Author's note: Thanks to all who reviewed! This story will have 3 chapters.

X X X X

Hotch got to Jessica's house within 15 minutes. On what should have been a twenty minute drive. Well, that didn't count as speeding too much, did it? He barely noticed the front stairs and didn't have to ring the bell...Jessica opened the door for him.

"Can I call you an idiot, again?" She said, arms crossed and a faint smirk on her face.

"Any time." Hotch nervously managed a smile. "Is he, um, still awake?"

"Probably. I don't think he's been sleeping well this past week." She pointed out. Hotch flinched, and she patted his arm. "You're here, Aaron. He needs you. How can you face nut jobs with firearms without blinking, and be brought to your knees by a five year old child?"

"The nut jobs don't matter to me." But Jack did...oh, Jack did...more than the kid ever knew, or would probably believe, right now.

Make him believe. Reid's voice prodded him. Get your butt up the stairs and stop procrastinating!

When the hell had Spencer gotten so forceful? Hell, when had Hotch started hearing voices in his mind? And Reid was the one afraid of Schizophrenia?

"Aaron?" Jessica asked, seeing him hesitate.

"Right. God hates a coward." Hotch muttered, and moved quietly up the stairs to the room where Jack slept.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, breath held in, afraid to move, Jack was sprawled on the bed, one arm grasped around an old stuffed animal...a large dinosaur..that Hotch had bought him years ago. He listened for a second to the breathing; it was irregular and restless, so he knew his son wasn't sleeping. But what did he say?

"Jack?" The single world, half prayer, half plea, came out before he could over think it.

Jack whipped around in the bed, staring towards the doorway. The light from the hallway illuminated his son's face, and Hotch felt fear clutch at him. He waited for Jack to recoil from him, to back away in fear from another violent onslaught, to try to pry himself into a corner in the vain hopes that an irrationally angry adult wouldn't be able to pull him out of it.

It was a maneuver Hotch remembered too well from his own childhood, in the days before he'd become resigned to his father's abuse.

Suddenly, without warning, Jack flew out of the bed, and launched himself at his father with all the speed a five year hold could have. Hotch found himself lifting the boy without thought, and Jack suction-cupped himself to his chest, legs around his waist, arms tightly clutching to his suit coat, head buried in his shoulder as he let lose with heart-rending sobs.

Apparently Jack was not afraid of him. Just as apparently, Reid had nailed the profile of what his son was going through. He'd have to get working on a raise.

Hotch hugged the child back, tears in his own eyes as he kissed the boy; walking forward, he came in and sat on the bed; Jack didn't budge.

"Sorry, Daddy...sorry...so sorry I was bad...sorry...sorry..." Jack's words hiccuped out of him, between the gasping cries.

"No, Jack...I'm sorry." Hotch whispered, unable to keep his own tears from falling. "I'm sorry I lost my temper with you."

"I'm bad...I'm bad..." Jack said again. "I threw the sandwich!"

"NO!" Hotch's voice was urgent. "Jack, you are not bad...you did a bad thing! And then I did something bad, too...and I made it worse because I was such a coward."

With a gulp, Jack forced down his sobs at that statement. "Daddy? You're not scared of anything!" Jack gasped, leaning back to look at his father in shock.

"I'm scared of so many things, Jack!" Hotch admitted. "Every day when I go to work, I'm scared of what will happen to you while I'm not there. But when I'm not with my team, I'm scared of what will happen to them when I'm not there. But mostly, that night...I was scared when I lost my temper and hit you, and I was scared that you would stop loving me."

That last he admitted in a quieter voice; fearing what Jack would say, he rushed on.

"And I thought it would be better for you if you weren't near me. I was scared I might hurt you again." Hotch wiped the tears away from Jack's face, now thoughtful, though his lower lip still trembled. "I won't, Jack. A friend made me understand that. I..." He hesitated. "I won't be like..."

"Like your daddy?" Jack said.

Hotch's shock must have been plain on his face, because his son continued. "I asked Mommy once why I only had one Grandpa, and she said your Daddy had been dead a long time. An' she said I shouldn't ask you about him because he was a bad man and he used to like to hurt people, an' it would make you sad to remember him."

"Right." Hotch sighed out deeply. He wished he'd realized that Haley had told Jack even that much, but then, at the time Jack would have been old enough to ask the question, they'd already have been separated. "He was a bad man...a very bad father. That night when I hit you, Jack, I remembered what he was like, and I didn't want to be like that."

"Did he hurt you bad, Daddy?" Jack asked, his voice tiny with awe.

