AN: This is the last chapter for this story. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks to everyone for your patience on getting these last few chapters done.

The idea this approach on Gideon leaving was based off a comment Rossi made doing Omnivore about Gideon blaming himself for everything.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

After leaving the conference room, Gideon slowly made his way to his office and sat at his desk. He had come in tonight to sort out some things before Spencer dropped by for them to play chess. After the team returned from Flagstaff he had gone up to his cabin to contemplate his future. It was time he should have given himself after Sarah's murder. He had thought it would be best to go right back to work and that had been a mistake.

He had gained some clarity on his time off about stepping away from the field for a while. He had arranged tonight with Spencer to tell him knowing that the younger man would take the news harder than anyone else. He hadn't expected anyone else to be here since the only one he had ever seen here at this time was Hotch and he was still suspended right now.

A suspension that if it was given to anyone, it should have been him. But Hotch being the man and leader that he is took the responsibility. He still didn't know what to say to the Unit Chief next time he saw him.

But tonight he hadn't been prepared to see Prentiss. However he had used the opportunity to ask some lingering questions as well as clearing the air with her. He had been wrong when he suspected her of doing Bruno's bidding. Like all of the others that he had identified, Bruno had used CIA assets to enrich himself with no consideration about how it would affect any of them. Some got through unscathed while other like Prentiss were doing their best to live with the scars while others died either during the mission or afterwards.

And he still couldn't shake that he was partially responsible for it. He had interviewed and written the psych evals. He had essentially given Bruno a blueprint of the psyche of each. Information about their background. In essence, he had given a complete psychological profile for each one of these agents to a sociopath. One that Bruno had used against them for his own gains.

And it wasn't the first time he had come up against it even this year. In the fall he discovered that detectives in Chicago had, after requesting a profile for one of their case, used it improperly to accuse one of their own of murder. They too had improperly used one of his profiles to accuse someone they had been after for years instead of as a tool for shrinking a suspect pool.

He had a hard time getting past how close that case came to turning out so differently for Morgan particularly after he disappeared from the police station. How his arrest had opened a huge gaping wound of what happened to him in the past. There was good that came out of the case in that a serial pedophile turned murderer was identified and arrested but it came at a cost.

Then there was Sarah. A friend since college. They had both married other people and had families but in recent years had found each other again. They both had busy schedules and tried to meet whenever they could.

Maybe it should have been an omen that they had been having dinner at his cabin when the head had been delivered a year earlier during that awful case with Randall Gardner. That experience shook her just as he had him as it had compromised, what until that day, his safe haven. Sarah hadn't been in any hurry to return to the cabin after that night.

So a few weeks ago, she had asked about coming to DC to see him. She had commented about it being safer in the city instead of out in the middle of nowhere. Little did either of them know that danger would show up at his door the night she was there making dinner for them. Danger that was meant for him. Danger in the form of a prolific psychopath who Gideon had been forced to let go in order to save a busload of children. A psychopath who then blamed Gideon for the disappearance of his obsession, Jane.

Jane. Who was the only person to survive Frank but had never really escaped from him. She had been trying to get away a couple of times from Frank but each time was pulled back into his web. The last time at the train station they had only involved Jane because once again only Frank knew the location of a missing child, Tracey Belle, and refused to reveal that location until he had Jane. Before any of them could stop them Frank and Jane had jumped in front of a train.

Tracey Belle. He clearly remembered her from the original case they worked when they were investigating murders. In cooperation with the police they had spoken to the local children about following a buddy system so none of them would be caught alone by the UNSUB. And being the child she was Tracey had followed those instructions which unfortunately had put her alone with the UNSUB who turned out to be peer.

The team's mad dash through the woods as they tried to track them down had almost been too late as Gideon himself barely reached the boy in time to get the bat out of his hands.

Tracey had been unharmed at least physically. Her family, in an attempt to heal, had moved to the DC area. And then because of her connection to the BAU. Because she was in his damn book, she was again targeted. Her babysitter killed and Tracey herself kidnapped and taken all the way to NYC to be locked in a closet in that morbid apartment with Frank's long deceased mother. At least at the end of the day, Tracey was back with her parents though he wondered how their family would move forward a second time.

That would be in contrast to Rebecca Bryant who would now never have the chance to move forward. She had survived a house fire that killed her mother and siblings while severely scarring her father when she was four. Her eventual adoption healed the trauma only so much as she acted out. When she disappeared it was written off as running away instead of kidnapping as would ultimately be determined.

She was held by her biological father whose mental state had been compromised after the fire who then held her prisoner. His attack on the BAU during the Fisher King case ended with the team narrowly rescuing Rebecca from the burning house she was being held in after her father set off a bomb.

In the time since then, she had made peace with her adoptive parents and started to rebuilt her life - getting her GED, finding a job and moving into her own apartment. And then because of his book, she was targeted by Frank who pretended to be Gideon himself when approaching Rebecca. Then before the team could reach her, Frank killed her as well. A devastating end for the young woman just as things were starting to come together for her.

He could help but blame himself because what happened to Tracey and Rebecca happened because of him. Because of his book. The book was for him - to remember those the team saved as well as those lost. But in the wrong hands it had become a weapon. But as Bruno and the detectives in Chicago had done, Frank too had used it as a blueprint of someone vulnerabilities and used it to harm.

As Gideon looked around his office he was hit with the realization that he couldn't do this anymore. He needed to get away from the BAU and out of DC. He needed to leave now. He couldn't be responsible for harm coming to anyone else. He stood up and packed up a few personal items from his office.

As he was getting ready to walk out of his office, his eyes fell onto the pictures across from his desk. He stopped and put his bag down before grabbing a box and piling the pictures into it. He couldn't leave them here and potentially put all of these people in danger too by another psychopath that wanted to get the BAU's attention.

With that done, he put his bag onto his shoulder, picked up the box and walked out of the now empty office.

####

It was two days later and Gideon had just finished packing up his car. After leaving the BAU, he had returned to his cabin. When he arrived, he realized that he had forgotten he had plans with Spencer to play chess. Spencer was another person he felt guilty about being involved in this work. He had recruited him out of college only considering the benefit of Spencer's intellect for the work of the BAU and not the potential harm to Spencer himself.

He tried a couple of times to call him but couldn't do it. He needed to keep his distance in order to keep Spencer safe. So while taking a break from packing, he wrote a letter to Spencer trying to explain though knowing that he had come short as there was so much he couldn't say.

He put the psych evals back into his locked cabinet and before he closed it, he added all the pictures that were now out of the frames as well as what was left of his book. He needed to keep them safe as well.

It was too early to know what would happen with the information he had compiled about what Bruno had been doing at the CIA. All he could hope for now is that at least one of the people he had sent it to was above board and something would be done to fix the systemic issues that allowed Bruno to get away with it for so long.

As he got into the car, he glanced at the files about the members of the BAU team sitting on the seat next to him. He knew where he was taking those though he hoped his old friend was where Gideon was hoping he was.

Driving down the road, Gideon went in the direction of David Rossi's hunting cabin. He was hoping his old friend would be willing to protect the team and the unit they created together.