Chapter Nine: Broken

Beta'd by the wonderful, Greeneyedconstellations. All remaining mistakes are my own.

Warning for shit getting real from this chapter onwards. Expect anything .

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She got home from work heartsick and drained and with the vague sense that nothing was going right anymore. There was nothing, nothing, that could save this day from being a complete and absolute misery.

Ever since Rossi's ominous announcement, every day had started to take a numb sort of sadness to it. It wasn't just her. Smiles had grown rare around the BAU.

She moved on autopilot. Mail and keys onto the cupboard. Kick shoes off. Coat on the rack.

Gideon would have shot her if he'd seen how lax she was about her surroundings.

"You should be more observant," said a quiet, painfully familiar voice from the couch. "I could have been anyone."

She stopped. Everything stopped. She couldn't think. She couldn't breathe. And she certainly couldn't turn around, not with the possibility of her heart being ripped out of her chest if she was wrong about who it was.

Or if she was right. Emily wasn't entirely sure which would be worse.

But she had to look eventually, because if she didn't her pulse was going to stop from the tension of it.

He was curled up on the couch with his knees to his chest and his chin resting on them, watching her with eyes that had bypassed 'sad' and gone straight on to 'tormented.' Even from here, even with the way he was drawn into himself, she could see that he'd lost weight, far too much of it, his skin fragile and stretched over the framework of bones that she'd previously incorrectly assumed were already as visible as it was possible to get.

"You cut your hair," she said finally, because she didn't know what else to say and for some reason the sight of his hair shorn so short and sticking up in jagged, unwashed clumps was hurting her like nothing else had. Not the skinniness of him, not the fear and misery in his expression, or the cruel gold bands she could see winding up his arms. His fucking hair was what she'd focused on.

"I didn't," he answered, and closed his eyes, head drooping. He wasn't wearing his glamour; the points of his ears and the small horns she'd felt but not seen were finally visible. She doubted he'd dropped it on purpose.

He was exhausted. He didn't look like himself. He was dirty and sick and barely a man anymore.

He was completely and utterly broken in a way she hadn't thought was possible.

But he was alive.

"Spencer," she breathed, and shuddered with the realization that he was five steps away. Four. Three.

He caught her as she stumbled and he smelled wrong, dirty and sickly, but underneath that she could still smell him.

She held him close and counted every bone, every beat of his heart, and tried to remember how to let go.

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Sergio got home before she remembered. Reid had gone quiet against her, stopped pulling away, and his breath had evened out.

It should have been funny, him falling asleep curled into her lap like a child, but it wasn't. His head lolled back against her stomach, one of his hands wrapped around hers, and he was out so fast and so deep she thought that this might be the first time he'd let himself sleep in a long time.

Even asleep, his face lost none of the pain that was traced indelibly in the lines of it.

She turned his palm over, looking for the almost-invisible lines of his credentials that should still be there, and found a ridged mass of scarring instead. They'd burned it off. They'd burned him. She could see where they'd pressed his hand to the surface, wrapped his fingers over it, where he'd struggled. She traced her finger over it, feeling sick.

"You should call your team." Sergio appeared on the end of the couch, leaving an inch of space between him and Reid's legs, sniffing at his pants. "Foyet could be nearby."

"I don't think he is," Emily replied quietly, running the fingers of her free hand through the unevenly cropped hair. It was oily, leaving traces on her hand, but she was beyond caring at this point. Reid twitched away slightly at the touch, eyelids flickering. "Serge… what will they do if I call them? What will Rossi do?"

"Help him. There must be something they can do. He is unwell."

Brushing her hand against his forehead, she could feel the heat radiating off of him. "How sick is he?" she asked her cat, not sure if she wanted the answer. Sergio was silent, eyes tracking up and down the thin form in her arms, tail oddly still.

"Were this any other situation, I would say only mildly. Nothing a day in bed couldn't fix."

