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Aaron was desperately trying to hide his nerves. He wasn't sure how Haley ended up inviting herself to the team night out and unfortunately it was one of the few nights Reid hadn't managed to talk his way out of once he'd heard that Hotch was coming. Still he'd kept his mouth shut and was now sitting with a group of people he seemed to know from outside of the BAU while Hotch and Haley sat with Emily and Garcia who was more involved in watching Morgan flirt on the dance floor while being teased about it by Emily. So far nobody had said Reid's name in front of Haley and Hotch had to be grateful for Garcia and Morgan's insistence on using the most ridiculous nicknames. JJ was also on the other side of the room soundly beating a couple of ýoung male strangers at darts. Aaron invited Haley to dance, hoping against hope that his luck wouldn't run out.
As it happened Haley didn't learn Spencer's name that night, instead their night was ruined in the more common way with a call from the BAU telling them they'd been assigned a new case and needed to be in Georgia by first thing in the morning. Haley ended up driving her car home alone while the team hurried to collect their go bags and meet on the jet.
Spencer was glad that they were called away to a case. Even sitting with his back to Hotch and Haley so he wouldn't have to see them together was torture. He couldn't bear to look at them or talk to them. A small selfish part of him wanted to greet her and introduce himself, to hurt her as much as her mere existence unknowingly hurt him. It was only the thought of hurting Hotch by doing it that kept him on the other side of the room. So he avoided her and tried to concentrate on the star trek trivia game his acquaintances from Georgetown were involved in and prayed that something would happen to end the evening early before he had to go back over to Hotch and the team and be social while hiding his heartbreak at having to watch the woman lay her claim on his soulmate.
-o0o-
Spencer had been missing nearly a day now, they'd managed to rescue JJ, and she was uninjured though still shaken from the ordeal but Reid had been taken away to a secondary location and they were all trying to find him. Because Tobias was heavily into his computers Garcia had been flown down to meet them and Hotch went to meet her at the airport. He knew as unit chief he was the right person to go but leaving the search for Reid was wrenching, what good was having a soul mate bond if it couldn't be used to find your soul mate or to know that they were still alive and uninjured. Garcia's worried fussing on the way back to the farmhouse didn't help and Hotch had to work hard not to snap at her to shut up and that it was his soul mate missing so she needed to focus on finding him and not what she and the rest of the team were feeling.
"Oh, my god. Guys! Guys! Get in here! He's been beaten.
"Can't you track him?"
"Hankel's only streaming this to his home computer. This is for us. He knows we're here,"
"I'm gonna put this guy's head on a stick,"
Why can't you locate him?"
"He's rerouting to a different I. P. Address every 30 seconds. I can't track him," Penelope said in tears at her inability to help her friend.
Hotch felt unreasonably angry with the emotional computer analyst. They'd had situations before where she'd been unable to track people due to the techniques they used to hide from surveillance and in truth she wasn't employed for her skills in tracking down hackers but her ability to find information for them.
"Reid, if you're watching, you're not responsible for this. You understand me? He's perverting god to justify murder. You are stronger than him. He cannot break you," Gideon said to the web cam on the computer every time that the footage showed that Reid was alone trying to show him support and help him find the strength to get through this.
Spencer watched Gideon on the screen talking to him. It was arrogant of the man to think that he could talk to Spencer without the unsub finding out. After all there was no way of knowing what was outside of the camera range or if the footage from the camera in the house was also being relayed to some secondary location.
He understood that Gideon meant to give him some comfort and the strength to hold out but all it did was make his heart ache with the realization that Hotch also had access to the camera Gideon was using to talk to him and hadn't. His rational mind reminded him that the communication was ill advised and that Hotch wasn't selfish enough to risk the possibility of rescuing a team member to indulge his own feelings even if he'd wanted to contact Spencer, but the days of captivity and torture and the constant threat that Raphael would decide to end his life had made him increasingly less rational and he wanted to see Hotch. Wanted reassurance from Hotch that he was doing everything he could to find Spencer and bring him home even if it wasn't to the home Spencer had dreamed of making with his soul mate.
Of course his rational mind was proven right when Raphael showed him the recording of Gideon talking to him and then Spencer was grateful that his likely imminent death wasn't Hotch's fault.
Hotch watched the screen horrified as Reid started to fit, then had to brace himself from clutching his heart as the young agent stopped fitting and his eyes rolled back, his chest still as he wasn't breathing. It seemed an age before the unsub came back into view and started performing CPR. Hotch felt the pain in his heart start to ease just as Spencer jerked to life and started coughing and he excused himself to the bathroom to try to calm down.
"We're not getting any closer," Aaron said despairingly. His heart clenched every time he thought of the likelihood that they wouldn't find his soul mate in time.
"Reid's brilliant he'll figure out how to survive," Gideon reassured him confidently.
