A.N. This will be a short multi-chapter intra-ep for 15X09 and 15X10, 'Face Off/ And in the End'. The episodes left so many spaces to explore, they couldn't possibly fit into one story, so this will probably be the first of a few.

Six

Six. He couldn't get through a full thought without the number intruding. Six.

Six people had lost their lives in a blast he hadn't foreseen.

Six seconds before the blast, they'd all been alive.

If I'd taken six seconds more to think it through….

Six was the number of seconds before he'd been able to hear again after the explosion, six the number of times JJ had needed repeat to him what had happened. Six was the number of times he'd refused her plea that he receive medical attention.

But it had taken only one, loud, angry demand to be left alone, to send her to another seat on the plane.

For JJ, the facts were still sinking in, but the nuances had already risen to the surface.

We lost Gideon over something like this. He was never the same, after, even after he was exculpated. The FBI found a way to forgive him, but Gideon never found a way to forgive himself.

She was worried that the same might happen with Reid.

It wasn't his fault those people died. It was the whole team who made the profile, not just Spence. He was just the one who passed on the order.

But she knew he wouldn't see it that way. More to the point, she knew it would have brought him back to thinking about Gideon, too. Of all of them on the plane, only JJ and Reid had worked with Gideon near in time to the events in Boston. Only the two of them had seen the extent of how it had affected him, the undermined confidence, the various attempts at compensation.

JJ sometimes wondered if Gideon had only come back to the team for Reid, if he'd only held it together as long as he had, because he'd had the young genius in tow. He had, after all, felt a need to explain himself only to Reid, when he'd left.

Who would Spence explain himself to?

Sadly, she realized, his choices had dwindled. Once upon a time, he might have told Hotch. Absent Hotch, he'd have told her. But things were different between them now, even in spite of their attempt at reconciliation weeks ago. They were more reserved with one another, more aware of the fact of their interaction, and thereby less free with the content.

If he won't talk to me, maybe to Emily. Or Rossi, though I think he's mired in his own guilt about it.

She wondered if maybe he would talk to Max, the woman he'd been seeing for a number of weeks now. But she doubted he would want to introduce her so quickly into the depth of grief and guilt that sometimes went with their job.

But...maybe. She did meet Cat Adams, after all. But Max prevailed against Cat. She doesn't know what it feels like to lose a battle to evil.

In the end, and in spite of not wanting to have her head bitten off, JJ decided that it had to be her. This was the kind of thing that had to be shared with someone in the trenches. But it was also the kind of thing that had to be shared in private, not with others only a few feet away.

And it's the kind of thing that has to be shared with someone who loves you, even if we can't talk about that.

So she waited until the jet was on the ground, and they were gathering their things. Then she made her move.

"I don't think you should drive."

He started to shake his head, and then immediately had to hold it, because it hurt so much. JJ took advantage.

"See? Don't even think about arguing with me. I'm taking you home. Although….I don't suppose I could convince you to come home with me? You shouldn't be alone, after you've had a concussion."

He was annoyed, but aware enough to know she was right. Still, he would only meet her half way.

"All right, you can drive. But I want to go home. Alone."

"Spence…."

"JJ, please. I need to be alone."

Inwardly, JJ sighed. Once she'd made the decision to push him, she'd spent the rest of their time in the air anticipating this conversation. Whether they'd been communicating well lately or not, she had fourteen years of 'Spence' to draw upon.

"I don't like it, but I respect your decision. But that doesn't mean you're not going to hear from me, every two hours."

He made a feeble attempt to push back. "People with concussions need brain rest. That means they need more sleep, not less."

"Hmph. Aren't you the one who was telling Emily the guidelines had changed?"

"Not that much." Closing his eyes as she began backing out of her parking spot. At the sign of his fatigue, JJ nearly relented on her plan.

"You didn't really sleep on the plane, did you? We've got 45 minutes to your place. You can sleep now, if you want."

For the first time, Reid looked over and really took stock of her.

"You're exhausted, too. And you didn't sleep on the plane, either."

She almost shrugged it off, but then recognized an opportunity.

"I couldn't. Too much to sort through, you know?"

He did. "I can't even focus long enough to start. I …" Cutting himself off.

She chanced a glance in his direction.

"You what?"

"Never mind."

"Spence, please. Even if you don't want to talk about it, I do. I need to. Six FBI agents died there today. And, for a few seconds, I thought you had, too."

Those words hit home, and he relented. If he couldn't do it for himself, he could do it for her. But she wasn't going to like what he had to say.

"I should have."

"What?!"

