Author's Note #1: I don't own them or anything else that could make me money by writing this story.

Author's Note #2: This entire story was inspired by one tiny photo of Mandy Patinkin on his entry in Wikipedia. Once I saw that mountain-recluse look, I knew I had to do something with it!

Previously in Criminal Minds: The Prodigal

The door closed beside him, revealing the figure standing behind it.

"Hello, Hotch."

Hotchner stared at the shadowy figure in front of him. The voice was right, of course, and the size, but… it couldn't be. Could it? This man was dead. They'd all been sure of it. He stared some more, and then had to force words out past the lump in his throat.

"You're alive? It's really you?"

"Yes, I'm alive. Is it really me? I don't know, how existential do you want to get? I've got plenty of time, after all."

Hotchner turned away from the bearded man, taking quick steps across the room, then turned back to him.

"We were sure you were dead, that you'd done something to yourself. Have you been here all this time? How are you living?" He raised his hands in a shrug, then let them fall again. "My God, Jason, what are you doing?"

"I've been here all this time, yes. I'm living well enough. Did that cop give you a deadline? He looked pretty jumpy when you came up here."

Hotchner glanced at his watch. "Yeah, he said 15 minutes or he'd call for backup. I need to go tell him it's fine. Should I –"

"Don't tell Morgan. Why do you think I wrote that note? I knew he'd know my voice. And I didn't want him to know, I didn't want any of you to know but it's too late for that. When you come back, bring those magazines in. You need to know."

They traded a long look, and Hotchner finally nodded. "I won't tell him. But you know he's smart, he may figure it out somehow." He walked to the door, then turned with his hand on the doorknob. "It's good to know you're still alive."

He could see Phillips and Decker tense as he opened the door, and Morgan stepped out from beside the cruiser to where he could have a clear shot.

"It's OK, guys, it's just me." Hotchner walked back to the cars, unstrapping his vest as he did so. He tossed it onto the hood of the Suburban and re-armed himself, then turned to face the impatient police chief.

"So, who is it? What'd he want? You sure didn't have time to ask him much."

"He was someone I… he was an old friend. Morgan, can you go back in to town with them and start looking at local police reports? This isn't our guy, but the Unsub might have started small with petty crimes against tourists and then worked his way up."

"How do you know this isn't our guy? No offense, Agent Hotchner, but even old friends can turn bad sometimes."

"Not this one." He hoped the certainty in his voice would put at least a temporary end to the chief's questions. He glanced over at Morgan, who broke in just as Phillips was about to speak again.

"I'm on it. What are you gonna do?"

"I'm going to talk to this guy some more. He's not our man, but I still need answers from him."

"C'mon, Chief, you can point me towards the records back in town." Morgan broke up the gathering by moving towards the cruiser, and Hotchner stood there with his back to the house until he saw the car swing onto the main road and head back towards town. Behind him, a faint click told him that the house's front door had been opened, and he finally turned towards the house. He stooped to pick up the pistol and the two magazines as he passed them. Weighing the magazines in his hands, he realized that one of them was full while the other only had one round still in it, and he wondered what it was he needed to know. Was it about the hikers? Had he been wrong?

Inside the house, he found that Gideon had turned on a lamp at either end of the battered couch, then seated himself in the shadows near the empty fireplace. Taking the hint, Hotchner sat down on the sofa, at the end farthest from the door so that he didn't make the other man feel trapped. He put the two magazines and the pistol on the coffee table in front of him, and they both stared at the deadly collection.

Finally, he cleared his throat and broke the silence. "So, what happened?"

"What do you know?"

"Reid found your service weapon and the note you left him, just like you thought he would. We know you completely cleaned out everything in the fridge and freezer at home and in the cabin, so no one would have a mess to clean up. We know you cleaned out your bank accounts, we know that you quit paying your car registration and insurance and never renewed your driver's license or took out a new one, that your credit cards were never used from the day you left that note, that all your phone numbers were disconnected that same day. We know that it looked like you had died. So tell me."

"I tried. I tried so hard, Aaron, but I couldn't, in the end." He pointed at the coffee table. "You see that magazine, the one with only one round? Take a look at that round."

Hotchner obeyed, thumbing it out of the magazine and rolling it in his palm. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Black Talon."

"You weren't going to take any chances, were you? Where?"

"Remember Golconda? The side of the road?"

Hotchner closed his eyes. He knew it had had something to do with Frank in the end, and he could remember scouring that roadside for some hint, any hint, of where Frank and Jane had gone. He nodded. "I remember."

