Watching through his window, Ashton smiled at the sight before him. Jace was in the middle of an open part of the yard, standing surrounded by some of the younger residents, a football in hand as he taught them how to play the game. The children loved spending time with him and, in the past six months that the man had been here, he'd shown an almost natural affinity for dealing with them. He had a way of getting them to sit down and listen that was admirable, yet he was almost infinitely patient with them. Then again, it may have come from caring for his friend for so long. Caring for Sebastian required a firm tone some times and definite patience at others; at least, until you got used to how the man worked.
Speaking of…where was Sebastian? He was supposed to come in for his afternoon visit and he was running late. Absentmindedness was normal for the man, but not when it came to daily activities. On those, he ran on a tight schedule and deviation from that schedule could be difficult for him to comprehend and process.
Slightly worried, Ashton set off from his office, intent on finding the young man. It didn't take him long to track him down. However, when he found him, it was in the last place he'd expected. Sebastian was outside, talking with a man on the front yard to the main house. Now, Sebastian talking to someone wasn't unusual. Blessed be, the man could get to talking about a topic that interested him, running off at the mouth whether or not the person with him was even listening. He was friendly, too. But why was the man—a client who was supposed to have been leaving from a meeting—talking with Sebastian? What would he have to say to him? A small spark of worry hit. Could the man be trying to convert Sebastian away from here? Had he been wrong in trying to sell to this man? Could he be a plant? No, no, that wasn't possible. He was damn good at detecting plants the FBI tried to get in. He'd just ousted another one two months ago!
All of a sudden the man put his hands against Sebastian's chest and shoved him back, knocking him to the ground, before turning and storming away. Eyes wide, Ashton hurried outside. At the same time he saw Lily and Carolynn running over from the garden. The three of them reached Sebastian at the same time, all of them reaching to help him upright. "Oh, you poor thing!" Lily exclaimed. She was dusting off Sebastian's clothes, getting the dirt and grass off. "That horrible man!"
"I, I was just telling him things." Sebastian said softly. His head was bowed and his hair was falling forward to hide his face. "He said something about the distance from here to town and I told him the distance in varying forms of transportation." His head bowed down a little lower. "I forgot people don't like when I talk too much."
Carolynn leaned in and gave Sebastian a brief hug, the only kind of hug he could handle. He was uncomfortable with longer touches. "You don't talk too much, sweet boy. You talk plenty fine to me, you hear me?"
Still Sebastian looked depressed. For a second Ashton wasn't sure what to do. Then inspiration hit and he smiled. There was something Sebastian had only recently started to help him with and it would not only cheer the man up, it would help out Ashton tremendously. "I almost forgot, my child. I have a job for you to do today if you're up for it. It's the end of the week and I need my numbers tallied and my math done. Do you think you'd like to come and balance my books for me?"
Happiness lit Sebastian's face when he eagerly looked up. "Oh, could I?" Nothing made him happier than working with numbers. He was happier with numbers than even with his reading. It didn't matter what they were for and Ashton had discovered that Sebastian didn't even pay attention to where the numbers went. When he'd had the man tally things for their shopping budget, he'd later asked him a question about one of the items and he'd had to laugh at Sebastian's confusion. He'd remember the number but had no care in the world for what the number belonged to. For the situation here, that made him the perfect accountant. One that would tally the numbers without knowing anything about what they were for. Taking in a brilliant, autistic young man had proved to be a greater asset than Ashton had ever hoped for.
Sebastian's excited "Of course!" had Ashton and the two women chuckling. With a wide grin, Ashton gestured Sebastian toward the house and together, the two set off for the office. You know, if we're careful, he'd be perfect to take with us on important meetings. His memory would allow him to recall information later and I wouldn't have to haul around things to make sure my numbers were right. And his hand to hand is improving, so long as someone's there to support him and tell him to fight, he can win most of the time now. I could up him and Jace, take them to target training, and then start bringing them out. Jace I was already thinking of and he can keep control of Sebastian. It could work and work well. Jace is loyal and Sebastian is perfectly loyal. Yes, I think this will work out nicely. Pleased with his plan, Ashton's smile grew.
