Notes:
TW: Drugs, murder, death, stabbing, prison, etc.
Season 12 Episode 13 "Spencer" - episode 20
(Basically the whole prison period)
The world was hazy. He knew nothing except that he needed to catch up to the truck, nothing else, that truck was important and he needed to stop it. Stop who. Stop…
The car veered off the dirt track and sirens and flashing lights surrounded him. Rough hands dragged him from the vehicle and throwing him in the dirt, cuffs cutting off feeling in his hands. His hands. There was something wrong with his hand… his head.
This was wrong, everything was wrong.
Spencer Reid floated through a series of strange moments. A camera, somebody shouting directions in Spanish, his clothes were gone, and the course fabric of a jumpsuit replaced the disguise he'd worn. Why had he worn a disguise? Why did the light jump around in front of his eyes? Why was his palm so itchy?
A thousand questions piling up, incomplete and incomprehensible, draining from him like the slow sand of an hourglass. Sand. There was sand between his toes.
Doctor Spencer Reid, FBI. Yes. That was his name. His hand?
"I don't know."
Why was he in Mexico?
"I don't know."
What was he doing with drugs in his car?
"I don't… not. not mine."
The drugs?
"The car, I don't know anything about…"
Anything about anything.
Yes.
Emily's face swam into view beyond the bars and Rossi's voice echoed around the concrete walls.
Fragments and fractions whirled meaninglessly by, but a few details filtered through:
The doctor he'd been in Mexico to meet was dead. His hand had been on the blade. El Diablo would probably kill him.
Emily looked concerned when the cognitive interview ended, but he couldn't remember what he'd said, the high was fading, dropping until the tremors and the pain behind his eyes grew unbearable and he had to be led like a blind man back to his cell.
I don't remember, I can't remember, what do I remember? This is wrong, all wrong, why, grey cells, need… food, sleep, who said?
Try to remember. Easier to forget.
Forget. Don't forget. Can't forget. Won't.
Short term memories resurfaced first, but everything after he entered the hotel room was hazy, he'd collected the vials of medicine for his mother, thanked the doctor, then a commotion and everything swirled again leaving him in doubt of everything.
The Mexican authorities smiled grimly when they came for him. El Diablo. The end.
Not yet. Rossi was loosening the cuffs and Luke was helping him to turn back, back to the station, to the car, the jet, back home. Except he wasn't going home.
Reuniting with the team in the BAU HQ should have been a relief, the faces of Garcia and JJ especially lifted seeing his. But something in the set of Emily's shoulders said this wasn't going to be easy and the cuffs still on his wrists emphasized how unprepared he was for the days and weeks to come.
Get a lawyer, plead not guilty, post bail.
Except…
An offer, plead guilty = 2-3 years.
The knife was found. His blood, his prints.
New offer 5-10, or take his chance at a trial and 25-life.
Reid's mind was functional now, back to all its brilliant glory, but he still couldn't force himself to make sense of the jumbled, drug-induced haze of broken memories that were the death of Doctor Rosa and the third person in the room.
He wouldn't lie. He would fight this, and his team would find Scratch. All he had to do was wait.
When he promised his mother that they would both be okay, and he would come home, he meant it. He believed it. And he infused that confidence into his next statement to her.
"I am safe and I have a great lawyer, we are going to be okay. Don't cry mom. I'm okay, everything is going to be okay."
"How do you plead?"
"Not guilty your honor."
"As to bail?"
The prosecution raised objections, as he'd been warned. Reid tried not to let the arguments against his character affect him. He tried to let nothing effect him. But then the verdict fell.
"Bail is denied. The defendant will be remanded to federal custody pending his trial."
The gavel fell,
As it dropped it broke hearts.
Broke bones, a broken dream.
Uncertainty, not the least of fear,
Danger, all around, in, out, upside down.
The cuffs wrapped around his wrists and cut off his lungs.
The steps to the holding cell, the steps into the transport truck, into the prison. Echoing steps, gavels each and every footfall, heralding the end of a good man.
Stripped, his good name, his freedom, his clothes and his future. Overcrowding put him in a cellblock with thirty other men. A guard who seemed to have it out for him, and protective custody rescinded. Profiling the hierarchy of this group would have been easy, but he wasn't given time. His things, the few things he had to call his own, were taken in the moment that he had his back turned.
Factions, loyalties, alliances. A dozen wild wolf packs thrown into one overcrowded den, fighting for dominance when control was a delusion. Reid's plan to keep his head down was already dislocated. Reclaiming his things from the Russian put a target on his back.
Helpless, he was helpless, tied up, tied down, a sock stuffed so far into his mouth he was gagging on it and the guard, even if he'd been there, wouldn't have stopped it this time.
Calvin Shaw stepped in. Outnumbered four to one, they still shuddered under his gaze.
Former FBI, killed his CI. Being friends with a man like Shaw can get you things in prison. Reid was moved to a single occupancy cell, offered a job in the laundry, books and chess games. Shaw explained the game of prison life and Reid believed for a moment that he'd been offered a reprieve. At least until it came time to return those favors.
"You can't fight it Reid, you just have to survive, and you survive by playing the game."
He understood, but he wasn't going to give up the last fibers of his morality, the basic tenants of right and wrong remained, no matter how upside down his world might be. He wasn't going to let them break down the foundations he'd built for himself. But Shaw was right about one thing. Predator or prey, there was no in between, it was all no-mans land.
His first move was the wrong one. The sharp bite of a fractured rib every time he took a breath was a reminder that he could count on no one. Survival of the ruthless was the only law. Bruises marked him out, and the sharks circled.
