How did the events of this story affect Spencer? He is reunited with his family and nobody got hurt, but is that enough? Read, find out and review! This is the last chapter, but I have a special epilogue ready to be posted soon. Thank you for reading and enjoy the chapter.

And so you see I have come to doubt

All that I once held as true

I stand alone without beliefs

The only truth I know is you

(Paul Simon, Kathy's Song)

From the warehouse they headed straight to the BAU Headquarters. Spencer wanted to hold the door for the others as they entered the office, but he was almost swept off his feet by something blond with a blue ribbon.

"Don't you ever, ever do that to me again!" Garcia complained. "That goes for both of you! I had to listen to the whole thing! I can never unhear it! I was there alone and with a baby and you made me listen!"

Spencer hugged her and he could feel her shaking.

"I promise to never tell you a fairytale again," he said.

"Garcia, where is Joanna?" Maeve asked.

Garcia pointed over her shoulder, where they saw agent Anderson holding a child as far from him as possible, like she was going to bite him. He gave the team a desperate look.

"I think she needs a diaper change."

"I will do it," Spencer said quickly. He desperately needed to hold Joanna. Besides, he still wasn't sure that he wasn't dreaming about a happy ending and nothing said real like a diaper change.

After he was done and very sure that he was truly back with his daughter, Maeve took Joanna to feed her. The team had scattered and Spencer had a few moments just for himself.

He sighed and looked around. He walked to his desk and ran his hand across all those little things that he accumulated there over the years. This place was almost like a second home, but right now it didn't feel that way. His job was the reason he got into this mess in the first place. His job almost cost Joanna her father.

There wasn't one person on the team that hadn't been hospitalized at some point. Elle and Emily almost bled out to death. Gideon's girlfriend and Hotch's wife were murdered. JJ's husband was kidnapped. Morgan once drove a bomb halfway across the city and got out seconds before it blew up. Even Garcia was shot. Spencer himself was kidnapped, tortured, shot, infected with a deadly disease... Their job kept proving them that they are never safe.

Maybe it was time for a change.

When Maeve came back, he was decided. He opened the top drawer of his desk and reached for a small box he had there for a few weeks, waiting for the right moment.

"Give Joanna to JJ for a moment," he told Maeve.

Maeve frowned, but handed her daughter to JJ. When Spencer got down on one knee and opened the box, she understood.

"I just remembered that I haven't properly proposed to you. Maeve Donovan, will you marry me?"

She laughed and nodded. "I will. I didn't stall a psychotic kidnapper just to back out now."

It was almost midnight, Joanna was sleeping and Maeve was curled up in Spencer's arms. She was enjoying his warmth, the feeling of his soft skin under her fingers, and the memory of his lips on hers.

"I think I will quit at the BAU," he said suddenly.

"Why?" Maeve was confused.

"I can do anything else with my life. Professors at Caltech have much higher life expectancy than FBI agents and they don't get kidnapped nearly as often. I don't want you to tremble with fear every time I'm ten minutes late from work. I don't want Joanna to know only my picture," he said.

Maeve turned so that she could see his face. "You don't like your job any more?"

"That's not it..."

"So if you like your job, keep doing it. No, listen to me for a moment. I hate your job. I hate pausing every time one of your friends calls me, wondering if they're going to tell me you're not coming home. I hate that every time you walk out of the door, I know it might be the last time I see you.

But what you do is important and nobody knows this better than I do. I have been a victim and I have been the victim's family, and I each time I could only thank God it was your team, who worked the case. They saved you, they saved the little girl from her crazy mom. You saved me. Your team gives people back to their families. Someone has to be doing this and that someone will always have someone else who worries about him or her.

I agreed to marry you knowing that you are doing something that is dangerous, but it is important and it matters to you. Do I hate that you put your life in danger? Hell yeah. Do I want a husband who does something that lets him be on time for dinner every day? Of course. Do I want you to quit your job? Only if you don't like doing it any more."

Spencer looked at her, wondering once again how did this woman end up with him. "I love you," he told her.

"I love you too," she snuggled next to him. "Does this mean that you keep your job?"

"I need to think about it."

A few days later Hotch found Spencer in his office. The genius looked just as nervous as the day Joanna was born and he was holding an envelope.

"What do you need?" Hotch asked, sitting behind his desk.

