In the end, he doesn't overdose. Spencer is too much of a coward to go through with the necessary actions. There's always another case, someone else who needs his help, and the timing is never right—Spencer continually worries about which unlucky person will have the misfortune to find his body.

So he doesn't kill himself, but instead becomes just another addict. Another burden to his team, a further embarrassment. Everyone would have been better off if he'd died. If only he could erase himself fully, completely obliterate all memory of himself from reality, but without hurting anyone in the process.

The team knows he's using. Each one of them. They know he's hurting; that he's hurting himself. Spencer can tell; for years he's been left with no choice but to be hyper vigilant of the individuals surrounding him, as well as their intentions toward him. He can read people and their attitudes toward him a mile away.

He knows the team knows he's using. The team knows he knows they know.

But no one does a thing to help him. They pretend everything's okay, as they've done all along, ever since Tobias.

It hurts. Knowing they've left him on display to show his pain and despair to the world. Knowing he's not worth saving to any of them, not even for his brain. Knowing that they would rather he endanger himself, them, and countless LEOs and victims before reaching out to him. He's that much of an embarrassment; they'd rather he die in the field due to his self-destruction before bothering to help him.

The worst part of him, the darkest, most cynical voice in his head, wonders if they're enjoying the show. If they took pleasure in watching him suffer through Tobias's torture, and if they're taking pleasure in watching him now.

He doesn't understand why they're not helping him. He is a risk. He is risk to himself. To the team. To the police and citizens of whatever town they're in. To the victims of the unsub, if the information from him that the team is using is unreliable.

But neither Hotch nor Gideon say a word. And every member of the team pretends as if they don't notice a thing.

Spencer can't wrap his head around their logic. Honestly, it was a case that got him into the disaster with Tobias. And Spencer had to rescue himself, fight through his torture to give Hotch and the team not one, but two clues to find him because they couldn't manage on their own. As far as apprehending Tobias was concerned, Spencer was forced to kill him because the team still hadn't arrived. By the time they finally did, Tobias was already dead.

The other members of the BAU hadn't saved him. They didn't do a goddamn thing for him. Spencer had saved himself then, and it looked like he would have to save himself now, since the rest of his team couldn't be bothered.

His substance abuse only lasts two months before it directly impacts his work on a case. And Spencer knows it's irresponsible, but he wants someone to come looking for him, for someone to care.

"I'm struggling," he tells Gideon when he finally acknowledges that Spencer isn't one hundred percent. Help me. Please, please, help me.

Gideon promises to see him through it, and Spencer feels an enormous weight lift off of his shoulders. Finally, someone actually wants to help him.

But Gideon virtually ignores him at work the next few days, and any happiness or relief Spencer felt at Gideon's promise gradually drain away.

One day, Spencer returns to his apartment and finds that a handful of pamphlets about substance abuse self-help groups have been stuffed into his satchel when he wasn't aware. His self-confidence ebbing to its lowest point in recent memory, Spencer swallows his hurt and humiliation and glances through them. Any therapy groups that requires a close circle of family and friends are unceremoniously tossed in the trash; he doesn't have either, and it's his own damn fault.

He's an embarrassment. So much of one that his team is too ashamed of him to even acknowledge the extent.

More ashamed of himself than ever, Spencer quits the dilaudid. On his own, naturally, because no one from his team offers to help him. But the situation with his colleagues doesn't improve.

Gideon leaves. In his place is a letter that easily could serve as a suicide note. It certainly lends itself to that interpretation, and Spencer knows Gideon had to be aware of that.

Gideon addressed the letter to him, and Spencer recognizes guilt trip when he sees one. He raised himself and was surrounded for years by people who wanted the worst for him; he can spot manipulation attempts from miles away.

With no official resignation from Gideon, it's left to Spencer to take the letter to Hotch and the others, to basically admit to the team that he is solely responsible for driving Gideon away. Gideon fully wanted it that way, wanted him to be the bearer of bad news, wanted the team to associate his departure directly with Spencer.

Maybe the letter was disguised with a sorrowful, (overly) paternalistic tone, but the purpose of the letter is not to make Spencer feel less guilty, but in fact, more so. The letter's only reason for existence is to indicate to the rest of the team that he is guilty, to convince them that Gideon would still be here if it weren't for Spencer and his multitude of mistakes. Gideon wrote the letter because he wanted Spencer to suffer, because he wanted to draw attention to all of Spencer's failures.

For a solid month, Spencer spends every night forgoing sleep for pacing throughout his apartment restlessly, his mind replaying his every interaction with Gideon, imaging what he could have done to convince Gideon he wasn't a failure. What he could have done to give him enough reason to stay. For a straight sixty days, Spencer calls Gideon's cell phone every night and leaves a message, pleading with him to let him know if he's all right, just so he can stop panicking each time the phone rings—each instance might be the authorities calling to say they've found Gideon's body.

But if Gideon is alive, he doesn't want Spencer to have that piece of mind. He never returns a single phone call, never does a thing to establish he's still on this earth.

Each morning he wakes, Spencer is overcome with an enormous, aching sense of guilt and grief. For killing Tobias. For driving Gideon away. For committing his mother. For driving his father away. For regretting driving his father away when his father was hurting him like he was.

He wishes he could reach out to his team. Talk to them, be reassured by them. But that's just a fantasy. They don't care about him. They would just deliberately embarrass him and try to manipulate him, just as Morgan did after Hankel.

He hurts. Every inch of him, every part of him, just hurts and hurts and hurts more than he ever thought was possible. Pieces of him are disappearing, tearing away, fading away, and the leftover parts don't fit together no matter what the number or method of his attempts, no matter the amount of force he tries to use.

At work Spencer smiles in the right places, talks when it's expected of him. The routine is automatic to him at this point.

Yet when he's asked, "How are you?" at work, he sometimes feels like answering honestly, even though he knows the question is only asked out of politeness. "Sad," he wants to say, even though just thinking that makes him feel stupid and childish. "Hurt."

But he can't burden his team in that way. He's done enough to prove himself a screw-up to them.

And the team seems intent on letting him know he's nothing more than a screw-up to them, too.