A.N. Just a little diversion, probably a two-shot. Takes place during the episodes The Instincts/Memoriam. I've taken a few small liberties with order and dialogue.

In Memory of a Mind

Is this how it starts? This is probably how it starts. You think you're just experiencing some sort of normal phenomenon but, really, there's nothing normal about it at all.

He remembered awakening to the semi-amused faces of his colleagues. Semi-amused. But also semi-concerned. At least, that's how Hotch had looked. And JJ. Even Morgan seemed to think there was something more to it.

Yeah, he's right. There is something more to it. I'm losing my mind.

At least it hadn't happened while he was awake. At least he hadn't hallucinated in the middle of a case presentation. At least that.

But the dream had been so real. It was true that he'd been having the dreams for years, but never so vividly. Never so convincingly.

I wish I'd thought of it when I was younger, when I could have asked Mom more about it. Found out what it was like for her. Found out if it had started as something that had seemed benign, and then become malignant.

The dream had been bad enough when it had simply been about his being at a crime scene. That hadn't separated it out from any of the innumerable nightmares he'd had since starting the job. His most recurrent dream had been about his failure to save a child. Countless times, it had jolted him awake, heart pounding, breath coming in short gasps. But at least it had allowed him to awaken to a different reality.

Now, what? Now, I awaken to the reality of having to confess my nightmare, because I've drifted off just when we needed to review a case.

Unless he hadn't drifted off. Unless it had actually been a hallucination. But his colleagues seemed to be teasing him about having fallen asleep. So maybe it had been a dream, after all. Even so, it had taken on a new characteristic.

Now it has more than one child in it. Now it has a child I know. Will know. Unless it's better if I don't know him.

He couldn't very well impose himself upon his best friend's first child if he was in the process of losing his mind. He'd been that child, once upon a time. The child Spencer had found a way to love his mother deeply. But he'd had to do so in spite of her mood swings, and irrationality. He'd had to do so despite the fact that he'd so often been frightened, both by her and for her.

I can't do that to a child. I know Mom wouldn't have wished it upon me, if she'd been aware. If she'd had a choice.

But Diana hadn't had a choice, and neither had her son.

Then. I didn't have a choice then, but I have a choice now.

The only question was when. Should he remove himself from a case in progress? But that would leave the team shorthanded, not to mention what it would do to its reputation.

Except if it gets worse. If I definitely hallucinate during the day, I have to step away. Hotch will understand.

Hotch would understand.

Of all the reasons Spencer Reid had come to treasure working under the tutelage of Aaron Hotchner, that had become primary. The fact that he knew Hotch would listen, and understand, and not judge, nor argue, nor falsely assure. If the spectre of schizophrenia had haunted Reid's psyche, the knowledge that he would be believed, and validated in his judgement, had brought him as much peace as could be had in such a situation.

He wished he could have stopped himself, come more quickly to awareness, so he could have made up some more palatable dream to share with them. But, no, that wasn't how life went for Spencer Reid. So he tried to make the best of it by moving them quickly back into the case discussion, hoping their dedication to the work might displace anything he'd said from their consciousness.

Who am I kidding? They're profilers. They notice everything. And they remember it.

There was nothing to be done about it. They'd seen him, and heard him, and he was one hundred percent certain that they'd each read his discomfort when he'd awakened.

Even JJ, and she's not a profiler.

But she was his best friend, the unlikeliest best friend he could ever have.

Maybe the second unlikeliest. Morgan is, by far, the unlikeliest.

Having friends had been such a unique experience for him. He'd made a few when he was a child, but they'd fallen away, partly from having witnessed his mother on some of her bad days, but also because of the widening gap between them, as he'd accelerated through his education. After that, and having borne the brunt of so many adolescent jokes, he'd been virtually socialized away from forming anything but acquaintanceships.

When Gideon had first brought him to the BAU, it had been only natural for him keep the others at arms' length, and it had not been difficult to do so. He'd been so different from the typical FBI agent, that none of the rest had been able to see him as much more than one of Gideon's indecipherable whims, and they'd largely left him to the BAU founder. That had been just fine with Reid, who had developed an instinctive fear of brawny tough guys and beautiful women.

But none of them had been who they'd first appeared to be, and walls had crumbled, and friendships had formed, and the experience of life had transformed for Spencer Reid. Now, at the prospect of it transforming once again, Reid mourned those friendships, even before he'd lost them. It left him with unutterable sadness.