"This," Spencer held up the envelope, "is my resignation letter. I just don't know if I should give it to you or not."

"Sit down," Hotch gestured to an empty chair. "Is this about the Elizabeth Patson business?"

"Yes. I mean, this time it was a happy ending, but what if I die next time? What if they take Maeve again? Or Jo? I think that maybe I should leave before it comes to that. I have three PhD's, there must be something else for me to do out there," he smiled weakly.

Hotch sighed. Spencer and Maeve had to have the worst luck of all the people he knew. The number of things that happened to Spencer was high even for an FBI agent. He had been expecting something like this since Diane Turner. And now, with the baby, it was only a matter of time. After Elizabeth took him, it was a matter of weeks.

"I can't say I blame you. I wonder every day... if I had quit when she asked me to, would Haley still be alive? If you decide to give me that letter, I will not try to convince you to stay."

"That's just it. I don't know. I hate not knowing. I think about all those people we help and I think I have to stay and help more. I think about Maeve standing there five steps from an unsub with a gun and I want to take my family and hide in the furthest corner of Greenland!" Spencer exclaimed.

"You know what?" Hotch suggested. "Take a break. Go home for as long as you need, figure this out and come back when you're ready. With or without that letter."

"Okay," Spencer agreed and put the letter back in his messenger bag.

"Hey, guys," Garcia poked her head in the office, "we got another one. Somebody is garroting women in South Dakota."

"I'll be there in a minute," Hotch promised and turned back to Spencer. "You know how to find us."

"It's weird, not having Spence around," said JJ and put a picture of another victim on the board. "I mean, do you think he'll ever come back?"

"I don't know," replied Blake. "Maybe he shouldn't."

"It makes me feel like a horrible mother," JJ sighed. "Like I don't love my family enough to quit for them."

"Drop it, you two," Hotch barked from his spot at the unsub board.

Blake rolled her eyes. This case was a nightmare. Not in the professional sense, they have seen both more sadistic and more complicated cases. But the whole team was on edge. Hotch turned his drill sergeant persona up to eleven, Morgan already almost got himself shot, JJ looked like she was ready to quit too, Rossi barely talked at all, and Garcia was answering the calls with plain Hello, which must have been unprecedented. Blake herself knew that there was a pattern somewhere, but the only thing she could think about was Reid would have seen it ages ago.

They were instinctively leaving an empty space where Reid would sit. When Hotch was handing out tasks, he assigned one to Reid before realizing he wasn't there, only to do it again two hours later. Garcia admitted that by mistake she sent half of the messages for the team to Reid as well. Blake herself asked for the geographical profile before she realized nobody was working on it.

This is going to be tough, Blake realized.

Spencer mowed half of the lawn, washed the dishes except the spoons, answered every third question Maeve asked him and hung a new picture in Joanna's room, hitting his own fingers just as often as the nail. The only thing he did with any kind of focus was checking his phone every time a text message came. He would read it and stare into the distance, thinking.

Maeve was following him around all day. She decided that the lawn can wait, washed the spoons, asked him every question three times and stopped to watch him every time his phone beeped.

After lunch he went online to look for open positions, but he just stared at the screen, not really reading anything. He sat like this for an hour before Maeve's patience ran out. She took his messenger bag and dropped it in his lap, making him jump.

He looked at her like a guilty puppy. "I tried," he said quietly.

"I know. Go," she jerked her head towards the door.

"This doesn't fit," Rossi banged his hand on the table. "There was no sexual assault, this doesn't make any sense!"

"There was the strangulation," Morgan pointed out. He spoke calmly, but they could all see how much effort it took.

"It's not enough," Rossi shook his head. "I'm telling you, we have the wrong guy!"

"For some unsubs the strangulation is a replacement for sex," Hotch argued.

"Bullshit," Rossi growled.

"Hey, calm down! We have the warrant, we are coming for him!" Morgan shouted.

"Actually, you do have the wrong guy," said a familiar voice at the door.

Spencer stood in the doorway, watching the boards with slightly annoyed expression. After a minute he marched to the nearest board and took a marker.

"Did you even look at the dump sites? A junkyard, a pig's pen, back alley among the trashcans... These were all successful women, intelligent, beautiful and he treated them like garbage. Of course there was no sign of sexual assault because this was never about sex, not directly. Look... Why are you all staring at me like I'm Santa Claus?"