A.N. Whenever I'm in the middle of a long story, I find myself looking for a way to stretch in another direction. In season, it's with timely post-eps. But, during hiatus, I have to turn to the past.

Elephants

Maybe I should have made it official. Maybe, in trying to protect him, I've failed him.

Aaron Hotchner was staring at the file in front of him, seeing nothing but the face of the young man whose job he'd just threatened.

I thought we were doing the right thing. So did Gideon. Why should he pay a price for something forced upon him by someone else?

Except that they'd never talked about it. It had gone unspoken between them….or among them, if he counted the almost certain fact that all the rest of them must have, at the very least, suspected it. What kind of profilers would they be, if they hadn't? But it was also true that only the two senior members of the team had seen the medical report. Only they knew, for certain, that Reid had been drugged.

For all I know, the rest of them don't even realize it started with Hankel. They were undoubtedly aware that his behavior had changed. And they would have known it had to be drug-related. But they might have thought he'd been driven to it as a means of coping. They might have looked upon it as a sign of weakness. It's like we have the proverbial elephant in the room, every time we meet together. And none of us is willing to confront it.

And then he remembered how different, and difficult, Reid had been in the several months following his return to work. He remembered how the others had come to lose faith in their young genius. Prentiss had even said it aloud, according to Gideon, when Reid had obviously blown off an assignment in New Orleans. And he remembered how Gideon, without mentioning anything specific, had said to him, "It's been taken care of."

Today, it had seemed anything but 'taken care of'. Reid had begun to spin out of control, antagonizing local law enforcement and the staff at the school, keeping things from his unit chief. Hotch knew that all of his team held things back, from time to time, wanting to confirm a suspicion before diverting the thinking about a case. But Reid had been certain. It was as though he'd uncovered a piece of physical evidence that pointed him surely in a direction. But it hadn't been physical evidence. It had been his mind. Which, when it's Reid's mind, is just as reliable. And he'd purposely withheld the information from Hotch.

Because he wanted to save the boy. I can't fault him for knowing the kid was almost as much a victim as he was a perpetrator. But Reid put his own life in danger, not to mention all those lives that might have been lost if his plan hadn't worked.

Not that one could actually call it a plan. All Reid had in his bag of tricks was an urgent appeal to whatever remained of Owen's need for human connection. If he'd read the kid wrong….

But, in truth, Hotch had never seen such confidence in Reid. It was as though he'd known the unsub, known his plan, understood….

It wasn't 'as though'. He did understand. I knew he was telling me that, at the school. How being the smartest kid in the class meant you were the only one. What it must have felt like to be misunderstood. No doubt he was bullied in school. He's still bullied now, by some of the people who are supposed to be our colleagues. Of course he would identify with the boy. And, of course, he would try to help him. As he wished he might have been helped, when it was he who was suffering.

Hotch had only Gideon's edited version of Reid's background, filled out minimally by the occasional remark from Reid. He'd been found at Cal Tech. Found. As though he'd been missing, or lost. Hotch reflected on just how accurate a term that might have been.

"He's an unfinished work of art. IQ of 187, eidetic memory. He even told me he reads twenty thousand words a minute. No family to speak of. No real direction. He's ours for the taking. Kid's a genius. Think what he'll bring to the unit."

And that was all he'd shared. It wasn't until Reid had brought his mother to the BAU, when they'd all been threatened by an anguished, guilt-ridden father, that Hotch had learned anything more about the young man's early life. And, having met Diana Reid in the throes of her delusions, he'd begun to understand her son.

But it had diminished his understanding of Gideon, who'd been surprisingly detached from the implications of Diana Reid's sudden appearance, and the state of her mind.

For Hotch, it had been the first really overt chink in the armor of his long time idol. Since then, there had been a great many times when Hotch looked back on the complex relationship he'd had with Jason Gideon.

He was such a complex man. How could our relationship have been anything but?

He'd admired the co-founder of the BAU, and his ability to get into the mind of even the most disturbed of their unsubs. But it was also precisely that ability that frightened Hotch, because it told him that, on some level, Gideon identified with the people they hunted. Identified. As though their character traits were his. As though he could just as easily have been on the other side of the law.

And that's what was disturbing him so much about the behavior of his youngest, this day. Reid had identified with their unsub, in a fundamental, deeply ingrained, way. Couple that with substance-induced impaired judgement, and disaster might loom in the young man's future.

It was why Hotch had alluded to that thing he knew about, but not officially. Knowing about it officially would place both of their careers at risk, because the last thing Hotch was willing to do was to cut his young genius loose. He wasn't about to banish Reid from the FBI, and the only purpose he'd known, if he could help it. And so, he'd gone with his best guess, his stab-in-the-dark that it hadn't really been a movie delaying Reid from their team meeting at the start of this case. And he'd urged him to go back. To find something to ground him, when every fiber in Reid's being was trying to tear him free.

