Chapter 09
BAU Headquarters
Quantico, VA
The meeting broke up. People started leaving, not without giving Spencer one last look. He sat there looking at the blank screen until someone pressed a glass into his hand.
One sip of very good scotch brought him back to reality. "Thank you." He said to Dave.
"Uh huh." Dave replied.
Spencer looked up and saw that only the team was left. "Does this change anything?" He asked.
"Confirms a few suspicions." Emily said.
"This only changes what you want to change Spence." JJ said. "It doesn't have to mean anything." She moved to give him a hug.
"Yeah, we love you no matter what." Penelope said.
"Actually that's not exactly true." Dave said.
"What, we don't love him?"
"No, that it doesn't have to mean anything. Your mom." Dave said in reply to Spencer's look. "You said none of her meds ever work right, maybe that's because she's another species."
JJ nodded. "This might explain why she keeps calling her doctors Neanderthals. I wonder if they can get her a medical eval."
"I need to find a way to contact them about it. Transparently." Spencer said to Emily. "Completely above board. Do I need to talk to INS?"
"Not for you." Emily replied. "I talked to the DIA about your Mom. They want to keep it quiet, and given that she was pregnant and escaping a war and everything else they're probably going to set her up with asylum."
"Good. Thank you."
"We can get them to facilitate contact."
"Yeah."
"Why don't you go talk to your Mom about it?" Dave said.
"Yeah. I should."
"Why don't you not go alone?" Emily said.
"I'll go with him." JJ said.
"Good."
Sunrise House
Silver Spring, MD
After briefing her doctor on what they had learned Spencer and JJ went to speak to Diana. She was sitting, looking through her scrapbook. A scrapbook, he now realized, that was only honest back to a certain point. "Mom." He sat across from her and took her hand as JJ sat a bit away to give them some privacy. "Some people came to talk to me today. They brought this." He placed a picture of the ship from the desert in front of her. She looked at it and tears began to fall. "They spoke to William as well. He told them what happened."
"I am so sorry Spencer." She said, wiping her tears on the sleeve of her robe. "I wanted to tell you but by the time you were old enough I was so sick and…"
"No, Mom, I understand. It's okay. Really. I just….when I said Dad was a jerk who abandoned us I was referring to William Reid, not to… Alrick Garron."
"Oh Spencer." She cupped his face in her hands and smiled through her tears. "You're right. William is a jerk." They shared a laugh over that. "Did the palace actually contact you? Did they say anything about your father?"
"No, it was someone from the Defense Department who's been working with them. I was thinking about contacting them directly though. Maybe getting a doctor to see you."
"Oh, one who's not working with leeches. That would be lovely. I might finally be able to sleep."
"It's worth a try." Oh, how did he tell her? "They said the war was really bad…."
"And you're a lot like your father. Brave, never shirking duty. I made my peace with him being gone a long time ago. I guess I just haven't given up hope. He was so looking forward to meeting you."
Damn. "I'll ask. See if they know anything. Maybe there's an alien version of the Red Cross or something."
"Ask for a palace representative. They always help the Nobility. It's their duty."
That went right over his head. "All right."
"Tell them you're head of House now. That should help with the paperwork."
"All right." Hopefully that would make sense someday. Yesterday he would have called this delusional, but now it might actually be memory. "Where did you and Dad meet?"
"At a palace ball, of all places…."
Dave Rossi's house
Alexandria, VA
Later JJ dragged Spencer to Dave's for dinner and post-mortem. Emily and Penelope were of course in attendance. "Well?" Emily asked.
"Diana confirmed it, without prompting." JJ said. "Also, Alrick Garron had a remarkable amount of game."
"Really?"
"Yes. Apparently he and Diana met at a palace ball…"
"A palace ball?" Penelope asked.
"It sounds like they may have had something like the British peerage system." Spencer said.
"ooo, I wonder if that means you have a title? And a castle?"
"Their planet was destroyed." Dave said from the stove. "That would take care of the castle."
"And when I was in London my favorite barista was a legit countess." Emily said. "Having a title doesn't mean all that much."
"I think I'm going to stick with 'doctor' and 'agent'." Spencer said. "I earned those."
"Good call." Dave said.
"Anyway." JJ took back the floor. "They met at a palace ball, danced three times, he never gave her his name. The next day she got back to her office after a class…."
'What did she do?" Emily asked.
"The equivalent of adjutant professor at the Crown University." Spencer said. "Ancient literature, which she claims is very similar to Medieval literature. It was her first year post-grad."
"Oh. So that didn't really change."
"No, not really. Same job, different books."
"…and he had filled her office with flowers." There was a general awww around the room. "He stopped by and said he didn't know which ones were her favorites so he got some of all of them and would she like to go out tonight?"
"Now that's well done." Dave said. "Do we know what he did?"
"Intergalactic Cartographer." JJ said. "He was a professor at the same uni."
"Apples do not fall far from trees after all."
"Apparently he did so well that they married a year later and soon after she tossed her birth control. She made a big point of saying that Spence is his 'natural' son, whatever that means to them."
"We broke to come for dinner there." Spencer said.
"Don't blame you." Emily replied. "So how are you feeling about having Alrick Garron for a father?"
"I don't know." Spencer replied. "Better than I ever felt about William Reid. It's one thing having your father abandon you because he thinks you're some kind of freak, it's another to have him lost in a defensive war. He's not gone because you're too strange for him, he's gone because he loved you and was trying to protect you."
Dave brought over the first course. "And that is enormous."
"It really is." Emily replied.
"I need to talk to William though. Tomorrow we need to find out what the DIA did with him."
"Why?"
"Mom doesn't remember much from those days…"
"Three months pregnant, fleeing a war, a whole new culture. It's not surprising." JJ said.
"She said something about someone named Kati coming with them. But at one point she disappeared." Spencer said.
"Where and how?" Emily asked.
"That's what I want to find out."