"You know I always take advantage of Reid for his brain but I never actually teach him to how deal with things emotionally," Hotch said guiltily. He knew that if Reid hadn't been his soul mate he would have spent time with the young genius, making sure he was coping with the emotional impact of their cases and teaching him some skills to build emotional resilience. But in his attempt to distance himself to protect his heart and to avoid giving rise to false expectations, he'd failed to be the team leader that the young agent needed.
"Lead by example," Gideon said.
"Yeah What kind of example is that?" Aaron asked self depreciatingly. He knew he'd been less of a mentor to Reid than he would have been to any other agent joining the team due to his desire to keep away from his soul mate and that it hadn't been fair to the young agent to leave him to Gideon's mentoring.
"He'll make it," Gideon reassured him.
Aaron didn't say anything but inside he was praying that Gideon was right and that they somehow managed to find Reid in time and resolving to do more to make sure the young Agent had the ability and assistance to cope with his abduction.
-o0o-
Reid tried to avoid choosing one of the team as long as he could, though his heart begged him to plead for his soul mate to live he rationally knew that without knowing how the three personalities felt about soul mates, particularly same sex soul mates and soul mates that weren't in a committed relationship with each other, doing that might be signing Hotch's death warrant.
Unfortunately he couldn't face being the cause of death for any of the team but eventually he decided to use the opportunity to try to send a message to the team. He was sure they were still watching him.
"I… I choose Aaron Hotchner," he stammered his heart breaking, but he had to choose him if he wanted a chance to live, Hotch was the most likely to understand his hidden message. He's a classic narcissist. He thinks he's better than everyone else on the team. Genesis 23:4. "Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense. For god's will…"
He knew that Hotch was anything but a narcissist and they'd discussed them recently so he knew that Hotch knew he didn't seem him as a narcissist. Hotch knew that, if anybody, Spencer thought it was Gideon who had the narcissistic tendencies and Spencer wasn't the first team member whose life had been put at risk because of them.
-o0o-
Hotch listened to the entire message knowing that Spencer was deliberately lying and trying to hear the message in his words. There was nothing in what he said but the bible quote wasn't actually necessary to answer the question and didn't serve to pacify the unsub, Reid identified as an atheist and very rarely referred to the bible unless it was useful during the case at hand, though the team knew he could recite the entire bible if needed, as he could the Koran, the Book of the Morman and any other book. For him to have added it now had to mean something but he couldn't hear what. It occurred to him that even most religious fanatics didn't know the bible as well as Reid and very few would be able to know without checking that Reid had given the wrong chapter and verse for a particular quote and Tobias was unlikely to fit into that few since only his recent personality fractures were religious. He went to look it up hoping that that was the clue because otherwise Spencer's faith in him had been misplaced and he couldn't work out the message Reid was trying to send.
When he walked away the team looked at each other concerned and followed him to try to support him.
"I'm not a narcissist," Hotch said as they walked in to find him looking at a book.
"Come on. Look. You can't think anything from that. - He's not in his right mind, Hotch," Gideon said.
"No. Stop. Stop. All right, everybody right now, what's my worst quality?" Hotch demanded.
The team was silent not wanting to insult him while he was already stressed.
"Ok. I'll start. I have no sense of humour," Hotch said. He could also have mentioned how much he hated changes in his personal life or how he subjugated his needs to keep his wife happy but in this circumstance he didn't want to get too personal.
"You're a bully," JJ said hesitantly.
"I'm a bully," Hotch agreed nodding.
"You can be a drill sergeant sometimes," Morgan agreed. He thought that JJ's comment of bullying was a bit too harsh, Hotch expected them all to do their jobs to the best of their ability 100% of the time and to be honest about their limitations but he was also the first to pitch in and help when a team member asked for support.
"Right," Hotch agreed looking at the others to answer as well.
"You don't trust women as much as men," Emily stated.
"Ok, good. I'm all these things, but none of you said that I ever put myself above the team, because I don't, ever. Reid and I argued about the definition of classic narcissism, and he knew that I would remember that, and he also quoted genesis, chapter 23,verse 4. Read it. "'I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me property, forbear a place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.' He wouldn't get it wrong unless it was on purpose. He's in a cemetery. - I don't see a cemetery. - Call up the first time we saw Reid. I won't choose who gets slaughtered and have you leave their remains behind like a poacher. Check to see if there are any reports of poaching in the last couple of days. Ok. Uh a farmer reported 2 sheep being slaughtered on his property. Where are we talking? - What's that patch of green there? - Marshall parish. - I think it's an old plantation. - Wait. Tobias wrote in his journals about staying clean and keeping away from Marshall. Guys, there's a cemetery on the grounds.
-o0o-
You're all right?" Hotch said looking at Spencer as if the man would turn into a figment of his imagination if he looked away for even a moment.
"I knew you'd understand," Spencer said hugging him. "I'm so sorry."
Aaron wrapped his arms around his soul mate and hugged him hard. "It's all right. It wasn't your fault. Let's get you out of here. Come on" Hotch tried to start leading Reid away from the half dug grave and the dead unsub.
