Author's Note: Three things - First, this is in no way related to The Keeping of Words, another Criminal Minds story I've been writing. Second, I have no claim of ownership to Criminal Minds. And third, if you haven't finished Season 10, I strongly recommend you turn back now. Here there be spoilers.
The swan is white without spot, and it sings sweetly as it dies, that song ending of its life.
-Leonardo da Vinci-
The call comes in the evening. There have been many just like it, at odd hours, Hotch or JJ notifying him that he's needed at Quantico. This one is different though. Because even in the haze of sleep, even though Hotch is trying not to say the name, he recognizes the address. And once he does, his lungs stop working for several seconds.
It can't be right. It can't. Can it?
[ || ]
The road is dark, paved with rustling trees and dirt barely illuminated by his headlights and the car bumps over the terrain. The woods seemingly go on forever, but all too soon they come to an abrupt halt, a small clearing occupied by a wooden cabin.
He's been here before, out in the middle of nowhere to seek something he knows he won't find. It was dark then too, but there weren't other cars before. He's the last one this time, not the first. Well, possibly the last. There are lights on in the cabin, another difference. He flicks the headlights off first, then turns off the ignition. The next thing to follow should be the opening of the car door, but he can't, not yet. The beat of his heart a thunder he can't control, hammering in his chest and echoing in the recesses of his brain. Even his lungs find drawing breath to be difficult.
It's inevitable that at some point he's going to have to leave the vehicle. There's no way to hide here forever, trapped between past and future. The car is like Schrödinger's box, and he supposes that makes him the cat. As long as the door is shut, he's trapped between knowing and not knowing, both dead and alive.
No, that's not right. Gideon is the cat. Both dead and alive, as long he stays in the car. If he doesn't go though, he'll find out some other way, and despite the grudge he's kept for the way his mentor left, he figures he owes at least that much to Gideon, to go inside. He allows himself a small moment of quiet first, one last chance to change his mind and drive way, one last plea to his lungs to get air while they still can.
It's unbearable, the notion of what he might find inside, and his eyes close of their own accord, keeping a sob escaping. I don't want to be here. But he is here, and so are they, and so he finds himself closing one door and pushing open another. Inside the cabin, light glows warm and orange, and every head in the room turns as he enters.
He tell from the looks on their faces that it's not good. Whatever the answer, it's not good. Morgan and Garcia arrive just seconds later, and he hears her voice the question he's not brave enough to ask. "Are you sure?"
The whole world stops spinning as he waits to hear their response. Hotch nods. The world starts spinning again, spinning too quick and he fears he might fall over. "It's Gideon."
It's too much, it's too much, and he turns on his heels to run from the cabin before they can see him cry. If he runs fast enough, maybe he can go back in time and change all of this. Get into the car, drive in reverse, never answer that call. Go back and back, years into the past, far enough back to keep Gideon from leaving, prevent this whole chain of events from happening. The sob is ripped from his throat as his chest feels like its been torn open, and nothing, nothing, not his father's absence or Emily's funeral or Maeve's death has ever hurt this much.
It's enough to leave him doubled over, his knees in the wet dirt, saltwater streaming down his face in floods. It's some strangled combination of screaming and crying, and he's sure that everyone in the cabin can hear but he can't seem to stop. The door opens and shuts, and he barely registers it over the sound of his own thoughts, the damn eidetic memory of his replaying Hotch's voice over and over. It's Gideon it's Gideon it's Gideon it's Gideonit'sgideonit'sgideonit's- his stomach joins the league of body parts betraying him as he heaves into the mud.
"Reid." It's not Gideon, it's Morgan, standing over him with a look of concern. It's all he can do to stand up and try to wipe the tears from his eyes. Morgan starts to say something, then stops, evidently conflicted. "Listen, kid," he says. "I know you're hurting. There's a lot of things I could say to you right now, but none of that is going to change this, and we still have a case to take of. Hotch wants you to come with me to the ME. You think you can handle that?"
A brief nod, and he's soon following Derek to the car, wheels tracing the road in the opposite direction. They drive in silence, neither one knowing what to say. Both are hurting, both are mourning, but grief manifested differently in each person. Each time they lost someone, it was clear that they dealt with loss in different manners – Morgan got angry, Reid withdrew from the world. This case was no different.
