Chapter Text
“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul.”
-Carl Jung
It was always the whispers that would wake him up. Dark eyes would snap open wide, the sheets would cling to his sweat soaked skin, his chest would heave for air, and a sob would claw its way up his trembling throat. It was psychological suffocation, the overwhelming fear of a nightmare he could not remember latching itself onto his brain. A parasite, sucking away any sense of comfort and safety that he had felt as he drifted to sleep. He had experienced nightmares before, but recently, it seemed like every night, he was roused awake, afraid of something that he couldn’t even identify in a dark room.
The darkness was a special place. It was unlike any other place, a dimension of its own that survived outside of the understood field of existence. The dark meant an absence of light, an absence of existence, and to Spencer, the sheer absence was what made it feel so eerie. He knew far too well what being submerged in that blackness was like. He could remember nights when he curled up in his bed, trembling in irrational yet gut wrenching fear while his mother wailed down the hall, talking to the walls about things that not even Spencer’s marvelous brain could comprehend.
As much as he loved his mother, his desire to forget about all of his childhood memories was immense, which was probably why he didn’t have much recollection of his younger years at all. The memories that lingered, however, would forever be ingrained in his mind. He could remember how his mother’s mental state and his father’s overall will to stay both declined at steady paces until one day it was just him and his shell of a mother, her body slowly following in the footsteps of her deteriorating mind. He didn’t exactly know what it was that made his father leave, but from age ten to eighteen, he had never been more miserable in all his life. He was filled with such an excruciating sense of empty betrayal, because as angry as he was at his father for leaving them, deep within he felt an underlying sense of relief that he couldn’t quite understand.
He had been taking care of his mother for as long as he could remember, and one could argue that he had raised himself more than either of his parents had. Frequent walks to the grocery store a few miles from home with his mother’s EBT card clutched in his little hands were all too familiar, and it didn’t seem like it had been that long ago. When he would get home with several paper bags clutched in his arms, his mother would think he was a mail man and thank him for delivering her packages. Looking back on it now, it had been nearly twenty years since he took his first walk to the store without his mother or father by his side.
He was dreaming again.
The house was dark, glaringly dark, and its eeriness reminded Reid why he was so afraid of the dark to begin with. The absence of light was enough to chill his bones, and he nearly halted upon his entrance but he pushed through because he had to get to the basement. He couldn’t comprehend why, but the urge to get down there was overwhelming, and he felt the need pulsing in his head. He should have recognized it as a dream almost immediately, especially given the way that he, Hotch, and Prentiss cleared the house was completely unorganized with little to no care for standard procedures.
Clearing the top floor of the house pushed Reid deeper into that black abyss, and soon he was wandering down a long, seemingly endless hallway. Gun loaded and clutched tightly in his slender hand, he proceeded even though the walls felt like they were closing in around him. At the end of the hallway stood a single door and it screamed out and begged for him to come closer, the same whispers that he had woken up from many nights before flooding his ears. Yet like a moth to a flame he couldn’t resist going closer. He reached out, his hand blurring in his periphery as he slowly turned the golden doorknob, and what greeted him on the other side was a set of descending steps.
“There’s a basement,” Reid whispered to the other two agents as they approached him from behind. Slowly, he descended into the depths below.
Once his feet hit the subterranean level, he didn’t see anything glaringly out of place, not until Prentiss muttered, “Damn,” under her breath. He turned and followed her line of sight, seeing a pair of black Converse cladded feet peeking out behind a dryer and scuffed up blue jeans stopping just short of white-socked ankles. Reid stood frozen, Hotch coming to stand alongside him while Prentiss crouched down by the boy’s feet.
“Damn it…” she breathed out, looking back at the two men with a telling expression on her face - they were too late.
“You sure it’s him?” Reid asked, voice quiet and hesitant. Something within said he knew who the boy was, but truthfully he wasn’t sure who he was expecting it to be.
“Who else would it be?” Hotch responded beside him.
“I just want to make sure,” Reid said as Emily turned to look at them, a grim expression on her face.
“Male, approximately six years old, I’m sorry,” she said while shaking her head. The sound of a slight clatter gained their attention and they all caught sight of a lone baby crawling across the cold concrete. Reid, eyes wide in surprise and horror, was frozen in his spot, even as the baby continued to crawl closer.
“What’s that baby doing here?” He started, “JJ can’t let her baby be at a crime scene…”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard a faint call of, “Reid.”
