I guess I’m just looking for it again – for the belief I had...

Gideon had what he called the “two heartbreak rule.”

It wasn’t his, in fact he had heard it from a social worker in Los Angeles when he was still a rookie and it had struck that profound chord truisms tend to do so he kept it and folded it into his own philosophy. Put simply; it said the only difference between someone who is a whole, healthy, contributing member of society and the ones who huddled under bridges, and stole for their next hit was two major, life changing injuries. It could be the death of a love one, the fall to addiction, the lost of a job or the returning of a war-haunted solider to what we called civilization. It could be finding the wife in bed with another man, or coming gradually into the realization that one in your bed is not who you want there, not even the right gender.

And once you understand that, once you embrace that the line between “us” and “them” isn’t as gaping as you first thought: all the doors open up. Then you can understand, and God willing, you can help them.

Gideon had always believed that. It was as center to his core and sense of self as his own name. Even more so then his name really, for reasons not many knew. His injuries he wore like armor. He kept them to the forefront for the ones he helped and hunted because like hurt animals; there is a kinship there just beneath the surface that stands out. Hurt knows hurt and for thirty years, he used that- he saved lives and stored them up like defenses against his own as if he could temper the pain with a book of faces he saved.

It doesn’t work that way. It never does.

But he lies to himself and says it will; because sometimes, just sometimes- he can ease the heartbreak, even ignore it. And for one more day, he can pretend the line is a little clearer than it really is.

Jason Gideon
Criminal Minds
341

There are times, even now, when Jason Gideon will wake up in the middle of the night to check his cell. It’s instinct, residual from thirty plus years of past-midnight calls from his underlings or the rare serious-and-sensitive-call from his superiors about a body or bodies found in some ditch, or alleyway or farmland that require his immediate presence. He hasn’t received the call in almost four years but still he wakes, gropes for the phone in the dark, and knows it’s bad without anyone having to tell him.

It could be sixth sense, or a guilty conscience. He knows, after all, that just as his bedroom is silent there are others, his team, still disturbed by that macabre interlude. That is a certainty he never quite accepted. It’s an evil he’s never been able to swallow.

There will always be bodies found in storm drains and cellars, no matter how many they pull out. And there’s always going to be someone putting them there. He could hunt down ten or a thousand but it never slowed down the phone calls, never stopped the body count. Someone will always be there, trying to smother their own personal pain through another’s, or just for the thrill of it.

Or for no reason at all.

And four years ago he walked on his life to stop those calls. Knowing it wouldn’t.

Knowing it hasn’t.


Jason Gideon
Criminal Minds
232

When he heard she had died, he made it as near as the Virginian border before his courage failed him and there he stood on the side of the road wondering if he had the strength to cross that final stretch for an hour afterwards. In the end, he visited her grave an hour before sunset on the day of the funeral and placed a stone on the marker in remembrance of the rookie he’d worked with for a. few months.

Truth was, he hadn’t known Prentiss very well, his own fault, but her lost had resonated to the very marrow of his bones because of what she had stood for, where she had served, and with whom. The details of the crime had been splashed across every news circuit and radio talk show for the past week and the whole ritual of mourning had been played out in print and on screen.

It’d been there in his hotel room, that he saw them; really saw them, for the first time in the three years. Their steps were weary, so much more so now in grief that he wondered how any of them remained standing. It was the erosion of strength first, and now purpose that each case inevitably took from them in one way or another.

Hotch was a single father now. JJ looked isolated. Garcia and Morgan seemed so interwoven that the slightest interference would bring them both down. His old friend looked angry. There was another one too, impossibly young. And lastly, Reid.

There was a stumble in Reid’s steps. He wondered if anyone else noticed it. He wondered how long the headaches had been bothering him.

And his own chest hurt as he studied each one in turn as the camera panned over them and quietly, in the pantomime of sincerity, Jason Gideon felt his hands flex as if grabbing hold of each of their shoulders could have given them strength, as if he could have taken their pain by his mere presence.

And if it could have, he would, had he the courage, or the words.

But instead, he watched from the safe distance of his hotel room as each one of them made their uneasy way towards the grave and then disappeared from view. He had a hundred different things he wanted to say to them; apologies interwoven with encouragement but they never reached his lips and their ears. There was too much distance there.

Too much guilt.

Jason Gideon
Criminal Minds
414

Comment here with your character's name for a big block of text about how mine feels regarding yours.

All replies are strictly mun-to-mun, specify verse if we share one

I do. In fact, the one I’m working through right now is my fourth. I started them when I was nineteen at the hospital. I liked having the escape and hope in a tangible way. Something to work towards and I try to go for the outlandish, as well as the sincere. It’s surprising actually how often you voice your dreams do ways for them to become possible tend to open up. So, in no particular order:

( You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you. )

Who Tony Stark, and Jason Gideon
What Papa Don’t Preach? Or you know, Gideon being a father to one of his kids.
When Magic bendy time-Monday/Tuesday in incitethemuse
Why Gideon checks on his kids. He can’t help it.
OOC: To make sure I drop any plots or subplots, I’m going to split up the sws/incitethemuse verses pretty soon. As soon as my meds stop making me woolly headed I’ll be able to figure out how best to break things up that’s good for all plots. Thanks!


( Knock, knock...are you alone? No one's out here and I was not followed. Love, love...you're already home. Party's over and you don't look so good. You find your way back down. And I'll keep the area clear...please clear the area. When you find your way back down...in one piece. Then I'll just be waiting here...right here. )

...behind a cut to spare your friend's list but this is...interesting. And while, I'm not sure what it bodes, it's still funny.

( The King's New Clothes )