"But…"

"I can't feel his magic it's so drained. And far too skinny. He's running on reserves he doesn't have. Emily, I understand you're worried about what the Bureau may do, especially since they will be unable to unbind him without Hankel, but you need to consider the repercussions of letting him leave here freely."

"How would you stop me?" Reid mumbled into her thigh, his voice cracked. He opened his eyes, and Emily felt her own water in sympathy at the glazed, bleary shine to them. "Neither of you are strong enough to stop me…"

"You are sick."

"M'fine." His face slackened, exhaustion almost winning, dry lips slipping open slightly.

"I won't call them," Emily said, making up her mind. "If you come to bed with me."

Even like this, his eyebrow twitched upwards and his mouth quirked in a fractured smile. "Hardly an appropriate time."

She pulled her knee up, jabbing it into his belly and he whined. "Idiot. To sleep. Will they notice if you're gone for a few hours to sleep? You need rest." You need a lot more than just rest. But that's all I can offer you at this point.

The barest hint of movement as he shook his head. When he spoke, his voice slurred slightly, even with the short, concise sentences he spoke in. "They won't notice. Supposed to be following you anyway. Loophole. Instructions not clear enough. Never said I couldn't watch you from inside."

"Alright," she said, slipping out from under him and heaving him up. He helped, barely. It was an uneasy realization when she noticed that she didn't actually need him to help. She could almost lift him unaided, even with his wings an awkward weight on his back. "Come on. Christ, you need a shower."

"Can't," he replied, letting his face sink onto her shoulder and breathing in slightly deeper, her hair in his face. She felt his heart skip unevenly in his chest. "Can't. Too vulnerable like that."

A rumbling growl that wasn't hers sounded by her feet. Sergio spoke to her alone. "I look forward to tasting Hankel's liver." He vanished, leaving an air of furious cat-anger that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She could still hear him even though he'd left the room. "Don't give him anything for the fever. He stinks of narcotics. I still think you should call someone."

"I promised," she whispered in answer, lowering Reid onto the bed and tugging the blanket out from underneath his dead weight. He didn't even twitch as she tugged his shoes off and covered him back over, before undressing and sliding in next to him with just her shirt and underwear, and curling around him like smoke.

The barest sliver of a hazel eye as Reid looked at her. "You're a bed hog," she scolded him, hugging him possessively with her ass almost hanging off the bed. She wasn't normally a cuddler; neither of them were. They liked their space. But just today, just right now, she needed the touch of him to remind her that he was real.

"I love you," he responded quietly, and it hurt so much she couldn't talk through it.

By the time the pain had receded, he was asleep.

"Please don't leave me again," she whispered to him, safe in the knowledge that he couldn't hear her ask the impossible and vividly aware that she was horribly close to begging.

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She woke up once to him pressing his lips against hers and kissing her with the breathless kind of hunger possessed by a starving man offered something delicious. She could feel his lips moving against hers, saying something, but she deliberately didn't focus on the words.

If this was the only time he could be vulnerable, then let him be so.

When she woke up again, the room was dark and she was alone.

For a long, tangible moment, it was like losing him all over again, and she pressed a hand against her gut to try and quell the uneasiness. She'd known intellectually that he wasn't back for good, it hadn't been half obvious. But she'd… some part of her had hoped.

"Prentiss."

The voice was clipped and formal, and she almost jumped out of her skin, spinning around to face the door. Reid stood there, hair damp and spiky, and he looked better. Still painfully skinny and drawn, but no longer on the verge of collapse. His glamour was back in place as well, the wings and horns hidden and leaving him human. The eyes that watched her were clear and sharp, no trace of the fever-bright sheen to them.

Slipping out the bed, she padded over to him and wrapped her arms around him, engulfed by the smell of her soap and shampoo and the fabric cleaner she favoured on the clothes he wore. He must have found them in her wardrobe, the ones she couldn't bear to box up and pack away.

He was stiff and unyielding in her arms, his own hanging limply by his side. It was like hugging a store mannequin.

