Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You knowingly jeopardized your life and the lives of others. I should fire you. You’re the smartest kid in the room, but you’re not the only one in that room. You pull something like this again, you will be. Am I clear?” Aaron lectured Spencer, reproach and warning in his tone.

Despite the all too fresh memories of Hotch’s planned-standoff with Chester Hardwick, painting his boss's words with heavy shades of hypocrisy as they rose to the surface of Spencer’s mind, Spencer managed a mild, obedient tone as he answered.

”Yes, Sir. It won’t happen again. Thank you.”

”What were you thinking?”

”I was thinking that that would have been the second time a kid died in front of me."

”You’re keeping score, just like Owen."

Hotch’s words spawned a wave of craving that crashed over Spencer, a gale force threatening to swallow or drown him, as he caught his breath.

In the back of his mind, alongside the constant stream of thoughts that he often consciously directed with the confidence of a symphony conductor, an unmistakable bass-baritone iconically stark and depressive voice began to sing, sotto voce, the lyrics that had been playing in the background to Spencer’s thoughts throughout the day… even when he had been listening earlier to the very similar lyrics of another of the artist's song that Owen had recorded as background music to the shooting recorded on the second mpg.

The lyrics fit his thoughts and cravings so well that Spencer couldn't decide if both his and Owen's song choices could even be called ironic.

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

”It was my turn to save one.”

”It doesn’t work like that.”

”It should.”

”I know it’s painful when the person you identify with is the bad guy. "

”What’s that make me?”

What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

”Good at the Job,” Spencer dimly heard Hotch answer back as his supervisor stood, pausing to study him silently before he continued in a tone that Spencer knew he hoped was encouraging. “I know it’s none of my business, but when we land, I think you should go and catch the rest of that movie.”

The words were a dim echo as Hotch stood over him, watching him with thinly veiled concern waiting for Spencer’s customary half-hearted smile or nod or something, but the memories that never went away were crowding his thoughts too closely today to make that sort of resigned obedience possible.

Instead, another answer rose to his lips; from where he couldn’t have pinned down at the moment, but at the same time, he knew. He knew what was coming: the confession of that one critical fact he had known since the moment he had walked across the stage to accept his first graduate degree, the confession that his team probably never spent more than a second or two considering if they ever spent even that much time on it. Hotch had been right saying that no one ever saw the signs.

”Do you know why I prefer to use paper and pencils instead of tablets and computers, Hotch?”

He knew that although his odd, seemingly off-topic question was directed at Aaron, the others were listening in - their silence obvious in the pause before he continued.

Aaron only shook his head, waiting for the connection.

”I know that Garcia thinks I’m a technophobe, a “Doctor of the Dark Ages”, technology-averse, or something like that, which I’ve never quite understood considering that a Luddite wouldn’t have been able to survive in an associate’s program at Caltech or MIT, much less the rigorous postgraduate programs required to earn Engineering doctorates from either university. I haven’t really said anything about it, but it’s an odd thing for her to miss…” He rambled, feeling more than seeing the others turn their slightly uncomprehending stares to him.

His eyes stayed fixed on Hotch’s gaze waiting for the implications to click. Hotch had seen enough, knew more about his background than the others, outside of what Spencer had shared with Derek only that morning. The question was how much was Hotch willing to put together or how much had he already put together?

”I’m not afraid of technology, nor ignorant in how to use it… for more purposes than Garcia even might expect. The coursework required to complete the “Data, Systems, and Society” doctorate, alone, provided a very thorough grounding in various methods of unearthing minute, diverse, and frequently overlooked elements of personal data and... using it effectively.” Spence offered before trailing off…not quite ready to say it plainly.

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair

”Then why don’t you use it? You wouldn’t need that bag of yours if you did. It doesn’t do you justice with the ladies, you know.” Derek threw out somewhat kindly; though Spencer knew there was an equal chance that he was interrupting just to cut Spencer’s rambling off and get to the point.

”Because Hotch is right: I have been keeping score, just like Owen. I always have. You commented earlier that I didn’t need an eidetic memory to remember the torments inflicted on me or the people who inflicted them. You called it ‘an elephant’s memory’. You're right, too. I may not have needed an eidetic memory to remember, but I have one; I’ve always had one and have remembered every moment, every torment as clearly as when it occurred. I’ve been collecting names and injustices; though not from any desire to do so."

"Owen just wanted to forget; I can understand that.” Spencer paused, turning in his seat to meet Derek’s still questioning expression ignoring, for the moment, Hotch’s increasingly intense study.

