A/N: Thank you guys so much for your continued support! Hope you enjoy this chapter, too! THANK YOU to [reidfan1971] for helping me out with the ending conversation with Reid/Rossi. And of course, to everyone else :) *heart emoticon that fanfiction won't allow me to put*

Reviews, as always, are very greatly appreciated and very much loved. :')

xxx

"To weep is to make less the depth of grief."

― William Shakespeare

7.

THEN
(4 Months)

"Spencer. Spencer! Wake up!"

Reid groaned, blinking open his eyes (or really, his eye; one of them was bruised enough it would not cooperate) and trying to clear his vision enough to see that all four of the children before him were awake, the two closest to the middle bed uncomfortably crowded around it, around the girl who had been placed here less than a week ago, who, as his senses came back, he could hear was wheezing painfully, loudly.

"Something's wrong with her," Lauren, the oldest of them at twelve, had the girl in her arms as best she could with the length of her chain pulled taut. "What do I do? What do I do?"

"W-what happened? What's wrong?"

"I don't know!"

The very youngest of them, Rosie, whimpered and said, "My brother did that. He needed medicine. Does she have medicine?"

"What medicine?" Lauren gasped, distressed to the point where she was panting almost as hard as the girl.

"Oh my God," Reid said at last as it clicked, kicking his foot against the ground to steady himself. "She's having an asthma attack."

Will stood up and squinted around in the darkness. "Does she have an inhaler?"

"They didn't bring one with her...maybe upstairs?"

"Rosie, bang on the wall! You're right next to it!"

"But they're sleeping..."

"And she's dying!"

Reid cut them all off. "Get her up! Get her sitting up!"

"What?"

"Just do it! Now!"

Lauren grabbed the girl under her arms and brought her up to sit, and her head lolled onto her shoulders.

"Hey, hey! Sweetie!" Reid said, and then the girl glanced up at him, dazed, Lauren holding her steady so she couldn't fall back down.

"Just try to breathe, okay? Just breathe. Deep breaths. With me, okay? Look at me! In through your nose...out through your mouth...in...out...Yeah, just like that. You're gonna be okay, sweetheart, it's gonna be okay."

Lauren finally understood he was trying to calm her out of the attack, and then gestured her head towards Will, who began rubbing comforting circles in the girl's back. Rosie started humming something slow and melodic, probably to calm herself as much as the other girl, slowly rocking back and forth in her bed.

"It's gonna be okay. I promise, you're gonna see your mom and dad again soon, okay?" Reid continued, tears beginning to fall down his cheeks. "It's okay. Sssh. Sssh. It's okay, it's okay..."

After a long, uncertain amount of time, the girl's breathing started to slow; just a bit at first, and then over a while longer evened back out. Lauren finally looked up, vision blurred with tears, and heard that Reid was still mumbling, very quietly, his eyes closed now. "Hey," she said. "Spencer!"

Reid raised his head a bit, blinking hard at her, and she gestured towards where the girl was sleeping soundly in her arms, smiling at him. "It worked. She's okay!"

The agent managed a weak smile and nod before he groaned softly and slipped back into a restless sleep as he so often did anymore. With a sigh, Lauren turned her attention to the others. Rosie was totally lost in slumber now, as well, and Will was getting there. She supposed it was safe for her to put the girl down now and return to her own bed...but instead, she just lowered both of them back down onto the mattress they were on now, burying her face in the other girl's hair, wishing she was back home and it was her own little sister beside her. She wondered if she'd ever even see her family again; while Spencer's words had been about as comforting as they could hope for down here in this situation, that's all they'd been: words. And words wouldn't get them out of here, words wouldn't make them be rescued faster, and...words wouldn't stop this little girl from having another attack, or another, and she knew that eventually they would be helpless to assist her. They couldn't even help themselves.

"I'm sorry," she tearfully murmured into the girl's hair, speaking to the five of them here and everyone that she might never see again. She knew it wasn't her fault, but that didn't make her sorrow any less. "I'm so, so sorry."

NOW

For the sole reason of the team not being able to stand Reid spending another night one of those rooms, alone, with nothing but the cold floor or hard chair to do so on, they convinced two officers to watch him and allow him to move to the couch in their own break room. The promise was that he would cause no trouble, and he didn't. In fact, once he had calmed down, he slept relatively soundly, aside from several, incoherently mumbled sentences, through most of the night, blissfully unaware of the less-than-gentle looks he received every time someone came in.

