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The first time you wake up with a knife in your hand you throw it so instinctually away from yourself that it sticks in the drywall. By the time your heart stops sounding like someone pounding on your door in fear for their life, you’re late for work. So instead of admitting you’re too scared to pull the damn thing out you tell yourself that there’s no time and flee the room to get ready. When your hands shake so hard that you can’t button your shirt you pull on a sweater vest over top and run out the door and you don’t look back.
You hope there’s a case somewhere far away so you won’t have to face what happened as soon as tonight, but then you realize what that means, what you’re wishing on others. And when you finally let your mind think about this morning you panic, all heavy ribs and too light head, because you woke up holding a knife and now you’re hoping for murder.
You’ve worked yourself up to the point that you’re almost hyperventilating by the time you walk into the bullpen, no less than half an hour late. Your brain is screaming, ‘Are you finally going crazy? You’re dangerous, you’re just not right. That’s why everybody has always left. They saw what you were capable of and ran ran ran as fast and as far as they could. You’re losing it, you’re going mad,’ and everything you think is loud, life-altering red.
“Relax, Pretty Boy, it happens to the best of us,” Morgan says over your shoulder, and you suck in a harsh breath and jump away in surprise. You were so lost in panic that you didn’t even notice him approach. You take a minute to calm down, but Morgan’s eyes studying you don’t help the process. You know you look a mess. You’ve been contemplating how safe it is for you to be around other people, to continue with your job, your life, and that’s never easy.
“Morgan. I- uh. You’ve never been, um,” you shake your head, try to clear it out, get yourself back to normal. You clear your throat and try again, “Actually, you’ve never been more than 7 minutes and 24 seconds late. In fact, the whole team on average has only-”
“Alright, alright. I don’t need a lecture, you’re the one who’s late here. What’s up, Reid? Everything alright?” Morgan interrupts. He drags his hand across your shoulder, and instead of feeling reassured you just feel an itch inside, a little voice in your head yelling that it isn’t safe, he shouldn’t touch you. You suddenly want to keep him very very far away, even if he is the only thing keeping your breaths from accelerating into panic, holding back the red red red. You casually duck away and his arm falls, and though somewhere inside you feel relief, it also hurts, and you don’t let yourself watch Morgan’s reaction.
But you were just thinking about your own internal dialogues as ‘voices’ and that definitely means you shouldn’t involve anyone else. Going crazy is a solitary affair.
You raise your head and look at his forehead because you can’t bring yourself to meet his eyes, and you tug your lips up into an expression that at least doesn’t portray mind-numbing terror, and assure him that, “Yeah, Morgan, I’m okay.” You still need to misdirect, so after a beat of silence you add, “Though, statistically, this day is almost impossible. The probability of every inconvenience experienced this morning all happening one after the other is astronomically low, in fact-”
“Kid. Get to work,” Morgan says, shaking his head. You don’t take offence because he’s smiling, and he ruffles your hair after he says it, which you’ve learned is affectionate. You hear a voice inside yelling at you for letting him touch you, but you’re too relieved to act on it this time.
Morgan really used to confuse you, but you understand him better now, so when he walks off you just mumble under your breath, perfunctorily fix your hair, and walk off towards your desk, grinning. Mission accomplished; Morgan is gone unsuspecting. You know you should give everyone around you a chance to run, but you really don’t want to be alone.
You’ve been lonely for years and years and years, the isolation almost carved into your skeleton, and you know that you’ll be alone in the end as well, so here, in the middle, you want to take advantage of every friend you can, even if it isn’t fair to them. You already know you’re a monster; a little selfishness won’t matter, you can give yourself this. Soon, though, you have to tell them, have to show them what you are.
It’s after that first time that everything changes. You’d always thought, though your whole life was, for the most part, in your mind, that being kind to other people mattered. You thought that even if you kept mostly to yourself and you couldn’t hold a casual conversation on a good day, that a smile to a stranger when ordering your coffee could be enough, could make a difference, add some good to a dark and twisted world. And you thought joining the FBI and catching serial offenders meant that you were contributing to the common good of others, even if a more direct approach was out of your skill set.
You thought you were nice enough. But your whole life was leading up to this morning, where you woke up holding everything you could be in your hands and you realized that what set you apart from all of those unsubs you catch is that you have the government on your side. You get a nice shiny badge that allows you to hurt people at your own discretion, and you realized that you chose this job, to be a person that hurts people.
And you looked back on your life and you thought of everyone you’ve lost, and names flew through your head, moments, memories. William Reid and Jason Gideon and Elle Greenaway and Emily Prentiss and Jennifer Jareau and Maeve Donovan and Alex Blake and, and, and. And they must have looked at you and just known.