"Don't do this," she snapped, tightening her grip on him before he could do exactly what he was planning to and slip away like he was never there. "Don't shut yourself off. We can do this. We've proven tonight that we can do this, you need this."

He shook his head, slowly, not making eye contact with her. "I need you safe. I shouldn't have come here… I wasn't thinking clearly."

"Bullshit," she said, resisting the urge to shake him. She slipped her hands onto his arms, the slick gold of the binding up his arms tingling against her fingers. "That's the clearest you've been thinking in months. You've been watching us? Why didn't you come to us? Jesus, Reid, we fucking love you, we'd do anything to help you. Hotch…" She trailed off, remembering the haunted cast to their boss's features, his dark misery when they'd packed up Spencer's belongings.

He crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut into her grasp, folding his lanky form until his head thumped onto her shoulder. "Because I'm not strong enough for that," he said, but his voice lacked any bite. He just sounded… empty. "If I came back to you, to any of you, I didn't know if I could leave again. And I can't, I can't walk away again. I watched you grieve."

"Spence…"

He jerked upright, pressing his mouth to hers in a pale imitation of a kiss, his eyes still open. She didn't even have time to react as the gold under her arms burned, except to wrench her hands away in shock. "I have to go. I have to. Em, Foyet has plans. I can't tell you, he won't let me, but… be careful." He stepped back, away from her, and she stood and did nothing but watch him because to do anything else felt too much like saying goodbye. His last words weren't of love or farewell or empty promises. They were a confession. "I'm so tired of fighting, Em."

Then he was gone and the air smelled faintly of ozone and soap.

Something butted against her leg. She looked down into Sergio's grey-green eyes, wide with concern. "He lasted longer than they believed he would. He may yet prove us wrong again. Don't give up on him."

She looked at the bed, something different about it catching her eye. Her pillow was oddly placed at a strange angle. Almost purposefully placed. "Don't be ridiculous," she said, her mouth almost impossibly twitching up into a smile. He was here and alive and she remembered how his heart beat. That was more than she'd expected. "Like fuck I'm giving up on him now."

Under the pillow lay the book of poetry, now held open by two envelopes shoved inside. One with her name, unsealed. She put it aside, not ready to open it just yet.

The other simply labelled, Gideon.

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Gideon didn't say anything when he unsealed the envelope and scanned the contents, but his eyes widened slightly. They all watched him as he folded the paper back up carefully and slipped it back into the envelope, placing both precisely on the table and lining the corner against the edge of the wood. Stalling.

"Gideon?" Hotch asked finally, pacing in front of the plasma. Emily caught Morgan's eyes. The man looked torn between hope and desperation, dearly hoping that Reid had just handed them all the key to his salvation in the form of the carefully labelled missive.

"It's a bible verse," Gideon said finally, heavily.

"What?" Morgan yelped, his eyes snapping around to stare accusingly at Gideon. "Wait, no. It can't be. Or it's a hidden message – a clue, like he did in Hankel's shack. Maybe it's saying where he is. Yeah, that has to be it!"

"Morgan's right, surely Reid's left some kind of…" Hotch trailed off, looking up as Rossi walked in.

"Am I interrupting something?" Rossi asked, stopping shortly as they all turned to look at him. Except Gideon. Gideon still looked down at the envelope, face expressionless.

"The arrogance of your heart has deceived you, O you who live in the clefts of the rock, who occupy the height of the hill. Though you make your nest as high as an eagle's, I will bring you down from there," he said in a monotone. Morgan's face clouded with confusion, before his eyes widened slightly.

That was a threat if Emily had ever heard one, and it made her blood run cold.

Rossi leaned back against the wall. "Ah. I see I have missed something. That's certainly… threatening."

Gideon's head snapped up, and he narrowed his eyes at the other profiler. "Threatening? No, I don't think so. If it was a threat, it would almost certainly have more of a… Foyet flavour to it. This is entirely Reid, don't you think?"