"I made the call. I told them to breach. Why should they have paid the price for that, and not me?"

She should have anticipated it. She'd known he would be feeling guilt. But she'd thought it would be guilt over the lives lost, not guilt over having survived. Memories flashed into her brain, about the guilt he'd felt years ago, when he'd lost the woman he'd loved, and wished it had been him. Back then, he'd gotten so mired in grief and guilt that JJ had worried it would suffocate him.

She wasn't about to let that happen a second time. But this wasn't a conversation she could have while she was driving. It required attention and focus. She needed to see him, and to have him see her. She needed his eyes. So she slowed the vehicle, and turned into an empty parking lot.

"What happened? Why are we stopping?"

She turned off the engine, slipped off her restraint, and turned to face him.

"Because we need to talk."

"I don't… I can't, JJ. Not now."

Probably not ever.

She studied him for a few seconds, strategizing.

"Okay, then 'I' need to talk. You can just listen."

When he didn't refuse, she continued.

"It was horrific. Never mind whether or not we got it wrong…" Purposely representing the role of the whole team in creating the profile. "It's a devastating thing to even think about, let alone to witness. It was just like….."

She stopped abruptly, her words having gotten ahead of her thoughts. When her thoughts caught up, she felt stricken.

How have I gotten so good at denial?

Her silence elicited a response from Reid.

"Are you okay?" Looking at her in consternation, her features telling him she'd gone to a place of psychic pain.

"It's just…. I didn't even think, until this minute. And then it flashed! The Humvee…"

He knew immediately what she meant. "Afghanistan."

The place where she'd been injured in an explosion that had killed several soldiers, and taken from her an unborn child.

She was still processing it. "How could I not have remembered?"

He knew, because he was currently experiencing the very reason.

"You lost consciousness. You don't have a memory of the actual explosion. Just the aftermath."

Which was bad enough, for Reid. But not as bad as the certainty that it had all been preventable.

If not the explosion, then the loss of life.

As addled as she was beginning to feel about this, Jennifer Jareau was also one of the most practical people either of them knew, and she called upon that practicality now. But she had to go deep to find that trait in the moment.

If this brings out my PTSD, I'll deal with it. Right now, I'm worried about Spence, because guilt is too heavy a burden to bear.

She adjusted herself in her seat, to better see his face.

"I'll be okay. It's you I'm worried about right now. Did you realize you were talking to yourself on the plane? I heard you. You kept asking how you'd gotten it wrong."

"I did."

"We all did, Spence. We did this together, as a team. We worked the profile together."

He wasn't having it.

"But you disagreed. You thought it was too dangerous."

"For Rossi to meet with him! That's what was too dangerous! It was you who thought she wouldn't be able to kill him, remember? You had to convince the rest of us."

"But I never profiled that she would want to die with him!"

The vehemence of his self-rebuke set his head to pounding even harder, and he had to hold it for relief. None of which was lost on JJ.

"Listen, we can argue about this another time. Right now, I really think I should get you to a hospital."

"You promised to take me home."

"But, Spence, I'm worried about you. You have a concussion, and you wouldn't even let the EMTs look at you."

"They had a lot of other people to look at, who were hurt much worse than I was. I can handle a concussion."

"But…"

"JJ, I trusted you when you said you would bring me home. Will you please do that, now?"

He'd pulled out his trump card, whether wittingly or unwittingly, and she could do nothing but comply.

Maybe I'm not the one for this. Maybe he does need someone else. Maybe Max. Or….

An idea came to mind. Once it was filed away, she buckled herself in again, and started the car.

"I'm sorry. I'll take you home. But I'm serious about being worried. I want you to promise me that you'll go to the doctor if your head still hurts in the morning."

Hearing a note of distress in her voice, he looked over to her apologetically.

"I'm sorry, too. And, if it will make you feel better, I promise."

She flashed him a quick smile.

"It will."

They rode in silence for several miles, until Reid had a question for JJ.

"Do you remember? With Gideon?"

She nodded. "I do."

"I was just finishing at the academy, then. I knew him, of course, because he'd recruited me, but I hadn't worked with him yet. Not in the field."

"I came to the team right after, when Hotch took over. He was the one who thought a liaison would be a good idea."

"So, you don't know, either. What he was like before, I mean."

She glanced over to Reid, tempted to stop the car again.

"I don't. But I heard he was different, after. Maybe a little more driven."

That resonated with Reid. "He almost never walked. It was like he ran, everywhere he went. I thought it was just how he acted in the field. But maybe it was something else."