Known how everyone around you choked on the cloud of darkness that follows you, known how fundamentally bad you are. How you’re a ticking time bomb that is going to take out everyone around you when you finally explode. And in light of that a smile just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. You were made to be alone alone alone.
The second time it happens you almost lock yourself into your apartment. You stand in the dark frozen in absolute terror, your breathing much faster than it should be, your skin ice cold and damp with sweat. You imagine yourself hurting someone next time, really hurting them, and you’re so scared of what you are capable of. You want to lock yourself away from everyone else, so you could never have the chance to do harm.
Then you look at the knife you’re still holding and imagine turning it on yourself, for a second. But you don’t. You’re a weapon in disguise, you’re scared and armed and dangerous and totally out of control, but you set it back down and get ready for work; continue reevaluating your own worth. These kinds of perception shifts take time. They really do.
By the time you get to work there’s something solid in your chest like you’ve decided. You are going to have to bow to the inevitable. You’ve always known your days of relief from the isolation you were made for were numbered, that in the end it would be just you and the endless silence all empty aching blue. And somewhere inside you realized that this is it, that your borrowed time is up, that it’s time for you to return to where you belong.
You can’t get the image of the weapon in your hand out of your mind. The worst part about it, you think, is that you were sleeping; you weren’t holding anything back, weren’t pretending for anyone, and the knowledge of who you could be without pretenses, the bare and honest truth of you, is almost too much for you to handle. You need to remove yourself from the position of power you’ve obtained in your job, in your friends’ lives, and in the community of people who know how supposedly respectable you are. You hate playing the self- sacrificial self- important child, but you also know something they don’t.
You have been waiting to go crazy since you were old enough to understand the true meaning of the word, and with your mother being who she was and your mind being what it was that was not nearly old enough. You know the damage you could do if you don’t ease yourself away from your own little world. You are going crazy, you are dangerous, and you are naturally violent, apparently.
And you’ve learned by now that going crazy is a solitary affair. You’ll do it alone, much like you have always lived. You’ve been preparing for this moment your whole life.
So after that second time, later, at work, when Morgan asks you what your plans are for the weekend, you tell him you’re seeing a movie and you don’t talk about an extra ticket, or invite anyone along. You just say, “I’m going to see an old film.” You don’t even mention the outdoor theatre that’s being set up, and then you can’t share any of the history you’ve picked up on the topic. You speak softly and when you’re done you lift your bottom lip up in what might pass for a smile and walk out of the room for a coffee, your eyes on the floor.
The conversation continues on without you, and you know you’re doing the right thing. They’ll be fine without worrying about you. A whole case goes by and you barely speak a word. All you ever do is cause trouble, and now you have to get away before the newest developments in your life tip the scale past tolerated levels.
You go home and you think, think about what you mean in the world, about how pointless it is to exist in it. You think about how hurting people is the only way you’ve ever seen anyone be remembered long enough for it to keep them alive after death. About how even in love, it’s the heartbreaks that imprint lasting memories, that drive a spirit to live on. You think about how easy it is outside of love, how killing a stranger can make a person live forever in the minds of their family.
You think about how you want to stop yourself from hurting everyone, about how you plan to fade away into the background unnoticed, about how easily you will be forgotten if everything goes the way you want it to. You think about how maybe it’d be for the best for you to just get it over with, end the suffering before you do any unintended harm. To just disappear like you were never there. You think about how if you quit your job before you died, nobody would even notice you were gone.
You think about how going crazy is and always has been a solitary affair. No one else’s mind experiences it quite the same. And you think about how your mother realized it too late to save you, and you think about how you never understood. You know you can’t make anyone else watch, because you’ll hurt people just like the monster that’s clawing it’s way out from inside you of you is trying so hard to do. People always get hurt because the mind cannot share its experiences, cannot let others live through it, and nobody understands. Alone alone alone, always.
When the dreams don’t stop you start making plans. You need to get everyone to safety before it’s too late. You need to make sure that nobody will run back into the fire searching for survivors after everything burns down around you. So one day on the way back from a case you start your work.
It won’t be pleasant, but you know they will move on and if they get out now you’ll never hurt them as badly as you could. You aren’t even sure how much you’re capable of, but nothing would surprise you at this point. Your body has never been your friend.
Just as you work up the nerve to set your plan into motion Morgan walks over and sits across from you. His eyebrows draw together and he sighs, not saying a word, just observing.
Finally, “Hey, kid. What’s up? I haven’t seen you this quiet in a long time,” he sets his hands on the table between you, palms down. You take note of this and know he’s made up his mind, that he’s certain something is happening with you, that he won’t go away without talking. You know that now is as good a time as any other, so you change your plan, decide to work on Morgan today and get JJ another time. You turn your head and breathe, slowly, then let it out.