The recurring nightmare and its inevitable fallout weighed so heavily on him that he had to rely on his own strong work ethic to focus on the case at hand while his psyche was worried about losing its control over his thoughts.

And my life. I'll lose control of my life, just like Mom did. When I took control of it for her.

Rationally, he knew he hadn't had a choice, at the time. But emotionally….emotionally…..

I didn't think I would ever get over it. But now, I realize….maybe it was a relief, for her to think that I would make sure she wasn't alone with her nightmares. Maybe she was grateful, or maybe she would have been, if she'd been able to think clearly. Of course…

Of course, if she'd been able to think clearly, he wouldn't have had her committed. Wouldn't have had to have her committed.

But she couldn't think clearly, then. She could only feel, and what she felt, was abandoned. Punished. Imprisoned….

The litany was familiar to him, having been so often recited inside his mind. It usually went on for hours, courtesy of his mammoth vocabulary and the infinite number of similes it could conjure for what he'd done to her.

What her illness did to her. It was her illness. It wasn't me.

It had been him, but only in response to what her schizophrenia had done to her. He'd done what he'd done to keep her safe. And he could only hope there would be someone to do it for him.

But there's no one. Who would do it for me? Hotch? My boss? JJ? Emily? Morgan?

Part of him realized the wretched irony of having to hope you had a friend who cared enough to institutionalize you after you'd lost your mind. But it was a real concern, and the nightmares had made it also an immediate one.

It's too much to expect of someone else, though. I couldn't lay that burden on any of them. Maybe I should just do it myself.

Wondering exactly how one accomplished getting oneself committed when one was still sane enough to try.

All day long, he'd carried on an internal dialogue about the state of his mind, and an external dialogue about the case. He'd gone internal again, and had been slow to process Hotch's directive that he and Morgan should spend the night at the home of the victim's parents. By the time he realized the danger, it had been too late to suggest another plan.

I'll just stay awake, that's what I'll do. It's only my dreams, right now. My defenses are down when I sleep. It was just a fluke that I fell asleep on the plane. It's not really invading my waking thoughts.

Yet.

But it would, one day, and he couldn't be sure how far off that day might be. His mother had already been diagnosed before he'd even been conceived, so he had nothing really to measure by.

The length of the day, and the stress of the travel, and that of his internal battle, all took their toll, and he fell asleep in spite of his best intention. If only he'd realized it, before he'd succumbed. If only he'd been able to stave it off. But he hadn't. He'd simply submerged back into the dream, and not recognized it as such. To Reid, it felt as though he had no more control of his waking thoughts than he had of his dreams.

This one was worse. In it, he was no longer just the investigator, he'd become the victim. Leeches had attached themselves to his body, and were sucking him, sucking him, sucking the life from him…..

He realized that the dream had invaded his reality when he heard his own voice screaming for Morgan, not just in the nightmare, but in the middle of the victim's living room. He struggled to calm himself, shamed at having startled the grieving parents, mortified at having shown one of his colleagues just how out of control his mind was becoming.

Later, when Morgan offered a sympathetic ear, Reid pushed him away with an admonition that they should be working the case. But the young FBI profiler felt the laser gaze of his older friend. Morgan had seen, and was worried about him.

If you only knew...

But they all did. They all knew about his mother and, by extension, and training, they all knew his risk, as well.

But they don't know that it's not just a risk anymore.

He should have begged off, should have told Hotch he was ill, pled a headache or something. It might not have been the whole truth, but he definitely had something wrong with his head. Maybe he would have, but the urgency of finding the young kidnap victim was moving the case along too quickly, and he didn't want to interrupt the momentum.

I don't want to draw attention to myself when these people are suffering like they are. It wouldn't be right. Not that having a nightmare in their living room didn't manage to draw attention. But it would be selfish to step away now, wouldn't it? It's not that I'm too embarrassed to speak up, right? Not that I'm too terrified to admit that I'm losing my mind?

The internal debate led to inertia, and he was carried forward on the wave of the case, finding himself standing at the graveside of a boy he'd never met, nor even heard of, the last deceased victim of their presumed unsub. As was expected of him, he studied the crowd, his eyes reflexively avoiding taking in the grief of the young victim's parents. He searched among the mourners, moving his eyes from face to face to face to face, and finally making an arc that reached up beyond the trees, and then came down….

To a new reality. An old reality. Something other than the one he'd just been in. He saw himself, standing beside his mother, attending the funeral. A funeral.

Not this one. We're not at this one.

This vision was both frightening and disturbing. He watched as a young boy rose from his coffin, asking why Reid wasn't helping him. And then his mother…his mother… was there, commanding him to pay attention.

