A/N — I had surgery this morning and THEN came home and finished and edited this chapter, so *some* of these scenes are fueled by ketamine. I won't be telling you which ones. XD

As always, thanks for reading!

Love,
Cynthia

"But why did I tell her this / a stranger I've just met / a woman who I hardly know at all and will forget / anonymous and gone tomorrow / enchantment passing through / and I'll I've done is tell her things / that she already knew / she knew / she knew." — "Enchantment Passing Through" from Aida

October 31st, 2017

"Don't you want to meet her?" Spencer asks, standing by the baby's bassinet at the end of Cat's bed; by the time he asks, he has been standing in a silent room for what feels like a very long amount of time but has in reality been only sixteen minutes and forty-three seconds. Presumably, Cat is occupied with recovering, and though this is something that she very much so brought on herself, Spencer reasons that it still has to have been a deeply uncomfortable experience.

Still, he finds it odd that she hasn't said anything at all. She isn't sleeping, instead opting to stare at the ceiling with a vague frown on her face. Is she completely uninterested in the baby she went to great lengths to produce?

Also, they've never been in the same room for so long without Cat attempting to manipulate or antagonize Spencer in one way or another.

It turns out that the question was pointless, though, because Spencer doesn't get an answer.

"Cat?" he tries again uncertainly.

"What do you want?" she finally replies.

"I was asking if you wanted to meet her."

"Who?"

"The… the baby?" Spencer answers as a question, not because he doesn't know what the answer is but because he's incredulous in regards to her complete indifference.

"Mm… no," Cat declares after sarcastically pretending to consider the notion for a moment. "Why would I want to do that?"

"You carried her for eight months and twenty-four days."

"And?"

"And… don't you feel any connection to her at all?"

If he wasn't so personally close to the situation, Spencer might find this to be a very interesting opportunity through which to gather information about the female psychopathic psyche, but as it is, his main reaction is to feel a twinge of sympathy for his tiny daughter. As someone who grew up constantly possessing the uncomfortable knowledge that his father had no desire to be a part of his life, Spencer wishes he had a way to protect his yet-unnamed child from experiencing the same thing. Of course, she doesn't understand much of anything at the moment, especially not the nuances surrounding her own birth, but one day, she'll certainly start to notice and question her biological mother's absence.

Cat, as it turns out, is feeling considerably less introspective about the whole thing.

"No. She was a parasite and a means to an end."

"What is she now?"

"Irrelevant to my life in every way."

Spencer shakes his head, looking back at the girl in the bassinet. "Whatever you say. Keep in mind that it's now or never, though—I don't think a women's prison is a suitable place to bring a baby, so we won't be visiting."

There's a bite of sarcasm in his voice that he can't quite suppress, though, because he and Cat both know he has only been visiting her once a month for the duration of the pregnancy because it was a condition of the agreement he entered into for the sake of the then-unborn child. He has never had any independent desire to seek out her company.

Cat finally looks at him then—her gaze draws Spencer's own—but it's only to be sure that he sees her rolling her eyes. "Believe me when I say that's fine by me."

It's frankly bizarre to Spencer that she now has this attitude, given the fact she has spent the last year of her life plotting to catch and hold his attention by any means necessary. He isn't going to complain if she has finally decided to release him, though, and there's no reason to start an argument over it.

"Alright," he decides after a moment. "Well… have a nice life, I guess."

Cat makes a motion with one of her hands that Spencer suspects is meant to be a sardonic salute, but since both of her wrists are cuffed to the metal siderails of her hospital bed, the movement is aborted. Spencer stares at her for a moment, relatively bemused, and when she doesn't say anything, he shakes his head one more time, releases the locks on the plastic bassinet's wheels, and pushes the baby out of the room without looking back.

November 1st , 2017

"Dr. Reid? Did you hear me?"

Spencer, lost in thought as he's been for several minutes, entirely occupied by musings about the events of yesterday, had up until this moment entirely failed to noticed the other man's presence.

"I'm sorry. I was just…" He trails off and gives up rather than finishing his sentence.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, of course," Spencer says more firmly, shaking himself slightly and forcing his thoughts back to the present. "Anyway, what were you saying?"

"I was suggesting that it might be time to bring Nellie home. We only kept her here out of an abundance of caution in the first place, and she has excelled on every test we've thrown at her."

