Summary: An ending, and a return.
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It had been almost four months since Spencer had died, and for at least three of those months we had been chasing after the same fucking accomplice.
And we had found him. I had found him.
My feet pounded against the concrete faster than my heart could beat. Despite feeling like I was going to throw up or pass out, my feet wouldn't stop moving. I reveled in the burn because I knew that it would all be worth it soon. Soon, I would be able to breathe again for the first time in four months. Because only one block in front of me, I could see him. The man we'd been looking for.
The only problem with that was that I was also four months pregnant. While I'd been able to withstand most of the pregnancy symptoms, they'd gotten exponentially worse over the past few weeks. The nausea had come back, and most days I was barely able to get out of bed, much less chase a grown man through the busy streets.
I could feel my instincts arguing with one another, one blaring a siren while the other saw nothing but blood red rage.
I couldn't worry about what could go wrong. Not while he was so close. I couldn't manifest another unhappy ending.
But just as the thought of the stakes hit me, so did a nausea and dizziness unlike ever before. My feet started to slow, but I couldn't let them stop. When the cold sweat started to form on frigid yet scorching skin, I blamed it on the tactical gear and exhaustion.
I'd barely slept the past few days. Weeks. Months, if I were being honest.
I tried to find every reason to blame for why the world was fading away in front of my eyes. It wasn't until I ran out into traffic and nearly collided with a car that I admitted my own inability. I abruptly came to a stop on the side of the road only to realize that I hadn't been paying close enough attention to the man. I had been running on spite and inertia, and I had come to a stop.
My eyes scanned the crowds over and over, but I couldn't see him anymore. But just as I was about to curse my own stupidity and pride, someone shouted to me from across the road.
"Hey! Officer! He went that way!"
I shot up with a second wind. I didn't stop to ask myself if going into this alone was a good idea. I didn't ask how the stranger had known who I was chasing or why, or how he'd been somehow paying closer attention than I.
I didn't care about anything other than finding him and putting an end to a miserable existence. I bolted in the direction the person pointed towards without a second thought on how careless the decision was. As far as I knew, this was a trap.
And it was.
The second I rounded the corner of the alley, I heard more than felt a fist against the back of my head. The forceful 'thud' made my stomach churn even worse. I fell to the ground face first, with my hands shielding my stomach before myself. But by some grace of God, I didn't lose consciousness.
I liked to think that maybe it was Spencer looking out for us.
All I could hear was sirens and screaming. All I could see was blood soaked pavement and a black curtain ushering me towards the climax of the story. Struggling for my weapon, I felt the familiar taste of iron and regret fill my mouth. My mind began blurring reality and nothingness. '
I could feel a terrible nothingness preparing to swallow me whole until I heard Derek yelling my name.
Three gunshots sounded, but his voice never stopped. Even when he came down to me on the ground and held me. He was there. He was trying to tell me I was safe. I believed him. He was going to help me.
"Everything's going to be alright," he assured me with a panic stricken face, "Just stay awake."
At first, I wanted to. But then I saw Spencer calling to me in a dream and I decided to go to him, instead.
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The soft humming of the machines was what first alerted me that I was in a hospital. I couldn't remember why. Some deeply rooted part of me hoped that it was me waking up to find that the past five months had been a horrible coma dream. But then the anesthetic made me sick and I knew that it was real.
All the pain returned like it always did. Those few seconds of peace before I remembered my reality faded faster than usual. The memories hit me much like the blunt object used to disarm me earlier. The pain radiated from my head and stomach, two reminders of how horribly I'd messed everything up. I could hear the beeping alerting me of my own spiking heart rate as my body jolted awake.
I felt... cold. Gone was the burning. Gone was the fire.
It was just me, with hands trembling from the cold saline flowing through the IV needle.
Shortly after I awoke, so did, Derek. He said nothing at first, instead he just watched me with a distant look that almost felt comforting. In a way, it felt like he didn't see me at all. In that darkness, I thrived.
