Adamda
"But why?"
It had been nearly 10 years that Spencer Reid had been asking that question of his subject.
Ten years of interrogation. I don't know who it tortures more, him….or her… or me.
"Why what, Dr. Reid?"
As usually happened, Amanda seemed to be enjoying the interaction. And Reid was tired of it.
"Why do you feel like you're the primary personality?"
Assuming she really understood at all the fact that she was simply a personality.
Amanda smirked at him, as she so often did.
"Well, who is here talking with you, Dr. Reid?"
He'd expected that. "I understand that you're here now. And, yes, I understand that you're the stronger personality. But why do you think that you are the more deserving one?"
Amanda seemed exasperated. "It doesn't matter which of us is more deserving, you sniveling pile of IQ points. Merit is a trait created by the weak. Dominance is awarded to the powerful."
"So you're more powerful? Does that mean you control the emergence?"
She stiffened. They were both aware that Adam had been both the original personality and that he had managed to reemerge repeatedly during the time when she'd committed the murders. Was Reid to think that she'd simply allowed Adam to appear, to deflect suspicion from herself?
But that would mean that she really doesn't understand that she isn't a separate person. Unless she planned that she would submerge until Adam had served whatever punishment might have come his way. And yet, she hasn't.
It amazed the BAU genius that, even after all this time, there should still be so many unanswered questions.
And that I'm still gaining new insights. If Amanda never intended to withstand the penalty, and yet has been doing so, maybe she can't submerge again. Or maybe she's afraid to.
He lasered his gaze on the shadowed eyes of the serial killer.
"You know what I think? I think Adam can come out whenever he wants to, but he doesn't want to. That would make him the stronger personality."
He didn't give her a chance to respond to him.
Next time. Maybe she'll let him out just to prove to me that I'm wrong.
"You went again, didn't you?"
She had always been able to read him like a book. Reid shrugged his backpack from his shoulder and laid it on his desk.
"Why does that sound like an accusation? You know I go a few times a year. It was time." Then, trying to deflect, he added, "How was your weekend? Did the boys win their games?"
"They did, happily. Mikey scored a goal and Henry scored two. He thinks there were some college scouts at the game."
The male profiler's brows went up. "Already?" Doing a quick set of mental calculations to assure himself that his elder godson wouldn't be going off to college any time soon. "Isn't he too young?"
JJ took a sip of her coffee and nodded to the mug she'd already prepared for him.
"Oh, thanks." She was the only one he trusted with his coffee prep.
"You're welcome. And yes, he's too young. They were probably there for the junior class, but it never hurts to make a good impression, right? Especially when that good impression might get him a scholarship when the time comes. College won't be easy on a government salary. Not even on two."
Reid nodded. "I guess you're right. I just don't like to think about how quickly their childhoods are passing."
JJ chuckled. "Henry would like you to know that he is no longer a child. And I fear Michael is right behind him." She stepped over to perch on the edge of Reid's desk. "Sometimes the days can be so long, yet the years pass so quickly. How does that work, exactly?"
Spencer Reid was still occasionally capable of missing the rhetorical nature of a question.
"All time is relative, and some of that relativity is dependent on the perspective of the observer, so…"
"Spence."
"Wha….oh, sorry."
She smiled. "So, back to my original question. Did you go there this weekend?"
Reid sat in his office chair and took a long draught of his own coffee.
"Mmm. Delicious."
"Spence."
He looked up at her and then away to the window. "How do you always know?"
She thought about it for a long moment, and then shrugged. "I'm a profiler?"
He grimaced at her. "Who knows what her best friend did on the weekend…..how, exactly?"
"Well…. For one thing, you always come back from there just a little bit agitated. Like you're still gnawing at something. Or something is gnawing at you."
That wasn't convincing to Reid. "Are you saying that you think that's the only thing in the world that might bother me?" Don't I wish.
"No. But there's something about this particular agitation. Something….I don't know, an air of frustration, maybe? And…" Hesitating to say the word. "And….ego….maybe?"
The word generated the response she'd feared.
"Ego? What does that mean?"
JJ shooed Reid and his chair over a bit, so she could move to face him directly.
