
Ever would it be night, but always clear day.
Las Vegas. The key waiting for him at the desk. His mother waiting for him by the window.
He froze. "It's never night in Las Vegas," he said, and it clicked, it clicked, but oh, how he wish it didn't.
"Excuse me?" Garcia said, confusion written all over her face, but he scrambled for the phone.
He barely waited for the operator to answer. "I need to be connected to the field office closest to Las Vegas, immediately," he said. He could feel Garcia's eyes boring into the back of his head.
"Summerlin FBI office, who's calling, please?"
It was quiet in the conference room, but he covered his ear anyway, pressing the receiver tighter, making sure there would be no mistakes. "Hi, this is Dr. Spencer Reid with the behavioral analysis unit at Quantico," he said. "Look...I need my mother picked up and brought to Virginia in protective custody as soon as possible."
"Is there a reason, Dr. Reid?"
"We're searching for an unsub who shot one of our agents today, and I think he might know my mother, and I believe she may be in danger," he said.
"You're confident?"
"Yes," he said. "She's at the-" He paused. He could still feel Garcia's stares, but he was going to have to go through with it anyway. "Bennington Sanitarium in Las Vegas. Her name's Diana Reid. She's a patient there."
"We'll take care of it, Dr. Reid. We'll call you if anything changes."
"Thank you," he said, and he dropped the phone.
There was a long pause. He refused to turn around. He tried to think of a way to play it off, but nothing was coming to mind.
"All right," Garcia said slowly. "Do you want to talk to me about what just happened, or…"
Her voice trailed off. This was his out. He could just say he didn't want to talk about it, and leave it, and that would be that.
"I write letters to my mother," he said, focusing on the wall. "She's hospitalized. For…"
He could count on one hand the number of people he talked to about his mother.
"For schizophrenia. And I think...the unsub had to have gotten ahold of the letters I wrote. It's the only way he would know all these details." His chest heaved. "I don't think my mom is safe out there. And I think she might know who the unsub is."
He felt a soft touch at his elbow. "I think you made the right call, then," Garcia said gently. "They'll get her out here fast. It'll be okay."
He turned around and faced her. "What if they don't get there fast enough?" he said.
"Oh, sweetheart, it'll be fine," she said. She was sympathetic, but she didn't seem to be bothered about the bomb he'd just dropped. He wasn't sure why.
"I need to update the rest of the team," he said. "Gideon-"
"I'll call Gideon," she said. She frowned. "You've got that line between your eyebrows again, that's never a good sign. And you're white as a ghost." She squeezed his arms. "Get something to eat, take a little nap at your desk. I'll keep you updated, okay?"
She was sympathetic...because she was worried about him, it seemed like. He blinked. "Are you sure?" he said.
"Positive," she said. "I'll call Gideon, I'll document the little poem thingy. You take a few minutes and take care of yourself, okay?"
He nodded. She placed his still-warm coffee cup in his hand and gave him a gentle push out the door.
He wasn't really that hungry, but he wanted to please Garcia, so he settled for a bag of chips from the vending machine, and he finished the coffee before it went cold. She was right- it wouldn't hurt to take a break. Sitting alone at his desk in the bullpen let his mind settle for a little bit. The panic that had been building up in his chest started to settle- still present, still painful, but a little softer. A little it easier to carry.
He barely noticed when Garcia approached him. "She's okay," she said gently, and he looked up, startled, as she handed him a plastic evidence bag and sat down on the desk. "Your mom...agents picked her up. She's flying here now."
He picked up the plastic evidence bag. The Fowls poem was inside, and he half smiled. "I forgot she used to always read me this poem," he said. "It's funny, huh?"
"Funny?"
"Should have realized sooner than that," he said. "Nobody knows things like the fact that JJ collects butterflies except for me. People tell me their secrets all the time. Think it's because they know I don't have anyone to betray them to…" He fiddled with the evidence bag. "Except...my mother. I... I tell her pretty much everything."
