Chapter Text
Langly was there, when Reid came in, as expected. Lunch was on the table, his other bag was already packed, and they were not going to be late for the flight, if he stopped to eat. They had a couple of hours, and then he was going to see his mother. They were going to see his mother. And he was nervous. It had gone so well, last time, that he had no idea--
That was a lie. He knew it wouldn't last. His mother had been unstable for too long for him to believe that she'd be in the vicinity of her right mind again. But, every time he'd spoken to her, since the last visit, she'd been... coherent, at least. Still a little paranoid, still lacking in some basic social graces, but consistently coherent, and actually writing, again, according to Latoya.
Langly was talking, and Reid realised he had no idea what had been said.
"I don't think my brain got off the plane with me," he apologised.
"You want to talk about what happened in Oregon, so you don't keep drifting off like that?" Langly asked, herding Reid into a chair and pointing at the rather large sandwich on the plate in front of it.
"No, I really don't. Not right now. There are other things I need to do right now." Reid picked up half the sandwich, and waited for Langly to sit, which didn't happen.
"Look, I got the results back from Benally. That's what I was trying to say." Langly pulled an envelope off the top of the half-wall by the door. "I figured you might want to see them before we see your ma."
"I don't." Reid looked up at Langly. "You look concerned. You opened them, didn't you."
"No, I have no idea what it says in here. I'm just not thrilled I have to wait another three days to find out if my boyfriend has stomach cancer." Langly tossed the letter onto the table and dropped into the other chair with a sandwich in front of it.
"I'd tell you to open it and not tell me until later, but if I do have stomach cancer, neither of us can walk in knowing it, or my mother will find out. I'm not willing to discuss the matter, assuming it's true, until I've studied my options thoroughly. I have no intention of adding a legitimate concern to my mother's paranoia, until it's unavoidable. If it turns out to be treatable, controllable, I may never tell her." Reid took a bite of the sandwich and washed it down with lukewarm coffee. "But, if we walk in newly frightened, she's going to pick at it until one of us unravels."
"As opposed to us walking in with this lingering dread."
"I'm willing to have this discussion after we have at least gotten to the airport. Where are we staying?" Reid could barely taste the sandwich, he was so stressed, but he knew it was good, because Langly always made good sandwiches, even if his casseroles were occasionally questionable.
"Somewhere nice enough that we can have a champagne breakfast on Easter Sunday, without having to leave the room to get it." Langly grinned, lettuce stuck in his teeth.
"I'm still looking forward to letting you explain to my mother why Easter is a champagne holiday."
"If you have champagne to celebrate a birth, which I'm pretty sure you do, why the hell would you not have champagne to celebrate a rebirth? That's the real question. Catholics drink wine all the time. There is absolutely no sane reason Easter shouldn't be a champagne holiday."
"Which you intend for me to celebrate with you, before we go to see my mother."
"It's not like we're driving. And you didn't get that trashed on champagne on your birthday. And, and? We're eating breakfast. Fruit, eggs, chocolate eggs. You'll be fine. We can get smashed when we get back, and then I can watch you do implausible things with your tongue and cherry stems."
Reid made a few muffled sounds of protest around a mouthful of sandwich. "I will not be getting smashed, thank you. I can do implausible things with my tongue while sober, and not all of them need involve cherry stems."
"We could've taken a commuter flight." Reid stared out the window of the tiny jet, picking at his fingernail.
"And you knew we weren't going to, because I'm completely paranoid about airport security." Langly stretched his legs in front of him and pulled a packet of licorice nibs out of the bag stuffed under his seat. "What the hell crawled up your ass, today?"
Reid almost snapped at him, but stopped and sat twisting his fingers, as the plane took off. "Do you remember what I said, the first time we went to see my mother?"
"Treat her like a conspiracy nutter. If she says something fucked up, roll with it."
"I wish you wouldn't call her a nutter." Reid sighed. "But, yes. That. We were extremely lucky, last time, and experience tells me we won't be, twice."
"Look, I've talked to your mom, since then. She's kind of rude, and she acts like you're a teenage dumbass, but she's not a hell of a lot weirder than Frohike on a bad day. You keep telling me the doctors say she's getting better. Maybe she's not so screwed up any more. It's been like twenty years, Reid. They've probably got better treatments, now."
"She's been schizophrenic since before I was born. I know the treatments for that have come a long way, and I know some part of what's wrong with her, now, may have come from those early treatments. I know. I've done the reading. But, it's been less than a decade since she developed dementia, and it wasn't the drugs, because taking her off them didn't help. When she's coherent, she's very coherent, and then she's just gone -- in the middle of a sentence. They haven't found a combination of drugs that will even preserve the condition she's in for more than a few months at a time." Reid leaned forward and buried his face in his hands for a moment. "I've said all this before. I know she seems to be getting better, but it shouldn't be happening, and I'm afraid that if I get used to it, it's going to stop. Again. As usual. I'm afraid that I'm going to walk in there, and all of the progress she's made will be gone. That she'll mistake me for my father. Again. It only happened once, but I almost stopped visiting."