How to find a short answer appropriate to a 5 year old? How to explain his childhood without giving his son nightmares? "Yeah, Jack...he used to hurt me bad. He got angry very easy, and I could never be good enough for him. He broke my bones, even, because he was so much bigger than I was and I couldn't fight back. By the time he died, I hated him." Hotch rested his chin on Jack's head. "I don't ever want you to hate me."

Jack looked up at him, eyes wide. "I would never hate you, Daddy! Never!"

"Remember that when you're a teenager..." Hotch grumbled. Jack just shot him an incredibly stubborn glare.

"I won't hate you." He said, in extreme seriousness.

Hotch gave a smile then, a genuine one, as he pushed Jack's hair off his face. "Got it, buddy. And I'll tell you this...we might have arguments sometimes, both of us...I might get angry at you. But I want you to remember this, always: you are the most important thing in my life. I love you with every bit of my heart and soul. No matter how angry we get with each other, nothing will ever change that."

Jack's eyes got watery once more, and he reached up and hugged Hotch again. "Love you too, Daddy." He paused. "Can we go home?"

"Yes...yes, Jack. We can go home."

After a short gathering of clothing, and a quick goodbye to Jessica, Hotch was making sure his son was buckled in to his booster seat. There would definitely be no speeding tonight.

"Daddy...you said a friend made you understand you weren't going to be like your father. Who, Daddy?" Jack asked, even as a yawn split his face.

"Your uncle Spencer." Hotch gave a rueful smile. "Would not take no for an answer and insisted on making me listen to him, even when I didn't want to. He knew that letting you go was a bad idea."

"Oh, that makes sense..." Jack drawled out. Hotch raised his eyebrows; if his kid had figured out Reid's troubled past then he was going to have to try and find a program for gifted child profilers!

Or not. "...Uncle Spencer knows EVERYTHING." Jack's eyes began to flutter closed.

Hotch grinned at his boy. "He sure does, buddy. He sure does."

X X X X

Spencer Reid wandered restlessly around the house after Hotch left. He was pretty confident that Hotch and Jack would be fine now. That wasn't the problem. But the conversation with his boss, as wide-reaching as it had been, had stirred up some of his own ghosts.

Finally, and with force, he sat himself down at his desk and began writing a letter.

"Dear Dad...

It's me again, Spencer. I had a rather interesting situation happen tonight that made me think of you, and, well, I wanted to try.

I know that the last time we saw each other it was pretty ugly. I mean, I was accusing you of murder; that's not a good thing. But I'd hoped...I know that there's a lot of water under the bridge now, and that you've moved on with your life. So have I, really. But still...I wouldn't mind trying to have a relationship with you. I actually would really like to try. I know it really can't be father and son, not after all this time, but I would like to get to know you. You're the only father I have.

Anyway, if you want to write to me, or call, well, the address and phone number are the same. Maybe the next time I am in Nevada to visit mom we could have lunch or something. It doesn't have to be personal, if you don't want it to be. We could talk about your classes, or whatever. But I would just like to talk.

Hope to hear from you,

Spencer."

Before he could over-think himself, Reid folded up the letter, addressed it, and stamped it. He walked outside to the mailbox, put it in there next to the one he'd already written to his Mom, and made sure the flag was raised. Closing the box, he stood there for a moment, his arms wrapped defensively around himself, hands rubbing up and down his biceps.

Maybe his father would answer this one. Maybe he would finally have forgiven him for that little bit of ugliness they'd been through in Nevada.

Maybe this wouldn't be like the last fifteen unacknowledged letters and phone calls he'd tried.

He could still hope, right?

X X X X

Six weeks later, Aaron Hotchner was looking over the bullpen with a faint smile...as much of one as he generally allowed at work...even as he was pinning up a new drawing from his son. He spotted Spencer Reid leaning back in his chair, twirling a pencil and apparently engaging in his usual banter with Derek Morgan. And Hotch's smile became just a bit more pronounced.

Because of Reid, he had his son back.

Because of Reid...and the young agent's unending stubbornness...Jack was happy.

After he'd picked up Jack that day, all that weekend they'd spent together, talking...and laughing, and playing. It had been a precious forty-eight hours. Yet, Hotch was not blind. He could see that Jack was still insecure, and because of that (though he still feared it) they had in fact started counseling.

Best move he'd ever made. Once a week they saw a therapist together/ It began with Hotch having some idea of helping his son adjust to everything. Six weeks later, Hotch could admit that he needed the help more than Jack, and more than he had ever realized. Quite possibly he'd never really dealt with what his own childhood had done to him.

Quite possibly? Some of our unsubs have dealt better with their past than you have!

