Kakorrhaphiophobia- Fear of failure or defeat.
He loved his job, deeply. He really believed that it was his calling in life, and the only thing he'd ever been good at. Since he'd been younger, his father had criticized everything he did. Starting from Elementary School when he'd bring home drawings from the first grade. The pictures were never just right, the colors never in perfect contrast, which he didn't understand when he was that young. He'd grown up thinking that anything below perfection was simply unacceptable, which left him in a vicious cycle of frustration since nothing ever seemed to be perfection. Deep down, he hated the word. He hated the standards that people set for themselves and society. Those standards led the people who he worked so hard to catch to do what they do. Those same standards had also pushed him his entire life, and made him unhappy for more then half of it.
He should have known that it wasn't normal to expect a first grader to always color in the lines, he should have known getting a perfect grade on every test wasn't possible, he should have known it wasn't normal to be afraid of not exceeding the average. Instead, he'd listened closely to his fathers words. From the first time he brought home a bad grade on a spelling test and his father screamed at him for an hour about how anything less then a 100 was simply unacceptable, he knew he never wanted to hear him scream like that again. He stayed up all night the evening before the next spelling test, going over the words more times then he could count. He left the third grade with a 100 that day, and his dad took him out for ice cream.
His dad insisted he not only join the sports team, but become the captain. He couldn't play an instrument unless he was first chair. Whenever perfection was just not met, the screaming started again. Over the years, the screaming turned to beatings, and he knew he had to work harder. He went days without sleep before a test, often too tired to even fill out the answer sheet.
Going out Friday or Saturday nights was pointless, there was work to be done. Secretly, he took an interest in fiction books, and he read them at night when he was supposed to be studying. In the seventh grade, he was tired of how things were. He couldn't hang out with any of his friends because he had work to do. His dad told him his 'friends' wouldn't be there in a few years when he needed to find a real job, so they weren't worth his time now.
On his fifteenth birthday, his dad made him get a job. He had to work for his yearly promotion and do his best to get it early, all while keeping straight A's, being captain of the soccer and baseball team, and staying first chair of the trumpets. The day he came home with an 84, he stared at it. He memorized how the red ink looked over his answers, and found himself hating the two digit number compared to the three digits he was used to. "No one's perfect," his one and only real friend said when he saw him later that day.
"I have to be," was his response. His friend and him never hung out outside of school, and he never met his father, but the kid knew something was off. He nodded and patted him on the shoulder.
"I realized it's not possible and stopped trying," he said, and he turned and walked away. He kept his eyes on the paper through the whole day, locking himself in his room with it. He hit things, broke things, and shredded the paper; not noticing his mother in the doorway. She stared at him for a moment before quietly shutting the door. He remembered how he broke down, unable to support himself. He sobbed, knowing that a seventeen year old boy shouldn't cry. His father knew it too, because when opened the door and found him like that, he knew he'd never show another emotion again.
"Your disgusting. I expect so little from you, and you can't even handle that without crying," his father spat, hands landing heavily on his back. He laid there, hoping his father could beat the sadness out of him, emptiness filling him when he realized his father was just beating more holes into his soul.
The day he died, he stood over his casket without shedding a tear. He pretended to be sad, but that was hard when it was the best day of his life. He thought it was over, that he'd finally be free to live a normal life. Even with the pressure off, he couldn't stop. He didn't go to his graduation because he wasn't Valedictorian and he didn't go to prom, even though Haley, the girlfriend he'd been keeping a secret for so long begged him. Determination fueled his thoughts, and he proposed to her at a young age, afraid that she'd leave him if he didn't.
He joined the academy soon after, rising through the ranks quickly thanks to his hard work. The FBI was perfect for him, he needed a job where failure wasn't an option. So when Rossi was standing there next to him with his hand on his shoulder, he couldn't understand how he managed to fail when failure wasn't an option.
"We interviewed so many people, Aaron. It could have been any of us," Rossi assured, patting his shoulder gently. 'No,' he wanted to say, 'It wasn't any of us though, it was me.' Another victims life was ruined because of his failure, and that was just another thing he'd have to live with on his mind. Keeping a steal face to preserve what was left of his dignity, he turned and headed for the car. He knew he wouldn't sleep tonight, not like he deserved it anyway. It was times like these that he wished his father was still alive, because he needed someone to remind him that failure was never an option.