"Please can I have a second alone?" Spencer asked looking down at Tobias.
Hotch stepped back leaving Spencer on his own and walked away hurting at the seeming rejection.
Spencer reluctantly pulled himself out of the desperate hug he and Hotch were in. He wanted nothing more in the world than to stay there in his soulmate's arms and be comforted, but he knew he had to make the first move to break free because being rejected while he was feeling so needy would kill him if Hotch pulled away from him.
-o0o-
Hotch kept reassuring himself that Spencer was alive and with treatment he would be fine. He avoided visiting him in the hospital with the rest of the team claiming a need to complete the paperwork from the case before Strauss could put her own spin on what had happened. He needed time to rebuild the walls around his heart that kept Spencer out and to start thinking of him as just one of his subordinates again. His resolution to do more to make sure Reid coped with the emotional impact of having been held hostage and tortured was forgotten in his attempt to distance himself from his feelings for the young agent in the wake of the desperation he felt when his soul felt Spencer die and their emotional connection when he was rescued.
Spencer metaphorically kicked himself for hoping that their new understanding would change things between him and Hotch, it had felt so good to be hugged by the older man even if he had initiated the hug his heart had soared when he hadn't been rejected, but it seemed that as soon as Hotch could hand him over to the paramedics things between them were back to their usual formality. Garcia, Emily and Morgan had visited him in the hospital reassuring him that JJ hadn't been hurt and didn't blame him for splitting up, but he took the fact that she hadn't visited as a bad sign. X-rays and an ultrasound proved that there was no permanent damage to his foot, his ribs had a few hairline fractures but nothing that would put him out of the field or prevent him from flying home. He'd flown with fractured ribs before after the Dowd case and it sucked but he knew he could handle it.
Worse than the physical pain, were the reminders that it caused of last time he'd broken his ribs when Hotch had kicked him in the ribs as a subterfuge for getting his ankle holster close enough to Reid for him to take the weapon from it without being seen by the unsub and the return of the nightmares of Hotch enjoying kicking him and the new nightmares where Charles Hankle and Raphael wore Hotch's face as they tortured him and demanded that he confess.
-o0o-
Over the next few months, the entire team was worried about Reid. At first, they thought that it was just that he'd come back to work a little too early and needed time to settle into his job again but it didn't take any of them long to notice the shaking hands, the extreme mood swing and the pinprick pupils and to remember that one of the personalities he'd been held hostage by had been a drug addict. None of them wanted to bring it up with him. If his drug taking was officially recognised then Reid would lose his career and the rest of the team would be sanctioned for not reporting it straight away. So they all thought it would be better to let the senior members of the team deal with it, not realising that neither of them were doing anything about it or to support Reid either.
For his part Gideon honestly hadn't taken the time to notice. He prided himself for knowing Reid better than any of the others and being Reid's mentor and was sure the boy would come to him for help if he needed it. Reid was still contributing to the team discussions as expected, his consults were still being completed at their usual pace and quality. Sure he might be struggling a little but it wasn't adversely affecting his job and he hadn't asked for help so Gideon didn't feel the need to intervene or get involved.
Aaron had noticed that Reid had a problem, even though he was trying not to look at the younger agent as anything more than a colleague and palm as much supervision and mentorship off to Gideon as possible, wilfully ignoring that Reid shared any doubts he had about the ability of the senior profiler to meet Reid's needs.
Aaron was so busy dealing with the tension in his marriage that he told himself that he told himself that he really didn't have the time and energy to deal with Reid's problems as well and they would be better managed by his mentor than his unit chief who once was officially aware of the problem would be mandated to report it to management. He also believed that Reid wouldn't want to accept help from him and that if he wasn't careful, he could make the whole situation worse. That didn't stop him from worrying, it just made him feel even more impotent as a team leader and colleague. What he didn't admit even to himself was how much it would hurt him if he reached out to help Spencer and was rejected.
Haley had noticed the extra tension in Aaron since he'd come home from the case in Georgia. Her first thought was, as it always was that he'd met his soulmate and was trying to decide how to fit both of them into his life. Or worse was trying to work out how to tell her he was leaving, and how to remain with the BAU while spending as much of his days off nearly 700 miles away, or to convince his soulmate to move to the DC area. Once she put aside these recurring negative thoughts, she noticed that Aaron wasn't happy, if anything he was significantly less happy or content than he normally was. She wondered what had happened. Had he met his soulmate and rejected them to stay with his wife and son as he'd always promised he would, or had Aaron's soulmate rejected him? Or was it simply that Aaron wasn't happy with her and Jack anymore and wanted to start looking for his soulmate. She wished she knew but Aaron wasn't willing to talk about what was bothering him, and that coupled with her insecurities was causing even more tension in their marriage and she just didn't know how to get them both past it all and back to happy.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.
Stay safe everyone.