Work Text:
At what point does responsibility end?
The question had Spencer’s stomach doing flips. Across from him, Elle’s desk was bare. Her personal effects were cleared, her computer cold, and her chair missing her jacket draped along the back of it. She hadn’t said goodbye or sent out a mass message thanking them for their year of working together. It seemed like overnight she’d disappeared. Had Aaron not said that she’d handed in her notice and they were now looking for a replacement, Spencer would be questioning why nobody was looking for her. Even now, he questioned why nobody was trying to make contact.
He’d sent her two messages. The first asking where she was, sent when she missed the first day of work, and the second thanking her for their time together. He’d agonised over the last message, deleting and typing before googling the best ways to say what he wanted to, but it still seemed too impersonal. He was tempted to demand some explanation despite already knowing her reasoning.
He scrolled through their texts, searching for signs he’d dismissed at the time, but it didn’t look out of the ordinary. They talked about work for the most part, with brief pauses to confirm where they’d meet for out-of-work activities and his unanswered texts when she was on sick leave. He got nauseous when he thought about it.
Spencer tortured himself by taking lunch at his desk, his eyes fixed on the emptiness of her little cubicle. She never had much on her desk, just a couple of photos and bits of memorabilia, but it seemed gutted without it. He never asked her why she kept it that way. He’d open up his plastic tupperware, look at the contents and instantly feel the hunger that’d been quietly building in the background disappear just like she did. He could’ve prepared the most glorious of meals, and he’d still be unable to stomach a bite of it sitting here, confronted with missed opportunities and their consequences, yet he couldn’t bring himself to move. What if there was some sort of clue? Some sort of reassurance that he did the best he could and all he needed to do was sit there that tiny bit longer?
It seemed to follow him home, and he’d have to force himself to eat something for the sake of having something to tamp down the bile threatening to rise to his throat. He felt run down, and he knew that if he just went back to his usual diet, then he’d be fine, but he couldn’t bring himself to. In the quiet of his apartment, the question reappeared.
At what point does responsibility end?
Spencer didn’t shoot Elle. He didn’t dip his fingers into her open wound to write on her walls. He didn’t threaten to hurt her to gain compliance and follow through with it. He didn’t send the packages or set up the puzzles or frame her for murder. He didn’t pressure her to come back to work after it all, and he did his best to make himself available for her to talk to when she did.
Yet none of that would’ve happened without him. He was the string knitting the case together. There were a thousand things he could’ve done differently, but he hadn’t, and now it was too late. He could change now, and he had. He’d given fewer details about his friends in his letters to his mum, but it felt redundant now. The damage was done. He couldn’t unburn the bridge.
Nobody was trying to pin the blame on him either. If anything, they were assuring him there was nothing he’d done wrong. Everyone talked about their friends to their parents; it just so happened that his mum spread this information to the wrong person, but not everyone’s parents were in a mental health care facility. A security risk within a security risk. He should've known better. The patients were supposed to be low risk, but assessments could only catch so much, and they'd seen enough seemingly normal people snap one day.
So, if he wasn’t to blame for their information getting out in the first place (thanks, Penelope, for taking the fall on that one), then what was he expecting himself to take responsibility for? What did he want to be held accountable for? He could’ve spoken to her more, but he struggled with opening up, and he was terrified that pushing the boundaries with her would have the tables turned on him. He still asked if she was okay, but maybe he should’ve broadened the boundaries. If he wasn't so terrified at being held under the microscope in return, then maybe he would've caught that little detail.
Being shot only to then have to shoot someone else planning to do all manner of things to her- it was just a bad stack of things to happen to someone so close together. He didn’t hold her hand to trigger or beg her to fire. Yet even that seemed to weigh on him. Would she have taken the shot if he’d taken the time to be there for her beforehand? Would she have left in the aftermath if he proved himself someone to lean on? Was it his responsibility to be that person in the first place?
By the time he realised he was spiralling, he was sitting in the dark with an open book in his palms, not a single page read, and his wristwatch showed it was the early hours of the morning. He’d debate between sleeping on the couch or trudging off to his bedroom, but tonight had left him more unsettled than usual. His clothes felt too tight despite being fine all day, his apartment tilted and turned in spite of its steady foundations, breathing that had once been mindless now seemed to take up far too much energy. He was running on an empty tank, and if he wasn’t careful, he was going to drive himself into the ground. He’d be of no use to anyone then, and they were counting on him with Elle’s departure.
Childishly, his first thought was to call for his mother. Then he wondered why it would be childish. She was honest with him, always had been, even when he was little, she never talked down to him as everyone else insisted on doing. It was just a question of whether he’d get his mother or a sick woman when he called. His thumbs were already numbly navigating his phone before he let it deter him, and he paced as the dial tone rang.
