"Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime." Maximilien Robespierre
For all his intelligence, his degrees, his talent, Spencer Reid was still very much a child. The team, the 'adults', sometimes forgot this. He hadn't grown up the way they had, he'd been forced into maturity and now, in the safety of the friendships they provided, he was allowed to try something very close to a childhood again.
So, they smiled and let him, watching in amusement as he performed "physics magic" for them or came in to the office with Halloween masks. They chuckled when he tried to make jokes and they really didn't mind when he talked about science fiction as much as they said they did.
They allowed him a second shot at childhood, but they didn't seem to realize it. They didn't notice that their job affected him more, that he looked at everything with a child-like wonder he had never lost, absorbing everything like a sponge. They failed to notice his innocence until it was almost too late to save it.
Almost too late happened about 100 miles out of Sacramento, California, in Mendocino National Park. After three days of searching for little girls who had gone missing over the past year, they found them. Specifically, Reid found them. When they found him, he was sitting in the rain, under a tree where he had found one little girl.
There were dozens of them, evidenced only by their remains, ravaged by the weather, animals and time. The most recent victim was still recognizable. She and Reid were under a redwood, Reid was quiet. He'd been quiet when he'd called, he was quiet while they counted bodies, he was quiet as they were put into body bags.
They never noticed.
When they were on the plane ride home, Reid sat silently while the others slept until something broke inside him. Then, the tears started to fall. Tears for the little girls, tears for their parents. Tears for the people they'd found before and even more for the people he knew they never would.
He cried.
Hotch woke to the noise and quickly made his way to the young team member's side.
"Reid, Reid, what's wrong?" Reid didn't answer, couldn't, not through all the tears. Hotch's mind flashed back to the look on Reid's face when they found him in the woods. He'd seen that look so many times and had never bothered to catalog it.
Reid was hurting, had been hurting. They were profilers and they had missed it. Reid was a genius and he had hidden it.
"Reid, it's ok. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He pulled him to his chest and rocked him as Reid clung to him, crying into his chest. Hotch whispered words of comfort, not knowing what else to do. He pressed a fatherly kiss to the top of Reid's head and held him, but it did nothing to stop the tears.
"Reid, I need you to calm down, ok?" He asked gently. Reid couldn't respond. He couldn't hear past the screams of the dying, couldn't see through the stains of their blood. He couldn't catch his breath, couldn't choke down enough air.
Hotch shook him a little.
"Reid! Reid, you need to breathe, ok?" He rubbed Reid's back, feeling helpless as the genius drew a gasp before crying harder.
"What's going on?" A sleepy voice grumbled. Hotch looked up, instinctively shielding Reid. "What's wrong?" Rossi walked over, sitting down on the other side of Reid.
"He's…He's hurting." Rossi watched as Reid tightened his grip on Hotch's arms. "I should've noticed before…" Both men looked down sharply as Reid's breath hitched into another wave of sobs.
"Reid. Reid, you're alright." Rossi attempted to comfort, squeezing his boney shoulder.
"Spencer, look at me." Reid ignored him, shaking as he held tightly to Hotch. "Spencer, please." Rossi shook his head.
"Just let him be." Hotch nodded, rocking Reid as he crumbled in his arms, broken and hurt. He'd never seen anyone cry like this and, to be honest, it terrified him. Sure, he could handle serial killers and psychopaths, but Reid like this was heartbreaking.
He pressed another kiss to the top of his head, feeling the sweaty heat that radiated off of him.
"He really is much younger than we treat him." Rossi observed, reaching out and smoothing Reid's hair, unable to not try to comfort him.
"But he seems so much older. He knows so much."
"But no amount of knowledge can stem the pain of what we see. It makes it worse. We see it all, but he's analyzing it. It gets trapped in his head."
"I know."
Any other day, they would have felt rude talking about Reid as though he wasn't there. But right now, with him breaking down before them, they knew he wasn't really with them. He was at hundreds of crime scenes, revisiting them. He was watching his mother lose her mind in front of him, watching his father walk out the door. He was tied up to a chair, tied up to a goal post.
No, Spencer Reid was many places, but he was not with them.
"I can't imagine going through what he's gone through." Hotch mumbled, frowning as Reid coughed on a sob and rubbing his back absentmindedly.
"We all go through things that others find unimaginable. It does seem like Reid has had more than his fair share though."
They waited together until the sobs died down to whimpers and the whimpers faded away to a tenuous slumber.
When he awoke again, Rossi had moved back to his chair but Hotch was still with him, arms wrapped around his middle as they both lay on the couch, having slumped over at some point. The young doctor shifted a little and the movement woke Hotch.
"Reid? You awake?" He said quietly.
"Yeah." Reid's voice was hoarse and hesitant.
"Do you want to talk?"
"Kind of."
"What do you want to talk about?" Reid squirmed until he was facing Hotch, unaware of their awkward position.
"I'm sorry for…losing it like that." Hotch shook his head. "And I wanted to say thanks. I…I've never had anyone who was really there for me, I guess. My dad, he was gone when things got bad and mom…she had her own problems."
"Reid…"
"And in school, well, you know."
"You can always talk to us, Spencer. We'll listen. Anyone on the team." Reid blushed.
"You guys see the same things and-"
"No. Everyone processes things differently. You see something different. You work out all the science behind a wound or you're thinking of something related to it. You make connections between things." He lifted Reid's chin so they were eye-to-eye. "And while that makes you an excellent profiler, we both know that making connections like that is a good way to remember something."
"I just wish I was like you guys." Hotch shook his head.
"No, no, don't. You're fine. You're great at what you do. We wouldn't be as good of a team without you." Reid was quiet for a moment but Hotch didn't think this conversation was over yet. Finally, after a long pause, Reid spoke.
"How do you forget? I see them, all of them, every time I close my eyes. The nightmares came back and…I don't know what to do." He sounded lost.
"I'm sorry, Reid. Everyone gets nightmares though. I used to."
"Yeah?" Hotch smiled sadly.
"Yeah. The first year I worked with the BAU, it was terrible. I drank more coffee than you."
"What did you do?" Reid's trusting eyes looked up at his boss with sincerity.
"I made myself think of the people we saved. I imagined them living their lives happily. That's all. It made it easier to fall asleep." Reid nodded.
"Sometimes…after a bad case, like this one, I'm scared to close my eyes. Scared of what I'll see." He admitted, cheeks coloring slightly.
"Close your eyes." Hotch said.
"What?"
"Close your eyes now." Reid obeyed without asking questions and for some reason the fact that he was so trusting made a sensation of guilt cross Hotch. Was he taking advantage of Reid's current state?
"What are you thinking about now?" He whispered as he pressed his lips to Reid's, smiling as they responded after a moment. The kiss was chaste. When he pulled away Reid smiled at him and leaned his head on Hotch's chest again.
"Thank you." They fell back asleep, not waking 'til the plane touched down.