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There would have been silence, if not for the sound of his footsteps against the floor as he crossed the apartment and slumped onto the couch. His shoulders rolled in a futile attempt to release the tension—the knots that had formed as a somatic consequence of the events not long ago.
Usually he would pick up a book. He would lose himself in its pages until mundane necessities—food, sleep—became secondary to the steady consumption of information. His eyes moved rapidly over the words, his brain absorbing and cataloguing them at a rate most people found unsettling.
But tonight, memorizing facts about dark matter and quantum entanglement held no appeal whatsoever.
He shifted on the couch and leaned back, resting his back in it, glancing at his bookshelf. A title caught his attention. Derivatives and Their Applications.
Yes, PhDs in mathematics and physics were part of his many acquired studies. But he couldn't even quantify the speed at which such a shift in his life had occurred. Let alone in himself.
The slope of a tangent line; the instantaneous rate of change. If someone had asked him to calculate the derivative of his own life, he doubted he could. The curve had bent too sharply.
A line that had curved and twisted his previous self, into something exponentially dull.
The sound of traffic. The chatter of commuters as he walked to the subway each morning, heading towards his workplace, after being reinstated. None of that had accompanied him in his cell.
Nor during those days in confinement. Neither did the distant sound of his neighbors at the contiguous apartment. Or the sound of rain coming through the window.
Only the wet, hissing sound of Luis’s throat being cut, replaying in his mind with mechanical persistence. While he tried to count the hours he would spend confined, without human contact. To not lose his mind, the task he wondered whether had been accomplished correctly.
Sounds like PTSD.
No.
Not disorder.
Luke had corrected him once.
“Post-traumatic stress syndrome,” Luke had said. “Not a disorder. An injury.”
“Every time you get stressed you go into tunnel vision. That’s why you keep rubbing your eyes”
For it wasn't a disorder, rather an injury. A physically compromised part of him. To be treated.
An injury implied repair. Like a bone resets into place, his mind could theoretically be recalibrated. Hypothesis he wasn't sure had enough evidence to become a theory, nor even a premise.
Maybe Luke was right about the symptoms.
As he walked, making his way to the bathroom, Spencer caught his reflection in the mirror. For a moment he studied it the way he would study a crime scene.
Observable symptoms: exhaustion, hypervigilance, intrusive recall. And the mask.
Of course it was impossible to not notice it.
A mask he could no longer remove.
Attached to his skin.
Dermis.
Epidermis.
Hypodermis.
He had learned. In prison he had trained himself to stop, to not show his traits.
Hands still. Shoulders squared. No restless movements that might signal anxiety.
A list he repeated, over and over.
Shoulders straight. Voice level. Eye contact. No hand movements.
His fingers twitched against the sink before he forced them still.
The prison was gone. The rules were not. After all, that was the way it should have been to survive.
But it wasn't.
Now, he didn't unlearn that behavior.
The physical bill, however, a heavy burden pressing against his temples.
A migraine threatening to arise.
In mathematics, the derivative described how something changed in response to pressure.
Prison had simply increased the pressure.
With a careless movement of his arm, he accidentally knocked a glass bottle of soap off the sink.
It shattered.
He rushed to pick up the shattered pieces, accidentally cutting himself.
His blood was crimson.
Accidentally.
At least, that’s what he told himself.
What he would tell anyone who asked.
The cut wasn’t deep, but it bled steadily down his finger.
Most people would have rushed to the sink. Disinfected it. Wrapped it in gauze.
He didn’t. He simply watched the blood gather and fall. His mind supplied the reasoning automatically—quiet, insistent.
Luis’s blood had been spilled because of him. And the poisoning of other inmates.
He was responsible for it. The thought wasn’t rational. But it stayed.
Eventually the dripping became inconvenient, staining the counter in thin red arcs.
With a quiet exhale, he turned on the faucet. The water ran, warm over his hand, washing the blood down the drain.
Warm.
For a moment he simply stood there, letting it run over his skin.
Warm water was a luxury he had not been allowed in that place.
Any kind of warmth.
In prison, the water had always been cold. He turned the faucet off and stared at the fading red spiraling down the drain.
A few minutes later he stepped into the shower. Showers cut short in prison. Timed.
Warmth? A reminder of his current freedom.
However, was he truly free?
He was free in body. But not at mind.
Still hearing the ghost footsteps of the guards. In the hallways.
Any sudden thud and his brain would process it as the sound of a cell door slamming shut.
For every 100 days he spends in the field, he is required to take 30 days off.
Prentiss told the board he was “rock solid.”
Ready to go back to work.
After his first day back in the field, he wasn’t so sure.
One day, he would kill an unsub.
Statistically, the probability was unavoidable.
It would be duty.
Necessity.
Self-defense.
At least, that was what he told himself.
Because lately, Spencer wasn’t entirely certain that would be the reason.