A.N. Things are starting to open up out there. Enjoy, but stay alert, aware and physically distanced. This isn't going away for good until we have a proven vaccine. Delayed gratification isn't a bad thing.

Six

Chapter 5

It was beginning to be a thing, he thought, that each time he should fall asleep, he should awaken to another of his team members.

Even if they're not all still on the team.

Reid reflected on his call with Derek Morgan, and how easily they'd fallen into their old rhythm of conversation, and how grounded he felt after talking with him. Once upon a time, Morgan had embodied everything Reid had come to be wary of, after what had seemed a lifetime of bullying. But the alpha male had proven to have a streak of empathy, a keen intelligence, and enough humility to truly listen to his younger colleague, and thus had been borne one of the deepest connections either of them had ever experienced.

In fact, for Reid, it had proven validating in a completely unexpected way. He hadn't tried to be anyone other than himself with Morgan, hadn't had to morph himself to fit in, hadn't had to prove his worth. He'd simply been accepted. In truth, he'd been met more than halfway, and that was one of the reasons he loved his former colleague.

Which didn't mean that Morgan hadn't still been willing to call him out, from time to time. The honesty between them was one of the things Reid treasured about their relationship, and the fact that Morgan had never coddled him had always been seen by Reid as a mark of respect.

Still, as much as he had been glad for Morgan's encouragement, the person Reid most wished he could hear from was Gideon. Only the man himself could speak to the burden of guilt he'd carried, and the way he'd carried it, and what he had let it do to him.

Not that he would. I mean, back then, I guess I didn't expect him to. I was very much the student, and he was very much the teacher. It wasn't the relationship we had. But, maybe, if he'd stayed…..

If he'd stayed, maybe their relationship would have had more of a chance to evolve. Maybe Gideon would have opened up to him, as much as he ever opened up to anyone. Reid remembered, word-for-word, the letter Gideon had left to him, to explain why he'd abandoned the job, and how the most important words had been the ones between the lines. Every time he recalled them, he heard them in Gideon's voice.

"I guess I'm just looking for it again. For the belief I had back in college. The belief I had when I first met Sarah and it all seemed so right. The belief in happy endings."

They were Gideon's last words to him, and they held no wisdom for his present dilemma. Or maybe they did.

That was the first mention he'd made of Sarah since her murder. He was never the same after that. He doubted himself in a way that I had never seen before.

In a way that he hadn't appeared to do, after Boston. That's what struck Reid, in the moment.

He got lost. He said he was looking for something he couldn't find. A belief in happy endings. He mentioned Sarah, and how she'd made it all seem so right. Without her, he couldn't make it right at all.

It didn't take much of a search for Reid to find parallels with his own life. Like Gideon, he'd lost the woman he'd loved to a mentally ill murderer. As with Gideon's loss of Sarah, Reid's loss of Maeve had rocked him on his foundation. And yet, unlike Gideon, Reid had found equilibrium again.

Maybe if he'd stayed with the team, the way I did, maybe he would have found himself again.

Which thought sent Reid into a rumination on exactly how and why he'd managed to stay with the team, back then. He'd been so shattered, and so rudderless, for weeks after he'd lost her. But his friends had reached out to him, repeatedly. He'd not even been cognizant of it, in the beginning, and after that, he'd had to actively ignore them. But they'd been too insistent, and his sense of loyalty had been too great.

But not just to the team. I wasn't just being loyal to the team. I was being loyal to the job, to the people who needed our help. I knew I still had something they needed, that no one else could give.

And thank God that knowledge had brought him back, both to the job, and to the people who cared so much about him. He'd always thought of himself as a loner, and in many ways, he was. But relationship had snuck up on him, and tethered him to the very people who had kept him tethered to himself, in that turbulent time of his life.

Gideon never let himself be tethered at all, except maybe to me. And he knew well enough how to cut that connection, and take off. I wouldn't have a clue how to do it.