He was already starting to build the plan as he took Sebastian inside. The more he thought about this, the more right it seemed. Jace might take some watching and some convincing when they actually went to meetings, but Ashton was confident that he could bring Jace around to his side of things. Plus, there was no need to let him know everything about what they were doing. Sebastian, though…with the simplicity through which the man viewed the world, it would be easy to make him see that this was right so long as Ashton said it was. He'd taken to Ashton quite a bit, looking up to his 'Pater', as all his followers called him. While intellectually, Sebastian was most definitely a genius, he was much more simplistic in the rest of his life. He was friendly to most everyone, not realizing that people might hurt him. He tended to see the best in them all. In contrast, Jace tended to watch everyone with a hint of suspicion as if compensating for his friend's naiveté. They were a good pair, and they were proving to be good 'children'.
Yes, yes, this plan was going to work out nicely. He was going to start work on it this very afternoon. The sooner, the better.
It was so strange to look at the team these days. Dave sat back in his chair, a cup of coffee in his hand as he stared across his office at the wall opposite him. That wasn't what he was seeing, though. His mind was moving and his eyes were unfocused, his attention turned inward. Absently he took a sip off of his coffee as he thought about the team he worked with, the team that was like family to him. Before coming back to the Bureau, he had never worked like this. Profiling had been a solo job, not a team effort. When he came back, the adjustment to being a part of a team, to working with others instead of on his own, had been a difficult one. Yet he'd done it. Now? Now he wouldn't change it for the world. They did good, this group of people. Lives were saved because of them.
Yet working the job that they did, seeing the things they saw and living the things they lived through, it was impossible to work day in and day out with the same people and not form a strong bond with them. To work that closely with someone, to go into situations that the only thing that stood between you and death were your teammates, it required a great amount of trust. Trust that was earned, little by little, case by case, moment by moment. All of them had grown used to that trust being there now. They'd grown used to knowing who was behind them and knowing that person well enough to most of the time be able to predict how they were going to react. It made it easier to work in these kinds of situations because you almost didn't need words.
That was what this team had. That was what they had become. The family bond had already been there before Dave had joined and he had wondered about it at first, wondering if it was practical to get those close when you knew there was a chance that, at any moment in the field you could lose one of those people you called 'family'. He'd decided early on not to get that attached.
Dave chuckled softly at that thought. That plan had worked out so well. But he dared anyone to work with these people and not grow close, grow attached. At the time, he hadn't noticed how much he was growing to care for them and them for him. Looking back, he couldn't pinpoint when it started, but he could see random moments that had built it. When Garcia—their ever bubbly Penelope, who tried to keep them in smiles with the horror they saw—got shot outside her apartment, that had been one. It had infuriated him to see someone so kind and gentle be hurt that way, no matter the cause. Seeing Morgan struggle with his faith both right before and right after that incident had drawn him to the man. Struggles in faith were something Dave understood.
Seeing Spencer go to the wall for the kid, Owen, identifying with their Unsub through a shared kind of pain. That had started him toward seeing more beneath the geeky exterior than he'd known. Almost losing Aaron when his SUV blew up had brought home how much of a friend the man was to him. Emily and Spencer inside that cult with Benjamin Cyrus. His stomach had been in knots the whole time he'd had to negotiate and as he'd had to listen to Emily insist that she could take it while she was being beaten right for them to hear.
So, so many moments that just made those ties tighter, that bond stronger. Emily confiding in him about her past, telling him about the abortion she'd had. Aaron, when the Reaper came back. Spencer, when he caught anthrax and they almost lost him. Canada, when all of them were pushed to their limits. The Reaper coming back, coming for Aaron. That had brought all of them together on one shared target, shared pain, and still it hadn't been enough. The grief afterwards as they banded together and worked to support their Unit Chief had made the ties even tighter. Woven through all of these moments, quiet and supportive, always there, was JJ. The motherly figure of their little group, taking care of them without letting any of them realize that they were being taken care of.
Then those bonds had been tested when JJ had been taken from them. It had been like a physical blow to the team. Dave compared it to a man losing a limb in war; painful, traumatic, and it took a long time to heal from. Even then, what was left was never the same. Even if you learned to function without that limb, going days sometimes not noticing its absence, eventually you were always reminded that it was no longer there and you would find yourself wishing for it to be there once more.
