Who is the Victim Here

I would love to hear your opinions and look to working further on the story.

I do not own or have connection with the "Criminal Minds" program or its characters.

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

In the next several months, problems begin to occur for different people. First, the restaurant in Hong Kong in having some management issues and William and Sean discuss about what to do about it and although Aaron has no authority in the business right now, they talk with him about the issues. Because William is a widower with four young children, it really would not be prudent for him to go there. Sean is the best brother to send to handle the situation but he really should not leave Aaron alone since he is also responsible for the man. The next court date is eight weeks away and although Aaron has improved greatly since the last date, he still has problems and should not be alone. Sean needs to go however so they give temporary custody of Aaron to his fiancée, Angie. So Sean leaves for Hong Kong to deal with the management.

Before Sean left, Spencer gave a seminar at Georgetown on Using Statistics in Profiling the Psyche of Serial Killers and had to wait when he was finished giving the seminar because momma was talking to her current professor of the class she was taking for her master's degree in medieval literature. Because of her failing eyesight, she only takes one course a semester and likes to have someone going with her when she goes to class. He goes to get her and meets Dr. Karen Somerset, momma's current professor and friend of a few years. Dr. Somerset is a lot like our young Dr. Reid; being shy, socially awkward and a person who had a lot of responsibility at a young age. She had been caring for her brother since her parents had died twelve years ago. Her brother passed away eight months earlier from complications to his cerebral palsy. He was diaper-dependant and wheelchair bound most of his life. The young professors start to date once a week as momma won't let Spencer go out on work nights. He needs plenty of sleep to stay out of toddler mode.

About a month after Sean left, momma began to keep Spencer with her or make sure that he is with someone he knows since he could break down at any time. He is currently taking a short break from case work with the BAU because he is in toddler mode and there doesn't seem to be any way to get him out of it. It began two weeks earlier when the phone rang at home.

Angie answers, "Hello."

"Hello may I please speak to Dr. Reid. This is the Dr. Jesson of the Bennington Sanitarium, I work with his mother and there has been an incident involving her."

"If you will hold, I will get Spencer." She goes to the nursery and gently goes to wake her sleeping son. "Spencer, baby, wake up there is a telephone call for you."

The man opens his eyes and rubs them. He says, "A telephone call?"

"Yes, sweetie, it is from Nevada at your mother's sanitarium." He sits up with a jolt and reaches out to her and she takes him out of his crib. "Take the phone in the office." He runs to the office in his purple sleeper; his covered feet silently going over the floor. Angie goes over to where Aaron is sleeping and wakes him up as well.

He asks, "What is it?"

"Spencer has a call from his mother's sanitarium in Nevada. I sent him to the office phone." He reaches out to her and she takes him out of his crib and he follows in Spencer's footsteps in his green sleeper. She walks into the office and Spencer has the phone on speaker talking to Dr. Jesson. Another patient at the hospital at a bad psychotic episode and ran to Spencer's mother and punched her over and over again before they were able to get the patient off of Mrs. Reid she was unconscious and has been taken to the emergency room of the local hospital. The hospital hasn't given them any details of her condition yet but they felt that as her nearest relative he needed to know.

"Thank you, I will get back to you about what I am going to do." says Spencer. He disconnects the call.

"What do you want to do sweetheart?"

"I don't know, I mean I know that I have no legal ties with her anymore but she is my mother and the woman who raised me. What should I do, mommy?" Aaron and Angie look at one another and clasp hands.

Aaron says, "We will go to Nevada and check on Diana." Spencer looks at the two with stricken eyes and goes to them and sits on Aaron's lap and buries his face into the man's shoulder. Angie went online and got three tickets to Vegas which would have them leave in about six hours. She passed by her boys in the chair and goes to pack three go bags and a separate diaper with food bag for her boys. After packing, she goes back to the office and the boys are not there and she goes to look in the nursery and the playroom, where she finds them. Aaron is rocking Spencer in the rocking chair holding the boy close to his chest while he drank a bottle of whole milk. She goes to her men and caresses the forehead of both.

"We ready to go."

She nods and says, "We just need to get you both changed and dressed and you need to eat. I see that you are feeding him and was the bottle his idea or yours?"

"It was his, he thought it might be comforting, that's why I chose whole milk for him. From experience, I know that it is one of the most comforting of drinks." She kisses him and then the top of Spencer's head. After finishing the bottle, Aaron takes Spencer back to the nursery and changes his diaper and dresses him in a pair of khaki pants, lt. blue button down shirt and a cardigan sweater. He put on his mismatched socks and goes to eat the sandwich that momma made for him. When Spencer left, Angie then changed and dressed Aaron and he got fed as well.

