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atlabeth · 5 months

Text

dance until we're bones

pairing: aaron hotchner x fem reader

summary: you and hotch both confront a lifetime of things left unsaid when a case forces your past into the light.

a/n: so i started this. two years ago. got 1k in and left it, came back now for some reason, wrote like a freak until it was done. lol. this is quite heavy and different than most things i usually write and it is SO much longer than expected but im very proud of it 🫶 i didn't really pay attention to the canon timeline so just know that reader and hotch were in their early and late 20s in law school (90s) and early and late 30s in present day (early 2000s). title from i lied by lord huron and allison ponthier

wc: 17.2k

warning(s): a lot of angst. typical bau case stuff, murder (familicide), implied/referenced past child abuse, reader and hotch go at it basically the whole time, character death, kidnapping, slight mention of drugging, injuries, mentions of blood. i wouldn’t say a happy ending but a hopeful one

Hotch can barely stay awake.

He got the call thirty minutes to 4 a.m, and if he hadn’t already been up, he would likely be in a much worse mood. He can only hope that the rest of the team has gotten used to rude awakenings at this point.

It’s poor planning on his part—he already got out late due to extra paperwork, and once he got home, he found himself staring at the wall, and then staring at the ceiling. If he’s lucky, he’ll get to sleep on the jet. If things go the way they usually do, he won’t be out until their first night in a hotel.

He started making calls to the team on his way to the office, but to no one’s surprise, he was the first one there. He had time to wash down a shitty office coffee and get started on a second one by the time everyone’s there.

Morgan, Prentiss, and JJ all have coffees—JJ comes prepared with her own thermos, but Morgan and Prentiss fall victim to the BAU’s supply—Reid is fighting back yawns as he tries to fix a hastily made tie, Garcia is slightly less energetic than normal as she passes out files, and somehow Rossi looks the same as always.

Hotch just hopes he’s put together enough to make the team feel better about being here at an ungodly hour.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome,” Garcia greets, setting down the last folder in front of Reid before taking her spot next to Hotch at the front. “As lovely as it is to see all of you this morning, I’m afraid that we’ve got a grisly one on our hands, hence the hour.”

“Great,” Prentiss mutters. “How bad is it?”

“Three married couples have been murdered in St. Louis, Missouri in the past two months, with the most recent one happening yesterday,” Hotch says, and Garcia grimaces as she clicks onto the pictures. “Mom and dad are killed, but the children are spared.”

“Awful lot of similarities between the parents,” Morgan says dryly as he flips through the folder. “Looks like our killer has some family issues.”

Reid nods. “The unsub likely stalks these families once they see the similarities. I’m guessing he was abused as a child, seeing as they kill the parents but keep the children alive.”

“Probably has a grudge against his father,” Prentiss remarks. “They make it out the worst every time.”

“There’s no method to the torture,” Morgan says. “It looks like he’s just trying to make it hurt as much as possible.”

“Our guy probably isn’t trained in anything, then,” Rossi says.

Reid flips to another page in the file. “Serial killers like to see their victims suffer. If he’s not torturing the mom physically, then he’s likely making her watch.”

“He doesn’t kill children, though,” JJ notes.

“Maybe he thinks he’s doing them a favor,” Reid says.

“The unsub sees himself in the kids?” Morgan suggests. “He’s doing what he didn’t get the chance to do.”

“Whatever it is, we have to keep a tight hold on this,” JJ says. “The press eats this stuff up, and the last thing we need is a terrified city making it harder to do our jobs.”

“Especially with families being killed,” Morgan murmurs.

JJ sighs. “I’ll draft something on the jet and make some calls when we land.”

Hotch nods and he closes his file. “Wheels up in thirty. I hope you’re all ready for a long day.”

The jet is silent the entire way to Missouri, full of sleeping agents trying to delay the inevitable—save for JJ scribbling down notes on a legal pad for the first thirty minutes, but even she knocks out sooner rather than later. Thankfully, Hotch manages to fit an hour in himself, though it doesn’t do very much for him. He spends the rest of the time reading through the case file.

The team settles in quickly at the city’s precinct, and Hotch takes charge as usual. The uniforms are just as tired as they are, but he makes it work. Soon enough, JJ is off to work with the local liaison to craft a narrative, Reid has situated himself in an empty conference room to get to work analyzing maps with Garcia, and Hotch and the rest go to check out the crime scene.

It’s brutal—much too brutal for this early, but Hotch forces the emotions out of it and gets to work questioning the present officers. Morgan follows suit, with Prentiss and Rossi going to investigate the rest of the house.

They don’t learn much from the officers that they don’t already know. This is the most recent crime scene—George and Marsha Springfield, undeserving of such a grisly fate. Their two kids, 8 and 9, were off visiting their grandparents in Nebraska when it happened, and though they avoided the same fate, they’re going to deal with a lifetime of guilt.

It’s all Hotch can think about as he examines the first body. The six children left to deal with the carnage, about their past and future marred against their control.

All he can think about is Jack, and the dreary fate that awaits him if his father falls in the field.

Hotch swallows his doubt and his guilt all in one and forces every thought out of his mind. He has to be unshakable for the team, for what’s left of these families, for a city on the brink of hysterics.

They’ll find whoever did this. That’s what gets him through it.

They spent early morning at the crime scene, collecting evidence and gathering information from the officers and trying to make sense of the killer’s motive. Progress is slow, partially because of the hour, but they make enough that Hotch feels comfortable moving onto the next job.

Their four a.m. start time was too early to go knock on doors and get interviews, but now it’s a more normal 10 in the morning. After a quick stop back at the station to share information with Reid, Garcia, and JJ and down a few cups of coffee, they get right back on the road.

Hotch and Prentiss take one van and Morgan and Rossi take the other, splitting up to get what they can from interviews. It’s difficult working with kids, especially with such recent trauma, so they hold off on it for now, allowing the local uniforms that have been with them for a bit longer to set things up before the BAU tries anything.

First they go to a neighbor’s house, then an alleged eye witness. They don’t get much other than personality reads, but it at least gives them the beginnings of a profile. The third place they hit is their earliest idea of a suspect.

“Lucas Hartford,” Prentiss reads off the file one of the local officers had put together. “Thirty-nine, born and raised in St. Charles, Missouri. High school degree, but never got to college because he was in and out of jail.”

“What has he been charged for?”

“Booked a few times for public intoxication and convicted three times for assault. Once was for third-degree assault, Missouri’s version of aggravated assault,” she says. “He got out of jail a little less than a year ago, and it looks like he’s been living in St. Louis for some of that.”

“Assault and drinking is a far cry from serial killing, even aggravated,” Hotch says. “What makes him a suspect?”

“Both parents are dead,” she says. “And from the looks of it, it was not a happy home while they were around. He’s got a sister, so it fits the initial theory of trying to replicate his family.”

Hotch lets out a loose breath and nods. “We’ll start there. Try and get a story from this guy, build a profile, see if it matches the one Morgan and Rossi have made for their guy.”

“And hope we pin something down before more bodies show up,” Prentiss murmurs.

They’re at their destination soon enough, and Hotch parks in an open spot on the other side of the road. His eyes dart around as they walk up to the front door, filing things away in the back of his mind.

The house number and last name—1432, Hartford—on the mailbox plagued with rotting wood. What there is of a yard is poorly cut, and a small garden of wilted flowers has their own corner, victims of the winter weather. One car is parked slightly crooked in a small driveway—there’s no garage, so at least he’s probably home. Two potted plants sit on either side of the door, thankfully alive.

“Remember,” Prentiss says as they come to a stop together, “be nice.”

“I’m plenty nice,” he murmurs, and she huffs the slightest laugh.

Hotch knocks on the door as Prentiss fishes around for her ID, and thankfully, they don’t wait long. The door cracks open after a few seconds to reveal a woman—certainly not their unsub, but something a whole lot more surprising.

You.

Your brows furrow at the sight of him, and Hotch has to hold back his shock.

You don’t live in St. Louis. And your last name certainly isn’t Hartford.

“Aaron?” you ask in disbelief, and he doesn’t even have to look at Prentiss to know the questions he’s going to get later.

He says your name, able to control his surprise with only the slightest crease of his brows giving it away, then corrects himself just as quickly. “Miss Hartford. My name is SSA Aaron Hotchner, and this is SSA Emily Prentiss. We’re here with the FBI.”

Your frown deepens as they show their IDs, and you actually take it from Hotch, skeptical eyes scanning over it for much too long. You glance back at him as you hand it back over. “What is the FBI doing here?”

Emily clears her throat as she puts her credentials away. “We’re here investigating the latest murders in St. Louis. Can we come in?”

“The murders?” you ask with exasperation. “What— what murders? And what do I have to do with them?”

Aaron notices the way your grip tightens on the door just the slightest bit, and a shred of sympathy strikes him before he speaks up.

“We’ll be able to explain everything if you let us in,” he says.

You swallow thickly in your throat, your gaze darting back to Aaron before you finally nod. “Okay. Sure. Why not?”

You move and Hotch and Prentiss walk inside, gesturing with a hand towards your living room as you shut and lock the door behind them. “Take a seat. Uh— do you guys need anything? Water, or coffee, or…”

You trail off, and Prentiss shakes her head. “Thank you, but that’s not needed.” She takes a seat on the sofa, but Hotch can’t stop himself from looking around the house.

It’s a small place, one story—likely rented, seeing how paintings sit on countertops and mantels rather than hanging on the wall. It has a certain charm to it, but something is off about it all.

Two styles clash—decorative pillows at odds with a filled and painted-over hole in the wall, an attempt at neutral tones ruined by dark articles of clothing scattered around, one person’s mess barely being held back by another’s cleaning efforts. You lived with someone else. Likely Lucas Hartford, possibly their unsub.

“Are you gonna sit down, Aaron?” you ask, snapping him out of his profiling haze. “Or do you want to look around some more?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, clearing his throat as he walks over and sits down in an open chair near Prentiss. “Just curious.”

“That makes two of us,” you say, and you cross your arms as you look at him. He notices that you don’t sit down yourself, and there’s still a coldness in your eyes. “You’re FBI now?”

He nods. “I had a change of heart.”

You huff a laugh. “Thought at least one of us would be a lawyer by now. I guess not.”

Hotch frowns, but Prentiss takes over before he can continue on that particular thread. “Miss Hartford—”

You interrupt by saying your first name, and it spurns something strange in his chest. It’s been over a decade since he’s heard your voice. “You can skip the formalities.”

Prentiss nods and repeats your name. “As you know, we’re investigating the murders that have been occuring in the St. Louis area.”

“And you think I have something to do with it?” you ask, the accusatory edge to your voice not lost on him.

“Not you,” Hotch says. “Do you know a Lucas Hartford?”

“He’s my brother,” you say, and your frown deepens. “You’re not saying—”

“No,” Prentiss interrupts, “we’re not saying anything. We’re just asking.”

And just like that, your entire stance, your visage, it all changes. Hotch can sense the walls slamming up around you, and he immediately realizes two things:

Getting information out of you is going to be much harder than planned, and you’re not anywhere near the same person you used to be.

Hotch doesn’t know what he expects, really. He graduated with the intent to prosecute for at least a decade—now, he’s with the BAU. It’s not fair to assume you’re that same girl he met in law school.

“My brother is not a murderer,” you state clearly.

“And we aren’t accusing him or you of anything—” she starts.

“Me?” you interrupt, and you let out a harsh laugh. “I’m a suspect too?”

“If you would allow Agent Prentiss to finish her sentences, you would be less upset,” Hotch says.

You glower at him, but you stay silent.

“We aren’t accusing either of you of anything,” Prentiss finishes. “We’re just trying to gather information with what little we know.”

“I know my rights,” you say, unflinching gaze still meeting Hotch’s. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

Prentiss looks at him as well, but his eyes don’t leave yours. “That’s unfortunate to hear, Miss Hartford.”

“You know my name, Aaron. Use it.”

He does, and the letters feel strange on his tongue after so long. “This is a serious matter. This isn’t an accusation—we’re in the early days of this case and we need all the information we can get.”

“Ask away,” you say. “Doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”

“Lucas Hartford,” Prentiss starts. “He’s your brother?”

You nod. “He lives with me.”

He lives with me, not we live together. Makes him think that you pay for the place, he came knocking, and you didn’t have the heart to turn him away.

“Why is that?” Hotch asks.

You look at him, those scrutinizing eyes attempting to peer into his soul the same way they did all those years ago. But Hotch has changed since law school, and he’s much better at guarding his emotions. It seems you are, too.

“He’s a student,” you finally say. “He goes to community college. I’m giving him a place to live while he gets his associate’s.”

“Community college and living with his younger sister at 39?” Prentiss is trying to get information out of you, even if it isn’t in the kindest way. Your jaw clenches, and he knows her words have some effect. You’ve probably heard it more than once, the way things are going.

“He’s getting his life back on track,” you say defensively. “I’m the only one left that can help him, so I am.”

“What about your parents?” she asks. “Surely they’re a better option than this.”

“Both dead,” you answer. “And no one else cares enough to help him. Are you here to do anything other than dig up my past?”

Hotch feels Prentiss’s eyes on him, likely because it’s a step in the right direction for a really shitty reason, but he can’t look away from you.

“Really?”

He knows your parents are dead—it was in your brother’s profile, and by extension it applies to you—but it still hits him.

He met your mother, had countless lunches and dinners with her. Helped her move out of her old house. Spent two Thanksgivings and a Christmas with her.

And he didn’t even know when she died.

You shrug and wrap your arms around yourself, and for the first time you look something other than defensive or standoffish. You look— well… sad.

“Mom went a few years after you graduated,” you say, looking at Hotch. “Dad went last year.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Prentiss says.

You nod your thanks, the notion a bit numb.

“You never told me,” Hotch says with a slight frown.

“We haven’t talked in ten years,” you say. “Sorry that I didn’t know you still wanted updates.”

Hotch tries to think of something to say in response, but Prentiss starts getting a call and she stands up. “Excuse me.”

His jaw clenches for a moment as Prentiss ducks into a nearby bedroom, but he’s recovered by the time you look at him again. Your arms are crossed, but your expression is even.

“I take it this was as much of a surprise for you as it is for me.”

Hotch nods. “We came here looking for your brother.”

“Does your team know about our history?” you ask simply.

“No.”

“Do you want them to?”

“…No.”

You huff a laugh, your eyes narrowing a bit. “‘Course not. Probably counts as conflict of interest.”

You wait another beat, then ask another question. “How’s Haley?”

“Good, last I heard,” he says, and then he hesitates. “We’re… divorced.”

Your eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”

He nods. “This job isn’t easy for anyone.”

You look like you want to say more, but once again, Hotch is saved by Prentiss as she walks back in. Her phone is closed in her hand and she looks at him. “Morgan and Rossi have a lead. The chief wants everyone back at the precinct to go over everything we’ve found.”

Hotch nods again and stands up. Prentiss takes her card out of her pocket and holds it out to you.

“Thank you for your time, Miss Hartford. If you find out any information, or want to tell us anything else, please give me a call.”

“Pass that along to your brother, too,” Hotch says.

You reluctantly take the card, but you don’t look at it. “You can see yourselves out.”

Prentiss nods. “Thank you again. Have a good day, and stay safe.”

She leads the way, and Hotch follows after her. He fights the urge to look back before he shuts the door.

Prentiss looks at him as they walk back to the car, and he can only imagine what is going through her mind. But eventually she just shrugs and pulls out her phone again.

“Garcia?” Prentiss asks after she picks up.

“You’ve reached the office of all that is holy.” Penelope’s voice comes out through the speaker, and Hotch can’t help the smallest twitch of his lips. “What’s up?”

“Dig up everything you can find on Lucas Hartford,” Emily says, and her glance at Hotch does not go unnoticed. “And throw in his sister, too. He’s one of our only suspects, and we need to know if she’s in on it.”