"It means that you always look like you're ready for battle when you come back from there. Like you've been bested, and you want to fight back."
He had to think about that for a bit. In truth, he suspected he might actually have to spend a full evening or two thinking about it. He knew he had an ego, but the fact that JJ could see him wearing it was a little disconcerting.
What if my ego starts to get in the way of me doing my job?
As he feared might have happened with Gideon. Overconfidence wasn't a trait associated with longevity among those who hunted serial killers.
JJ pulled him back into the moment. "Spence? Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you."
"What? Oh, no, you didn't. In fact, you gave me something to think about."
"Well, I hope that doesn't mean you're perseverating on the idea of having an ego. You're entitled to one, Spence. You're brilliant, and caring and you've probably saved more lives than any of us will ever know."
The response was so soft as to be nearly inaudible. "Except his."
"What did you say?"
"Except his. Except Adam's. In ten years of trying, I haven't been able to save him."
JJ took his mug, intending to refill it as she did her own. "He has to save himself, Spence. Doesn't he?"
She moved over to the coffee bay as he considered his reply. Which he still hadn't made by the time she returned with both of their drinks.
"Well? Doesn't he? Doesn't Adam have to save himself?" Still not quite fully understanding the complexities of DID.
"Maybe. Or maybe Amanda needs to save him."
"But Amanda isn't the root personality, right? I mean, isn't she mostly a defense mechanism that Adam created?"
Reid was noncommittal on the point. "Amanda is the dominant personality. She is the one participating in society at the moment."
JJ wanted to understand. "But Adam is the true personality, right? Remember….I mean…..well…."
Her hesitation told him what she wanted to bring up, but he knew she wouldn't do so without his permission. Though long unspoken between them, they each knew there was a boundary, and that only Reid could release it. Which he did.
"Go ahead."
"Are you sure?"
He shrugged. "Maybe it will help."
She studied him for a long moment, trying to decide. Was gaining understanding on Adam and Amanda worth revisiting one of the worst episodes of their lives? But he seemed steady, and she'd always followed his lead on this. So…
"Okay. Well, back then, it was Tobias, right? There were three personalities, but it was Tobias who owned the body, wasn't it? Just like Adam owns their body."
Reid conceded the point. "Tobias was the personality that originally inhabited the body, yes. I guess that means it belonged to him."
"And his father….well, we saw his body, we know what happened to him."
"You did?" He'd already been kidnapped by the time they'd found Charles Hankel, and afterwards, he'd been too addled to process any details of the case.
"Spence…" Reaching out to touch his arm. "Maybe we shouldn't talk about this."
He covered her hand with his own. "I'm okay. I just didn't know."
"Are you sure?"
At his nod, she continued. "All right. I was just saying that we knew that Tobias was the root personality, and that the others were creations of his mind. Isn't it the same with Adam and Amanda?"
"Adam was the original personality."
"He was the only personality, until the abuse began, right? Just like Tobias was the only personality until his father died." Pausing for a moment. "Right? You're not thinking that the other personalities were already present, are you? You're not thinking that Amanda was always inside Adam?"
Reid's words came softly and slowly, as though he was still thinking about whether to utter them.
"Sometimes I wonder if we can know that."
She could see that he was still deep in thought, and waited him out.
"I mean, we all have different aspects to our personalities, don't we? We all live through some process of discovery of who we really are, at some point in life. I don't know about you, but I feel like I've been someone different at each stage of my life. Maybe growing up with my mom had some effect on that, I don't know."
JJ wasn't as far from understanding as Reid might have anticipated.
"I get it. There was definitely a 'before' and 'after' for me. 'Before' Roz killed herself, and 'after'. I felt like I was a completely different person after she died. I was someone whose sister hadn't felt loved enough to live. And I was one of the people who hadn't loved her enough."
His protectiveness inserted itself into their conversation.
"That's not true, and I'll bet Roz would tell you so. It wasn't a lack of love. It was her inability to feel it. That wasn't on you, JJ."
"Thank you, my knight in shining armor. I did eventually get there, but it changed me in the moment. I can see where the abuses that Adam and Tobias suffered might have led them to focus on one aspect of their personal identity. I guess I just have trouble understanding how it created a total conversion."