"Really? You're sure she's ready to be discharged?" Spencer checks nervously.

Nellie's NICU physician, Dr. James, is patient and kind—Spencer clearly isn't the first anxious parent to play twenty questions when the time comes to bring home their new baby.

"I'm sure. She's doing wonderfully—I can't think of any reason to keep her here. I'm sure you're eager to have her home, too, right?" There's a knowing twinkle in Dr. James' eye. "Or are you wanting her to stay here?"

"No. Unnecessary hospitalizations are a leading cause of antibiotic-resistant illnesses, because unfortunately, hospitals are just teeming with pathogens looking to cause opportunistic infections. Studies show that—oh. You were joking, weren't you?" Spencer belatedly realizes, his voice becoming a little sheepish.

"I was," Dr. James confirms, smiling with a mixture of good-natured amusement and empathy. "Home is the best place for Nellie now. She's ready."

"But what if I'm not?"

"Spencer, I've seen thousands of new parents walk through those doors with their infants over the course of my career, and do you know what they all have in common?"

Spencer shakes his head.

"None of them felt ready, and all of them managed to figure it out anyway. You'll do great, okay? And Nellie will have frequent checkups with her pediatrician in her first year of life, so even if something went wrong—and I'm not saying that it will!—it would be noticed."

"You're right. I'm just… I'm nervous."

"That's a very human response." Dr James pats Spencer gently on the shoulder. "Alright, you can go ahead and transfer Nellie into her carseat. Her nurse will have discharge papers for you in just a few minutes, and then we'll send you on your merry way. Best of luck, and you know where to find us if you need us!"

"Thanks, Dr. James. For everything."

As soon as the doctor walks away, Spencer's phone chimes, and he pulls it out of his pocket to frown at it.

[Clara Rose]: I'm here. Do you want me to park and come in, or wait in the car?

Spencer quickly replies—or it's a quick text by his own standards of clunky, awkward typing, anyway.

[Spencer Reid]: If you don't mind, can you come in and bring the car seat with you? I think it'll be easiest for us to get her situated and make sure she's properly strapped in here in the brightly lit hospital than the dimly lit car. Then we can just connect the carseat to the base and be on our way.

Clara is a much faster tester than Spencer is, and it's less than a minute later that he gets a reply.

[Clara Rose]: Absolutely. On my way up now.

Spencer sends the exact floor and room that he's in just in case Clara has any trouble with the hospital directory sign, and it's only a few minutes later that he looks up and sees a familiar face on the other side of the glass. He has Nellie already out of her hospital bassinet and in his arms; she's sleeping at the moment, tiny lips slightly parted, and he marvels at how light she is, even though she is currently totally unconscious and essentially dead weight.

He waves through the glass and hurries to go let the nanny in; he hadn't thought to send her the door code to the NICU.

"Hi, I'm glad you made it! I know hospitals can be a little confusing if you're not used to the layout of—" Spencer stops talking when he realizes that Clara isn't paying him the slightest bit of attention. Her entire being is focused on the face of the tiny girl currently nestled in the crook of his elbow, and there's a look of absolute joy on the nanny's face. "Clara Rose, meet Nellie Reid. I'll introduce you to her a little more fully when she's awake again."

"Spencer, the picture you sent didn't do her justice! She's beautiful."

It's obvious that every word of the compliment is genuine, and when Clara finally tears her eyes away from the baby and looks up, she's beaming. Spencer can't help but return the expression, feeling pride and happiness bubbling up in his chest. "Thank you so much. I can't stop looking at her. I think she's so gorgeous, but I'm biased, so it's just—it's nice that you think so, too," he finishes sort of lamely, but it doesn't matter. Clara is right there with him.

"Hey, I'm not related to her at all, so I'm not biased and you can believe me when I say it: she's cute as a button, Spencer, and I know what I'm talking about."

"Guess you've seen a lot of newborns, huh?"

"I sure have… and while I am of the opinion that there are no ugly babies, Nellie truly is unusually lovely."

"If you're trying to butter me up, it's working."

That earns Spencer a laugh. "Hey, having you pre-disposed to like me can't hurt, can it?"

