A/n Criminal Minds drabble, a short thing instigated by my consuming criminal minds at an alarming rate. Spoilers through season 3.

JASON GIDEON 

Rossi looks at the nameplate on the door, remembering a young man with too-understanding eyes and a bleeding heart who could take one look and peel you right out of your own shoes. He remembers a different man than the rest of the others do, and quietly wonders just what Jason had been like in his middle age to make all these people mourn his absence. To make the kid glance at the office door three times in an hour, to make Aaron's eyes linger a little too long while he sees a different face, to make the blonde woman hold her head in her hands when she thinks she's alone. 

But Rossi has his own ghosts to face and, unlike the others here, his are not called Gideon. 

He slides the nameplate out and palms it, three new names replacing the one he has in his hand, because he's not here for Jason. 

/

Hotch scans the case file and sighs, pressing his fingers to his temple in an attempt to stave off a headache. Their last case had been hard, with too many bodies. You can't take this stuff personally. He hears someone else's voice. In this job, you focus on the ones you do save.  

"Why didn't you?" he whispers to an empty room. 

He sighs when the ghost he's asked doesn't answer and pinches the bridge of his nose again. Ghost... How strange that the man he'd looked up to mere months ago could be gone one day to the next. Reid had showed him the letter. He hadn't read it. 'It's addressed to you, Reid'. But he'd seen the look on Spencer's face the kid tried so damn hard to hide. And maybe he's found something he cannot forgive Gideon for. 

Hotch hears the whispers, and he hears the things they don't say. He sees the glances, the downcast eyes, the lingering looks. Hell, he's given them himself. He feels this team cracking, reeling in the sudden and unexplained loss. Hotch shuts the case file, closing the door on his ghosts. He'll forget them, he will deny them power over him and remain the strong face everyone sees. Yes, the team is cracking, but he will not let them break. 

/

Morgan turns to look for a ghost and stops himself short. He growls under his breath and looks pointedly away from the empty space he'd instinctively turned to for guidance. Because ghosts aren't real, dammit. No. They just feel that way. 

He puts him out of his head and turns purposefully to ask Hotch and pretends he never looked for anyone else. And when Reid's travel chessboard doesn't turn up on the plane and JJ accidentally brings one too many coffees to the office he doesn't think of Him. 

Because if he does he'll get angry. 

Because Gideon who supported every spoke on the wheel of this team was gone and where did that leave them? Gideon who presented calm and experience and insight in a way Morgan hasn't seen anywhere else could just...up and leave. It felt...it felt like weakness and abandonment and failure and that wasn't fair. So mostly he felt angry. 

"Wheels up in 30," Hotch says, and Morgan gives a terse nod. And the ghost isn't there but it feels like he is so Morgan goes forward, determined to leave his ghost in the dust. If he turns around he'll be there, absent yet present, abhorred and yet loved, dichotomies igniting his temper in their contradictions and confusion. He'll be there, standing next to old ghosts who watch with solemn eyes, some more vivid than others, but all watching, all silent, all tying up strings in his heart that crossed and tangled and pulled. So he doesn't turn around. Not now, not yet. 

"Wheels up," Morgan mumbles to himself, and grabs his go bag. 

/

JJ sits back in her chair and frowns at the tears she feels pricking at her eyes. It's not like he's dead, not like he's gone. But his desk is empty and his badge was there and his gun was there and he was not so how different is it, really? 

And she feels silly for this sense of grief she feels for a coworker who walked out on his job. But they're all not just coworkers are they, and this job is so much more than just a job. Gideon gave Spence those tickets. He sent Garcia a gift because he didn't know how to say thank you. He kept hotel soaps to give to the homeless and framed pictures of the people they'd saved. And JJ frowns as she reaches for a tissue. There's a file on her desk marked for Gideon. She doesn't know where to send it. 

The team has gone off on another plane to another town to profile another unsub. Hotch is stepping up as Spence is trying to pull back. Morgan refuses to be moved and Emily moves as the others move her. JJ wonders if there's anyone she should be calling. He has no family ties on the books, Hotch is his emergency contact. There's a son; Gideon doesn't speak to him. 

It's not like he's dead, she thinks again. But something irrevocable has changed, she feels wrong just sitting here and doing nothing. But there's no one to call. No one but Hotch and Reid and Morgan. She tries to think of other people, other people who should know. She can only come up with Sarah. 

"Who should know what? That he quit his job?" she asks herself. "It's not like he's dead." 

JJ sits up with a pointed breath, shuffling case files on her desk. He's not dead, but the ache in her chest and the subdued tension in the team feels like he is. And she grabs another tissue and looks forward to days when the grief will feel more like fondness and she'll look back on memories again and smile instead of cry. 

/

Emily sits on the jet, flipping slowly through a book. The tone of the jet is muted, like someone's thrown a blanket over this little BAU team, or a stormcloud. Morgan has his headphones on and is staring at the window, periodically easing the anger out of his posture, though it always returns. Reid is pretending to sleep, but it wouldn't take a profiler to guess what he's thinking about instead, and Hotch is still working, scribbling in his case files as he plods on, scrambling to do work Gideon used to cover. 

