All hail the beta platypusTVlover! Many thanks for the help, even if I didn't take all the suggestions...
Author's Note: I don't own the characters you recognize, but the ones you don't recognize are mine all mine. No commercial interest in any recognizable trademarks, brand names, etc., either. The Easter egg this time: a quote from Season 3. I don't live in the US, so I haven't seen Season 4 at all; there's a name in here that I'm sure doesn't agree with canon. But this is my universe and I can hand out names as I like.
Author's Note #2: This is a short chapter, sorry. And it took a long time to get here, even more sorry. But I had to wrestle Gideon to the ground to get any of this written, and you know what? He fights dirty.
Previously in "Criminal Minds: The Prodigal": It was a silent ride back to town. Hotchner could see Gideon out of the corner of his eye, staring blankly out at the darkness. For his part, he was trying to figure out if there was any way to intercede in the rest of the "interview" and keep things from getting any worse. By the time they reached the lights of Oakhurst, though, he hadn't come up with any ideas.
Within a short time, Chief Phillips brought the Jeep to a stop in front of the Oakhurst police station and cut the engine.
"Isaac, I hope you realize I'm doing you a favor here. I'm not gonna print you tonight, I'm not gonna take you in there in handcuffs, and I'm putting you in an interview room rather than a holding cell. But don't take that to mean that I'm letting up on you. I don't like it when people visiting my town get killed, and I don't like people who aren't upfront with me. So you and I are going to spend some quality time together tonight. Got it?"
Gideon turned away from staring out the window and faced Phillips. "Of course."
"Good." Phillips nodded, then climbed out and led the way into the station. The duty sergeant on the front desk wordlessly held out some pink message forms as the chief walked by, and Phillips just as wordlessly took them and shuffled through them as he led them through the station. Behind the front desk, a detective's bullpen had the typical fluorescent glare and disorder of any over-used, under-cleaned area seen after dark. Two interview rooms led off one side of it, and Phillips cut between the desks to the interview room closest to the back of the building. Once Gideon and Hotchner were inside, Phillips shut the door behind them and closed the Venetian blinds on either side of the door.
"OK, Isaac. This is not a formal interview so I'm not going to Mirandize you. But, I'm sure you know that you can have a lawyer present in any interview situation, and we can rustle up a legal aid guy somewhere if you can't afford one. Do you want to take advantage of that?" He leaned against the wall next to the door, his arms folded across his chest, as he waited for Gideon to answer.
"Aaron, if I need a lawyer in here will you be it?"
Hotchner was surprised at the request. He certainly had no problem with acting as Gideon's attorney, but he hadn't expected the question. "Of course. Only unofficially, since I'm not admitted to the bar out here, but yes."
"That's settled, then," said Phillips. "You've said several times you came out here 'trying to disappear', that there was nothing criminal in your past but that things hadn't worked out, so you didn't 'want to be that person' anymore. What type of things?"
Gideon looked at Phillips, rubbing his hands together abstractedly.
"My actions and my choices and my life got people killed. Not just people I worked with who had voluntarily signed on to take those risks, but innocent bystanders whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I couldn't let that keep happening, and the only way to stop it from happening was to get out."
"Not just people you worked with?"
"Yes. I thought I had a suspect's profile nailed down, and I was wrong. We lost several good men that day."
"And what about the innocent bystanders?" Phillips asked, still leaning against the wall.
"One of my old cases came back from the past. The problem is that the guy killed several people to get what he wanted the first time, and then the second time he got my attention by killing more people."
"Were they people you knew?"
Gideon stared down at the floor, still massaging his hands together. "Yes," he finally answered in a low voice.
"And what did that do to you?"
"What is this, a therapy session? You think I need to get therapy to make me feel all better about this?" Gideon snarled.
"Quite frankly, I don't care what you need," Phillips said as he slammed his hands down on the table and leaned down in front of Gideon. "What I care about is that some sonofabitch has murdered several people in my township, and I want him. So if you're the SOB I'm looking for, tell me now and save us all some time. If you're not, then answer the question, damn it!"
