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She turns up one day, just sitting there in the lobby of the Quantico building on one of those uncomfortable-looking chairs that seem nice enough at first glance but are really just moulded formica covered with fabric. There are splashes of mud on her jeans, her chucks are scuffed, and she’s wearing a blazer that doesn’t fit. She’s sitting like she’s been there for a WHILE but is trying not to be rude about it.
Spencer notices all of this without really noticing it as he makes his way to security. He’s already pulling his bag from his shoulder, ready to drop it into the tray to be scanned by security.
His hand is held out to show his credentials, and then her head turns in his direction, her eyes meeting his when he hadn’t even realised he was still looking at her. He freezes, just for a split second, something triggered in the back of his mind, but then her eyes move on and so does he.
He finds the bullpen that houses the BAU nearly empty, but in Hotchner’s office JJ is gesticulating and their boss throws up his arms, expression grim. The door is closed but the blinds are open.
“What’s going on?” Spencer deliberately doesn’t look at the desk that used to belong to Prentiss and he doesn’t calculate the time in London. She isn’t dead, she just left. People leave, is a lesson he didn’t really need any Ph.D.s at all to learn.
Morgan looks up from the file he’s reading. “No idea. They were already in there when I got here.”
Spencer is still watching them when Hotchner gets up from his desk and moves to open the door. “Reid. Up here, please.”
“Oooooh, someone’s in trouble,” Morgan teases, no malice in his tone, just a hint of curiosity.
Spencer ignores him. Someone’s always in trouble.
He takes the stairs two at a time and then Hotchner is telling him to please shut the door and come take a seat. He stays standing, door closed as instructed but the handle still within reach. No-one else is sitting down.
“There’s someone here who asked for a meeting with you,” Hotchner begins.
JJ breathes deep and heavy, anxiety coming off her in waves.
“I know,” Spencer begins to say, then stops. He doesn’t know anything, but then he blinks and there are those eyes again, that rubber sole drawing circles on the tiled floor. “I mean… okay?”
“She says she’s a journalist.”
Oh.
JJ scoffs.
“Okay,” he says again. Why does she want to talk to ME, he doesn’t ask.
“You don’t have to speak with her,” Hotchner goes on, prevaricating to a point that’s almost comical and Spencer both wants him to just go ahead and say the words out loud and never say them at all.
“There’s something else.” JJ now, her voice so gentle he shakes his head at the floor. They moved on from this. All of them. So many bad things have happened in the meantime, it’s barely a blip on the team radar. He doesn’t really know where these thoughts are coming from, but they’re making his head spin and his mouth dry.
The blazer was probably bought secondhand, like maybe she’s not used to dressing that formally. Like maybe she’s just playing at being a grownup.
Hotchner clears his throat. “Garcia ran a security check. Extra thorough. She saw the request and thought it was strange that someone would make a general request but ask for you by name, not go through JJ.”
Is this how the others feel when he explains in too much detail? Like their skin doesn’t fit their bodies and it won’t again until he stops?
Maybe he’ll become a monk, take a vow of silence.
“It’s Tobias Hankel’s sister,” JJ says. Finally.
Spencer feels his shoulders tense and then relax, slots fitting themselves back into places in his mind that he didn’t know they had left. Alright. “There was a sister?” He feels like a robot. He’s supposed to ask this question, right? As if he hadn't somehow known that this was coming since his hand froze halfway to the scanner, piece of plastic in his hand.
“Apparently. The mom was pregnant, that’s probably why she left when she did. And now the sister’s here. Her name is Sarah Smith.”
She was wearing a t-shirt under the blazer, not a button-up shirt. There was something printed on it, but what?
“You don’t have to see her,” JJ insists.
“It’s fine,” Spencer reassures her. ‘It’ being whatever she needs it to be. None of what happened was JJ’s fault. He was so sure they moved on from this, but she has a look on her face like she’s personally been put in charge of killing all puppies everywhere and he has to watch her do it. “I’ll talk to her.”
Hotchner nods, and Spencer wonders if this is him agreeing with the decision or he would’ve nodded no matter what. Probably.
“Are you sure?” JJ hesitates, reluctant.
“I’m sure.” He looks her straight in the eye for the first time since walking into the room, hopes she’ll see the certainty he’s trying to project. He isn’t sure of anything.
“Okay. I’ll set it up.” She’s resigned but slips into efficiency with hardly any visible effort. This is the job, like it or not. Media liaison.
“Take the conference room,” Hotchner says. It’s not an offer, it’s nearby. The right people around if things go sideways. What’s the opposite of sideways, Spencer wonders. What’s a good way for this to end?