Emily flips a page, her eyes scanning the terrain. She didn't know Gideon well, not like they did. She looked up to him as a founder of the BAU, she respected him and she'd grown to like him. But she'd also known men like him. 

Well, no one had the mind or heart of Jason Gideon, who would know you better than you know yourself, but she knew men like him. Men who left, men who looked into the abyss too long, too deep, and never quite got themselves back. 

She's the newest member, until Hotch finds someone to replace Gideon, which she's already seen him start to work on. She's new, but this team is remarkable in many ways and she feels secure here; at the moment more secure than anyone else. Because she's seen people come and go, and she knows how to let them. Ghosts have flit in and out of her life for as long as she's known them. She's learned to live with them. 

"Did you know?" she asks the newest ghost, watching him haunt his team. "Did you know how they needed you? What this would do to them?" Reid shifts on the couch, hiding his head in his arm. "They'll understand, in time. But you didn't have to leave them like that." 

There's no answer; ghosts never give one. She purses her lips and flips another page, she knows that too. 

/

I knew it would be you who came to the cabin to check on me 

A ghost's words float around Reid's head. 

I just don't understand any of it anymore 

Happy endings...Gideon said, he wanted to look for happy endings. Reid tried to understand that, tried to be pleased Gideon was pursuing his own life. It just felt too familiar. And when he sees Morgan slam a door or glare too sharply at no one he doesn't stop the anger that comes. 

But mostly...mostly he just feels lost. Because if Gideon doesn't understand it...what hope does he have? Gideon knew everything, and if this job is too much for that man, how can anyone bear it? Mostly he feels lost because Gideon was the one who took him under his wing and taught him, mentored him, cared about him. 

Reid has been exceptional all his life. He loved to learn and he loved to grow, and he learned so much so fast that he left everyone else behind. And that...that meant he was often alone. There was no one else who knew what it was like, no one else who could match him as he climbed, faster and faster, more and more, searching always for something he didn't know he was looking for. 

His mother loved him, but couldn't connect with him the way he needed. His father never tried. His teachers beamed at him but spoke in awed tones as they stepped aside to let him climb, but didn't quite support him. So he'd climbed higher, searching subconsciously for something more. 

It was Gideon who encouraged him to look into the BAU. Gideon who picked him out of the Academy classes. Reid knew it was Gideon who pulled strings that let him into the field. Gideon showed him how to profile, talked him through nightmares, counseled him on how unsubs think and feel. Gideon never laughed at him, never balked at his age or glared when he said something abnormal. Gideon understood him in the way only Gideon could and no one else ever had. Gideon could, and would, beat him in chess. Reid knows now the word, 'surrogate', he knows now his own background and how that impacts him psychologically and why he looks for father figures. Knowing didn't change that fact that Gideon became that surrogate father. Didn't change how he felt when Gideon praised him or taught him or asked how he was and listened to the answer. 

Didn't change how he felt when he'd driven up to a dark cabin. Or when the door swung open. Or when he'd read the letter. 

I'm so sorry the explanation couldn't be better

"Me too." Spencer says. 

You must be frightened 

"I was. I saw the darkness and I thought you might've done -- something." 

I never meant to cause you any pain

"They never do." 

The world confuses me. The cruelty, indifference, tragedy.

"It confuses me too. That's what we learn to understand. That what you taught me to understand; the unsubs, how they think, how they feel. You could have asked me. We could have talked about it." 

I just don't understand any of it anymore. 

"Not even me? Not even us? So you just leave without saying goodbye?" 

I guess I'm just looking for it again...the belief in happy endings

"Why couldn't you find one with me?" 

Spencer blinks, wiping angrily at the tears wet on his cheek. "Why can't anyone find one with me?" He waits, but his ghost is silent. Absent people can't reply to what they never hear. It settles, cold, bitter, in the pit of his stomach. And he remembers feeling just like this a million other moments in his life. He just never thought Gideon would be one to make him feel this way. 

It's a few weeks later when he finds him. 

Reid doesn't ask Garcia, even though she could probably find him within a day. He works it alone, in his spare time stolen between cases, up late at night. He never works it in the office, never where everyone else could see. Because they're finding it; a new normal. A new rhythm with Hotch and Rossi, and no one talks about Gideon anymore.  

No one seems to care still, no one is so affected. So Reid works quietly, on his own, braving the technology landscape to track down one man who has so many things to answer for. 

Now he stares at his computer screen, reading and re-reading the address he's found, even though it was permanently burned into his memory the moment it flashed up on the screen. 

He could...he should... 

But in all these months, Gideon hasn't said a word. He's always known where Reid was, he'd know Reid would still be there. He hasn't said a word. Nothing more than the letter Reid already hears echoing in his ears far too often. 

He could ask him his questions. Make him answer. 

I'm sorry the explanation couldn't be better 

Reid is tired of hearing those words. 

He could ask his questions. Get the answers. He closes the laptop, plunging his room into darkness without the thin glow of the screen. 

He never tells anyone where Gideon is. Never tells anyone that he found him. He thinks Garcia probably looked, knows that if she did she found him. Probably told Morgan, probably told Hotch. JJ probably asked, Emily probably heard, Rossi probably found out. By now everyone probably knows where Gideon has a new cabin. Everyone probably knows everyone else probably knows. No one says a word.