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there are a lot of words spencer reid could use to describe himself - smart, kind, talkative, friendly, empathetic. there were plenty more words that other people could use - scrawny, small, burden, weird, annoying. but one word that nobody had every really used to describe spencer was happy. even when he was just a kid, before the schizophrenia diagnosis and the abandonment issues, his mother told him he had a sad soul. he wasn't sure what it meant at the time, just passing it off as yet another odd thing his mother would say.
spencer wasn't too sure what his stance was on whether souls existed, but his mother would talk about them often. she'd tell him to never get involved with someone who had a rotten soul, because you can't bring a soul back from the dead. she'd say that you can try to mend a soul before it dies but once the rot takes over, they are beyond repair. that was another thing he wasn't too sure about - at what point can you tell that somebody's soul is too rotten to live? he thought that nobody was beyond saving; that there was always something you could do to help them.
she told him that he had a gift. his mother believed that he could see the condition of someone's soul. spencer humoured her, and asked her what he was supposed to do with this gift. she told him that that was up to him, but he should always do his best to help someone whose soul was in trouble.
when his father left, he asked his mother if william had a rotten soul. she said that it wasn't rotten, it was weak. souls were as much about the people around you as they were about you, yourself. william's soul just wasn't strong enough to contain another two, and so he left. spencer thinks that if he did stay, william's soul would have rot and made their souls rot too. it was good he left before that could happen.
he never asked what kind of soul his mother had because he knew. his mother had a kind soul, no signs of rot whatsoever. she was pure. even as her mind started deteriorating, her soul stayed intact. no matter how many times she would forget who he was, or scream at him, or become violent, her soul stayed the same.
he wanted to ask if souls could change. he didn't want to have a sad soul forever. but he didn't ask. he tried to tell himself it was because he didn't actually believe in souls, but he knew it was because he was scared of the answer. if he'd already had a sad soul for years as a child, he didn't have much hope for change. that didn't stop him from trying to find a way to disprove it. he read as much as he could on souls, finding nothing to prove that they exist, trying to convince himself that it didn't matter if his mother thought he was sad because souls aren't real.
he read as many books on humanity and the mind as he could. at first it was just to prove to himself that he wouldn't be sad forever, but over time he found that he had a genuine interest in it and he started attending lectures on the subject. he started studying philosophy and sociology and psychology and anything else he could get his hands on. it was at a lecture for criminal psychology that he first met jason gideon. gideon told him that he had a gift for reading people and offered him a way to put that gift to use.
spencer went home that night and thought about his mother. he wished he could ask her what she thought he should do, but even if she didn't despise the government, she was still angry at him for putting her in the sanitarium. the thing that truly pushed him to accept the offer was when he thought of how his mother said he should find a way to help people with his gift, and it just sounded so similar to what gideon said that he just had to say yes. it was perfect.
when he met his team for the first time, he thought that he could really see himself becoming friends with them. sure, he was hesitant at first. morgan looked like a typical jock, elle and jj looked like every mean girl he'd ever met, and hotch was just generally incredibly intimidating, even without the glare. but he could see that they were good people and he chose to at least try to trust them - that was probably one of the best decisions he'd ever made. they soon became the first friends he'd had since college and he found himself smiling more than he had before. his soul was just a little less sad.
and then hankel happened.
if souls did exist, hankel had two. charles hankel's soul resided in the body of his son, and god, it was rotten. tobias just wanted to help. he was scared but he was kind. and when spencer had to shoot hankel, it was tobias' soul that was present. he tried to tell himself that it was a mercy; that tobias no longer had to share a body with that monster; that tobias' soul could be free. it was hard to remind himself of that when all he could think was do you think i'll get to see my mom again?
then came the dilaudid.
with every dose he took, he was poisoning himself. he was poisoning his soul and he was rotting. he knew he needed to stop, but if he was going to have a sad soul forever, who cares if it rot? who cares if he poisoned himself every day until it became too much and he finished himself off? not his team, that's for sure. they saw the physical portrayals of his decay - the pale skin, the grotesque mix of purple and black and blue under his eyes, the way his body sunk in on itself as if trying to sustain any sense of self it had. they saw the way the rot manifested itself in his actions. he stopped being kind. he stopped being friendly. he stopped talking and he stopped considering the feelings of others and his brain was in such an intense fog he could hardly think. his team did nothing.
the rot had taken over, and it had rid him of any essence of spencer reid.
one day he wondered why it was so easy to succumb to the corruption. he knew his mother was pure enough to never rot, so why wasn't he? he should've been able to stop himself from taking the poison, but he didn't. maybe he had always been rotten. maybe, deep down, his soul had started decomposing as soon as he took his first breath. or maybe he had spent too much time around rotten souls. he had spent hours upon hours upon hours around the most awful people humanity had to offer, he would be a fool to think that their souls had not become part of him.