Silence as they all processed that. Emily stared at JJ, trying to work through the muddle of her own thoughts. By the way JJ's face cleared, they came to the same conclusion at once.

"It's a warning," Emily said, JJ nodding along. "Not a threat. He's warning you that Foyet is… oh."

"Coming after me first," Gideon finished, leaning back in his chair and smiling coldly. "Good. I believe we have business together that is long overdue."

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"Prentiss." Rossi had excused himself as soon as Emily had left the roundtable room, and even a desperate detour into the women's bathroom hadn't discouraged him from following her.

She turned on him and crossed her arms, shifting her expression into a subtle disapproval she'd learned from Sergio. "You're like a goddamn terrier. You just don't give up, do you?"

He smirked. His shadow made a gesture under his feet that she didn't quite catch, even when she glanced down at it. As soon as her gaze landed on it, it settled into an innocent shadow, copying Rossi's movements perfectly. "I can smell a guilty conscience a mile away. Funny, throughout that little breakthrough we had back there, I don't believe anyone mentioned just how that letter came into Gideon's possession. Do you?"

"No idea," she lied flatly, her hammering heart giving her away. It wasn't even a good lie. She was slipping.

He hesitated, and she could see him choosing his words carefully. "Prentiss, you know… I understand how hard this can be. How desperately you want the best outcome, we all do. But I really must recommend you take a step back and view it objectively. What would the Bureau say if they knew you were… entertaining… the person they've poured thousands of man-hours into retrieving. Your career would be over."

"Fuck my career," she responded quietly. "You didn't see him, Rossi. He was… still himself. Under it all, he's still there. You were wrong."

His mouth quirked down. "No I wasn't. I never said he'd stop being himself. I said he belonged to them, and he does. Don't forget that. You should change your locks. You can retract your invitation. I can help you."

She became suddenly aware of points of pain in her hands, her nails cutting into her palms and leaving half-moon shapes she'd pick obsessively at later. "No. If he comes to me, I won't turn him away. That would be signing his death warrant, and I won't do it. And I can assure you, if the Bureau finds out, we'll all know who went to them."

At some point, she'd become the kind of person to issue veiled threats to a man thirty years her senior and outranking her by a league. She wasn't even that surprised; she'd always been terrible at being subordinate.

"I don't intend upon telling anyone," Rossi replied, closing his eyes for a moment. "But you're playing with fire. If you won't let me change the locks, at the very least… you're a rune mage. Put one within reach in your home that will call me if you need me."

"Fine," she said after a beat, allowing him that concession. She'd never use it. She already knew that.

He nodded and walked away, his shadow watching her as he went.

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"Again, Emily?" JJ tried to keep the incredulous tone out of her voice when she saw Emily walking towards them through the squad room looking sheepish, but she didn't quite manage it. "How many is that now? Four?"

Emily did her best Sergio glare. She was doing that a lot these days. "Two. Christ, JJ, it's been two."

Morgan sniggered, tilting his chair back and grinning at her. "Don't lash out at JJ because you can't keep a tutor. What the heck do you do to them? This one didn't even last a week."

"I didn't do anything to this one," Emily said honestly, slumping in her seat and considering a career change. If she didn't pick up on her magic soon, she wouldn't have a damn choice. "It was all Sergio. He has opinions. Loud opinions."

"She's an idiot. She would have crippled your magic if you followed her advice. I merely pointed out her idiocy." Sergio appeared on her keyboard, paws pressing every inconvenient button possible as his tail lashed. Emily stared glumly at the windows flashing up on the screen, knowing that Garcia would soon appear and shout at them both for disrespecting technology.

"I can speak to Gideon." Hotch's voice floated down to them, and Emily almost fell out of her chair with shock, turning and flushing with embarrassment when she found her boss looking down on them. He looked… sympathetic. No doubt he'd just received the phone call from the furious mage Sergio had insulted.