Hotch looked up from the file in his hand, the one he'd been gazing at without really seeing. At the far end of the plane, he saw the back of Reid's head, upright, turned to the window. The young man sat alone, obviously not engaged in anything but deep thought. So Hotch rose again, to pursue what felt so much like unfinished business.

As he moved down the aisle, he passed by Morgan, eyes closed and earbuds in place, recognizing the pose as a defensive measure. Hotch knew the audio player was usually on silent, Morgan using it to fend off discussion of those cases he would rather not discuss.

He passed by JJ, wondering when she would decide to break the news. He'd known it in Haley from the very beginning, even before the at-home test. Which made him wonder if JJ even knew yet. But the profiler gene in him had activated, and he knew it was only a matter of time.

He continued by Emily Prentiss, perhaps the most complex of his team members. He'd been suspect when she'd come to join them, then found her both solicitous and strong. And, most recently, she'd been the only one to call Gideon out on Reid's behavior, however privately she'd done so. She was the kind of woman who intrigued Aaron Hotchner, in a way that he relished unraveling.

Finally, he passed by his old friend and erstwhile mentor. Rossi looked up briefly from his tablet, and Hotch knew immediately that a new book was in the works. The two men smiled at one another, and Rossi offered an approving nod at the business he knew his old friend must be about.

Finally, Hotch made it to the last row of seats, and once again took the one across from Reid. The younger man had seen his superior's image in the window, and smiled apologetically as his unit chief sat down.

"I didn't think we were quite finished."

Hotch kept his voice low, and his brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I thought there was more you wanted to say. Or more that you needed to hear, maybe."

Hotch's eyes roamed the floor of the cabin as he searched for the right response. Not finding it, he went with what he had.

"I'm worried about you."

A soft snort was Reid's immediately reply, followed by, "So am I."

Hotch pressed his case. "You didn't just try to save Owen. You related with him. You identified with him." Please don't turn into Gideon.

Reid hesitated only a moment. After all, he'd already told the story to Morgan today.

"I was him, Hotch. I was the guy…..the kid…. who was humiliated. I was the one who kept trying to fit in, to pretend I wasn't who I was. To trust people who hadn't earned my trust. To delude myself into thinking I could be accepted, one day. How pathetic was that? I didn't even want to be popular. I just wanted to be allowed to be who I was."

Embarrassment colored Reid's neck as he realized how impassioned he'd become. He cast his eyes away, back out into the ether, not daring to make eye contact with the man across from him.

Hotch recognized the moment for what it was. A crucible, of sorts. They would either emerge from it with a bond that tethered them to one another, and to their team, into the unseen future. Or they would separate, too tenuously connected to sustain what the younger man needed. Hotch knew what he wanted to happen, and he sent a quick prayer for the guidance to make it so.

"You're not Owen. You're not like him. You never were."

Slowly, Reid peeled his eyes away from the window, and turned them to Hotch. His plea was evident in the deep brown, the earnestness of his gaze.

"What do you mean? How?" I want to believe you. Help me.

"Owen never learned to love. Not until he met Jordan. You saw it for yourself. His father was hard, and cold. His mother…..he wanted to love her, but he could never be certain of her love in return."

Reid took it in, turned it over in his mind. "That's not what happened to me. I mean, I know what it looks like to the outside world, that my mother was unlovable, and incapable of love, herself. But she wasn't. It wasn't always like that."

"Exactly. I saw it when we met. It was brief and…." He gave what passed for a smile these days. "….it was a little strange. But the love was there. That much was obvious."

Hotch saw his words having an impact, and decided to press the matter. "What happened to Owen isn't what happened to you. He didn't know love until he was nearly an adult. You learned it as a child."

Reid's struggle to find his voice told Hotch all he needed to know. He'd touched the younger man where he needed to be touched. The unit chief leaned forward and spoke once again, into the silence between them. What he was about to say would put both of their careers on the line.

"I know you've been struggling. And I know we can't officially talk about it. Which is why I'm encouraging you to go to those who can talk about it with you."

The eyes that met Hotch's were full…of gratitude, of relief, of unshed tears. Which pushed the older man further.

"But…if it helps to talk to me….. you can. I'm here. It can stay between us. And, if it doesn't, so be it. I don't care what happens afterward. I have yet to meet a young man I admire more than you. And I want to keep it that way."

He watched as Reid swallowed silently, and acknowledged his superior's generosity with the most minute of nods. Then Hotch rose and headed back down the aisle to his seat.

Watching as he passed by, Rossi read his old friend's body language, and nodded in silent, unseen, approval. He'd long since learned that 'the book' was only a set of guidelines. One didn't really need to live one's life accordingly. One could make decisions on their own merit.

After all, he mused, elephants only come in shades of gray.