AN: strong content warning for suicide and major character death. please be careful.

(some canon dialogue is used here. i don't think it violate rules, but if it does please let me know! i'm much more familiar with ao3)

"Reid?"

Spencer opens his eyes, then quickly shuts them again. It's so bright. And his neck hurts. And his arm hurts. He's pretty sore all over, actually. Maybe he slept wrong? Oh, and he's not alone.

Reluctantly, he opens his eyes again. His vision is blurry, the figure in front of him too distorted to see any features, just a white face and long blonde hair. For the briefest moment, he thinks he's looking at his mother before she'd stopped washing or brushing her hair, and he'd had to cut it short in their bathtub. But no, her hair was lighter and had a curl to it when it was longer. This person's is the colour and shape of straw.

The figure solidifies into JJ. Okay, that makes more sense, but what is JJ doing in his—

Finally processing his surroundings, Spencer sits up straight. Slept wrong, indeed. In the ancient armchair in Gideon's office, to be exact.

"What are you doing here?"

He yawns, moving his arm out of its position (braced on the armrest, hand used as a pillow, which was probably why he was achy) and checking his watch. 7:28. He hardly slept in his actual bed at home and had somehow managed a whole night in an armchair? "Gideon didn't answer his phone. I called him twice."

"Have you been here all night?"

"We were supposed to play chess," Spencer says, tucking his hair behind his ear and gesturing to the set-up chess board. He'd have played white, like always, Gideon with the advantage of years granting him the advantage of going first.

"Here?"

"Yeah. Uh…he hasn't been back to his apartment since, um." He trails off, but he knows JJ hears the unspoken: since Breitkopf killed Sarah there.

"Right. I need to brief the team, so…"

Spencer pulls the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder. It won't be the first time he's shown up to work in the same clothes he'd worn the previous day. Spencer did that sometimes back when…and Morgan does it a lot, albeit for very different reasons. Maybe he can run down to the gym and shower before they have to leave for the case they clearly have, at least. "Is Hotch here?" He asks, standing.

"He's not due for a half hour," JJ says, checking her own watch. Spencer glances back at his own. It's still not quite 7:30, and he swallows the urge to correct her. It tends to make him seem rude.

Spencer is starting to wonder if he's tripped and fallen into a parallel universe, as unlikely as that is. Or, more likely, he's still asleep and dreaming. Except, like most people, Spencer can't read in dreams, which means this is reality. A bizarre reality where Strauss is on the case with them because Hotch has requested a transfer, Emily is quitting the FBI entirely just as he's starting to get along with her again, and Gideon is…somewhere.

He hopes he's okay and fears he isn't. Less than 40% of people hospitalized for strokes are younger than sixty-five, but fifty-two isn't impossible. And one of the most common causes of strokes is hypertension, which can be caused by stress, and Gideon has certainly been stressed, and and and…

And Gideon knows how much his father's abandonment had hurt him. Had shaped him, even. He would never leave Spencer with nothing unless something was very, very wrong.

Spencer knows he should focus on sorting through the student records, but he keeps looking up at the open doorway as if checking often enough means he will eventually look up and see his…friend? Mentor? Father figure, as much as neither of them acknowledge that last one? He tosses aside another dead end and glances up, ready to again see that empty doorway looming at him like a laughing mouth, only this time…

"Look who's here!" he says, mood flipping on a dime and drawing the attention of the rest of the team.

"Where do we start?" Emily asks as she enters the room, smiling just slightly. Hotch follows close behind, never smiling, though his expression becomes less stormy as he shakes hands with Morgan. "How fast can you get us up to speed?" she adds when nobody responds, all too absorbed in being relieved at their presence to speak.

"How fast can you sit down?" JJ says, passing her the file.

Spencer stares at the doorway, waiting for Gideon to join them, but there's no sign of movement. He turns to Hotch and Emily as the two sit down, but just as he opens his mouth to ask if either has heard from their still-missing friend, Strauss re-enters the room, and everyone deflates at once.

Reid swallows and turns back to the file. A woman's life is in danger. He can't let himself get distracted, especially when there's nothing he can do from well over eight hundred miles away. Gideon would never forgive him.

They don't save her.

He knows it was unlikely—they'd only had an hour left by the time Hotch and Emily had rolled in, but frustration boils in his stomach all the same. Maybe if Gideon had been there—maybe if Hotch and Emily hadn't been late—no, that's all unfair. Perhaps if he hadn't let those things distract him so much, they'd have found the UnSub before he could kill her.