Hell hath no fury like a mage with a sore ego.

She shook her head. The last thing she needed was Gideon taking her back out of some sort of misplaced pity. She'd work through this on her own. She'd take classes if she had to. It was clearly psychosomatic, her brain working against her.

Maybe Reid if she saw him again…

"I can do it." The thump of a bag hitting the desk opposite hers announced Rossi's arrival. "It's been a long time since I got to knock a young mage into shape. It'll be fun." He grinned and Emily groaned. Sergio purred.

"You're a dark mage, Dave," Hotch pointed out. "That's going to make things difficult."

"Ah well," Rossi responded cheerfully, pulling a muffin out of the battered bag and tearing a chunk off for Sergio. "I do love a challenge."

Emily began to consider that maybe she was in over her head.

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She'd never been to Gideon's apartment before.

She'd imagined it would be filled with books, with paintings of birds. Maybe even model trains... he did seem the type. And so far, it had all those things.

It was also painted with blood.

"They have six witnesses who saw Gideon running down the street covered in blood and holding a gun," Morgan murmured as Emily stepped up beside him, both of them looking through the bedroom door at the splayed body of a woman on Gideon's bed. What had once been a woman.

What was a woman no longer. What was left of her… Emily closed her eyes for a moment, to spare her brain the image for just a few seconds more. "They think Gideon did this?"

Hotch answered, stepping out of the room with his face chalk-white. "No. They think Reid did."

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"His scent is all over the room. Sarah died with her throat torn out. There are indications of sexual assault, but no DNA. That also points to demon. The entire place stinks of weather magic. Tell me again how we're going to prove it wasn't him?" Morgan paced as he spoke, the atmosphere in the room suffocating with the door closed tightly.

They were all crammed in Hotch's office, Strauss' eyes on them and the threat of her fury if she caught them working this case.

"It wasn't him," Emily said firmly, seeing JJ nod along. "Christ, Morgan, you think he went from being Reid to assaulting and eviscerating a woman in one fell swoop? There's no hesitation marks on the body, every strike was precise. That's not a first time killer."

"Incubi don't feed on blood," Rossi pointed out, rubbing the fingers of one hand together thoughtfully. "Foyet overplayed his first hand. Tearing out her throat, that was showy and shocking, and completely shattered the illusion he was going for. Indications of sexual assault? If we believe for an instant that that was Reid, she wouldn't have fought him. They're basing that on that she struggled. His entire species' survival is based around being impossible for humans to resist; there wouldn't be signs of a struggle from it."

"Why would Foyet bother staging it if he could order Reid to just do it?" JJ asked the question, even though Emily could tell she already knew the answer by the sadly triumphant look on her face.

"Because he's still fighting," Emily answered, locking her gaze accusingly onto Rossi's. "He was there, we know this. That fucker probably made him watch. But he didn't do this."

"Fantastic," Morgan said softly. "Now we gotta tell Gideon that before he finds him."

"Or before Foyet escalates this even more," Hotch added. "He's put these events into motion now – he's not going to fade away into the shadows without finishing what he's started. He's going to have more victims, and he's going to put Reid between us and them. We need to be ready for that."

Emily had a horrible feeling this case was going to end with them standing over the body of at least one person she cared about. It was the kind of case that brought with it that possibility.

The real question was; who would be left standing when the dust cleared? Gideon?

Or Reid?

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"Hotch, nothing could have stopped this." Emily stared at her boss's shoulders, the way they'd slumped, the empty look back on his face.

He was breaking.

The body of Rebecca Bryant lay in front of them and they couldn't have stopped it. But that didn't mean Hotch wasn't going to blame himself.

The air reeked of ozone and blood, and she half expected to turn and find Reid standing behind her, watching the scene with his hazel eyes both keenly assessing the information it presented them while still managing to convey his sadness at a life lost. Instead, Morgan stood there, and his face said nothing.