She'd been ready to give up on having this conversation, and now here it was. JJ recognized that she would need to tread carefully.

"I guess 'driven' was a healthy response, considering. I mean, it allowed him to keep working."

"But he didn't. He didn't keep working. He left."

Which was the core of her concern about Reid, and JJ felt her pulse accelerating as they approached it.

Please keep me from saying the wrong thing!

She took what she hoped was a breath of inspiration before responding.

"There were a lot of other things that happened, Spence. Not just Boston."

A quick glance over at him told her that he'd already begun taking mental inventory of the events leading up to Gideon's departure, and her 'Spence antennae' told her when he'd reached the fact of his own trauma, and the role Gideon might have played in it.

She spoke again, as though he'd recounted his memories aloud.

"He felt responsible for every one of those things that happened, even if he'd asked to have Hotch take over the team."

That got a reaction from her best friend.

"He asked for Hotch to step in? I thought…"

"It wasn't disciplinary. Hotch told me that, when I started. It was like he wanted to make sure I understood, so it wouldn't affect my relationship with him. Like he wanted to make sure I still respected him. Gideon didn't tell you?"

Reid shook his head. "He didn't explain himself to me, back then. Everything was about the process. He didn't explain himself to me at all, until that letter."

She remembered, and it was what worried her. On the plane, she'd heard Reid repeating the words Gideon had written in the letter, the ones he'd read to her again, from memory, after Gideon died. 'I just don't understand any of it anymore.'

"Do you remember how much you worried about him, then? That's how much I'm worried about you."

Reid was quiet for another long stretch of road, and she couldn't quite tell if he was thinking, or feeling, or ailing. Until he spoke again.

"Thank you. And I heard you, before. It's just that the fact that it wasn't only me doesn't mean much. It doesn't change the fact that those six families are grieving tonight. And it doesn't change the fact that I didn't see it."

"None of us saw it, Spence. Not until that satchel was found, and that was just a fluke. I mean, if you think about it another way, there might have been more agents killed, if we hadn't been able to call it off at the last second."

"You called it off."

"Because I took the call! That's the only reason."

There was something odd about this conversation, something circular, which made it stand out from nearly every other conversation she'd ever had with him. Later, with the perfect vision of hindsight, she would see it as an indicator, and one that she'd sorely missed.

Their last exchange had carried them the rest of the distance to the street outside Reid's apartment. JJ pulled over, put the vehicle in park, and turned off the engine. Which was Reid's cue to protest.

"I'm fine. You don't need to come in."

She tried. "I can make you tea, and make sure you're comfortable."

"I'm okay by myself. I think I'm just going to lay down, anyway."

She'd expected her offer to be rebuffed. Turning to him once more, she reached for his hands.

"Listen, Spence. I know it's still a little weird between us, and I'll take the blame for that. But I hope you can hear me when I say that I love you, and I care what happens to you. I care what you think, and I care what you feel, and I care if someone is coming down on you, even when that person is you. I'm not going to let my best friend be lost to something that was not his fault, and was beyond his control. So, please don't insist on carrying this by yourself. It happened, and it's horrendous, and we'll find out soon enough exactly what caused it. But, whatever it was, it belongs to all of us, or none of us. Not to you. Not only to you."

He loved her for that, and for so many other things. But she simply didn't understand, as he did, that he always carried the greater responsibility, as the price of his giftedness.

"I hear you." I don't agree, but I hear you. "Thanks."

As he released his seat belt, and took hold of his messenger bag, she made one more offer.

"Sure you don't want me to get you settled? I know how to open a mean can of chicken soup."

He smiled. "That's tempting, but no, thanks. You went through something today, too. Go home and hug Will and the boys."

She returned his smile. "I will. And you're welcome to some little boy hugs any time you want them. I can tell you from experience that they are mighty healing."

"I'll bet. Thanks, JJ. For the ride…and everything."

"You're welcome. Rest well, Spence."

She waited until she could see him starting up the staircase to his apartment before she drove off. As she did, she received a text message. And then another, and another. A disembodied voice from her vehicle read them to her, and was interrupted in the process by the arrival of several more texts.

Six was the total number of messages JJ received from her female co-workers, insisting she join them to let down from the extreme tension of this day.

Six was the number of times she told the boys she loved them, after she'd told Will she would be home late.

Six was the number of bottles of wine opened at Garcia's that night.

Six was the number of seconds it took Reid to realize that he was bleeding from his nose.

Six was the number of steps he took into his apartment before his legs buckled, and he fell to the floor.

Six was the number of seconds he had to think, 'Am I dying?' before he stopped thinking at all.