A.N. When I started this story, I wasn't sure exactly what would happen in between, but I did know which words would close it. Thanks to all who have shared their thoughts, and reactions, and love for Spencer Reid.

Of Genius and Gentility

Chapter 18

By Monday they'd been called out again, to a bizarre case. Women were being left in public places, oddly dressed and made up, looking almost doll-like. The most recent had been left on a carousel in the park. The profile oozed 'child' but they all deemed that impossible. Maybe child-like. Maybe female. Maybe not.

Something else was different as well, but this was a difference that normalized things. Reid appeared in the round table room without his cane, moving with only a small, but perceptible, limp.

"Yay!" JJ celebrated the sign of progress.

Morgan got up to slap his little brother on the back in congratulations, nearly knocking him over in the process.

"Morgan!" All three women cried out at once.

"Oops….my bad. Sorry, Kid. Don't want you falling on that pretty face."

Hotch felt a need to ask. "Are you sure you're ready?"

Reid brushed off their concern. "I have to start some time. It may as well be now. I'm just not used to it yet. I'll get there."

Rossi couldn't help but wonder if Hotch was right to worry, if Reid was pushing himself too fast. Once upon a time, he imagined, the young man might have held on to the cane, using it as a tool to keep expectations low. A physical infirmity, trying to cover for the psychological one. But much had changed in the past few months, culminating in both physical and psychological healing. Neither process was complete, but they were both well underway.

Also changed was Rossi, who had undergone a sharpening of his vision, and gained a new understanding of his youngest colleague. What he once viewed as weakness, he now knew to be a façade of insecurity wrapped around a core of deep strength. Part of Reid's healing process would require him to accomplish a connection with that core, and a shedding of the façade. Losing the cane was a step in that direction. Even if Reid was pushing himself too fast, forcing his body to catch up to his recovering psyche, that wasn't something that warranted caution. It was something that warranted encouragement. And Rossi fully intended to deliver.

On the plane, he found the empty seat across from his target. As Rossi sat, Reid looked up from his book, a questioning look on his face.

"I heard from our editor. She's happy with the final few chapters we just sent in, and the publisher wants to go to print. So we need to schedule our little photo shoot."

Any new-found confidence drained immediately from Reid's face, and the young man gulped.

"Uh….couldn't you…..I mean, I only helped a little…..and they already know your face, and…"

Rossi suppressed a smile. "Nope. We did this together. We succeed together, or we go down together."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Reid's current coiffure didn't exactly meld with Rossi's sense of style, but the senior profiler was very much aware of the young man's appeal among the ladies….including the ones on the team. He'd long since considered the benefit of having Reid's face prominently displayed on the cover, and the very likely possibility of drawing a whole new audience to his books. In fact, he'd even thought to inquire about the possibility of moving the 'science fiction' section to another part of the bookstore, so that 'true crime' and 'romance' might be located more closely together.

"Sorry, Spencer. Price of fame." He waited a beat before adding a suggestion. "You could always pull the cane back out. You know, go for sympathy."

"No!" Then realizing both his vehemence and the circumstances of the cane, Reid apologized. "Sorry. I mean, it was an amazing gift, and I appreciated it. But… well, I think I let it inhibit me."

"Inhibit?"

"Yes. Don't get me wrong, it helped me when I needed it, and if I was going to have to lean on something, I'm glad I was able to lean in style…"

Looking to see if Rossi would smile, and satisfied when it happened.

"….But I think it might have kept me from pushing myself a little harder. I might have leaned on it for too long, and I was letting it limit me."

Rossi mused on how 187 IQ points could obscure one's personal insight. He knew it hadn't been the cane limiting Reid. He could only wonder how long it would take Reid to figure it out as well. And he knew, instinctively, that it was something the young man would have to realize on his own, if there was to be any merit to it. So he held his tongue, and let Reid continue.

"Do you know that I hadn't even been to the park for months, until this morning? I used to stop by a lot, and catch a game of chess or two." He smiled to himself. "The kids always seemed to like it. But I didn't realize until today that they actually missed me."