“JJ…” he breathed, his eyes fluttering open as another call of his name forced him out of his dream. He shot up and leaned forward, dragging a hand over his face and exhaling shakily, “Sorry, I was dreaming,” he murmured, hearing a giggle from Prentiss.
“No kidding,” she said, a smile tickling her lips.
“We found a six-year-old boy, who had been abused and stabbed. Your baby was at the crime scene, I was trying to get him out of there,” Reid turned to address JJ and instantly felt embarrassed at the amused and somewhat perturbed expression on her face. “Sorry,” he muttered, looking down.
“It’s okay,” JJ said. It almost sounded like a question since she probably wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for and looking back on it, he realized he wasn’t making much sense.
“You know, Reid,” Derek said, “Simple dream analysis says if there’s a baby in your dreams that baby’s actually you.”
“I don’t believe in dream analysis,” Reid said dismissively.
“I don’t know, it makes sense,” Hotch said with a slight roll of his shoulders, “The case we’re working on and the case in your dream both involve children. Maybe your subconscious is telling you that you want to sit this one out,” he suggested, not unkindly.
“I don’t…” Reid quickly refused with a frown. He was beginning to worry about his own mental state, but he couldn’t let that transfer to the rest of his team. Their concern was the last thing he needed.
“Well, maybe you’re just stressed out about going home to Las Vegas. Did you tell your mom you’re coming?” Emily asked. Reid felt a bit off-put about the comment regarding his mom, a shiver running up his spine, yet he couldn’t quite pinpoint what had brought it about. He didn’t talk about his mom that often to the team. It was personal, and he kept it a secret for the longest time. He wasn’t ashamed of his mother by any means but talking about her brought up bad memories; another reason why he could hardly stand to see her in person anymore.
His daily letters, as he had told Garcia in the past, helped to alleviate the guilt he felt for not seeing her as often as he probably should have. She was his mother, he loved her dearly, but to visit her meant visiting his past, and that was never a happy interaction. She was mostly ignorant to the way his childhood turned out, and she chose to bring up the good times whenever they talked, likely because her brain had either blissfully forgotten or chose to ignore the bad memories. Her favorite story, one that she repeated often, was when Spencer had pretended to be a tightrope walker. He would smile and nod, even though the time she had been yelling at the people listening in through their tv was much more memorable.
“I don’t know. Maybe because someone fell asleep on the jet,” Emily said with a smile, and Reid couldn’t help but smile as he hummed and nodded his head since he had no choice but to accept the jab. Hotch was quick to bring the group’s attention back to the pressing matter at hand - no surprise there.
“All right, let's start from the beginning, one more time,” he said. JJ flashed a photo of a young boy with light brown hair and dark eyes and a smile on his round face, “This is Ethan Hayes, he was 5. Two weeks ago he was abducted out of his own front yard.”
"Where were the parents?” Reid asked, glancing up from his file. He had asked himself that question far too many times in his own life. Watching his mother’s gradual mental decline and his father abandoning him left within him an irreparable scar. Maybe the basement represented just that, a symbol of his dark childhood, his dark foundation.
“His mom just ran inside to grab her purse. When she came back, he was gone. She wasn't away for more than a minute or two,” JJ answered, taking a breath before continuing, “Police found his body exactly one week later in the desert. He was in a new change of clothes, his nails clipped, his hair was combed,” she listed off.
“That's a lot of remorse,” Rossi said with a frown.
Hotch continued on listing the known facts regarding the manner of his death , “No sign of sexual assault. Medical report suggests he was smothered,” he said as he theorized with the rest of the team, “Unsub could see this death as merciful.”
"Who's the new boy?” Prentiss asked, taking a second photo from JJ.
“Michael Bridges. Yesterday he set out to walk by himself to a friend's house a block away. He never showed up,” the blonde informed, the picture of Michael circulating around the jet.
“Are we sure these cases are even connected?” Reid asked with a furrowed eyebrows, his chin perched atop his slender knuckles.
“The unsub called each of the families,” JJ informed them, leaving them all with no doubt that the cases were connected.
“But no ransom demand,” Rossi noted.
“It was more like taunts,” JJ responded, “He's telling them it's their fault that their child was taken.”
“Okay, so we have an unsub who shows remorse and then projects his own guilt onto the victims' parents,” Morgan said with a grim expression, one that looked far too similar to the one on his face when he regarded Reid.