“On it,” Garcia says. “I’ll call you back when I’m done.”

“You’re the best,” she says, and then she hangs up. They get back to the car, and it only takes Prentiss all of five seconds after they get in for her to start drilling him.

“Alright,” she says, buckling her seatbelt with a click before she sets her attention on him. “What was that back there? You two know each other?”

Hotch busies himself with his own seatbelt and starting the car, answering as casually as possible as the engine revs to life. “We were friends in law school.”

“Sure,” Prentiss nods. “The way you were around her, that’s not just ‘law school friend’ stuff.”

Hotch is once again reminded of how, sometimes, it was a downfall to constantly be around profilers. It was nearly impossible to keep anything a secret.

“It’s nothing,” he says as he pulls back onto the road. “We knew each other, we fell apart, we’re here now.”

Emily hums. “Is it too far to ask if you were together?”

“Yes,” he says sternly, maybe a bit too hasty. “It is.”

“Fine,” she says breezily, and she looks out the window. “But that tension was thick.”

Hotch knows what she’s thinking. Hasn’t he been with Haley since high school, what kind of history did you and him have, were you together, would he be okay to work this case—

He doesn’t really want to answer any of them. You were a part of his past he hadn’t expected to resurface any time soon—if Hotch is being honest, he didn’t know if he would ever see you again once he graduated. Not after the way he broke things off.

You’ve changed a lot. So has he.

And now your brother is a murder suspect, and you could be covering up for him.

That’s the only thing that should be on his mind.

“For the last time,” you huff as you storm down the stairs, “I don’t want to deal with this.”

“Because you know that Mia is a lying bitch!” Cleo exclaims, following after you. “I’m sick of you stealing my clothes!”

“I’m not stealing your clothes,” Mia scoffs in your wake, just behind Cleo. “They’re too ugly for me to want anyways. I bet I wouldn’t even fit into them.”

“You are! And you’re stealing my fucking jewelry, too!” she yells. “All of my shit is going missing, and I know it’s not Little Miss Law School, so it’s got to be you!”

Mia draws out a mirthless laugh. “You are not accusing me of this.”

“I don’t have anyone else to accuse!” Cleo shouts.

They both look at you, and Mia says your name. “You have to settle this before I kill her.”

“Oh, I’ll kill you first!” she hisses. “At least I’ll get all my stuff back!”

You clench your jaw as your nails dig into your palms, and you’re about to bite back when the doorbell rings. You don’t even try to hide your sigh of relief.

“That’s Aaron,” you say as you grab your coat and your bag from the table. “I’m leaving. If you kill each other, don’t get blood on the furniture.”

You don’t give them a chance to say anything before you rush to the door, open it, and shut it behind you.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” you breathe.

“What’s going on in there?” Aaron asks, amused.

“My roommates are fighting again.” You roll your eyes. “It doesn’t matter. You’re much more interesting.”

“You know this is a study date,” he says wryly, and you cut him off with a kiss.

“Still a date,” you murmur against his lips. “And something seriously needed.”

Aaron chuckles as he wraps an arm around you, pulling you into his side, and the two of you walk to his car. “You’ve gotta get out of this house, honey.”

“I know,” you grumble. “But I can’t afford a place on my own.”

“Doesn’t have to be on your own,” he says as he opens the door for you. “It just has to be away from the girls that are making you miserable.”

“The lease ends at the end of the semester,” you sigh. “Just have to make it until then.”

“You know,” Aaron boxes you in against the car when you lean against the side of it, smiling softly at you, “I do live alone.”

“Oh yeah?” You ruffle his hair with your fingers and grin. “What are you proposing?”

He shrugs, letting his hands linger on your waist. “Just that you hate your roommates, and you don’t hate me. You could spend your time somewhere else.”

“Careful,” you warn. “You keep saying things like that and we might not make it to the library.”

“You keep saying things like that, and I might not mind,” Aaron muses.

You grin as he leans in and kisses you again, once, twice, three times as your back hits the side of his car and you card your hands through his hair. Mia and Cleo are probably killing each other inside, but you don’t really care at this point. They’ve made your life hell for a semester and a half—they can bother each other for once.

“Aaron,” you whisper against his lips, and he gets one more in between words, “I’ve got a test on Tuesday.”

“And today’s Sunday.” He nips at your neck and you laugh, your eyes falling shut as you lean your head back. “You’ll be fine, honey.”

“You have one on Monday,” you remind him, and he sighs. You feel his hot breath against your neck.

“Ruining our fun in the name of schoolwork,” he says. “No wonder all your professors love you.”

“Everyone loves me,” you correct. “Including you.”

You steal one more kiss before you open your door yourself and get in, and Aaron lets out a breathy laugh.

“You’ve got that right.”

He closes your door then gets in the other side, and you’re already rifling through the glove box full of cassettes. You pull out the mixtape you made for him for your six month anniversary and pop it into the player, and Aaron smiles as the first few notes of Stairway to Heaven come on.

“You’re a threat to my grades, y’know.”

“Maybe it’s all part of my plan,” you say. “Distract you with kisses to make sure I’m a shoe-in for this fellowship.”

“A dastardly plan,” he says with mock austerity.

“I’ve been told I have to be more of a shark,” you muse. “Consider this me taking down my competition.”

Aaron laughs, and you find yourself smiling just at the sound of it. You love the way his eyes crinkle at the corners, how they soften just so, how he acts like himself around you, and not some perfected or stoic image that he thinks he needs.

Falling in love with Aaron Hotchner has been the easiest thing in the world.

“Don’t let anyone know,” he says, and he reaches over to intertwine your fingers together. “But I’ll happily fall to you every time.”

“As long as you don’t tell everyone how whipped I am for you,” you tease.

“Looks like we’ve both got reputations to keep up.”

“Looks like it.”

You share a smile, yours just on the edge of a grin as you try to bite it back. You hold hands the rest of the way, just soaking in each other’s presence with songs from bands you introduced to each other floating through the air.

(It is a goddamn struggle to get any work done at the library with that face across from you the whole time.)

You had sky-high aspirations when you were younger.

Ones that would make your teachers offer a smile and tell you to shoot a little lower, that would make your friends’ eyes widen, that your father would scoff at and your mother would humor you on just to get you to move past it.

You didn’t listen. You’ve wanted to be a lawyer since you went on a class field trip to a courthouse in elementary school and saw all the attorneys hustling about, dressed to the nines, making last-minute deals outside the courtroom.

They were just… so confident. So smart, so stoic, always knowing the answer to everything. The good ones had money, sure, but more importantly they had the power to change lives for the better. And as a kid that had to cover up bruises before the school day, nothing sounded more appealing.

All you’ve ever wanted to do is help people.

And as you sit in a cold, empty interrogation room, you can’t help but wonder where the hell you went wrong.

You don’t want to be here, obviously. But you know the FBI won’t stop bugging you until you give them answers—you know Aaron Hotchner won’t stop bugging you.

Because god— what are the odds?

What are the fucking odds of your ex-boyfriend from a decade ago showing up at your door with a badge and an attempted case against your brother?

It’s ridiculous, and it’s such bad luck that you think it could only happen to you. You’ve thought about Aaron Hotchner more than you’d like to admit over the years, especially when you found your old GW crewnecks, and the box of school supplies you used for a decade, and those photo albums from what should’ve been your golden years.

It’s not like any of it matters, though. You only agreed to come in and talk because you want them off your back and you don’t want them poking around your house. You saw it in Aaron’s eyes—he was profiling you and your place the entire time.

If the cops want to invade your privacy even further, they can get a goddamn warrant.

Your thoughts are interrupted when the door opens, and you hold back a mirthless laugh, because of course it’s Aaron. He greets you with your name, and he has a file in his hands. You wonder if it’s on you or your brother. “Thank you for taking the time out of your day to come in and talk with us.”

“Well, you seem to think my brother is a murderer.” You cross your arms as you sit back. “I’m not really gonna let that stand.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked for a lawyer,” he says as he sits down across from you.

“I don’t plan to be here for very long,” you respond tartly. “But don’t worry—that can always change. I know my rights.”

“I’m the last person you need to tell that to.” Hotch sets the file down and looks right at you. Though he’s obviously older—more grizzled, more hardened; harsher, sharper lines that define his face; lips set in a taut, unflinching line—you still see that young man from law school. The passion, the care he puts into everything, the penchant for striped ties.

You wonder what he sees when he looks at you.

“Your last name wasn’t Hartford when I met you,” he says. “Why is it now?”

“Not one for small talk,” you remark.

“I never have been.”

“I remember.” You hold his gaze. “It’s my mom’s maiden name. I changed it to put some distance between me and everything else.”

You can practically see the gears of his brain working, neural pathways branching off with every word you say to make sense of it and reason a thousand different meanings from it. Aaron’s always been like that, but it’s tenfold now.

You suppose one has to be like that, to try and get anywhere with the types of criminals they face.

“How long have you been living in St. Louis?”

“Seven years. I’ve had that house for three.”

“Rent or own?”

“Rent,” you scoff. “I don’t make enough for a down payment, and I don’t want a place tying me down.”

“What inspired the move?”

“Close enough to home to be familiar, far enough to not be.”

“And home is?”

“St. Charles,” you say, and you purse your lips. “Shouldn’t you already know all this?” You nod at the file in front of him. “It’s either on me or my brother, and we share a lot of the same info.”

“We prefer to get our information from the source,” he says.

“Sources can lie.”

Aaron doesn’t waver. “And we can charge you with obstruction if it harms our investigation.”

Your lips twitch for a moment, not entirely without heart. “Ask your questions, Aaron.”

He opens the folder and slides the first picture over to you—your brother’s first mugshot, taken when he was only twenty-one. You still remember riding your bike to the station in the sweltering August heat to drop off his bail and pick him up.

You had to catch the bus home together, you had to pay his fare, and his bail drained everything you’d been saving from your waitress job. But your dad refused to pay it, and you refused to be alone in that house any longer than you already had.

You swallow the memory. It still tastes as sour as the day it happened.

“Lucas Hartford is our main suspect,” he says. “He matches our initial profile—in and out of jail since his twenties, his parents are dead and he has an unstable home life, and he’s got a sister.”

“None of those sound like questions,” you say.

“Where is your brother?” he asks firmly. He’s given you a bit of leniency, but you can tell he’s getting tired of you. Some things never change, you think to yourself bitterly.

“I don’t know,” you admit.

“You don’t know,” he repeats.

“I let him stay with me, and my only requirement is that he goes to his community college classes and stays out of jail,” you say. “He’s done both, so I stay out of his business.”

“And you’re telling me you haven’t questioned it?”

“I called him the other day after you left,” you say. “He didn’t pick up, and I didn’t get a call back until the next night.”

Aaron’s eyes sharpen. “What did you say to him?”

“I called to see where he was,” you say evenly. “I think you all are wrong, but I wanted to make sure he was okay.”

“You didn’t tell him—”

“No,” you interrupt, “I didn’t tell him about your investigation. If I think you’re wrong, why would I need to let him know?”

He still has that look in his eyes, and you know you’re getting on his nerves with the constant interrupting, the constant backtalk. But he probably deals with much, much worse.

“Good,” he nods. “You could be putting lives in danger if you do—including yours.”

“Please,” you scoff. “He won’t hurt me. He never has.”

“Why do you let him stay with you?” Aaron asks. “You’re straight-edge, he’s a borderline alcoholic that’s been in and out of jail for years. You’ve got a law degree, he never made it past high school. You’ve got your life together, his is falling apart.”

“That’s why I do it,” you say. “Our parents are dead. I’m all he has left, and he’s all I have left. I want him to get better, so I’m trying my best to help him get there. How can Luke put his life back together if he’s got no support?”

“That’s an awful lot of faith to put in someone who hasn’t earned it.”

“I’ve gotten good at that over the years,” you reply.

Aaron stares at you, and you stare back. You let the moment linger. You hope it stings, even fleetingly.

“And you’re wrong, by the way.”

“About what?” he asks. Again, unshaken.

“I don’t have a law degree,” you say. “I dropped out.”

And for some reason, that is what gets him. He frowns, and you wonder what it means that this is the most unexpected thing he’s gotten out of you.

“Why? You were only a year out. You had stellar grades.”

“My mom got cancer,” you say. “Luke was serving his second stint, Dad fucked off to some corner of the country to drink himself to death a couple months before. I was the only one left to take care of her, and I couldn’t do that from DC.”

“I had no idea.” This is the first time he looks taken aback since you’ve met him again. “And she’s—”

“Dead,” you supply without waiting for an answer. You know he already knows it, but it still seems to have some effect on him. “Went a couple months after I was meant to graduate.”

“…I’m sorry for your loss,” he says. He’s just repeating what his agent said at your house, but it feels genuine, at least.

“It’s been a decade,” you say. “I’m just sorry it was her instead of my dad.”

Aaron’s brows knit together again, and less work goes into covering it up this time. “You seem to have something against your father.”

You huff a mirthless laugh. “Excellent profiling.”

“Child abuse is common for serial killers,” Aaron says. “We find it’s typically the root of their problems later in life, or plays a part in their MO.”

You stare at him again. This isn’t just an interrogation with Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner—it’s revealing parts of your past that you never told your ex-boyfriend Aaron.

“Yeah,” you finally say. “Our dad beat us. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“You know th—”

Aaron cuts himself off before he can finish whatever he wants to say, and he lets out a short sigh with a nod. “It’s valuable information for the profile.”

The room feels a lot colder all of a sudden. “Sure.”

He still looks like he wants to say more, but he bites his tongue as he takes the picture back and closes the file.

“I’ll be back,” he says. “Would you like anything? Water?”

You shake your head and remain silent. He takes the folder and stands up, and you watch him the entire way to the door. Just before he can open it, you find words escaping without you thinking.

“Look, Aaron,” you blurt out. He pauses, and he turns to look at you. “I know this is your thing, and this is your investigation, but I’m telling you—my brother and I don’t play any part in it.”

“The profile—”

“I don’t care what your profile says,” you interrupt. “He didn’t do it. He couldn’t have done it.”

“He’s rough around the edges, I know. In and out of jail isn’t good for anyone.” You hold onto the edge of the table as you continue rambling, needing something to do with your hands. “But he’s working to get better, and he is not the kind of person to do something like this. If you believe anything I say, believe that.”

“I suppose we’ll find out,” he says evenly.

He leaves the room, and your hands fall into your lap as your nails dig into your palms. You don’t mean to be desperate, but you feel it. You’ve been defending Lucas at every chance, but you’re terrified of being wrong. You’re terrified that Aaron might be right—that he might be behind all of this.

For his sake—and your sake, honestly, because you think you deserve to be selfish when he’s all you have left—you hope you’re right.

You have to be right.

The room feels even colder.

Your stare drifts to the one-way mirror, where you know his team is watching. You saw the way Agent Prentiss watched Aaron when they came to your house—he said he doesn’t want them to know, but you think they already do.

You wonder the kind of things they’ve come up with about you and him.

Morgan whistles when Hotch walks out of the interrogation room.

“She does not like you.”

“Did you gather anything else?” he asks placidly. He sets your brother’s file down so he can fix his tie.

“Abusive dad, dead parents, criminal background,” he says. “Lucas is looking like a stronger suspect. Oh— and she really doesn’t like you.”

“If you don’t want to go back to building a file on your suspect, move on,” Hotch demands.

Morgan shrugs, clearly unfazed, but he keeps his mouth shut. Reid, meanwhile, is still staring through the glass at you. You haven’t exactly relaxed, but you’re not as tense as you were while talking to Hotch. You pick at a loose strand of thread on your sweater, and when you pull it out, you let it fall to the floor.

“Her brother feels like a prime suspect,” Reid murmurs. “I feel like I could just figure it all out if I could talk to him.”

