Letters After December
Title: Letters After December
Rating: Pg
Characters: Diana Reid, Spencer Reid
Summary: Whenever Spencer misses a day's letter Diana knows there is somthing wrong.
Diana Reid was used to a lot of confusion in her life. There was uncertainty and a good deal of fear. The surest thing was Spencer’s letters and even those didn’t come without a little terror.
When she was lucid in the hour before they delivered the mail it was always hardest to bare. Sitting in her window, writing in her journal, hoping without speaking that she would get a letter. She wasn’t afraid her son would stop writing, that wasn’t her worry.
She feared he wouldn’t be able to.
She could count on one hand the times he’d missed days for his letters, each one of them coming with some horrible event. When Spencer had been taken hostage in Georgia he’d missed four entire letters and the months that followed had been so difficult she wished she could go to him. Mother’s instinct was hard to resist and she knew he needed her. Then there was when Gideon left and Spencer had missed a day, his next letter full of apologies at first but breaking down to tell what had happened. Then when he had been hostage to that cult and then when he was so sick.
When he misses another day one December she tries not to worry.
When he’s missed more days in a row than he has in the years since moving to D.C. the doctors are looking at her with pity. She goes into an episode and when she comes out the letters have started again.
There’s something wrong, some little thing. The words are slanted a little too much, the references and stories ring a little out of key for her son and something seems forced. She tells herself she’s paranoid. It is part of her diagnosis.
And thinking about it to much makes her feel sick inside.
The issues even out and she forgets she ever had questions about them. New team members come and go. New adventures happen. Every so often there is something odd but… she just can’t tell. She doesn’t want to know.
When Diana Ried passes away in 2016 the doctors call the BAU.
It’s Garcia who fields the call and directs it to the others.
Morgan, Rossi, and J.J. make the arrangements and the newer members of the team try to stay out of sight as ghosts shift in the bullpen.
Four days later the team assembles, Prentice, Elle, and Hotch coming back for the funeral still hoping to find a little closure where they hadn’t been able to six years ago. There are others there, seeking the same.
They lower Diana Ried into the ground feeling not closure but a loss of connection as the first dirt hits the coffin lid, thrown in by a pair of solemn twelve year old girls no one says a word. They stay until the dirt is packed down tightly and they’ve kept their promises and they know closure won’t come for this anytime soon.
They lay flowers on her grave before turning and walking three clipped steps to lay them on the grave of her son, laid to rest after using his own body to shield two little girls from an explosion set by an unsub, whispering the key to solving the case to them even as he bled out.
Spencer Reid
1981-2010
Loving son, friend, magician, Hero
"Good men die young, but death cannot kill their names"
--Spencer Reid's headstone
Rating: Pg
Characters: Diana Reid, Spencer Reid
Summary: Whenever Spencer misses a day's letter Diana knows there is somthing wrong.
Diana Reid was used to a lot of confusion in her life. There was uncertainty and a good deal of fear. The surest thing was Spencer’s letters and even those didn’t come without a little terror.
When she was lucid in the hour before they delivered the mail it was always hardest to bare. Sitting in her window, writing in her journal, hoping without speaking that she would get a letter. She wasn’t afraid her son would stop writing, that wasn’t her worry.
She feared he wouldn’t be able to.
She could count on one hand the times he’d missed days for his letters, each one of them coming with some horrible event. When Spencer had been taken hostage in Georgia he’d missed four entire letters and the months that followed had been so difficult she wished she could go to him. Mother’s instinct was hard to resist and she knew he needed her. Then there was when Gideon left and Spencer had missed a day, his next letter full of apologies at first but breaking down to tell what had happened. Then when he had been hostage to that cult and then when he was so sick.
When he misses another day one December she tries not to worry.
When he’s missed more days in a row than he has in the years since moving to D.C. the doctors are looking at her with pity. She goes into an episode and when she comes out the letters have started again.
There’s something wrong, some little thing. The words are slanted a little too much, the references and stories ring a little out of key for her son and something seems forced. She tells herself she’s paranoid. It is part of her diagnosis.
And thinking about it to much makes her feel sick inside.
The issues even out and she forgets she ever had questions about them. New team members come and go. New adventures happen. Every so often there is something odd but… she just can’t tell. She doesn’t want to know.
When Diana Ried passes away in 2016 the doctors call the BAU.
It’s Garcia who fields the call and directs it to the others.
Morgan, Rossi, and J.J. make the arrangements and the newer members of the team try to stay out of sight as ghosts shift in the bullpen.
Four days later the team assembles, Prentice, Elle, and Hotch coming back for the funeral still hoping to find a little closure where they hadn’t been able to six years ago. There are others there, seeking the same.
They lower Diana Ried into the ground feeling not closure but a loss of connection as the first dirt hits the coffin lid, thrown in by a pair of solemn twelve year old girls no one says a word. They stay until the dirt is packed down tightly and they’ve kept their promises and they know closure won’t come for this anytime soon.
They lay flowers on her grave before turning and walking three clipped steps to lay them on the grave of her son, laid to rest after using his own body to shield two little girls from an explosion set by an unsub, whispering the key to solving the case to them even as he bled out.
Spencer Reid
1981-2010
Loving son, friend, magician, Hero
"Good men die young, but death cannot kill their names"
--Spencer Reid's headstone