He shook his head, and moved back to the doorway, leaning against the frame, able to hear some of the light banter going on down below. That banter was interrupted momentarily when Reid's phone rang; tossing a wad of paper at Derek Morgan's head, Spencer moved to answer it.

"You look like a mother cat observing her kittens." David Rossi quipped, moving beside him. "Heck, you're even smiling."

"Optical illusion." Hotch replied. Morgan's laugh came up to him; the athletic agent had thrown the paper ball at Prentiss and was being chased around the room in consequence. He let them play. A new case would happen soon enough; one thing Strauss had never understood was how moments like this were NECESSARY for his team to keep their sanity.

He glanced back at Reid before planning on going in to his office, and what he saw made his smile disappear.

Reid's own body language had changed. His relaxed pose in the chair had gone rigid; he now sat upright and leaned on one elbow. His face seemed to pale...although with Reid it was hard to tell. The pencil he'd been twirling suddenly snapped. With one hand he pushed his hair back off his face; even from the doorway Hotch could see that hand shaking.

"Hey, Hotch, will you tell Morgan to grow up..." Prentiss grumbled as she came close to him, but he didn't acknowledge her.

He walked down the stairs in to the pen, moving with purpose up to Reid's desk.

"...thank you for letting me know." Reid's voice, strained, ended the call, and he gingerly replaced the receiver.

"What's wrong, Reid?" Hotch said at once, his voice strong enough to let Reid know that he wasn't going to take 'nothing' for an answer.

To his credit, Reid never even tried. "That was Bennington." Reid named the sanitarium where his mother resided. "And...uh..." He rubbed his hand over his head once more, looking confused...lost. "It seems my Mom is...dead."

Hotch felt the news on Reid's behalf like a punch in the gut. Prentiss had heard as well, and turned to go to get Morgan, who had taken refuge in the break room. "Was she sick?" He asked, feeling equally confused.

"Not at all, that I'm aware of. The Doctor is being...vague." Reid shook his head slightly. "Said he couldn't tell me much over the phone...needed to see me in person." Now the young agent looked up at him. "I'm, uh, going to need a few days off."

"As much as you need." Hotch said at once. Bereavement policy allowed 5 days for a mother...but screw policy. As he'd pointed out to Reid six weeks ago, he wasn't actually known for going by the book. He glanced over to JJ, who'd been retrieved by Rossi. "Jayj, can you book him a flight to Vegas?"

Reid blinked slightly. "I can handle that...I just need to figure out...um..."

JJ squeezed his shoulder, and reached over to give him a hug, which he accepted awkwardly. "I'll make all the arrangements for you, Spence. You get headed home to get what you need, and I'll email you the details Don't worry about a thing."

Reid stopped protesting. "Thanks."

"I'll drive you, pretty boy." Morgan appeared suddenly, concern etched on his face. "You're driving sucks when you're not distracted." He tried to bring some lightness.

It worked...sort of. Hotch saw Reid give Morgan the thinnest of smiles. "Ha, ha." He picked up his bag, the thing suddenly looking as if it weighted a hundred pounds to him. "Hotch, I don't know when...I mean..."

"Call me when you land." Hotch encouraged, grasping the agent's forearm, as he had done to him not so long ago. "Keep me updated. If you need anything, we're here."

Reid's clear hazel eyes met his, some of the confusion now replaced with gratitude. "Thanks, Hotch. Right now I'm just a little...stunned."

Hotch gave a little nod of understanding, a squeeze of Reid's forearm, and then let go; he watched with concern as his young agent ambled forward behind Morgan, as if he were barely sure of where he was going.

Rossi was beside him once more as they walked away; JJ had gone in to her office to make travel plans, and Prentiss had moved towards where Garcia's office was, no doubt to spread the information.

"Geez, tough luck, huh?" Rossi said. "Does he have any family he can call on?"

"None." Hotch said. "Other than his father, of course. Dave, you were with him on that case...is it possible that William Reid will actually be of any use to him?"

"I can't say for sure. I thought that by the time we left there they'd come to a bit of understanding, but then, I've never heard the kid mention him since." Rossi stroked at his beard thoughtfully.

Right. Hotch was remembering back to their own conversation, about Hotch's troubled past and his concerns over Jack:

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to pretend to mourn a man you'd come to hate?"

"No." Reid answered truthfully. "My father isn't dead yet."

That didn't exactly sound like Reid expected the man to be terribly useful. Hotch frowned, then spoke in a low voice to Rossi. "I asked Reid to give me details as soon as he's got them. I'm going to ask Strauss for permission for the team to attend the funeral. He shouldn't be alone then."

"Agreed. For better or worse, looks like we ARE his family." Rossi replied.