As they approach her (Claire Thompson, she was a person), Strauss steps on her hair and stumbles, barely catching herself on a chain link fence. Hotch, of all people, consoles her. Like she deserves it. Like she has any place here. He knows, heart and head, that she's the reason Hotch and Emily had nearly left them (and are maybe still leaving them), and that's something he feels okay being angry about.

Morgan, Emily, and JJ dash off not long after that to stop Claire's husband from seeing her (good. He figures the memory of a loved one's corpse would remain with one forever, eidetic memory or not), which leaves him alone with Hotch. He kneels by Claire. Their UnSub has changed dumpsites; maybe he's changed something else, something that will—

"Morgan says you're worried about Gideon."

Tattletale. "I keep on calling him and he doesn't call back."

"He's probably at his cabin. That's where he goes when he…needs to get away." Hotch says this lowly, staring grimly down at Claire, but his tone changes as Reid stands. Sharper, less distracted. He's not confident in the truth of what he's just said, but this he very much means. "Reid, I need your head in this."

He hears reproach in it, and it shakes him, even knowing it's his own guilt inserting it there. Hotch is much more likely to blame himself for Claire's death than he is Reid. "I know."

God, he hates this. He hates not having Gideon and hates even more how not having Gideon makes him feel. He hadn't realised how much he clung to Gideon in the field until Gideon wasn't there for him to cling to. He feels lost, adrift like a baby bird whose mother has overestimated its readiness to fly. Open and exposed to predators. With Gideon by his side, the police they interacted with tended to (reluctantly) accept him as the protege of someone respectable, if not as someone respectable himself. With that protection stripped away, Spencer looks like what he is: a kid playing tag-along.

He feels so young, so childish. He feels ten years old.

In the end, they solve the case, and they manage to save Lisa Phillips from Joe Smith. The resolution isn't without its bitter aftertaste, as per usual. David Smith probably has a lifetime of therapy ahead of him and will forever be trying to escape the shadow of his father's name, and Emily nearly gets herself killed. She's probably concussed and definitely shouldn't come to work tomorrow, but Spencer knows she will anyway.

Speaking of, she's not quitting anymore. And Hotch probably isn't transferring. And this outing with Strauss will probably be the only one they ever have to endure, which is good because she really was terrible. The world is righting itself slowly, and he blows out a breath as he pulls up in front of Gideon's cabin. Everything is going to be okay.

It's pathetic, he thinks as he approaches the door, just how much he needs Gideon. He was badly off today. At least he'd managed to be of some use, in the end, correctly redirecting the team's attention from the poorly-behaved kids to the exceedingly well-behaved kids. Except he'd slipped up when he'd done that.

(Sometimes, when a parent is unstable, especially if the other one's out of the picture, you'll do anything to be the perfect child. You, you. Why did he say you? He'd felt Hotch's eyes land on him and stay there, turning the word and its implications over in his head. He wouldn't have made that mistake if he'd had Gideon there to anchor him, he thinks).

Maybe he'll talk to Gideon about it. Except, no. Gideon has too much going on and has had too many terrible things happen to and around him in the last several months. Spencer can't burden him with this.

(Sometimes, Spencer fears Gideon is sliding up to the edge of something. It's the same feeling he'd had the first time he saw his mother talking to people who weren't there, the same feeling he'd had the first time his father slapped him. The unshakable knowledge that any pedestal you place someone on is destined to crumble or at least crack.)

He swallows down the building, useless anxiety and knocks on the window rather than on the door since it's louder, even though it's kind of rude at this time of night. "Gideon?"

He looks behind him, which is unnecessary since Gideon's cabin is so isolated, but some part of him fears that some passer-by will think he's breaking in. Even though he kind of is, and any passer-by would probably be here for nefarious reasons themselves because of the aforementioned isolation. Then, he turns the doorknob, and the door pops open. Huh. He'd tried that just in case, but he'd kind of been expecting to have to pick the lock.

(Later, Spencer thinks that somewhere deep down, he'd known what he would find. He will think that he wouldn't have even considered picking the lock if he'd honestly thought Gideon would be alive, if not well inside. At best, he would have been met with a very unhappy mentor; at worst, he'd have found himself at the business end of his Glock).

It doesn't matter, in the end, because whether he knows deep down or not, the idea doesn't consciously register as he steps inside, leaving the door open behind him. "Gideon?"

Spencer turns on his Mag-Lite and sweeps it over empty cabinets and a dusty stove. The light is weak to begin with, and he needs to change the batteries, so he fumbles through the dark until he finds Gideon's lamp and turns it on.

He sees Gideon's feet, first. Absurdly, his first thought is, no, that's not right. They're not supposed to be that far off the ground.

