A.N. Post-ep 'The Bunker' 13X05 (or 06, or whatever) with minimal spoilers for the episode

Protective Custody

He knocked softly on the open door, prompting the owner of the brunette head to look up at him.

Emily put down the pen she'd been using to initial the report, fully attentive. This was the first spontaneous visit Reid had made to her office since he'd returned.

"Hey," she sent a smile his way. "What's up?"

He stood motionless, and tentative, prompting her to stand and move to the other side of her desk.

"Come on in. Is something wrong? Do you need to talk?"

Realizing, even as she said the words, how ambivalent she was about what his answer might be. She longed for him to recover, fully recover, from the trauma imposed on him. And she wished, with all she had, that she might be able to help him in that process. But she was his superior now, not his colleague. There were things she might have to act upon, should he choose to share them.

I could always ignore them, I suppose. I could always pretend he hadn't said them. Just like I pretended he hadn't confessed to me, in Mexico.

She couldn't be sure Reid even remembered that cognitive interview. But she remembered it, because it had been the first time she'd outright lied to another LEO about something a suspect had confessed. Just as it had been the first time she'd had to interview such a dear, dear friend, as a murder suspect.

He'd been so pitifully not himself, so inadvisably compliant, so vulnerable, that she'd been driven to protect him. Her inclination, as a friend, was to protect him still, should he need it. But she was also the Unit Chief of the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. She was the person charged with making sure the team was fit to perform its critically important work. She couldn't sacrifice the others, and especially not the untold numbers of victims and prospective victims, for the sake of one troubled individual, no matter how much she cared about him. And no matter how guilty she felt about his trouble.

She'd gotten so deep into her thought process, that she was taken by surprise when he spoke. And taken even more by surprise, by what he said.

"I ….uh…. I just wanted to check on you. You know, to make sure you were all right."

You wanted to check on me?! She recovered enough to reply to him.

"I'm fine. Why, what were you think…Oh."

She correctly read the look on his face. It wasn't very hard to do, because she'd been holding that same look in memory for the past nine years.

"Yeah," he said. "It reminded me, so I thought it might remind you. I mean, I know it wasn't exactly the same, but….it almost felt like it."

She leaned back to balance on the edge of her desk, while he leaned back against the door jamb.

"You're right, it did. The only big difference was that this unsub physically abducted his victims, while Cyrus accomplished it psychologically."

Reid nodded. "And they both craved the adulation of the people they'd deluded. And those poor kids, in both cases, who'd been born into it, and never knew anything about the real world."

He hadn't meant it as an opening, but Emily saw it that way, and took immediate advantage of the opportunity.

"Sometimes the real world isn't the better place, is it?"

Reid flashed her a look. "I'm all right."

Emily took her time responding, giving him space to qualify his answer. Which he didn't choose to do.

"I'm glad to hear that. I'm all right, too, Spencer. I told you, then, that it had been my choice. It wasn't your doing."

His gaze dropped, as he studied the floor.

"Spencer?"

"It's just…. it didn't even occur to me to admit it, then….that we were FBI, I mean. I thought we would both deny it, and try to convince him that he'd been misinformed."

A small, sad smile curved Emily Prentiss' lips ever so slightly upward. It was so like him, so like the Reid she'd long known and loved, to have to beat a subject to death before he was done with it. He hadn't been ready to let go of his guilt all those years ago. But maybe she could take it from him today. Maybe she could do that much for him, in atonement for all she hadn't been able to do, these past months.

"He wouldn't have bought it. Cyrus was brilliantly intelligent, if more than a bit deranged. Once he'd been told there were FBI agents in there, it resonated with him. I could see it in his eyes. One of us was going to have to play the bad guy. I just decided it would be me."

"But…"

"Spencer. Please look at me." Echoing her plea to him on the plane, following that case. "It just made sense. It was obvious we were going to have to either convince him to let everyone go, or keep him off balance while the rest of the team came up with a plan. The nuns I had in Catholic school might not have been proud of me, but I was totally unprepared to throw Scripture at him, the way I knew you would be able to do."

She had, after all, witnessed it first hand, shortly after joining the team, when Reid had used his proficient knowledge of Scripture to send the team the message that would ultimately lead them to where he'd been held captive.

She'd won his gaze, which was narrowing at her.

"That's why you did it? Because you thought I'd be best positioned to work with Cyrus?"

She did her best to shield her deeper thoughts from him.

"Of course. Why did you think I did it?"

"To protect me."

Of course I was trying to protect you. But the Cyrus thing was also true. I think.

Aloud, she said, "You sound like that would have been a bad thing."

"No. I just …. I guess I get it, now."

"Now?"

He stared off for a while, needing to swallow before he continued.

"You already know that I was assaulted a few times while I was in prison."

"Spencer…."

His raised palm stopped her.

"What I want to say is, that it was my choice."

"What?!"

"It was my choice. Well, not the first time. But, after that, yes. It was stupid, but it was my choice. I thought…. I guess I wasn't thinking clearly, because now it seems so obviously foolish… but I thought I could keep them from hurting one of my friends, if I drew them to come after me."

Now she understood, on several levels.

"Luis Delgado?"

He nodded. "He'd been their target. At first, I think he just looked like an easy one. But then he became their way….Calvin Shaw's way, actually… to send a message to me. But I didn't realize that until it was too late. So I tried to make them angry with me."

Emily studied him for a moment, before giving him a half smile.

"It wasn't quite so terrifying then, was it? Because you felt like you were controlling them."

He nodded. "Yeah. Well, in the moment, it was pretty terrifying. And it hurt like hell. And I do remember thinking how stupid I was, and what if they actually killed me, and…."

"Welcome to the club."

His smile was wry. "I don't remember applying for membership."

She chuckled. "Yeah, well, I don't remember it either. But we're both in it. I don't know that one can do the work we do without risking it."

Her beating at the cult compound hadn't been the worst thing Emily Prentiss had been through. There had also been that other assault, by a man she'd once loved, that had very nearly taken her life.

Reid noticed her brief dip into memory, and discerned where she'd gone.

"I guess every trauma is only relative."

"Yes, it is."

Reid pulled himself away from the wall, preparing to leave. But first, he nailed her with his gaze.

"I was trying to protect Luis."

She knew what he wanted to hear. And he did, after all, deserve her honesty.

"All right. I meant what I said before, about you being in the best position to deal with Cyrus. But, yes, I was also trying to protect you. I'd already watched you being beaten once, by Tobias Hankel. I didn't want you to have to go through something else. So, I guess, technically, I was protecting myself from having to witness it."

Reid stared at her. Nice try.

"It would be ungrateful of me not to thank you. But, Emily... please don't protect me now. I need to either make it, or not, on my own. I don't want to put anyone else at risk. If I'm not a fully functioning, reliable member of this team, I need to trust that you'll tell me that, and pull me if you need to. If I can't see it myself, that is. Will you do that for me?"

For a thousand reasons, and a thousand things that had nothing to do with reason, Emily Prentiss had grown to love Spencer Reid over the years. That special place in her heart pulsed at the courage and nobility he'd just expressed, even if his voice had shaken as he'd expressed it.

Her eyes glistened as she responded with a simple, "I will."

And then she did something totally un-unit chief-like. She opened her arms wide, and her friend of a thousand reasons walked into them, and she hugged him.

"Bet you never did this with Hotch," she teased.

"Bad bet."