seeing ethan again was a blessing in disguise. they had been close for years, best friends and sometimes a little more. he knew him well enough to know that ethan had a kind soul. he knew ethan was good. and if ethan was good despite suffering the same affliction of a poisonous addiction, spencer could be good too. maybe there was hope after all. if ethan had yet to rot, maybe spencer could save himself.
he got himself clean. he took a week off of work, got through the shaking and the crying and the cravings all alone. and each time he threw up, he felt as though he was dispelling another bit of rot from his soul until by the end of withdrawal, his soul was fresh again. sad, but not rotten.
spencer understood when gideon left. he didn't like it, and he was angry, and he was upset, but he understood. there comes a point when being around so many disgusting people could start to rot even the kindest soul, and gideon knew it was time to leave. he just wished his mentor had been more thoughtful when he did it. a letter was not enough of a goodbye, no matter how much the goodbye was needed.
his soul got a little sadder.
rossi joined the team and his initial impression left spencer wary. he couldn't tell whether he was genuinely an asshole or if it was some sort of defense mechanism but he soon discovered that yeah, he was just an asshole. that didn't last too long though. cold hearts didn't take very long to thaw when surrounded by the warmth of the bau family.
spencer had a feeling that the bau was exactly why his own soul wasn't rotten. if his soul was truly affected by those he surrounded himself with, he certainly chose the best people to be his family. they were good people. they kept him good. even as people came and went, they stayed good. his family remained even if they weren't always all together and that kept him content.
once again, his soul started to get a little more less sad. he still wouldn't describe himself as happy, but a lot of his smiles were genuine, if not a bit exaggerated. he laughed a lot more too. he still had cravings every now and again, but those were easily squashed by a call to a friend or a trip to a meeting. he may not have been necessarily happy, but he was certainly on his way there.
and then emily died.
it felt as though his soul was sat on his heart and there was enough sadness within it that it was pushing his heart down into stomach, down towards the butterflies that were swarming as fast as they could, in a race with his thoughts to see who could overwhelm him the quickest but his thoughts went so fast that they escaped the confines of his head and left his mind blank, taking his breath with them so that the butterflies were left only with the option to move faster and faster as if trying to produce the breath that he had lost but only succeeding in creating a tornado inside of him until everything was demolished and he was left hollow with nothing to show for it but a pile of broken wings that nobody but him could see.
and then came the cravings. and the struggle to get out of bed each morning. and the habit of spending every night staring at his ceiling instead of sleeping. and the constant feeling of emptiness in his chest.
he didn't understand the first time his mother told him he had a sad soul. he understood now.
at this point, he felt so hollow and empty that tears were a mercy. they gave him an excuse to go to jj's and cry rather than sit at home staring at nothing until exhaustion took over and he passed out wherever he was. as much as he was glad he could always go to his friend, he felt guilty. she was grieving too, but he was still dumping his problems onto her.
it didn't take long for them to get into the routine of him showing up unannounced at least two or three times a week. sometimes he would be a sobbing mess and needed to be held, and sometimes he just needed to be around someone who wouldn't let him go wandering the streets trying to score anything he could get his hands on. he never explicitly stated that that was the reason he was there those times and he didn't know if she knew, but she seemed to understand that he just needed to be with someone. she'd cook him dinner and let him play with henry, then leave him in his room. there were times in the morning when he would stay for breakfast, but often he just kissed henry's forehead and slipped out the door before anyone was awake.
it lasted for ten weeks before he finally managed to cut down to once a week. he would've stopped going all together but losing emily forced him to accept the mortality of his family in the most brutal way possible. he still cried sometimes, but it didn't count if the only witnesses were the walls of his apartment. the walls had held enough of his secrets for him to know that he was free to not hold back there.
generally, he was getting used to emily not being around. the empty feeling didn't go away, but it did become less noticeable. it became easier to get out of bed, and the cravings had finally lessened. his sleeping schedule was still entirely messed up, but that was nothing new. he was reaching a semblance of normalcy.
and then emily came back.
they lied to him. he trusted them and they lied to him. was he really so blinded by his own grief that he didn't notice that they weren't? he cried on jj's shoulder more times than he's willing to admit, and she let him. she let him come over and she cooked dinner for him and she watched him fall apart over and over again and she let him. she could've stopped his suffering before it had a chance to start. he understood that they didn't have much of a choice but that's just the thing - they did. they could have told the team the truth. they're trained in behavior, they could've easily faked true grief. but instead they were left to wallow in their own misery.
spencer was angry. he was sad and he was frustrated and he was shocked and he was angry. he'd gotten so close to relapsing so many times during the time emily was gone. he nearly ruined his life, all because they lied to him, and then they treated him like he was being petulant and prideful when he struggled to forgive them. he could barely believe his ears when jj said he was only angry because he took it as an insult to his profiling skills. when emily tried saying that she had it worse because she mourned six friends and he only mourned one, he wanted to blow up on them. he wanted to yell and scream and act exactly like the child they were accusing him of being.