Spencer thinks of Maeve and sobers slightly, privately speculating about people he likes ending up in quite a bit of danger due to the knowing of him. He feels it's the wrong moment to open that can of worms, though, and Clara had only been making a joke anyway. It would be weird to respond as if she hadn't been.

"Can't hurt a bit," he responds, putting some slightly-faked levity in his voice. "For what it's worth, though, I already like you, so we're off to a good start."

"I think so, too." Clara smiles at him and then gestures to the combination baby-carrier-and-carseat that she brought in from the car. "Alright, how familiar are you with this thing?" she begins again, taking on the air of a lecturing professor administering a pop quiz.

"Mm, I know its safety specs and its measurements because I spent several months comparison shopping, and I have the user manual memorized, but something tells me that's not what you were asking about."

"It isn't. Have you ever put a baby into one?"

"No. It's got to be pretty straightforward, though, right?" The next part is slightly uncertain. "I could recite the instructions to you, but I've never actually done it."

"You're right, it's not overly complicated. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that it's important to get this down exactly, though, right? We want to make sure we're keeping Nellie safe." There's a smile accompanying Clara's words, making it obvious that she isn't trying to talk down to him about it in the least.

"We absolutely do," he agrees firmly. "Want to show me how it's done, then?"

"Happy to." Clara holds her hands out for the newborn, and Spencer passes her over with an air of mild anxiety. What if he fumbles the exchange and they drop Nellie before even having a chance to bring her home and—

He needn't have worried, because the nanny is confident (even if Spencer himself isn't) and she takes the baby with ease; Nellie doesn't even wake up as she's passed between the two adults. Spencer shakes himself slightly, trying to force out the horrifying mental images that he conjured for no reason in favor of watching what's about to be demonstrated. Like Clara said, this is important.

She walks him through correctly adjusting and fastening the small straps and buckles step-by-step, and though each part of the process is identical to what he remembers from the diagrams in the manual, getting to watch a demonstration takes the fear out of the process. This way, Spencer doesn't have to worry that he misunderstood something due to lack of clarity in the directions or something else along those lines, and he's exceptionally grateful to Clara for failing to make fun of him when he asks her several questions on minute parts of what he has just seen her do.

He remembers what JJ had said about being fine on his own, able to figure out many parts of early parenthood by way of simple common sense: although she's undoubtedly correct, small moments like this make Spencer very glad that he chose to have a nanny handy from day one. Clara is earning her salary already by lessening his parental anxiety.

"Alright," she begins when she finishes the play-by-play, "I'm going to undo everything I just did so you have a chance to try it while I'm watching, just so I can correct what you're doing on the off chance that you miss something."

"You're the best," Spencer replies, grateful, and when Clara indicates that he should start whenever he's ready, he attempts to mimic all of her steps.

"It's official," she announces when he finishes, "you're a certified car-seat-baby-placement expert. I want to make sure you understand something, though, just in case I wasn't clear: I wasn't testing you because I thought you couldn't do it, I was testing you because it didn't seem like you thought you could do it. Please don't take this the wrong way, but… you were sort of giving off the same energy that a trembling Great Dane would give off while meeting a kitten it's terrified of."

That analogy is so unexpected and Penelope-Garcia-esque that Spencer laughs out loud, finding it surprisingly endearing. "No, no, I got that," he promises the nanny, grinning, "and your conclusion wasn't at all inaccurate, but… a trembling Great Dane? Ouch, Clara."

Clara chuckles, too, seeing that he's good-naturedly teasing her back. "What can I say? I just call it like I see it."

"Nanny by day, profiler by night. Do you have any other hidden talents?"

"It's possible."

Spencer snorts again and tilts his head toward Nellie. "Well, what do you think? Ready to help me get her in the car?"

"You bet. That part is pretty easy, too. Then you'll have your first two hurdles down! Once we this girl home, you'll have the opportunity to cross a million other parenting firsts off your bucket list."

Spencer carefully scoops up the car seat—Nellie still mercifully asleep inside—and leads the way from the room. "Only a million? That's sure to be child's play. I've been worrying for nothing…"

November 2nd , 2017

It feels like Clara hasn't been asleep for very long when something wakes her up, and for a moment, she isn't able to place what it was. She lies still, taking stock of her surroundings.

After a moment, the answer presents itself when it happens again—from the next bedroom, she hears a soft cry. Nellie must be awake.