[ || ]
They keep him covered, out of respect, and for that he is grateful. Seeing him would be too much, would have unraveled the remaining threads of his sanity and composure. As is he can barely keep it together. Morgan is asking the woman questions, and she's giving him answers but he can't get himself to focus. The world is tuned out as he replays conversations and chess games and letters. Gideon in the office and on the plane and in the field. Gideon, who was there for him when nobody else was – until he was gone too. Gone for good now.
"Did you hear any of that?" Derek is speaking now, the woman is gone, and jolting back into the present is all that it takes to rattle him. "He didn't suffer." That doesn't matter, all that matters is the fact that Gideon is dead. The tears return, and he's instantly embarrassed. Morgan isn't crying, Morgan isn't weak. He can't even pay attention to an autopsy report. Furious with himself, he yanks a tissue from his pocket to wipe the water away, and he's surprised when Morgan doesn't admonish him for crying.
"Listen to me. Listen to me. Sometimes you put up these walls and you block us out, and you can't do that, not right now. We need you kid. Gideon needs you." Right now he needs Gideon. But his mentor is gone, and how many more people is going to lose? How many more people will he have to say goodbye to? The world isn't fair, it's a cruel and callous place, allowing people like Karl Arnold to live out his days in a comfortable cell, while people like Jason Gideon are gunned down in cold blood.
Morgan steps out of the room, giving him one last moment with Gideon. What is he supposed to say? What is he supposed to do? He isn't sure. The last time he saw his father, he accused him of murder and then apologized in shame. William Reid left him feeling abandoned. He knew when his dad left, it was for good. The last time he saw Gideon, he had no idea it was going to be the last time. The resentment he feels now isn't for Gideon's departure, but for his absence. For the goodbye and the forgiveness he never had the opportunity to speak. He has this moment, though.
"I'm sorry," is all he can manage at first. "I'm sorry I never came to see you. And I forgive you for leaving." He reaches for the tissue again, sniffing, his voice a low whisper. "I understand now, why you left. This job… I'm starting to think you were right all along. I wish I could've gone with you, eight years ago." Eight years of soul-sucking crimes and nightmares, and for what?
How much longer, how many more cases, before he too vanishes in one way or another?
[ || ]
Searching the drawers of a bedroom, his fingers find a small book, and he knows instantly what it is. He's seen it so many times before, in an office, on a jet, in short glimpses between the horrors of some of their worst cases. Once his hand closes around it, he's hesitant to pull it out from the nightstand drawer. It's one of the few tangible things he has left of Gideon, and acknowledging that fact only adds to the pain. Ironic that his mentor left him with only words – the letter, the notebook, the years of lessons and lectures – when all he has ever wanted is someone who can actually stay.
Deciding he deserves a few more minutes alone with those words, he takes a seat on the bed, bedsprings creaking beneath the mattress. Flipping through the pages is like going back in time. Cases of the past, those he helped to save, those he recognizes only from stories, and those he's never even heard of. It's only when he reaches the last page that he begins to recall exactly what Gideon's last letter said, beyond the part where he said goodbye.
Sarah. Her picture stares back at him, and finally he can imagine how Gideon must've felt to find her murdered that night. The course of love never did run smooth for the BAU team. Maybe all he wanted was to find some peace out in the cabin, to feel happy again. Isn't that what they all want? What they all deserve?
After composing himself again, Reid goes to join the others, still staring at Sarah's page. "I guess I'm just looking for it again. For the belief that I had back in college. The belief that I had when I first met Sarah and it all seemed so right," he recites, the photo of the woman bringing to mind that letter, left in this very cabin seven years ago. JJ and Kate make remarks, but all he can do is stare at the small notebook in his hands.
It isn't fair for Gideon to ask this of him. Why did he have to come here, searching for an old friend only to find a mess he couldn't clean up, a puzzle he couldn't explain? The place has become a conundrum, it's an ending to a story he thought still had chapters left. He's always hated endings. Goodbyes. Even when that person is headed for better things, there's something inherently sad about them.