Our little family arrives in Las Vegas many hours later and head to the hotel first because the hospital visiting hours are not for another hour. Momma changes and cleans up both her men and they head out to the hospital and find out what happened to Diana. It seems the other patient was mad at her for something and began to punch her repeatedly in the chest and head. Diana suffered heart failure and they had to revive her but they are not giving her much hope that she will come out of the coma that she has gone into. Spencer sobs when he hears this and asks, "Can I see her?"

He is given permission but to not bother her while she is lying there. The doctors look at the young man in wonder. He seems so much younger than they thought he was. Our group goes into the ICU room that Diana is in. Spencer goes to the side of the bed and grabs hold of her hand as he looks at the pale face on the pillow and with his other hand he sweeps her hair trying not to touch the bruises and bandages around her body. He says, "Mom, you can wake up now. It's me Spencer. Wake up mom." His face crumples in pain as tears roll down his cheeks. Aaron and Angie stand behind and watch as their young man becomes younger and more vulnerable. Spencer looks at his mom and turns around to clasp his daddy Aaron's waist while he buries his face into his suit jacket. Mommy strokes his hair and he looks at her crying.

He turns back to the woman on the bed and bends down to cry on her chest and says, "Wake up mom please wake up." The woman on the bed just lies there still and shows no reaction to her son's anguish. He loves her but he can't take care of her anymore and knows that she cannot take care of him. Angie leaves the room and lets her son stay with his mother for as long as wants to. In the waiting room, Mr. Reid is waiting and sees her. He now knows that Spencer is in with his mother and Angie motions for him to join his son. As he enters the room, he sees Spencer crying on her chest and Aaron is behind him with his hands at his waist as if supporting him to stand there. Mr. Reid goes over and stands beside Aaron, who looks at him and moves back so the Mr. Reid can stand beside the boy. He strokes Spencer's hair and the boy looks up to see him standing there and cries even louder as he hugs his biological father. They stand there looking at the woman on the bed trying to will her to live and come back to them. Aaron goes to sit in a chair in the corner and watch over Spencer.

An hour later, everyone is actually in the day room where they sit and pray and wonder about the woman in the room. Spencer is no longer crying but sits there feeling lost and yet he looks up and sees his mommy and daddy and knows that he is not lost but is losing a string to his past. He stops thinking and just lets his body's instincts take over and those are the same instincts that are controlled and influenced by the drug in his cells. He curls up on a double chair and starts to suck his thumb. Mommy comes over and moves him to lay down in her arms where she begins to rock and hum. Aaron brings a bottle for him which he begins to drink greedily. Mr. Reid is finally seeing the effects of the drug that he had been told about and now completely understands why the man needs to have someone take care of him. Aaron sits down on the same double chair as Angie and Spencer with Spencer's bottom half over him. Angie remembers this scene from the year before except the men had been reversed and they were in a SUV. She and Aaron clasp hands while they feed their little boy.

Spencer finishes the bottle and falls asleep in their arms. Mr. Reid comes nearer and the three begin to talk about the boy and what he does and if Mr. Reid should still be in his life at all. He will always care about his son but obviously Spencer needs more that what he can provide. Angie asks Mr. Reid if he would like to hold him for while he is sleeping. The man in uncertain that he can but was willing to try. Angie and Aaron lift the top half of the boy so that she can get up and Mr. Reid sits down after which they set the boy back down to lie in the man's arms. Spencer had his thumb in his mouth again and curled up closer to his chest. Aaron moves the boy's bottom half off him and the couple go to find a place where they can change his diaper and get something to eat. They know that Spencer will be safe in Mr. Reid's arms.

An hour later, the couple comes back to the scene that they had left. Aaron had been changed and then fed and given a bottle and Angie ate a cheeseburger. Mr. Reid looks relieved to finally see them again. It seems Spencer is getting heavy and starting to squirm once in a while. Angie goes to pick up the boy from the man's arms and takes him to the same place that they found to change Aaron's diaper. She placed him on the exam table and proceeded to remove his wet and dirty diaper. Aaron had brought the diaper bag and then left to go back to the day room. Spencer wakes up while he is being changed by mommy and reaches to her.

He asks, "Is my other mother okay still?"

"She still alive and in a coma, I am more worried about you. How do you feel?"

"Scared mommy, what happens if she dies? What happens to me?"

"You will be with me and Daddy, your father wants to still be a part of your life in at least knowing that you are safe and happy. Your mother will be a part of your life in your memories and your heart and she will watch you mature and live in another plane of life."