“I just,” you start, before sucking in your lower lip and twitching the corner of your mouth up. You open your mouth again. Shut it. Then you take your hands, lift them above the table, and fold your fingers together, hands against your chest with every line of your arms at awkward angles, holding them there for a second before twisting your wrists and opening your hands up to expose your palms to the ceiling. ‘I’m being honest,’ the gesture screams, you hope.
You open your mouth again, “I’m wondering what I’m doing here. With the FBI. I know that,” you drop your hands, “that I’m not someone that people exactly, expect, you know? And I’m, I know I’m not useless in the field, but no matter how capable I am it seems like everyone is always reluctant to let me out there.” You flick your eyes up for the first time during the conversation and see Morgan frowning.
He leans forward, shakes his head, “Reid, you-” and you can’t let him talk. So you sit up, cut him off, get ready to deliver the real blow.
“No, Morgan, it’s true. And I know that you can all use me here because I can read super fast, or because I can make connections nobody else can, or because I can crack codes in minutes, but that’s just it. It’s like,” you wrinkle your brow, give a pursed smile, tilt your head away, “I don’t belong here, I feel like I’m wasting my time, like I could have been so much more. I shouldn’t be working with people who-” you cut yourself off. Faking surprise, you dart your eyes to his face, let your mouth hang loose, shake your head. “Morgan, I didn’t-” you start, but he doesn’t let you finish. You hope you said enough.
“What, Reid? You think you’re too good to be on the same level as a dumb jock like me? Too smart to get your hands dirty, to actually work out in the streets day after day? You think saving lives isn’t a good use of time?” and yes, he sounds mad enough, and you hold back a grin. Morgan lets out a loud puff of air, no humor in his face. “Well, you chose to be here, Reid, and I like what kind of man that makes you. If that’s not good enough for you then,” He trails off, staring at you so intently you shrink under his scrutiny. Finally, he gets up and sits back down on the other side of the jet. You wait until nobody is looking and then deflate.
You didn’t mean it, is the thing. You just knew what to do to make Morgan back off and you knew that it was more important for him to stay away than to protect his feelings. He’ll be over it in soon, but by then you’ll be gone and he will still be upset enough to leave you alone, he’ll think you decided you really were too good for him and this job.
It hurts inside, but you choose to listen to the part of you that says you were doing what you had to do. He doesn’t know he needs protection from you, so you have to provide it for him. You can’t let him be caught up in your explosion. Life will move on.
The dreams don’t stop, so you need to finish your job quickly. Luckily, nothing has gone wrong yet, but your level of trust in yourself has plummeted to the point where there’s almost nothing left. You hand Hotch your notice of resignation the following day, before you get called out on another case. You ask him not to tell anyone until your time is officially up, and he doesn’t ask questions, just nods, ever the professional.
You catch his eyes following you for the rest of the day, and your badge feels like a ten pound weight in your pocket, one that you want to be rid of now now now. Soon, though, you will be done, and it will be harder for you to hurt people without it, without this job. You hope the two weeks go by fast.
One week goes by, and you know it’s time to talk to JJ. Garcia was easy enough to push away when you upset Morgan, so you don’t think she will be a problem. You’ve been acting like your conversation with Morgan is still a sore point, and that seems to be keeping him upset enough to treat you strictly like a colleague and nothing more, which is good for your purposes but concerning for JJ and the rest of the team. You know she’ll approach you and when she does you’ll have to strike. You figure that once you push them away nobody else will care enough to search you out, and they’ll be safe then.
You’re pouring yourself a cup of coffee, five days of work left until your world collapses. JJ walks up to you and smiles, bright and caring. She’s always made you feel so safe, but no matter how much you want to keep her looking happy, you know it’s your turn to protect her now, from the evil she can’t see. The evil pulsing inside of you. So when she asks you, Spence, “Is everything alright with you and Morgan?” you do what you have to do.
“Everything’s fine. Why?” You raise your eyebrows and give her a look that dares her to continue, stirring your coffee all the while. She startles at your sharp tone, then frowns to herself.
“Spence, I know something is going on. You two aren’t joking around anymore, you’re barely speaking, and he hasn’t called you Pretty Boy in over a week,” she says, reaching out to rest her hand on your shoulder, “You can talk to me, you know. About anything,” and it hurts you to do this but you shrug out from her touch and tighten your face up, force yourself to look into her eyes, like a challenge.
You let out a humorless chuckle, “Can I though, JJ? You haven’t exactly been the most trustworthy in the past, have you?” Her mouth drops open a little, like she can’t believe what you’re saying. You get how she feels, you don’t understand it either, how you can do this. But you have to.
