Hotch looked up from a seemingly never ending pile of work at the soft tapping on his door. He glanced at the clock to his right as his eyes twitched tiredly. It was gone nine pm and his aspirations for a six pm finish were now thoroughly out of the water. The case they had come back from had been one of the more exhausting ones they had consulted on in quite a while. And not just because of the case itself. Throwing down his pen he stretched lithely and thinking longingly of a smooth glass of whiskey, he cleared his throat.

"Come in."

Reid sidled in slowly, his hair lank in his eyes. Exhaustion was etched into every line of his young face as he closed the door softly. In the lamplight bathed room he looked decidedly agitated and restless. At Hotch's encouraging hand gesture, he sunk into the chair across from him. He clutched a suspension file tightly in his grasp as he opened and closed his mouth repeatedly. Hotch was instantly on alert as he studied the kid with a quiet gaze for a moment or two. "Spencer," he opened quietly, "It's late. You should be at home. As it is, what can I do for you?" Big melting brown eyes looked up at him with a cacophony of emotion conflicting within them. Swallowing somewhat, Reid opened his mouth once more and Hotch instantly sensed that his words had been rehearsed to the last syllable.

"You threatened to fire me on the plane."

It wasn't a question, it was a definitive statement. Hotch raised a brow in response, but didn't otherwise react facially. It wasn't quite like Reid to be so blunt, and he correctly gauged that such abruptness was born out of weariness. "I did," he agreed eventually. "Do you want to talk about that?" Spencer pushed a limp lock of hair out of his eyes as he looked over at his mentor quietly. "It surprised me," he admitted softly. "And at first, I was relieved. I assumed you were going to…" he trailed off, his face reddening as he looked downwards. Hotch tilted his head to the side inquisitively. "You assumed I was going to…what?" When the kid merely looked at him like a deer in the headlights, Hotch decided to allow the implicit rather than explicit explanation to stand.

"Ok," he countered quietly. "So what's the problem? All things considered, I feel like I've been pretty lenient with you. You don't agree?" Reid coughed slightly as he chewed his lip. "No…that's not it. I guess I just don't understand…I mean, I don't know why…" He fell silent in agitation as Hotch stared in utter confusion in response. When the kid offered no further explanation, he cleared his throat encouragingly. But before he could open his mouth to try and prod whatever Reid wanted to say from him, the suspension file was suddenly thrust on his desk with an oddly clacking thud.

He raised another brow.

"Reid? What's this?"

No vocal answer was given, merely an expressive widening of already widened eyes. Looking at the doctor with curious worry, Hotch tugged the file towards him. Opening it, he felt his own eyes widen as the thick, wooden hairbrush fell into his lap. He said and did nothing for a moment. He simply stared down at the presently inoffensive brush resting in his lap. Snapping back to reality, he reached down and quickly pulled open the second drawer in his desk. The brush was gone, the brush in his lap wasn't some odd duplicate. Closing the door quietly, he looked back to an ashen Reid with confusion burning in his eyes as he held the brush up high.

"You came in here when I wasn't here? You came in here and took this?"

Spencer swallowed deeply but nodded without hesitation. "Yes," he murmured. "I thought…that you might be," he scrubbed an agitated hand across his eyes. "I thought you should probably use it." Hotch's mouth fell open slightly as he flickered his gaze between the brush in his hands and the tortured looking kid in front of him. He had used the brush more times than he would care to admit in chastising the young genius. He knew how much Spencer hated it, he knew how gingerly he sat after he had had cause to use it. And yet…here he was and here it was.

He was offering it to him. He was encouraging him to use it.

It made absolutely, categorically and inexplicably poor sense.

But suddenly as he gazed deeply at the torn looking boy, it did make sense. It made absolute, categorical and explicable sense. Groaning inwardly, he cursed his own stupidity. His own impulsiveness. His own assumptions. Picking up the suspension file once more, he quietly passed it over to Reid who took it instinctively. Reaching down, he pulled open the second drawer once more. Placing the brush back where it belonged, he closed it tight. When he looked back up, the confusion in the brown eyes had already racked up another degree of intensity. His voice was quiet when he spoke, but it was infused with an almost alarming degree of sincerity.

"I am not going to punish you. Not like that, not for this. I simply will not allow it."

Before Reid could verbalise the objection he'd opened his mouth to utter, Hotch silenced him with a raised hand. "But I do owe you an explanation, if not a punishment. "You're right. I did threaten to fire you on the plane. And I meant it, and I continue to mean it. It's the last thing I would rather do, but if I have to do it, I will. If there's no other option available to me to keep you safe, then yes, I will fire you." He crossed his legs and clasped his hands together as he thought. "Was I furious with how you acted on this case? With Owen?" He nodded without equivocation. "Yes, I was and yes, I'm still angry with you."