"I don't think anyone would mind," she said.
He could hear the smile in her voice but he didn't dare look up. "Do you know that I write her a letter every day?"
"That's nice," she said, and he knew she had a completely different mental picture than the truth.
"It depends on...why I write her," he said.
"What do you mean?"
He had never said it aloud, never thought he would ever say it. "I write her letters so I won't feel so guilty about not visiting her," he said.
He thought about his mother sitting alone by the window, and handing the book to the doctor while he ran out in a barely-contained panic. "Did you know that schizophrenia is genetically passed?" he said, and he finally looked up at her, his lips twisting.
She caught her breath and he glanced away quickly. "Oh, honey," she said. "That's not going to happen."
He raised and lowered one shoulder. "It could," he said. "Schizophrenia can surface any time before the age of thirty. My mom was twenty-three, she was getting her masters degree. She'd just gotten married. And then-" He dropped the bag on his desk.
"So she was already diagnosed when you were born?" Garcia asked quietly.
He nodded. "I didn't figure out what was wrong until I was five, and then it was...all downhill from there, I guess," he said. He'd never spoken to anyone on the team about his mother before, and now words were spilling, fast and harsh. "It was too much for my dad. He couldn't...couldn't handle her, and me, so he...he left." He took a deep breath, trying to slow the torrent, and forced himself to smile. "I turned out okay, I guess."
By the look on Garcia's face, she wasn't fooled. "When was she hospitalized?" she asked.
His smile dropped. "When I was eighteen," he said.
Garcia was uncharacteristically quiet. She opened her mouth like she was about to speak, stopped, tried again. "You did turn out okay," she said, and she placed her warm hand over his. "And you're going to be okay. And if anything isn't okay...you have us to rely on, you know?"
He nodded. She squeezed his hand. "Did you get something to eat?" she asked.
"Uh...yeah," he said. It wasn't quite a lie.
"Good," she said. "I'm going back to the lab, hopefully I'll hear from Morgan and JJ soon. I'll let you know if anything changes, all right?"
He nodded. She squeezed his hand again and left the bullpen.
There wasn't much for him to do. He went back up to the conference room and stared at everything again; he went back down to his desk and organized everything, running the details of the case over in his head. It was getting late, and his head was getting fuzzy. The thought of going home and eating dinner and going to sleep in his own bed sounded pretty appealing, but he settled for coffee from the break area.
The coffee smelled burnt and acrid; he dumped at least six sugars into the cup in hopes of making it at least palatable. After a moment, he added two more and then poured the coffee into the cup.
"That's why you're so skinny, you know. Too much coffee."
He hadn't seen his mother in two years, and it was like he had said goodbye to her yesterday. She looked out of place, flanked by two agents, her hand fidgeting at her mouth with worry and her bag clutched under her arm.
"Thanks a lot, I've got her," he said to the agents.
"You know I'm terrified of flying," Diana scolded.
He abandoned his coffee and walked over to her, his hands in his pockets. "I know, Mom. I'm sorry," he said. He felt like he was six years old again.
"Well, then why did you have those fascists arrest me?"
"Mom, they're not fascists, and you were not arrested," he said. "I'm trying to protect you."
"By forcing me to do the one thing that frightens me more than anything else?" she said tersely.
He sighed. "I need to show you something," he said. "Follow me."
He led her up to the conference room keeping his pace slow and checking every few steps to make sure she was following. She trailed behind him, gazing around like a tourist at a museum. "This is where you work?" she said, looking around cautiously.
"This is where we meet, um...my desk, you can see it, it's right out there in the bullpen area."
He fidgeted, wringing his hands unconsciously while he watched her study her new surroundings. "The table's round," she said.
"Yeah, just like I wrote you in my letters," he said.
"Yes, just like you wrote in your letters," she echoed. She shot him a sharp look. "Dr. Jessen gave me the book you brought."