Next, he notices the chair lying on its side on the floor. Still, the primary emotion is confusion, if only because he refuses to add these elements together to their logical conclusion. He looks up, and the world screeches to a halt.

Gideon is hanging from the rafters. At first, the image makes no sense, but then it makes too much sense. Of course, of course, this would happen. How could he not have noticed? It's his job to notice. Bile rises in his throat as he stumbles backwards, but he swallows it down and rights himself in favour of bolting for Gideon's kitchen.

Hanging has a high mortality rate compared to other methods of suicide. If Gideon tied a proper submental knot under his chin, he's most likely already dead from the sudden fracture to his C2 vertebrae. But if he tied a subaural knot beneath his ear, death would more likely be from asphyxiation or the occlusion of his blood vessels, both slower deaths that he could be saved from, provided it hasn't already been too long and that Spencer acts quickly.

(A 2002 study found that 77% of near-hanging victims treated properly in hospital survive. There might be hope, there might be hope).

He doesn't have time to check Gideon's pulse, and certainly not time to check the knot, so he rummages around in the dark until he finds Gideon's knife block. When he finds it, he pulls out the first knife his hand lands on, pausing just long enough to make sure it's sharp enough before running back into the main room.

Spencer rights the chair and positions it under Gideon's feet again, then climbs onto it, standing on the very edge so Gideon has room to land. Putting his Mag-Lite between his teeth to see what he's doing (avoiding looking at Gideon's face, knowing what he'll see, even if he's not ready to admit it), Spencer starts to cut the rope.

His blood rushes in his ears, and his eyes start to blur. A sob hitches in his chest, and he scolds himself for it because crying is wasting time that Gideon doesn't have, and then the rope breaks. Spencer knows before he even hits the ground that the weight that lands on him is that of a dead man.

He rolls Gideon over even as the terrible knowledge of what has happened starts to press him down. He detaches from himself as he's met with Gideon's slack face and recategorises everything he sees into general knowledge. Tries to, anyway.

(Pressure on the jaw makes the tongue protrude and dry. Capillaries rupture around the eyes, resulting in small red and purple spots called petechiae. There may be more on Gideon's—the victim's—legs and feet. The knot is tied under his chin, so maybe it was fast, at least, but the chair means it was a short drop hanging, so maybe suffocation? If I had gotten here faster—)

He fails. There are some things he can't separate from himself, no matter how hard he tries.

(How it feels to die. How it feels to be high. Now, how it feels to look upon the body of someone you loved.)

He thinks about Claire's husband trying to catch a glimpse of her body, which feels like a lifetime ago but was actually just this morning. He's grateful again that the others stopped him. He doesn't need an eidetic memory to remember this.

Absurdly, Spencer presses his index and middle finger to Gideon's wrist, even though he can tell it's been days. Thankfully, his brain shuts off before it can start informing him about the process of decomposition. When no pulse comes, which he knew already but had to check, Spencer buries his face in his shaking hands and just sits there.

It's not long before he remembers the hands that are currently pressed against his face are the hands that had just been touching his mentor's dead body, and he jumps to his feet and bolts into the kitchen again, barely making it to the garbage can before he's vomiting. He thinks for a second that it's good he made it because otherwise, he would be contaminating the scene, and then the thought sends him retching again.

Is that all his friend and mentor is now? A crime scene to worry about contaminating, a body, a thing to be touched and examined? He thinks about Gideon in Golconda, asking if the cop who'd vomited at the sight of dismembered bodies off I80 had contaminated the crime scene, and wonders if the techs who come to Gideon's cabin will ask the same of him. As if it's the only thing that matters.

When he's finally done, he washes his hands and face at Gideon's sink, wanting absurdly to look presentable when the cops come. Speaking of cops, they won't come unless he calls, so he takes out his phone and dials.

"Reid? It's the middle of the night, what's going on?"

Spencer blinks and checks his phone. He's not dialled 911, he's dialled Hotch. He thinks about hanging up and trying again, but that will only concern Hotch more, and maybe it's better that Hotch hears this from him, anyway. An awful calm has taken over him like he's expelled the overwhelming grief and panic with his stomach contents, and he wanders listlessly back into the main room. "Um. I'm at Gideon's cabin." He should be better at this. They've all broken this awful news to people before. Why is it so hard now?

"Okay."

"Gideon's, um, he…" Spencer stops in his tracks by the table near where Gideon…

He stops that thought before it can continue. There are three things on the table—Gideon's badge and gun—as if the only thing he's leaving is the BAU—and an envelope. That's not unusual. Suicide notes aren't as common as people think they are, but they aren't rare, either. The simple presence of one isn't what makes him stop. It's what's written on the envelope.