He tilted his head at a paling Reid.

"But I understand, Spencer. I understand why you did it. I understand that you felt you had no choice. I understand that you went through hell throughout your teenage years. I understand that you couldn't help the identification you had with Owen. I understand that you lost your cool, that you lost your objectivity. I also understand that there are things that you've experienced that I have no appreciation or understanding of. And yes, you acted outrageously. You acted with disregard for the health and well being of everyone concerned, yourself included. That is why I threatened to fire you and that is why I will fire you if it ever happens again. This case was your one explosion, Reid. This was your own get out jail free card. There will be no more."

He stood and crossed over to the kid's side of the desk and indicated for him to stand.

He did so on relatively shaky legs.

"I heard Morgan call you a brat on the way back." He held up a hand as the kid tried to defend the field agent. "Don't even try Reid, I heard him with my own ears. And I've spoken to him. And now I'm speaking to you." He gestured to where the brush now lay, concealed from sight. "Have I used that with you when you have acted like…well, a brat? Yes. Will I use it again if you act like a brat? Yes. But this is not that, Reid. You did not act like brat, or a child or anything of the kind. You acted like a brave man who saw an injustice being done unto a child. You knew that injustice because you've lived that injustice. You were wrong. You acted inappropriately and unprofessionally. But you were brave and you were not a brat. Nothing is as black and white as we might like, nothing is as simple as we might prefer. You were both right and wrong and sometimes that's hard to process, but you've got to try."

He laid a gentle hand on the kid's right shoulder and squeezed gently.

"Do you understand now? Do you understand why I haven't and wont punish you in the usual way?"

There was a resounding silence for a moment as each man stared at each other. Reid had said very little but felt like the conversation he was in would remain with him for a very long time. He glanced between Hotch and the desk, chewing his lip. "You still feel guilty?" Hotch surmised quietly, "You don't feel like you've been forgiven?"

Spencer nodded mutely, not trusting himself to speak.

Hotch couldn't suppress the sigh that sailed through his windpipe.

He never wanted the kid to feel guilty, or for issues to feel unresolved. That was a huge motivating factor in why he employed the unusual disciplinary measures that he did. But there was nothing he could do about such guilt on this score. To punish Reid corporally would be to tell him he was utterly wrong. And in a way he had been, but in another…he had been everything that Hotch admired about him. The trauma of the kid's past still haunted him and the Unit Chief point blankly refused to exacerbate it. He squeezed the shoulder gently once more. "I'm sorry about that," he murmured sincerely, "I'm sorry you still feel guilty but…"

He trailed off, an ingenious idea springing to the forefront of his mind.

"I have a…different way to ease that conscience of yours, Spencer."

Before the boy could react, he had removed his hand and once again returned to his side of the desk. Rummaging around a tottering pile of files, he extracted a particularly thick one and held it out to Reid. Looking down at the bulky paperwork in his hands, Spencer quirked a brow. "Hotch?" Smiling, Aaron settled back down into his chair and gestured towards the small table in the corner of his office. "What you're holding there is over nine hundred pages of transcripts collected from cell interception in relation to cold cases. Unfortunately, all the interceptions were of text messages. More unfortunately still, all those messages you're holding are segregated messages. They are segregated because they were composed utterly in…text speak, is it? Is that the correct term?"

He smiled at the horrified look on Reid's face.

"You know what I mean? The letter "u" instead of the word "you" and so on. He allowed a shiver to pass over his face. "Anyhow, they all need to be properly translated into readable and court ready English." He gestured to the table once more and raised a brow. "Your penance is calling you Reid, if you want it. It's your call. You can say yes, or you can say no. If you say yes, your penance needs to be on my desk first thing Monday morning, so I'd get cracking if I were you. If you need any help…I'm sure urban dictionary can offer you a guiding hand."

Reid's soul fell right through his stomach and dripped slowly into the thick carpet beneath him.

His voice, when it spoke, was in the form of a scandalised whisper.

"Urban dictionary?"

Hotch leant back and smiled widely with a nod and a guiding hand gesture.

"Urban dictionary."

…

A/N: My two cents on the whole "Elephants Memory" saga. I don't feel like Reid was a brat or a child in that episode as I've read in many fics. I do think he was wrong, but I also think that has to be tempered with his life experiences. I wanted to assuage his guilt by a serious threat of dismissal being followed up with a less serious/token punishment. Anyhow, there we are. I didn't put this scene into my "Of Sidelines and Baselines" fic because I feel it would have distorted the timeline somewhat.

Thanks for reading.

Hope you enjoyed.

_Inks

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