Hotch gave half a smirk. "Right. Picture postcard perfectly dysfunctional, but nevertheless, family."

X X X X

That night, a very angry Aaron Hotchner sat on his sofa, a glass of wine in his hand, waiting for the phone to ring. Not far away Jack was sitting, coloring quietly. He'd managed to get through dinner and the early evening without letting his son SEE how angry he was; he'd learned that Jack automatically assumed that if Hotch were angry, it was at him. And he assuredly was NOT angry at his young son.

His boss, however...

Hotch pursed his lips in a frown. Strauss had emphatically denied giving the team permission to travel, regardless of where the funeral was, for anything other than business reasons. They could request vacation time, of course, but then, she was the arbiter of approval, and she made it clear that she saw no reason to do any such thing. "Let Reid be with his family." She'd said, sounding entirely logical. Except, of course, the woman knew full well Reid HAD no family.

"You're angry, Daddy." Jack said, timidly, looking up from his coloring book, chewing on his own lip thoughtfully.

Hotch blinked at once, and forced a smile. "Not at you, buddy." He reached out an arm, and Jack took it; he pulled the boy on to the sofa and hugged him close. "Daddy's boss made a very wrong decision today, and it's made me very frustrated."

"Oh." Jack thought that over. "Can I help?"

"Boy, I wish you could." Hotch sighed and kissed his son on the head. "Actually, you are helping, just by letting me hug you for a little bit."

Just then the phone rang. Spencer.

Jack sensed his need to have the conversation, and released his father; Hotch rose to pace. "Reid...what news?"

A pause then. "Hey, Hotch. Um...got a minute?"

"Of course."

"They, ah, have to do an autopsy before there can be a funeral." Hotch heard Reid's fragility over the phone lines from three thousand miles away. "It's required in the case of suicides."

Oh, God. "Reid, I'm so sorry." He spoke quickly. How in the hell did something like this happen in a high class mental institution? He knew Reid sunk every spare dime he had into keeping his mother in a private facility. "How...I mean, do they know why? Are they telling you anything?"

"It wasn't her fault." Privately Hotch wondered how many conversations in Reid's life he'd had to start with that defense. "They'd, ah, changed her medicine, apparently. She'd become resistant to the other drugs, had fewer good days between bad spells. Happens a lot with folks who take these kind of drugs for an extended period of time. So, anyway, this new medication comes out, and it shows a lot of promise, with a few side effects."

"Side effects?" Hotch asked, quietly.

"Occasional headaches, nausea, in rare cases extreme paranoia and severe depression." Hotch could almost see Reid's twisted lips. "You know my mom, not content to go for the run of the mill...she went right for the paranoia."

"Weren't they watching her?" He asked, utterly befuddled.

"Thing about my mother is that she actually is...was...extremely intelligent. Intelligence and paranoia are a really bad combination. They restrained her until the drugs could work their way out of her system. And she knew what they were up to. Apparently she faked NOT being paranoid, long enough for them to let her free. Then she, um, got hold of something she could use as a rope and..." He heard Reid swallowing hard.

Damn Strauss and her no-travel edict! Reid should not be dealing alone with this now. "It's not your fault, Reid." He found himself saying automatically, somehow positive that Reid would find a way to blame himself on this.

"She left a note...her paranoia...she was convinced that she was going to be kidnapped by agents of the government, as a way to get to me. They were going to capture me and torture me for the state secrets I hold." He gave a very dead-sounding laugh. "You know, that all important information about how Rossi likes his coffee, which flavor of cupcake Em prefers, Morgan's favorite ballplayer growing up."

"Reid..." Hotch repeated firmly. "This is NOT your fault, And if your mother had been lucid she would never have left you a letter making you think that it was. She loved you."

"Obviously. Enough to die for me." There was a very tired sigh again. "And I do hear what you're saying. I know all this guilt is pointless. Right now I'm just...numb. Shocked. I don't know." He waited a second. "Anyway, I wanted you to know that it might be another couple of days before the funeral...the autopsy might be a formality, but they're probably going to also want to run a few tests for the meds...hell, who knows."

"Spencer Reid, you listen to me carefully." Hotch kept his voice in full boss mode. "You have my permission to take all the time you need to get everything settled. You do whatever you have to do."

"Thanks, Hotch...but as soon as the funeral is over I'm getting the hell back to Virginia. It wouldn't bother me if I never saw Vegas again."

With that, his young agent hung up, and Hotch found himself slamming his own phone down with a bit more force than was perhaps necessary.

"Daddy?" Jack's voice was tentative again. "Is Uncle Spencer okay?"