Clara is not completely certain on how to coordinate with Spencer on baby care for the next few weeks; he'd expressed a need for general support as he transitions into fatherhood, but he'd never really elaborated on what he's expecting Clara to do to help. For now, she stays where she is, listening more intently.

The apartment is on the third level of an old building full of creaky floors, and Clara can hear every step from Spencer rolling out of bed to him padding toward the crib in the corner of the room. Then she hears a low voice, her new boss murmuring something to his daughter. The words are too muffled to make out, but the tone is unmistakeable—sleepy and affectionate. Something about it makes her smile.

After a minute or two, Nellie's quiet, sporadic cries start to die away, leaving silence in their wake. Then Clara can hear the squeak of a door hinge as Spencer leaves his room.

She had been reluctant to interrupt while the others were still in the bedroom, but now that they're in the common area, Clara decides to go see if she can offer any assistance. She climbs from her bed, shivering slightly as her feet hit the cold planks of the floor, and—blind in the dark—she fumbles around for her slippers. They help with the chill, and she makes her way out to the living room.

She finds Spencer and Nellie in the kitchen, though they're facing away from her and don't immediately notice her entrance.

"Did you know that humans are the only animals that routinely drink another animal's milk?" she hears Spencer murmuring conversationally as he goes through the motions of preparing a newborn's liquid meal, placing a baby bottle full of formula into the bottle warmer and turning it on. "What you're about to drink now—and what you've been drinking since your birth—is based on purified cow's milk. Now, ideally, your mother would supply milk of her own making and you wouldn't need artificial supplements, but in this case, that just isn't happening. It's okay, though, because modern science and medicine have accomplished some incredible things. Besides cow's milk, your formula has a vitamin-mineral mix, lactose, and vegetable oils—among other things. Those ingredients can't completely replace or replicate the benefits of breast milk, but it's remarkable how much a baby can thrive without ever once being breastfed."

"I know you said you don't know everything," Clara cuts in softly, trying not to startle her new roommates, "but… I'm not sure I believe it."

Spencer turns around, giving her a tired smile and bouncing Nellie slightly. "Sorry, we didn't mean to wake you," he replies, "did we, Nell?"

Nellie's only answer is a bit of fussing; she's ready to be fed.

"I'm here to help," Clara assures him lightly, dismissing his worries with a shrug. "I just came out to see if there's anything I can do."

"Not yet—but thank you, really. For now, it's enough to know that there's backup if I need it. I think I—"

Spencer is cut off by the beeping of the bottle warmer, indicating that it's done heating. He turns back to look at it, and then looks down at the baby in his arms, frowning. It's easy to see what he's considering.

"You may not need help, but it can't hurt, right?" Clara suggests gently, smiling. It can sometimes be difficult to finish a warmed bottle without putting the infant down; she knows that from long experience.

Spencer chuckles. "That's true. Would you mind?"

"Not in the least."

She joins them in the kitchen, giving Nellie a warm look—though she completely disregards the nanny's presence, glaring upwards at nothing in particular as newborns are wont to do. "Helpful hint—" Clara says as she plucks a dishtowel from the oven door and uses it to pull the bottle out of the heater, "despite the fact that bottle warmers aren't supposed to get too hot, the condensation can still do a bit of damage. Best to take it out with something covering your hands."

"I figured that out a couple of hours ago," Spencer replies ruefully. "I burned my fingers."

"Yep, I've done that a few times, too." Clara wipes the bottle off and inverts it a few times before testing its temperature on the inside of her wrist.

"I guess I should have thought about it. The water in the reservoir that the bottle sits in needs to heat to a higher degree than the formula itself in order to disperse heat into the bottle efficiently, so even if the formula isn't too hot for a baby's sensitive oral mucus membranes, the same isn't true for the warmer itself."

"Exactly. Those fifty baby-care books are paying off, aren't they?"

"Fifty-six when I met you," Spencer corrects, "but I'm at seventy-one now. They all have the same basic information, but I can't stop myself from reading more of them, just in case. Every so often, I come across something new, so I keep seeking out ones I haven't read."

Clara laughs, a sound Spencer echoes with only a tiny amount of self-aware embarrassment. "And I'm sure you have them memorized," the nanny guesses correctly.