"Marjorie Kemp," he offered. "She's your favorite."
Diana shrugged. "That particular book is one of her minor works," she said.
She crossed over to the board and picked up the bag holding his key to take a closer look. "Mom, no!" he yelped, running over and yanking it from her hand. "Don't...don't! You can't grab stuff off the board. This key is evidence." She ducked her head, averting his gaze, unfamiliar and almost childish, and he took a deep breath. "Mom, the unsub that we're looking for...the bad guy. He knows things about my colleagues' personal lives, things that...only you would know. Do you write about them in you journals?"
She scowled. "My journals are none of the government's business!"
"I'm not the government, Mom," he said, biting back a half smile.
"Well, this certainly looks like a government office," she snapped.
"Mother," he said, trying to redirect her focus. "Do you write about my colleagues' personal lives?"
She pressed her hands to her temples. "Why did you bring me here, Spencer?" she asked.
He bit his lip. "I need to ask you some things about a man I think you might know," he said. "A bad man. He's killed some people, and he's holding a girl hostage."Y
"You think I know someone like that?" she scoffed.
"Will you just watch the tape and see if he sounds familiar?"
She paused, then nodded reluctantly. He pulled out a chair for her to sit and picked up the remote, turning the unsub's video back on.
Diana's reaction was instantaneous- her eyes widening, her hand dropping to her throat. He only played a few seconds of the unsub speaking before he paused it. "You do know him?" he asked, but it wasn't really a question.
"I'm sure it's... Randall Garner," she said slowly.
"Randall Garner?"
"He was with me at the hospital," Diana said. "He's a very emotionally disturbed man."
He opened his mouth to ask another question, but Garcia interrupted him, charging into the room. "Reid, I got to the end of the IP string," she said. "Sir Kneighf, the fisher king...his name is Randall Garner. He's Rebecca Bryant's biological father."
"That's the unsub on the tape," Spencer said. "My mom just identified him."
Garcia's eyes flicked over to Diana. "Oh," she said. "Oh! Your mother?"
"Uh...yes," he said. "This is my mother, Diana Reid. Mom, this is Penelope Garcia. She's our technical analyst, she does all the crazy computer work."
"It's so nice to meet you," Garcia said. "We adore your son."
Spencer felt the back of his neck blush warm. His mother relaxed and smiled. "He's brilliant, isn't he?" she said.
"Absolutely," Garcia said. "We're lucky to have him."
"I knew he was going to be a genius," Diana said proudly. "From the time he was little. I knew, because when he was three years old he picked up a copy of The Idylls of the King and started reading it aloud to me, perfectly. What three-year-old can do that?"
He cleared his throat; Garcia looked like she was about to melt and the last thing he wanted was his mother telling his coworker more stories about what an adorable child he was. "We should probably call Hotch and Gideon and fill them in," he said.
"Already called, Hotch is on his way back," Garcia said. She handed him a file; he set it down on the table and they both leaned over it. "Here's everything I could dig up on Randall Garner and Rebecca Bryant. There was a fire, the rest of the family died and Randall was hospitalized. Rebecca was put in the foster system and he signed away parental rights when she was five."
"I can't believe she's real," Diana said.
Garcia glanced up from the file. "What do you mean?"
"Whenever he talked about Rebecca, he never said she was his daughter. He said all his children died in the fire," she said. "He spoke of her more in the abstract. I really thought she was a metaphor, not an actual human being. An ideal."
"A grail," Spencer said. "He thinks he's the fisher king."
"Who does?"
Morgan and JJ walked into the conference room, both looking a little worse for wear after their road trip to South Boston and back. "Randall Garner, our unsub," Spencer explained.
"He believes you're all modern-day knights of the round table," Diana chimed in.
Morgan looked from Diana to Spencer and raised an eyebrow; JJ seemed equally confused. "Uh...Derek Morgan, this is my mother, Diana Reid," he said.