"Do you really believe that there are other planes of life?"

"There is no true quantifiable proof of it but sometimes you must go outside the box and what is quantifiable to just believe in your ideas and fantasies."

"I don't understand."

"Of course not, but that's okay you don't have to understand everything in life." She finishes dressing him and they go back to the day room. Spencer goes to the room with Diana lying in the bed and sat by her bedside watching the machines help her breathe and monitor her vital signs. He brought a book to read to her and it is one of Angie's that he had never read before and does not remember his mother reading it to him. For more than an hour, he would read and there would be no response.

SCREEEEEE! SCREEEEE!

Spencer jumps as the monitors on Diana's machines began to scream, he looks as she stops breathing and medical personnel come running in, he gets pushed back and watches as the people try to stop the machines and bring the woman back. Her heart stops and they begin heart massage to get it going again and then her left lung collapses and there is no brain activity registered. After fifteen minutes of trying to revive her they call her death for 10:38 pm. They cover her face in a sheet and leave the room. Angie and Aaron had been kept out during this time and Spencer was not able to leave so he watched the entire time as they tried to save his mom's life and yet he sees her die in front of his eyes. He starts to cry and moans to see her die. He doesn't want her to die but he can't stop it. All of a sudden momma was in front of him blocking his view of the woman on the bed and she placed her hands on each side of his face to make sure he looks only at her. When she sees his eyes clearly, she takes him and puts his face into her shoulder and started to rock him while standing there. He cried and said, "I couldn't stop it, she died as I watched. She died when I held her hand. She died. Mommy, my mom's dead." She continues to hold and rock the man as she leads him out of the room.

She leads him down to the day room and sits down and sits him down beside her and he lies back into her arms and cries into her chest. They just sit there for quite some time until Spencer falls asleep and starts to hiccup slightly from crying so much. In the meantime, Mr. Reid and Aaron were talking to the doctor and find out what happened. They will have to do an autopsy to find out exactly what happened. Aaron come over and looks at them and says, "We should head to the hotel and get some rest. We can talk more with Mr. Reid tomorrow about what to do. He bends down and picks up Spencer and put him in a wheelchair to take out to the door, where he calls for a cab.

Back at their room, momma changed and then dressed Spencer into his sleeper and put him into bed. She then took care of Aaron and they go to bed together. In the morning, she wakes up to someone calling mommy and gets up to go to her little boy. When she gets to his side, he finds her and grabs her in desperation and great need. She climbs into the bed and puts him on her lap on the bed and starts to rock him. Aaron watches and gets out two bottles from the refrigerator and he gave one to Angie for Spencer and kept one for himself. He got in the bed next to her and drank his bottle while watching Spencer drank his. The two men look at each other while they suckle and both snuggle closer to mommy.

Later that day, Aaron and Angie met with Mr. Reid at the funeral home with Spencer. The people set up a time for a memorial for the woman and a funeral later in the week. Spencer went with Mr. Reid to his place to look for addresses that he had of former friends and family of Diana Reid. Angie and Aaron went to her room at the sanitarium. They did not want Spencer to see her things until he is more stable. With the Doctor, they learn of her desires and who is the executor of her will. Because Angie is Spencer's legal guardian and he is the executor of the will, Angie is allowed to make decisions for him. She begins by having all of Diana's things boxed up and sent to the hometown house except for her books and photographs, which are sent to the apartment in D. C. Anything else will be done at a later date. She is only concerned about making sure that Spencer does not come to the sanitarium.

For the next month, our little boy wakes up in his crib crying and doesn't want to read or do anything that would remind him of what he did with his mother. But soon he begins to heal and the hole that is left by Diana's death starts to fill. He has been dating Dr. Somerset a few days a week and she has been helping to bring the man back out of the toddler mode that he has sunk himself into. He tries to keep himself in good graces with mommy and with Aaron, but little boys don't always do what they are supposed to do. (We know how trustworthy Aaron is, we just have to remember him going down into the dungeon and stealing the van) Is Spencer any better? Usually his discipline was for tantrums about not letting people change him or take care of him when he needed it. So what can our little boy do that really upsets people exceedingly?

He starts to go back to work and the team goes on a case to Wisconsin, this winter in the national forest in the center of the state, a large tree fell over and under the tree wrapped in the trunks was the bodies of four young teenagers. The teens look like they had been there for years but testing discovered that they had only been there for three months. Our team is requested to help them discover who would have done this and how. Angie stays home while she has packed bags for her men to take with them. David will be changing diapers and keeping them clean and dry and making sure they are well fed. Aaron is the boss when working but when he is not on the job; David is the boss of both Aaron and Spencer. Neither man is going to be happy when he realizes how mad that this boss can get.