"Where am I?" I asked, not really looking for the location so much as an explanation, "What happened?"
"You're in the hospital."
He knew that wasn't what I was asking.
"You blacked out," he followed after a moment of silence.
"Oh... Is everything okay? Did you get him?"
Trying to sit up, I realized there was a deep and unusual pain in my stomach that prevented me from getting very far. I nearly threw up at the feeling, but persisted, nonetheless. The pain had been there before, I reminded myself, all the while failing to mention that it had felt different.
"Yeah, I got him," Derek answered quietly.
Another moment passed before I realized the simplicity of his response. I turned to him, waiting for an answer that wasn't going to come.
Is everything okay? I tried to ask again, but my throat began to close around the words.
That distant, solemn stare was back, and somehow more forlorn than before. He had his hands folded in front of him like he always did when he met with the parents, the wives, the kids. He looked up at me with glassy eyes and a trembling lip. Derek Morgan struggled to speak the same way I knew he did when he had to give the worst news of someone's life.
Even more upsetting than that image was the distinct emptiness I felt inside.
"What's wrong?"
The beeping beside me became faster, and in a way it felt louder, too.
He didn't answer.
"Derek, what happened?"
He didn't have to. I placed my hand on my stomach, and it all felt wrong.
"Is... Is my baby okay?"
"(Y/n), just get some rest."
And there it was. The end of everything that I was, the collapse of my rib cage around an empty nest. The world was falling in around me, and I suffocated on the dust of the wreckage before the walls even hit the ground. I couldn't breathe; I couldn't see. The blinding fluorescent lights of the intensive care unit felt like darkness. The air was so cold that it burned my lungs.
"What do you mean?" The words rung hollow, "Is my baby okay?"
I was on fire. I was burning and there was nothing to rise from my ashes.
"Derek—"
But before another word could form, the door opened to reveal a young woman in a white coat. I didn't give her a single second to speak before the weight of my stare threatened to crush her where she stood.
"Is my baby okay?" I asked once more.
She didn't need to answer. I saw it in her eyes.
I was a profiler, and I had already known the second I woke up. I had known it before. I just didn't want it to be true.
"Ms. (Y/l/n), I'm so sorry but—"
Her voice felt like sandpaper on my feverish skin. The bleak, pungent odor of disinfectant felt so different than only a few weeks before, when they had held a machine to my stomach and showed me the face of my child.
"You... You were bleeding when you came in and it appears that you've lost the pregnancy," she explained, despite the obvious indicators that I couldn't hear her, "I'm very sorry."
"He killed my baby," I muttered.
My eyes were fixated on the wall, listening to the new sound of my heart slowing back down, settling into a detached state of numbness that would have been terrifying if I could feel anything at all.
In that horrible void, I heard her cautious voice echoing.
"You... miscarried before the accident, Ms. (Y/l/n)."
It wasn't his fault, I heard, It's yours.
"What?" I asked, turning back to her with the same dead eyes, "What are you saying?"
Despite the threat behind my heaving breath and clenched fists, she continued, "When you came in you were already in sepsis. That's... why you're here."
She glanced down at the chart in her hands and flipped through the pages frantically, like the words on the page would mean anything to me.
"No... That's not..."
I wanted to say it wasn't possible, but I knew that it was. I knew so strongly that something was wrong that my brain had ignored the possibility altogether. Now, the numbness was receding and sending me straight into a state of pure panic and hatred.
I saw the fear in her face the same as I'd seen it in Derek's. The overwhelming sensation of pity turned to rage in my veins until all I could think about was the pain. I wanted to make her feel it, to revive two dead men just to make them feel it, too. I wanted to hold the burning match of my body against them until we were all nothing but the same stupid, useless fucking ash.
The doctor turned to Derek with the hope that he could make the situation better. But he closed his eyes and bowed his head to pray to whatever God was left for forgiveness that he couldn't be strong for me, then.