"It's your mother?" Morgan repeated, almost skeptical. Spencer nodded. "Ma'am, it's a... it's a pleasure to meet you."
Hotch strode into the room before he had to continue any awkward introductions. "So where are we on finding this son of a bitch?" he asked.
"I rechecked all the clues, there's nothing that points to an address," Spencer said.
"The adoption records for Rebecca listed an address of the fire, so I made a call to Nevada, and it's vacant. No one ever rebuilt," JJ added.
Hotch scowled. "Nevada? So we don't even know what state he's in?"
"I'll search the tax records, see if he owns any property," Garcia offered.
"Excuse me," Diana interrupted.
Spencer jumped up. "Mom, do you want to wait-"
"Just before the agents got me from the hospital, a man delivered this to me," she said, ignoring him as she fumbled in her bag. "It's a photo of a house with an address on the back."
She held it out- the photo of a large Tudor-style house and an address scribbled on the other side. "Shiloh, Virginia?" Morgan said. "That's only ten miles from here."
"I'm calling in SWAT for backup on this one," Hotch said. "Morgan, Reid, let's go."
"Wait, Spencer, where are you going?" Diana asked.
He pulled her aside. "We're going to go find Rebecca," he said. "You'll be safe here without me, don't worry. You can stay here with Garcia."
"What about you?" she pressed. "Are you going to be safe?"
"Of course I am, Mom," he said. "Don't worry, I do this all the time."
JJ approached cautiously. "Mrs. Reid?" she said. "I'm JJ, I work with Spencer. I'm staying behind on this one. Would you like to keep me company?"
Diana relaxed. "Oh, yes," she said. "So you're JJ. My son's written about you. All of you, actually." She frowned. "The one who doesn't smile, that's Hotch, correct?"
JJ hid a laugh. "Yes, ma'am, that's our Hotch," she said. "Spence, don't worry. Garcia and I will stay with her."
"Thanks," Spencer said. "I'll be back soon, okay?"
Diana nodded, and he followed Morgan and Hotch out of the conference room.
It wasn't until they were in the SUV that anyone said anything. Spencer sat in the center seat, picking at the skin around his nails as he watched the streetlights flash overhead. Hotch drove, Morgan sat in the passenger seat. The car was silent except for the occasional staticky chatter on the radio, until Morgan cleared his throat.
"So...that was your mom?"
Spencer's head shot up. "Uh-huh," he said. "I, um...I had her flown out here from Las Vegas. I know I probably should have asked about it first, but there was a chance she knew the unsub, and it turns out I was right, so-"
"How does she know Randall Garner?" Hotch asked.
Spencer fidgeted with the seatbelt strap across his chest. "After the fire, Randall Garner was hospitalized at Bennington Sanitarium in Las Vegas," he said. "After he was released, he kidnapped Rebecca and-"
"Reid," Morgan asked gently. "That's not what Hotch was asking." Spencer turned to look out the window, watching the streetlights flash by. "I'd kinda like to know too."
He bit his lip. He'd kept the secret for as long as he possibly could, but Garcia knew. Gideon had probably known for ages; JJ was bound to figure it out. He couldn't lie.
"My mother was hospitalized there too," he said. "Is currently hospitalized there. For schizophrenia."
Hotch and Morgan were both silent for a moment. He wanted them to say something; he wanted them to stay quiet. Spencer bit his lip so hard he could taste blood.
"How does your mother's connection to Randall Garner affect the case?" Hotch asked at last.
Spencer let go of the seatbelt. This he could handle. He sketched out the details quickly, his words tumbling out in an anxious tangle, filling in the gaps they'd missed.
Hotch pulled the SUV up to the curb outside a large Tudor house- the same house from his mother's photograph, the same windows well-lit. "Let's go," he said. "Stay in communication. Garner could be unpredictable."
Spencer climbed out of the car, his flack vest digging into his ribs, and slammed the door. Morgan caught him gently by the shoulder. "Hey," he said. "I get the feeling this is a secret you didn't want us to know about."