It had been months, and hours of conversation, and yet this was a new revelation. Reid had told Rossi about the deepest, darkest secret of his past, and yet hadn't shared this little tidbit of the present.

"You teach the kids how to play chess?"

Reid shrugged it off. "Some of them are pretty good. I just help them advance their games a little. Kind of like Gideon did for me."

Rossi nodded at the obvious connection. "So you honor Gideon by doing the same for the kids in the park."

He was surprised at how long it took Reid to answer, and at the convoluted succession of expressions passing over the young man's features.

"Uh-oh. Did I touch a nerve?"

"Huh? Oh…..no. No, I just…. I was talking with one of the kids this morning. I told him how I'd tried to play every variation of move, in games against myself."

Rossi whistled. "You'll be an old man before you finish that, my friend."

Reid smiled. "I realized that. So I stopped, once I also realized something else." He shifted in his seat, striking what Rossi had come to think of as his professorial pose. "I realized that every game was the same, just like I told Gary, today. They all follow the same pattern, and they all lead to the same outcome."

Rossi wasn't buying that. "If that was true, what would be the point of playing? If the same person always won?"

The younger man nodded, enthused. "Exactly. Every game is the same, and they all have the same outcome, but the winner is different."

The thick Italians brows went up. "Explain, please, to this mere mortal."

The genius was happy to oblige. "It's like I told Gary, there's always the opening volley, and the patient midgame, and then one of a set of patterns that lead to victory."

"But not always by the same person," insisted Rossi.

"Exactly. Because, while the game is the same, the players are different. That's why I couldn't solve it playing against myself. The players matter. Someone is more daring, someone else more timid. Someone is more patient, someone less. It's what Gideon got wrong."

"Gideon?" Not sure how his old friend and colleague had come into the conversation again.

"I told Gary that my friend had lost interest in the game, because he saw it as always the same. For a long time after Gideon left, I wondered if he was right. Maybe there is no point to what we do, because there's always another one, and they always ruin lives, and we try to stop them, and then there's another one, and…."

Rossi got it now. "And there's no end in sight."

"Exactly."

"But you've decided that Gideon had it wrong?"

Surprised to find himself hanging on the answer. What had started as a simple conversation about a photograph had wandered into some deep territory.

"Gideon left because he didn't see the point anymore. He felt like he wasn't effective, like we weren't effective. He left because he couldn't change the narrative, the evolution of the game."

Intrigued now, Rossi asked, "And you think he was wrong?"

Reid nodded. "He couldn't change the game, because he was the constant. Just like I was, when I tried to play against myself. There were only so many ways I could change the game, because it was always me strategizing, on both sides of the board. Gideon had the same problem. He could only think the way he thought."

Rossi sat back and stared out the window for a bit, chewing on what Reid had said, not yet sure he was ready to digest it. Whether or not he'd intended it, Reid had hit upon Gideon's great shortcoming, something David Rossi had encountered several decades ago.

He wasn't a team player. He built a team around him, but he didn't use them, not really. Under the guise of teaching them, he imposed his own analysis onto every case. The kid's right. He really was the constant.

"So, you're saying that he left because he couldn't change the outcome of the game? That he didn't see his work as effective?"

Reid shook his head. "Not that, really. I mean, we did have different outcomes, we did catch a lot of unsubs, and we even saved some victims."

"Some. But not enough?"

Reid shrugged. "I don't know. I think Gideon would say that we don't know how many we've saved, because we don't know what would have happened if we hadn't caught them when we did. But there was always another one. Always someone else getting ready to kill senselessly, or someone else already doing it."

"The neverending story."

"Something like that. I think it just got to him. He could only study the game…..and the unsubs…so much, without knowing the inevitable outcome."

"They kill. And, sometimes, we kill them."

Reid nodded. "But we don't have to. Not all the time. Maybe not even most of the time."

"And you don't think Gideon could see that?" Not so sure that he could, either.

Reid shifted in his seat, and stared for a long time out into the ether. Answering Rossi's question would mean admitting something that Reid had only barely admitted to himself. But he'd already trusted Rossi with so much more than this.