"This all started with me," Hotch snapped, turning and shouldering his way past. Walking out. Rossi followed, his expression grim.

"This all started with Foyet," Emily corrected softly, but he was already gone.

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Foyet took a child. Emily looked at the picture of Tracey Belle smiling cheerfully at the camera and silently prayed that Reid would protect her. He'd do anything to protect her, anything.

She hoped it was enough.

The phone rang while they were trying desperately to narrow down where he would take her and it was Garcia, her voice panicked. Hotch had sent her off somewhere, telling none of them where. They knew she was with Gideon.

Or had been with Gideon.

"Foyet made Tracey call, she told him where to find her. It's a trap, Hotch, it's a trap to get Gideon on his own, I know it. You have to go."

Hotch remained calm. "Did you record it?"

The voice that came from the phone directly after was young and painfully scared. "Please Mr. Gideon, you saved me once."

"I remember. Of course I remember you. How could I forget you?" Gideon, soothing. Emily's heart twisted at his voice. She had her problems with the man, hadn't ever thought to tell him that he was an inspiration to her, hadn't even realized until she heard him calming a frightened child even though he was grieving and alone and hunted. Now she might not ever get that chance.

"The man said you'd help me. He said you'd come for me and take me to mommy."

"Which man, hon? What man are you with?"

"I don't like him. He says nice things, but then he holds me so tight it hurts, and he won't let me go home."

"Reid? Spencer? If you're there, you need to help us. Help us save her, please. Please."

Every single one of them was holding their breath waiting for the reply. When it came, none of them were surprised.

"We chose the train station because we know how much you love trains," Spencer said dully, and Morgan closed his eyes. "We saw the toys in your apartment. Better hurry, Jason. What are the chances of her cheating death twice?"

The call cut off.

"Gideon has a head start on us," Rossi said firmly, standing and moving towards the door. "We'd better get moving if we want to beat him."

"In what capacity are we going there, Dave?" Hotch asked, his eyes dark. "As agents, or as executioners?"

Rossi didn't answer.

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There was no sign of Gideon or Foyet at the station, packed with civilians. There was no sign of Tracey either.

Or of Reid.

Emily moved behind Rossi, eyes scanning the crowd and Sergio at her feet. She needed his senses, needed to be the first to find him. So much could go wrong here, there was so much to lose.

She was calm though. She knew this, knew her job. Fear could come later.

She ended up being the third to see him. Rossi was first, followed by Sergio. His warning was seconds after Rossi swung his gun up, aimed squarely at Reid's unprotected heart.

Emily's forgot how to stop beating.

Reid blinked slowly, Tracey limp in his arms, and standing horribly, impossibly close to the edge of the platform. A shot from Rossi to the chest would veer dangerously close to the unconscious child.

A shot to the head was still dangerous.

And none of them were under any illusions that Reid couldn't kill her before the bullet even landed.

"Do it," Reid said, his voice a mocking challenge. "Take the shot. I won't stop you. I'll even fall so the girl remains unharmed."

"Is that Foyet talking or you, Dr. Reid?" Rossi asked, still calm. Emily said nothing, Sergio frozen at her feet. Reid didn't even spare her a glance. She could see Morgan and Hotch moving up behind Reid, keeping their distance, both of their faces shocked.

Oh yeah. She hadn't told them how different he looked.

Maybe it would make it easier for them if Rossi did end up taking the shot. He didn't really look a lot like their Reid anymore, not with his hair and the cruel expression he was wearing as a mask.

Spencer Reid, a magician to the end. Master of the fucking illusion. He threatened the girl, but his grip on her was gentle, and his body angled away from the tracks.

"I killed them, you know," Reid tried again, and the illusion slipped slightly. He was desperate. "I killed them and enjoyed every moment of it. You think I didn't? I am what I was always meant to be; a hunter."

"Foyet again," Rossi stated, and lowered the gun. "We don't want to talk to Foyet, Dr. Reid. We want to talk to Spencer Reid, our friend. The man who'll do anything to save the girl in your arms."

