I took this thing down to edit it. I didn't realize my breaks weren't showing up... I didn't change anything else though.
Beta'd by: the-vampire-act
I don't own anything...at all
I wanted to say thanx to those who reveiwed this... so THANK YOU! :D
"You do know that it wasn't your fault." The voice sounded distant even though its owner was sitting in the leather seat adjacent to his.
"Wasn't it?" Dr. Spencer Reid wasn't usually this melodramatic, but given the current situation, he felt it was justified. Not justified, he thought slowly, mentally correcting himself, but it wasn't unreasonable.
If only he had been smarter….Spencer winced at the thought; his intelligence was what had messed them up, not the lack of intelligence. He had read over their partial profile, and in a rare case of overestimation, he had completely misjudged their UnSub. The team had been working on the case for four days; they were all more than frazzled, so when Spencer had made the suggestion they all just assumed he was right. They had trusted him.
Needless to say, he had been horribly wrong. Because of him they wasted an entire day and even had caused of the local officers to get shot. He remembered with a wry smile that he wasn't supposed know that. The cop had been fine, but he wouldn't be walking on his own for a while. Luckily, the UnSub finally screwed up and they were able to bring him in. Thankfully, there hadn't been anymore victims.
"It was an honest mistake." Gideon's usual 'matter of fact' tone did little to ease his irritation, and when Jason placed what he was sure he felt was a comforting hand on his shoulder, Spencer felt like screaming. His jaw tensed reflexively, and the older man let his hand fall back into his lap.
If Morgan had caused a problem like that... Reid thought idly, closing his eyes and leaning back against the plane's cream-colored headrest. The cool leather did wonders for his headache, and he was finally able to let his thoughts wander. It wasn't that the team had blamed him, but just the opposite. They had all claimed the fault- even Hotch.
Eventually, the team all agreed that they were tired and shouldn't had accepted his observations without reasonable cause and…. Well, he should have known better.
XxXxXxX
Jason was worried. He had been working with the FBI for over 12 years now, and he knew by now what happened when you took cases too personally. The key to excelling at the job was to care during the case and leave it on your desk at the end of the day. His brilliant Spencer, his protégé, was suffering because no one had ever taught him that even geniuses could make mistakes.
It really hadn't been that bad. Jason had told him to try to find the UnSub's primary location using his killing zone. Spencer had followed precedent right up until the end. He had been in the middle of spouting information at the team- something to do with a cold case from back in the fifties- when he had stopped in the middle of his sentence and started writing on the legal pad located on the wooden table in front of him. He wrote for a solid minute before walking over to projection board toward where their map was currently being displayed. He made a few quick adjustments and started circling things and connecting dots. The team had watched in mild amusement-they had seen this many times before. They didn't bother asking for any explanation since they knew one would be provided as soon he was finished. Sure enough, after a few moments of intense scribbling, Reid turned around with triumphant smile. The long-awaited explanation soon followed even though no one was completely sure they understood it.
They had gone with it though, and the next morning they released the police force a very inaccurate profile. Morgan and Elle had watched a vacant house for a full six hours before Hotch called them back. They went back to the profile and took Reid's intelligible scrawls down. Jason spent the next hour reworking the profile to get the proper location, and he had just finished when the sheriff came in to inform him that the man had been caught and that they could go back home. The sheriff, Ronie Patterson, wasn't a pleasant man to deal with when things in his small town weren't fine, and trying to get any information from him was usually like trying to get water from a stone. However, that afternoon, he had been positively chatty, reminding the team every few seconds that they had barely been more than an inconvenience to the force and that if that last girl's body hadn't been over the Nevada border they wouldn't have been there at all.
Reid had been silent the whole time, his only reaction being a small wince every time the inaccuracy of the first profile was brought up. After a while he had just ducked his head low enough to keep his hair in his hazel eyes and kept going, helping pack the case files into their corresponding boxes and then silently disappearing back into his hotel room to repack his stuff. Jason had been busy gathering as many pertinent details as possible, and he had eventually found out about one of the deputy's getting shot. He had asked if that information could be kept from the young agent, and the request had been met with a surprising understanding. Luckily, they had been able to spare him that much more guilt.
He knew Spencer was an adult. Intellectually speaking, he had probably been an adult since he was about seven years old or possibly even younger. His mother had checked out before he had hit nine, and Gideon knew after that he had mostly raised himself. Knowing these facts didn't stop Gideon from feeling the ever pressing need to take care of his subordinate. If anything, knowing them had increased it. It made him want to protect him from the few things he didn't know about- the things you only learned from painful experience.
XxXxXxX
Spencer woke with a start; his heart was pounding and his palms were sweaty. His nightmare still clung onto the edge of his thoughts. He shook his head in attempt to irrationally dislodge the images from his head. Checking his watch, he saw that he had only been sleeping for about an hour. It was a nine-hour flight and everyone else was either still asleep or reading. Gideon was still sitting beside him, a book with its pages laying down on his chest with his eyes closed. He thought back over his now fuzzy dream. They had been on another case, and he had made a mistake and somehow managed to kill everyone- except Gideon. But when he had tried to talk the older man, he had just started screaming at him, saying it was his fault and that he was never right.
Rubbing his hand over his face, Spencer told himself that his dream was impossible at best and ridiculous at its worst. He started when he heard the unmistakable whispering sound of a page being turned beside him.
"I thought you were asleep." The words burst out before he could stop them, and he realized that they sounded more like an accusation than a question. "Sorry."
Jason carefully marked his page before turning to face Spencer. "It's okay. I was thinking, not sleeping."
Spencer nodded silently. He turned to stare out of the window for a few seconds before he spoke again.
"I know that I just made a mistake and that logically no one person can ever be fully be responsible for a situation, but-"
"But you still feel responsible."
"Yeah." He turned to face his mentor, blinking back unshed tears. " I just wanted to know if it ever ... " He trailed off despondently, rubbing at his eyes tiredly, "Never mind."
"Spencer," Gideon waited until he had turned back to look at him. "It does get better."