It's hard to think back to his own college days, back at CalTech. Reid doesn't know what it's like to have that wide-eyed college idealism. Being fifteen, he was still trying to figure out who he was and what he wanted, deciding what he believed was another thing entirely. But Gideon knew that feeling so clearly, some sort of golden nostalgia that drew him away from the BAU, from the small family of profilers who never had the chance to properly say goodbye.
Bitterly, he wishes he could go back, wishes he could find something like that. He wants to go back to a time before the scars and the fears. It's hard to believe sometimes, that there was such a time, when he didn't know what it was like to sob over the body of a friend, or how quickly one could become addicted to a drug. There were once nights he could sleep without being plagued by bad dreams, visions of everyone he's lost.
The way he sees it, there are three kinds of people in this world. Some people get to walk away. Some people are taken away. And some are left behind, with nothing but empty spaces where hope used to reside.
[ || ]
Rossi asks him to accompany him on a trip to the old Behavioral Sciences building. With nothing else to do, and little desire to stay at the cabin, he agrees. The drive isn't too long, nor too conversational. Dave seems to understand he needs to process things, and he's grateful for that. When he does finally open up a bit, Rossi tries to reassure him. But it's hard to believe that the empty space he feels, the gaping void, is ever going to heal. How can he possibly find something else to fill it with?
It's been two years since Maeve's death, and he still feels that loss so acutely, still hasn't found anyone who loves him that way, or who he's able to love that way. He's still not sure what hurts more – to believe there's nobody else out there who he could adore that way, or to consider that maybe he's the problem, that Maeve Donovan was the only girl in the world who would want to be with him. Either way, it's terribly lonely.
When the reach the building, he becomes aware of the fact that Rossi is trying to make him laugh. Joking about the smell, offering to find him some dehydrated food, and poking fun at the unit's original nickname. The "BS" Unit. Regardless of title, Reid is still impressed. It's incredible to see where the department began, the early days of profiling. It's not hard to imagine younger versions of Rossi and Gideon holed up in this basement, searching for answers in serial offenses, and likely driving each other crazy in the process every now and then.
Sometimes he thinks he was born in the wrong decade. He would have felt so much more at home in a place like this, among books and files and old things. In the increasingly complicated world of technology, he feels increasingly lost. Maybe back then, he wouldn't have felt have felt like such an outcast. Regardless of his own personal preferences, he knows Morgan is right. He's needed here and now. It's not going to do his team any good to keep wishing for impossible things, and so he grabs a stack of files and gets to work.
[ || ]
They've finally got a name, a location. The whole way there his heart is racing. The girl has to be alive still, he wants that small miracle for Gideon. He also isn't sure how he feels about confronting the man who killed his mentor. Does he want Mallick arrested? Or does he want him dead? The realization that he doesn't quite care about ethics or law right now scares him.
That fear is nothing though, compared to chill that rattles him to the core when he hears a gunshot. Rossi. He's not going to lose two mentors, two family members in the same week, and certainly not to the same person. If there's one thing in this world Spencer Reid hates, it's running, and yet his legs can't seem to carry him fast enough. It's impossible to be prepared for what might be waiting outside in the yard. A fight? A wound? A body?
In the end, it is a body. But not the one he expects. On the ground is Donnie Mallick. David Rossi holds the gun, breathing hard, his grip tense. Hotch is there too, his face blank. The others follow soon after, each of them taking in the scene with their own eyes.
The collective exhale translates to the only thought his mind can form: it's over.
[ || ]
There is a man at the cabin, one whose face is faintly familiar. In his gestures, in his eyes, Reid can see parts of the man's father. Stephen Gideon is somber but stoic in his grief. Who feels the loss the sharpest? Gideon's relative family? Or the figurative one? The family who has chased a monster down in the name of justice. In the name of closure. Now is not the time for comparison though. Now is the time for sharing in the mourning of a death, and the celebration of a life.
There isn't much he knows about Stephen, other than the fact he is Gideon's son, and that the two have hardly spoken in the last ten years. How much does he know about his father? About the people he saved, the lives he changed? How much does understand about the job, and why it was so hard for Gideon to walk away? Though the man knows Rossi best, Dave offers to let Reid hand over one last thing. And so he places the objects into Stephen's palm with the greatest of care, like the treasure they are. The gesture is not lost on him. Two rings, a gold and a silver band. Wedding rings.