“I told Penelope to keep an eye on him,” Prentiss contributes. “She’s tracking his cards, the car registered in his name, even called the person in charge of the AA meetings he goes to to keep an eye out—everything. We’ll know if she gets anything.”

“Serial killers want to see the damage they’ve done,” Reid says. “Things are falling apart here—the whole city is terrified. He’s gotta be in St. Louis still.”

“You’re sure that he’s still in the running.” Hotch glances back at you, and he knows he has to at least ask, for your sake. He doesn’t want to put you through anything more than he has to—not after what you’ve told him.

And Hotch knows your past is your business—he just can’t believe you never told him.

He’s turned over your relationship in his head just as many times in these past few days as he did the months after he ended things.

“I’m sure, sir,” Reid says. “I’ve read over both their files, and Lucas matches with our preliminary profile. His stressor could have been his father dying.”

Morgan frowns. “Explain.”

“Family annihilators typically go after their own family for a myriad of reasons,” he says. “Paranoia, to cover up their lies, to free themselves from what they see as oppression, sometimes just pure jealousy.”

“He’s killing the parents but leaving the children alive,” Hotch says. “Sounds like a liberator to me.”

“That’s what I think,” Reid nods. “If Lucas has been banking on killing his father for that attempt at freedom, and then lost the chance?” He shrugs. “That could be why he started going for other families.”

“Other fathers to take his place,” Morgan realizes, and he nods again.

“You should talk to her, Spence,” Prentiss says. “You’ve got a handle on the profile, and you’re pretty good at conveying info. She seems like a reasonable person—just can’t accept her brother doing something like this.”

“It’s typical for someone to deny their family member’s involvement,” Reid says. “No one wants to think their sibling is a murderer.”

“If you lay it all out for her like that, with facts and the profile, I think she’ll listen.” Prentiss looks at Hotch. “She’s too closed off with you.”

“That’s how she is,” Hotch claims.

“Maybe,” she shrugs, “but it’s much easier to hate you than it is to hate Reid.”

Hotch glares at her, and Reid clears his throat to insert himself back into the conversation.

“I’d be happy to talk to her,” he says. “I know what it’s like to be in this kind of position—I can put her at ease, sympathize with her.”

They all look at Hotch, and he wants to say no. He wants to be the one to get this out of you—some part of him wants as much time with you as possible. But he decides to swallow his ego.

“Fine.” He nods, and he hands the folder to Reid. “I trust you to handle it.”

Reid nods too, far too many times, and he takes the file. “Thank you. Uh— sir. I appreciate your trust.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, but it has no bite to it, and Reid walks inside.

He says your name and sits down across from you. “I’m Spencer Reid. I know we’ve already said it, but thank you for talking to us. It may not seem like it, but it goes a long way towards figuring out this case.”

You nod. You already seem more at ease than you were with him, and it makes Hotch…

Not jealous, because that would be insane. But it makes him upset that he doesn’t understand you the way he used to—that he doesn’t hold that key to you anymore. God, it feels like he doesn’t know you anymore.

Hotch doesn’t get why a side of his brain still thinks this way about you.

“They sent a new one in,” you say.

“You looked like you needed a break from Hotch,” Reid says. “Don’t worry. We all do sometimes.”

You huff a slight laugh and your posture eases, your expression softens just so. Reid was right, as usual.

“I can imagine.”

He starts talking to you about the case, laying out all the facts, and though you don’t look happy, you don’t cut him off like you cut Hotch off.

“She’s pretty,” Morgan offers, glancing at Hotch. “And stubborn. I see why you like her.”

“Shut up, Morgan,” Hotch mutters.

He chuckles and holds his hands up, and focuses back on the interrogation.

The rest of it passes in silence, save for the occasional input from Prentiss or Morgan to elaborate on a point. You talk much more with Reid than you did with Hotch, and you don’t stare daggers at him the entire time.

Time doesn’t always heal all wounds, he thinks.

When Reid is finishing up inside with you, Morgan glances back at Hotch. “You think she’s part of this?”

He shakes his head. “No. She has no reason to kill, nothing to gain. She talks about her past too plainly—it hurt her, obviously, but it hasn’t taken over her life.”

“What about her brother?” Prentiss asks.

“The more we learn, the more I suspect him,” Morgan says.

She nods in agreement. “We just have to find him.”

Hotch isn’t sure yet.

But for your sake, he hopes his gut feeling is wrong.

Spring has finally sprung in DC, and you couldn’t be happier.

It’s hard to feel down on your walks to class when the birds are singing and the sun is beaming down on you, when you see students sitting on blankets reading and talking and actually enjoying life for once.

You’re two years into law school, and it feels like you’ve spent 90% of your time studying in either the library or your room. A bit of a sad existence, but it’s made better with Aaron.

You’re laying down on a blanket—one you crocheted yourself in undergrad—resting your head on Aaron’s chest as he reads a book, the spring sun shining down on you. It feels like the first moment of relaxation either of you have had since classes started, and you chose to spend it together in the University Yard.

You should probably be studying or doing some kind of homework, but you don’t care. It has been too damn long since you’ve gotten to just sit around and exist with Aaron, and you’ve got at least a couple days until your next quiz. That’s far enough away for you.

It’s been a rough semester for both of you, between classes and endless homework, between your internship and your endless family issues—Luke is two years in, and his parole was denied, and your dad still insists on being the reason you stay on campus year-round.

You don’t think you’re pushing it when you say Aaron’s support has been the only reason you’ve gotten through it, your grades—and your mental state—relatively unscathed.

Aaron says your name, and you hum.

“Are you listening?” he asks.

“Of course,” you say.

“Your eyes are closed.”

“I don’t need my eyes to listen,” you say wryly. “What’s up?”

You feel him tense for a moment, feel him adjust his position slightly.

“I got a call from Haley,” he says carefully.

Your eyes open and you frown.

You know the name, but only in the way that you talked a bit about your past relationships while you were still getting to know each other. She was his high school girlfriend, and it was a big deal then, but they broke up before college because they both wanted different things.

It shouldn’t be a big deal now. But he’s treating it like one, and that makes you hesitate.

“Yeah? What’d she want?”

“…She’s in DC for the weekend,” he says. “Some conference for school. She asked if we could grab a coffee or something and catch up.”

You finally sit up, his hands falling from where he’d been playing with your hair, and you look at him.

“Your high school girlfriend wants to catch up.”

“An old friend wants to catch up,” he corrects. “I haven’t really talked to her since we graduated high school.”

“…Okay,” you say slowly. “Do you want to see her?”

He shrugs. “I thought it would be nice.”

“Do you think she thinks it’ll be more than nice?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t even know how she got my landline. I think my mom might have given it to her.”

Your eyebrows rise. “Your mom gave your ex-girlfriend your number?”

“It’s the only way I can think of her getting it,” Aaron shrugs. “Like I said, I haven’t talked to her since graduation.”

You chew on the inside of your cheek, trying to think as you look at Aaron.

You’ve met his mom a dozen times. You’re insistent that she doesn’t like you, despite Aaron’s assertions towards the opposite—it wouldn’t surprise you if she gave this girl his new number in an effort to push him in a new direction.

But that train of thought feels a little crazy. You’re confident in your relationship with Aaron—you love him, and he loves you. God, he made an off-handed comment about marriage the other day. You’re not threatened by a girl from his past wanting to catch up.

“Go for it,” you finally say.

He frowns, like he was expecting the worst. “Really?”

“I trust you, Aaron,” you say. “You say she’s just a friend, I believe it.”

You lean forward to kiss him, your eyes fluttering shut, and it lasts much longer than it should. When you pull away, Aaron’s smiling softly at you.

“Thank you,” he says.

“‘Course,” you say, tipping a shoulder. “I’m known to be rational from time to time.”

He chuckles, and you smile as you lay back down on his chest. Soon after, you feel the weight of his hand on your shoulder.

“I love you,” he says. It feels more like a reminder than anything.

You entangle your fingers together and press a kiss to the back of his hand.

Sometimes you need reminders.

“I love you too.”

“Four more bodies,” Prentiss mutters. “God.”

“You can say that again,” Morgan murmurs.

Hotch is silent as he examines the father’s body. They’ve been so busy the past few days trying to nail down the profile, both on their unsub and geographically, that this happening again hadn’t been at the top of their list. There was a month between the first two, and two weeks between the second and third.

No one expected this to happen so soon.

The entire family was killed this time, and once again, the parents look similar to the other victims. It’s the work of their unsub, no doubt.

Hotch and the team had already been at the precinct for an hour going over all the information they’d found when they got the call at 8 in the morning, the bodies discovered by the family’s maid when she arrived for work.

An entire family, parents and children, senselessly slaughtered for one man’s deranged quest for liberation.

Hotch has been in this business for a long time, seen things that most people only imagine in nightmares, and he still has to take a step back when children are involved.

He sees Jack in every single one. He can’t help it.

Hotch took Prentiss and Morgan with him to the crime scene—JJ has a kid, Rossi had a kid, and he just didn’t want Reid to see it. They’ll all be more valuable working together back there anyways, and it’s imperative that JJ controls the narrative before this can break to the press.

Again, Prentiss talks to the officers at the scene and Morgan helps him examine the bodies. After all, there are double the amount.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Morgan says as he stands back up. “Our guy is killing surrogate parents to get back at his own, fine. Dad was tortured again, mom was killed with a bullet. But bringing the kids into it isn’t his thing.”

He uses a gloved hand to gingerly lift the father’s arm away from his body so he can examine the underarm. “Look at this. He’s been stabbed at least ten times, and his arm’s nearly severed from his body.”

“And his neck,” Morgan mutters. “He’s half decapitated.”

Hotch sets the arm back down. “The unsub always wants the father to suffer, but this is a new level.” He looks up at Morgan. “I don’t think he has a reason for killing the children. I think he’s getting sloppy—he’s getting overwhelmed by his anger.”

“You think he’s devolving,” he says, catching on.

“Something tells me we’re coming to the end of the line,” Hotch says. “Whatever he does next, he’s going out with a bang.”

The mood in the precinct has fallen dramatically since the last hit. The uniforms aren’t happy that they’re working around the clock, the chief isn’t happy that the BAU hasn’t figured everything out yet, and the city isn’t happy that ten murders have been committed with what they think is no end in sight.

JJ and Rossi have gone out to bring in the suspect that he and Morgan found together for the sake of covering their bases—they still haven’t been able to find Lucas, despite Reid calling you every day to check in and upping police presence around the city.

The rest of the team sits around a conference table, over a dozen coffees between them, going over everything and racking their brains for information.

“This just isn’t matching up,” Reid complains. “Lucas has just been at home for the first two, but for the third and the fourth he’s got alibis.”

“What are they?” Hotch asks.

“He was on the road all night when the third happened,” Reid says.

“And how do we know?” Prentiss asks.

“Garcia picked up his debit card being used a couple times from Des Moines back to St. Louis when the third set of murders happened,” Morgan contributes. “Must’ve been a road trip, because there are stops at a gas station, a restaurant, and a rest stop.”

“The last one happened during an AA meeting he was supposed to attend,” Prentiss says. “I called the leader and she said he was there.”

“Do we have footage from any of those places?” Hotch asks. “We need to make sure.”

Reid nods. “I asked her to check it all this morning, including the AA meeting. She must still be going through it—I can’t imagine it’s easy to get all that access.”

“What about a second unsub?” Morgan suggests.

Hotch shakes his head. “These are all meant to be personal for liberation—catharsis. Involving someone else would take away from the feeling.”

“What about your suspect?” Prentiss asks, looking at Morgan. “Could he be the unsub?”

“Patrick Fenton,” Morgan says, and he shrugs. “He fits it—dead parents, jail time, child of abuse. But he’s got two sisters, and his parents died when he was in his twenties from a car accident. I don’t see why he would start killing almost twenty years later.”

“Maybe we’ll figure something out in questioning,” Reid says hopefully.

Morgan’s phone suddenly goes off, and he hits the button to answer. “You’re on speaker, babygirl.”

“I found the security footage from those three places, the ones that Lucas was at on his supposed road trip when the third family was hit,” Garcia says, voice slightly tinny through the phone.

“And?” Hotch asks.

“I was getting there,” she says. “Lucas wasn’t there. He wasn’t on any of the footage—his sister was.”

Hotch frowns. You?

“You’re sure?” he asks.

“I’m always sure,” Garcia responds. “And I don’t know if Spencer is there, but he also wasn’t there at the AA meeting—I combed through the whole meeting, and he didn’t show up at any point. Just another guy that looked like him.”

“And you’re sure about that, too?” Hotch asks again.

“What is with this questioning of my abilities?” she asks, offended. “Yes. I’ve stared at so many pictures of Lucas Hartford over these past few days that I’ve got him burned into my brain.”

“Thanks, babygirl,” Morgan says. “We’ll call back if we need anything.”

“And you’re always welcome in this house of miracles,” she muses. Morgan chuckles before he hangs up.

“Lucas gave her his card,” Reid realizes. “It’s an easy alibi, but it falls apart when you look into it even a little bit.”

“Probably seemed solid to him at the time,” Morgan says. “He doesn’t seem like a detail oriented guy.”

Prentiss frowns. “That means he’s back on the chopping block. We can put him at the scene of every murder.”

Hotch leans over the table and grabs Lucas’s file, and he pulls out the page compiling his family. “His father died a year ago from liver failure. Hartford got out of jail nine months ago after a six year stint.”

“If he’s been plotting some elaborate murder of his father for years, just to get out of jail and find out he drank himself to death?” Morgan shakes his head. “He’d snap. It doesn’t feel like justice.”

“He thinks he’s saving the kids of these parents that he kills,” Reid says. “He sees himself in them—he can’t look past his own childhood, and he assumes those kids must want their parents dead too.”

“He’s trying to get back at his dad,” Prentiss says. “We know that.”

“But that’s not his main goal,” Reid insists. “If his dad died when he was a kid, the abuse would have stopped. His mom wouldn’t be the battered wife anymore, and he wouldn’t be the battered kid.”

“His goal has always been protection,” Hotch realizes. “Yes, he’s getting his revenge by killing his father over and over, but ultimately, he’s trying to save himself.”

“But he didn’t anticipate the kids being home this time,” Prentiss says. “He had to kill them too.”

“If he‘s seeing himself in these children, recreating what he never got to do, then that means that he effectively died in this scenario,” Reid says.

“He didn’t get what he wanted,” Morgan says. “That’s gonna take a toll on him.”

“He’s coming to the end of the line,” Prentiss nods.

Hotch’s brain is working overtime as they work information off of each other. They’re so damn close—they just need the last piece of the puzzle. If they find Lucas’s next victim, they find him.

“His next crime will probably be his last before he goes out himself,” Reid says.

“You think it’ll be a murder-suicide?” Morgan asks.

“It’s common with family annihilators,” Reid says. “Hell, it’s common with anyone who sees no future beyond their murders. It’s their way out.”

And then the answer hits Hotch like a ton of bricks. Reid is still rambling next to him.

“If his dad was still alive, I’d say he would be the target. But the only one left—”

“—is his sister,” Hotch grits out, and he’s dashing out of the conference room before anyone can stop him.

“Hotch!” Morgan yells, and he turns to Prentiss with wild eyes. “Where the hell is he going?”

“The last victim,” she says as she starts following him. “The one person he never managed to save.”

“Goddammit,” Morgan curses, and he grabs his phone from the table, dialing Garcia as fast as she can while he runs. Reid is close behind him.

“What’s up, sugar?” she asks. “Got anymore leads?”

He laughs dryly. “We’ve got a big one, babygirl. Lucas has finally reached the end of the road — he’s going for his sister. I need you to call JJ and Rossi and—”

“Send them the Hartford address and fill them in on everything?” she interrupted, and he could hear her fingers flying across the keyboard. “Already on it.”

