#cm oc

"Where's Valentina?"

It was the first question out of his mouth that made everyone pause. A type of pause that held weight to it, and that weight settled in his chest in an uncomfortable way as he looked around. They were supposed to be relieved he was back from prison, but if anything, they just looked worse. And it wasn't really a problem at first. Valentina had always been early to work and the last to leave, he half expected someone to laugh and dismiss his question to confirm she was in the building.

But the room went quiet.

JJ was staring at the floor. She couldn't look him in the eyes even if she tried. Penelope shrunk in on herself, fidgeting with her hands and looked as though she was close to tears. Emily's eyes weren't looking at him. They were unfocused and far away. Rossi swallowed hard and looked away. The tension was laid on thick. He was staring expectantly, then half turned expecting her to walk right through the door and hug him as hard as she'd hugged him for the first time. He'd been kidnapped back then as she crushed him in a hug out of desperation.

When he turned, the doors didn't open. No one he was waiting for walked through the door and now something twisted in his stomach.

"Where is she?" He repeated with an even tone, not yet quick to anger, but it was prickling in the back of his mind like violent cactus thorns.

JJ was fidgeting with a file she was holding, her eyes flicking between him and whatever was on the paper. The silence stretched as though they were trying to shut him out. Spencer scoffed and adjusted his posture, shifting weight from one foot to the other.

"Penelope?" He didn't meant to put her on the spot, but she was the only one who would break even if no pressured was applied. She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut.

"I can't! I can't do it!" Turning hard on her heel, she made a bee-line for her office and slammed the door behind her. The sound making Spencer take a step back. She never slammed doors.

"What is going on?" Spencer asked as calmly as he could although his pulse was quickening and his heartbeat was getting louder in his ears.

But then the room shifted again and the eyes weren't on him anymore. They'd moved over his shoulders and brushed past him entirely. That was when he turned again. When he saw her. Her eyes were sunken in and she'd lost a significant amount of weight, her cheeks were hollow and her skin was almost grey in some places. All of that warmth she'd carried over the years had been extinguished. When she saw him, her face didn't light up. She didn't run to him like she had when he'd gotten kidnapped. It was like she didn't even acknowledge he was there.

"Hi," his voice was so soft and gentle he was afraid she couldn't hear him. In a way, it was like she was looking through him. And that felt even worse.

She didn't respond, but her eyes roamed over him in an almost lazy sort of controlled way.

Something in him wanted to harden. He wanted to turn to stone and shield her from whatever it is that turned her into this ghost of the person she once was. But the damage had already been done, and here she was standing in front of him alive... yet lost. All the times he wondered why she didn't visit him in prison seemed to fizzle away once he took in just how frail and beaten down she looked. Like the room would swallow her whole and she would let it.

He approached her like how he would approach a wounded animal, slow and cautious. Giving her enough time to back away or retreat but she barely even flinched. The smell of his deodorant clung to the inside of her nose, and once upon a time, it would have wrapped around her like a warm hug but now it just felt like he was everywhere all at once. It felt like he was surrounding her like barbed wire and she clenched her fists so hard her nails dug into the palms of her hands leaving behind half-crescent shapes. She didn't step away. She didn't hide.

That made him want to crumble to the floor.

So, instead, he stepped back. He made that distance instead of forcing her to make it herself, and for a split second there was something familiar in her eyes.

Everyone told him she was okay. JJ reassured him that Valentina was at work everyday, and that she was fine. This was the absolute opposite of fine. No. This wasn't fine. This- She was a human being that had been broken down and rebuilt crooked.

It didn't take too long for the team to disperse. Either they realized they needed a moment alone together, or they didn't want to face the consequences of it all catching up to Spencer then and there. But when he looked over his shoulder his coworkers were gone. Like they dissipated into thin air. And when he looked back at Valentina, she was... distant again. Her mind was somewhere else entirely. So, he followed her line of sight. He watched the room the way she did, studied patterns and paths and mapped exits just like she was. Because she didn't feel safe in the one place that had felt the safest not so long ago.

Unfortunately, work had to fall into rhythm. One that left no time or space for people who were struggling mentally. The show must go on, and all that fun stuff.

He'd watched her brother break her. Cradled broken glass with careful hands and helped her restructure herself into a piece of art that reflected the light of those that saw who she was, that remained after every screaming match or carefully cleaned up the physical wounds that she allowed them to patch together. That she allowed him to patch together. Her essence had become a quilt sewn with reverence holding every multicolored piece. But here in the flesh, she was accentuated by a dull grey. The light within her had died.