Reid exploded. "Shoot me!" he shouted, glancing around wildly, desperately, eyes skittering over JJ and Morgan before settling on Hotch. He controlled his voice this time, barely. "If you are merciful, you'll end this. Please."

A long beat of silence, and even with the rumble of an oncoming train and the screams of civilians desperately trying to flee the area, Emily could hear her heart hammering. "Now that was Reid," Rossi said finally, and he holstered his weapon. "You're not going to hurt her. You're not that far gone yet."

"Yet," Reid said numbly, closing his eyes. Hotch took a slow step forward. Then another. They held their breath. The train roared past, gone in an instant. Tracey still slept safely in his arms.

He shuddered as though in pain.

Hotch was next to him now. Reid looked at him, and something unsaid passed between the two. He deposited Tracey into Hotch's outstretched arms, safe. For a moment, it was any other day and they'd just solved a case together.

"Lower your weapon, Prentiss," said a low voice behind her. Gideon stepped up, his gaze locked on Reid and hungry. "You've got friendlies in your sight."

"Stop him," she breathed, the world snapping into vivid focus again and moving far too quickly. He'd be gone soon, he'd vanish again, out of reach. "Gideon, do something. Anything. He needs you."

"You do have the power," Rossi said mildly.

"I won't hurt him," Gideon replied numbly, and seconds later Reid was gone.

Again.

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The aftermath of that case would be prohibitive, Emily knew. They travelled back to the BAU in silence.

Gideon acknowledged no one and when he left for the night, there was an application for leave on his desk. They all knew it would be granted.

JJ tried to pretend she hadn't been crying, but Emily was done pretending. "It's confronting, I know…" she began, touching JJ's arm in the elevator, but JJ shook her head and pulled away.

"I can't talk about it, Em," she said quietly. "I can't face it yet. I thought… I thought we'd get him back and put this all behind us, like nothing had happened. I thought he'd be the same. I don't know why."

Emily understood that just as much as she wanted to laugh at the idea of it. How could anyone pass through the last three months unchanged, let alone Reid? They were all different now.

Morgan hugged JJ before she left and Garcia like he always did, and when Emily picked her bag up and slung it on her shoulder, he hugged her too. Clinging almost, like he'd seen the possibility of loss tonight and been terrified by it. He wasn't usually the hugging type, so she tolerated it.

"If you see him again," Morgan murmured quietly into her ear, and this was why he'd hugged her, so no one could overhear. "Tell him to do everything in his power to stay alive, and we will come for him."

"I've been saying that all along," she replied mildly, and Sergio mewled in agreement.

Rossi was oddly quiet, no flippant remarks or casual jokes to try and lower the tension, and his eyes stayed locked on Hotch's office. It was empty, Hotch in with Strauss, and Rossi didn't pack his things.

"Are you going home?" Emily asked him when she couldn't stall her leaving any longer and he still showed no signs of moving.

"Mmm, not quite," he replied, rubbing his eyes.

She looked at Hotch's office as well, unease setting in. Then she sat and waited with him, for as long as it took.

When he finally appeared, he was quiet. Rossi stood, and his face was the question they both wanted to ask.

"Suspended two weeks without pay," Hotch said calmly. "They think I should have taken the shot and that my abilities have been compromised by Reid's loss. You're to lead the team in my stead, Dave."

"That's bullshit," Rossi snapped, anger clouding his features. "I had a clearer shot than you, and he presented no danger. You did nothing wrong!"

"Didn't I?" Hotch murmured, looking away.

He walked out without glancing back once.

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The next case was strange without Hotch. Without Gideon. Without Reid.

There were more ghosts than souls in the jet these days.

Rossi was distracted, pacing, ignoring all of them even as they tried to form a profile. Sergio watched him, gaze following the pattern of his feet on the carpet.

"He's going to quit," he said finally, stopping and running his fingers through his hair. "He's going to quit the BAU."