"Are you the father?" I heard her ask.
"No," he said quietly, "No, I'm not."
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Time passed so much slower after Spencer died, so why did it pass so much faster after our baby died? I thought maybe it was just the universe correcting itself, returning to normal speed. Maybe it just felt faster. The self-loathing monster inside of me convinced myself that it was some kind of cosmic mockery.
Regardless of the physics or religion of it all, two months had come and gone, and I had finally cleared my counseling. My first day at work couldn't have come sooner.
Because today was the day that Derek gave me the call I'd been waiting for. They had him. After six months of painstaking work, the man who killed Spencer Reid was in our custody.
There was no possible way for me to get to the BAU fast enough, but I tried anyway. The sound of my sirens blaring down the back streets of Virginia felt like the swan song of my grief. For once, I couldn't hear my heart over my breath, and the bizarre combination of anger, hatred, and happiness swelled inside of me like the perfect storm.
Today I could stare into the face of the man who took everything from me, and I could take it from him in return.
Or so I thought.
No sooner had I stepped off the elevator than I felt a strong hand cut off my path. I knew who it was before I even processed what was happening. Hotch stood in front of me like he had been waiting for me, as we both knew he had.
His eyes were still cold, still sympathetic and pitiful.
"(Y/l/n), you can't."
He didn't bother explaining what he was talking about; we both knew. We had discussed this in the theoretical enough for us to have memorized the scripts. I knew it was pointless to argue with him, that he was my boss and someone I respected, but I didn't care. My logic and appeal to authority vanished the moment I'd heard he was there.
So, shoving Hotch's hand off my shoulder with more force than necessary, I scoffed, "Yes, I fucking can."
He sighed. His frustration was evident in the way his jaw tensed between his words as he explained, "He knows how you feel about Reid. It's not going to end well. He's gotten to you once before already."
I'd heard it all before. I'd blamed myself for it enough that I didn't need to hear him say it again.
"This is different," I pleaded with tears already streaming down my face. I realized it had been a long time since I cried. It had been forever since I'd felt something. I didn't want to let it go.
"You're right," he conceded before adding, "It is different. It's worse."
Biting down on my cheeks, I glanced over at the door to the room just as Derek stepped out. We looked at each other with a silent understanding of what sat beneath the surface. We both bit down until we tasted iron and tried to pretend like any of this felt fair.
"Hotch, I've been waiting six months for this," I muttered. I begged my voice to stop shaking, to end the crackling that gave away everything I wasn't saying. But it didn't. I remained pathetic as I whispered, "You have to let me in there. He— He killed Spencer."
I paused, my eyes shutting as my hands turned to fists hard enough to hurt.
"He killed my baby, Hotch," I said even quieter. I tried to pretend like the lack of volume hid my rage rather than amplified it.
But he showed no mercy. He did not reward me for putting my pain to words. Instead, he just lowered his eyes to the ground and took a deep breath before he answered, "I know. That's why you can't be in there."
Trying to slow down my thoughts and my lungs, I held my hands up to prevent myself from turning them to fists. The gun on my hip had never felt so heavy.
He was right there. What would it matter what happened to me after? What sort of future was waiting for me on the other side?
"If I can't... Who is going to do it, then?" I managed to ask, unable to imagine who else on the team would know more about this case than me. Derek was the only one who came close, and I highly doubt he didn't want me in there. Not to mention the fact that he'd wanted to kill the bastard just as badly as I did.
But his answer was as surprising as it was confusing.
"...That's why I tried to call you here myself."
There was something in his voice that set off my profiler brain, warning me that something was coming that I wasn't going to like. It wasn't just the words, which were equally terrifying, but his entire demeanor. He looked like a child that was about to tell his mother he'd broken her favorite vase. I wondered if that's what I was.