He almost wanted to reach out, but couldn't move his hands from where they rested at his sides. The way his fingers flexed as though he wanted to wrap himself around her and never let go.

She was supposed to be fine.

During the case briefing, she was quiet. Sitting in the one chair that was angled in a way that showed her the entire room and kept the door in her sights. Not only that, but there was space between her and the team. The team who's chairs were closer together, but she was the outlier on the graph. The one that doesn't connect to the average, that skews the data. Spencer was still quite close to the team, at least, physically anyway. He hovered in the space between.

It felt like it had been decades. Before, maybe Spencer would have rambled about a statistic regarding the unsub and she would chime in with a snarky, but laughable comment. Now, both of them were silent. It was unsettling. For Spencer to not talk at length, or at all, and for Valentina to stare blankly like a psych patient on medicine. And its like his head is underwater, the way he's watching her, the world around him muffled and quiet.

Spencer wasn't the type of person to just ask immediately, no. He wasn't going to bombard her with questions out in the open. That's not what he was going to do. Not to her. So he waited patiently all day. Waited until they were home. Waited until she was back in the apartment he kept untouched for a month, hoping that maybe someday she would come back. And she had.

Just... not the same.

And Valentina? Even though their apartment is a space where she can feel safe. She's still so hesitant when she sits down on the couch, facing the door. Her back to the windows with closed curtains. To the bookshelf littered with all kinds of literature, some books she picked up and some he bought for her. All different titles and colorful spines making a mosaic that was uniquely them. She looked small, nestled against the far end of the couch, her body tucked into the upholstery like she's supposed to be a secret.

"I can make some tea," Spencer's voice is soft and gentle. It has always been soft and gentle.

She can only nod once as a response.

Mostly to busy his mind and his concentration, he disappears into the kitchen for a moment. Setting out two mugs. Like clockwork, he put two spoons of sugar at the bottom of her mug the same way he watched her add flavor before adding the tea. He drizzled honey from the squeeze bottle like he was an artisanal barista. Exactly the way he'd watched her about a million times before. It seemed so mundane, and to anyone else it would mean nothing, but to Spencer? This was how he showed he cared. This was it. The small moments of his devotion mattered more than any grand gesture.

When he came back into her line of sight, maybe ten of fifteen minutes later, she blinked up at him. Slow like a cat would. A nonverbal cue. Her hands curled around the warm mug when he handed it to her, and all at once yet again, he's hit with the realization of just how frail she looks. Like she was just barely fed enough to function like a regular person. He swallows hard, trying and failing to not think so much.

"JJ told me you were okay."

"I was, for a bit." Valentina answers automatically. Like it meant nothing, even though it meant everything.

"It was just questions, and then..." She trailed off. Her eyes had been distant the entire day, he never commented about it. The way she looked like a living ghost. "I'm here." She breathes out like its unreal. Like its a dream she's afraid she'll wake from.

The exhaustion is etching shadows on her face he had never seen before.

"I didn't-"

"I know."

He looks at her again, almost stunned. It seems so casual coming out of her mouth, and she doesn't seem all that bothered. Slightly leaning her head toward the back of the couch, just barely resting her temple against the grey fabric.

"Knowing I was okay, made you feel better."

And just like that, Spencer Reid wanted to shatter into a million pieces. He was prepared for crying, for screaming, for her to melt into him like a pile of goo and sob until her head hurt. Not detachment. Not the way she stunned him into silence. He knew how trauma manifested, how PTSD could persist in the human brain. He'd studied every text and perused every psychology book. He knew so much about the human brain, but his own was working double time to calculate what sort of reaction this was.

They stayed there in silence, on opposite ends of the couch. Until their tea was unfinished or had gone cold, she eventually shifted and stuck her arm out toward him.

"Come here," and he obeyed like a dog on a leash.

He shifted closer to her on the couch almost instantaneously. Hesitant, but careful. Watching her reaction, waiting for her to make the move first. She wrapped herself around him like clingwrap, nuzzling into his warmth like she was trying to siphon it out of him.

"I'm just glad I'm back."

And slowly, his arms wrapped around her. Warm. Grounding. He smelled like old books and lavender, the kind of olfactory sense that stuck to her even in that clinical, anti-bacterial smelling place. The way he smelled stuck to her brain like glue.