Another challenge from Challenge King; this is going to be a four-shot. Enjoy!:)

Spencer Reid had one thing and one thing only on his mind when he stumbled his way up to his apartment after coming home from a hard case.

He had been trying not to take the dilaudid as much while he was traveling for work with the team – he knew that they always noticed when he did take it – and had even gone so far as to try going a touch cold turkey. He had left the two vials that he had in his apartment, so since he had been away on a case, he hadn't had a drop of the stuff in four days. It was starting to get to him.

However, now that he was home, he could plunge the needle into his arm and succumb to the mind-numbing relief that he so desperately craved.

He was shaking both with the craving and excitement at the thought of finally getting his drugs as he approached the door to his apartment, but he wasn't anywhere near so out of it that he didn't notice that someone had left the door to his residence open. He also knew full well that it hadn't been him when he had left four days ago; he always checked and double-checked that the door was both closed and locked before going to work each morning. His landlady had learned the hard way how paranoid he was about strangers in his place, so she didn't go in without his express permission either – permission that he knew very well he hadn't given her, or anyone else, for that matter.

Spencer stopped just short of his door, all of these thoughts flying through his mind in the instant before he reached down to his holster and unsheathed his gun, holding it warily at his side as he pushed open the door to his apartment with the other hand. From where he stood in the doorway, Spencer craned his neck to look around in his apartment as much as he could. He didn't see anything… but he heard water running in the kitchen. Someone had broken into his apartment!

He stepped lightly, silently towards the kitchen, now keeping his gun out in front of him, entirely ready to shoot at whatever perpetrator he found. He had been ready to find almost anything – except for the person that he saw.

Even seeing her just from the back – even after the months that he had gone without the slightest bit of contact from her – Spencer recognized her as being someone that he had already written off as being gone from his life forever, just like so many other people. But she was here – and he found that he was livid.

"What the h***!" Spencer yelled, shoving his gun back into his holster.

She yelped, whirling to face him and dropping the tiny glass bottles that she had been holding.

"What are you doing breaking into my apartment?" Spencer seethed, taking a step towards her.

She looked like she wanted to back away from his obvious fury – which was strange for her – but her back was already against the counter.

"You weren't home, so I had to get in somehow," Elle Greenaway answered, sounding much calmer than she looked.

"Where the h*** have you been?" Spencer shot off before his gaze registered the fragments of glass that littered the floor between them. His blood ran cold as he forgot his previous question, asking instead, "What did you do?"

"I poured them down the drain."

Again, Elle sounded unreasonably calm, and it just made Spencer feel the urge to break her neck more than what he already did.

"Why would you do that, you sick little freak?! You're a monster!" Spencer was down on his knees by now; gathering the shards into his hands and trying not to let his surprise, fury, and desperation come out through tears. "You're a cruel, uncaring, callous little…" he trailed off, unable to think of anything potent enough to call her. Instead he simply screamed again, "Why?!"

"Is the front door still open?" Elle asked, ignoring his questions for the time being.

"Yes," Spencer recalled, cringing at the idea of frail little Ms. Nussbaum who lived across the hall having heard his and Elle's exchange.

The former BAU agent slipped past him out of the kitchen. A moment later, he heard the door shut and then she reappeared in the kitchen doorway. Spencer could feel her watching him as he picked up the last pieces of glass and threw them away before grabbing a hand broom and getting back down on his knees.

"I really should make you do this, you know," Spencer muttered.

"You brought those vials back with you to begin with," Elle shot back, crossing her arms over her chest.

"How did you even know that I had them?" Elle paused, and Spencer sensed that she didn't want to answer. "How, Elle?" he pressed.

She sighed, looking down at her shoes before she answered, "After I left the BAU, I went back to Brooklyn and checked myself into a mental health facility. The fisher king and William Lee had messed with my head; and I knew that I needed help as well as anyone else on the team did. I got help there – the help that I needed – with everything from just getting my emotions settled back down to dealing with my drinking.

"They have television there, Spencer, and I saw the Henkel case all over the news. You know the story went national, right?" Elle waited until Spencer nodded grudgingly before she continued, "So, I did some research online – I even sent Penelope a couple of emails, just to check up on you and the rest of the team, to see how you all were handling everything. She mentioned something off-handedly once about you starting to have awful bouts of tremors and since I had already learned from my research that you had been drugged with Dilaudid, I put two and two together. I would have come to see you sooner, Spencer, but I knew that I needed to make sure I was better first before I tried to help someone else, which meant waiting until the doctors declared me fit to leave. That was yesterday, and now I'm here." She met him in the middle of the kitchen when he finally stood up, saying gently, "I want to help you get over this, Spencer."

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