Autumn
The only people who can tell you are those who have gone over…
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He found Reid by her grave, exactly where he'd expected to find him. There was nothing surprising about this. Autumn leaves made damp sounds under his shoes as he walked carefully between headstones and faded bouquets, coming to stand by his agent's side.
Reid said nothing, but there was a look in his eyes Hotch knew.
"The anger fades," Hotch said in a voice as quiet as the event deserved.
"Does it?" Reid asked, his expression flickering. "It doesn't feel like it will. I'm either paralysed by grief, or I'm burning with a need to hurt those who took our future from us. It hasn't faded at all."
That hurt. A stinging pinch that whispered he imagined a future and the following punch of they would have been happy. All Hotch had ever wanted was for the people he loved to be happy, and he'd failed Reid at this integral moment. There was no fixing that.
He could still try, though.
"You missed the plane yesterday," Hotch said. There was unease in the words. Reid was raw and Reid was angry, and Hotch had been both but slightly less because he'd thrown himself gleefully over the edge and softened his landing with Foyet's death. He didn't want Reid following that harrowing path.
"Yes." The answer was blank and broken.
Hotch took a breath. Grief lingered on the air along with rain. "Are you going to miss another?"
They both knew what he was asking. The woman who killed Maeve is dead. Are you going to take that anger out on the only person left alive who you blame?
Reid held his arm out in silence. To an onlooker, it would look as though he was trying to trail trembling fingers across the gilded name in front of him. To Hotch, it showed unmarked skin and a step back from the edge.
"It wasn't your fault," he tried. Don't self-destruct. We need you.
Reid just looked at him, his mouth turning down. "I won't miss another plane," he finally said, his shoulders slumping. He'd said that before. It had turned out to be a lie.
Hotch had no choice but to believe him this time because the only other option was destruction.