Not after the depth of relationship he'd formed with many of the others on the team. He rarely even thought of them that way anymore….as team members. They'd become friends, and family…..and more, and he couldn't even conceive of walking away from them.

I had enough of a taste of it when I was at Milburn. And I found out I'm not as much of a loner as I thought.

Which point had been brought home especially well in recent weeks. Even if there hadn't been those several exchanges with JJ, even if he'd not found himself begging her to stay alive, to stay in his life…..even if not for those things, there had been that other, unexpected, remarkable, exciting thing that had happened. He'd met someone. And she'd 'met' him back. And suddenly, 'relationship' had begun to take on a new context.

He was just beginning to wonder if he should call Max when the phone that was still in his lap sounded again. For a second, he thought it was she, but there was only a number on his screen, and not a name, and she'd long since been worthy of a name on his screen. Reid's recovering brain ran through the area codes that were filed away in some obscure corner, and he realized that the call had to be from a government-issued phone. So all he could do was to answer.

"This is Spencer Reid."

"Good. I hope the fact that you're answering your own phone means you're doing as well as I was told."

It took Reid only a split second to react to the voice.

"Hotch?"

"How are you?"

"I'm…I'm fine. Well, maybe not fine, but I'm awake. Obviously."

There was a smile in the former unit chief's voice as he responded.

"Obvious or not, I'm glad to hear you're recovering."

If he hadn't just had a brain injury, Reid's mind might have parsed the situation more rapidly. As it was, he was slowed by a few seconds, but he still made the leap.

Hotch hadn't contacted him after his ordeal in prison, but Scratch had still been in the wind at that time. He hadn't contacted him directly after he and Garcia had been kidnapped, though he was aware that Hotch and Rossi had spoken about it.

But he's contacting me now. Is it because I was hurt? Or because….

Or because Aaron Hotchner had never quite relinquished the role of mentor to Spencer Reid. And he knew that, who Reid needed more than anything else at the moment, was his mentor.

"Reid?"

Reid shook himself back to the present, and immediately regretted it. His head was pounding.

"Uh…sorry. I'm still here."

"So, again. How are you?"

The younger man took a long moment trying to decide.

How am I?

He'd been assured by Emily that the order hadn't been his to give. He had a hazy memory of JJ saying something similar. And Morgan had just done his best to convince him that he'd done things by the book, that the decision hadn't rested solely in his hands.

But what happens when 'the book' is wrong?

So he gave the only honest answer he could.

"I…..I don't really know how I am."

Hotch took his own pause before responding. "Welcome to the club."

"Are you saying…"

"I'm saying that I've had to learn to live with regrets, just like you're going to have to do."

In true paradoxical fashion, Reid was relieved by his friend's words. Here, at last, was someone willing to let him own the thing for which he felt most guilty.

"Everyone else has been telling me it wasn't my fault."

"They're right. It wasn't. But that hasn't kept you from owning it, has it?"

Reid shook his head again, slowly this time, and then realized that Hotch couldn't see.

"No, it hasn't."

A few thousand miles away, Aaron Hotchner took a deep breath. For the sake of someone he greatly respected, and for whom he had genuine affection, he was about to revisit the single most painful fact of his life.

"Someone we both know very well once gave me some wise words. A felon had threatened to harm innocent people, unless I made a concession. I refused to give in to him, and he followed through on his threat. Several people lost their lives."

A quick rifling through his mental filing cabinet brought Reid to the case, and he felt stricken. He'd 'seen' this particular felon only yesterday.

"Foyet."

Mirroring his younger friend, Hotch nodded, and then realized a verbal response was called for.

"He blew up a bus crowded with passengers, and I was convinced that I could have stopped him, if only I'd made a better choice."

"But, Hotch, you weren't responsible for anything Foyet did!"

Fully aware that they were both remembering what else Foyet had done.

"That's what Rossi said. He reminded me that it was Foyet who was responsible, and that the best thing I could do was to catch him."

Which had happened, but not until Foyet had accomplished the most devastating crime either of the men on the phone could remember.