“What would I do without you?” he asks.

“Be half the man and twice as sad,” she says. “I’ve got to call JJ. Be safe, my love.”

“Always,” he responds, and he hangs up.

Hotch distantly registers Prentiss stopping by the chief to alert him of what’s going on, because he’s in the fog of a rampage. He’s in the driver’s seat before he knows it, starting the car, and he sees Prentiss, Morgan, and Reid running out after him.

Prentiss takes shotgun and Morgan and Reid file into the back, and they’ve all got Kevlar vests in their hands. He didn’t really think of that through his haze.

“We’ve got an extra one for you,” Reid says, reading his mind.

“Thank you. I— I know what you’re all thinking—” Hotch starts, but Prentiss shakes her head.

“Just drive.” Her lips set themselves in a taut line. “We’ve got a murder to stop.”

And he does.

You sit on the curb, surrounded on either side by a box of your things. Packing up everything made you realize how little you had at his place. You thought you’d integrated yourself into his life fully, but it really just took an afternoon while he was in a lecture to disappear.

Summer has fully turned to winter, and you’re as morose as the weather. This side of town looks so depressing without the warmer months to pick it up—the sidewalks are lined with dead trees, the grass is shriveled up and yellowing, and you feel like you’re living in grayscale.

A shiver runs through you, the weather only partly to blame.

Amy is supposed to pick you up, but as usual, she’s running late. You don’t know if it’s a personal issue or DC traffic has just struck again, but it doesn’t really matter. Either way, you’re stuck here, and your bad luck seems intent on making it worse, because you watch a familiar car pull around the corner.

It parks a distance away—there’s no space in front of the complex, and he always complained that they didn’t do assigned spots—and you have to hold back a scornful scoff.

Of course you have to deal with this now.

Aaron picks up his pace when he gets out of the car, surprise—and what you think is shame—painted on his face. He says your name when he slows down.

“You’re already packed.”

You shrug. “I’m nothing if not efficient.”

“I could’ve helped you with all this,” Aaron says, frowning.

“Why do you think it’s done already?” you ask.

His throat bobs and he opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Let me save you the pain of chivalry,” you say. “I’ve got a friend coming to pick me up. I’ve already found a place. I called your property manager the other day and argued my way out of the lease, but I still paid my next month. You’re welcome.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says.

“You know what they say about a clean break,” you intone.

“I’m sorry,” Aaron tries again. To his credit, he looks like he means it. Against his credit, it’s about the fiftieth time you’ve heard it from him in the past two weeks.

“I shouldn’t have let you get that coffee,” you say with a grim smile, “should I?”

His lips pull into a taut line. “I didn’t cheat on you.”

“I know,” you say. It’s the one thing you do believe. “I just don’t think you ever fell out of love with her.”

Mercifully, you see Amy’s car pulling up in the distance. She’s your only friend with an SUV, so at least your boxes will fit.

“My ride’s here,” you say as you stand up, and you pick up one of your boxes. Amy throws on her hazards and she gets out to open her trunk.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she breathes. “Traffic was awful, and Jake has been so annoying—”

“Don’t worry about it,” you say with a slight smile as you put your box in the back. “You’re already doing me a huge favor.”

“I want us to still be friends,” Aaron calls. When you turn back, he has your other box in his hands, his expression shamelessly desperate. Amy glares daggers at him.

“Why?” you ask innocently. “So I can go without talking to you for ten years, ask you for a coffee when I’m in town, and then get you to leave Haley?”

“That’s not what happened,” he says, but you’re already shaking your head.

You take the box from him and smile thinly.

“Have a good rest of your life, Aaron. I hope it doesn’t involve me ever again.”

You let out a noise of frustration as you struggle to get the key into the lock, gritting your teeth as you try to fit it in. It’s always been finicky, but you just don’t have the energy to deal with this tonight. Thankfully, just when you start getting annoyed, you get it open.

You get a few steps in before your eyebrows rise, the sight of your brother at the kitchen table a surprise. He’s got his head in his hands, and your surprise turns to concern.

“Lucas,” you say with a slight smile, shutting the door behind you, “I didn’t know you were gonna be home tonight.”

His attention shoots to you immediately as he says your name, and he looks slightly out of it. “I was wondering when you were gonna get back.”

“Stole the words right out of my mouth,” you say wryly, and you ruffle his hair with your free hand as you walk past him. He swats your hand away in brotherly protest, and you snort. “This place has been quiet without you. Well— except for the cops. They were pretty loud.”

“They haven’t been back, have they?”

You look back at him and notice his leg is bobbing up and down insanely fast, and he keeps scratching at the soft wood of your table with his nail.

Your smile fades. “Don’t tell me you’ve been drinking.”

“Of course I haven’t,” he insists, but you turn on the kitchen light, then move closer to peer into his eyes against his protests.

“At least you’re not high,” you murmur, taking one last look before you pull away. “And stop ruining the table. I need it to last for the next ten years.”

He huffs, and you can practically hear him roll his eyes, but he stops.

“Did you go to class today?”

“You don’t have to act like Mom,” Lucas says, crossing his arms again with another huff.

“And you don’t have to act like a child.” You roll your eyes as you set your tote bag on the countertop and begin unpacking the groceries you bought. “I’m asking you about your day—that’s definitely not acting like Mom.”

“Yes,” he mocks. “I went to class.”

“Good.” You glance back at him. “I’m proud of you, Luke. You’ve been making progress.”

His smile is a bit thin, but he nods. “Thanks. How was work?”

You scoff and shake your head as you put a couple things in the pantry. “Don’t even get me started. I swear, Marie’s going to get me fired someday if she keeps her bullshit up.”

“She’s still on it?” Luke asks, and you can’t help but smile a bit.

“Don’t act like you know what I’m talking about,” you say. “Just agree with me.”

“I agree with you,” he says.

“That’s it,” you muse.

Your eyes fall back on your bag, and you’re reminded of what you meant to do next time your brother showed up.

“Oh—” You go back over to the kitchen table for your bag and pull out your wallet. You slide a debit card out and hold it out to your brother. “Thanks for letting me use it while I was up in Des Moines. I finally got my bank to get rid of the freeze on my card.”

“…Of course,” he says, and he takes it back. “Glad I could help.”

“I’ll pay you back, obviously,” you say as you get back to your groceries. “I just have to wait to get paid again.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “And uh— you never answered me. Did the cops come by again?”

You huff a mirthless laugh and shake your head. “You have nothing to worry about, Luke. I think they finally realized they were barking up the wrong tree.”

“…Good,” he says. “I can tell they’ve stressing you out.”

“Like that looks any different than my normal state,” you say wryly. “Besides, it wasn’t that bad.”

You recall the shock you felt when you opened the door to Aaron, and how nervous you were on the drive to the precinct. It’s almost been a decade, and yet he still has an effect on you that he has no right to.

“You remember that guy I dated when I was still in law school? Aaron Hotchner?”

“I think? I was in jail, so.”

You roll your eyes. “I know I told you about him when I visited you while we were together.”

“I remember you telling me how he broke your heart,” Luke says.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“That he’s with the FBI now. The BAU,” you enunciate, and you huff. “He’s one of the guys on this case, coincidence that it is. They came here—they even brought me in for an interview.”

He frowns. “What’d you say?”

“The truth.” You pull your cutting board and a knife out of a drawer and get to work washing your vegetables. “That I didn’t know anything, and neither of us are involved in either way.” You shake your head with a sigh. “They must believe it, because they haven’t come back.”

“What have they said about me?” he asks.

“I’m not supposed to say.” You roll your eyes. “I think you’re innocent, but I could get charged with obstruction, and I really don’t feel like dealing with that…”

You trail off into a sigh as you finish washing the peppers and set them on a towel. “I hope they find whoever’s doing it, though. It is freaking me out that there’s a murderer out there.”

You pick up your knife and start cutting them up—they’re not the freshest, but it’s all Kroger had after work—and you glance back at Luke. “You really shouldn’t be going out so often with this going on, y’know. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m careful.”

“I doubt that,” you say wryly. “Still, though. I worry about you.”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” he asks. “I’m your older brother.”

“I worry about everything,” you say. “It’s my thing.”

You hear him huff a laugh and you smile a bit to yourself. You get through your first pepper before you remember what’s been nagging at you your whole ride home.

“Oh— can you get the TV?” you ask. “Channel 8, I think. Marcy is getting interviewed for something with her nonprofit, and I told her I’d record it for her.”

Lucas doesn’t respond, though you hear the scrape of the chair as he gets up.

“Thank you,” you say. “I think they have a fundraiser coming up or something…” you trail off and shake your head as you scrape the cut peppers onto a plate. “God. I need to start paying attention in the break room.”

Another few seconds pass, and you don’t hear the television switch on. You huff and turn your head slightly. “Luke, I’m making dinner tonight. This is the least you could do.”

“I’m sorry.”

The words come out as a murmur, but you can tell he’s much closer than he was before.

You don’t even get the chance to turn around before something crashes against your head and your vision goes dark. You feel yourself fall to the ground, and your head hits the floor hard.

Then, there’s nothing.

Hotch has been breaking every speeding law there is.

The station isn’t too far from your house, but it’s still too far. All he can see is your body, crippled and lifeless just like every other victim they’ve had to look at.

It should never have gotten to this point. Lucas has been a suspect for the first day, but they looked to other suspects, got caught up in statements from neighbors and the kids of the victims.

If Hotch just found him and booked him on the first day, this wouldn’t be happening. Your life wouldn’t be in danger.

His hands tighten on the steering wheel.

“I seriously think we’re looking at a murder-suicide if this gets to play out,” Reid speaks up from the backseat. “This is his way of ending this for both of them—the ultimate protection of his sister.”

“No one can hurt her if she’s dead,” Morgan mutters.

“Hotch,” Prentiss starts, treading carefully, “are you sure you’re okay to lead this?”

“Yes,” he says, though he wants to say what kind of question is that?

You were together a lifetime ago in law school, yes, and he might still have feelings for you that he didn’t even realize were there, yes—but he’s an agent and a professional before all of that.

It doesn’t matter that you have history. It doesn’t matter that you likely hate him.

It doesn’t matter that he thought he was going to marry you one day, and then was watching you drive out of his life after he got back with his high school girlfriend another day.

Aaron Hotchner is not going to let you die. It’s as simple as that.

Hotch’s phone rings and he picks it up and flips it open immediately. “Talk to me, Garcia.”

“JJ and Rossi are on their way,” she says. “Are you headed to their place?”

“Yes,” he says, and he puts it on speaker. “I’ve got Prentiss, Morgan, and Reid with me still.”

“Do you think there’s anywhere else he could be?” Morgan asks. “If he’s going to kill her, he might not want to do it in this house.”

“Already a step ahead of you, my love,” she says, and he can hear mouse clicks through the phone. “They grew up in a house in St. Charles—it’s abandoned, from the looks of it, some place on the outskirts. Never got another buyer after the past owners moved out. I’m sending the address to Emily right now.”

Prentiss gets a buzz on her phone and she nods in confirmation after flipping it open. Hotch immediately switches lanes and makes a U-turn, his jaw clenching.

“Tell me how to get there, Prentiss,” he says. “He’s there.”

“You need to get on I-70,” she says, and then her brow furrows. “How do you know?”

“He’s killed everyone else in their homes because he sees it as the source of it all. His sister’s rented place isn’t personal enough.” Hotch shakes his head. “Why wouldn’t he want to go back to theirs to end it all?”

“Hotch.” Penelope’s voice rings out in the car, and he doesn’t even realize he forgot to hang up.

“What?”

“Be careful,” she says, and he rushes to turn it off speaker and press it to his ear. “I… I know how important this is to you.”

Hotch’s throat bobs and his eyes burn with the beginnings of tears. He blinks them away—he can’t be weak now. He can’t let his team see him be weak now. “Dare I ask how?”

“I found an article about GW’s mock trial team,” she says. “Kind of went down a rabbit hole from there.”

Somehow, he huffs the slightest laugh. It feels like a lifetime ago—it honestly is, at this point. Before he saw carnage and gore on a daily basis and tried to solve it, when he thought the DA’s office was the endpoint, when he came home to your smiling face every night.

And now…

Hotch’s spine somehow stiffens, and he knows the other three in the car are watching him. He can’t decide whether he cares or not.

“Thank you, Garcia.”

“No problem,” she says, and he can almost hear her blink in the pause. “Uh— for what, exactly?”

For the memory, he wants to say. But he doesn’t. He can’t, not right now, so he tries his best to snap out of it.

“Keep a watch on the patrol cars,” he says instead. “Update JJ and Rossi on our plan, but tell them to stay on their path. I’m sure I’m right, but we need to cover our bases.”

“Of course, sir.” He hears her fingers flying across the keys. “I’ve got yours and the squad cars’ locations up—I’ll call them now.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“Good luck, Hotch,” Garcia says softly.

Hotch hangs up before he gets too emotional. Penelope has a way of bringing that side out of him.

“We’ll get him,” Prentiss assures. She’s been watching him this whole time, he can feel it—she’s been attuned far too keenly on this entire part of the case involving you and him. “And we’ll save her.”

His knuckles go white around the steering wheel, and for once, Hotch can’t find the words.

It feels like your head is slowly being cranked in a vice when you eventually wake up, a dull but insistent pain. Your arm stings too, but you don’t know why.

You blink a few times as you try to figure out where you are, a low groan slipping out as you fully come back into consciousness, and you move to rub the grogginess out of your eyes.

Your arms don’t move. You try again, panic spiking your heart for a moment, and that’s when you realize you’re in a chair—tied to a chair, your wrists bound together behind you and your ankles bound to the chair legs.

Now the panic fully sets in. There’s a murderer in St. Louis, but you don’t fit the victimology from what you’ve seen, but does any of that fucking matter when you’re stuck in something out of a horror movie?

Lucas was the only one there with you. So either he’s in the same situation, or he—

“You’re finally awake,” a voice murmurs. When he comes into view and sits down across from you, your heart stops.

For a moment, all you can do is stare at your brother with wide eyes. You see the gun in his hand through your peripherals, but you don’t look away from his gaze.

“I was worried I was too rough,” he says softly. “But you’ve always been resilient.”

“Lucas,” you breathe. “What the fuck is this?”

“It’s finally going to be over,” he says, ignoring your panic. “We’ve been hurting our whole lives because of that bastard of a father, and I can finally make it all stop.”

Your brother is fucking crazy. He’s fucking crazy, and he’s going to kill you.

You’ve spent two weeks telling Aaron he was crazy and your brother was innocent, and now he’s going to be proven right when he finds your dead body.

You try to tamp down on your panic. You don’t have a law degree, sure, and you never officially practiced, but you’ve been a good speaker, a persuasive one, all your life.

And if there’s ever been a fucking time to be persuasive, it’s now.

“You don’t have to do this,” you whisper. “We— we can talk if you want to talk.” You tug at your ankle restraints. “This is unnecessary.”

He shakes his head. “I know you. You’d run.”

“Come on.” You manage as much of a smile as you can. “I’ve always been there for you, Luke. Why would this be any different?”

“…You’ve always been too nice,” he says, and he sets the gun down on his leg. At least he doesn’t have his finger on the trigger. “Anyone rational would’ve kicked me to the curb when I asked you for help.”

“You’re my brother,” you whisper. “I— I love you, Lucas. I’d never do that to you.”

“Family’s supposed to be everything, right?” He shakes his head. “You were the only one of us that understood that. You were there to pick me up every time my sentence was up.”

“I’ve always believed in you,” you say.

He huffs a monotone laugh as he stares at the ground. “You’re definitely the only one.”

You shake your head. “That’s not true.”

“Mom didn’t care enough to stop anything,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “And Dad wished I was dead every goddamn day. He didn’t have the guts to do it himself, but he definitely tried.”