The team hadn't shared most of the information of what was going on with any of the others, only that Brown was no longer seen as fit to continue the interrogation part of the investigation. But assuming the precinct had listened to the detective wholeheartedly about the case, about his suspect, they probably suspected the worst. Corruption and whatnot, maybe. JJ had only shared with anyone the fact that the seven were dead; she didn't know if she could handle repeating the rest, even to the rest of her team.

Then, Garcia, at around 4 AM, called awake the others, most dozing in their chairs, and began to speak as they huddled around the tiny screen of her laptop.

"Alright, so really, this should've been impossible. Actually, for anyone else it would be. Lucky you have me, right? Right? Yeah, okay. So." She clicked to show a map of the state. "For one, there are a lot of wooded areas here, okay. Two, there is no property in any of the ones where living is legal which has Marian as a registered name; no currently-being-lived-in property at all, actually. I looked through old factories, abandoned places, a few of which I swear to you are haunted, all in the middle of nowhere, nothin'." She held up a finger, dramatically. "But! Then, I thought that just maybe they were crazy enough to be in an actual neighborhood, one where the houses each had a good amount of land between them? Anyway, I went with it and found two possible locations.

"One of them is gated, highly secured, no way they could've gotten away with it. The other," she zoomed in on a clump of trees with blackened squares every so often, "is not. And what did I find when I went through their registry? This one, in the middle, under one fifty-two-year-old Mariana Duboir, and wow did I find the four-one-one on her. She grew up with her single dad blaming her for her mother dying during birth. And when I say blaming, I mean with fists, not words. She was admitted to the hospital four times as a minor."

"Garcia," JJ interrupted, "did she lose a child?"

"She lost two. Three and a half years ago she miscarried, and a year after that, a ten year old Cody Deboir was found dead in the house after police responded to a nine-one-one call. He drowned in the bathtub."

"At ten years old?" Rossi asked, and Garcia looked at him sadly. "It was inconclusive if he was held down. He did have signs of previous physical abuse, however."

"And the husband?"

Garcia shook her head. "There's no record she's married. Divorced, almost twenty years ago, from someone who now lives in California—total model citizen, by the way, remarried, three kids, he's even a kindergarten teacher—but...nothing now."

"That's not possible." JJ said, sticking a hand in her pocket. "There were two. There's gotta be something, anything."

"I'm sorry, hon. There just isn't. And you know I'd find him if there was. Maybe they were never married?"

"Maybe. Why call him her husband then?"

Hotch glanced at her. "Reid doesn't remember anything about him?"

"Oh, he remembers everything about him. He just never got a name." She shook her head. "The kids back with their parents right now are alive because she wanted them to be, not because the unsub did. Spence told me that when the man would get angry enough at the kids, he would beat them. Marian, too."

Morgan scoffed and looked away, and Rossi nodded slowly. "He gets off on pain, then. Reliving a childhood memory? Maybe someone did that to him, or a sibling, and he's reenacting the scene where he's the one in control."

"And that could be a lot of the PTSD causes," Prentiss said, and JJ nodded, but it was slow, hesitant, enough that Hotch noticed. "What is it?"

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. As much as the words hurt her to say, it didn't make them any less true, and they deserved to know. "He killed the seven children that way. And...made Spence bury them."

"Christ!" Morgan cursed, slamming his fist onto the table. "I want this guys' fuckin' head."

"Easy," Hotch warned sternly, and Prentiss frowned. "But then why did they find just one? The girl, nine, Missy Thompson. She was found on the side of the highway."

"Maybe that was a test, to see if it would be found?"

Rossi shook his head. "No...I don't think he would be that risky. He's managed to stay under the radar completely...he wouldn't be that disorganized."

"What about the wife?" Morgan pointed at the laptop. "How did Missy Thompson die?"

"Ahh...suffocation," Garcia frowned sadly. "An asthma attack. Says she probably had a few minor ones before the one that killed her. No medication was given any of the times."

"I'm going to assume that wasn't part of their plan."

"And she wanted her to be found. She felt bad." Garcia clicked at the keyboard a few more times before there was a knock on the door, and they turned to see Reid, along with one of his officers.

