Two things about the anthrax case kept you up at night.

First: the image of Reid laying in that hospital bed, dying. Sometimes, you selfishly wondered if it would be easier to get over if you had Reid's memory. Then, you would just remember the whole thing exactly as it happened. Instead, your memories were tainted with fear. You saw him sicker, you saw him dead, all in your mind's eye.

You tell him about it after your nightmares leave you whining in your sleep. He creeps in from where he'd been sleeping on the couch and wakes you. He asks you to tell him about it.

He sits on the other side of your bed, the lamp clicked on, while you tell him you can't stop seeing him dying of anthrax.

"I wish I could just remember it perfectly like you do, Spence. Maybe it wouldn't look so scary then." You admit to the ceiling.

"I don't know. It might be worse with my memory. You know I can feel every emotion, like it's happening right now? That's a memory too. I can sit here and think about what it felt like the first time my mom had an episode in front of me as a kid or when I heard you jump in the river during that family annihilator Tennessee case. It hurts just as bad as it did at the time. All the physical symptoms come back- the adrenaline or the tears. Time doesn't heal anything. I'll remember how it felt to get shot up with dilaudid and what it felt like to go through withdrawal until I'm dead. Even when the physical craving is gone, all I need is a reminder of the memory to want it again. I have nightmares about cases too. I have nightmares about you getting hurt. Nothing helps those."

He wasn't accusatory. He never was. Reid just stated the truth. He didn't judge you for wishing you could remember better, just stated the pain that comes along with it.

"If you had a choice," you ask, "would you want our daughter to have your memory?"

He thinks for a minute.

"I don't know. My memory stopped me from having a normal adolescence, from connecting with my peers. It has come with the enormous responsibility of this job, of being so relied upon. It's given me a lot of opportunity, too. I get to enjoy understanding the world so much better than I would without it. I get to help people, I've made better friends on this team than most people will find in their entire lives, and I've got you. I wouldn't mind either way, if she has my memory or not. She'll make her own life, the same way we did."

"You aren't worried about her remembering the pain of her first scraped knee forever?" You prod.

His lips quirk at that. "You know women remember pain less than men? Moderate pain, at least. They're less stressed when they remember it, too. Maybe she'll have better luck than me."

"You're telling me I'll forget how much birth hurts?"

He didn't pull his punches. "You will if it's moderate pain. Most likely, you'll remember it as the worst pain of your life."

"That's great. I really needed to hear that."

"Do you want me to go over pain management options for labor? I've been reading up on it."

"I don't want breathing exercises, Reid. I want substances. If it has a chemical formula, you have permission to tell a doctor to put it in me."

He laughed. "You got it."

The second thing about the case that kept you up: every case was so unique, the team could rarely learn a lesson from them. They just had to go home and get ready for whatever the next case brought.

Fortunately, the summer was unusually mellow when it came to cases. There were murders, sure, but fewer of them than normal involved unsub chases and injuries. Field work involved more interviews and investigation than ever- for the whole team.

The "break" was welcome. You'd never seen the team with so few bruises. Morgan had started complaining he needed to go to the gym another day a week since he wasn't flexing his muscles against serial killers as much. You knew it wouldn't last. The dog days of summer would end and the routine of school and work and gray skies would grate down on potential unsubs until they snapped. They'd be more willing to run and cause drama.

All was easy, until the Canada case. That was the polite name for it in the bullpen. Behind closed doors, it was "pigs-eating-corpses case". Prentiss and Morgan had some more colorful names for it after a few beers. You were thirty four weeks along when the call came for your first international case. The summer had officially come to an end, just in time for the fall equinox.

a/n: I disappeared on y'all for two years, I recognize that. In my defense, I was a freshman in college when I started writing this. I stopped when a) the isolation of online college in a dorm room alone started messing with my ability to do anything and b) halfway through spring 2021, I got an internship offer at nasa which made me very busy that summer. Then I was a junior in college, busting my ass in physics and quantum mechanics classes, and then I got an offer for a second nasa internship term and was busy again. I've been ridiculously blessed and also more stressed out than I ever have been in my life. The entire time, I've been getting emails with your comments in them. do you guys know how embarrassing it is to check your phone while waiting for a drink at a club and up pops a notification from wattpad? I've never swiped that fast to clear a notif in my life. I love my friends dearly. I don't need them knowing about my criminal minds fanfic. The point is- I've been getting comments all this time and kept on swearing I'd get back to this some time. And now it's time. It's syllabus week, the internships are over, all my grad school apps are in, and tonight it's too cold outside for me to go walk to the bars with my girlfriends. I'm a couple gin-lemonades deep, and it was the perfect night to finish this. I'll be releasing one chapter a day for the next six-ish days (not sure how I'm going to break up the chapters, but it's complete). Welcome to the finale. Thanks for sticking around. I'll see y'all tomorrow

ps- ironically, I've now slept with three of my own coworkers. I have refrained from falling in love with them or having their children