They both knew the theory, but knowing and understanding were two different things. Reid laid out the theory.
"It's a defense mechanism. They can't tolerate what is happening to them, so they create a different persona to go through it for them."
She nodded her recognition of it. "I know, I studied it too. They essentially submerge themselves and allow this other personality to replace theirs. But I guess I've never understood where that alternate personality comes from. Has it always been there, just below the surface? Do we all have one?"
Which thought both fascinated and terrified her.
Reid was no help. "I don't know." His frustration drew him out of his chair and into a slow pace back and forth across the length of their desks. "When I think about it….I don't know. With Tobias, the other personalities were strong, but specific. They each had a purpose, and they came out only long enough to accomplish it, each time. With Amanda….think of it, JJ…she's been the public personality for ten years! It's as though she was already fully formed, and ready to take over for the long term."
"Because she'd been watching." JJ shook herself, startled by her answer, and the fact that she'd uttered it.
"What?"
More certain, this time, although she didn't fully understand why. "Amanda had been watching Adam's life. She knew what he'd been doing, she knew the people he knew, even if she didn't let on."
Reid's mind went into overdrive, as he went back to pacing.
"I think you're on to something. When I was with Tobias and the other entities, none of them seemed to know what the others were doing. Tobias didn't know that his father had beaten me until he saw the bruises, and the father didn't know that Tobias was drugging me until he saw the needle tracks."
Reid caught the motion mid-pace, and followed JJ's hands as she raised them to her mouth in sorrow. He stepped over and brought her hands back down.
"It's okay. I can talk about it now."
She squeezed the hands holding hers. "I just wish…..you know."
He smiled as he released her hands. "I do. And I'm grateful." Pausing a moment to reorient on the conversation. "So Tobias fractured into personalities that were each there to serve a specific purpose while allowing him…Tobias, I mean….to continue living his life."
"And Adam just…what? He stepped aside, or went deep? Or was Amanda always there, ready and waiting to push him down?"
Reid couldn't be sure, but he had a hunch.
"I think you're right that she was there, watching. But it's not clear to me whether her emergence was sinister and greedy, as in she wanted to take over his life, or if it was protective. We only met them when the murders happened in San Padre, but maybe she'd emerged before."
JJ was curious. "Did you ask her?"
"She wouldn't answer. I wasn't even sure she could."
"You mean, she might have emerged before and not remembered it?"
He could only shrug. "Maybe. I guess that would mean that it's as you wondered….that she's existed all along, and wasn't just created when Adam was traumatized."
JJ shivered. "Congratulations, you've just given me the heebie jeebies."
The look on his face told her that Reid was unfamiliar with the term, so she explained.
"The willies." Still no acknowledgement. "It creeps me out. You know, the idea that there might be someone inside me, or someone inside you, waiting for permission to come out."
Reid was ready to assure her, if only by reminding her of their individual traumas.
"I think we've both been through enough that a lurking personality would have emerged by now, don't you?"
"God, I hope so." JJ spent a long moment in thought before adding, "So, what does this all mean? Does it bring you any closer to Adam?"
He spent his own long moment. "I don't know. She likes to think that she's in control, so I left with a taunt that maybe Adam didn't want to come out, which would make him the stronger personality. And now…I don't know, maybe it isn't just a taunt."
JJ stopped him mid-pace. "Do you really think that? Do you really think that Adam could emerge whenever he wants to, but he doesn't want to?"
Reid could only shake his head in indecision. "I don't know. I guess it's possible. Because she's been the one showing herself, I've thought that Amanda was the dominant personality. But maybe it's Adam. Maybe he's chosen to stay submerged."
"Or maybe he's afraid to show himself."
Reid was intrigued. "Why?"
"Well, first of all, there are the legal aspects, which we know are real. If Adam emerges permanently, they may remove his diagnosis of insanity, right? And he'd be sent to prison instead of a psychiatric institute."
"True. But I think you meant more than that, didn't you?"
JJ waggled her head from side to side, a motion that conveyed an unsaid 'maybe'.
"I guess I was thinking that he might be afraid to face who he has become, not just because of the consequences he'll face, but because it's not who he thinks he is. Or maybe it's just not who he wants to be."
