Chapter 35: What did Gideon do?
"One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though ... betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope." Nai Steven Deitz
While Joy cried herself to sleep Reid went to his room and walked around like a caged lion in it, rolling the words of the last few hours in his own head.
His eidetic memory was a mixed blessing: it was helpful when studying a case but when his emotions were involved, what a mess.
He finally got tired of walking and sat down on his bed, kicked off his shoes and laid down fully clothed over the duvet. Still sleep eluded him, as his gut churned with the knowledge that what they had had been cut short thanks to Gideon's interference.
But Joy's words were clashing with something in the back of his mind, as his eidetic memory went over what she had recalled from her childhood and their conversation before her terrible nightmare, and he was aware that there was something there, just beyond his grasp.
He could feel it. He closed his eyes and left his mind alone processing the information, as he felt his body slowly relaxing against the blankets.
"Gideon took me to a therapist he knew from the Bureau."
"Gideon knew."
"They've recorded the sessions for later study."
"Gideon knew."
They've never let me hear them but Gideon made my mom and my dad listen to them."
"Gideon knew."
"They've told me later that I was better off not knowing."
"Gideon knew."
"They've worked with me for one year…"
"Gideon knew."
"Gideon was not only a mentor. He was pretty much like a father for both of us."
"Gideon knew."
"He saved my life when I was just a little girl…"
"Gideon knew."
"I... left you because Gideon told me to."
"Gideon knew it all along. And he knew me."
"Gideon knew."
GIDEONKNEW GIDEONKNEW GIDEONKNEW GIDEONKNEW GIDEONKNEW GIDEONKNEW GIDEONKNEW
"SHIT!" Reid jumped awake from the bed, breathing heavily as his mind shot into overdrive. His heart was jumping in his chest, and when he looked to the window he saw the light filtering through the curtains.
It was already morning.
"He knew." Reid murmured, his gaze on the branch of a tree slowly curving on the wind blowing outside. "He knew all along. He knew what had happened to her and did nothing." He stopped, reconsidering it. "Actually, he did something. He buried it as deeply as possible in her subconscious, praying that it would never see the light of the day again."
He jumped off the bed and went barefoot out of the room, his mismatched socks on his feet muffling any sound. He slowly made his way towards Joy's room and thought twice before knocking on the door. When he received no answer, he gently turned the knob and entered the room.
He stopped by her bed and gulped as he saw her wrapped in her duvet, her face glistening with dried tear tracks on her cheeks.
"He used both of us, didn't he?" He murmured to the sleeping woman.
He got no response, so he silently left the room and went back to the living room, eager for a large dose of coffee.
He had some digging to do.
NICS NCIS NCIS NCIS
Reid was again stuck with only his thoughts. He usually was quite comfortable to dwell with them, but after the revelations of the previous evening - Joy's nightmares, her witnessing her father's murder and Gideon's betrayal both of him and her - his own mind was the last place he would like to stay alone.
So after making himself a gigantic mug of coffee he mindlessly walked to the bookcase some good soul had decided to set up in a room of the safe house and started studying the titles, looking for one that might keep his attention long enough to dim the restless questions which were hammering his forehead.
Why did Gideon interfere in their relationship?
Why did Gideon on purpose choose to hide Joy's past from her?
The question to the first question was simple, but not easy to accept. They had been extremely young, vulnerable and had found in each other solace for a very short time.
Joy had just graduated from her M.A. in the UK and had come directly to finish training in Quantico.
He was Gideon's research assistant, visiting the Bureau whenever he wasn't pursuing this or that PhD. His genius status granted free access to the papers he needed for his research projects, and it was through Gideon that both youngsters met for the first time in the cafeteria of Quantico.
She was older than him but he soon found out that didn't necessarily mean she was more experienced than himself. She had been all his firsts: first lover, first female friend, first girlfriend... The man in him enjoyed the attention while the teenager still there had been charmed to find someone who, for some reason, was almost as inexperienced as him.
When he asked her why, she showed him her scarred back. She later told him he was the second male who had ever been given the dubious honor of seeing - and why not - touching her scars.
"Why?"
"The first one left our bed one morning and got shot half an hour later when he walked in on a robbery. There was no one since."
He didn't dare to ask any other question after that.