"I pulled off there, way off, and down the hill behind some brush so the car couldn't be seen from the road. And I sat there, beside the car, with a loaded weapon in my hand, and I just couldn't do it." He reached up and rubbed both hands over his face, rumpling his beard in the process. "I sat there like that for three days before I realized I couldn't do it."

"Why?"

"Why did I want to, or why couldn't I?"

"Either. Both. Whichever."

"Because I had let someone cross that line; because I drew a line years ago between me and them, and then I just let someone walk right across that line and touch my life. And because I realized that standing there on that train platform, I had almost walked over it in the other direction. I had almost become one of them. I wanted so badly to hurt him, just as he had hurt me, and then to kill him after I'd hurt him, in the hopes that it would make me hurt less." They sat, still staring at the little chunk of lethality in Hotchner's hand, and after a few minutes Gideon went on again. "And because if the people I've saved can be harmed by the animals I've freed, then I haven't saved them, have I? All I've done is condemn them to a different death."

"You know that's not true, but we'll talk about that later." Hotchner rolled the bullet in his palm again, then slowly opened his suit coat and dropped the bullet into the inside breast pocket. He could feel the small lump against his chest when his coat fell closed again, and he imagined that he could feel Gideon's eyes staring at the bullet from across the room.

"Don't trust me, do you? I couldn't do it because I realized that I just couldn't do that to someone, especially not the people in that town, they've seen enough. Some kid out on his ATV, or a trucker pulling off for a break, doesn't deserve to find that. And none of you deserved to have me do it."

"I'm glad you didn't, couldn't, do it. So how did you end up here? And what are you doing here, anyway?"

Gideon laughed and slouched down in his chair, almost looking relaxed. "We sent Stephen to summer camp here when he was a kid, so I knew the owners and they knew me, what I did. I showed up on their doorstep one day and said I needed to get away from my old life, reconnect to a different world. So now I'm a caretaker, make sure the place stays in one piece while the owners are away for the winter."

"But how do you do live? You don't have a bank account or a driver's license in your name, you haven't legally changed your name. What is it, Jason, do you have something to hide here?"

"Come on now, you know me. What would I have to hide?"

Hotchner stood up quickly and walked to the window. "I don't know, Jason. I thought I knew you, but the man I knew wouldn't have terrified his friends like you did. Did you know Reid had nightmares for weeks that he found you, and not just the note? He didn't tell me, but Morgan got it out of him. Did you know that the first thing Garcia does on a Monday morning is hack into all the databases she can, looking for John Does fitting your description and lying in morgues? Every Monday she does this, and has since the day you disappeared. Actually, for the first six months she looked for a report that would fit your body every single day. You scared us, Gideon. You scared us all." He pushed the curtains aside and stared out the window at the empty yard. Behind him, he heard Gideon shift position and sigh heavily.

"I had to do it, Aaron. I had tried so hard, and it wasn't working. Nothing I was doing made any difference. Being me didn't make any difference. So I had to be not-me and see if that made a difference. See if it changed anything."

Hotchner continued to stare out the window, thinking about what his friend had said. Finally, he let the curtains drop and turned, leaning against the windowsill and crossing his arms across his chest. The bullet in his pocket dug into his wrist, and he pressed harder on it, steeling himself to not feel sorry for the man sitting in front of him.

"And did it?"

Gideon shifted again, laying one ankle on the other knee and bobbing his foot up and down, then rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned his head into his hand.

"No."

"I'll ask again, Jason. Do you have something to hide, living up here off the grid like this? These murdered hikers, is this you? The timing is right, the place is right, damn it Jason, the profile is right. You fit this profile. Is it you?"

"No."

"Do you know who it is? Will you help me out? You know the area, you know the people. Help me."

"I don't do that any more, that's not who or what I am."

Hotchner continued to argue with his former colleague for another half an hour, finally realizing as the sunlight waned that he would not be a welcome guest for dinner, and gave up.

"All right, I'm going back to town. Do you need anything? I can bring some things back up late tonight, Morgan doesn't need to know. Are you sure I can't tell him?"

"No, I'm fine. And don't tell Morgan. Don't tell anyone about me, it's better if they think I'm dead."

"Better for who, Jason?"

Hotchner stood, leaving Gideon still sitting in the shadows, and let himself out. As the house receded in his rear-view mirror, he puzzled over how to keep Gideon's secret but keep the police off of him at the same time.