Spencer Reid doesn’t believe in fate. Not really.

He believes in math. In probability. In the crushing statistics of loss.

But after everything. Gideon’s death, Emily’s fake coffin, Maeve’s voice cutting off mid-sentence, he’s started to wonder if the universe has a specific kind of cruelty reserved just for people like him.

The kind who hope.

The kind who still love.

And then there was you.

You were the one thing the world didn’t take from him.

A fellow agent, sharp, fast-thinking, relentless in the field. And you saw him. Not just the profiler, not just the genius, but Spencer. The person. The man who reads Russian poetry to calm down after crime scenes and can’t ever quite get his coffee order right the first tme.

At some point, without either of you saying it out loud, you became each other’s safe place. Long nights in the field turned into shared hotel coffee, inside jokes, quiet laughter on flights home when the rest of the team slept. And something bloomed, slow, tender, unnamed.

You never had to call it love. It just was.

So when the bullet tore through you on that rainy Tuesday in D.C., it didn’t matter that it missed your heart by inches. It hit his.

He rode with you in the ambulance, hand gripping yours like a lifeline. Blood on his shirt. Sirens wailing. And his thoughts spinning in one desperate, looping prayer:

Take anything else. Just don’t take them.

Because the universe had already taken so much.

And when you pulled through, when the monitors stopped screaming, he let himself breathe for the first time in hours.

But it didn’t last.

Three days later, still pale and bandaged in a stiff hospital bed, you looked at him with tired eyes and said the words that unraveled him more than any flatline ever could:

“I’m resigning, Spence.”

No anger. No drama. Just the soft devastation of someone who’d finally had enough.

“This job... I love the people. I love you. But I can’t keep giving pieces of myself away. I almost died.” Your words rang through his brain. The same brain who had answers for everything. Not for this.

And he couldn’t argue with you.

He wanted to. God, he wanted to say: Stay. I’ll protect you. I’ll follow you anywhere. But he knew that love, real love, doesn’t hold people hostage.

So instead, he nodded.

And when you turned away, he broke.

Now, he sits alone in the dark of his apartment, watching shadows flicker against the wall like ghosts of everything he’s ever lost.

He keeps whispering it, somewhere between a prayer and a plea:

Just take my wallet. Take my degrees. My job. My books. My sleep. My time. Take anything. Just not them.

But the universe never listens.

What’s the kindest way to say... the universe took away another person, another friend, another buddy. Another someone who understood.

You’re alive. But gone. And Spencer’s left with that particular kind of grief reserved for the ones who survive.

He keeps remembering the good times with you, the way they sang to him now when all he could do was reminisce.

He wishes the universe just took his wallet instead.

What’s the softest way to say... the end?