Spencer.

Spencer opens and closes his mouth as Hotch tries to get his attention. It's addressed to him. Because, like it has been with everyone else who has left him, this is his fault.

"Reid? Are you there?"

Spencer blinks, coming back to himself, though his thoughts are still frozen, and his eyes are still fixed on that letter. He can think of nothing to say save for the technically true but misleading, "Gideon left."

Hotch sighs. "Okay. I'll be right there. Stay where you are." He hangs up before Spencer can correct himself.

Spencer stares at the envelope but makes no move to open it. It's evidence; he can't touch it. If he has nothing else, he has the procedure.

With that thought and with nothing else to do, Spencer lets his phone slip from his fingers and onto the floor. He sits calmly by the body and, mechanically, begins compressions.

He's not sure how long he's been at it by the time he hears Hotch's car pull up outside. He hasn't been doing cycles of thirty compressions and two rescue breaths like he should, so he can't even make a guess based on that. (He should really be doing rescue breaths, thinks the part of him that floats somewhere above the scene. He really shouldn't do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a dead body, thinks the panicking part of him that's trapped somewhere inside his chest.)

"Reid?"

He doesn't turn around even as Hotch's footsteps land on the dead leaves. Two hands centred on his chest. Shoulders directly over hands. Elbows locked. Compression depth of at least two inches. One, two, three, four—

The old stairs creak under Hotch's feet. A flashlight beam lands on his back and spills around his hunched form, illuminating Gideon's slack face. Spencer closes his eyes as he hears Hotch inhale sharply behind him. For a moment, the footsteps stop, and then they reappear, pounding fast behind him before stopping just within his field of view. Hotch stands still for a moment, and Spencer almost thinks he's swaying on his feet, except he can't be because it's Hotch, and then his boss crouches beside him and puts a hand on his back.

"Reid."

Hotch's voice sounds weird, weird enough that for a second, Spencer genuinely thinks it must be someone else his boss has brought with him. Then, his sluggish brain catches up, and he realises that Hotch sounds weird because Hotch is crying. The world has been thrown off-kilter again just as it had started to right itself. Desperate to fix it, Spencer increases the speed of his compressions even though that's not how CPR works. "Reid, you have to stop."

Spencer doesn't stop, even as Hotch's hand slides from his back to his arm and curls around his bicep, not pulling but threatening to. He hears Hotch inhale shakily through his nose, trying to keep his composure. Hotch has never had to try and do that before, not in Spencer's memory. He has to fix it. He tilts Gideon's head up and pinches his nose shut. His skin is room temperature, and Spencer chokes on a sob himself before bending to—

"Okay, Spencer, Spencer, no." Hotch grabs him under his arms and yanks him back. Spencer flails to get away, to return to his task, but Hotch drags him easily to his feet and holds him there. Spencer. He'd called him Spencer. He doesn't think Hotch has ever done that before—even when Hotch had pulled him off the ground in Georgia, he'd been Reid. "I'm sorry. He's gone."

The wind blows from outside and sends dead leaves rolling around their feet. The floorboards creak as Spencer shifts his weight. Somewhere in the cabin, a clock ticks. Everything is still.

Hotch might be the only solid thing left in the world, so Spencer turns and tries to catch his gaze like a life preserver. Except Hotch's eyes are big and dark and wet, and they meet Spencer's with equal devastation.

Hotch looks away quickly, and Spencer, still floating somewhere above himself, wonders what Aaron Hotchner could possibly have seen in him that he couldn't stay to witness. He watches as Hotch's eyes search for something easy to look at. First, the body, which is quickly abandoned. Then, the table, and on it, the letter that damns Spencer.

Spencer feels the hand, still resting on his back, twist in his jacket. The arm attached to it shakes. Anger.

Spencer folds into himself, shoulders shooting up to his ears. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I cut him down as fast as I could, honest."

He hears Hotch exhale hard behind him like the breath has been punched out. Spencer steps away, Hotch's hand slipping easily from his jacket in a way that should tell him his boss isn't angry with him, but his blood is in his ears, drowning out the handful of thoughts he's even capable of conjuring right now. He feels like a caged rabbit, reduced to base instincts. He thinks of a hospital in Illinois, of Hotch's feet slamming into his ribcage, leaving bruises that throbbed for days even as he held back. It wouldn't be fake this time. Hotch has a very real reason to want to beat him now, and all good men have their limits. Gideon did.

