Chapter 33

BAU Headquarters
FBI building
Quantico, VA

October 2011

Eventually they'd had to take their leave of Larry and return home. "Is this where you live?" Tally asked as she looked up at the towering building.

"No, this is where we work." Spencer considered the building as well. "I supposed you could call this our schoolhouse. It's where we feel very safe and we can do our best work."

"Ah." That understanding reached she followed them in to the building and quietly submitted to security. "I cannot get used to these moving rooms." She said of the elevator. "You said they are lifted by cables and pulleys?"

"Yes. They are counterweighted. They're actually less common back home, the risk of earthquake there is greater and there is more room for the city to spread out so there are fewer tall buildings."

"What if the cable breaks?"

Spencer looked down into her concerned face with a tight smile. "Let's not consider that."

"Right."

Morgan's stomach hurt from holding in laughter.

They stepped out of the elevator and straight into a brightly colored tornado. "Spencer! You're here! You're home! You're okay!" Garcia said, hugging him long and hard.

"I'm okay. Reasonably okay," Spencer replied.

"No you're not, you're too skinny!" She stepped back and looked at him. "But we can fix it! I'm going to make you soup! And you too. Are you Tally?"

"I am." Tally replied, a soft smile on her face. "You must be Penelope. Spencer told me quite a lot about you."

"I am. Can I hug you?"

"Of course."

"You have two choices, at the moment." Dave said, walking up to them, "A hotel room in the city...do not argue..." He put up a hand to stop Spencer from even opening his mouth. "Or I know a little inn outside Spotsylvania, a small town, close to the city but in the countryside. Which one?"

Spencer looked down at Tally, who considered. "Boston was fascinating. I would like to spend more time in the city, especially in the Capitol. But I think I need to get back between the shafts first."

Dave turned, but then turned back, "I should have considered this."

"What?" Spencer asked.

"The inn is built around an old plantation house. A lot of the rooms are small outbuildings."

Spencer winced but Tally smiled. "That sounds quite familiar. But we'll be safe there, yes? Our own space and the freedom to come and go?"

"Of course. I'm sure Morgan will go with you and you'll have a car."

"Then I think I rather like the idea. We discussed it," she turned to Spencer. "When you tried to come back for me, basing in the familiar as everyone went out to explore something new so it wouldn't be such a shock. It would probably be for the best if we did the same."

"Good point." Spencer replied.

"I'll go set it up. You're going with them." Dave said to Morgan.

"Guess I'm going to the country." Morgan replied with a sigh.

The Tobacco Barn
Stevenson Ridge Plantation
Spotsylvania, Virginia

At first Spencer was doubtful, but the renovated barn was really a small cabin, quiet and cozy, with just enough kitchen to manage breakfast for two or three. The look of the place was very much like the housing back on the island, but there was a bed for two, internet service, an SUV outside, and Morgan was in the cabin next door. It was the perfect bridge space between there and the city. "Oh, this is lovely!" Tally said when she saw it.

"Just need to make it into a schoolhouse." Morgan said, as he put the old globe he had found on the coffee table.

"Seriously?" Spencer asked.

"Whatever it takes to make you two feel safe enough to get a good night's sleep."

They managed to get a good night's sleep that night. But it had little to do with the décor, as comforting as it was. The bed was big enough, and soft enough, to sink and they had a fire against the sudden fall chill. Tally rolled into his arms like she belonged there, and moaned like she'd never known pain. It was sweet and good and in the end he found himself drifting with her in his arms. "Future son-in-law?" She asked.

"Maybe your father was right. Maybe this was meant to be."

For the next several days they got 'back between the shafts', an island term for being back to a familiar line of work. Spencer was debriefed over a few days, filled out the mountain of paperwork, and started seeing a Bureau psychologist. Tally was not yet ready to see a therapist, and Spencer wasn't certain what specialty she would need. Instead she started keeping a journal, and kept her hands busy.