"Okay, I can see where getting called your dad's name might not be great, but what are you not saying? I know you. You're not the kind of guy who's going to fuck off into oblivion because somebody called you the wrong name, just like I'm not the kind of guy to fuck off into oblivion because somebody called me ma'am. Tempting, though. Every time."
"First of all, I don't look anything like my dad. Nobody in a room with the two of us has ever thought we looked anything alike. Second, she didn't just say his name instead of mine. She does that all the time. She called me the cat's name, once. That's not personal, she just doesn't always have the words in the right order. She called me my aunt's name and threw a wadded up tissue at me when I laughed. But, my dad..." Reid cleared his throat and looked out the window. "She really thought I was my dad. And I called a nurse. And I left."
"Yeah, that's not great. That's kind of the opposite of great. But, you weren't freaked out about it last time we went up to see her. You were freaked out she'd be a kind of weird you were okay with, but I wouldn't be."
"She only got that bad once. Her medication changed the next day." Reid just kept staring out the window, watching the clouds. "Last time... She was better, last time, but it was a surprise. It's... the longer this goes on, the more likely it is to stop. Dramatically. It is... an incredible strain, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I can't stop waiting. I can't stop expecting it. It's happened too many times." He finally turned back to Langly. "So, yeah, I'm freaked out because my mom's fine, and I'm an idiot."
"So, maybe this time, she got lucky. You said she was on something experimental, again, right? Maybe they finally found the right drug for her."
"And maybe five years from now, it causes brain cancer!" Reid slammed the cover over the window and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I don't know, any more. I just don't know. I'm trying to do the right thing. And it looks like it's working, but it's looked good before, and I just don't want to be surprised when it all comes crashing down, like it always does."
"So, what I'm hearing is you're not going to chill the fuck out, until we actually see your mom." Langly crumpled the packet, having finished the licorice nibs, and stuffed it into his pocket.
"Maybe." Reid didn't move. "Maybe I just need a cup of coffee and a hot shower."
"You kind of did just get off a plane, come home for some reason known only to you, then turn around and go back to the airport and get back on a plane. And it's pretty much the second time in a row that you've done that." Langly leaned forward to dig something out of his bag. "I am not above suggesting that you need a nap. Preferably in your own damn apartment, with the phone unplugged."
"That would be nice, but I'm on a plane." Reid took his hands away from his face when a gold box dropped into his lap.
"I was going to give you those when we got to the hotel, but I think you're going to entirely lose your god damn mind before we're even back on the ground, if I don't give you chocolate now."
"How is it that you manage to be both so helpful and such a jerk, at the same time?" Reid asked, sliding the ribbon off the box.
"It's a natural talent. Just ask Byers." Langly pulled out another bag of licorice nibs, for himself. "I feel justified in calling this a chocolate emergency, so go for the swirly-looking ones, first. Highest chocolate content per chocolate."
Reid said nothing until the second chocolate had melted in his mouth, the creamy, bitter flavour settling his nerves ever so slightly. "Sorry."
"Whatever." Langly sounded dismissive, as he poured another handful of licorice nibs into his mouth. "You gonna tell me the rest of what that was about?"
"Oregon. Everything bothered me about the case." Reid looked under the lid of the box of chocolates for a guide to what the rest of them were, and picked something with a raspberry filling. "You were sitting there when I found out someone had tried to kill Dalia Otero. It was her sister's husband, Rob, who we already suspected had some part in the murders. We were also sure that the sister, Graciela, was the instigator, at least. We have a witness who suggests she was present for one of the murders. But, it's been twenty years. It's almost impossible to prove anything, at this point."
"Yeah, except that Rob guy tried to kill the younger sister. That's something."
"And he's going to spend some time in prison for that. Graciela didn't alibi him for the attack. She said she thought he was at work, and work said he'd left for lunch, and hadn't come back. But, she did say she had no idea why he would attack Dalia, and asked if it was possible the blow to the head had made her think it was Rob." Reid shook his head. "Other shopkeepers identified his car, and the old woman down the block identified him. He said absolutely nothing, except 'I don't know what you're talking about', until the local police proved he was the only person in the shop, at the time. Then, when asked why he assaulted his sister-in-law, he said, 'She needs to mind her own fucking business.' When asked about what, he replied, 'You need to mind your own fucking business.' It's really, unquestionably, about the murders, but nobody's going to admit to it, now."
"And you can't lean on the sister, because even if she wasn't involved in the murders, they're married," Langly groaned. "What a pain in the ass."
"So, that's what's been going on since I left. I hate everything about this case, and I regret getting involved in it. Not that we didn't successfully arrest a murderer twenty years after the fact, because that was never likely. But, that the investigation caused the attempted murder of a completely innocent woman, and even with that, we couldn't arrest her attacker for the murders we're entirely sure he and his wife participated in."
"Yeah, but you still got him for the attack on her, at least. He's going away for a while, right?"
Reid snorted derisively. "He'll be out in four. Easily."
"Jesus absolute godfarting christ, are you kidding me?"
"Nope. And Dalia's probably going to want to change her name and leave the state before he gets out, because I don't think he's going to be that sloppy next time." Reid rubbed his face. "Sometimes, the good guys don't win, and we end up getting people killed."
Langly went for the obvious. "You need a day off."
"This is my day off."