Spencer freezes on his second step forward, realising he's fleeing (however slowly) towards the body. If he turns, he'll have to pass Hotch to get outside. He stands still, ruminating until Hotch makes the decision for him, grabbing him below his wrist and pulling him outside. Spencer lets himself be led. Either he's wrong, and Hotch won't hurt him, or he's right, and he deserves it anyway.

Hotch brings him out onto the porch and moves to shut the door behind them before pausing. "Do you want the letter?"

"It's evidence," Spencer says numbly, watching Hotch tilt his head up, probably thinking, before nodding to himself and shutting the door. He sucks in a greedy breath. The cold brings some clarity, and he starts to settle back into himself, scoffing at the thought that Hotch would ever intend to hurt him, much less act on it.

(But then, hadn't he been thinking just the other day that Gideon would never leave him? If he was wrong about that—)

The thought ends before it can send Spencer spiralling in that direction again, though it doesn't leave him stable, either. Gideon. The cold may have snapped him out of that half-manic, half-dissociative state, but that also means he's very, very aware of what's just happened. Spencer trips on the porch, almost falling face-first into the leaf litter but catching himself on the last step just in time. He bends in half and dry heaves, waving his hand dismissively when he sees Hotch move towards him. "I already threw up. Give me a sec."

"Where?"

Spencer hiccups. "Garbage. I didn't—I didn't contaminate—" His fears have been realised. He knows Hotch is only trying to cling to professionalism, just like he was, but it doesn't stop the feeling that Gideon, the person who changed his life for better and for worse, is now nothing but a crime scene and a body to be bagged and taken away. Despite his assurances to himself and Hotch that he was only dry heaving, he's sick again. Hotch is standing too far back to get to him, so Spencer reaches around and holds his own hair back with the same hands that had been attempting CPR on Gideon's corpse just a few minutes ago. He'll cut it when he gets home.

Once he's done, he sits heavily on the step and tucks his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and pressing his forehead into them like he's trying to sink inside himself. Hotch comes closer, but Spencer doesn't move.

"I'm going to get you some water from the car—"

"Please don't leave me." It's the youngest he thinks he's ever sounded, even more than when he was an actual child, and his face burns with humiliation. Hotch stops behind him, then sinks onto the step beside him.

"Okay. I won't."

"Never?"

"Never."

They sit in silence for some time until a shuffling comes from Hotch's side of the step. Spencer turns his head so his ear rests on his knees. He watches Hotch slip his phone out of his suit jacket before taking it off and draping it over Spencer's shoulders. Spencer is wearing a coat already and has given no indication that he's cold, but he says nothing, understanding that Hotch needs to feel like he's doing something. "Are you calling the police?"

"Yes."

"Sorry, I meant to do that earlier. I called you instead." It feels like a confession. To what, he's not sure, but it must mean something to Hotch with the way he startles.

Hotch probably says something reassuring, but Spencer allows himself to dissociate again as Hotch makes the call that makes this real. He's only halfway to unreality, though, and returns quickly when Hotch addresses him.

"Are you alright?"

Spencer lifts his head and blinks into the night. The crickets are chirping like nothing has happened, and he's reminded for the thousandth time that no matter what great tragedy has occurred, the world continues to spin. He alternates between finding that comforting and disturbing and isn't sure where he lands tonight. "Why did he do that?"

Hotch inhales sharply beside him, and Spencer kicks himself. Gideon was his friend, too. Hotch is just as hurt as he is, and it's probably only Spencer's presence keeping him from breaking down like he should. Having an audience means having an image to maintain, and having a subordinate present means Hotch has to be the strong one. Spencer has half a mind to get in his car and leave to give Hotch the space he needs to be a person, but the police are probably going to want to talk to him, and he doubts he's safe to drive.

"I don't know, Reid."

Spencer jumps, having forgotten he'd even asked a question. He wets his dry lips. "Do you think the letter will tell me?"

"Maybe," Hotch says. "But no matter what it says, it's not your fault. I hope you know that."

"Mm."

"Would you like me to hang onto it? Until you're ready to read it?" He pauses. "Or if you never are?"

"Please. Can we stop talking now?" He sounds young and stupid again, and he bites his lip.

"Of course."

Eventually, the air fills with the sound of sirens. Spencer watches out of the corner of his eye as Hotch wipes his sleeve over his eyes and rises to meet the officers. As red and blue lights bathe the front of Gideon's cabin, it becomes real. A third party intrudes on their private grief. Spencer buries his face in his knees again, like the child he's never been, and the dam breaks.

AN: title from "in corolla" by the mountain goats