"Hotch or Gideon?" Morgan asked mildly, because they'd been expecting this blow up since Quantico.

"Hotch. Both, probably. They're giving up." Rossi looked at her as he said this, eyes challenging.

"Gideon won't leave while Reid needs him," she responded, pressing her hand against her mouth for a second, teeth nipping at the nail, before catching herself. "Hotch… lost his family. Lost everything because of this case. And last week he found out that there's not going to be a neat ending to this, that we can't just bring Reid home and slip him back into his life like a missing puzzle piece." She hoped it wasn't obvious how bitter her voice was. JJ flinched, her own words echoing back at her.

"And then he gets suspended because he didn't put a bullet in his teammate's back," Morgan added, and he wasn't even bothering to hide his bitterness. "The teammate he's obsessed with saving. If he needs to bail to stay sane, well… we can do this without him. I don't want to lose another teammate like how we lost Elle because he doesn't know how to walk away."

"I don't agree," JJ said. Emily wondered if she was aware that there was ice forming on the table around her hand, the only sign of her distress. "We need him. Reid needs him. This is what Foyet wants; he wants to break us apart and make us vulnerable. Hotch is playing into his hands if he walks away now."

"Gideon's not answering his phone," Rossi said finally, letting that sink in.

"Give him time," Emily suggested, her stomach flipping uneasily and sending a wave of trepidation up her spine. "Give them both time."

.


.

Home again and her phone woke her. She opened her eyes and stared at the brightness of the screen illuminating her bed stand, squinting slightly against the glare.

She didn't want it to be JJ. She couldn't handle another case, not right now. They needed to heal.

It wasn't JJ.

.

Gideon

Do you know where my cabin is? I need you here.

.

What the fuck. What in the ever loving fuck.

She closed her eyes for a minute, opened them again and read the message twice, just to make sure. The contents didn't change.

.

To Gideon

What's wrong? Do you want me to bring Rossi? Or Hotch?

.

No answer.

Oh, there was absolutely no fucking way that this wasn't a trap.

"Sergio," she called, slipping out of bed and reaching for her pants. "We're going out."

She was going anyway.

.


.

The cabin lay in darkness as she pulled up, the car wheels crunching on gravel the only sound. She activated her runes before her feet even touched the ground, gratified when they responded instantly to her call.

Further proof that whatever was fucking with her was in her head.

"I don't like this," Sergio said, his mouth open and eyes diluted. "I smell blood, Emily."

"We should leave," she agreed, pulling her phone out and tapping out a text, sending it to everyone in the contact list labelled 'work.' "Walking in there is suicide."

.

To Bossman, JJ, Morgan, + 4 others

At Gideon's cabin. Received text from him asking me here. Almost certainly a trap.

.

It sent with a satisfying boop, and she turned it off before putting it in her pocket. She knew within seconds it was going to start ringing with anxious calls from every person who'd just received it. She also knew that it would be forty minutes minimum before any of them made it here, no matter how fast Morgan drove.

Forty minutes was an eternity in the lion's mouth.

There was a polysyllabic sound from inside the cabin. Gideon's phone receiving her text.

Then there was another.

Oh shit.

"Emily," Sergio said, but she was already moving. Gun out, runes on, pushing open the door of the cabin, credentials lighting up the room as she held her left hand out. The room stunk of burning, of lightning and fire and copper.

Reid was sitting on the table, legs crossed and head bowed. His hands hang loosely in front of him, gleaming black in the blue from her palm. She turned on the overhead light, and they turned crimson.

Two more steps and she saw Gideon.

"Oh no," Sergio whispered, sinking to the floor.

Emily looked into Gideon's eyes and they looked back sightlessly, and she knew that this was the moment everything ended.

She turned her gun on him and rested her finger on the trigger. The job came first. The job absolutely always came first. At the end of her sight, his heart and hers.

Reid looked up and nodded.

She made her choice.