The most frustrating part about it all was that I was scared, too. So I didn't question him. I dutifully followed him into the conference room like I always did. I reverted to the soldier who follows orders because I was afraid what would happen if I let myself step over that first barrier.
I knew what would happen. I was being selfish.
As I walked into the conference room, I tried to reassure myself that the end result would be the same. That justice would be served, one way or another. I tried to convince myself that I was not the broken vase, I was not only ashes. But with each step, I felt the unease wash over me, not unlike it had when they told me that I'd miscarried.
I took the same seat next to where Spencer would have been. No one had claimed it, yet. I wouldn't let them if they tried.
So why were there books on the table beside it?
Hotch stood at the front of the room with his hands crossed over his chest. The worry I felt exponentially increased with every passing second. His eyes met those of everyone in the room, except mine. I wondered if that was because he felt guilty, or because he couldn't bear to see the disaster where I was seated.
Either way, I stared at him relentlessly, with fists growing tighter each time he opened his mouth but said nothing.
And then he spoke.
"Six months ago I had to make a decision that affected this team," he started with the volume to denote confidence, but his voice held none of the other indicators. "As you all know, Spencer lost a lot of blood after his encounter at the warehouse..."
My vision rocked at the sound of his name, the memories like a freight train over my body. Images of his blood coating my hands, legs, and arms. The smell of irises at his grave. The taste of tears and whiskey on my breath. It all came so suddenly until I was there, at the chess park, his apartment, his grave, the sanitarium. The memories were sickening in their clarity every time that I went back too far and could feel his lips on mine.
But all of it, everything came to a grinding halt when Hotch's voice rang through the somber silence.
"But the doctors were able to stabilize him."
Goosebumps and nausea filled every inch of me unlike ever before. The trauma and grief felt like a drop in an ocean of fury and dread that seemed never-ending. My heart stopped dead in my chest before trying to leap through my throat. I clutched my chest, digging my nails into my skin so that I might find that fire again.
I begged time to slow down again, to let me catch up, but it kept going in fast forward.
"What?" I spoke, but didn't recognize the word.
I needed him not to answer, but he did.
"He was airlifted to Bethesda under a covert exfiltration. His identity was strictly need to know until he was well enough to travel. He was reassigned to Paris where he was given several identities, none of which we had access to for his security."
He spoke in impossibly beautiful lies. I had to be dreaming. This was a nightmare wrapped in pretty paper. The rug would be pulled out from under me and leave me falling into the endless once more.
He'd said the words so effortlessly, like they were the obscure local newspaper headlines he'd received the previous weekend. But they weren't so carefree; they were suffocating.
I felt everyone's eyes immediately turn to me, my skin once again paradoxically burning and freezing. A different kind of sepsis kicked in as I began to rot from the inside out. My heart wasn't burning, it was withering. It was frozen and sprouting something sharp. It hurt worse than anything I could have ever imagined.
The room felt so small, but the space between his chair and my own felt so large. I watched it, wondering how time and space could bend so freely to inflict the maximum damage on me.
"He's... alive?" I asked when I found some semblance of breath.
"I take full responsibility for this decision," Hotch said, as if that would ever entitled him to my forgiveness, "If anyone has any issues, they should be directed toward me."
Derek's entire body lurched forward. I could tell because despite staring straight forward, I heard his fists hit the the desk in an unbridled rage.
"Any issues?" he spat, "Yeah, I got issues!"
"Where is he now?" Penelope asked, playing her part as the voice of reason trying to prevent the brawl that felt like it was fast approaching.
With both hands perched on the edge of the table, I was just trying to find the strength to stand up. I had to leave. I had to move. I couldn't stay here. Inertia be fucking damned. Damned like my heart ticking like a bomb. If I didn't get out soon, now, I would take out everything inside the room, the building, the entire fucking base.
The sound of the door clicking open filled the room despite the tension permeating it. My back was to it, but I didn't need to turn around to see who it was.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee and cinnamon. That feeling of calm just before the storm.
