Work Text:
"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."
"What are you sorry for, boy?"
****
Exodus 21:17.
It was marked, in his little Bible. The linen was stained and the edges torn. The little string marking his place ripped out long ago. A cigarette burn smudged one corner, coffee smudging some text through the middle.
He always carried it with him. Since he was five years old and read it through the first time and was filled with wonder at the stories. Since Mom showed him her own, one day after church - pulled from her coat pocket, nearly as battered and worn as his is now.
The cigarette burn was from his father, on a bad night. The string missing, the edges gone, from bullies finding it and taunting him. Coffee spilled after all-nighters writing essays.
It told the story of Spencer Reid as clearly as it did of Jesus, or Paul, or John.
The whole book was annotated. Little notes in the margins, black underlining and exclamation points. Sticky tabs jutting from half the pages. He did those when he was younger - younger, and bright and happy and only vaguely aware of the cracks in his life. The sickness in Mom. The bag his father always kept packed, in the back of their bedroom closet.
There were red lines, too. Those were from later. After William left, and Mom got sick, and the world started crashing around him.
Red lines on the page. It almost felt better than red lines on his skin.
And there were so many.
Genesis 23:4. Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense.
Galatians 5:19. Now the works of the flesh are evident: idolatry, sorcery, jealousy, envy. Those who do these things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Genesis 3:6. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and made one wise, she took of its fruit, and ate.
Corinthians 5:21. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.
He remembered that little book, with its little tabs and little lines black and red, in that cabin. He remembered all the times he sat in church, awed by the singing and joy and the purpose. The times he went, after, when Mom wouldn't stop telling him she could see God behind his eyes, his Grace in his hands. And he knew she could.
He remembered the pain every time he picked up that red pen and underlined his sins. Carved them in that book as surely as though he'd carved them into his flesh. There for everyone to see. It echoed the pain he felt now - in his foot, his face, his heart.
When he was nineteen, his mother still spiralling in that state institution, his scholarship about to be revoked from his failing grades, he held a match under the book. Held a match under the book and watched as some of the pages started the blacken and shrivel and fall, ashes. Felt the pills he'd stuffed in his back pocket. Remembered the jug of whiskey his father had left in the pantry, all those years ago.
Five minutes. A burst of flame, a handful of pills, a swig of alcohol, and it'd be over. The red lines gone. The scars, gone.
His sins, gone.
And he stood there. For an hour, he stood. The match burned out against his fingers. He didn't light another, but neither did he move.
It was only when the clock struck eleven in the house, and he remembered the English paper due at three he hadn't started yet, that he moved. Put the matches away, the pills. Slipped the book, a bit more charred, into his bag.
He didn't have an English paper this time.
He has nothing left.
Tobias, this cabin, that couple - they took it all from him. Any bit of goodness, any small part untouched by sin, gone. He could still hear their screams, their screams as Tobias pushed that knife into them again and again and again -
A genius IQ, and he couldn't figure out how to save two people on a computer screen, miles away.
He was a murderer.
Thou shall not kill.
And he did.
Thou shall not kill.
Two people are dead.
Tobias was nothing more than a weapon. Spencer Reid was the one who aimed, and Spencer Reid fired. Tobias was just the bullet that hit home.
(he just has to aim that gun again)
He watched, caught in the hold of opiates and hallucinogens, his mother get set dragged away. Heard her screams, her cries.
Exodus 21:17. And he who curseth his mother or his father should surely be put to death.
He underlined that one on his eighteenth birthday.
He underlined it again that day, in the cabin.
* * *
"Is that a confession?"
"I confess."