He shrugged. "It's out in the open now," he said, and he started to pull away.
Morgan's grip was firm and reassuring. "You know we don't judge you at all, man," he said. "None of think any less of you, or your mom."
Spencer raised his chin. "No offense, Morgan, but I don't think you know what you're talking about," he said, and he followed Hotch towards the house.
It was a warm night, the breeze barely enough to make a difference. Hotch's flashlight shone over the wrought iron gate leading to the house; the handle gave way as soon as he touched it. "That's it, guys, it's open," he said. The SWAT team made their way in first, checking the back door and easing it open. It wasn't even locked.
Spencer followed Morgan and Hotch into the house. While he could tell there were lights on somewhere when he was standing outside, inside was dark and humid, their flashlights catching specks of dust settling.
Morgan's flashlight caught something on the table. "Hotch," he called, and he picked up Elle's badge. Her gun was there too, set out neatly for them to find.
"Guys, listen up," Morgan said. "He wants us to know we're in the right place, so keep your eyes open."
The house split into a maze of doors and hallways. Spencer edged through a passageway and found himself at the bottom of a curving staircase. He balanced his flashlight over his tight grip on his firearm.
The beam caught a shadow shifting over his head. Spencer whipped around, his heart jumping into his throat. "There's someone upstairs," he whispered into his mic.
Morgan caught up to him along with a couple members of the SWAT team. "Where?" he asked.
"I saw a shadow."
Morgan scanned the railing above. "Randall Garner?" he called. "FBI." No answer. Morgan signaled to the nearest SWAT agent and headed up the staircase. "Garner?"
Spencer followed close behind, the steps creaking beneath him. There were more lights on upstairs, but it was far from reassuring. The shadow passed him again at the edge of the hallway and he gripped his gun tighter.
"He's in there," he whispered.
"All right, cover me," Morgan said, rolling his shoulders.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait," Spencer hissed.
"What?"
Spencer kept his eyes on Morgan. "Mr. Garner?" he called. "My name's Spencer Reid. You were in the hospital with my mother. I think...I think she might have confused you."
He saw Hotch approach from the end of the hall, gun drawn; Morgan nodded towards him. "All we want to do is help Rebecca," he said. "That's exactly what you want, right? That's why you sent us the puzzles? That's why you said you hoped you'd be seeing us soon?"
"Ask the question."
It was the same raspy voice from the video, floating down the dimly light hall. "There is no magical question, Mr. Garner," he said. He saw Hotch and Morgan frowning at him, puzzled, and he lowered his voice. "He believes if I ask him the right question, it'll heal all of his wounds."
"Do you know the question?" Hotch whispered.
He set his chin stubbornly. "I know what he wants," he said. "I'm gonna move to where he can see me."
They both scolded him, called him back, hissed at him to wait, but he handed his gun to the nearest SWAT agent and edged down the hall, his hands raised in surrender. "Stay calm, Mr. Garner," he said.
"Ask the question, Sir Percival."
Of course he would be the representation of Sir Percival- a naive boy raised by a single mother, the youngest of the knights, eager to prove his worth. "I told you, I'm not Percival. My name is Dr. Spencer Reid from the FBI," he said. "You were in the hospital with my mother, Diana."
"If you want the grail, you must ask the question!"
Garner was agitated now, verging on angry. "She's not a grail!" he said. "She's your daughter. Her name's Rebecca."
"My daughters died in a fire. And my son, and my wife."
He could see into the study now, but not clearly enough to see Garner. "Rebecca lived."
"No. Your mother, she explained it all to me."
He gritted his teeth. "My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic who'd forget to eat if she wasn't properly medicated and supervised," he said.
"She made me realize none of it was real. I didn't lose Rebecca. She never existed in the first place."
"She does exist, Mr. Garner, and we're here to help her."
