Don't forget to read chapter 4!

OMG, AJ's coming back! She signed a two-year deal! **eek!**

And... I went and bought the May edition of Vogue yesterday, and Tweeted about how awesome Matthew looked in his hat... And he retweeted me! Not Kidding! He did! And I wasn't even expecting him to, either! It was so cool! I have been walking on air all day! I have this humongous grin on my face! :D :D :D :D :D

Anyway...

I don't own Criminal Minds!

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If you truly want honesty, don't ask questions you don't really want the answer to ~ Proverb

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I waited until the elevator doors had closed on the law enforcement assembled within the bullpen before breaking down in tears. Even now, in my darkest hour, I wouldn't let them see me cry.

Sean… Dead.

Jeremy… Dead.

Tsia… Dead.

All of them dead because of me. Because of what I had done when I was undercover with Doyle.

And the team… They were in danger. And there was no way that I was going to endanger their lives. Hotch's words echoed in my ears.

Hotch had lost his wife; he was all that Jack had left. He was a good man, a good father. He was the leader of the team, my team; they needed him more than they needed me. And it would destroy Hotch if anything happened to Jack. And Jack believed his father was a superhero, someone who would always defeat the bad guys; there was no chance that I would let his father be defeated by a villain that made Foyet look like Lex Luthor.

I wasn't going to take a father away from his son, or a son away from his father. But I had done it before, I remembered.

Declan…

Don't think about that, my mind hissed. If Interpol can't find them, then Doyle will never find them; you hid them so well that it'll be impossible to find them without the proper channels. But just in case they're compromised, hopefully Garcia will trace the pictures back to Dan's computer….

I forced my thoughts back to my team.

Rossi, the writer… He had come on barely a year after I had, the founding father of the BAU. We were surprised to see him even return; I still remembered the day Morgan, Reid and I had tried to profile him based on his office. Well, Morgan and I; Reid had been dragged into it. But he had been there for all of us. I remembered after Matthew's death, how he had stuck by the case I thought we'd had. We had taken to it, and we had figured it out, despite the clear opposition between us the families and Father del Toro. And the Chad Brown case, even though I had snapped at the horror of finding out that one of my friends, my team… my family, had been infected, and then he had "Emily-d" me, our bond had strengthened, and he became the kindly older uncle I had always wanted, the father that mine had tried to be, despite his continued travels abroad.

Morgan, my rock. He was the first to notice something was wrong, the first to try to get me to speak about what was going on. All he wanted was to be my confidante, the brother he was trying to be for the rest of us. He never felt complete unless he was protecting someone, or letting someone tell him about their secrets, fears and despairs.

Seaver, the new girl… I was supposed to be mentoring her, answering her questions, giving her a voice in this unit until she could hold her own, stand up and be a good a profiler as the rest of us. But with Doyle hanging around, I couldn't do that, because I had to protect her, protect them. I had to keep Doyle away from them; I knew what he could do, and I didn't want to walk into a crime scene with one of their bodies dominating the scene.

Garcia… Sweet, lighthearted PG; she was the one who always saw the good in people and the light at the end of the tunnel. What would my departure do to her? Tear her apart? Harden her resolve? She had always told me that she always wanted to see the good in people, and JJ had once told me that every time we went away, she, Garcia, would hope and pray and will her "babies" to come home to her.

And Reid… Oh, God, Reid… He was the most innocent member of the team, the most insecure and the most open-hearted. He wore his heart on his sleeve, but always in a good way. In many perspectives he was still a child; confiding in me about the headaches was proof of that, but I would keep his secret. I had promised him. But he was more than a child; he was also the bravest man I could have ever known. He had stared down death, unwilling to choose one of us to die. He had walked up to a school shooter without his own weapon. He had emerged from a burning chapel like the newborn phoenix from the ashes of its last burning. He had confronted his father when a case seemed to point toward William Reid being the UnSub, and had tried to save a young man from his female alter-ego.

I realized in that moment that the men I had worked with in the last few years, in this last part of the decade, were more man than some of the men I had known my entire life.

And as the elevator doors opened up into the lobby of the FBI Academy, I was sorely tempted to just push the sixth floor button and ride back up and let Doyle come to me, see if he was willing to get through me to hurt my team….

But then I thought of Reid, how he always cared for his mom, and I remembered how he had bonded with Sammy Sparks not that long ago. I wasn't about to let the world lose someone as pure, or as heartfelt as SSA Dr. Spencer Reid.

I wouldn't… because I loved him, because the world needed him, and not me. I could love him, but I could not have him. He would go on, while I stayed here, another player, a secondary character in this story. We weren't for the ages, but rather, just a bright flame that would flare up in the darkness, unnoticed by the rest of the world.

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Honest hearts produce honest actions. ~ Brigham Young

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A/N: I don't think I'll stop smiling for the rest of the week! :D :D :D

Please, please review!

Lots of love,

*~N_CBAU~*