His chest aches; that empty space threatening to tear him apart. Perhaps that space was never his to claim in the first place. Perhaps he has no right to feel this way. Gideon has always felt like a father to him, but he already had a son. A child of his own, a family of his own. For all he knows, Gideon never saw him as anything more than just another agent, just someone to train and to play chess with. That thought makes him want to cry all over again.
He feels like a boy once more, like a kid who has been left alone. There's nobody for him to turn to anymore, there's nobody for him to go running to when the world doesn't make sense because it's his job to make sense of it now. But when Stephen meets his eyes, he finds that they hold the same steady strength and wisdom as his father's do – as his father's did. Past tense. And just like that, he's no longer in Virginia.
He is 21 and awkwardly fumbling his way through the academy when a dark-haired man sees something in him that he's never really seen in himself. Potential. He is 24 and Gideon is giving him a pair of tickets to a football team he's never heard so he has an excuse to spend time with JJ. He is 25 and a familiar voice is streaming through a computer speaker, pleading with him to stay alive, promising that he is stronger than Tobias Hankle. That he will not be broken. And then he is broken, and sitting in a dim New Orleans bar and admitting that he can't keep doing this alone anymore, making a deal that he'll never miss another plane again if only Gideon can help him with this insurmountable struggle he's facing.
And then he's driving up the dirt road in the dark, to open a letter addressed only to him. Because Gideon knew, of all the team members, of all his friends, that Spencer would be the one to come looking for him. That Spencer would know where to look. Except he doesn't know where to look anymore. He's not so sure he's ever really known Jason Gideon after all. But when he's 29 he thinks maybe leaving it all behind wasn't such a bad idea after all. At 31 he knows it was a good idea, because he's lost his first love too.
Here he is now, 33 and staring at the only other person who thought of Gideon that way. A father. Reid has never been one for physical touch, but he finds himself hugging this near-stranger, holding on to him in the hopes of comforting and being comforted. To his surprise, Stephen hugs him back.
It lasts only a moment, a quiet acknowledgment of what they each have lost. To the others, it looks something like a reunion between two long lost brothers, reunited by a tragedy. And then it is over. Stephen stays outside with the friends of his father, and Reid escapes inside to pay his respects to his friend. He doesn't want to cry in front of them.
On his way inside though, he hears Stephen speak the few words that change everything.
"He always said you were his family."
So Gideon thought of them – all of them – that way after all. He doesn't know quite how to define that sentence. A consolation? A confirmation? Some things, like family, don't need to be defined though. They only need to be felt. He feels a great many things for Jason Gideon.
Appreciation. Sorrow. Bitterness.
Apology. Forgiveness. Love.
Gratitude.
[ || ]
Inside there is a chess table. If he has learned anything in the last ten years, it is that the world is not always so black-and-white. People are not pawns. There is so much more to life than moves and countermoves. Around every corner, there waits a zugzwang. All victories come at a cost. All games must end.
But just because the game will end, just because there is always the possibility of losing, doesn't mean you should keep from playing. Try again, fail again. Fail better.
He reaches instinctively for the pieces, the metal cold against his fingertips. A knight. That is the one he's chosen. Fitting, for a mighty warrior. At first, all he can do is stare at it, uncertain. Once he is done here, once he walks out the door, he knows he will never be back. This is one of those moments that are defined by before and after. Everything is going to be different now.
In chess, the point is to move forward. Instead he moves the knight back, out of harms way. His last move, in the last game he could ever possibly play with Gideon.
One last, long look at the board. At the cabin where a life came to an end. At the place where he lost the same person twice. It is empty. There is nothing left for him here now.
He swallows hard. "Goodbye, Gideon," he whispers. It's time to travel that road again, this time in the daylight, this time in the opposite direction.
And as he drives, he swears that for just one minute, the cacophony of birdsong in the trees becomes a something of a harmony.
[ || ]
According to Greek mythology, the swan was a bird consecrated to Apollo. Despite being silent during most of their lifetime, they were believed to be musical, and sang chiefly at the approach of their own death. One single, sublime performance; their own funeral song.
He is not sure if he believes the legend, but he would like to believe that an ending can be beautiful, too.