Reid chewed on that for a bit. "That would imply that he had no control over the situation, right? Because Amanda would have committed the murders without Adam actually intending it."
She wasn't so sure about that. "Why couldn't it just mean that he's ashamed of what he did? Or of what Amanda did?"
Her genius best friend considered it. "So, you're saying that even though Adam had no control over Amanda, he can still carry shame for her actions? Wouldn't that imply awareness?"
She couldn't quite answer the question. "If you're saying that Adam would have had to have known what Amanda was doing…I don't know. I mean, it seems impossible that he wouldn't know. But if we're supposed to think of him as a completely different person….I don't know."
Reid had to concede. "Neither do I. Nor am I sure which of them actually committed the murders. We've assumed it was Amanda because it seemed that the victims were lured by a female. But what if…"
JJ finished it for him. "What if Adam emerged at the moment of the murders? That's what you're asking, right?" Sharing a moment of silent consideration with her best friend, JJ came to another question. "Spence, what if Adam was trying to protect her? I mean, what if he felt like she was in danger, and he emerged to save her?"
Reid's gaze began tracking left to right, as his memory recalled everything about the case.
"Maybe. But the first victims were restrained, weren't they? Amanda was in no real danger from them."
"So maybe he was trying to save her from herself." JJ spoke the words as if still thinking them through, and then a shiver ran down her spine. "Listen to me! I sound like I'm saying that Amanda was there all along, like she's real."
Reid caught her eyes. "She is real. That's what we've been talking about, isn't it? That Amanda is real, and Adam is real, and they both inhabit the same body."
She conceded. "It's just…..I just have trouble wrapping my mind around it. It's too comfortable to think of one of the personalities as real, and the other, not."
"Believe me, if you had been talking to the 'alter' personality for the past ten years, as I have, you would be thinking of her as real."
Their conversation was interrupted by the clacking of heels on the mezzanine as Penelope Garcia emerged from her tech lair.
"Team, oh, Team! I need you in the conference room, pronto!"
The two profilers exchanged a smile. Even when many things had changed, some had not. Like Garcia. They grabbed their mugs and headed in the direction of the stairs. JJ had a question for Reid.
"When will you see her…him…them again?"
"In a few months. It's the rhythm we've fallen into."
She nodded as she moved along beside him. "And what do you expect?"
"Expect? I've pretty much learned not to set an expectation. I'll just say 'hello' and find out who I'm talking to."
"And you'll see if either Amanda is dominant, and submerges to prove that she can….or Adam is dominant, and emerges to prove that he can."
"Either way, I guess I'm counting on ego." Then he smiled at her, remembering the first part of their conversation. "As long as I keep my own ego out of it, right?"
She laughed. "Spence, if you manage to Adam to emerge, or Amanda to submerge….you will be more than entitled to your ego."
He'd done his best to plant a seed with each visit over the past ten years. Today he'd find out if his last one had germinated. He prepared himself mentally as he waited for the door to open. Finally it did, permitting entrance of a lone figure. The wide-legged slacks didn't give anything away, and the hair was as long as he remembered it. Was it styled differently? Was the patient wearing makeup? If so, it was subtle, and Reid simply couldn't tell from the appearance. Still uncertain, Reid gave a small wave, in lieu of a handshake.
"Hello. I'm Dr. Spencer Reid, from the FBI. We've met before."
The guarded eyes met his, and when they did, Reid picked up tinges of both challenge and intimidation. Absent a response from his companion, Reid asked the question.
"To whom am I speaking?"
The barest of grins appeared on Adam's face. Or Amanda's.
"If we've met before, how is it that you don't know who I am, Dr. Reid?"
"Touche. Maybe I should have said, "We've met before, but I don't remember how long ago. Do you?"
So, I don't know how it's working on the reader end, but this site has been wonky on the author end for nearly three months, and there has largely been radio silence from the site owners, which makes me wonder if they have encountered an unsolvable problem. So I've spent some time backing everything up in case FFN goes down permanently one day. If you're reading this, yay! But I may never know. In the event FFN does go down, everything is at AO3 as well.