You can’t defend your parents. Your dad’s a piece of shit, and your mom didn’t stop anything he did—but you could never find it in yourself to fully hate her because he hurt her too, with more than just bruises.

“I’ve dreamt of killing our dad every day for twenty years,” Lucas says. “And that old bastard had to fuck me over one last time and die while I was in jail.”

You remember when you got the news. You were next of kin—your mother was dead, and your brother was incarcerated—so you got the call from the hospital. You deliberated for hours before you bought a plane ticket to Montana—apparently that was where he fucked off to drink himself to death—and you don’t know if you’ve ever felt more numb than when you were sitting in some lawyer’s office, listening to him drone on about his will and how his estate would be divided.

“So you killed all of those people?” you asked. “Because you didn’t get to kill our dad first?”

“I was saving those kids!” Luke yells, and you shrink in on yourself. “Saving them before their parents could fuck them up like ours did to us!”

“You don’t have to do this,” you repeat. “You’re just letting Dad win. Proving every shitty thing he said about you.”

“And that’s the zinger, isn’t it? Luke laughs and shakes his head. “He was right. We’re a whole family of fuck-ups. An alcoholic abuser, a battered wife, a nonstop jailbird, and you…” He shakes his head with a sigh. “You should be out there prosecuting people like me.”

“He ruined us,” Luke murmurs. “And I’m finally going to fix it.”

All you can do is stare at your brother, wide and teary eyed. You can’t find the words, but you don’t have to.

Police sirens begin to filter through the air as they get closer, and Luke huffs. “Of course.” He eyes you. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” you say weakly.

When he leaves to peer out the front door, you take a second to look at your surroundings. It takes a second because they’re so decrepit, but you could never forget.

Luke brought you back to your childhood home—the place in St. Charles, rotten down to its bones. It’s abandoned by now, but the atmosphere is nothing less than oppressive. There’s a reason you graduated high school a year early, why you never came back once you got to college—except with Aaron, to help your mom move her things out.

You refuse to die here. Even if you have to claw your way back through the gates of Hell inch by inch—you will not die here.

You hear footsteps, and when Lucas comes back in, he has a crazed glint in his eye. He shakes his head as his finger returns back to the trigger, and you can’t help but flinch. He won’t. Not now.

“Looks like your friends the FBI are here,” he drawls. “You said you didn’t tell them anything.”

“I didn’t,” you insist. “They’re profilers—they figure things out.”

He shakes his head. “They don’t realize that I have to do this.” Luke kneels down in front of you and takes your chin in an iron grip. “This is the only way to end our pain.”

He lets go of you then stands up, moving behind you—you want to protest, but you don’t get the chance. He presses his gun to your temple and then the door is broken down. Four agents rush in, guns at the ready. Aaron leads them, and he’s got fire blazing in his eyes.

“FBI,” he barks. “Hands up.”

Lucas doesn’t seem fazed, his breathing staying the same. You stare right at Aaron, unfiltered fear in your eyes, and you feel torn bare. He’s going to watch your brother put a bullet in your head.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he says smoothly. “This is a family matter.”

“Put the gun down, Lucas,” Aaron says.

“You know my name,” he says. “I know yours too, Aaron Hotchner. My sister told me you were with the feds. She also told me you broke her heart.”

“Put the gun down,” he repeats.

“I don’t think I will,” Luke says. “You see, I don’t go around just kidnapping people for fun. I have a purpose here.” He tilts his head to the side. “But you know that, don’t you? You’re all profilers.”

“You’ve been targeting families that look like your own,” he says. “You think that killing them will end the pain inside you, and protect those kids in a way that you never got.”

“I don’t think it,” he bites, “I know it. If my dad had been shot thirty years ago, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

“This isn’t going to bring you peace,” Aaron says. “Your sister has been the only person to stay by your side through every part of your life. Do you really want to lose that?”

“Trust me,” Luke says. “I’m not losing her.”

He flicks the safety off and you flinch. He’s going to kill you.

“Put the gun down,” another agent warns.

“If you all don’t leave right now, I’ll shoot her.” Your whole body stiffens as he presses the gun harder into the side of your head, your breathing going off kilter. “Except you, Aaron Hotchner. You can stay.”

“We’re not doing that,” the woman says. Agent Prentiss, you think.

“Really?” Luke chuckles. “You think you hold the cards here?”

“It’s okay,” Aaron says. “Go.”

Agent Prentiss frowns, and the other two men look different levels of puzzled. They obviously doubt the decision, but they don’t doubt Aaron, because one by one, they leave.

“Wow,” Luke muses. “They really trust you.”

“Because I know you don’t want to hurt her,” Aaron says. “Deep down, you know you’re not protecting her. Not by hurting her.”

“I’m not hurting her,” he says. “She’s always been the one to keep me safe over the years—I’m finally paying the favor back. I’m finally taking her pain away.”

“You were abused as children. Both of you.” Aaron looks at your brother. “Your sister always tried to protect you, but it never worked. It just made it worse for her, and it made you feel worthless. You’re her older brother. You’re the one that was supposed to protect her.”

“My sister said you’re profilers,” he says, and though his tone is lazy, you know your brother. You can tell it’s starting to get to him. “Is that what you’re doing right now? Profiling me?”

“You would never be good enough for your father, and your mother would never do anything to stop it,” Aaron continues. “All you had was your sister, and even that wasn’t good enough—you hurt her just as much as your dad did. At least your dad didn’t think he was a good person.”

Luke growls, and he puts a hand on your shoulder to pull you closer to him. “Shut up.”

“Your sister has told me you can be more than this,” he says. “And I think she’s right. You’re better than this—better than living between the margins and jail.”

“I’ve had a hole in my chest since I was born,” Luke mutters. “And I’ve tried to stop it, but it’s just grown and grown and grown. This— this aching pit of pain, and he caused it. You’ve got it too— I know it.”

“I— I do,” you say. And you’re not lying. You’ve had a pit of despair in you for as long as you can remember. The only difference is that you’ve fought every goddamn day of your life to keep it from consuming you. “And it hurts, Luke. Trust me, I know. It took me so long to even be able to deal with it, but I know how to. I can help you—we can both walk out of here.”

“No,” he whispers. “No—we can’t.”

“Yes, we can,” you plead. “I love you, Luke. I’ll spend every day of the rest of my life helping you if that’s what it takes to get rid of that hole.”

For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. For a moment, you think you’ve gotten through to him. Aaron never takes his eyes away from you.

“I’ve never been able to protect her,” Luke murmurs. “Not from our dad, not from the world, not even from you, Aaron Hotchner.” He presses the gun harder than ever into your head, like he wants to bury the metal in your skull along with the bullet. “But that all ends now.”

You screw your eyes shut. You don’t want to see Aaron’s face when your brother kills you.

And then it happens so quickly you barely process it.

There’s two gunshots, almost at the same time. You scream, first because of the gunshots, then because of the sudden roaring pain in your side. There’s a thud next to you, your eyes shoot open, and you see your brother’s lifeless body fall to the ground.

You scream again—you can’t even control it, it just rips out of you at the sight of the hole in his head and the blood pooling beneath it—and Aaron drops his gun to rush forward. The rest of his team thunders in after him, all in guns and bulletproof vests, and they’re talking, but you can’t focus on a single goddamn thing because your brother’s dead body is right next to you.

Aaron pulls out a pocket knife and begins to cut through your restraints, and the instant he finishes you collapse. He catches you without a second thought, and you immediately wrap your arms around him.

Torrential sobs wrack your entire body as you bury your face in the crook of his shoulder, every part of you shaking as the reality of it all hits with full force.

Your brother is a serial killer. He killed ten people, he tried to kill you. And now he’s dead.

The only part you had left of your family—gone, just like that, with four other families ruined in his wake.

Aaron’s soft voice in your ear is the only thing bringing you back from the edge of hyperventilation, his own hold on you the only thing keeping you from collapsing.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmurs and he shrugs off his windbreaker to wrap it around your arms. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

“He’s gone,” you choke out, voice muffled as you speak into his chest. “He’s gone, and he tried to—”

A fresh round of emotions hit you, unable to get the words out, and you fully break down in Aaron’s arms.

“I know.”

Aaron’s fingers linger on your side and you feel some dull pain, but you feel his breath still for a moment.

“You were shot,” he says with your name. “We have to get you to a hospital.”

You don’t even feel it. God, you don’t feel anything. There’s a distant ringing in your ears, an insistent pain in your skull, and you finally realize Aaron is right when you pull away and see the blood on his fingers.

But black spots start to fill your vision. You may not feel it, but your body holds the score. The pain intensifies in your side as your adrenaline starts to slow down, and you collapse against Aaron.

“Get an EMT in here!” he yells, keeping an arm wrapped around you. “We’ve got a GSW— she’s losing blood fast!”

You can feel Aaron’s rapid heartbeat, can feel his steady arms as he keeps you propped up. You feel the warmth of his body, feel the warmth draining out of yours.

“Aaron,” you whisper, your strength fading. You don’t think he hears you.

He helps you up and you’re suddenly hoisted onto a stretcher, and he’s beside you as the EMTs run you out of your childhood home. The night is a blurry canvas of red and blue lights, and your eyelids feel like they’re made of concrete.

“Aaron,” you try again, and you have enough left in you to grasp his cheek. “Thank you.”

And as the world goes black around you for the second time, you see his lips form your name.

It’s not a bad thing, you think before darkness overtakes you, for Aaron Hotchner to be the last thing you see before you die.

You wake up in the hospital alone.

You don’t know what you expect. You have few acquaintances, fewer friends, and the last part of your family is dead after he tried to kill you.

The real surprise is that you wake up at all.

Lucas is dead.

He tried to kill you. You thought he succeeded.

You let out a slow, even breath, accompanied only by the sounds of beeping machines. It still doesn’t exactly feel real.

You’ve spent the last two weeks defending your brother against every accusation, and you ended it in the hospital—well and truly alone for the first time in your life.

You look at the television. Some muted soccer game is playing, and you’re thankful. You were worried that you and your brother would be the topic of the day.

Who are you kidding? You’re going to be the topic of the year. He killed ten people. He tried to kill you, and you think he nearly did. He shot you, after all.

You let your head fall back against the pillow. All of your limbs feel insurmountably heavy, your side aches like hell, and you’ve got the worst headache of your life.

And you can’t stop playing it all over in your mind.

He was going to kill you.

Your own brother, your flesh and blood, the only person you had left, tried to kill you and would have killed you had it not been for the BAU.

Had it not been for Aaron Hotchner.

The door opens and someone walks through, your eyes following the movement, and when he sees it, he pauses. And so do you—apparently the devil appears even when you think of him.

“You’re awake,” Aaron says after a moment. It’s the third time he’s sounded surprised since you’ve met him again. Seeing you, finding out your mom is dead, seeing you.

But there’s relief there, too.

He has a coffee in his hand and his tie is undone, the sleeves of his white undershirt rolled up to his forearms. It makes you realize his suit jacket has been slung over the back of the chair near your bedside.

“How long have you been here?” you ask, your brows furrowing ever so slightly.

Aaron closes the door and sets his coffee on the table before he answers you. “Three days.”

“And how long have I been here?”

“Three days,” he says. “You suffered head trauma, they discovered drugs in your system, and… you were shot. You had to go into emergency surgery.”

You frown, and he answers before you can ask any of them. “…Your brother. After he knocked you out, he used something to… keep you out. And after I shot him, he still got one off—thankfully, as he was falling. The bullet hit you in the side instead of the head.”

“How bad was it?” you ask.

Aaron glances away. “You died on the table. They managed to bring you back, but…”

“I guess Luke did succeed,” you say absentmindedly. Aaron doesn’t laugh, and you glance away too. “Sorry. Bad time for jokes.”

He shakes his head. “If anyone’s allowed to joke about this, it’s you.”

Your lips twitch for a moment, but then you look back at him as he takes a seat at your bedside again. He looks— god, he just looks tired. Tired and ragged and downtrod, and you can’t imagine you look much better.

“You were out for two days after,” he explains. “This is the first time you’ve woken up.”

“Why are you here, Aaron?” you ask quietly. “Why have you been here?”

Aaron frowns. “Where else would I be?”

Your throat feels like it’s closing up, and you feel the telltale pinpricks of tears. You blink them away before they can start.

“My brother was a serial killer, Aaron.” Your hands clench into fists as you stare at the wall. “He killed ten people while he was living with me and I— and I didn’t even fucking notice.” Your gaze moves back to him. “I went against all of you because I thought I knew him, and look where it got me.”

“It’s not a crime to want to see the best in people,” he says. “Especially your family.”

“It’s a crime to fucking murder people,” you huff, and it’s only slightly unhinged. “I— I thought I knew him, and I didn’t. And if I did, maybe none of these people would’ve had to die.”

“Don’t blame this on yourself,” Aaron demands. “Lucas was lost. Mentally ill. He was on a path for revenge, for his deranged idea of protection—nothing you could have said or done would have stopped him.”

You shake your head. “It might be easy for you to say that, Aaron, but I— I can’t. He’s my brother. I gave him a place to live, I gave him easy access to families— god, I fought with you all for two weeks about his innocence, all while he was planning his next fucking murder!”

“It is not your fault,” he repeats, slower and enunciating the words. “He was the only member left of your family, and you loved him. You were just stubborn, and that’s nothing new.”

“I just don’t know what to do.” You’ve had these walls up for so long, especially this past week, and now that everything’s come to a head and you’re in the hospital and your fucking brother is dead, the floodgates have opened. “I have to plan a funeral because I’m the only one left to plan one, but— but does he even deserve one? He’s a serial killer, and he tried to kill me for god’s sake, but he’s my brother and even though he’s gone he’s still all I have left and—”

You break off as you suck in a huge breath of air, the notion shaky as you clench your hands into fists to keep the rest of your body from doing the same.

“And I just don’t know what to do,” you repeat, barely a whisper.

You meet Aaron’s eyes, almost desperately. You feel like you’ll shatter into a million different pieces if you even breathe wrong and he might be the only solid thing in your life.

“Whatever you do,” he says, “you don’t have to do it alone. Not if you don’t want to.”

“Aaron,” you start shakily, but he continues.

“I know what you think, and that’s not what I’m suggesting.” Aaron pauses for a moment, and it’s obvious how carefully he’s crafting his words. “I’ve… always regretted how we left things. And I regret losing touch with you. This isn’t the way I would’ve liked to meet you again. But I’m thankful I have.”

He pulls a card out of his shirt pocket and holds it out to you. You realize it’s his business card, and it’s got his number.

“I’m sorry for the formality,” he says dryly, “but I don’t exactly go around prepared to give out my number for purposes other than work.”

You take it without giving yourself the chance to think about it. You run your finger around the sharp edge of the cardstock, pressing the pad of your thumb against the corner.

“Years ago, you wished me a good life, and that you didn’t want to be involved in it,” he says, still treading carefully. You can’t believe he remembers the last thing you said to him. “But— but a lot has changed since then, and I hope that has as well.”

“I’d like you to be a part of my life again,” Aaron finally says, “if you want to be a part of mine.”

For a moment, all you can do is stare at him. Two and a half years of law school flash behind your eyes—coffee shop dates and endless hours spent studying at the library. Movie nights cuddled on his couch, hauling boxes out of your house at an ungodly hour to get away from your roommates. An unhealthy amount of all-nighters immediately followed by going out to celebrate a miracle of an A on an exam. Getting through every soul-sucking part of earning a J.D. together, falling apart before either of you could make it to the other side, and somehow…

Somehow, you’ve ended up on a completely different side together.

“My life isn’t going to be easy,” you say faintly. “Especially… moving through this.”

“My life isn’t easy either,” he says. “I’m divorced with a kid and I try to solve murders every day.”