"What did it do to me?" Gideon stared at his hands, shaking his head slowly, and Phillips went back to leaning against the wall. "It broke me. I couldn't think, I couldn't make decisions, I questioned everything I did and everything I thought of doing. It absolutely broke my heart."
"And what did you do with this broken heart of yours? Did you find that killing other people made it feel better?"
Hotchner shifted in discomfort, and Phillips shot him a look; what sort of look, Hotchner wasn't sure but thought it was probably a warning to keep his mouth shut. He didn't think this line of questioning was fair, but Phillips was running the discussion. And after all, Phillips had no idea the insult he had just delivered to the man he simply knew as 'Isaac'.
"Chief Phillips, I spent over 20 years going toe to toe with some of the worst criminals in this country, and there is no way on this earth that I would become one of them. There is nothing that could convince me that being like them would 'make me feel better'."
"So what did you do?"
"I ran. That's how I got here."
"You ran. What did you do while you were running?"
"Tried to find happy endings again, tried to make sense of everything I'd seen." Gideon paused, and looked up at Phillips. "Tried to convince myself to commit suicide."
"Really. Damned fool thing to think of, you ask me."
"I didn't." The two men stared at each other until Phillips finally broke the eye contact, looking over at Hotchner.
"Agent Hotchner, you got anything you'd like to say? Maybe convince your friend here to help me out instead of fighting me every step of the way?"
"You said you went looking for happy endings. Well, if you'd stuck around you would have found one. JJ just had a baby a little while ago. You want to know what she named it?" Gideon looked up at him in surprise, and Hotchner took that as agreement. "William Jason LaMontagne the third," he said slowly and distinctly.
A slow, sweet smile spread across Gideon's face, and Hotchner found himself smiling in involuntary reaction.
"Big name for a little tiny baby," Gideon said. "That's nice of her."
"People do miss you, and they always will, you know."
At that, Gideon's eyes went back to his hands. Across the room, Phillips stood up from where he had been leaning against the wall.
"Agent Hotchner, Isaac, either of you want a coffee? I sure need one." Gideon shook his head, but Hotchner agreed that he could use a cup. The door closed behind Phillips, and Hotchner moved over to where he had been standing.
"You know, you're not helping him any. You've got him against you right now, and the only way to get him off your back is to tell him what he needs to know."
"He doesn't need to know anything other than what I've told him. We all know I'm not the Unsub, even Phillips knows that, this is just so he can prove he talked to a likely suspect."
"Why won't you tell him the truth?"
"And which truth would that be? Why does he need to know my name? Why should I tell him what drove me out here? I wish you didn't even know," Gideon said bitterly.
Hotchner was stunned by this, and stared at his friend's bowed head. He looked so much older than he had only two years ago. Whether it was the beard which had come in almost completely gray, or the streaks of gray in the longer hair, or the deeper lines on his face, Gideon had aged since Hotchner had seen him last. After a couple minutes, he wondered where Phillips had gone. Surely coffee didn't take that long to get? OK, so it was late, but that was all the more reason to have a pot already brewing. And he'd never seen a police station that didn't have coffee going at any hour of the day.
Finally, Hotchner heard brisk footsteps outside, and then a clink of mugs bumping together as the door opened. Phillips pushed the door open, two mugs in one hand and a sheaf of papers and a small bottle of water under one arm, then closed the door behind him. He handed one mug to Hotchner, then set the bottle of water down on the table.
"Here you go, Agent Gideon. Thought you might need something to drink."
Gideon sank his face into his hands, and Hotchner swore quietly. He knew he should have kept his mouth shut about JJ's baby.
"Come on now, you didn't think you were just dealing with an old country hick of a cop, did you? I know how to work Google too. If you'd just told me who you were at the start, we could have avoided a lot of tonight's fun. Now, you want to help me find the guy we're really looking for? Dust off that old profiling talent?"
Cue an evil grin from the author... I do so love cliffhangers! Hopefully it won't take so long for the next chapter, but one never knows.