He startled himself out of it, eyes rapidly shifting right to left and back again, to see if anyone had noticed. But no one was looking at him, and nothing seemed to have changed. At least this hallucination had stayed within the confines of his mind.

What does it mean, that my mother was there? Is it confirmation that I'm following in her footsteps?

As the day progressed, he was aware enough to realize that he was still managing to contribute to the case, working the profile, correcting it as they went along. Part of him wondered if that meant he wasn't really ill yet, if the fact of being aware of it meant it wasn't real.

I wish I could ask her. I wish I could know what it had been like for her.

Ironically, he did end up seeing her, having consulted with her doctor for the case. But, instead of asking her a question, he was given one, by her, after he'd told her he was only at Bennington to pursue something about a case.

"What else is goin' on in there?"

The way she said it, the way she looked at him, it was as if she could see right into his mind.

"Don't lie to your mother, Spencer. We know. We feel things."

Her words held him in place, made him unable to move, to breathe. Had he just been given a confirmation? Had her illness given her some sort of preternatural ability to see it in someone else?

His failure to respond allowed Dr. Norman to interrupt the conversation, with information related to the case. But it was something his mother said that sent Reid back into FBI mode.

"I spent every day in terror, but it was worth it."

Diana had foregone her meds, and spent every day of her pregnancy in terror, to bring him to a healthy beginning.

If she could do that, I can hold it together long enough to give these parents back their son. I can live with the nightmare, but they shouldn't have to live with the reality of such a devastating loss.

And so, he'd carried on, and analyzed, and profiled, and made his best educated guesses as to the identity and location of their unsub, and he'd prevailed. The team had solved the case, but Spencer Reid had prevailed over whatever was trying to steal his mind from him, if only for the moment.

He'd run into the building, following both procedure and instinct, and he'd found the child, unharmed. The feeling of weightlessness that might have accompanied the saving of a life was superceded by the groundedness of holding the little boy in his arms, feeling the warmth of his body, the frantic tightness of his grip. As the child clung to his neck, Reid felt the implicit trust in the boy's arms, the sense of willing dependence, the gratitude. With each step, Reid's sense of elation at the save was replaced with a sense of regret, knowing that his illness would preclude him ever holding his own child like this.

I guess I should be grateful in the moment, then, right? I guess that's the upside to knowing you're losing your mind. You can treasure each moment for what it is. Even if you might never remember it.

So he would treasure each step, and love this child for the duration of their journey. And he would also mourn that there would never be another little boy to hold in his heart, not for a minute, nor for a lifetime.

He'd radioed ahead to the others, and the parents were already on their way. He handed the child over to JJ, and tried not to make eye contact with her as he did.

She'll know.

Instead, he walked off a bit, and stood alone, staring into uncertainty. Some time later, he was joined by Derek Morgan. As if in testimony to the depth of the friendship they were about to lose, Morgan had news for him. He'd been researching Reid's nightmare.

"He was real. He died here back when you were about…I don't know…maybe four years old? He was murdered."

Reid's head whipped around. "He was real? It was a memory?"

"Maybe not a real one. But you probably saw it on the news, or heard your mom and dad talking about it. You're not crazy, Kid." Pausing. "Well, maybe you are, but not about this."

He'd meant it as a joke, but would have realized differently if he'd been looking directly into the welling eyes of his younger friend.

Reid cast his eyes downward, and his gaze inward, whispering a mantra.

"It was real. He was real. It was real. He was real."

Maybe I'm still here, all of me. Maybe it's not happening! Yet. Maybe it's not happening yet. Maybe I have time. Maybe….

Maybe he did have time. Maybe he could use it to reset his priorities. Maybe he could use it to treasure more of the people and things in his life. Maybe he could break an old habit, and actively choose to spend some of that time with the woman who'd willingly lived in terror so that he could be born. Now that he had a personal sense of that terror, maybe he could forgive her some things. Maybe he could learn to forgive himself. If only he had enough time.

He'd been granted a reprieve, of sorts. Maybe not a full pardon, but a reprieve. The events of the past day, the musings, the fears, the sense of loss, the mourning, the resignation were replaced, if only for the moment, by a sense of relief, and celebration.

I don't know what lies ahead, not ten years from now, or twenty, or even tomorrow. But I know what I need to treasure today.

So, when Hotch approached the place where Reid and Morgan were standing, the young man had a question for his unit chief.

"Hotch, do you think it would be possible to wait until tomorrow to return home?"