it took a long time and a lot of venting sessions with morgan for him to get over his anger. he was glad that emily was back, he truly was. he just couldn't see himself getting back to how content he was before her 'death'. the residual feelings of betrayal kept him from embracing his family as he once did. they were still his family, nothing would change that, but he didn't trust them outside of the field. his anger may have left, but the sadness lingered.
and then he met maeve. she was incredible. he didn't believe in soulmates until he met her, and he knew without even seeing her that she had the most beautiful soul that he had ever had the pleasure of knowing. he thought that maybe, just maybe, this could be his shot at happiness. she made him smile until his cheeks hurt and laugh when all he felt like doing was crying. she made the headaches go away. she made him happy. he saw himself building a life with her.
and then her life was ripped away.
he sunk further down into his sadness than he ever had before. the empty feeling in his chest became so intense that he was sure his soul had left along with hers. the walls were once again trusted with his secrets as he finally exploded. books were thrown everywhere, glasses were smashed, mirrors were punched. if his soul had left, he was broken, and his safe space portrayed that.
he fell to the floor one day and didn't get back up until two days later when penelope knocked, requesting for a sign that he was alive. oh, how he wished he wasn't.
his life seemed to be one misery after the next. he'd lived through enough for several lifetimes, and he didn't want to deal with it anymore. he wanted to shoot up. he wanted so badly to find the closest dealer he could and buy whatever they had on them. he wanted to be happy, even if that happiness was artificial from a needle and followed with feelings of despair and regret so strong all he could do was curl in a ball and cry.
he couldn't seem to even get off the floor to do that. it didn't seem to matter how badly it was screaming for a fix, his body wouldn't move.
he laid on the floor for an unknown amount of time - could've been days, could've been hours. he didn't know. he didn't care. he didn't care about anything. he didn't feel anything. he was empty. all he could do was sit and stare at the wall, as if it would somehow betray someone else's secret and tell him that maeve was alive just as emily was.
spencer wasn't sure how he could come back from this. he should've known better than to get his hopes up but he wanted to be happy - he wanted to be happy with her so bad.
his head hurt.
it took a long time before he finally emerged from his apartment. of course it was for a case, as if anything else could get him to leave the confines of his safety. he couldn't save maeve but he'd do his damn best to save anyone else he could.
for the next while, things seemed okay. he knew not to hope this time. people still left, he still got hurt, bad things still happened. but when the two year anniversary of maeve's death passed with nothing truly traumatising happening (if you don't count being shot in the neck, that is), he thought that maybe he could be allowed to finally live in peace. well, at least as much peace as an active fbi agent could live in.
and then they found gideon's body. and then his mother didn't recognise him. and then derek left. and then peter lewis forced hotch to leave to go into witness protection. and then his mother got worse. and then he got arrested. and then his only friend got his throat slit in front of him. and then cat adams kidnapped his mother. and then he found out that he was violated in mexico and cat was pretending her baby was his. and then he was forced to take time off work to teach for a month every one hundred days. and then he got kidnapped by a cult. and then, when things finally start to look up again, cat adams returned and forced him to take her on a date.
he could never catch a break that lasted longer than a few months. he stopped waiting for the next moment of happiness and instead starting waiting for the next disappointment. he couldn't even find it in him to be shocked when something bad happened. he'd get suspicious each time he went a little longer than normal without something awful happening.
and honestly? he was tired of it. sure, maybe he had a sad soul. maybe he was destined to be sad until the day he died. so fucking what? he wanted to be happy, he was going to be happy, whether the world was seemingly against him or not. he was done with just accepting the sadness. he didn't need to wait for happiness, he could just be happy.
he started telling his friends he loved them more. he stopped forcing himself to smile and made sure his happiness shown more when it was actually genuine. he stopped saving certain things for special occasions - that really nice vest he had didn't need to only be worn to formal parties, he could wear it to work simply because he felt like it. he even started visiting derek more. of course, this made his teammates concerned at the sudden change in behaviour.
emily called him to her office one day and told him that they were worried because he was exhibiting signs of being suicidal. he laughed. probably not the best response, but a real one. he genuinely found it funny just how off the mark they were, and he told her such. after a lengthy discussion, they decided he would also start seeing a therapist that emily highly recommended, a friend of tara's. this was partly to ease the minds of the bau, but mostly to help spencer overcome his struggles.
it was the start of a long journey and he knew he had a lot of obstacles in his path, but he wanted to get better and he was willing to make the effort. he didn't care what happened in the future - he'd made it through all the shit life had thrown at him so far and he would make it through whatever else. he owed it to his childhood self to prove that no soul is sad forever.
spencer wanted to be happy, and that's exactly what he was going to do.