They'd recovered as best as possible from that blow. Though it had been hard and it had taken some time on all their parts, they'd managed to find their roles once more and maintain that bond, that strength that they'd always had. Then Ashley had been brought to the team. The poor girl, barely ready to be in the field, trying so hard to impress these people that she was quietly in awe of and knowing all the while that there were times they looked at her and maybe, sometimes, they resented her presence slightly. Though he knew it wasn't fair, Dave could admit he'd felt that way once or twice. It was almost as if JJ had been traded out for Ashley and there was no way the young girl could live up to JJ's reputation. To her credit, Ashley still fought to do her job, even knowing that sometimes she wasn't up to par. The trust between them and her wasn't like it was between one another, but they all tried.
Now…now this. The instant Aaron had said that Spencer and Morgan were undercover, Dave had known this was a blow that would hit the team hard. It wasn't as if the men had died, yet with them being undercover and not able to contact any of them, it almost felt as if they had. They all knew that there was nothing they could do about this and that it was just a part of the job. In their heads, they knew that. The rest of them? Not so much. Where they'd lost a limb with JJ's departure, they almost felt as if half of their 'body' were gone with the men's departure.
A sigh slid out as Dave took another drink of his coffee. Here, to himself, he could admit that he did breathe a little easier knowing the two were on assignment together. If it had been just one or the other, this would have been harder. But knowing that they were together, two who had absolute trust with each other, who knew one another so well, it helped him not worry as hard about them. Morgan would keep an eye on Spencer, just as he always did. The older man seemed to make that his mission—well, okay, all of them did. But that was just because Spencer seemed to attract trouble to him without even trying! But Morgan was one of the few who could do it without pissing Spencer off.
Whether he liked to admit it or not, Morgan needed someone at his back, too, just like everyone else. It had amused Dave time and time again to watch the big, tough man act so self-sufficient, never quite realizing the things the quiet man beside him did to take care of him.
Now that the two had been gone for six months—Jesus, had it really been six months already?—Dave was coming to realize that it hadn't been just Morgan that Spencer had taken care of. The man simply had a caretaker personality. Without him here, things they'd taken for granted, things they'd never questioned, were suddenly gone. Silly things, like creamer types they liked that were supplied at the stations they traveled to. Or the tea that had been on the jet that they'd all loved and none of them but Garcia had realized that Spencer personally supplied.
Their loss was felt keenly on cases. Sure, they had Drew, and he was a good profiler. Definitely. Dave could see the young man making a good name for himself in the Bureau. But whereas Ashley had fought some to try to live up to JJ's reputation, Drew had the reputations of both Morgan and Spencer to live up to and that was just impossible to expect of one person. No one could be another Derek Morgan. With his combination of damn good profiling skills, his years of experience in varying areas like bomb squad, obsessional crimes, and his joking reputation as a destroyer of doors, he was a unique individual. And there could never be another Spencer Reid. No one had that kid's intelligence, memory, or innate profiling skills coupled with the humbleness and innocence that he still managed to carry around. It wasn't Drew's fault that they kept looking for someone to question them or make them laugh as Morgan had done, or ramble at them or provide them with just the right fact at just the right time like Spencer had done.
It was more than just work things, though. They were missing their friends in this, too. Dave missed the random card games he and Spencer had played some nights when neither had wanted to go home to their empty places, so they'd stayed a little late at the BAU and played rounds of poker in Dave's office. He missed the talks he'd had with Morgan on architecture, or debates about religion, or a million other topics that others might not suspect they would even talk about. He knew he wasn't the only one that missed listening to the two bicker out in the bullpen, pulling Emily into those arguments that usually ended with Emily and Morgan laughing and Spencer blushing as he chuckled.
Another sigh slid from Dave. He downed the rest of his coffee, swallowing the lukewarm liquid. Sitting here thinking and reminiscing about this wasn't going to get him anywhere but down. Hearing a voice out in the bullpen, he made a quick decision. He set his cup down and rose from his chair. What they needed right now was something to perk them up. So he grabbed his jacket and headed out to the bullpen where Emily, Garcia, Aaron and Drew were all talking, each one looking ready to head out.
"Hey!" Dave called out to get their attention. They all looked over at him as he made his way down to them. "Who's hungry? My treat."
"Oh, I'm definitely hungry then." Emily said jokingly.
Garcia laughed and smiled at him. "Sounds like a plan, Sir."
It didn't take but a second more for Drew and Aaron both to agree. Together, the group of profilers set out. And if they all noticed the lack in their group, that little piece that was missing, by mutual agreement they all said not a word on it.