“It’s not a contest.” An attempt at a joke, but it falls flat for you. Aaron’s lips still quirk at the edges the slightest bit.

“Getting through this certainly won’t be easy,” he agrees. “But I have more experience than most in these sorts of things. So if you ever need anything, call. Please.”

“I imagine you’re pretty busy,” you murmur. “Unit chief and all.”

Aaron shrugs. “I make time for the things I care about.”

Thankfully, you don’t have to figure out how to respond to that, because there’s a knock on the door, and a nurse walks in after you call a come in.

“It’s good to finally see you awake, sweetheart,” the nurse says with a smile. It warms you from the inside out.

“It’s nice to be awake,” you say. Her smile widens and she moves over to the computer in the side of the room—to add some things before she makes her checkup, you assume.

“I’ll give you some time alone,” Aaron says.

Before he can stand up, you grab his hand. It’s fully on instinct, and he looks just as surprised as you feel.

“Don’t go,” you plead, and it’s almost a whisper. “I— just— please.”

Aaron stares at you for a moment, that shock glinting in his eyes before it transforms into something a lot warmer. He nods and sits down.

“Okay.”

And he stays.

This time, he stays.

#i was truly possessed while writing this i can't understand it #i wrote 15k words in 5 days #aaron hotchner x reader #hotch x reader #criminal minds x reader #aaron hotchner x y/n #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner angst #aaron hotchner imagine #sadie writes

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lesser-mook · 7 months

Video

Footage of Texas STANDOFF With 302k Migrants on US-Mexico Border Has Gon...

https://youtu.be/cL7X4cskd8Q

(shitty *melodramatic thumbnail aside- and brace yourself this is finna get deep, 90% of this is lore)

This is like The Walking Dead Season 4, but the Zombies came with bags and are given free resources after they invade. Literally a zombie horde forcing their way in, to consume resources that should've been going to Americans.

But this sudden surge of resources given to these aliens shows that the Gov. had the means to help Americans the entire time but chose not to, which we all knew already but it's confirmed by the same people that left us to burn.

(To clarify, this isn’t on the illegal aliens entirely, like ‘let’s dehumanize these people’ because of the dumb policies our “leaders” made

Yeah some of em are coming here not for some Dream but they want free shit because Biden is an agent, ie. Who allowed them to come in here in the first place? The Illegals aren’t actually taking anything by force-- they’re being GIVEN the motherload by your own Administration)

What a joke.

Every Empire has it's fall. America. Your turn.

And how we got here starts with the simple things, like relations, tensions between the power-houses of society.

The dichotomy, Man & Woman. 2.Two forces of nature, two pieces of an incomplete entity that is the “Hu-man”

The agenda is simple, it wasn’t quick, it was a slow burn: If these two pieces fit so well together that when they are getting along, things are great, community is stronger, the culture is healthy, values/norms/standards intact- Traditional family works...but the problem is

A civilization united like that well? is a lot harder to fool/control/manipulate.

So the agenda is simple:

Keep people fighting, invent more labels, enable toxicity/ hostility in the culture, propagandize with stronger signals in the music, movies, political spectrums = Separate men and women on a cultural level. Plant a disconnect and keep it intact.

Drive the sexes apart in the intangible sphere, thought, norms.

Propagandize & overstimulate girls with a crap-ton of unrealistic expectations of themselves and men.

Give women every incentive not to be responsible with their reproductive powers, to the point young men are stuck with grown children who are looking for Papa at Ages 19-35 to pay for everything and offer next to nothing of their own accord.

The world owes you for being born female

And when every woman is a special snowflake & pandered to, womanhood is trivialized, accountability becomes an option.

It’s why your culture worships “Girl bosses”, you call your adult females “girls” so casually, it’s casual condescension. Patronizing.

It is so casual- WOMEN call each other “girls”. Reinforcing a state of infantilism.

So a bunch of girls and yet you have no “Women”, America has stopped raising women years ago.

Castrate, degrade, bash and shame men to the point where young women are now stuck with Sub-Males who are out of touch with their balls.

America doesn’t make men like they used to, they’re too busy neutering them.

And then develop fetishes wanting giant women (aka a hybrid construct of mommy/female authority issues & Gynocentric society) to castrate, degrade, bash, and subjugate themselves- They developed a fetish where they castrate themselves in the exact same fashion society does except they depict actual violence happening. Manslaughter even.

Now, what do you call a condition where a victim normalizes the abuse as a coping mechanism? Stockholm Syndrome.

Macrophilia is just an advanced/tragic case of mass Stockholm Syndrome.

See psychologists aren’t allowed to say that, they stay very neutral because that’s what keeps them employed.

But I’m not getting paid for this- so there you go. Macrophilia and it’s mother: (toxic-gynocentrism/ not Women having opportunities-- but TOXIC Gynocentrism/Female Privilege) & it’s father (misandry) are all connected.

One big inbred family of dysfunction and societal collapse (which if you pay attention that’s what a giant woman mainly does, collapse civilization, cause pain, destroy, evil-

Something women are not, just to put that out there, because I feel it’s necessary or we’ve fallen so hard as a species, that HAS to be said now. Women are not the enemy, Women are not the enemy, Men are not the enemy, Women are not the enemy of Men.

So it’d be a good idea to stop emulating the hatred that’s implanted.

Macrophiles/ or Macrocreeps as I lovingly dubbed them- are literally/indirectly/ & repeatedly communicating that women will cause or are the collapse of civilization, women being empowered means women are enemies of humanity, women are evil- the same narrative on repeat)

NOW THAT- is misogyny, 100% learned, 0% nature.

If you were raised in a small town like Black Forest (Germany):

or a Mongolian Steppe Nomad life. Healthy upbringing, healthy-equal community for men and women, away from misandry & gynocentrism, unplugged from the Matrix/ aka The HATE-trix

-you’re not going to have this crap living in your head.

You just might even have a life.

It’s why this movie (The Red Turtle) is so poetic, simple and beautiful. it displays simply what life is without the bullshit:

Every time I watch this movie, I’m reminded what the “human experience” boils down to, as repetitive as it is, it really boils down to having each other, family.

See people were freaks back in the day, but within reason, this macro-cancer wasn’t really popping back in the 70s when men and women were for the most part in an okay place.

You get more of a rise of this kind of thing when things are bad between men and women, it’s really a mirror of HOW bad it’s gotten in society or in your own childhood, your mind, your subconscious where seeds are planted.

When men & women are happy on mass, when the culture has shows like Good Times, The Cosby Show, Living single Roseanne, Full House- positive culture, when that is the repeated narrative, positivity, you tend to get positive signals implanted in the people watching it, namely children.

Fact is, you get an infection in the body when there’s a problem, not when it’s healthy, plain and simple.

See you don’t simply feel the need to replace women with a demonic sociopathic mile-high she-beast or in a neutral sense you need to have Mommy looming over you & make you feel like a loser to feel secure because the giantess needs to be MAN enough for both of you combined: (Hence, women are stuck in a generation of SUB-Males who lost touch with their balls and a lot of the time women have the carry them both)

And this has nothing to do with confidence, you can be confident and have no balls, want to be mistreated or not know what being a man is about. There’s a lot of confident losers on this planet, do not confuse the two (Confidence vs Security) together.

vs when you have actual healthy relationships with women throughout life here in reality or a society that doesn’t tell you you’re less than dirt or outright communicates you are stupid, inferior, and something that needs to be fixed or stamped out by a more competent woman presence-

Hellywood definitely hasn’t been doing that, TV shows definitely hasn’t been doing that, Culture, various IRL situations (some caught on camera) definitely hasn’t been communicating that.

One just can’t help but share that misery with the world & await a “congratulations” from fellow cult members for posting the exact same thing for the 15′000th time for the 13th year in a row.. An example of misandrist propaganda birthing a mini-industry of misandrist propaganda. (Though women are victimized as well in the fantasy, lesbians can be macrocreeps too, and the opposite spectrum exists *Giant males* but let’s focus on the popular one, women.)

The compulsion comes from the fact that it’s a generational conditioning operation. I personally think it’s unintentional, there’s no way this shit was calculated, and macrocreeps are too small a group to even be measured as a problem but the problem actually is what they represent, the question: “Where in you is that fantasy coming from?”

What they represent, and what they’re literally showing us (Cry for help / Red Flag) in the content is the concerning factor. And how *consistent it is.

A normal person gets tired of watching the same movie, playing the same game, hell- some people break up from boredom.

Most fetishists (especially macrocreeps)- DO NOT evolve, grow up or move on, they will stay on the same radio channel for- EVER. I repeat: FOREVER.

The same horror, the same scenarios but from new artists (so much talent wasted on nonsense, it physically hurts me), the same-

“me male, me insignificant, yes goddess”

disrespect/Misandry narrative on repeat and repeat and repeat. As per design.

It’s literally a case of an internet economy where nothing changes, like it’s recycling the narrative that their culture convinced them to be true.

And most will eat it up for years to come (Literal Matrix tier enslavement of the mind)- as if following an installed directive, robotic. If only that level of commitment was shown to marriages or idk actual women?

But nobody tryna have that conversation, a she-devil in your head who’s entire function is to hurt you & belittle will get more of your time, your skills, investment, devotion than women here in reality, hilarious.

(And don’t be fooled, these are everyday people, some with families, these aren’t neckbeards but men & women with serious issue, and it’s about time we stopped pretending being broken is a virtue or some kind of badass badge when at the end of the day what you’re producing is blatant misery.

It’s just ironic the level of commitment given to some lala-land kaiju, a paragon of misogyny that will NOT give you anything back in this life but wasted time, is still more effort than they’d give to women with something to offer)

And it’s even more hilarious that American birthrates started the drop just around the70s to 2020, now that is very interesting to me. Seems like the 70s was just around the tipping point for everyone over in America. Including Biden, because his stance on borders was verrrrry different way back when:

Funny how the media has all the resources to ride Trumps D 24/7 but they conveniently leave out this little gem.

.Biden In 2007_ “No Great Country Can Say It’s Secure Without Being Able To Control Its Borders”

source

And so, again, women are now stuck with a good chunk of house broken Man-children or live in a culture that cultivates this attitude where some men in a bizarre sense want to worship women to a disturbing degree and want their mother to domineer over them and tell them how insignificant they are as society successfully programed into them (rarely is it from one experience), thus women are shipwrecked in this generation with a good number of American males-

-who don’t know how to be or afraid to be men (not men’s fault). And yet the consequence is they turn to fantasy, Anime, fetishism- escapism or any escapism where they condition themselves to have unreasonable expectations of girls and women’s behavior, bodies & themselves.

All to overcompensate what they couldn’t or CHOOSE not to step up to be in reality as men.

Keyword: They <choose> fantasyland over choosing to be better, which is 100% in their control. They’d rather play victim in a fantasy where they lose control instead of growing a goddamn pair.

Product of the times.

Modern day wars on masculinity is what happens when we are taught women have a right to say “no” (True) but as a society we never tell a woman “no”. (A problem)

A woman happily serving the husband is toxic & repressive, but “Happy wife, Happy life” is normalization of men suffering in silence as long as their domestic adult-baby is pacified.

Notice how I’m throwing haymakers in both directions, because either way you slice it (and yes, it does go both ways) on either side it’s not efficient nor sustainable, as we’re now seeing. Everyone actually, because the Americans aren’t the only one’s suffering dropping births.

But it’s only okay when women get the better end of the deal. But the punchline is women aren’t receiving anything good from an atmosphere like this.

Do women today feel safe? Do they trust the men of their country? (that is a big one), Does their culture prepare girls or pander to them to keep them in a box? Because padding women’s ego’s is a subtle form of control by giving women the illusion of agency.

That’s the ultimate fallacy of a Giant Woman being used by Feminists as an empowerment symbol, and Fetishists as a symbol of power: When in fact, a woman that big has even less control over her life because her interaction with civilization (and all the resources they have that she NEEDS from care to tampons) is now limited. The gigantism is fallacy in itself.

The illusion of control.

Inflating the importance of a woman’s “independence” from men in society (when it’s not dependence to be with a man, it’s coexistence)

Some society shame the egos of men because they are afraid of what men are capable of when things go wrong (Shootings, R*pe, murder).

When all that needs to be done is to teach boys & men to regulate and channel their ego instead of snuffing it out, teach principle, not hedonism.

Abusing boys, drugging them up to stay still & smothering masculinity because the result is that a lot of men now think they have no power and some believe & revel in the narrative they should have no confidence or power and only women should be allowed to have an ego & overwhelming advantage (Gynocentrism).

When it's just another perpetuated narrative (harming women & men) that men should be nerfed because they're a threat and not women because-

women aren't a threat. Apparently only in a fantasy are they anything close to a danger.

Exacerbating a woman's ego because you or the system presumes they won't ever do anything about it, zero threat.

That’s why American culture is biased toward women so hard: They don’t take you seriously.

Misandry is when the village fears men

Gynocentrism is the result of underestimating women's egos, underestimating women, painfully so.

Which is also why these macrocreeps use the fetish so they can fabricate a woman with near omnipotence over the “tiny”,

Some psychologist taking on macrophilia theorize (paraphrasing): ‘Macrophiles seek to create women with overwhelming power in light of society lacking female empowerment’...... uhhhhhh excuse you, where have you been in the past 15-20 years of American pop culture & real time events?

A “LACK” of Female empowerment? What?!

Women are in fact doing better than the fellas.

This is a brutal form of gaslighting harder than a politician.

And you want to know the most insulting part? Their assertion It’s conceivable to an extent but they never dig deeper.

Example: Most of these qualified people will use the “lack of female empowerment” point but rarely do any of them mention the rampant misandry in society & the culture inflating women’s egos, more so the normalization/glorification of male expendability as a logical alternate or logically the primary reason why Macrophilia has taken root in this era specifically to glorify what? You guessed it Glorification of male expendability and inflating the hubris of a woman.

Coincidence, it’s all coincidence.

But you see, when you say men wanting to be destroyed is because of gynocentric society lacking female empowerment: That’s another way of saying:

It’s not the fault of culture putting women on a pedestal at men’s expense as to why men developed stockholm syndrome where they also put women on a pedestal at men’s expense, even to the point of desiring their own oblivion- #Deflection

No instead they assert or suggest women aren’t being gassed up ENOUGH!!!

So it’s not about men & women being culturally (& possibly at some point physically or emotionally) abused and propagandized-

let’s make it about women not getting enough pandering, reinforcement, benefits, exceptions, compliments, priority, priority priority, priority. PEDESTAL.

(I think you get it, and I also think you see the problem. Men ARE ALWAYS AT THE BOTTOM, even in a situation where they are the focus per the fetish & might look to these psychologists for answers, somehow these people still make women out to be the victims anyway because society isn’t doing enough, so women deserve more more more.)

THAT right there is the freaking problem, not that women are involved in the conversation, but the fact that men are shelved yet again to make it about women.

But so many go to these pages for answers to be met with enabling the problem further, thus the source of the problem is lying in the place you go to get answers, how ironic.

The dishonesty with some of these professionals is astounding, and you know what? I don’t think they’re doing it on purpose, that’s the scary part for me.

But yes, I do believe a lot of these people are holding back information or a degree of transparency to prevent from seeming like a persecutor.

Listen, I get empathy, you can’t just come at people any type of way. But if we’re going to get to the bottom of this, we have to stop holding people’s hands. The truth doesn’t exist to breastfeed you, the entire point is to enlighten, teach, and if that involved discomfort that means it’s working.

And saying essentially ‘women deserve better’ is why men glorify women destroying humanity is just signaling more entitlement, toxicity, excuses, zero accountability.

And worse? Enabling people to worship Anti-Humanity obsessions.