“And if we're lucky, six more days to find the boy before he's killed,” Hotch said solemnly. After a bit more discussion between them, Reid stood up to get another mug of coffee, dragging a hand through his hair and sighing as he leaned against the mini coffee bar. He felt a migraine coming up, right behind his eyes, but he proceeded to fix his coffee to his liking.
“Hey, pretty boy, you alright?” Derek asked, startling Spencer into dropping the sugar packet, an audible gasp forcing its way from his lips. Grains of sugar scattered across the counter as he turned to look at Derek, eyes blown wide and lips parted in silent shock. “Jesus, Morgan, you could have killed me,” he said, almost breathless. Morgan raised an eyebrow, glancing down at the spilled sugar before looking back to Reid’s face.
“You seem a little high-strung…” he pointed out, all amusement gone from his face now. Reid cringed internally, feeling guilty for making his friend worry. He wasn’t even sure what was going on with himself right now. Everything felt surreal - like this moment alone was a dream that he was traveling through.
“I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head and wiping the sugar off of the counter and into his palm before disposing of it in the nearby waste bin, filled with coffee-making paraphernalia.
“Reid…” Morgan said, his voice almost a warning as he tilted his head and leaned his hip against the counter, effectively trapping the genius in. Reid just sighed in frustration, because he knew Morgan and Morgan wasn’t going to let him get away from this without a bit of talking. He just brushed his hair back, unable to help the little twitch of his lips, one of his worst nervous habits. He had the urge to rock back and forth to calm himself down a bit since he hated confrontation, but this was Morgan and he was not a threat.
“I just… I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” he said, but he frowned and looked down into his coffee, “I guess the correct description would be staying asleep.”
“Let me guess,” Morgan said, an expression of faux pondering on his face, “Nightmares?”
“Yeah… Yeah,” Reid muttered, tracing a finger over a line on the mug. “I’ve been having them for a long time… You know that.”
“I know,” Morgan asked, beginning to fix himself a cup of coffee so that he had an actual reason to stay standing there, “We’ve talked about them before… We all have nightmares, Reid,” he reminded him.
“No, I know that,” Spencer said with a frown, his fingers dancing along the rim of the mug now, eager to move and twitch, his autistic traits nearly impossible to hide. “But there’s been this one-this one dream that’s been recurring since I was little… I can never remember what it’s actually about but I just get that same feeling when it wakes me up and… I don’t know,” he hummed, pursing his lips. He didn’t want Morgan to doubt his abilities to work the case, and Reid knew that he was capable of doing his job. This was just… a hump, he assumed, regarding his childhood. There were memories that he didn’t want brought to the surface regarding his mother and his father’s abandonment. His childhood was a frail existence, shrouded in a dark veil of neglect and sadness. A world built upon his father’s departure and his mother’s unintentional abuse and neglect. He loved his mother more than anything, but it was a painful time in his life and it was a difficult time to look back on and think of the good memories before the bad ones.
His only escape had been books, learning, education… He devoted himself entirely to school, more than most kids, because that was the only outlet he had. Athletics had never been his forte. His father had tried, but his undiagnosed autism prevented his parents from understanding that he simply wasn’t cut out for sports. Diana preferred him to become an academic just like she was, but his father wished for him to be normal, like the other kids. He could remember his mother telling him many times in the past that he would never be like the other kids because he was extraordinary. He didn’t care about what his father thought. He only hoped he made his mother proud.
“Maybe going back home is triggering it somehow,” Morgan proposed, and he sighed when Reid let his shoulders rise and then drop in a displeased shrug. Reid didn’t respond, unsure of what to say, and he could feel himself getting more and more nervous, the weight of Derek’s gaze lingering on him.
“Kid,” Derek said, resting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing slightly, ever the touchy person. Spencer didn’t even flinch away like he normally would. Instead he met Derek’s gaze directly, the other man acknowledging him with true care and concern in his eyes. “If you ever wanna talk, you know I’ll listen, right?” he asked lowly, and Spencer couldn’t help the shiver that tiptoed up his spine.
“I know,” he said with a nod, his lips pulling into a line as he looked down into his coffee once again and he briefly thought about how the color resembled Derek’s eyes. Derek smiled and ruffled his hair before walking off and going back to his seat, and Spencer was left with more questions than answers. Soon, he found himself wandering back to his own seat, mentally preparing himself for the investigation that awaited them.
so many people have told me
that i need to open up
but not a single person
understands that every time
i pry apart my ribcage,
releasing all of the butterflies
that have been hiding there
for years,
people are too busy swatting
them away
to realize what i have done
for them
-k.p.k