Gingerly he tapped the door open and it creaked under his fingertips. Garner sat his desk, the one from the tape, and his chest was wrapped in his explosives. His scarred hand clutched the activator, his thumb hovering over the trigger.
Adrenaline spiked in Spencer's chest. "Hotch? Morgan?" he said slowly, not daring to turn around. "I think maybe...maybe it'd be better if you guys waited downstairs." His mouth went dry. "Mr. Garner and I are just going to talk alone up here."
"Go ahead and talk, Reid, but we're not going anywhere," Morgan called.
Scarring had obliterated Garner's face, melting his features. "Ask the question, I'll be healed, and you make take the grail," he rasped, his mouth held at a tight odd angle as if he couldn't open it all the way. "Just ask the question, Sir Knight."
"I can't," Spencer said, his hands still raised in surrender.
"Heal me!" Garner demanded.
"Mr. Garner, a fisher king wound cannot be healed by somebody else," he said desperately. "It's not a wound to the body. It's a wound to the memory. Wound to the mind. It's...it's a wound that... only you can find, and a wound that only you can heal."
"Just ask the question," Garner said, and he knew he wasn't listening.
"There's only one question that matters, Mr. Garner," he said, slow and careful. "There's only one really important question. Can you forgive yourself?"
Garner paused. "I couldn't get to them."
Spencer nodded, encouraging him on. "If you tell me where she is, you can save Rebecca now," he said. "Tell me where Rebecca is."
"You already know. I sent your mother the map."
Spencer faltered. "What map?" he asked.
Garner didn't hear him. "Can I forgive myself?" he asked. Spencer took a step back. "No, I can't."
Spencer ran. "Run!" he screamed and the hallway exploded in shattered glass and a burst of thick oppressive heat. The blast threw him forward, tossing him face-first on the ground, and he could feel the heat pouring over his body.
"Don't move, Reid, don't move!" Morgan ordered, his voice thick and garbled like he was underwater, and Spencer pushed himself on his elbows, struggling to get his bearings.
Hotch grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet. "Get him out, let's go!" he shouted. Morgan took hold of his other arm. "What was that?"
They were half dragging him, half carrying him down the hall; his legs felt like jelly and he couldn't take a deep breath. "He had a bomb," he gasped out.
"You didn't think we needed to know that?" Morgan scolded. His arm was tight around Spencer's waist, pulling him towards safety.
"I told you to go downstairs," he protested.
"Well, you didn't say bomb, you left that part out!" Morgan said.
Morgan and Hotch had dragged him halfway down the twisting stairs when he dragged his heels. "Stop!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "Stop, stop, stop!"
"Stop? The house is on fire, Reid. Let's go!" Morgan shouted.
"Just let me think, let me think!" he begged, his voice rising. The brimstone air pulled at his skin, dried out his throat. "He's the fisher king, this is his castle, Rebecca's got to be here."
Hotch held out his hand towards him. "Reid, there may not be time for a search, let's go," he said firmly.
Spencer ignored him. "Location's on the map that he gave to my mom," he said, mostly to himself.
"Reid, all she told us about was that photo," Morgan said, and a support beam behind them cracked, collapsing in flames.
"Down…" he mumbled, and he saw the photo clearly, saw the outside of the house when the SUV pulled up to the curb, and it clicked. His head shot up. "She's in the basement downstairs!"
He pushed past Hotch and Morgan, jumping down the stairs two at a time. "How do you know that?" Morgan demanded, but he ignored it, his heart thumping in his throat.
He tracked down the basement door and ran down the stairs. The basement was pitch black, a cavern of drywall and wet cement, but smoke was filtering down from the upstairs and he could hear a voice calling, faint and high pitched in fear.
"She's in here!" he shouted, and Hotch pushed past him, kneeling beside the girl chained to the floor. Morgan ran in at his heels; Spencer hovered as they tried to get her free. "He called me Sir Percival…"
"Reid, hurry," Hotch said.
"The key!" Morgan said. "The key, the youngest one holds the key. Tell me you got the key. Come on, man!"