Reid sat down on the sofa with the book over his lap and stared at the unlit fireplace, trying to figure out the answer for the second question.
"Why did Gideon choose to hide her past from her?" Reid muttered out loud, but no answer came from the empty room. He looked up and saw one of the other agents walking outside in the garden, close to the waterline.
Unable to come up with an answer which undoubtedly would reveal a deep betrayal, Reid called one of his favorite persons in the whole world, after checking that it was an acceptable time to ring someone at Quantico.
"Garcia, Oracle of all knowledge, how may I serve you, young Jedi?"
"Hey, I need you to check something for me."
"Tell me, oh so gracious one."
"I need you to look for hypnotherapy sessions requested by Gideon in his first few months working with Buchanan."
"Researching Buchanan therapy files from 1999 onwards..."
"No, Garcia, I need the files previous to that."
"Oh," Garcia's hands froze over her keyboard, "what exactly do you want me to look for?"
"I need the files from 1989 onwards from when Gideon first met Joy."
"These are juvie sealed records. Are we even allowed to look at them?"
"Has that ever stopped you before?"
"No but why do you need them?"
"I have a theory but I need proof."
He could hear the insane typing of the redhead on her keyboard, providing a background to her muttering on the phone. After a while, he heard Garcia humming puzzled on the line.
"This is interesting."
"What did you find?"
"Gideon requested a Federal shrink specialized in PSTD – a Dr. Charlene White - to be assigned to Joy's treatment after the case they met for the first time back in 1989 but… I can find the logs of the sessions but there is nothing else."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, there are no files. No recorded sessions, no transcripts, no reports, no nothing. It's as if the doctor went there and took no notes of her sessions or, if she did…"
"The reports were never filed in the FBI system." Reid muttered, seeing the pieces falling together right before his eyes.
"But why Gideon would do that?"
Reid rested back on the sofa, rubbing a hand over his eyes tiredly. "Gideon didn't do it. At least not without help."
"But who could bury these files in such way that yours truly here can't find them." Garcia's voice was puzzled, seeing that her magic for once couldn't retrieve any answers from her babies.
Reid opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, sighing loudly at the phone. "Maggie and Joseph Buchanan could. Gideon didn't have the necessary clearance to order the files sanitized but Maggie Buchanan through the proper channels could have the entire file erased by her request."
Garcia was shocked into silence for a moment, gulping as she stared at her plasma screens all displaying info at a dizzying speed. "Uh… but why would they do it? Wouldn't they want Joy to know about her past?"
Reid closed his eyes and saw clearly Joy's trashing and screaming as she remembered the events that lead to her father's death. An adult Joy reacted as if her own heart was being ripped from her heart without anesthesia. A younger Joy would probably have reacted in a much worse way.
It's a miracle she hadn't become catatonic or worst.
"Probably because there are too many dark corners in her mind, Garcia, and people shouldn't have free access to them." Reid repeated Joy's words to Garcia, receiving just a loud uhmpf from the tech's side.
"Take care, baby G-man, I'll hold the fort for you here."
"Thanks Garcia."
They disconnected and Reid put the phone on the center table, grabbing the calculus book again and mindlessly going through its pages. His eyes weren't even moving over the words as his mind went through the information he had just received and cross referenced it with what he already knew of the Buchanan family.
If there was a bunch of people who were good of keeping secrets, it was the Buchanans. They were downright paranoid in protecting their own and there was nothing they wouldn't do for another member of the family.
If Maggie and Joseph have decided that digging deeper in Joy's subconscious would become dangerous to their child, they wouldn't think twice about brushing it all under a rug in Joy's consciousness and pray that that particular skeleton in the closet would never see daylight again.
But in order to do that, they must have had help. And that help must have come from Gideon.
Gideon had offered the services of a Bureau trained child psychologist after Joy's and Hope's kidnapping. He did the follow-up interviews and he must have known, he must have been aware of what was lurking in that little girl's mind.
He knew how damaging that information could be so he chose to bury it as deeply as possible.
Sometimes he really wished a chance of having a talk to Gideon in order to clarify what the older man had been thinking.
But Gideon wasn't there, was he? So he had to clean up after the mess and emotional turmoil Gideon had left in his wake.
"Oh crap." Reid closed his eyes, aware of a migraine coming full force behind his eyes.