"He needed to see you immediately," the officer said, and Reid shuffled a couple feet forward before he stopped, handing his notepad to Morgan, who was closest.

I remember another name. Her son's, I think, maybe. Cody...there wasn't a Cody with us. Does that help?

"Well shit." Morgan handed the paper over, and after they'd all seen it, it was already settled.

"Officer," Hotchner said quickly, "uncuff him. Release him into our custody. He's not your criminal, and if you all will let us, we can prove it."

xxx

It had been barely twenty minutes after his release, sitting in the corner of the room in a chair, before Reid had begun to feel awful again. Here he was, and here seven children weren't. Here he was, free, and somewhere, The Man was as well. He didn't see any reason he should be happy. He didn't see any reason he should be anything but miserable. He watched the team put together their testimony, bit by bit, and knew he would remain out of jail, but he still couldn't get himself to relax. He didn't deserve to, though, did he? Not really. He wasn't innocent, and he certainly wasn't free. No, he would never be either of those. Not ever. Not while He was still out there. Not while the memories and the fear haunted him with every breath he took.

Rossi, after a few minutes of glancing over at their saddened friend, pulled up a chair next to him and sat. Reid flinched and turned his head away as if he expected violence, and Rossi gently said, "I just want to talk, Spencer. Okay? I'm not going to hurt you. You have to know that. None of us ever would ever hurt you. Okay?"

Reid raised his head a bit and nodded, looking at the man out of the corner of his eyes.

"You know," Rossi began, slowly, crossing his legs and leaning back, "I've done some awful things. Terrible, awful things. When I was in the war...and when I wasn't."

A bit curious as to where this was going, Reid looked up. Rossi acted like he didn't notice. "I've had to kill. I've had to watch people—good people—die right in front of me. And I've had to tell their families, their friends...live with it myself. It's part of the job." He turned his gaze to Reid, who immediately turned his own down to the floor. "But...you have to remember the people youdo save, the people you give the satisfaction of knowing that the one who tried to take away their life is gone for good. Reid, eight kids are alive because of you, because of what you did. And you have to understand...that the others...they are not dead because of you. You did not cause it, and you certainly didn't kill them yourself."

I didn't stop Him, Reid wrote onto the notepad he'd been hugging to his chest.

"Didn't, or couldn't?"

Reid hesitated, and Rossi sighed. "Didn't and couldn't are two very, very different things. If you didn't, that is a choice you made for yourself. If you couldn't, Reid...that's a choice that was madefor you. If your life was being threatened to the point where you couldn't,then it is not your fault."

I should have tried! I should have done something...anything!

"Every single day while I was in Vietnam, I thought that too. Every single day. Sometimes, though, Reid...sometimes there's nothing you can do. But you need to keep yourself alive, no matter what, and I know that sounds selfish, but it means you can go on to help more people. What happened to those kids is unforgivable, but Reid, you didn't kill them. There was nothing you could do, but that doesn't mean you were helpless.

"It means there was nothing you could do, and that's that. I'm still kept up by nightmares of those I couldn't save. But because all of us are alive, hundreds of others are, too. Because you'realive, those kids are sleeping in their beds tonight, with their parents and sisters and brothers, and they couldn't be more grateful to you, because you are the reason they're there. You took care of them all to the best of your ability, and that's all you could do. That's all anyone ever expected of you, and all you should have ever expected out of yourself. None of us blame you, Reid; none of us. We know it's not your fault. We know you did everything you possibly could to save them all, and we're so, so proud of you. You heard that, right? We're proud of you. You're here, and you're alive, and we couldn't be happier about that. Don't think for a second that any of us wish you weren't."

It was silent for a long moment as Reid processed the words, processed the emotions the words brought onto him, and then suddenly he burst into tears and leaned forward, resting his forehead against Rossi's arm. Rossi did not try to touch him, allowing him to seek out whatever little comfort he wanted, and he looked up to find the others watching, brokenhearted. Thankfully, however, Reid wasn't crying in distress; no, his tears were of relief, of actual, pure, utter relief, because after being told for so long that he would never, ever be forgiven for what he'd done...he just had been. They wanted him. His family wanted him here. He was wanted...he was loved.

And only then did Reid realize that he had forgotten what being loved felt like.