During the case, Aaron and David are looking into the talking to the parent of the teens, while Morgan and Reid go to the crime scene. JJ and Emily's replacement, Donna Cook, are looking into the details of the crimes with the police chief, while Garcia was checking if other reports of missing children or other crimes similar are found. While at the scene of the tree which had fallen and was next to the national forest, our agents look around and look to how the teens were actually buried under an old living tree. Reid kept walking farther and farther away from the scene following a stream of brushed snow that looks suspicious and interesting at the same time. The snow was well packed in the area and he left no footsteps behind him. No one was watching where he was going as they were listening to what Morgan was saying about what he sees. When he looks up to ask Reid his impressions and doesn't see him, he asks around. The deputies and Morgan look around and Reid is nowhere to found in the area. The call out and Reid has wandered so far away that he does not hear them and when he finally realizes how far into the forest he has come, he discovers himself to be completely lost. He gets out his cell phone and finds no bars which mean no signal and he calls out to see if someone might be just at the edge of where he can see. He receives no answers to his calls.

Morgan receives no answer to his calling out and the people in the area begin to search for the missing agent. Morgan tries to find the way the man went by following the boot prints left by his steps but could not find the path. He did not hear what Spencer had said about what he was following.

Reid tries to do a u-turn and walk back to where he came from, however since it was not in a linear path, there is no way that he really knows from which way he came and the snow is so packed that he is unable to tell where his boot prints are in the snow. He feels completely lost and alone. He picks a path through the bare trees and to show that he has been there, he places a thread from his scarf on an empty branch. He does not realize that he is walking further into the forest and away from the scene, but just walks and leaves threads along the way.

Meanwhile, Morgan calls in to let Hotch and Rossi know that he has lost Reid, who went walking in the forest. Great concern is felt but the men believe that Reid will find his way back and do continue to work on a profile with the information they have. They do find that it really isn't too difficult and have one in just a few hours. The day in getting dark and Reid is still missing. He hasn't been changed since lunch and it is near dinner, while he is walking through the trees he becomes more disoriented and frightened. The trees start to move from the wind picking up and making strange shapes into the ground. Reid is struggling not to go into toddler mode because in his mind he knows that he needs to a functioning adult in order to find his way out of there. He feels lucky when he finally comes to a rutted pathway in the forest and begins to walk along it hoping it would lead to a road.

Morgan in the meantime has not left the scene and continues to call out and the group there creates a grid to search for the missing man. Rossi and Hotch arrive to talk to Morgan about what happened. Hotch has Garcia look up the forest maps and tell them what is around the area and help them find the best way to find Reid. He also has her check Reid's cell phone and gets no signal from it which means that she cannot find it. Rossi tells Morgan that he will be back to help in the search but he was taking Aaron to the motel and will check on the ladies. Aaron protests that he is not going back to the motel as long as Reid is out there.

David says, "You have put in your ten hours today, Aaron. Legally I cannot permit you to stay and search for Reid. He is missing from a case scene which means on the job right now. You cannot work more than ten hours. Until the judge changes the ruling and gives you back control of your life, you are limited and under my supervision personally. The only time you are the boss is in the ten hours you are working, that time is up for today. You are going back to the motel, being changed, fed and possibly even put to bed. Get in the SUV now Aaron."

Hotch answers, "No Dave, as long as Spencer is out there. I cannot leave the scene and my responsibilities to him and the team."

"Your responsibilities ended twenty minutes ago. They are now mine, go get in the vehicle."

"Dave, please do not do this to me. I am not a baby right now and I don't need to be treated like one. Spencer needs me here and I need to help find him."

"I have to disagree, you need to do what you are told and until the courts say differently, you are legally still a baby and have to be treated as such. I am giving you the chance to go back to motel looking like a man but that is about to change Aaron." Aaron scowls and looks angry at the situation but gets in the car. Rossi tells Morgan and the men head to the motel.

At the motel, David does change a dirty diaper, feed solid food and a bottle to Aaron and put his night time sleeper on although he did not say he had to sleep yet. David then heads back to the scene with hot coffee and food for the searchers, trusting Aaron will stay at the motel.

Spencer is getting more scared and toddler mode as the night falls. He has a wet and itchy bottom, a rumbling tummy and fright of the dark and the forest looks terrifying. He finds a hollow style tree and crawls in for the night because that they are going to search and find him at night. He hopes he will be alive still in the morning as he tries to go to sleep in the tree. It is difficult because he is crying and sucking his thumb at the same time thinking Mommy? Daddy? Anybody?