"I think Gideon studied unsubs, and their behavior. He tried to understand how they acted, and to predict their next moves. But it was rare when he tried to understand them. What they'd been through, how it had changed them, how they were feeling in the moment we encountered them."

"He had no empathy?"

"He feigned it, sometimes. Sometimes, he tried to sound sympathetic and understanding, and other times he challenged them outright. But he never felt it. Not really."

Rossi studied his companion, and saw the earnest plea for understanding. It wasn't often one admitted one's hero had feet of clay.

Noting Reid's discomfort, Rossi tried to sound encouraging. "And you do. Right?"

"I try to. I think it's important. They've all still got some humanity in them."

"But, does it really matter that you play the game differently? If we still get the bad guy, what's the difference?"

The younger man tried to gather his thoughts into something articulable.

"I don't think I can explain it well enough, but I do think it matters. For Gideon, the game was always the same, because he was playing both sides…himself, and his analytical version of the unsubs. He was the constant. But, when you approach the unsub with empathy….when you actually achieve empathy…there are two playing the game. The game changes. Even if the outcome is the same, the game changes. Maybe it's shorter, maybe it's less violent. It has a different dynamic."

Maybe we can save some of them. Thinking of a frightened teenager, years ago, who'd tried to take his life rather than become a psychopath. Gideon had written him off. Reid had reached out.

Rossi stared a while longer. "So, what's the take home?"

"That we need to work differently with the unsubs. We need to try to relate with them, not just analyze their behaviors after the fact. We need to find the other side of them. If we do, the game will evolve. We'll learn. Even if we can't save them, we might be able to interrupt the process in the next one. But only if we pool our efforts. We need all of us contributing to this. We need all of our life experiences, and all of our insights. We work best, and most effectively, as a team."

Rossi smiled, and chuckled softly to himself. I coulda told you that, Kid. I just didn't know why.

"So, you learned all this from playing chess this morning."

"No, I learned it from playing chess by myself, for months. It just took a while to sink in. Besides, I didn't have time for a game this morning."

Feeling the need for caffeine, Rossi stood, patting Reid's knee as he did so.

"Tell you what. When we get back, why don't you make some time for it? I have a feeling those chess kids need you."

Ultimately, they concluded that their unsub was a woman, who, to one degree or another was still embedded in her childhood, herself likely a victim, years ago. She was making dolls of her victims. Perhaps she didn't even realize she was killing them.

Something in the profile obviously got to Reid. On the surface of it, maybe it was the fact of electroshock treatment administered to a child. But, hovering just beneath the surface, and beginning to erupt, was the fact that her father had been behind it. Yet another example of paternal betrayal of a child's trust.

It wasn't unusual for the young genius to assign himself a duty. In fact, he was often the first to volunteer to work the files, or the maps, taking on an unwanted task that he himself found intriguing. But it was highly unusual to hear him announcing his intention to interrogate a subject. Not volunteering. Announcing. Staking claim. All of the rest of them were caught off guard, including their unit chief, who raised a single brow, and then looked to his senior colleague.

"Take Rossi with you," Hotch said. Assigning Rossi the back-up role, not about to ask Reid to relinquish the lead he had so assertively claimed.

For his part, Rossi was glad to go along. There had been something different about the team dynamic throughout this case, and he was anxious to see it reach its denouement. Something about Reid, something about his demeanor, the way he was carrying himself, the swiftness of his thinking, the vehemence of his reaction, all of it had impacted his role in the case, and his relationship with the others. They nearly always consulted their genius colleague, especially on obscure pieces of information. But, this case, they deferred to him. Each of them had played a role in unraveling the story, and building the profile, but it had all been under the guiding hand of the youngest among them.

They see it too, and they're responding to it, even if they don't realize it.

Ironically, Reid was still moving with a limp, which might once have made him seem lesser, shaken his confidence. But, in the moment, it had the opposite effect. It gave him the appearance of one who knew how to operate in the face of adversity, of one who knew how to overcome.

Go for it, young man.

When they arrived at the psychiatry office of their suspected unsub's father, Rossi took the lead, but soon enough turned the reins over to Reid.