They were duly trundled off to the doctor for a full medical check. Spencer was deemed to be healthy if underweight and dealing with arthritis in his knee, was ordered to eat more and sent to physical therapy. Nothing he couldn't handle. Tally was deemed to be more seriously malnourished, was given supplements, a special diet, and was told to come back regularly to check her progress. "I always thought I was doing well." She said. "I never felt hungry."

"The midwife knew what she was doing." Spencer replied. "She kept you just hungry enough to stop a baby, no more."

"Ahhh. Best to set that to rights then."

The Inn was run by old friends of Dave's, to no one's surprise. They let her sit in on cooking classes they offered, letting her absorb modern cooking techniques and terminology as she watched. And she started a quilt, of all things, for their bed, and a new sweater to replace the one she had to give back, and at one point she commandeered a place behind the landscapers shed and a propane stove and set up dying buckets. "Much better," she said as she pulled an older boy's undershirt from a bucket full of hot water, alum and some kind of mushroom she found growing under the foundation of the horse barn.

"That's a nice purple." Spencer said.

"I always did like this one. Those boughten shirts are both ugly and uncomfortable. There's something not right about clothing for women being so unpleasant compared to clothing meant for men."

"I agree." He looked at the long denim skirt she was wearing. "You look more comfortable in a skirt."

"I am."

The next day the Innkeeper noticed the soft colors and asked her about it. "We regularly do crafter's retreats, where women come for a few days to learn to do different handicrafts." The Innkeeper said. Can you teach a natural dying class?"

"Surely." Tally replied. "Shirts, cloth for sewing, spun wool or batts?"

By the end of the week she had a glimmer of a future career going.

Eventually they started visiting the city. Tally made him bring the camera so she could send videos back to the Island. Never what you would expect, public toilets were a thing, and banking, and taking the Metro and a dozen other topics of interest. They managed to set up e-mail out there and she found herself answering a dozen questions a week. "Sounds like they're keeping you busy." Penelope said one afternoon as she put bowls of a rich chicken soup on her table.

"They are." Tally replied. "But it's good. I like feeling like I still have a place there."

"It really matters to you."

"It does. It's...I guess now I have two homes." She said. Then she looked over at Spencer. "No, I have three."

"They wanted the results." She said one night as they sat around a fire pit on the inn grounds, enjoying the Indian summer evening, "The Master's wives and the Elder's wives. But the Elder's had too many children to have time to knit and sew and the Mistresses didn't have the patience. So they made us make things for them, everything from cloth diapers to fine lace wedding veils. It all had to be handmade, even though they didn't have the time or patience to learn to make anything. The output they wanted took an awful lot of hands, that's why I had to teach every girl."

"Now you can teach people who want to learn for themselves, for the pleasure of making things."

"I rather like that." She replied. "You know, I did overhear some of them talking about a woman they knew, a relative perhaps, who was not 'working'. The Masters used to preach that all women had to work outside of the home out here, and homes were barren cold places where people merely slept and did not live as a true family or community. They made it sound awful, but then they have lied before..."

"And they were lying again, or at least exaggerating. The question of who works and who looks after a home is answered by each individual family. The majority of women do work, as do the majority of men, but some of both sexes stay home, or stay home for a time and then return to work. As an example, my boss Hotch's wife stayed home full time to keep their home and raise their son. My co-worker JJ's husband stayed home to care for their home and raise their son until Henry was old enough to go to school full time, then he went back to work as well. It's really up to each individual family. I'm still working out why they told that lie."

"And what about us?"

Ahh, that was the meat of the question. "As far as I'm concerned just having you in my life is contribution enough. Should you choose to work and contribute financially I'll support your decision, but I make enough so that you shouldn't have to. If you want to teach crafting or go back to university or if we start a family, I'll support any decision you make."

"You will?"

"Yes. You're my wife." It wasn't legal yet, not by any of the world's standards, but as far as he was concerned...

"And you're my husband." Tally replied. "There and here."

"There and here."