Warning: Slash. Hotch/Reid established. Rated K+.

Disclaimer: Not mine. However, I am the proud owner of half a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper.

Spoilers: Through 6x20, Hanley Waters

Unbeta'd. All errors are mine.

Author's Note: This is a result of sitting down to write an important essay for school. Takes place after Hanley Waters, some indeterminate period before Hotch leaves for Afghanistan.

Eurydice

And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.

-Sylvia Plath

Aaron was sleeping, and Jack was sleeping, and the house was dark and quiet. He paused in the doorway and considered before entering the den. Street lights filtered through the curtains. The restlessness that had driven him up out of bed and away from Aaron's deep, even breaths made him take the final steps forward, towards the pictures lined on the shelf.

If he believed in ghosts, he might have said his friend was haunting him. Because Emily was in all the silent places, in the blackness, she was in the alertness that sucked him in and made him long for sleep.

The pictures, though, Aaron's family, were proof that foundations could be rebuilt. He reached and touched the frames, and concentrated on immediacy and the glint of light on glass.

Aaron had said, "Spencer," the first time he found him looking. Aaron had slipped the frame of Haley from his fingers and kissed him. Spencer had kissed him back, and taken the photo, and replaced it on the shelf.

"You love her," he had said. "How could I mind? She was a huge part of your life."

No, Haley's photo wasn't the one he hated.

Static seemed to run along his nerves, eradicating his pulse, crescendoing with the run of his fingers over glass.

On the desk, Aaron's paperwork waited, and the edges were uneven. Nothing else indicated something was wrong. Aaron never ran his hand over the back of his neck, he never glanced down, he never bit his lip or the inside of his cheek. Body language was different for everybody, he knew. but Aaron's revealed nothing. But he knew the guilt was there, almost outweighing the grief, in the way Aaron never said, "Emily Prentiss is dead."

In the frame he lifted now, a young man stared forth, the dark streaks in his hair alleviated by blond, with a firm chin and an aquiline arch to his nose. The structure of his face was all that was not inverse to Aaron.

The easy smile, the face that might have been Aaron's, was foreign and cutting in the way it transformed his face.

He had never seen Aaron smile like that, not with Haley, not with him, not even, really, with Jack.

Behind him the switch on the wall clicked, and the room flooded with light.

"Spencer."

There was a feeling like taffy that slowed him, made him tilt his head, before turning to face the older man.

"Spencer, you need to sleep."

He set the photo of Aaron's brother back on the shelf, and his words were clipped despite his efforts. "I slept."

"When?" The rasp in Aaron's voice made him shift his balance to the balls of his feet, but what that rasp meant made him let Aaron grip his shoulder, and draw him close, and steer him back to bed.

The light in their bedroom, slicing from beneath the bathroom door, was enough to see Aaron's eyes. Spencer hovered over him in a half-push up and analyzed. The pain he saw there was the kind that had Aaron staring back up, and waiting. The pain was the kind that spoke of expiation and prie-dieus. As though Spencer could offer absolution.

"It's not your fault," he whispered, cupping Aaron's jaw. "It never was."

Aaron closed his eyes a moment, and leaned into his hand, but when he opened them again the pain was unchanged.

He leaned down, and rested his head on Aaron's chest, and listened to the beating of his heart.

But the restlessness made him fidget, and he half-expected it when Aaron spoke fifteen minutes later. "I could sleep on the couch."

"I'm sorry." He tensed and tightened his grip, not looking up. "Please don't go."

Aaron made a quiet, helpless sound, something that might have been, "God."

He thought, to Aaron and also to Emily, I would save you if I could.

The blackness and the silence offered nothing. He wished they had said, I know. Or even, It's not your fault.

Likely none of them could ever accept, I forgive you.

…

Emily's was not the only ghost, prowling in the shadows. Another had his own face, and it smiled, it was the self that had overridden Aaron's objections the first time they fell into bed. The self that had reassured, You're not too old for me. Because really, I never was young.

But that self had a brightness to it, and worry, when he thought about his revolver.

He thought to the archangel and the religious fanatic and the junkie, This is God's will, and he filled every chamber and pulled back the hammer and he fired three rounds at the man who had killed his friend. He sneered at the archangel's dispassion. As the third shot exploded between his target's eyes he felt his fury finally, finally abate.

There are other ways, the gentle part of him whispered.

He snarled back, and wished the blackness would take his side.

...

Somehow, he slept, and he dreamed.

He had never had this dream before. The air was cool, making the hairs on the backs of his arms stand to attention. Red streaks across the horizon indicated sunset or dawn. Knowing which was impossible, though, because here there was no sun.

He moved forward, squinting to see past the middle distance. Bare ruined columns crumbled in the midst of this field. And the smell was too cloying to be heavenly, though once it might have been.

And farther than the eye could see spilled violet, silver-limned blooms.

He frowned as he walked. The flowers whispered away from his tread. He knew what these flowers were.

But when he drew near the ruin, a crack sundered the air. Before he could scramble back the ground opened beneath his feet and disintegrated into a cascade of little white spiders. He twisted away and jerked but still crushed too many.

He dreamed that he was falling.

…

They had fought about telling Jack. "He understands death, Aaron," he snapped, standing back and crossing his arms.