“You- I don’t even-,” she stutters out, “look.” There’s a pause, a moment of silence for every happy memory you shared together, every moment you’ll miss for the rest of your life. “I thought we were past this,” she finally states, sounding strong, and you’re going to miss her so much. You hold your hands up, open, and shrug, unable to force any more words out. You let your hands close into fists and drop them, blinking a little too fast. You can’t let her see you cry, so you take a sip of your coffee like this conversation means nothing to you and then you turn and walk away.
Your last few days are awkward. Everyone is avoiding you because nobody knows what to say, and you’re just biding your time and making sure that neither Morgan nor JJ gets the chance to actually make up with you, because you aren’t sure you could keep pushing them away if they tried to stop you. You make it the full two weeks and then you just stop showing up. You left your gun and badge on Hotch’s desk; he can inform the team.
There’s nothing left for you to do, so you sit at home and you read and you sleep and you dream. The dreams are getting worse, growing darker and hotter and red red red. You’re terrified of yourself, of everything you feel you are becoming.
Ten days after you walked out of the BAU for the last time, the team gets back from a case. You guess they decided to come visit you, because when you woke up that morning you were standing facing your front door, a knife shining in your grip, heart hammering in your chest and muscles tense, and you could hear their voices. You are so frustrated you want to cry, scream, to tear your hair out in shame, and that does nothing to calm you down because you can’t remember when you became so violent all the time, even towards yourself.
Then, while you are standing in your pajamas in front of your door you realize why you woke up, realize that what you hear is your team outside of your door talking to you, yelling out “Spencer,” like you’re someone worth the trouble. And it makes you so, so angry that they still care, even when you did your best to push them away gently.
They’re being rash and chasing danger and you don’t understand why they can’t see that they should stay away. JJ left once before, you thought she knew, why is she here? You’re dangerous, don’t they see that? They need to let you go. You’ve already hurt them without care and here they are, back at your front door. You’re bad bad news, and you’re so frustrated that you scream like you’re trying to drown out your thoughts.
You scream at them to go away, to leave you alone, and they ask you what’s wrong, say they can help. They’re infuriating, it’s like they don’t value their safety at all. So the red bubbles up inside of you and then flows over. You yell things at them that you’ve never even dared to think before. You yell the things you know will really, truly hurt them. You yell what the profiler in you knows is the cruelest thing you could yell. And you don’t even hesitate to do it.
They finally leave, of course they leave, and there’s spit on your chin and your chest is heaving with the weight of your emotions. You take a minute and then you freeze. And, god, you’ve really done it, haven’t you. You were trying to keep yourself from hurting them but you did it anyways. The evil is inside of you, soaked all the way through. All you do is cause pain, you knew it, but now you’ve done it again. You never wanted to let it get that far. But at least now they will stay away before you can do worse. You sit on your couch for hours that day, numb.
They don’t come back. You sit in your apartment and you don’t bother getting another job and you don’t bother speaking to anybody because there’s no one left. And you sit and you dream, you dream of blurry figures and silver knives and it all starts coming to you, the dream you’ve really been dreaming. You wait for it, wait to see yourself hurting, cutting, killing, but it never happens. You dream of everyone you’ve ever loved, and you dream of everyone happy. You dream that your whole team is with you, and one night, finally, you dream the whole scene and you remember it.
You remember everything. You dream that your whole team is sleeping soundly, agents and families and friends, and everyone is happy and everything is warm and bright bright yellow. Suddenly, you see a darkness leaking through the doorway, you see an angry red, too loud. So you stand up, move between everyone who’s ever brought joy into your life and the unsubs pushing at the door, and your hand rests on your hip, searching for your holster instinctively, only there’s nothing there.
So you dream that you look back at your team and see something worth saving, protecting, and you walk to your kitchen and pick up a knife. And you carry it with you as you run to stand in between your team and the creeping evil, and you spread your feet and tighten your grip, roll your shoulders back, lift your head up high. Your heart is beating fast for all you stand to lose, and then the door bursts open and-
You wake up. There’s a knife in your hand.
You look up to the door. Back to your fist. Time feels like a wave, circling back and pulling you down too slow, making you float somewhere in between, unreal, too calm. Finally, you move to set the knife back on your counter, keep walking until you reach your bedroom, sit softly on the edge of your bed. You shift your gaze to your old work phone on the nightstand. Then to the wall. They might as well be the same object, at this point. Neither does much at all. You just sit.
And then it hits you, like a wave, all ice cold and unforgiving, and you laugh and laugh and laugh. It’s a strangled sound, an ugly painful truth that comes with tears and snot and wheezing. You laugh, a hysterical laugh, and it goes on and on and on until it stops. And you laugh in your apartment all alone; you’ll always be alone. There’s no one left.
Going crazy is a solitary affair, you’ve always known that fact too well.