This isn’t about accountability of women, not this time, Macrophilia wasn’t created by women, it was created by the overall culture, the village, the atmosphere that enabled female privilege, how matriarchal society is despite how patriarchal civilization is or was, but society? Is very matriarchal, Gyno (Women)- Centric.

Namely the people on top that own these companies, these news, media platforms of all types, owning everything we see (global too)- that are pushing the narrative.

Then we wonder why so many ladies are infantile and panic whenever asked “What do you bring to the table?”, this is not women’s fault, mind you.

How are women supposed to answer the question, when they’re taught that they have all the answers, they’re bosses, they’re in charge, they run the world, the future is female, girlpower, #girlpower, #GIRLPOWER, empowerment, ass-kissing-

WOMAN WORSHIP culture. (Macrocreeps anyone?)

That’s what’s pumped into the average Americano lady like crack, like being reliant on the world to tell them they’re awesome. And then they grow up (physically), trained to be reliant on external validation for life-

A form of control over a woman’s mind, not fantasy but here in reality.

Spend a lifetime with a phone in your hand, depending on anon’s to signal they want to sleep with you instead using those hands of yours to actually build something or spread something constructive, like the truth, or a song, or a story, an empire, create something, anything other than your Two-Millionth selfie for the day.

That’s the sick joke: It comes off as America’s boner for Female Security when it’s female subjugation/pacification, on top of male subjugation/castration. Both parties are trivialized as a result. Nobody wins, nobody.

Everyone’s a prisoner. That’s the point.

A giant 5′000ft tall woman destroys civilization, kills everyone.

She laughs about it, gets off on it, and then what? She’s left stuck as a giant, no grocery to shop from, no one to love her, no one to talk to, no dental care, no resources, no infrastructure, no friends, no home, no support system, she’ll starve, she’ll dehydrate, she’ll get lonely, she’ll die alone. No fucking point, that’s the part of the fantasy these muppets very conveniently leave out, reality. Strength for days, but zero power.

The natural consequence of the fantasy emulates reality. Nobody wins, nobody. Not even in fantasy.

No intimacy, just horror, ugliness, death, destruction and emptiness.

Because that’s what women are, amiright boys?

The common theme? I repeat, Nobody wins.

It’s so closely similar in both fantasy & reality, the parallels are blood related (Hence my mother & child analogy).

Propaganda is scary like that and moreso predictable, as are fetishists.

We underestimate the effects of what children internalize (regardless of how minor the experience is) & regurgitate it and the fact that we don’t stop doing that emulation when we become adults.

It’s how we read rooms, social cues, our lovers or dangers, develop traumas.

We see, then spread the message. Whether it be school, a cool line from a movie, a song stuck in your head, an insult that sticks with you, someone intimidating you, threatening you, or you being threatened by a misunderstanding, a compliment etc.

No difference.

We need less female empowerment, and more mentors.

Respect to women as humans first, and not singling them out constantly as “first woman to do-” something a man did 75 years ago. Patronizing women and making them like being a participation winner.

Mentor girls of womanhood as a principle, aka accountability, protecting your reproductive powers, not giving it away.

America panders to female ego but does not respect womanhood.

Society failed women and men by convincing us women are the exception when they actually deserve less- until they’re willing to contribute something beside an open hand in a relationship.

You don’t get to win by just showing up.

women need to learn what earning a man’s time, money/ His life, His sacrifice,

What earning his LIFE for hers really means.

Women need to learn what it means to earn that shit, I swear to god, a man’s life is so trivialized now, women don’t even think about what a big deal it is for man to just pay his life as a toll for hers to go on 5 more seconds.

It’s disgusting how overlooked that is, but I keep hearing “As he should”, WHOO buddy. Americans are beyond lost baby.

But you see in 15 years or less that’ll be considered “hate speech” or a thought-crime, or perhaps this entire rant would be worth an insta-trip to ban world.

because #MenAreTrash is trendy that’s fine 100% males don’t have feelings right but the same time we want them to be sensitive, but not too sensitive or else he’s a man-child. It’s never enough.

#MenNeedToStepUp we can agree on 100%, but #WomenDoBetter or #WomenNeedToEarnAMan is misogyny

Everything is misogyny when name calling or witch-hunts aka “Cancel culture” (how it’s called today)- doesn’t work.

Right, keep that up. Doing a good job so far, lmfao.

But gee, I can’t figure out why the birthrates are falling

& men are flocking to other countries for real women? When there’s plenty in America, far in-between but they do exist.

All we wanted to do was just treat men/husbands/fathers like second class citizens, like idiots- so horrifically mistreated that the goofballs went & created a fetish/Cult where they actually enable each other to want to be treated like second class citizens.

ZERO connection, all coincidence!

Wanting Women to be their gods and mistreat or destroy them and the whole of civilization: um wow.

Did you even have a mother? I mean My God, what happened?!

You know, ZERO red flags there. Nothing to see here. Everything is fine. Go back to deviantart, enjoy the genocide.

No btw, I AM NOT shitting you, this is real.

(And the access to A.I art made it SOOOOO much worse, now these lovable dorks can just spawn the most horrific shit with zero effort now)

If you didn’t think that group’s issues weren’t that deep? (because naturally, they’re just minding their business beating off/worshipping human genocide- until you realize how comfortable they’re getting, too damn comfortable, normalizing the most anti-human shit, it makes you question if you’re even awake sometimes)

Trust me, a good majority of them don’t even know where their obsession came from--- AND that is the point of propaganda, subtle, like a socio-cultural virus. A weapon for your mind. neurological malware.

I repeat: Neurological/Socio-Cultural Malware for your mind. A prison for your mind. It used to be heroin, still is for some, but now fantasy is the new drug, no drugs in your system, not “harming anyone” but that justification to keep doing it is why the prison is that much stronger. You tell yourself there’s no problem because no one’s hurt, you’ll keep doing it for the rest of your life.

The change begins when we allow ourselves to stop lying to ourselves.

And again, to no one’s surprise (Brain mappings show fetishism or sex addiction is parallel to addictive habits like drugs, alcoholism, etc.) So no, not harming anyone (until it does) but yourself through re-wiring what your brain imprints on, I believe it’s through firing signals via the synapse endings at climax, like you’re physically making changes to your brain on a microscopic scale.

That is precisely why breaking the habit is difficult and the more rewarding, with any bad habit btw.

Fact is, Nobody knows exactly when a virus gets in your body or your pc/phone machine, but when it’s in, it’s on you to do something about it or cope with it by not coping at all.

Superboy-Prime’s level of petty is not even close to an average GTS NPC, and ironically he could solo 99.99999999% of them all, even the god level one’s. And he’s smaller than most of them-

So yeah, despite having the word in their mouths 24/7, macrocreeps don’t really understand what “power” is, lol.

Even if it’s a gentle scenario or the cringe “unaware” crap (where the appeal is more manslaughter but the excitement is she’s doing it unintentionally *yes, society failed this hard*)

The visual point of a woman being bigger by that much is visually signalling: “superiority”, female supremacy, gynocentrism. Males being lesser, weaker, vulnerable, under control, a security/self-esteem/ ultimately a Life-skill issue- that is the point.

It’s always a “power-” dynamic scramble, it’s so toxic and dysfunctional.

To belabor the point, It’s no accident that what American society (from movies to articles) is pumping into you guys, is exactly what these cats worship with a level of dedication that makes Christians look like amateurs.

They could legitimately begin a religion, I’m actually genuinely surprised they haven’t by now.

In this context though, in Fantasyland where genocide is a goddamn game, that’s the entire appeal, #SizeDifference #Macro #Giantess #GiantessCrush #Sizeplay SizeSIZEsizesizesizesizesizesize, it’s really unhealthy.

Hence Fetish hence “Obsession”, that’s what fetish means = You have nothing better to do.

This is why macrophilia is so unique though, solely because of how relevant it is to this era, the socio-cultural relevance.

And the reason for that (again) is this toxic gynocentric era in the west/ First world countries in general enabled it/ birthed it/ cultivated it in the first place.

Hear me: Macrophilia (One obsession) didn’t cause the problems between men and women, it is simply one of many manifestations/ & ultimately a spawn of these problems.

It’s literally an example of what your civilization did horribly wrong whilst trying to empower women, you left men behind.

Worldwide issue btw, Macrohphilia is not exclusive to America, neither is toxic-Gynocentrism. But America is Gold Medal champ in making their Men are 100% aware they are expendable to society, made to feel inept or stupid, should do more, here’s a superhero movie showing a guy being cool but IRL we’ll treat you like garbage in policies & law making.

A lot of Japanese are into MacroCultisms, to no one’s surprise.

Not in the 50s to 70s, but during the 90s, post-Internet 2000s era is when it really sparked, now all of a sudden we got a huge influx of goofballs wanting women to commit mass genocides on entire cities (Which involves children & babies- #ThisIsFine) or men the size of germs shrining women for existing, living on their bodies like Demodex (your hair mites)... just the most mind-numbing shit just to feel like you’re worthless, on purpose.

Kind of like the narrative privileged society pumps into you? #FutureisFemale (How inclusive)

Or articles propagating that men are “Falling behind”, any & every excuse to plant seeds of disconnect and potential resentment, always negative.

The goal is to propagandize female supremacy to either frustrate men into resenting women (some of MGTOW), turn them paranoid (Anti-Woke Tards that complain about any movie with a female lead or women doing anything cool or competent), or straight up break them like dogs & the victims will ask for more (Macrocreeps)

or turn them indifferent, numb to even want to say or do anything about the problem. Men who unplugged and absolutely do not care anymore.

A lot of Men have been whipped & brutally trained by their own culture to be and somehow want to be second/third class citizens in some respects. and you’ll have attention seeking narcissist women infiltrating these communities garnering a following calling themselves “Goddess- [insert name]” , absolute silliness, just the most infantile stupid crap you’ll ever see.

The strongest degree of secondhand embarrassment I’ve ever experienced, it’s like watching younger siblings just ruin....everything they touch for no reason.

These women banking on the insecurity of thousands of men who just need help or a fucking hug.

And the simple chemistry of men and women boils down to: SEX, connection, life, be happy. That’s it. That’s really all people want.

How do you complicate that, this badly? And it NOT be an artificial catalyst that caused it, life was not designed to be this convoluted & silly. This is what happens when you make relations between men and women more complicated than necessary.

Otherwise, frankly: How does genocide correlate with sex.

Vore? Still cringe, but at least you can loosely correlate that with oral sex, digestion (psychotic) but believe it or not it’s wanting to be in the womb again.

(Male or female) it applies, yes brains are stupid like that. This is why what you ingest through the eyes to your soul is important, most people don’t even know where the impulses are coming from but WELP *wank wank

KNOW THYSELF. FREE THYSELF. Ya’ll better watch The Matrix again and really listen to what it’s telling you, not “was” telling, what IT IS telling us, still today.

“A prison for your mind.”, notice how The Matrix in context was a “Fantasy” land/ distracting from the real war going on outside of the fantasy, outside of the prison.

We better catch what these films are communicating.

Back on topic, how does being abused/bullied/destroyed/digested/ all of this crap by women- relate to sex and making love and NOT be related to some psychological struggles or a mass installation op. Even if unintentional.

Propaganda, abuse, societal/generational neglect. That’s how. Genocide ain’t it boi, something upstairs went sleep mode & it needs to wake up.

“The sleeper must awaken.“

I’m not smart at all, I just know what shit smells like and I’m more than willing to step on toes, and happily brave a ban or 2 if it means saying what apparently no one wants to say because we have this unspoken rule that all kinks are sacred & immune to judgement.

HA!, I don’t know what planet you came from, but that’s not how life works buddy. Whenever I tell fetishist this, they shut down completely or unravel, their confidence just goes away like fart.

Why?

Because they rely on the world saying “Sorry, carry on.” Nope! That’s not how life works. A fetish is not a baby, so adopting it gives absolutely nothing to us.

Really, all we have to do is pay attention to the world in real time and the rest sorts itself out. But our everyday can muddy & blur the lines, I get it, and that’s part of the game. Blue Pill baby, it was never about being asleep, it’s about being distracted.

“You need to see.“

- Jamis (DUNE PART TWO)

Some of these hombre’s aren’t even abused as kids, sometimes all it takes is one awkward moment with a girl overpowering you verbally or physically, a moment of vulnerability, or you get yelled at by an adult woman, or you see abuse or a woman having an overwhelming advantage in a movie and society does the rest with crap like #GirlsRunTheWorld over and over and over again-

No strong male role models to build up a healthy ego, or no dad at all, or a competent father, or even a big brother or sister, then when your confidence isn’t properly built (by your parents or environment) in time when you see something that makes you feel inferior or put-off and your mind can’t register it properly.

Like psychological indigestion and or in layman’s terms “Intrusive thought” that manifests into something it shouldn’t.

So it doesn’t bounce off as it should, or make you mad & you reject the negative signal.- instead it actually sinks into you, you internalize it. And it sits there, and sits there, & you keep seeing things in shows, feeding that seed.

And through a coping mechanism post-puberty where your hormones turn off your intelligence entirely (Yes, Sex chemicals actually make you stupid by design), where you then normalize the toxicity because it’s women doing it, and women are attractive. So genocide is a good thing if a woman does, because women are hot.

You’re horny now + the epic scale of giant women having near omnipotent control over your fate provides unrivaled excitement & dopamine levels that no woman could or would even want to measure up to (Cause it’s goofy af, Gulliver’s Travels #headass).

Then the newborn fetishist propagates #Giantessisms over and over and over again with the unbridled freedom of the web- ready to act a fool.

And the ever so convenient echo-chamber of fetish spaces where everything you do and say came straight from Christ himself, where you’ll receive ZERO challenge. (Another part of the problem)

Indulge comfortably until someone, eventually goes against the grain in 4-15 years, roasting it- and then your defenses activate. Because how dare they insult something that provides absolutely zero value or tangible substance to your life amiright?

But my oh my, I don’t know where it came from, I guess it’s always been there but It’s pretty much my personality and ”a part of my identity”....it’s a “hobby”

-some say this crap, of course on threads where the likeminded are & will upvote everything they say, naturally naturally.

Challenge is their Kryptonite. Questions make everyone queasy.

Painting women as inhuman psychopaths is a HOBBY. Riiiiiight, Okay then.

Pretending in make believe land that you’re a tyrannical burden to the society that would bend over backwards to protect you at the expense of men, any day of the week.

You actually want to be an evil & mortal danger to people if means your fragile ego getting a stroke from being a couple meters/Mile taller than everyone else, for a sense of control you obviously can’t manage to obtain as a competent adult here in reality. That’s part of your “identity”? Oooooooookay then.

Definitely not overcompensating for anything.

But don’t judge them though, you don’t want to hurt anyone’s fee’s fee’s now do you? You don’t want to be a meanie or a bad person.

Because saying nothing & pretending “This is fine” has worked out so well for mankind thus far right?

Just ask Japan 2023 (Age of consent raise in that year, look it up. *If I talk about it, that’s going to be another essay, let’s stay focused:

Sexes Disconnect/Gynocentrism/Gynocentric-Fetishism/Birthrates/Illegals/Decline ) 🚨

Cycle of toxicity birthing more cycles..

The biggest woman you see first/imprint on in life is ideally your mother-figure.

These cats just want mommy, thus from the place of a child (thus small like a child) so macrophilia has some PeterPan syndrome-isms in it’s core, thus to no one’s surprise this is a very cringe case of some suspended development because for most, all of this started when they were at their smallest & VULNERABLE to begin with.

“Vulnerable“, something they want to feel. That’s part of the high. “Helpless“, you’ll hear that term a lot in their subtext, it’s like a religious mantra next to “insignificant“, they LOVE that one, holy shit is that one a cult favorite line. (Z from ANTZ #headass, “You’re right Z, you are insignificant.”)