Once.
Twice.
“Bennington Sanitarium, Nurse Kyle speaking. Can you state your name and which patient you’d like to contact, please?”
“Dr Spencer Reid to connect with Diana Reid.”
“Oh, Dr Reid. Good to hear from you. You know us here-”
“Can you just put me through please?” he snapped, already fighting the temptation to hang up altogether.
After Garner, the facility had tried to make it up to them. Of course that was just so he wouldn’t try to sue for one reason or another, but after looking through their files, even they couldn’t have predicted the turn Garner took mentally. Frivolous apologies weren’t what he was after, though, and he really wasn’t in the mood to be patient enough to sit through them.
“One moment,” the nurse muttered.
Another series of tones. He begged her to pick up as his hands started to tremble. He should’ve calmed down before he called her because now if he was faced with incoherence it would only make him worse. He’d have to find a way to get off the phone without causing undue distress, and he’d probably fail because he wasn’t able to do much of anything right nowadays, and that’s likely one of the reasons Elle didn’t bother going to him because he would’ve just made her worse-
“Spencer? Why are you calling so late?” Diana answered. Clear. She knew it was late and she knew it was something to question. It was a good sign he was desperately searching for more of.
“I-” I’m having a panic attack, and I’ve been sick the last two weeks because a coworker left and it’s probably my fault. She’d just worry. He needed to make it palatable, but it was getting harder to focus. He wished he was there sitting beside her in this rare moment of clarity, having her close to catch him before he went tumbling over the edge. “I just- I need help.”
“I’m not going on a plane again, Spencer. I love you, but I have my limits.”
“No, not with a case. With me.” She hummed in that all-knowing way mothers did.
He tried to paint a picture of what she looked like now. Probably bundled up with the knitted cardigan she’d made in a workshop a year ago. She loved that thing. Maybe she was sitting in an armchair by the phone, twisting the landline wire around her finger as she listened. Her reading glasses resting slightly below the bridge of her nose and her place in her book saved with a bookmark he’d gifted her when he went to look at universities. It’d been his way of introducing the idea of moving out of state for the rest of his education. Not that it softened the blow any when he got in.
“Are,” she paused, “Are you beginning to have symptoms?” she put carefully.
“No,” he quickly assured her. “Do you remember Elle? I spoke about her a few times, but she was in hospital when you visited.”
“Visited,” she repeated with a sneer. He rolled his eyes at her. “I wouldn’t describe it like that, but I remember the name. Terrible what happened to her. I still can’t believe he was capable of that.”
“Well, Elle quit out of nowhere, and I think it’s my fault.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong telling me about your friends,” she swiftly defended.
“The details were a little specific, but I mean more so that after she came back from sick leave, I didn’t do enough. She seemed fine, but something happened on a case, and she never came back. Hotch told us she handed in her notice.”
“People leave. It’s one of the facts of life,” she said simply. “It’s not always going to be your fault that they do.”
“Circumstances matter,” Spencer argued. “If-”
“Now think about this for a moment before you start. When we play with ifs and buts, we leave ourselves far too open to catastrophising. It all starts with “if so and so hadn’t met me then so and so wouldn’t have happened”, but it’s not long until it gets to “if I wasn’t born then this would’ve never happened”, and you’re too important to be making statements like that.”
“But if-”
“Spencer.”
In all fairness, he walked straight into that one. He sighed as he continued to pace, fussing with the strands of hair too short to be tucked neatly behind his ear but long enough to flicker in his field of vision. His mum was only taking his side because it was him and she might’ve thought this was a bad time to criticise him too harshly. If he could just get her to understand his shortcomings, surely she’d get it and give him some decent advice.
“Mum, I should’ve done more,” he insisted.
“More of what?” He wouldn’t be calling if he knew.
“Something.”
For a moment, she didn’t say anything, and he briefly feared that he’d just said something so stupid she had to hang up on him. He was comforted by the sound of her shuffling on the other side as if she was getting herself comfortable. He glanced to the couch, wondering if he should do the same, but sitting down would just make him focus on his stomach churning with little to fill it.
“Do you want to know what I think?”
“Sure.”
“I think that she was traumatised from what happened, as she has every right to be, and realised the job wouldn’t let her heal. I worry the same for you. When you tell me about the people you interview, I hate to imagine you out there in the same room as any of them, but you’re a grown man, and I have to trust that when the tide starts to come in, you’ll go back up the beach. I think she saw the tide before you did.”