”If I could, I would gladly forget that Harper Hilman was wearing ‘Charlie’ when she came up to me. I'd forget the way the peach and moss notes of her perfume barely covered the scent of the lime'onade she’d drunk at lunch; I would forget how Alexa Lisben’s cherry cola lip gloss glistened wetly like she’d just put it on. I’d forget the callouses and sweat on the hands of the football players, and how they slid - slick and horrible - on my skin as they pulled my clothes off and dragged me kicking and calling out for help to the goal post; I’d forget the shadows that had paused while crossing seven of the twenty-two windows facing the football field; I’d forget that it took twenty-eight minutes before they tired of daring each other to pinch me, rub mud on me, grab me, spank me, or find other ways to humiliate me. I’d forget that, in addition to the junior and varsity team members and the cheerleading squad, there were sixty-two other classmates there watching me suffer and beg for them to help while they just stood there, watched, and laughed. I'd forget that the youngest of them was still five years older than me... And I’d forget that I know all of their names. I’d forget that they aren’t stuck with the memories that I can’t get rid of or move on from because no matter how many books I’ve read and memorized page for page, how many cases we've handled and case reports I've studied and prepared, or how many supposedly trivial facts I’ve memorized - it hasn’t been enough data to bury those memories. ”

Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here

Spencer knew without questioning that half of their silence was from shock and half from sympathy, and more than fifty percent of each of those feelings had come from their willing choice through years previous -

To ‘not profile’ him;

To not understand what he meant when he told Gideon that he’d felt nothing after killing the sniper who’d held him and Hotch hostage

To not worry when he admitted to Derek that he knew what it was like to be afraid of his own mind

To not press after he told Hotch that he’d kicked like a nine-year-old girl - hinting at more when he’d reminded the man he’d been a prodigy in a public high school

To not consider the fact that he had always been the smartest person in the class (including the teacher), and - unlike Owen- had time and time again too easily proven the fact to students and teachers alike (despite never intending to) - and more often than not suffered for the fact

To not consider how closely Spencer’s own family, school, and social dynamics mirrored the so-called textbook cases: his life one torment after another -

bullied from early childhood in the overpacked Vegas public schools whose teachers had no idea what to do with an awkward, highly-functioning but socially-inept child, in the days before Asperger’s syndrome was entirely understood

ignored and eventually abandoned by a father trying to escape his own dubious predilections

subjected to the dubious care of a mentally ill mother who in the throes of her illness spiraled between moments of lucid caring, emotional abuse, physical violence, and oblivious neglect ...

leaving Spencer ultimately unsupported to collect names, to remember the injustices - the cruel remarks and biting blows and willingly blind eyes.

”I’d forget the six hundred forty-seven bumps, bruises, and pushes I’d received before that from various classmates whose blatant disdain for outcasts never quite rose to the classic definition of bullying; the eighty-three slaps delivered by my own mother when she couldn’t remember who I was or worse thought I was a plant that the government put in place of her biological son, the three broken ribs I’d gotten from being pushed down stairs by indifferent College Physics majors who wanted nothing to do with a twelve-year-old who was skewing the grading curve, by doing better in class than they were; the jeers and insults from professors who wanted to put me in my place or undermine my credibility before I’d made a name or found a mentor to stand up for me.”

”I’d forget that I still remember their names or more than half of their social security numbers from when social security numbers were used in place of student numbers or as parts of their passwords, that I remember their license tag numbers, that l learned how to use those details to unearth very private information my classmates would never want seen or that it would take less than seven minutes effort to remotely plant incriminating data that would implicate my father in converting his employer’s suddenly-missing funds into cryptocurrencies they could never recover and less than that to use the information I already know to retrieve Harper and Alexa’s passwords and forge explicit emails and texts ‘accidentally’ sent to their spouses … ... ... and I would forget that for one hundred and eighty-six of the minutes that I was in Tobias Hankel’s captivity - Dilaudid helped me to forget.”

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

”The reason I avoid technology is the same reason I stay away from Dilaudid and the same reason that I keep count … because I have to believe that all of the memories that never leave me, that are as painful and clear as in the moment they happened, that let me identify with one of the ‘bad guy’s (as you called them) have to serve a purpose - even if it’s only to let me save the life of devolving kid when everyone else can only see a suicidal standoff as the only possible outcome of the path he was on or to talk down a death-row inmate making a last-ditch effort to prolong his life by killing two Federal Agents...” he paused watching the barb hitting home and Hotch take his comment in with the slight widening of his dark pained gaze, before Spencer continued:

”I have to believe that the purpose I turn them to will more than balance out the injustices I’ve collected, and that can’t be measured without keeping count.”