A.N. Post-ep 14x15, 'Truth or Dare'.

Mirror Image

He stood before the mirror, staring.

Staring.

Almost always before, he'd stared at the image of a man apart. A man with great intelligence, but few friends. Great responsibility, but no one with whom to share the burdens of it. Great capacity to love, but a sometimes crushing loneliness.

Tonight, he stood before the mirror and saw someone else. He saw a man, loved by a woman.

It wasn't the first time he'd seen that image. It had happened once in his past. Transiently, oddly. That time, there had been a sense of wonder, almost disbelief. A sense of promise. All of which had evaporated far too quickly, and tragically. After that time, he'd not looked in the mirror for a great many days.

But, tonight, he once again saw a man loved by a woman. And he was changed.

He'd been blindsided, at the time, not so much by the words she'd said as by the fact that she'd said them.

She thought she was going to die. She thought we were both going to die, together. If not for that, she would have made something up, I'm sure of it.

She'd started out that way. She'd engaged their unsub as a means to distract him, to buy some time for the team to do what the team always did. But the man had been too volatile, and they'd lost control of the situation. Only Reid had known that he was near to freeing himself, and only Reid had known that he was wearing an ankle holster. All JJ had known was that the unsub had just fired wildly at her best friend when he'd been dissatisfied with the 'truth' she'd given him.

Best friend.

Partner.

She was both of those things to him, and had been, for better than a decade. And he'd been the same to her. But they'd also been that unstated 'something more' to one another. It had been JJ whose image he'd held on to, throughout his time in prison. JJ to whom he'd entrusted the care of his mother. It had been JJ's embrace he'd accepted, as he'd sought to ease the pain of losing Maeve. It had been JJ who'd seen him completely splayed open in his battle with Cat Adams, JJ who'd seen him at his worst, and still managed to love him.

And it had been Reid to whom JJ had entrusted the love and stewardship of the two people most precious in her life. It had been Reid to whom she'd confessed the fact of her miscarriage. Reid who'd seen her anguish, and confronted it, and absorbed the misdirected emotion of it . Reid who'd pushed her to confront the source of that anguish.

Best friend.

Partner.

Something more.

'I thought you should know.'

He had known. Of course he had. He'd felt it, just as he was sure she had. Not that he hadn't doubted, at times, along the way. Not that he hadn't actively tried to doubt. He'd thought it would be easier than the alternative.

She'd tried to tell him she'd been lying, but he knew better. He didn't even need to know her 'tells' to be certain. He only had to know her.

Reid's focus on the man in the mirror blurred, as his mind traveled back fourteen years, to his first memory of her. He smiled to think that it hadn't actually been forged on the day they'd first met.

She'd been the embodiment of everything he'd learned to avoid in the opposite sex. He'd been victimized more than once by a beautiful, intelligent female. Despite his pubescent hormonal attraction to them, he'd determined that they were creatures to be avoided.

I don't think I even let her imprint on my brain for a few weeks.

But she'd broken him down, with a cheerful smile and unexpected kindness. The day she'd brought in that birthday cake for him, and Gideon had given him those tickets, and had encouraged him to ask her to go with him….

That was the first time I'd ever asked anyone out. And, after it was over, I thought it might well have been the last.

His social skills had been too sorely underdeveloped, and hers too finely honed. The date hadn't exactly been a disaster, but it had been awkward enough to have become part of the shared trauma upon which some friendships are built.

So had the work they'd done, so often side-by-side, under the tutelage of Aaron Hotchner and Jason Gideon. They'd seen and heard things most people would shudder to see and hear, each of them for the first time. They'd laughed together, and cried alone, and bit by unseen bit, they'd forged a relationship that neither of them had ever quite tried to categorize. They'd just accepted it, and enjoyed it, and, gradually, treasured it.

He'd grown into his maturity in the BAU, sometimes embarrassingly so, in front of the people he called colleagues. He'd also succumbed to the trauma he'd suffered at the whim of a demented unsub, and his desperate desire to ease the pain. That had happened in front of his colleagues, too.

The latter had so damaged his self-esteem that, no matter his burgeoning maturity and acquired social skills, he'd been unable to even conceive of being in a relationship. Unable to conceive of being in the relationship he'd begun to fantasize about. He'd simply cared for her too much to foist himself upon her, even if she would have had him.

He'd barely begun the process of recovery when she'd begun to see Will. When she'd still been seeing him a year later, and certainly, when there had been Henry, Reid had let go of the fantasy. But he'd not let go of the love. He'd allowed it to remain as a source of warmth, and nurturing. He'd realized how much it had transformed him when she'd looked past his failings, and shown her trust in him, by asking him to become Henry's godfather. He'd marveled, at the time, that despite his love for her, he still had such a deep well of it to bestow on the tiny, squirmy infant.

But it hadn't been until he'd fallen in love with another woman that he'd fully realized how spacious his heart was. Ever the analyst, he'd concluded that the acts of loving and receiving love had expanded the virtual chambers, and made it possible to welcome someone new without having to evict any of those already residing there.

He wondered if JJ had experienced something similar.

She said she's always loved me. Not that she 'used to'. She does. Even if she tried to take it back.

Which he'd known she would do. Which he'd known she would have to do. Even if she still loved him, even if he could find his way back to loving her as he once had. As he'd never completely stopped doing, if he was completely honest with himself. He'd found a way to love her differently, without loving her less. But, just maybe, that was because there remained a remnant of the kind of love he'd felt before. Or, just maybe, more than a remnant.

There was no question of what would happen now. He'd already told her.

Everything's okay.

And it would stay that way. If he looked at it rationally, nothing had really changed. She was still committed to her marriage and her family, he was still too caring of his godsons to even want anything to jeopardize that, let alone to be the vehicle behind it. He knew he loved her, in many complex ways, just as he had before. She knew she loved him, just as she had before. Looking at it rationally, nothing had changed.

Except everything.

Now that she'd said it, even if he hadn't reciprocated aloud, now that it was in front of them, it had potential power over them. It could insert itself into every conversation, every decision, every nuance of every interaction. It could turn shared smiles into averted eyes, deep conversations aloft into lonely flights home from whatever human disaster they'd been called to. It had the potential to rob them of the deep affection they'd substituted for romantic love. And Reid couldn't have that.

So he'd allowed her to lie to him, and retract what she'd said. To disguise it as an attempt to delude their unsub, and not acknowledge it as the revelation of her heart.

But their eyes had told them the truth. Just as his were, now, as he continued to stare into the mirror.

He was looking at a man who was valued, and loved, not for what he could do, but for who he was. Not for what he could give her, because he could give her nothing, but just for being himself, even when she knew all of the most ugly parts of him. He was looking at a man who knew how to love her in the same way.

He was looking at a man, who was loved by a woman, whom he loved.

And he was changed.

A.N. I never thought this would actually be canon. (Well, truthfully, and if I twisted my head just right, I'd often thought it already was canon, even if unstated.)

Unlike many, I believe the characters maintained their integrity, and I believe they will continue to do so. Feelings are one thing, actions another.

For now this is a one shot. If I can get into JJ's head, we may get a chapter from her POV.