Note- This story will change the events of the Criminal Minds season six episode titled Lauren and all events afterwards. It is inspired by the movie Just Like Heaven, but it will only take inspiration from it, not follow the storyline closely.

Proof

Reid and Emily

Chapter One

March 2011

Waiting patiently outside the small chapel located on the main floor of the hospital, Spencer Reid leaned with his back against the wall and his eyes closed, trying to stem the pain of his headache. Though he understood why his friend and co-worker Derek Morgan was inside the chapel praying (most people turned to religion in times like these) Reid believed that Morgan was probably wasting his time.

There was no scientific proof of any God, any afterlife, or anything beyond this random world spawned from science.

The world began because it could and existed as it was currently due to evolution. One day it will destroy itself due to natural disasters or man's hubris, just to start all over again. All on its own, though, without any divine guidance.

Reid could prove this theory with facts whereas no one could prove God existed with any facts that Reid would consider undebatable. Of course people who were religious didn't deal in facts as much as faith. They couldn't prove what they believed as much as they felt it deep inside to the point where it didn't have to be proven to be what they based their lives on.

Spencer Reid had never felt that kind of connection with some force outside of the known universe.

The only thing he put his faith in was his team and they put their faith in him right back.

Only Emily hadn't...Emily tried to do it all alone...tried to hunt down Doyle to protect the team, put her faith in herself alone and no one else. It hadn't work. She should have known better. They were a family and no person could do it all alone.

Now Emily was paying the price for her mistake while Reid stood there, in the hospital corridor, trying to block out the light, the noise, and the feeling of his head throbbing. Trying to just survive this moment in as little pain as possible.

But everyday the pain got worse and worse. The doctor said it was just stress. Dr. Reid was investigating his illness himself, mainly to try and allay his fears that he was close to going into a schizophrenic break. Citing stress was an easy answer, considering his job, but also a double edged sword.

He didn't see his stress level going down anytime soon.

Finally Derek stepped out of the chapel and said, quietly, "Lets go, kid. We need some rest. We got a new case starting in the morning and it's a bad one."

A bad one was code for more disturbing than their normal type of horrifying cases. Bad ones took even more out of all of them. Spencer didn't know how many more bad ones he could endure, how much more he had to give.

Walking out of the hospital that night his mind mulled over the theory of time travel, something he would believe possible much easier than believing in a divine presence guiding the universe. Time travel could one day exist, perhaps, and if it ever did then he would like to go back to when Emily first joined the team.

She was happy and healthy then. They were all so much less scarred. Her smile was bright, her eagerness to learn endearing, her skills impressive for this being her first job in the field- or so she said back then.

It was a better time for all of them. They had a happiness then that seemed far away now. What Reid would give to be back in one of those days but science had not perfected time travel yet.

Science was letting down Reid and he, unlike Morgan, had no God to pray to that might make it all better again. He only had his scientific facts that said Emily's brain activity was not increasing and the longer she stayed in the state she was the less likely she would ever make any recover.

She could live this way for years to come, wasting away physically and mentally. Emily deserved better than this.

If she had only trusted them, come to them, come to just him alone even, then she wouldn't be in this hospital. Reid was sure of that fact. She wouldn't be here if she had turned to her family for help.

Why didn't she know that anytime she needed them they would be there for her? Why did she take away their choice to give their all, even risk their lives, for her? Why did she treat them as if they were children, not her capable friends who love her?

Reid had gone over and over this question in the days since Emily was hurt and come up with a litany of answers ranging from shame to pride to stubbornness and the inability to let down her walls but none of them satisfied him totally. The question stuck in his craw, repeated in his mind: Why didn't she come to us?

Only Emily could answer that but she wasn't talking. If she ever did again, Reid wondered what kind of shape he would be in by then. Each moment of each day now seemed to take a little more from him. How long until there wasn't enough left to do his job, to be the Dr. Spencer Reid he could recognize in the mirror?

His brain was what he counted on most but it was his own head turning on him now. Clogged with pain, gruesome memories, hurtful thoughts, regrets, anger, resentment. And it wasn't getting better as the days went on...it was only getting worse and worse.

(So tired of the straight life

when everywhere you turn

there are vultures and thieves at your back.

The storm keeps on twisting.

Keep on building the lies

that you make up for all that you lack.

Don't make no difference.

Escape one last time.

Its easier to believe

in this sweet madness,

this glorious sadness,

that brings me to my knees) (In the Arms of the Angels by Sarah Mclachlan)

XXXXXXXXXX

He put the key in the lock, twisted, and then took hold of the door handle, jimmying it some because it was an old building with a door that stuck. Reid walked into apartment, where a lamp stayed lit always, and dropped his go bag and messenger bag, along with laying his mail down.

As he often thought when he came home, he mused on how nice it would be to have a pet. To have something that looked forward to seeing him, something to share his life and space with. It seemed the few people he had really let in here to spend time with him over the years, with just a few exceptions, were now people he didn't see anymore: Elle, Gideon, Austin. That was one thing Reid hated about life: how people come in and out of your world, staying sometimes only a short while.

He didn't do well with losing people. Every single time it felt like more than he could bear. Sighing, he wondered how he would handle it if Emily didn't come out of her coma.

The odds were against her now. She was moving each day toward it being less likely she ever would recover. Those were the facts. Though Reid hated to think about it he could never escape the things his own brain knew, even at moments when he wished to be ignorant of the truth.

Moments like this.

It would be nicer to be like Morgan. Nicer to be able to pray and hope for God to grant a miracle. That must be comforting. But if there was a God, which Spencer could not reasonably conclude that being the case, then why would He grant anything to a man who didn't pray or believe in him, a man like Spencer?

Waiting on God to make this all right again wasn't an option for him. That void left Reid with his scientific facts, which were no comfort at all. They only made things more grim, the pain in his head intensify.

Slipping out of his coat, he tossed it on a chair that was covered in books, and made his way to the kitchen to make some green tea. But as soon as he rounded the corner of his kitchen he let out a strangled cry, stopping cold in his tracks.

Standing before him was the physical manifestation of a delusion. It wasn't the first time he had one but this was truly the most frightening because this time his mind had conjured up the woman he had missed the most these last few weeks: Emily Prentiss.

She looked as stressed as he remembered her being during her last days before the injury. Though her cream sweater and cream slacks provided a very pulled together look, with not a single strand of hair on her head out of place and even some minimal make up applied, it was her eyes that were wild with fear and worry- big, dark, intense, penetrating deep into him.

He stumbled back a step, closing his eyes and trying to block out the image, knowing it wasn't anything more than another sign that he was schizophrenic.

"Reid," she said, her tone strained and hinging on hysterical.

His eyes blinked open in time to be staring right into hers when she asked "What happened to me? Am I dead?"