❝you're in danger here, spencer.❞
❝we'll worry about that later. right now all that matters is you and me.❞
hazel finley is afraid. afraid of being alone. afraid of losing the people she loves. afraid of making mistakes. afraid of falling back into...
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❝Twice I would die for a little more once with you.❞
ATTICUS
✩
1.3 : interdependence
SPENCER, BY ANY HUMAN STANDARD, IS A LOSER. Not in that he fails, but in the sheer number of things he has lost. He lost his father to freedom. He lost his virginity the night he sent his mother away. He lost his first love to PTSD. He lost his mentor to grief. He lost his innocence to his job.
He lost the love of his life once, left with nothing but a single-page letter.
And now Emily.
Spencer wonders if maybe it's him. If he is the cosmic obstacle destroying everyone and everything he cares about. If perhaps a star collapsed at his birth, and there is a black hole inside of him, sucking all the happiness out of life as he moves. It would explain why his father left and his mother is slowly spiraling into a black hole all her own. He dreads the day she doesn't recognize him anymore.
He wonders if maybe it's the job. If doing good for others means that you get none for yourself. If keeping hearts from breaking forces your own to shatter to balance the scale. Perhaps true justice means that in order to give, you must lose things of your own.
Or maybe it's the people he chooses to let in. Perhaps he has poor judgment in friends, in lovers.
Maybe he has poor timing. After all, he chose to fall in love with Elle just before she murdered William Lee. He chose to get drunk and go home with a woman he didn't know. He chose Gideon as his mentor, not Hotch. He chose to join the BAU, despite being offered professorship at Harvard and research positions at NIST, NNI, and the Department of Energy.
He chose to let Hazel go to Greece alone.
He chose to read her letter over and over, instead of booking a plane ticket.
We can't be together.
(Someday they will talk about that letter.)
(But it is not today. Spencer is not that cruel.)
But Spencer did not choose Emily. Emily was a force to be reckoned with. She barreled into his life, kicking the door to his heart down and instituting herself as his coworker, his teammate, and eventually his friend. One of his closest friends. Part of his family.
He could tell her anything. She wouldn't baby him or make him feel useless like other people would. She knew about his headaches, about how much he loved Hazel. She knew about Elle and Gideon. She knew about his parents. She was good at keeping secrets.