A long silence ensued, as each of them revisited the events of the past, both near and distant. Finally, Reid emerged to answer.

"I know I'm not responsible for what Everett Lynch did. I know it cognitively. But here…." His palm on his chest….."in my heart? It's like a weight, inside my chest. Six people didn't get to go home to their families because of an order I gave. Even if I just transmitted it, it was still my voice that sent them in there."

"But it wasn't you who set off the blast. Are we clear on that?"

"I know that. Just like you knew you didn't put a bomb on that bus. But you still felt the guilt of it, didn't you? Isn't that what you just told me?"

The older man conceded. "I did. But Rossi was right. I felt guilty because I assumed I had the power to stop him. It was hubris. I never had that power. And you didn't either."

Fifteen years ago, Aaron Hotchner would never have believed he'd have such parallel life experiences with the young genius Jason Gideon had recruited to the BAU. But both men had been single-minded in the pursuit of serial killers. Both men had lost the woman they'd loved to one of those killers. And now they both shared in bearing unwarranted guilt for the deaths of innocent others.

"I saw him."

Having been lost in memories of the past, it took Hotch a moment to register Reid's words.

"You saw….who did you see?"

Pause. "I saw…I saw Foyet." Hurrying to add, "It was in the 'in-between'. When I was unconscious. I had…..it was more than a dream….I had an experience, I guess. One of the people I saw there was Foyet. He spoke to me."

It was only through years of practiced control of his emotions that Hotch managed to suppress a gasp.

Or maybe, not quite.

"Hotch? Are you all right?"

George Foyet's former nemesis swallowed back bile. "I'm fine."

In his hospital room, Reid's recovering brain began to process the obvious subtext to this most recent exchange. He knew Foyet had changed the trajectory of Hotch's life, just as he knew that Hotch had ended that of Foyet's life. Still, it felt like there was something more….

So he ignored Hotch's assurance, and pressed his question. "What is it?"

There persisted a long silence as Hotch gathered himself.

"I saw him, too."

Now the silence was on Reid's end. He wondered if he'd heard correctly.

"You…did you say that you saw him, too?"

"When I had that emergency surgery. You remember…"

Reid absolutely remembered. They'd been in the middle of briefing on a case when their unit chief had collapsed, and all of them had found difficulty in concentrating on the task at hand.

Not unlike when we were called out after Haley's funeral.

And both episodes had occurred because of damage inflicted by Foyet.

"How…..are you saying you had your own 'in-between' experience?"

"Something like yours, I think. It didn't feel like a dream, but I knew it had to have been, because there were so many strange things that happened."

"That's how it was for me, too. I was in the BAU, but it was like no one could see me. The only person who talked to me was Director Strauss, until somehow I ended up in my apartment with Foyet. It was like an out of body experience, because I was looking at myself lying on the floor."

"What did Foyet want?" Feeling strangely in need of the information.

"He didn't want anything, except to taunt me, which is what he did. But then….then I saw Maeve. She was in my apartment, just sitting on my couch."

The parallels were striking. Reid had seen the person Hotch considered the embodiment of evil, and he'd also seen the woman he'd loved, and lost. As had Hotch.

"It was …I almost didn't want to go back, you know? I mean, actually didn't want to go back. But then she made me see how much I have in my life that's worthwhile, and all of the things that I love about living, and the ways I still have to contribute…and the next thing I knew, I was back."

More parallels. Hotch had wanted to stay with her, but Haley had shown him all of the things that were still precious in his life. Still, he hadn't wanted to leave her, and she'd virtually pushed him back into time.

Still as taciturn as ever, Hotch didn't choose to share the details of his own experience. But he did ask a question, in an overt acknowledgement of his respect for Reid's wisdom.

"Why do you think Foyet was there?"

Again, needing to know. It had been years since his 'in-between', and he chewed on it endlessly. And still, he hadn't yet digested all of it.

Although he was still unraveling his own experience, Reid did have a theory.