"He barely knew Emily. He doesn't need to go through this."

Incredulity filled his tone. "Are you really going to lie to your son?"

"No." Scarcely more than a whisper, but Aaron had held his gaze, and on the tense nights sent Jack to stay with his aunt.

"Tell him," he urged.

"I can't."

So Jack knew nothing. If he was subdued, he was less so than he might have been.

Sometimes, when he stood in the doorway and watched Jack playing with race cars or action figures or dinosaurs, he thought how well adjusted Jack was. He had bounced back from unspeakable tragedies in his past.

Aaron really was an excellent father.

So he relented. He followed Aaron's lead, and if Jack asked him what was wrong, he smiled and hugged Jack and said, "Nothing."

That statement had the benefit of being true, because nothing was terribly, terribly wrong.

Aaron was right. Jack should never have to feel this.

…

He tried for humor when Aaron-no, Hotch, his boss-pulled him in for his grief assessment at work. Here where the pace was fast and brutal sometimes he could drown out the silent places. Sometimes, not always.

"The last time I was on a couch like this was when my father left."

The statement fell flat, and he bit back the quick assurance that he knew that Emily had not abandoned them, that this was very different.

Hotch told him to say what he felt, not what was expected, and there was the gentleness and safety to which Spencer entrusted more than his life. He told Hotch about the silent places: "Sometimes, I think maybe—maybe Gideon was right. You know—maybe it's just not worth it."

His admission seemed to spark that obscure pain in Aaron's eyes again, and he looked away, guilty. A dearth of serotonin and norepinephrine were to be expected, after experiencing a loss, and his brain's neuroplasticity would remodel and next time he would be able to answer the question with, I'm fine.

Right now, though, he was so tired. He had to be careful not to let Aaron catch this, like a common cold, like a scythe in a firm grip.

…

That night when he made his coffee, he forgot the sugar. That sent a little thrill of alarm through him that he could forget something so trivial, and he choked on the bitter drink.

"What's wrong?" Aaron was pounding his back.

"No sugar," he spluttered, almost dropping the cup in his haste to reach for the sweetener.

Shock froze him, though, when Aaron started laughing, even when the laugh turned rueful and ended when Spencer turned to stare at him wide eyed.

If the blackness could whisper, it might say, Let me go.

He tried to temper the regret in his reply. You know I can't.

…

"I'm so tired," he said to Aaron's chest where he was pressed against the older man's heartbeat.

Aaron's arm tightened around him briefly. "I know. Spencer. Sleep."

He closed his eyes.

…

The dream caught him up in dread, because he wanted to dream about anything but falling. The back of his throat tightened against that same thick cloying smell, and the silver-limned violet blooms whispered away from his tread.

He knew this flower. "Narcissus." His eyes closed at the pang of anguish. "They're not supposed to be here."

By the ruin, the shadows were the same, and the way the earth cracked open was the same, and the way he fell was the same.

This time, though, the dream continued.

He was in a cavern, underground, and from the blackness and the silence more than a whisper emerged.

"Spencer."

Her hand clasped his, and he smiled. "You've never called me Spencer before."

"There were a lot of things I never did," she said, and she followed her whisper from the blackness, and she was lovely and alive. Regret throbbed through her words.

"Emily," he said, and held out what he had kept for her in his hand, "You're not wearing your vest."

"Thank you." She accepted the Kevlar and strapped it over the white folds of cloth enshrouding her. "You're supposed to bring me back."

The earnestness there was the earnestness that had crafted the silent places.

"I can't." His breath hitched.

"You can. All you have to do is take me back from the man that took me away from our family." She gestured, and he saw the dark silent figure.

From the place where they waited in the blackness, the archangel and the religious fanatic and the junkie handed him his revolver. "You stay there," he told them, but he considered his weapon before lifting it in a steady hand.

Emily's eyes grew round. "No, you're supposed to sing! That's the only way he'll let me go."

"I'm sorry. This is all I have left."

"You don't understand," the dark figure rasped.

"I understand enough." And the chamber was full, and he pulled the trigger three times, and his final shot exploded between his target's eyes.

He ignored the cautioning sigh from the archangel as he moved forward to toe the dark silent figure over and see his face.

"Oh, Spencer," Emily whispered, as though she knew that this was much worse.

...

His eyes flew open and there was no air. Beneath him, Aaron's heart was a steady beat, and he wanted desperately to rise and pace and find some peaceful place.

Airlessness trapped him against Aaron's heart.

He thought to himself, as air finally followed one of his open-mouthed gasps, There were reasons. Aaron would never do this without reasons.

His gasps were growing faster and more frantic, and beneath him Aaron stirred.

"Spencer?" He felt hands grip his shoulders and drag him up, even as sorrow seemed to convulse through him in an effort to escape. "Spencer, you need to breathe."

He closed his eyes and obeyed, because more than he needed to breathe he needed to trust Aaron.

"Take deep breaths, that's right, breath with me."

Not much time passed when he could choke out, "I don't want to know." Aaron's muscles stiffened against him. "I want to forget what I know."

"Everything will be okay," Aaron replied eventually.

But red streaked across the sky and they were looking at the wrong side of dawn before either of them moved.

...

FIN

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

-T.S. Eliot

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