Scratch that. I just stepped out of the way before he ran me over.

The younger profiler started off with what sounded like an innocent question, about some toys on a shelf. But then he followed up, in rapid fire, with the same question, over and over again, each time about a new toy. It was a blatantly aggressive move, and Rossi began to feel a bit like Dr. Frankenstein.

Please don't tell me I've created a monster!

The implication of Reid's interrogation was obvious….that the psychiatrist had used the toys in question as bribes, or rewards, for girls he'd molested, just as he'd done the same with his daughter, and a set of dolls that she was now trying to replicate, using human models.

Rossi thought Reid might have pushed too hard, and too pointedly, even threatening the man's career, when the psychiatrist ordered them out of his office. He was rehearsing a little speech for his young companion, when they both heard the doctor call them back. The man had, indeed, felt threatened. But he also felt guilty, as he was, and he was willing to cooperate in exchange for leniency. He gave away the location of his daughter.

As they traveled to the apartment where they hoped to find some of the potential victims alive, Rossi stole a glance at his companion in the passenger seat. Reid looked straight ahead, his gaze intense, his chin set, clearly preparing for what was to come.

He's getting inside her head. He hasn't even met her yet, but he's so sure of his profile, that he's using it to think like she thinks. He wants to relate to her. He wants to play her half of the game with her, because that might be the only way to save the others without hurting her.

Rossi put aside that little speech he'd planned to give. Maybe he should just let this play out. Maybe Spencer had a better handle on it than he realized.

When they arrived to the address, Rossi instinctively let Reid take the lead. He followed the younger man into the apartment, where both of them were taken aback. They'd profiled it, they should have known. But seeing it, seeing the reality of it, was still a shock. Adult human women, completely immobile, heavily made up and dressed in doll-like clothing, seated around a table for a child's tea party. And one more woman, also adult, this one moving, and speaking to her dolls in a way that made her developmental stasis obvious.

The two men made eye contact, and then Rossi nodded, and Reid moved into view, and gently called the woman's name. Frightened, and caught off guard, she made a move to threaten one of her human dolls. But Reid spoke to her gently, and assured her of her safety. He sympathized with the loss of her childhood companion dolls, and offered to restore them to her, and she ate it up. Thus, with nary a shot fired, nor a single movement of physical aggression, nor even a raised voice, their unsub was taken, and her victims saved.

Rossi was about to comment, when he realized that Reid wasn't quite satisfied. He watched as the young man squatted to achieve eye level with their adult-child unsub, and then listened as Reid earnestly promised her that she would keep her items of comfort. She would remain, forever, with the dolls she loved.

They'd already accomplished their task. The women were safe, the unsub in custody. And still, Reid had insisted on this extraordinary act of kindness.

He is changing the narrative. Maybe not the outcomes, yet, but he's changing the narrative. Gideon never even saw that as possible. If I'm honest with myself, I probably didn't either, until today. I've seen him do it before, but I didn't get it. Now I know. And I want to know more.

An hour ago, Rossi had intended to give his junior colleague a little lecture on how things should be done, on remembering his role, and not stepping out of it.

A few months ago, he'd intended to give that same junior colleague an opportunity to learn from the master….about books, and profiling, and life.

Funny thing about that.

He hoped he had imparted something to Reid. He hoped it was at least a fraction of what had been imparted to him. In the process of getting to know the young man, Rossi had gotten to know himself, just a little bit better. He'd lost that sense of stagnation, of already being whoever he was going to be. He'd regained a sense of becoming. And he was eager, once again, to see who, and what, he could become.

His young colleague was becoming, too. He'd left behind the role of protégé, no longer the exception to every FBI rule and requirement. He'd integrated the roles of mentee and mentor, and moved beyond, into a new identity. He was no longer a kid, no matter how many of them called him that. In fact, Rossi thought, it was time he called Reid something else.

So he turned to his colleague, and friend, and co-author, and co-traveler in life, and nodded his approval of what had just happened. And then he voiced it.

"Well done, Agent Reid."

FINIS