"I think the whole thing was something like in Dante's Divine Comedy, where he's escorted through heaven and hell and purgatory. But I figured that happened to me because, you know…medieval literature. It's been ingrained in me, since my childhood. Still, if it happened to you, too….maybe not."

He couldn't see Hotch's smile, but he knew it would be there. Hotch was more of a non-fiction history kind of guy.

Hotch went with Reid's theory. "So, are you saying Foyet was there as my escort through hell?"

"That's the only thing I can come up with. For me, he's the embodiment of evil. You know me, I can always find a place where someone lost their footing in life, or some reason why they've done the things they've done. I've never been able to do that with Foyet."

That sounded reasonable enough to Hotch, considering the unreasonableness of this entire conversation.

"And Haley?" Forgetting that he'd not shared that part yet. "Was she my escort through heaven?"

Now it was Reid's turn to be struck by the parallel.

"Haley was there?" Not wanting to be intrusive, but needing to know. "Did she send you back, too?"

"She was there, and ... I will never understand this, but she was friendly with him."

"With Foyet?"

"Like nothing had ever happened between them. Like none of it mattered."

Reid was quiet a moment, before offering a thought. "Maybe it doesn't matter, there. Maybe we learn how to let go."

Across the country, Hotch closed his eyes in silent prayer. Please let me learn how to let go.

"I can only hope so."

Reid returned to his question. "Did Haley send you back? Was it like it was for me, with Maeve?"

"She sent me back. I'm remembering more of it now. We weren't in the BAU or our home. We were in some movie theater, watching films of Jack, and Beth. And the marquee read, 'Decisions, Decisions'."

Reid pondered that for a moment, then sighed.

"I'm not sure I actually decided. It was almost like Maeve decided for me."

"And Haley, for me. Maybe they know something we don't."

"Maeve showed me that there was more here for me to do, and more for me to live."

"That was pretty much the message I got from Haley. I'm thinking maybe we should listen to them."

Reid chuckled. "It's not like we have any other choice, right? So I guess I'll have to see what else there is for me to do."

Which reminded Hotch of something else about which he'd been briefed. If their lives continued to prove parallel in this regard as well, then there was a bit more advice for Hotch to share.

"Forgive me if this is too personal, but…..did I hear that you may have met someone?"

The short pause before Reid's response was telling.

"Um….well, yes. I met someone. In the park. We're still getting to know each other, but…"

"Do you mind if I ask if Maeve gave her approval? While you were in the in-between?"

Miles away, Reid shook his head. "We didn't talk about her. Not at all. I didn't tell Maeve, and she didn't bring her up."

Hotch took that in. Haley had seemed to know about Beth, and she'd approved. And still he hadn't wanted to leave her. He wondered if Reid had felt the same.

"Did seeing Maeve change the way you feel about….what is her name?"

"Her name is Max. And…. I don't know. To tell you the truth, Hotch, I don't know how I feel about having a relationship right now. I mean, I really like her, she's great, and I like spending time with her. But sometimes I think...there's been a lot...there's just been too much going on…"

Cutting himself off there. He couldn't very well tell Hotch about JJ.

"I think I might need to just take a deep breath for a little bit."

"Understood. I just thought I would ask, because my experience was different. Haley encouraged me to move on with Beth. She said I needed to live my life with the people who were still in it. So that's what I've been doing."

"You think Maeve would have said the same thing to me?"

"Didn't you say she asked about the things that you love? It sounds to me like she wanted you to have happiness."

In the context of this conversation, it struck Reid that he hadn't mentioned Max at all, when he'd told Maeve the things that he loved. Nor JJ.

"I hear you. I guess I still have a lot to figure out."

"Well, the first thing you need to do is heal, and it sounds like you'll have some time to do it. Emily said the team would be standing down for a while. You've all been through quite a bit."

"Did she tell you anything else?"

"Such as?"

"Why we're standing down?"

"I assumed it was for you and Rossi to heal, but she wasn't specific. All she actually said was that it would be a while before you all went wheels up."