Spencer fumbled through his pockets and pulled out the skeleton key from his pocket, still safely encased in the plastic bag. He forced the key into the lock, his hands shaking with adrenaline, and after a brief stall of hesitation it gave way.
Morgan pushed him out of the room first. Spencer waited just long enough to see Hotch pick up the girl and carry her out before turning on his heel and running pell-mell up the stairs.
He broke out of the house into the warm night that suddenly felt cold enough to be arctic in comparison and skidded to a halt once he reached the sidewalk, leaning forward on his knees to catch his breath. The air smelled like fire and summer flowers and suddenly all he wanted to do was lie down in the cool fragrant grass until he could breathe again.
A hand clapped down on his shoulder. "Reid, you all right?" He nodded. "That burn on your back doesn't look great."
He tilted his head, squinting at Morgan out of one eye. "What burn?" he asked.
Morgan kept his hand on his upper back, steadying him. "Remember, you caught fire after the blast?" he said.
"No, not particularly, I-"
He words broke off in a sudden harsh cough. Morgan hauled him upright and the world tilted around him. "Hey, can I get a medic over here?" he called.
"I"m fine," Spencer said. "How's Rebecca?"
"Hotch has her," Morgan said. "You just stay put and breathe, kid, okay?" He grinned. "I gotta get you back to Mama Reid in one piece."
Spencer closed his eyes, breathing slowly to steady the cough that tickled the back of his throat. He kept his eyes closed as Morgan talked to an EMT, their voices blurring in his ears.
"Here, take this," Morgan said, and Spencer's eyes flew open as an oxygen mask was pressed over his nose and mouth.
"Morgan, I don't need this," he complained, his voice muffled, and he was promptly ignored. His hand automatically moved to hold the mask in place as Morgan held him upright, helping him balance as the EMT lifted the back of his shirt and checked out the burns. Spencer sighed and lowered his head to balance on Morgan's shoulder. He was so tired.
"All right, champ," Morgan said gently as he pried the oxygen mask from his face. "Better?"
"Uh-huh."
"Your back isn't burned too bad, just enough to bother you for a week or two," Morgan said. "That shirt is a lost cause, though. But I think that fire did you a favor, it's pretty ugly."
"Shut up," Spencer complained, rubbing his eye.
Morgan folded his arms. "Really, kid," he said. "How are you doing?"
"I'm fine, Morgan, really," he said. "It's just...been a long day."
Morgan was quiet for a moment, studying him. Spencer stared down at his soot-covered shoes and dropped his hands in his pockets. "I heard what you said to Garner," he said. "About your mom. That she wouldn't remember to eat if she wasn't on medication and supervised."
Spencer shrugged. "So?" he said.
"When was your mom diagnosed?"
He raised his head. That wasn't what he expected. "Before I was born," he said, too caught off guard to lie. "She went off her medication when she was pregnant with me."
"Mm. And then...your dad left when you were ten?"
His heart dropped to his shoes. "Yes."
"When was she hospitalized?"
He hugged his arms around himself. "She was on her own after I went to college," he said defensively. "She couldn't take care of herself. She tried, but-" Morgan waited patiently for him to answer the question. "When I was eighteen."
"Listen, Reid, you gotta stop being so hard on yourself," Morgan said. "You don't have to keep all this stuff bottled up, pretending like it doesn't affect you. It's okay if it does." He tilted his head, his dark eyes searching his face. "Have you ever talked about any of this before?"
He thought of the high school guidance counselor asking him about his father. He thought of Gideon sitting him down in his office. "Not really," he confessed. "I'm...not really good about talking about personal stuff."
"Yeah, we know," Morgan said. "I'm not gonna force you to talk if you don't want to. But you're allowed, Spencer. You're allowed to talk about what's bothering you. No one's gonna judge you, or think you're a problem, or tell you to stop talking. Okay?"
