Title: And Back Into the Light
Author: Sam
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Pairing: Gideon/Reid
Rating: FRAO - violence
Series: 1) Down the Rabbit Hole
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made, don't hurt me.
Warnings: Violence, dark!fic, angst, slash.
Summary: Frank leaves Spencer for dead in Gideon's apartment.
A/N: I wanted to thank everyone who yelled at me to FIXIT after I left Spencer for dead in Down the Rabbit Hole. Without you guys beating on me, this fic wouldn't exist. :)

***

"How is he?"

Outside of the ICU, Gideon never took his eyes from the slender figure swathed in blankets from neck to toes in a desperate effort to ward off the hospital chill. Even after the blood transfusions, Reid still looked  transparent and about to fade away.

"Better." Voice rusty and dry with misuse, he winced at the harsh quality of it, even carrying the good news, such as it was.

He almost hadn't made it. If he had gone after Frank as he had left Gideon's apartment building...if Gideon had *seen* him leave...Spencer might  have bled out. Those last few minutes might have made all the difference. As it was Jason had rushed blindly into his apartment, following a sick sense of intuition to his bedroom where he had found Spencer laying limp and weak on his bed, blood pooling on and around his body painting him red.

The white sheets had been saturated with his blood, his body cut and mutilated, left open for Jason to find.

A hand on his shoulder broke him out of the nightmare playing behind his eyes. Frank was still out there, somewhere...

"We'll get him, Jason," Hotch promised, voice low and cold in the silence of the ICU.

"He was right about one thing..." Jason told him, his eyes locked onto the freshly bathed and bandaged form of the man who had captured his heart. The man who had almost died because Gideon had been late, dithering over something as childish as whether or not what they had been doing had been a  *date* or just a friendly dinner. Of course it had been a date. "The killing *will* stop."

Rather than warn the older man from doing anything rash or impulsive, Hotch only nodded, his own eyes locked onto the bed where their youngest team member still fought for his life, breathing in and out with help from the ventilator. "What do you need me to do?"

No question as to how this would end, or what Gideon had planned. You didn't reason with a psychopath; you didn't hope that a sexual sadist would be happy just retrieving his latest obsession and go away. And this time Frank didn't have a busload of children hostage to bargain with.

This time the blood that had been spilled demanded blood in return.

"Keep Garcia and JJ working on Frank and keep Morgan here at all times."

Hotch frowned. "Frank won't come back here..."

"No but I need Morgan out of the way."

That made sense. "And Prentiss?"

"Have her stay on Jane."

"Right. What about me? I could watch your back..."

Turning his gaze on Hotch, Gideon favored the earnest offer with a brief smile. "I need you to keep the police busy while I work on Frank. They may not consider me a suspect in my own home anymore - "

But when he found Frank that may well change.

"You'll need an alibi."

"I'll have one."

--

In the end it wasn't all that hard to track down Frank Brightkoff in the wilds of the big city. His mother's apartment in Manhattan left a paper trail for Garcia to follow that led Gideon straight to him. To say Frank was surprised to have been captured so easily was something of an understatement.

All of the various visions of retributions and avenues of revenge Gideon had thought up on his drive into New York had all fallen to the wayside at actually having the killer at his mercy. With no cops around, no one to stop Special Agent Gideon from taking the law into his own hands, Jason had thought it would have been easy to strap the smug bastard down and do to him what he had done to Spencer. But he hadn't.

Instead, he did what a profiler did best.

--

"Jason." The surprise that colored the normally smug drone was quickly covered as Frank turned to face the man standing in the doorway to his mother's bedroom. "What a - pleasant - surprise. I suppose one must ask how you found me, but I shant waste our time on such pedestrian concerns."

"Jane's not coming, Frank."

Sitting on the bed beside the mummified corpse of his mother, Gideon watched as Frank Brightkoff wrestled with his rage. Only for a moment and then it was gone, his face as bland as if it had never been.

"I see. You disappoint me, Jason."

"Get over it."

Jason savored the dark surge of satisfaction at another flash of anger before it, too, was gone.

"Ironic, isn't it? Us having this conversation by the bed of our loved ones. Tell me, Jason, did you enjoy the gift I left for you?"

Rage flared again and this time it was Gideon's turn to hold it down. He managed not to go for the gun at his back. Not yet.

"More than just a bit of bone I would say. At the end, when the ketamine was wearing off, he was crying for you. Did you know that? Such pretty tears." Cold, watery blue eyes homed in on his, locking with them and Jason couldn't help but shiver at the madness and fury in them, despite the insulating heat of his own rage simmering on the surface, deliberately kept there by the madman in front of him. "Still. I almost slit his throat, just to shut him up. But then, I imagine that would have been a kindness. Did he die in your arms, Jason? One last embrace? He must have died in such pain..."

"He's alive, Frank," Jason told him cruelly. "You screwed up. Made a mistake. And now here we are."

Upon the news that his victim was alive, Frank went into sudden motion, snapping up off the bed and throwing himself at Gideon. Only to stop short at the gun now pointed at him, held steady in the profiler's hands.

"You won't kill me, Jason. You don't have that in you. It's why you fail. Over and over." Frank taunted. "Give me my Jane. Before I slaughter the rest of those you care about."

"Is that all you can think about?" Gideon taunted in return, scrunching his face up in a mask of disgust and pity. "You need your mommy so badly that you can't function without her? That it, Frank? All those men around and still you're a momma's boy?"

His face, no longer bland and smug with superiority, flushed dark and twisted with his hate and intent. His shame. Never good enough for his mother. "I'm warning you, Jason. You don't want me loose and angry in your cities without Jane. I'll tear apart every last scrap of flesh from his bones. I swear. And I'll make you watch."