“Then why didn’t she tell me when she saw it start to come in? Why leave without saying anything? Not even a text or a letter,” he added the last part more bitterly than he’d intended. He couldn’t look too far down on his father for choosing to write his final goodbyes rather than speak them when he’d used the same scapegoat to avoid his mother for years.
“Silence can be anything. Who says it’s an indictment of you? Who says it’s not just the best option for her? You can’t know, and whilst I know how fascinating the unknown is, some mysteries will remain that way no matter how hard we try to solve them.”
“But it could be because of me?”
“Could be. A black hole could swallow us next week,” she remarked glibly. He swallowed his anger before he said something he’d regret.
“Please take this seriously.”
“Sweetheart, I think you’re taking it too seriously.”
“But what if this happens again and I could’ve learned something from this and I didn’t?”
“What did I say about the ifs and buts?”
“I’ve been asking myself since she left where my responsibility ends. I keep looking for the answers, but everything I find swings between being callous and borderline controlling. Then I go to work, and I see her desk without her, and I feel sick- I can’t eat looking at it, but I keep staring anyway and then I come home and ruminate on it,” he ranted. He wondered briefly if she could hear his shoes against the wooden floor. His downstairs neighbour definitely would. He cringed and quickly went to the door to take them off, toeing them to neatly sit at the side of his welcome mat.
“You’ve worried yourself sick, and that’s the only thing you’re guilty of. You want to know why I think that? Because I know you would’ve seen something wrong with your friend and tried to fix it. It’s what you do, Spencer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something you could fix this time. Maybe you could’ve done more. I wasn’t there to say definitively that you did everything perfectly, but I know you would’ve tried. That’s a lot more than most people would do.”
“Then, how do I stop this from happening again?”
“People leave,” she repeated, but it was no easier hearing it the second time. “You can’t stop it, the same way you can’t stop time. There’s no good in making yourself sick over it.” He nodded to himself. Hearing it in person would’ve been a lot better, but he’d have to make do with being thousands of miles away in a different state. “I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but the truth hurts, I’m afraid.”
“Do you think I’m a good person?”
“I’m your mother. I’m inherently biased,” she said. He held his breath. “Let me ask you this: what have your friends at work said? Have they called you out for being this monster you claim to be?”
“I don’t claim to be a monster…but no. They seem just as blind sided by her leaving as I am. I asked Derek, but he doesn’t think we could’ve done more for her. I don’t know if he’s trying to placate me though.”
“I like Derek. You should listen to him. Good head on his shoulders.” She yawned, and he realised he was keeping her up with his worrying.
“Sorry, I-”
“Don’t,” she told him sternly. “Now, what’ve you been eating?”
“Mum, it’s late-”
“No, no, my advice comes with a fee, and that’s making sure my son is well fed. You were terribly thin when I saw you last. I thought I was going to break you with a light shove. So fess up. I already know it’s not going to be much. You’re terrible for it when you’re anxious. Worse when you’re sick.”
“I had oatmeal this morning.”
“Spencer, go make yourself some damn food before you faint.”
“It’s four in the morning!”
“Oh, are you busy sleeping? I’m sorry, your snores sound like a conversation.”
“Muum.”
“I’m not hanging up until you get a decent meal, and I know you’re not brave enough to hang up on me.” He huffed to himself as he grabbed a bowl from the cabinet. “Other than making yourself sick, what’ve you been up to?” Spencer knew she was only changing the subject to keep him calm. He wasn't going to fight it anyway. To no one's surprise, constantly criticising yourself got old very fast, not that it stopped him from doing so.
“I’ve been reading a terrible romance novel Garcia is making me read for “cultural enrichment”, so I’ve followed it with Chaucer for the sake of my mental wellbeing. I don’t know how many synonyms I can read for the same pair of eyes before I start to wonder if I’ve ever looked at a pair of eyes before," he explained as he rooted through his cupboards for something easy to make. He made sure to stock up on safe foods when times got tough, although he hadn't been able to bring himself to make any of them as of yet.
“Good books make you think, I suppose.”
“I doubt good books make you want to throw them at a wall.”
“Oh, the really good ones do.” He smiled. When was the last time they talked like this? He would’ve missed out on this if he didn’t stop hiding behind the letters. Maybe that’s his silver lining to look for, although it seemed rather selfish.
“Thank you for answering,” he said suddenly.
“I’m your mum. Of course I’d answer.” When you’re my mum, he thought. Don’t ruin it for yourself. “You’ve got to tell me about this romance novel. I’ve only known you to tolerate romance for the sake of good literature.”
“Again, Garcia is forcing me to read it.”
“Oh yes, she looked rather intimidating with her plastic beads and pictures of kittens.”