All These Scars... (A Criminal Minds fan-fiction)

Chapter Sixteen

Spencer's POV:

"You actually showed up this time," he laughed and came further into the light to where I could make out his deteriorated features. He wasn't that old, but I could tell his wrinkles and droopy eyes were caused by too many days of chugging tequila and smoking cigarettes. He let himself go completely.
"Why are you here?"
"I just wanted to talk to you Spencer."
"I tried to talk to you before, but you were only concerned about defending yourself."
"Spencer, I still want to be apart of your life and with your mother dying, you'll have no one left. But I'm here now, Spencer."
Where was this coming from all the sudden? He never cared and suddenly he gets me out to an abandoned barn and is ready to talk, and he even has the nerve to talk about my mother and how she was dying.
"Why are you really trying to come back into my life, huh? You think that if you buddy up with me you'll get some money from Mom's health insurance. I know your plan, but it's not happening. You don't deserve anything from us," I snapped.
There was a moment of silence. Until he stepped close, until he was about ten feet away from me.
"Do you actually have any information on the case, or are you just trying to toy with me and my team?"
"I needed you to come out here. I needed to talk to you because I need you to forgive me, Spencer," he pleaded.
I took a step back. His desperateness started to scare me.
"Why do you suddenly need my forgiveness? Mom is getting worse and now you want to come into my life. Why?"
"That's why I brought you here to talk about it and-"
"Then talk about it. Tell me. Or I'll turn right around, hop in my SUV and leave, because I came here for information on the case. Not a therapy session with my father."
I started to turn around, but he stopped me.
"Spencer...I'm dying. I just needed to tell you that I'm sorry...and...that I love you."
I took the information in for a moment. My mother was dying. Now my father was dying. I was losing everything, but my father wasn't in my life before so just because he was dying didn't change anything.
Is that selfish?
"You're dying?" I scoffed in disbelief, knowing that would cause him to elaborate.
"Six months ago I was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer and I couldn't afford chemotherapy and barely radiation so I have at most three months to live. In fact, I feel like you're the only reason I have to stay alive now, Spencer.
"My daughters are both mad at me because they didn't know about you and realized how terrible I am when I told them I left you and your mother for another family. I regret it, I do. My wife left me when she found out I was dying. I'm losing everyone. Don't leave me too."
He was starting to get on my nerves.
"You're the one that left me and Mom. You're the one who was supposed to ask if I needed help with my homework even though I never did. You were supposed to be the one to ask how my day was or if I learned anything new. But you were never there... You don't deserve for me to be there for you."
We stood there, facing each other like it was a drawl. Like as soon as the clock struck whatever time it was we'd pull out our guns and shoot to the death. But we didn't and the clock never sounded.
I heard the crunch and break of a stick or a piece of wood as soon as he did and heard her breathing. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, they were filled with anger.
"Spencer," he began, "I thought I told you to come alone..."
By then, JJ knew she blew her cover and approached the doorway, stood just outside of it to where she was still out of sight from my father.
The next few minutes went in a blur. He started shouting blurbs at me about how he can't trust anyone and I was a failure, but he stood in the same place.
"Hey, shut up!" I shouted and after a few seconds he did just that. "You really expect me to come alone when I had no idea it would be just you? I'm not going to risk my life like that. This was supposed to be about the case. Not about you."
He looked at the ground and then up at me, but his expressions changed to...evil or revenge...like he was crazy.
I hope that doesn't run in the family.
I've feared all my life that I'd become a psychopath or be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Sometimes I still get the headaches, but I try to drive the fear and pain away with narcotics.
If my dad was crazy, which I always considered him nuts for leaving us like that, then I knew I was screwed.
Why did there always have to be something? Everyone on the team had some back story. Blake's son had a neurological issue that was left unsolved. Hotch lost his wife and JJ lost her sister to suicide. Everyone on the team has lost something or someone. For Derek it was his dignity. For Penelope it was her parents and so on.
My crisis just happened to be an extremely high IQ and apparently two crazed parents. Joy.
"Who said you weren't risking your life when you came here, even though it's 'just me'?"
He was startling me by that time.
I stepped back to where I was in the doorway, able to see JJ clenching her gun tightly in her hands, and for some reason that comforted me.
But little did I know what would happen next.
I turned back to my father, and told him that I was heading back to the BAU for it was getting late.
"Wait... I want to show you something. I want you to know...something."
He started to unzip his worn out jacket.
"What are you talking about?" I asked, stepping further back.
He dropped the jacket on the straw covered ground.
"You need to know that it's all your fault."
He started unbuttoning his shirt.
"Spit it out, already! What are you talking about?"
"You caused this!," he shouted and started jamming his pointer finger at me, "You're the reason your mother is dying of heart failure. You probably give her a heart attack every time you have a new case," he snapped.
"She can barely remember I have a job. It's not my fault," I retorted quickly, making sure not to place any more blame on him. He was unpredictable at that point.
"You're the reason my daughters hate me. You won't forgive me... I have no reason to live."
I stayed silent as he dropped his plaid shirt down beside the jacket revealing a white undershirt plastered to his old body.
But there was an extra accessory that made my stomach do a cartwheel.
"Since you won't forgive me, Spencer," he began slowly as I just stared in terror as this scene was unraveling. "You need to see that you killed me. You killed your mother... And you killed your team."
I didn't move. I couldn't. Things happened so fast. I watched him suck in a deep breath, his last... For a bomb was strapped to his chest.
And here's another crisis. The kind that shapes you as an individual. The same crisis and personal loss that everyone on the team has, except I feared I would lose them as well.
He lifted his clenched fist that held a small device with a red button flashing on the top.
He slowly exhaled.
He pressed the button.
I could tell, then, that he was sadistic. He wanted to watch me frantically try to get away, so he put a three second timer before things went boom.
What a bastard.
3...
"Run! There's a bomb!" I shrieked and darted through the barn entrance.
2...
I snatched JJ's hand and bolted as far as I could to the SUV. I didn't turn back to see if Derek and Blake were getting away, but I couldn't. I didn't look back to see my father watching our helplessness, enjoying it. I knew we weren't going to make it to the SUV...
So I threw JJ to the ground and draped my body over hers. She had more to live for than me. I squeezed my eyes shut and covered her head with both of my hands.
1...
The last thing I remember thinking about was my mother's aging face and Maeve and how I never once got to touch her. And I regretted it everyday.
Those were the last things I remembered before things went up in flames. But I didn't have but a second, even though it felt like an eternity.
One second.
Maeve.
My mother.
My team...
Boom