Gideon snorted, laughing in contempt. "You're not even man enough to kill a man who can't even pass his proficiency half the time, Frank. Not even man enough to subdue a man weighing 150 soaking wet when you catch him unaware in the middle of the night. What makes you think your threats are even threatening? Huh Frank? They're nothing but useless drivel spouted from the last dying efforts of an ordinary, plain, *pedestrian* mind playing at aspirations of grandeur."

"Jason - "

"You're nothing. Nobody. Weak and useless, Frank. Your own mother never wanted you around. Preferred the company of strange men over that of her own son - "

Frank lunged in a rage and Jason calmly pulled the trigger.

Standing over the now cooling body of what had been one of the most prolific serial killers in history, Jason Gideon calmly holstered his gun and dialed 911. All trace of his earlier passion gone from his voice, he detailed to the operator who he was and that they would need a bus for the body of the unsub as well as the forensics team for the apartment. Then he hung up.

Staring down at Frank, Jason shook his head at the unrealized visions of the tortures his angry soul had urged he visit.

Clean was best. A thorough and accurate profile was just as much a weapon as anything made of gunpowder and steel and bullets. Jason Gideon had never needed a gun to kill someone.

But sometimes it helps.

--

Epilogue...6 months later.

The summer was waning but life on the beach was still going strong. For the seven agents soaking up the last night of their vacation, the warm breeze coming off the ocean stirring the large bonfire and carrying the carefree music to where they sat on blankets in the sand was enough to carry the night.

Well that and the sight of their youngest member up and about, highlighted by the fire, laughing and dancing with surprising dexterity and rhythm in between JJ and Garcia. Reid had made it through the surgery and the resulting physical therapy just fine. The mandatory psych evaluations would start in a couple of days, but they were confident he would get through them as well. This time, they had made damn sure Spencer knew he wasn't alone.

Director Strauss had gone after Hotch the only way left open to her - through Prentiss - and had paid the price for it. The best profiling team in the country had banded together, circled the wagons and treated the threat as they would any other.

The overzealous woman had learned of her mistake too late. The morning after Strauss had summoned her into her office, Prentiss called her up on charges of coercion and blackmail, producing the audio taped evidence from the wire she had worn into the meeting. Backed by Gideon and the rest of the team, Hotch had been reinstated immediately and without any further protest; the director had resigned her position, stating the sudden desire to have more time with her children.

And Gideon...

Gideon had taken Reid on a real date that had included as many roses as he could find as soon as the younger man had been declared fit to leave the hospital. Initially surprised by the sight of Spencer standing over his bed, tearing at the roses, Gideon had to admit the white petals had looked and felt amazing scattered all over the dark sheets of his bed, crushed and trapped under their bare skin...

"What are you smiling about?" Hotch asked, sitting to his right and doing his best to keep Morgan from tripping over his legs as Prentiss dragged him up in front of them, insisting Garcia had sent her to make him dance. He noticed Morgan didn't protest too much as he laughingly followed her to where  the others had claimed their own patch of sand a few feet away, joining Garcia, JJ and Reid in moving with a tourists appreciation of the music.

"Irony."

"Yeah? Well what I find ironic is that this was your idea. I thought you hated the beach."

Jason's smile only widened as he agreed. "Yes, I do."

That earned an outright laugh from Hotch even as Gideon joined it. "Well alright then. As long as we've got that cleared up."

They watched in companionable silence as Morgan pulled Garcia away from Reid with a somewhat nasty grinding of his hips, Garcia fanning herself and quite willing to be lead away with the temptation of a half naked, relaxed and happy Morgan getting his 'thang' on. Reid compensated by riding the steel drum beat down to the ground and back up while Morgan's mouth opened in shock and JJ laughed, the wind carrying Morgan's weak protest that geeks should *not* be allowed to dance like that.

"But Spencer loves it. It's good for him," Gideon admitted fondly. "And the team needed a break from all of the politics and backbiting of the office."

"You don't have to convince me," Hotch nodded. A sly look over to Gideon had him adding, "I agree with you. But then, I *like* the beach."

Catching that look, Jason gave up the pretense and nudged his co-conspirator in exasperation. He hadn't done this alone; seven tickets to the Bahamas hadn't come easily. Neither had a full week of vacation for the entire team. "Shuddup and just enjoy will ya?"

Hotch's grin was teasing as he shrugged, deadpan. "I'm just sayin'..."

A snort was his only answer.

"How is Reid?" Hotch asked. When Gideon met his eyes, the younger man added, "I've notice he hasn't taken his shirt off the entire time we've been here."

Gideon took a breath and admitted, if only to himself, that the scars were a sore point they would need to work on. "He hasn't. But even at the best of times, Spencer wouldn't be caught dead without his layers, so..." He shrugged.

It was clear Hotch wasn't buying it. "Jason, it's the Bahamas."

"And you have Morgan tattooed and shirtless pretty much 24/7 with muscles any man would die for. Let it rest, Hotch; Spencer will come around."

"At least tell me he takes them off when you're alone."

"He does." Jason assured him. It had taken time, but Spencer no longer felt the overwhelming need to come to their bed covered from neck to knee in order to avoid Jason having to look at the scars Frank's scalpel had left  behind to color his flesh.

Not that they mattered to Jason as anything other than the visual reminders that Spencer had gone through Hell and survived.

To Spencer they were the physical reminders that Hell had sought him out and claimed him - again.

"Good."

Gideon cast him a look and Hotch met it with one of his own.

"I mean it, Jason. He's good for you."

Relaxing at the honest goodwill in his friend's endorsement, Gideon felt himself smiling. "Yes, he is."

"What I don't know is what you were thinking, buying him *mums* for God's sake..."


end