JJ nods, then leaves, her hand brushing Spencer’s arm deliberately as she passes him. He almost winces but manages to suppress it, then follows her out before Hotchner can start another conversation. Or continue this one.
“What’s going on?” Morgan asks when Spencer returns to his desk.
Spencer shrugs, sits down. Pulls a book from his bag and stares at it, opened to a page he doesn’t read.
It might have been a band logo, or maybe a school? On the t-shirt. All he knows for sure is the t-shirt was white. And also that it doesn’t matter.
“Okay,” Morgan grumbles. “Don’t tell me, then.”
So Spencer doesn’t.
He gets coffee. Stays in the tiny kitchen area with his back to the room until JJ comes to find him and let him know everything is ready. “She’s waiting.” His hands are trembling slightly, so he leaves the coffee mug on the counter and walks to the conference room trying to stop his fingers from folding into fists in his pockets.
She’s already sitting at the table. Doesn’t get up when he walks in, just observes him with those eyes, as if figuring people out is her job, not his. Eyes exactly like the ones he looked into the moment he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was going to die.
Except he’s still here.
“Hello,” he says. He reaches for the chair opposite her, his knuckles turning white as he grabs the back of it. There’s a brief hesitation before he pulls it out, commits to whatever this is.
“Thank you for seeing me,” she says. Her voice is soft. Not timid or gentle, just naturally soft. She has a hard time getting people to take her seriously, his mind profiles on autopilot. People underestimate her constantly. Probably to their detriment.
He sits down, taking a moment to get as un-uncomfortable as possible.
“How can I help you?” Spencer asks, like he’s a barista or she needs a kidney. Her eyes are still on him, completely steady. Her hands are folded on the table, this display of calm that stabs at him for some reason. Spencer wishes he had brought a file or something, anything, to fidget with. His hands grab hold of each other in his lap, doing nothing to quell the feeling of anxiety that has taken hold.
She has the advantage over him. She knew before this morning that this was going to happen. She came prepared. Of course, he could’ve said no.
“You’re Spencer Reid?” she confirms, fact-checking. Is she actually a journalist or did she just think that explanation would get her through the door?
“I am. Dr. Reid.” The correction is automatic and he regrets it immediately.
“You look younger than I expected.”
He licks his lips. She looks either 16 or 60, depending on his perspective. Really, she’s just a few years younger than him. “I get that a lot.”
She smiles and it throws him off balance. “Me too.”
Then the smile fades and Spencer shivers in the cold he suddenly feels.
“Do you know who I am?” She asks like she’s hoping he won’t make her explain but he finds that part of him wants her to. He wants to know the words she would choose.
“My brother,” she begins when he doesn’t say anything for what feels like an age. “Or—”
Her discomfort helps settle him. They can struggle through whatever this is together.
“My mother died last year,” she says instead. “I knew she left her first husband before I was born, I knew there was another child. An older brother.”
Spencer nods, encouragement or just a sign that he’s listening.
“She never told me their names. I guess she was worried I’d go looking for them. Worried they’d find us.”
Smith. Right.
“I only found out… after.” Her eyes are trained on a stain on the table, coffee someone spilled and the cleaners missed. Her fingers twitch and he knows she wants to pick at it. She doesn’t do it.
“Find out what, exactly?” She knew enough to look him up, she must know what Tobias did.
She chews on her bottom lip; Spencer looks at her knitted brow instead. It’s a mistake: when she raises her head and looks at him her eyes are right there and he can’t escape them. She shakes her head. “You’re the one who shot him, right?”
He can feel his eyebrows shoot ALL the way up. “Yes.” He did, there’s no point in denying that but it feels like an unfair place to start.
“He killed all those people.” It’s like she’s reminding herself.
“He did.”
“And he… He tortured you.” Not a question. Spencer wonders who she spoke to. Reporter with a cherub face and a voice like warm honey. They’d probably tell her anything she wanted to know.
“He did.”
“I’m sorry.” He wonders what she’s sorry for. Does she somehow feel responsible, too?
“It’s okay. I’m fine. It was a long time ago.” Except some nights it was just yesterday and his mind is on fire and his body screams for Dilaudid and it is an avalanche that will never, ever stop.
Her eyes bore into him and he has never felt this exposed before. He blinks and it’s over, like he just imagined it. She’s just a normal person, looking at him the way normal people do. Except nothing about this is normal.
"Was he evil?"
It's a complicated question, but she asks it like it's simple, so he tries for a simple answer. "He had a drug problem which led to a psychotic break. He suffered from dissociative personality disorder." A simple answer that's not really an answer at all.