He nodded. His throat was too raw to speak.
Morgan slung his arm around his shoulders. "Come on, pretty boy," he said. "Let's get you out of here."
The drive back to the BAU seemed so much shorter than the drive out. Nobody spoke much, but it was past midnight already, and Spencer realized that none of them had slept in the last twenty-four hours. Exhaustion was creeping into him, slowly but surely, and his ash-coated skin felt grimy and itchy.
JJ met them at the doors, beaming brightly, with Garcia close behind. "Elle's out of surgery," she said. "She's going be okay."
"Good. Is Gideon still at the hospital?" Hotch said.
"Yeah," JJ said. "How's Rebecca?"
"She's in the hospital, but she should be all right," Morgan told her.
"Physically, maybe," Garcia said.
"Thank you, everyone," Hotch said. He looked directly at Garcia. "All of you."
Garcia grinned, clearly relieved to be back in his good graces. "Well, we could have only gone so far without Mrs. Reid," she said.
Morgan turned to him with a knowing look and he shrugged. JJ patted his arm. "Diana's up in the conference room," she said. "We already made arrangements for her to stay a hotel nearby, if you want to stay with her."
"Yeah, that'd be nice," he said.
She smiled at him. "She was telling me stories about you when you were little," she said.
"Hopefully nothing embarrassing," he said.
"No, just adorable," she said. She grinned, her eyes dancing. "See you at work tomorrow, Crash."
She walked away and he sighed, but he was smiling. He headed back up to the conference room and found Diana sitting on the couch, calmly writing in a notebook. "Mom, we found her," he said. "Rebecca's safe. You helped us save her life."
She didn't look up. "Is it time for lunch yet?"
He blinked. "What?"
"I'm lecturing everyone in Tristan and Iseult," she said. "They're all gathering in my room after lunch."
He slid his hands in his pockets. "Can I attend the lecture, too?" he asked timidly.
She glanced up and raised an eyebrow. "Have you read any of the material?" she inquired.
He grinned. "I've had them read to me," he said.
"Wonderful," Diana said, and he could see the recognition warming up in her eyes. "That's the best way, isn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "By far."
He sat down beside her, his hands clasped on his knees, remembering a childhood spent listening to her read to him. She reached over and squeezed his hand, her fingers cold. "I like your friends," she said. "And they like you, very much. They're exactly like you wrote in your letters."
He thought about his conversation with Garcia earlier- I write her letters so I won't feel so guilty about not visiting her. "So...they're going to take you to stay at a hotel tonight, and fly you back to Vegas in the morning," he said. "I was wondering...if I could fly back with you, and maybe stay with you for a few days, if that's okay."
She patted his hand. "I would like that very much," she said, and he smiled.
Author's Notes:
Now let's hope the blessed child actually gets some sleep and eats something after this. (he probably won't.)
I can't believe I didn't originally put a Fisher King chapter in my outline! It really is an important episode for Spencer. I feel like after this he started mentioning his mother in casual conversation more often. And I think this is the point where he really started opening up to Morgan more. Although let's be real, Spencer is terrible about opening up to people.
After this...we have finally reached Tobias Hankel! I'm so looking forward to posting it; it'll be four chapters of angst and whump, so if you like that sort of story you're in the right place! (Also please send me your headcanons for that episode- I want to know what y'all think) I've just started writing the drug withdrawal chapters and I think it's some of the most lyrical writing I've done in a while, so I hope you like it.
There's not a lot of fun BAU team bonding in this one, but I may write some more oneshots here and there, as well as more bits with little Spencer! I love the prompts y'all have been sending, I'll probably post them on my tumblr first and then crosspost them here!
Thank you so so much to AZCatMom, KylluaFox, and Cherubim! Y'all are fantastic, thank you so much. I absolutely love reviews and it's so encouraging to read them and talk to y'all!
Up next: they were just supposed to talk to a witness, and then they could go right back. Spencer wasn't prepared to be taken.