Hotch blinked, and remembered what the therapist said...that keeping secrets from Jack wouldn't work; he would just imagine things even worse than what were true. He turned and put his hand on his son's shoulder, then bent down and picked him up; Jack's legs and arms wrapped around him, but the boy's worried eyes kept lock on his father.

Well, sadly, this was something he'd be able to explain too easily. "Jack...Your Uncle Spencer just found out that his Mom died."

"Oh." Jack's eyes flooded with tears, but he held them bravely back. "Did someone hurt her like Mommy?"

"No...Spencer's Mom has been fighting an illness for a long time. And she just got tired of fighting, I guess. But Spencer's still very sad." Hotch pressed his own forehead to his son's, and Jack squeezed him even tighter, chewing on his lip thoughtfully again, clearly remembering things.

"Can we go see him? Like he came here when Mom died?" Jack spoke quickly. "I'll be really good, I will...I want to give Uncle Spencer a hug like he did for me. An' he stayed with me that afternoon an he played with my blocks with me...he made me feel lots better. I wanna be there for him."

There were no words for how proud Hotch was of his son in that moment. "Me too, buddy. That's why Daddy is so mad at his boss. He already asked her if the team could be with Reid, and she said no."

Jack's eyes got hard, in an unconscious imitation of his father. "That's not right." He frowned. "She didn't stop anyone from coming when Mommy died."

"Yes, well..." Hotch walked over to the map of the United States, the one he kept up so he could show Jack where cases were taking him. "See, Mommy's funeral was right here, where we all work. So nobody had to take any days off. Reid's Mom died here..." He pointed to Las Vegas, dragging is finger across the map from Quantico. "In Nevada."

Jack got it. "That's far."

"Yeah, really far." Hotch admitted with a sigh. "But Daddy's going to keep trying. There's got to be something we can do..."

"You'll figure it out, Daddy." Jack said with great confidence. "You're the smartest person in the whole world!" Jack said with great confidence, laying his head on his father's shoulder. And then he continued..."Except Uncle Spencer, of course."

Hotch smiled at Jack's quick understanding of the situation. He just hoped that he really was able to get something done. Spencer deserved that.

X X X X

It was 6am when his phone rang. JJ. A case. Naturally. "Hotchner."

"Hotch, I have a solution."

He blinked, at was at once wide awake. "Speak to me, Jayj."

"Tahoe. The gym murders."

Hotch frowned, trying to remember. JJ fielded all potential cases for them. They had, of course, far more requests than could be handled, and JJ was usually good at sorting through them. Some were clearly misplaced...not the sort of work that they did...and were referred to other departments. Some, a good number in fact, were long distance consults...cases that actually weren't all that complex but which one of his agents could take a quick look at a file and provide some new angles for local law enforcement to follow up on. The exceptional ones were the ones that called for "wheels up"...full team to a major case needing their intervention.

Just yesterday, JJ had diagnosed Tahoe as a category two situation...and had handed the file to Prentiss for local law enforcement follow up.

"Has it escalated?" Hotch asked, confused.

"Not really...but Strauss doesn't know that." Jayj said, with perhaps the hint of a smirk in her voice. "Tahoe doesn't realize that their enormous problem is tic-tac-toe for us, so they'll just be happy to have us. And it puts us in Nevada. If one of our team were then to drive over to Vegas to be with Reid...say, you...who would know? And then, if we were able to wrap it up by the day of the funeral, which seems probable, no reason we can't depart from Vegas."

Hotch lit up at the scheme. "Jayj, you are brilliant. Utterly, amazingly brilliant and entirely irreplaceable. I don't tell you that enough."

"By the way, Tahoe is going to need technical help as well...because you know there's no shot in hell of Garcia being left out." She added, ignoring his uncharacteristically effusive praise.

He did hesitate just a bit. "Jayj...were not...endangering anything, are we? I know we all want to be there for Reid, but we're not acting irresponsible?"

"There's no other case on the docket that would require our attention." She soothed. "I'll be monitoring new requests, and if we get something in that really is urgent, I'll call Tahoe off."

Right. They could do this, following Strauss's orders, and do the right thing at the same time. "Call wheels up, Jayj. I'll alert Jessica about Jack and meet you all on the plane."

As he hung up, though, Hotch was remembering Jack's concern about Spencer from last night. Jack wanted to be there for Reid, and Hotch didn't want to deny him that chance. Still, he could hardly bring Jack with him on a trip to Nevada...even Strauss wasn't that stupid.

He had an idea, and he reached for his phone. He owed Reid for what he'd done for him with Jack, and he wasn't going to let that go unpaid.