"I do—but as my mother has been reminding me for my entire life, high IQ or any other measure of academic intelligence doesn't necessarily translate to a high level of common sense. I appreciate your warning… and I will be careful not to burn myself in the future."

Clara nods, imagining that Spencer's mother is absolutely correct. "Well, the bottle's ready, and I think Nellie is going to work herself up into quite a fit if she isn't fed soon."

"I think I'll feed her on the sofa."

"Good call."

Clara leads the way back out to the living room, and when she reaches the sofa and turns around, she is now able to see Spencer grinning, clearly amused. "What's so funny?" she wants to know.

"You're wearing slippers."

"So?"

"Literal bunny slippers!" he emphasizes with bemused levity, sitting down as Clara does the same.

"They make me happy. Leave me alone," the nanny protests, wrinkling her nose… but she wiggles her toes to make the plushy bunnies in question twitch in his direction all the same. Tiny fabric ears flap in the air.

"They're fun."

"Thank you." Clara shakes her head, smiling. "Alright, ready to feed her again?"

"Mhm."

"Great. Now, this is just a suggestion, but… even as tiny as she is, holding her for a long time will start to get really tiring. I find it's helpful to prop an infant—or your arm, either way—up on pillows for extra support during feeding times. There are pillows made specifically for this purpose, called Boppies, but couch pillows work in a pinch."

"I've heard my friend JJ mention those before, I think," Spencer notes, obligingly lifting his arms as Clara shoves two pillows underneath them. Once he seems properly situated to her trained eye, she passes him the bottle, which he in turn offers to Nellie. She accepts it with merciful ease and gets to sucking.

"JJ—that would be Jennifer, the one who interviewed me?" Clara remembers.

"Yeah. She's my best friend, and she has two kids of her own."

"Well, I'm sure she knows what she's talking about. Boppies are lifesavers."

"I'll absolutely get one, then." Spencer looks fondly down at the his daughter, watching her eat. "It's funny, isn't it? Thousands of years of evolution are at work here. This all feels so foreign to me, but she knows exactly what to do."

"You know what to do, too," Clara points out kindly—and she means it. "You're doing just fine."

"I—" Spencer has to stop to yawn, and Clara parrots the motion reflexively. "I've held babies before—babysat them a few times, too. I have a few godsons, and I've even delivered a baby once. This is different, though. This is… pressure. I know Nellie's life won't be ruined if I don't know instinctively what a Boppy is, but she's relying on me."

Clara's voice is firm when she answers. "She is, and you're coming through for her. I can't speak to the emotional differences between caring for your own kids versus caring for someone else's… but in the one evening you've had Nellie home so far, you've done everything I would have done, if that means anything to you at all."

"It does. Thank you."

Clara pats him comfortingly on the shoulder, hoping he won't mind her crossing the professional boundaries they have followed up until this point by initiating a little personal contact; from what she has seen so far, he generally seems to keep his distance, as does she… but the quiet, dark apartment invites closeness. "No one ever feels ready, not at first," she assures him. "This is normal."

"There's nothing normal about this," Spencer enigmatically disagrees, something odd in his voice, but then he shakes himself. "But you don't want to hear about that. Tell me more about Boppies…"

In the end, there's little Clara can do to help that Spencer wouldn't be able to do by himself, but she had honestly expected that. Spencer seems to appreciate the company, though, and she stays up as long as he and Nellie do.

There have been several times since meeting him that Spencer alluded to something painful about his situation—something to do with Nellie's mother, Clara is sure—but each time he seems close to saying something, he catches himself and changes the subject. Like before, Clara's naturally curious about whatever information being hinted at that she's not privy to, but she knows better than to ask. After all, it's not like she doesn't have skeletons in her own closet, and she knows how it feels to keep cards close to her vest.

There are agonizing secrets that she bites back, too.

When Spencer gets Nellie back down, laying her in her crib like she's a live grenade because he's so afraid of waking her back up, he feels like he's barely keeping his eyes open.

He hasn't slept well in the better part of a year as it is, but he hadn't fallen asleep before Nellie woke up an hour ago. Instead, he'd laid in bed, eyes closed but body alert as he listened for the slightest change in his daughter's status. This is hardly sustainable—he'll need his rest sooner rather than later—but he can't help the anxious instinct to make sure his child is okay.

That is a feeling that's certain to linger for the rest of his life, at least.