Penelope looked at him through the glass partition like he was a ghost, and he struggled to keep his own emotions buried as she reassured him that they would get him out.
Shaw was protecting him, because of something Alvez said, or just because he was bored and needed a project? Did it matter?
There was nothing he could do for Luis. Even as he screamed for help and tried to stop the bleeding, no help came and he could do nothing. His fault. They couldn't get him, so they made him watch.
Spencer Reid was a chess player. He would play the game, and he would do it by his own rules. He had time to plan, and he laid his plans deep, layers of contingencies upon contingencies upon possibilities. Every man in here was a piece on a chessboard, each moving and interacting in unique ways with the others. Wait, watch, analyze, strategize.
If he didn't move the drugs, he'd be dead. If he did it, he'd be complicit in a system of illegal drug use, and he'd have shown that he could be coerced. They'd use him like a pawn from that point on. He couldn't let them win.
The first step? Interfering with the drugs he was supposed to be transferring. Just a drop, a contaminant that would make them sick, but not kill them. Flush out the supply chain and give him space to prepare his next move.
The flush worked.
Shaw was in charge, that soon became clear. Nothing happened in cell block C without his tacit order or permission, and the guard was in on it. Shaw was the reason Luis was dead. This was war. Reid smothered his remorse as prisoners began to cough and choke in the cells around him. The only guilt he felt was for Malcolm, who had been forced to use, he had not had a choice, and Reid would have prevented it if he could, but it was too late now. He'd bought himself at least a week, maybe three, the team would figure it out in time. He just had to make it to trial.
In the breathing space, when his plans were polished and complete, he dreamt.
There was nothing but time. To think, to remember and reconsider and reframe his perspective.
At night, when sleep eluded him, there was one dream he re-played like a memory, the smooth warm voice of an angel, singing of love and loss and forgiveness. He pictured her, dressed all in white, illuminated by the moon and a lantern held out to him.
Tara visited, and the second cognitive brought up new details, details he obsessed over. Could it be true, he had held the knife, had he raised it? Had he killed Nadie Ramos? Was Tara right and this was just a false memory, rebuilt from fragmented memories to fill the blank in his mind?
One night to believe he was a murderer.
He dreamt the white clad figure was offering him a handful of berries, her face odd and unearthly as she waited for him to accept his fate. No, I didn't mean to, I never would have, I couldn't, I didn't, I'm sorry.
The next morning Tara insisted on walking through it again, and finally, something that felt like the truth. The other person was a woman. She killed Nadie, and sprayed him with something, taunting him to follow her. The details were still fuzzy, but they were falling into place.
And just at the moment that Reid's hope was highest, another blow fell. The trial would be delayed another six weeks. Shaw and his people would be back from infirmary before then. his fallback plans would be needed after all.
However prepared he may have been, he couldn't have planned for Diana's visit to the prison. He wouldn't have asked for this. He didn't want anyone to see him this way, calculating, cold, hard as stone, on the verge of sleep deprived insanity. He wasn't himself and he didn't want the infection to spread. But she was his mother and he couldn't refuse her. Diana was remarkably coherent, but it was cruel to let her see him this way, a cruel blessing, and a clue. The caregiver.
A face, familiar. A name, different than the one she gave, but Reid remembered anyway, there had been no drug induced amnesia the first time he'd met her.
Carol Atkinson – Lindsey Vaughan.
The significance of that name only sank in after his mother had left the room with the woman who murdered Nadie Ramos and got him locked up, helplessly watching her leave. Too late. Again, too late. The guards ignored his shouting.
The first chance he got; he gave her name to his lawyer Fiona. The team would look after his mother, he couldn't help her until he got out. So he had to focus on the game, time was up. Shaw was out and he would be gunning for him. After a brief intermission, the chess game would resume, and he still had one play left to make.
Shaw thought he'd won when word went around that Reid was a fed.
This was Reid's chance. Strike first, control the outcome. He had to let Shaw get him in a corner, but he didn't have to wait for the blow to fall.
The shiv he fashioned was sharp, and as thin as he dared without making it brittle. He dwelt on that sharp edge when Emily came to tell him about his mother's disappearance. He dwelt on the basic anatomy of arms and legs and the general location of major arteries, traced the lines in his own forearm as she spoke. Her warning to stay isolated only added to his conviction. His plan would work, it was the only way and it was now or never.
Shaw's threats fell flat. Spencer's play: Checkmate.
The man's face when Spencer forced the shiv into Shaw's hand and thrust it into his own thigh and again, into his arm, was horror.
Reid grinned as they were dragged apart. He looked insane he knew, but he was safe for the moment, and the team would find a way.
Zugzwang, this time he wrote the ending.
Still, fear and doubt hung over his head, paranoia. The empty silence of solitary confinement echoing with ghosts and taunts. The exercise routine he'd begun to follow since he'd been locked up could only amuse him for a short time. Then he had to find a place, somewhere deep in his own mind, where no one could touch him.
A white clad apparition walked with him in meadows of spring green, she sang and the birds echoed her faith, her palm was warm in his, their fingers intertwined. Reid was humming under his breath when they came for him.
The cuffs removed, he waited, knowing that this would be his last stand. He wasn't going down without a fight. The next door opened and JJ appeared.
"We're taking you home."
Notes:
So not a lot changed from canon, it's mostly just a rehashing with my own spin on Reid's experiences behind bars, all to get us to the big reveal in the next chapter.
What did you think?
Is it a bit of a let down since it's not new stuff?
Good, bad? I love to hear it all!