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mhalachaiAt AO3| Dreamwidth
Summary: What do you do when the center of your universe walks away?
Rating: PG
Setting: beginning of season three, after Gideon leaves but before Rossi joins the team
Characters: Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss
Words: 1,135
Notes: Genderswap!Spencer/always a girl!Spencer. This part references Spencer's drug use. See notes in Part 1.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Spencer sat in the empty office, now stripped bare of Gideon's possessions, and stared at the shadows cast on the wall by the setting sun.
"So," came a voice from the doorway. "I take it this means you've finished your casework for the day?"
"I'm not taking on any of your files, Prentiss," Spencer said, not taking her gaze off the wall. "And I know exactly which ones you have, so no slipping anything into my inbox while I'm not looking."
"Don't be silly, I've been shoving my extra work off on to Morgan for months," Emily told Spencer, moving into her line of sight. "You want to tell me why you're in here?"
Spencer blinked, letting her gaze shift to Emily. "You're a profiler, you tell me."
Emily's eyebrows went up at Spencer's tone. "Okay," she said slowly. "Look, Spencer, I just want to make sure that you're doing okay."
"I'm perfectly fine," Spencer said, giving Emily a bright, empty smile. "This is me, being just fine."
"Yeah, because you sounds so great." Emily sat on the edge of the empty desk. "Can I ask you a question?"
Spencer dug her fingernails into her stocking just above her knee, feeling the sharp pressure close to pain to stop from screaming. "Let me guess what it is," she said, smile still too bright. "And the answer is, no, I have never had sexual relations with Jason Gideon."
This time, Emily winces. "Spencer, I didn't--"
"Didn't you know that's what everyone thinks?" Spencer asked, never taking her eyes off Emily’s face. "How I got into the FBI, how I made SSA right out of the Academy. Did you know that a couple of the guys in Counterterrorism still call me Jason Gideon's mistress?"
"Spencer, stop," Emily commanded. There was an edge in her voice Spencer rarely heard, and today all it did was piss Spencer off.
"Stop what?" she taunted, anger bubbling up in her chest, and Emily was the only one around. "Stop pretending that I don't hear all the crap that goes on in this place? Stop pretending that it doesn't matter what people in this place think about me? About Gideon?"
Emily took a deep breath, pulling back from confrontation. "Stop telling yourself that you're okay that Gideon's gone."
Spencer got to her feet, walked to the window. Her hands were shaking with fury and she wanted to hit something; the wall, the window, Emily. Maybe Emily would hit back and Spencer could finally bleed off some of the pain she'd been feeling ever since she walked into the cabin and saw Jason's letter. To her.
She hadn't been high in five weeks, had been clean for days before Jason vanished, and now he would never know.
Her hands gripped the window ledge, the metal cold and sharp, so unlike the wooden handle of the shovel that Tobias Hankel had given her to dig her own grave. Her throat hurt just remembering.
A hand settled on Spencer’s arm, and she jerked away from the unexpected contact, heart in her throat and she wasn't in Gideon's office, she was in a dark shed in Georgia and she was going to die.
But no, she was in the BAU headquarters, Emily by her side, and this time when Emily took Spencer's arm and led her back to the chair, Spencer didn't flinch away.
Emily knelt beside Spencer, rubbing circles on her back while Spencer tried to breathe her way around the panic attack. They'd been getting worse since she stopped taking dilaudid, but she wasn't going to let that pull her back, she was stronger than that, she had to be.
She had to be strong because Jason was gone and had left her behind.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," Spencer said after a few minutes. She dropped her head into her hands, trying to breathe steadily. "After Bale and the explosion, Jason was supposed to come back to work and stay here."
"Things don't always work out that way," Emily said quietly. "It happens to a lot of FBI agents."
"Great," Spencer muttered.
Emily pulled over the spare chair to sit in front of Spencer. "Do I get to ask my question now?"
"Go ahead," Spencer said, sitting back in the chair and pulling her knees up to her chest. It was an inappropriate way for a lady to sit in the workplace, but office etiquette could bite Spencer today. "What?"
"We're going out for Thai. Do you want come with us?"
Spencer blinked at Emily for a long minute. "Who's 'we'?" she asked in a small voice.
"Just me, Morgan and Garcia. JJ left with a headache and Hotch has a night with Jack."
Spencer put her hand over her eyes. She didn't want to go out for dinner; she wanted to track down the drug dealer who was suicidal enough to sell to an FBI agent, wanted to go home and put a needle in her vein to push the panic attacks away for another night.
Because Jason Gideon was gone and he left Spencer behind and what the hell was she supposed to do now?
"Come on," Emily said again. "You can order the pad thai and tell us about all the ways the cuisine has been Americanized."
Spencer looked up at Emily. The woman was always so put together, calm in a crisis. Spencer really didn't know how she did it.
"I guess," Spencer finally said. "But if there's ketchup and peanut butter in the pad thai, I'm leaving."
"Deal." Emily stood, and waited while Spencer put her feet on the floor and stood. "I know a place."
"You always know a place," Spencer retorted. She rubbed her eyes carefully, not wanting to scratch her corneas with her contact lenses. Maybe she should go back to glasses.
Jason had commented once that he thought she was pretty in glasses.
"Come on, I'll give you a lift."
Spencer obediently followed behind Emily, only to stop in the doorway. The sun was setting in the west, and the shadows were nearly gone.
"Spencer, are you going to be okay?" Emily asked, concern in her voice.
Leaning against the door frame, Spencer thought of a hand-written letter from Jason in the bottom drawer of her desk. "I think... I'm just tired of people leaving without saying goodbye."
Emily hummed under her breath. "Sometimes they can't help it, sweetie," she cautioned.
"And sometimes they can." Spencer thought of the letter from Gideon, which was more than she got from her own father when he walked out on her and her mother. "Sometimes they just don't care."
"And sometimes they care too much," Emily said, almost too quiet to hear.
Spencer took a deep breath, and turned her back on Jason Gideon's ghosts.
fin