It helps some to know that Clara is in the next room sleeping, though, because it lessens the pressure. There's another someone looking out for Nellie's wellbeing, someone else to catch a problem if one arises.

He'd been surprised when she joined him in the kitchen earlier, because he'd never told her that she had to get up for middle-of-the-night feedings with him. Honestly, it would be crossing a line to ask her to do so when he's capable of doing it himself, really. He can't deny appreciating her presence, though.

Maybe it's that gratefulness, or his sleeplessness, or maybe it's just that the last year has changed him… but whatever it is, he felt his lips loosened dangerously a few too many times for comfort. He nearly mentioned Cat once or twice, and he almost talked about his prison sentence, too. Those are things that Clara doesn't need to know.

He's aware that he has changed since his arrest in Mexico, and while some of those changes don't bother him, some of them weigh him down. He sees the way his team—his family—looks at him now. It's not the same way they used to look at him; for better or for worse, what Cat did to him changed every aspect of his life.

It's so nice to be developing a tentative friendship with Clara, someone who doesn't have any idea of the darkness in Spencer's past. He hadn't anticipated that when he hired her, but every time he's spoken to her since her initial interview, the feeling has risen again. She doesn't know about the struggles of this year, or Maeve, or dilaudid. She doesn't know about his mother's schizophrenia or her Alzheimer's, or the fact that he nearly lost her to Lindsey Vaughn. She doesn't know the desperate inmate that he was six months ago, and she doesn't even really know Dr. Reid, the genius profiler of the BAU.

Clara is simply getting to know the Spencer he is at home—as a man and as a father, as her roommate and as her employer.

He feels surprisingly protective over that budding laid-back friendship. He's not ready to ruin it. Even beyond his desires for his own life, he'd like to keep Nellie's environment as innocent as possible for as long as possible. It doesn't matter that his daughter—at only two days old—doesn't understand a word of what is said around her. He knows very well that kids are insightful, and they alway pick up on more than they're meant to. Nellie's situation will never be exactly like that of her peers, but it can still be a happy one.

By now, almost everyone important in Spencer's life has met the baby; the BAU returned to Washington the morning after Nellie's birth, and all of them agreed that she's lovely and sweet and generally perfect in any way. It's possible that these reactions were due primarily to the team's love for Spencer and—by new extension—for Nellie, too, but that's alright with him. It's only important to him that his daughter is loved.

He, of course, adores her, and he's glad that everyone else does, too.

When things settle in a few weeks, Spencer will see if he can convince his mother to make the journey to Washington from Nevada for the first time since returning to her home state, aching to introduce her to her brand-new grandchild. She's iffy about flying, though, sometimes traveling with no complaints and sometimes experiencing spikes of anxiety that make it difficult to convince her to fly at all. The alternative is very daunting, however: if Diana can't bring herself to fly to see Spencer and Nellie, Spencer and Nellie will have to travel out to see her instead.

Spencer is still relatively fearful of life in his cozy, comfortable apartment with a newborn. He's exponentially more frightened of taking a several-hours' journey with his child in tow.

That's a bridge he'll cross if he gets to it, though. For now, since his mom is on his mind, he climbs out of bed and tiptoes to Nellie's crib, taking a slightly grainy nighttime photo of the sleeping baby and emailing it to Diana's address.

Hi, Mom! he types, wondering when she'll see it. Nellie is getting settled nicely at home this evening. I can't wait for you to meet her! I think I can see a little of you in her face. What do you think?

Love,
Spencer (and Nellie)

After hitting send, Spencer decides on a whim to send the same photo to his team, too, though he omits the message that he'd included in his original email.

He isn't expecting to hear back from anyone else this late, but shortly after he climbs back into bed, he hears a swooshing sort of sound that indicates an incoming message, and when he squints at the screen—having worked diligently in recent weeks to improve his digital skills in preparation for this sort of thing exactly—he finds a reply from Garcia. The message is simple, and it makes him laugh quietly: She! Is! So! Cute! Can I have her? Pretty, pretty please?

It takes a moment of fumbling with clumsy fingers to get to the right screen to send another message back, but finally, he manages, sending only three words: Good night, Garcia.

Then he puts his phone face-down on his bedside table, looks half-anxiously at Nellie's crib one more time, and tries again to get some sleep.