"So what you're saying is, don't do drugs, kids?" Her tone is light, like she's joking.
He swallows, imagines he can feel the skin of his throat stretch and relax as his Adam's apple moves up and down. "I think that's the general government advice.”
She smiles, does a sort of hiccup like under other circumstances she might have laughed. Spencer remembers Penelope telling him that if anyone asks if he made a joke, he should just say yes. It feels like a different lifetime.
For the record, though. That WAS a joke.
“He was very sick, and that made him do evil things,” he elaborates. His mind is reciting definitions of diagnoses, all the clinical reasons Tobias did what he did.
“My mother said once, I was maybe seven, that the devil lived inside him. Do you think that was true?”
“No.” Spencer is firm on this. The devil didn’t do this. Synapses misfiring after years of abuse and drug-use did.
She nods. He thinks she believes him, or maybe she just believes that he believes it.
“I’m not really sure why I’m here,” she admits. “I want to understand, but I don’t want to… I don’t want to know too much, and I’m not sure where that line is. How much of this will I be able to carry?”
He gets that, but her openness is startling. It’s not his job to comfort her, that’s not what she came for, but he suddenly wishes JJ was here, or maybe Penelope. Someone should give this girl a hug.
“What DO you know?” he asks.
So she tells him. Glosses over her childhood: the father she barely remembers, her mother’s screams in the night, constantly moving, the devil always lurking in dark corners everywhere they go. Dwells on the moment she found out, the hours spent online, endless research as her mother withered away in a hospice bed. Reveals too much about how cops in Atlanta can be convinced to talk to pretty journalists. Reid could probably get a few people fired if he wanted, but by this point it doesn’t seem to matter.
“And then I found you,” she says, finally.
“You did,” he agrees, feels like the puzzle piece she is to him. Something to be fitted into place somewhere, edges uneven.
“Did you have a choice?”
There’s no segue at all and it takes him a moment to understand her. There’s always a choice, he wants to say. You just don’t always have the means to make it. “No.”
“Okay.” Her tone is too neutral and he wants to shake her, ask her if she believes him. Why does it matter? It won’t change what happened, the hows and whys fixed points in his consciousness. “Good.”
Then she’s moving, getting to her feet and he realises that whatever it was she came here for, she got it. Or she decided she didn’t want it after all.
He clears his throat and stands up too, moves to the door so he can hold it open for her.
She looks up at him as she walks past. “Thank you for your time.” It’s been less than half an hour since he sat down across from her, his time seems like an absurd thing to say thank you for.
“No problem.” He hands her his card, not really sure why he’s doing it even as his fingers dig it out of his pocket.
She looks at it, her thumb brushing over the black ink spelling out his name and title, his contact details printed underneath. It shouldn’t feel like a caress, but still there are goosebumps spreading on his arms.
“Feel free to call me.” He doesn’t specify why she might want to. Doesn’t want to give her ideas or maybe set limits, he has no idea.
“Thank you.” She doesn’t try to shake his hand. “Goodbye, Dr. Reid.”
The formality is jarring but he welcomes it. “Goodbye.”
JJ appears as if she’s been hovering nearby, her eyes moving between them uncertainly until Sarah looks at her expectantly and then she finally speaks. “Shall I escort you out?”
Sarah nods, smiling politely, a completely different person somehow. Like this was just a regular interview on a regular day. “That would be great, thank you.”
Spencer leaves without another word, but watches from his desk as the elevator swallows them up. When JJ returns she smiles at him, a question, and he nods to let her know he’s fine. She nods back and vanishes into her office, emerges half an hour later with a case file and a business-as-usual expression that doesn’t reach all the way across her features. But she doesn’t say anything.
Back to work.
Sarah doesn’t call and Spencer doesn’t think about whether or not he wanted or expected her to. But then one day there’s an email in his inbox from “Reporter, Sarah the”. No greeting, no signoff, just the words “Saw this and thought of you”, an IP address, and two attachments. He opens them both; it’s a newspaper clipping, a scanned and cropped story about the seventh victim of a brutal rape, and a chat log that he reads through in a minute and a half without printing it. Then he gets up and heads to Garcia’s office because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to look up that IP himself.
They've been back in DC for two days - serial rapist behind bars and a signed confession on file in Kansas City - before he pulls up the email from Sarah, types "Thanks" in the Reply box and hits Send.
He watches the pixelated graphic that tells him his message has been sent into cyberspace and then goes to get himself a coffee.
The print on the t-shirt was the Columbia University logo.