"What's the matter?" Prentiss asked when the two walked stiffly into the B.A.U. Neither answered. Morgan looked anxiously at Hotch's office door, which was open. Reid walked swiftly to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him instead of letting it swing closed.
"What's going on?" JJ asked seriously as she saw Morgan lean against Prentiss' desk, dropping the large stack of file folders atop an empty table.
"There's something I gotta tell you guys." Morgan said, folding his arms across his chest.
"What's wrong with Reid?" Prentiss probed.
"What does she mean," Hotch asked, appearing just outside the bullpen, his hands on the dividing railing, "what's wrong with Reid?"
Morgan looked up at Hotch, eyes sad. "Where's Rossi?"
"Right here," he said, floating out of his own office door. "Where's Reid?"
"He's in the bathroom," Morgan said, running a hand across his scalp as Garcia appeared out of her lair. "Something happened…you all need to hear it."
The team waited expectantly. "Chloe…" he struggled to form the words. Garcia put a supportive hand on his shoulder. "Chloe's mom called Reid's cell just now."
Hotch walked slowly down the stairs, Rossi following close behind. "Morgan, what's the matter?"
"She's dead, Hotch."
Garcia brought her free hand to her mouth. Prentiss' face fell, and JJ leaned against the table she had placed the folders on to steady herself. Hotch looked at Morgan questioningly. "What happened?"
Morgan brought a hand across his chest to squeeze the one Garcia still had on his shoulder. "She killed herself, man."
Garcia pulled away to bring the remaining hand to her face. JJ folded her arms. They both began to cry. Prentiss brought a hand to her forehead. Hotch stood up straighter, Rossi's shoulders slumped.
"But she—she was just here," Prentiss said, shaking her head.
"She could have said something," JJ continued, swiping at the tears streaking down her cheek.
"Where's Reid?" Rossi asked, stepping forward.
"In the bathroom," Morgan said quietly. "Oh, yeah—" he remembered, "there was a note." He paused, giving the team a mental response time to ask What did it say? "It said 'Reid will understand,'"
Hotch nodded slightly, looking away. He bit the inside of his cheek, shifted his weight. "Hotch?" Morgan asked, startling him.
"I—" he said, his eyes snapping to the dark-skinned agent. "I need a minute." He strode quickly away.
Morgan looked at Prentiss, then at JJ, and then at Rossi. They all looked after Hotch. He went into his office, closing the door quietly behind him.
"Why?" Garcia asked, sitting down in Reid's empty chair, yanking a Kleenex out of the brown box and dabbing at her eyes. "Why would she do that?"
"I don't know, Baby Girl," Morgan said, rubbing her back. He shook his head. "I don't know."
"Someone needs to go check on him," JJ said, hitching her chin toward the bathroom.
"And him," Prentiss said, looking at Hotch's closed door.
Rossi exhaled. "I'll go talk to Hotch. JJ?" he gestured toward the bathroom. "You were with him when Chloe took down Warren. He might respond better to you right now."
JJ nodded and wiped her eyes with the Kleenex Garcia handed her, pushing her weight off the table. Running her hands through her blonde hair, she walked to the wooden door and gave a quiet knock-knock on the Restroom sign. "Spence?" She waited a moment, then knocked again.
Rossi knocked twice, opening the door slowly when he heard no answer. "You all right?"
Hotch sat at his desk, head in his hands. Sitting in the middle of the polished mahogany sat Chloe's finished draft of Profile: The B.A.U., and on top of that sat her black-and-white composition notebook.
"Aaron?" Rossi probed as he approached the desk.
"Did I cause this?" he asked, raising his head, his eyes full of tears.
"Aaron, she took her own life," Rossi said, sitting in the chair near the window. "Nobody causes that."
"Dave, I was never anything but an ass to that kid." He shook his head, letting a hand fall onto the table. "She was nineteen, for God's sake."
"You can't—"
"Dave, I made her feel unwanted," Hotch cut him off, meeting his eyes with a desperate expression. "A burden. A nuisance. I made it perfectly clear that given my way, she wouldn't be here."
"Aaron," Rossi said, a tone of finality in his voice. "This was not your fault."
"Someone has lost a child. For no reason. At all." Rossi had no response. "Maybe if—if I had…"
"Suicide is the third-leading cause of death for children ages 15-24," Rossi said quietly. "Second on college campuses."
"If I wanted statistics, I'd drag Reid out of the bathroom," Hotch said shortly. "Please excuse me, Dave—I've got some phone calls to make."
Rossi closed Hotch's door just as quietly as he had opened it, knowing the harshness of his words wasn't directed at him. JJ still stood outside the bathroom door.
"C'mon, Spence, I know you're in there," she said exasperatedly, turning away and toward the team. "Morgan, he's not going to open the door."
Morgan uncrossed his arms, pushing himself out of his desk chair. He walked over to the door, rapping quickly and loudly with his knuckle. "Reid. Get out here."
When nobody answered, Morgan tried the handle. It didn't budge, and he looked incredulously back at the others. "Reid, if you don't unlock this door I'm going to kick it down, don't think I won't."
The unit was silent for a moment, punctuated by the tacit click of the door lock being turned. Morgan exhaled, then strode inside.
Reid was sitting on the floor against the far wall, elbows resting on his knees. The toes of his black Converse were touching one another, and his eyes were rimmed with tears.
"How's that compartmentalizing going?" Morgan asked, sitting down beside him in the tiny bathroom. Reid didn't answer. "Look, man, we all feel bad—awful, even."
"I should have seen it coming," he croaked.
Morgan inhaled deeply. "Reid, we're all profilers. None of us saw it coming. Why should you have?"
"Because we—we had that conversation on the plane. After I read her book," he looked at Morgan, "her book is all about suicide, a—and she talked about Sylvia Plath…it was all there," he looked away, at the door again, "I just didn't see it."
"Reid, you can't think like—"
"She didn't feel like she fit in with humanity," he said, running both hands through his hair, "or like anyone would miss her, because she didn't belong anyway." He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand, sniffling. "But I—I understood that. I get that." He looked at Morgan again. "I should have said something, done something…to let her know that she—she could talk to me."
"Reid," Morgan said, shifting his weight to face the other agent, "she's gone. Anything you could have done doesn't matter now."
"But it's my fault," he said, standing up. "It's my fault, Morgan! I should have seen, I—I should have done something!" He turned, his hands either side of his head.
"Reid!" Morgan said, raising his voice and grabbing Reid's bony shoulders. "It's too late. She's gone."
"You don't get it!" Reid cried, trying—unsuccessfully—to break free of Morgan's grip. "I did understand! I could have stopped her!"
"But you didn't!" Morgan yelled, shaking his shoulders. "She's gone, and nothing you can do will ever change it!" Reid pushed him again, tried again to break free, but Morgan only held him against the wall. "Reid, you know as well as I do that you can't stop someone who wants to take their life. Better, even."
A tear spilled over Reid's left eyelid. "But you don't—"
"If you want to blame yourself for something you can't change and didn't cause, be my guest," Morgan said harshly. "If you want to be Gideon, go ahead," he continued, pushing Reid's right shoulder into the wall on the word go. "But you know inside that giant brain of yours that it wasn't your fault, and that no matter what happened, she's still gone."
He let go of the skinny agent, exhaling loudly. Reid backhanded the stray tear with his right hand, sniffling again. Morgan tore a foot-long piece of toilet paper off the role inside one of the stalls and handed it to him. "Now let's go, Kid."