"... Hi, everyone," Spencer whispered.
The vacant stares in the room slowly made their way from the man in my shadow back to me. They surely saw the panic in my features, the pounding of my pulse in my throat. No one moved. No one said a word.
They watched me as his fingers curled over the lip of his chair. His fingers were the first part of him I saw, and my body immediately sprung into action.
I couldn't see him. If I saw him, it would become real again. He would be real again. All my grief, my fury, my pain, it would have all been for naught. If I saw him, I would hate him. My heart, already shattered, would fill with chasms until the shards destroyed me from the inside out.
If I saw him, I would feel him on my body in a way that didn't hurt. But the hurt had become so familiar to me that I wasn't ready to let it go.
In that moment, the pain felt more real to me than he did.
So I ran. I bolted out of the door without ever looking back, trusting my intuition to take me anywhere but there.
And it would have, if it hadn't been stopped.
"(Y/n), wait!"
His hand was the first thing to touch me. He grabbed hold of my wrist and jerked my body to a stop without any regard to how it would hurt.
Any thoughts I had were short wiring, the warmth of his touch felt like a fire. I stumbled back into him. I felt the warmth radiating from it like it always did. I was reminded, vividly and mercilessly, of where the fire inside me had come from. It had only been seconds, but it felt like an eternity of suffering.
He had not thought about how it would hurt me.
"Please, let me explai—"
The first time that I saw his face again, risen from the grave, I watched it collide with my open hand. The volume was too powerful, too loud as I shouted in the bullpen that felt like it only contained the two of us.
"Don't!"
My hand stung with the evidence he was real. His face stayed turned away from me, his breath heavy and hurting. I wanted him to hurt like I had.
But don't what? I wondered, Don't explain? Don't touch me?
I couldn't decide, so I just repeated the word and hoped he would understand.
"... Just... don't, Spencer. Don't."
Sensing the way my hand shook uncontrollably under his, Spencer let it go. It fell away from him like a bitter goodbye, and it returned to me unhurried. Even in that moment when I hated him more than I thought possible, my body tried to keep him near.
I forced myself to get away. I carried myself to the bathroom where I once again found myself on my knees, trying to purge things that would never come up. Between the dry heaving, I stared at my hands like they would be able to turn back time themselves.
When I would rewind to, I didn't know. Before he was gone? Before he had betrayed me? Before he had come back?
Having him back was everything I'd craved and prayed for. But not like this. Because now I knew for certain that when it came down to things he could leave behind, I was one of them.
And it hurt. It burned.
I tried to push the thought away, to ground myself enough to get through the case. No, to get through the day, the hour, the minute. I just had to see it through so I could leave it before. Whether he was here or not, I needed this chapter of my life to end.
This wasn't about just him, anymore. It was also about me; my grief and my life without him and the disgusting lie that it was.
Picking myself up all over again, I put one foot in front of the other until I was back in the conference room. Passing by my chair, I found the seat next to Derek's and sat with unsteady legs. I hid trembling hands from the rest of the team by placing them in my lap before they turned to fists.
I felt Spencer's eyes glued to me, but I stared straight ahead.
Somehow, I spoke without screaming. I held myself together with spite and sheer force of will. The meeting proceeded as normal, save the way my hands continued to shake. But soon those would stop, too. Because from the seat next to me, Derek took my hand in his. The strength the small gesture afforded me would be enough to carry me through the second, the minute, the meeting.
And when it was over, Spencer followed me out the door towards our desks. We stayed in complete silence, navigating the minefield that was our own memories, now divorced and blemished by something that couldn't be taken back so easily.
By the time I looked over to him, he had looked away. My sixth sense told me I did the same thing to him seconds later.
My hand instinctively went to hold my stomach, but stopped halfway there and rested on my chair, instead.
From my peripherals, I saw his fingers brush over the tear stained documents scattered over his desk just like he'd left them.
We didn't look at each other anymore after that.