Disclaimer: I, Bren Gail, do not own Criminal Minds. The title of this story was named after a Laslo Bane lyric.
A/N: This drabble (a story 500 words or less) is a response to one of Bones Bird's Fanfiction Drabble Challenges over on Facebook. The following are the challenge lyrics that inspired this drabble.
"Well I know what I've been told,
You've got to know just when to fold,
But I can't do this all on my own,
No I know, I'm no superman."
- Laslo Bane, I'm No Superman
Know Just When To Fold
When he had felt no guilt for lying to his team, Aaron Hotchner had quietly acknowledged that he was quite near his breaking point, because his utmost strength had become his greatest weakness.
How could he not feel guilt for lying to the people who had become more like family than his own flesh and blood? How was he capable of performing his friends' grief assessments when he knew that the reason for their grief was for naught, no, that he was the reason for their heart wrenching pain? Instead of their anguish making him second-guess himself about the betrayal, it had surmounted the fact that he had succeeded.
Had he perfected the art of concealing his emotions so thoroughly that he could no longer distinguish what he truly felt? Had he told himself and others so many lies that he had started to believe them? Had he turned into an uncaring and cold man like his father before him as Haley had once accused him of becoming?
It had taken seven months of continuous dishonesty and betrayal as well as reassignments, a quick homecoming, and a metaphorical resurrection before the truth of what he had done became common knowledge throughout both the team and Bureau. Yet, it had taken another month after the seven before the walls that he had built around him had finally crumbled and the remaining jagged pieces waited for one person to pick them up and put them back together, but would she know how?
If she did, would she still want to?
He desperately hoped that she did, because he could no longer deny himself the truth that he needed help, that he needed her to know how to love him well, because no one before her had succeeded, yet how could he blame anyone of them for failing when he himself had failed first.