I’m telling you, all you have to do is pay attention. How our brains work is not that complicated especially when what these innocent goofs choose to share with us is literally spelling out the picture- How can I tell? Consistency and the fact that they NEED the world to know, like a cry for help:

Except they’re getting likes & money, and not a fuck to give to provide a solution vs exacerbation.

And no, unlike what some of these exploitative women will say: NO providing an outlet or safe-space for these little angels is not therapeutic.

Therapy is an actual solution, letting it go is a solution. Indulgence? Is like dumping a truck full of “happy snow” in a rehab center and then calling that “therapeutic”.

The women arguing this want their meal tickets to stay delusional, stay deranged and remain imprisoned. Money baby, it’s all money.

This fetish became an industry, like many tend to do.

The repetitive nature of the “content” is too consistent, Artwork evolves it’s narrative. Art changes.

(I repeat) But this? It stays the exact same, same narrative, same bloodshed, same dialogue, all that’s different is the production value and who it’s coming from.

And yes, all of this & others mentioned prior contributes or related to the birthrates issue (China, Japan, Russia & others suffer this too), thus this illegal invasion in America.

All of it is connected, all of it, this isn’t the usual rambling session or tangent. There’s a point to this entire lecture, this is actual lore for the movie you’re living in.

The Twilight Zone episode that will not end even after you do.

These are real people, it’s not doing America any favors pretending these clowns/more-so the implication and subtext of their issues or more importantly THE issue doesn’t exist.

It’s the same with Japanese men and their infatuation with Anime culture & how that mega industry and so many other factors are causing Japan’s own falling births, social shut-in’s, etc.

We can’t just ignore this crap because no one wants to be “that guy”, screw that. Nothing’s gonna get done if we’re stuck in our own little worlds.

Doesn’t make sense to have the Internet and be this connected & still be so distant at the same time.

We gotta at least address the roots of the issues while having fun-

That’s the operative concern, what caused the phenomenon in the first place, how do these obsessions work, why, and where is it coming from?

And why is it almost prophetic? Like a warning.

This isn’t about Macrocreeps being the problem, they’re a result.

This ain’t about coming after them, though it’s been high time somebody put their ass on blast, so long overdue, holy shit.

Because if you step back and really look at the concept of a giant woman committing genocide because her job sucks or she needed to bigger just to feel good about herself instead of just getting her life together?

It’s pretty silly lol, infantile even.

But this is really about the subtext, that they are living breathing red-flags/reminders that your culture is failing and it’s failing everyone.

Woman is god, male subjugation good, women destroy civilization (including killing kids & babies by the thousands apparently, so marcocreeps are indirectly beating to slaughter of children, yaaaay) and yes, some also sexualize children too, casually.

Japan would be proud or as of 2023, maybe not? Lol.

Wash rinse repeat, it’s never enough. Men, humans, animals, life needs to be red paste on the bottom of a woman’s feet or else the itch isn’t scratched.

For an average macrochump to feel some sort of sexual vindication in the context of the fantasy: Women. The ONLY natural threshold of human life, absolutely need need to trample, torture, and destroy life.

That is indicative of something very concerning.

This is what I mean when I say Macrophilia is at it’s core: Anti-Human

That is straight misogyny, and I’m one of those people that hate the overuse of the word “misogyny”, I never use it but here I am using it (If I’m not mistaken for the first time in serious context) because this is actually that disturbing.

Click “upvote” on the psychopath content (”content” lmfao, more like commissioned propaganda)

comment for more, make video games repeating the same exact, and I do mean SAME EXACT narrative.

(Yes, these goofballs make games & comics *they’re shit storytelling btw, absolute garbage, it’s not even appropriate for ironic cringe, it’s just bad*, it’s not creative either. But the lengths they go to to realize the exact same talking point they’ve heard a million times? The sheer determination to want to be demeaned, disrespected, & bullied by women and girls? That’s the impressive part. Again, I sincerely doubt they’d put that same effort in their kids. Just saying.)

further internalize male self-hatred as you were programmed to do so. Follow the script. Question nothing. Consume. Consume. Consume. Indulge, sink, drown.

You’d think they’d get bored of it, or maturity would fight it’s hardest to tame that beast of a brain in one’s cranium, and fit some sanity in there. God forbid

All in all, The American Culture state has weaponized women against men for decades now- so the fetish itself is not surprising or a shock.

Men or women wanting to give up “control” for a sense of security in being ruled or abused in every way possible by a giant entity (male or female) sounds ideal for a (giant entity) state/society/government that literally would love love loooove for men (aka the first & last line of defense of civilization) or women (first, second and last line of defense to the children AND the only natural threshold of new life) to bow down, and want to be slaves.

So (in general) if your protectors are too busy kissing the ground, who’s protecting you?

It’s why so many women are wondering what happened to men? Where did the men go? Why aren’t men performing?

To put it simply (fetish or no fetish), a lot of western men:

They’re broken. Tamed. Clipped. Sterilized. By the same entity that tells you you can have it all “The Party”, The collective, society, the entity, the giant.

Because there’s a lot more men committing self-termination than women, look it up. They’re suffering.

So most, not all- But all in all, women need better “uplifting” messages and the men are in serious need of society giving a crap about them.

It starts in the home, both the solution and the problem starts at home and the village/society. Because parents can do everything right and society will undo 70% of that work.

I’ve said all this before, and I will keep saying it until I’m dead & probably still talking & ranting from beyond the grave.

If I personally wanted to "RIP” a country, “If.” Theoretically

I would convince the men that being a man is toxic, that they shouldn’t be men, to the point where they actually want to give up their manhood.

Enable a superiority complex in the women regarding the men, to keep them in a constant state of resentment & entitlement and they don’t even know why. And the men are so passive & broken, they won’t challenge the women unless pushed, and when pushed, they will be frustrated, & what could result in a solution will just deepen the resentment on both sides.

And while one group is insufferable and the other one is groveling and pathetic and angry, or they just fight each other- The children are now exposed.

Corrupt the children, you take that country’s future. Checkmate.

Same with race.

Not a nuke, not poisoning the water- but poison how the people see each other.

Corrupt what they believe until they believe in nothing at all, not even in themselves, let alone their Gov., let alone their Homeland. Poison the culture. Keep them fighting, so when I do pull up on their doorstep, it’s too late.

[Destroy the traditional family first, the pillars. Trivialize values until you stand for nothing: Destroy the country]

Convince the Protector Class/Men they should want to be destroyed by the group of people they should be protecting in the first fucking place: That is the power of propaganda people, corruption of the natural instinct. Anti-Human.

Size is not power,

controlling what you see, influencing what you should think, what you don’t believe, who you hate, how to hate, what to hate, what to see as good, even now influence what you obsess over- To control how the world changes, controlling the triggers to your mind, propaganda, knowing you better than you know yourself, how to speak, what to say, weaponizing the mind against you, propaganda, that is power.

Message = Power

Always has been.

This is psychological warfare in real time. Brain-Malware, this is not a joke.

And trust and believe, I actually do have better things to do, I only talk this much because I actually give a hoot.

It’s just a crime that professionals with lengthier credentials WILL NOT tell you any of this.

Propaganda is CONTROL, and can convince you to give yours up.

Propaganda hurts you and conditions you to want to be hurt by the other half of humanity who’s entire instinct is community, birthing life, emotional propensity strength & nurturing. Things that glue civilization together.

Things that are trivialized by civilization but things that civilization needs to stay intact, that only women provide in a way only women (as a collective) can. That’s womanhood, but you’ll sooner hear about empowerment on a corporate ad on Youtube to sell some damn soap than these companies tell you (what I just said) that truth because people actually NEED to see and hear this.

Hear me out, women are physically softer, designed to be more pleasant and lovable to appeal. Even an average woman’s voice triggers pleasure chemicals in your brain.

But somehow the popular obsessive scenario in the cult is women destroying everything, with a smile, with pleasure, and obscene satisfaction. Absolute demon-spawn who’s birth is a mistake.

Sooooo the overtone being, again, that a woman with any power- is a threat to civilization? A threat to men.

Wow, that’s how you feel? Lmfao! Again, smells like misogyny. Smells like an implanted narrative.

See, majority of the “GTS” (Gratuitous Trivial Silliness) -producers just conjure their content to receive likes, appease the intrusive thoughts living rent-free in their head and most importantly validation for their Misandrist-macabre & maybe money from the fellow members.

The actual overtones of what they’re spreading out in the Human races digital continuity (Inter-Nets) and how that insults/slanders women or what that says about them because that’s coming from their own heart & mind about women- that will never sink in for them to devote 5 seconds of self-awareness.

Or they did, and just don’t care because they know nobody replying will say anything less than “More please!”

Too much dopamine addiction to the validation to properly think about the subtext or what they’re actually communicating by drawing/shooting/programming the same crap over and over again.

A beautifully implanted rotted seed (on part of the powers sabotaging men & women), twisted, horrifically sick joke.

Completely Anti-Human narrative, because who even portrays women like that, all women wanted was Equality. Why do we absolutely need them to loom over us like overlords when they actually just want someone to love them, listen to them, and see them? Flaws and all.

That’s all women want. Women are not a mystery, they’re just made to be complicated by the media & hacks that dictate the prevailing narrative that articles spread like wildfire, because women being complicated helps the disconnection. It romanticizes it.

Tell someone a lie enough times then it becomes true.

Some bro’s propagate “Woman with power is a man’s undoing” / “The threshold of life being the merchants of death” for a living and sleep at night without considering “Why is that coming from inside me” ?

Nothing.

This is why accountability, judgement, criticism is necessary.

It helps prevent society from becoming a mass asylum (where it gets to a point where a woman who steps on toys for a living is actually given an interview, yes this happened).

It never “hurts anyone” until it does-

Just. Ask. JAPAN.

(’2023 Japan Age of Consent Law change’, look it up and look up why they changed it)

Some commenter said something simple yet true on the same video where some goofy attention seeking woman who sells videos of herself stepping on plastic toys & sells said footage to mouth-breathers, she ultimately claimed “I’m a Giantess” (*nice job parents, good to know where Americano Tax dollars went)

And the commenter didn’t insult her, they didn’t say anything wild, no essay, no lecture, not even something I personally expected, they said simply:

“Western society has derailed.”,

that’s it. It’s not profound, but it’s so candid & haunting.

That stuck with me.

Because that’s the point.

And then if you’re not dealing with human footstools who want to be literal pets for giant-women, you have the other end of the spectrum: Man-Boyos who are actually toxic, the kind that grooms, unwanted advances persist then calls you a “bitch” because the situation didn’t play out how it did in his head, the R*9ists, harassers, stalkers etc.

Plenty of confidence, but misplaced, no humility, no maturity, nothing intelligent to say but talking the loudest. Can’t tell you how many times I almost threw hands with those types of dudes.

And in-between, you have the normies just trying to keep their heads down, live out whatever’s left of the “American Dream/ Theory”, racking up 50 exes every 6 months trying to figure it out because the only legacy society has to pass down to you is failure.

Consider this hookup culture where women are expected by a lot of men to be LVL99 Sexperts but if she’s had too many partners she’s considered damaged/used up/monkey branching by MGTOW groups...who in concept should be a good thing, some good messages, but overall just boil down to divorcees & bitters bashing women while sprinkling “male empowerment” on top of it.

Again, we need less empowerment and more principles. With principles, you won’t need someone rubbing your belly telling you you’re a special girl or a special boy.

She hits 30, she’s over the hill when actually 30-35 is physically prime time to have babies. 20-30 should be young women figuring it out (mentally, existential), as with any adult.

Or women told/encouraged to “experiment” or made to think they can have the swingers life at 19 and then settle down when it’s convenient.

Which they can, however, consequences don’t take a break because you’ve been taught to think that’s having fun- Then they’re worn & torn before they’re 25, just way too eager to sleep with 70% of America, like slow the hell down, jfc.

Have a laundry list of expectations for a man, but who you are doesn’t match half the good things you expect from him- How is that a recipe for success?

Just having your cake, eating it, and choking on it on both sides.

Both sides have podcasts asking “what happened?” or pointing the finger to the other side, when in reality--

We’re not enemies nor meant to fight in nature, powerful women are not a threat, civilization NEEDS that. We need more women that earn their power, & have something offer.

A woman with advantage is not something that will threaten civilization, that’s advancement you goofballs lol.

Ad proud men aren’t something to keep caged, broken and exercised.

We’re not even designed to fight each other. This is precisely the point as to how forced this all is.

We’re set up to be fractured and wedged from each other in a cultural sense. (because obviously people are still bumpin hips & having kids but some are not raising em worth a crap or training them to be useful or struggling to give them something good, or raising them up right just to be corrupted as soon as they leave the house, sometimes even earlier. some sects of Society are not even hiding that they are “coming for your kids”)

“Everyone knows what sex is, a lot of people know how to fuck. Nobody ‘makes love’ anymore.”

SO point being, finally, again: Propaganda is POWER. Propaganda is control (Not a new concept, it’s been said before). It creates delusions/& apparently fetishism. It creates false realities, conflict, disconnect. Lies. Lies. Lies. Propaganda is CONTROL.

“power & control“, two words macrocreeps obsess over in fantasyland- same two concepts that propaganda is meant to take away from you. That is NOT an accident.

Drive the American sexes apart, division makes for a weaker people, weaker people are easier to control, birthrates dropping since the 70s (Not an accident, look it up & it’s got nothing to do with women going to school and getting jobs)

And now Biden or the powers above him are making up the difference with an influx of illegals to compensate for what Americans are not birthing because of the disconnect and all the various side-effects of that and the propaganda.

American Feds has always been lacking, but this level of incompetence is not accidental. It’s sabotage. And it’s not new, it’s no different from how dope is implanted in Black communities so the community eats itself alive, remaining behind and seemingly primal.

Think about it, why would we need a New World Order, if one of the most iconic Empires on the planet is successful, healthy and thriving economically?

The answer is, you wouldn’t need a NWO if the U.S. is King or a threat or taken seriously.

(Even if you’re not the biggest fan of American history, or the current reputation they have with their poor wokeness & political embarrassments. Do not underestimate just how many countries look to America for reinforcement and an example & always have.)

So to fix that, you prevent The United States of America from EVER becoming a threat again.

And instead of picking a fight on the outside- infiltrate their political parties, infiltrate their culture, their pop-culture, propagandize what they watch, what the masses internalize, break the family down, drive apart men & women, promote alternative lifestyles, make truth an “insensitivity”, speaking truth punishable by legal persecution or being banned from social media (which is akin to erasing your existence in the modern age), and plant agents in the Senate that will (by vote) prevent any progress for the American people:

(Think in Newspeak or be banned for ‘violating community guidelines’, you vulgar swine) aka

“Social Media” aka 1984: The Prototype

“there is no war in ba sing se”

Pay off the leader to literally allow illegals (that coincidentally involve a good number of your own nationals) into their country and make the legal citizens who are already desperate for better healthcare to then pay for the toilet-paper the illegals wipe their ass with.

The illegals aren’t the problem, Americans are letting them in there. Look up what one of China’s border installations look like, it’s a FORTRESS out of a James Bond game.

Russia’s border doesn’t play either so why is America expected to be the fool?

Blatant sabotage. It’s all connected. Biden himself in ‘07 said a great nation can’t have weak borders (paraphrasing), now he’s changed his tune when what he said was 100% true.

Birthrates resulting from the disconnect, the disconnect resulting from propaganda, the fetish being the manifestation of the culture’s declining climate & hostility toward men and boys & trivialization of women & girls, dehumanizing humanity; As well as a symptom that the propaganda is working way better than intended.

OR? the scary part? It was calculated. (doubt it tho)

PROPAGANDA is power!!! Control how people perceive reality & themselves, you control the direction of that society.

Stepping on cities doesn’t compare to making a NATION eat itself over 50 years or less, it’s not even close. The slow knife cuts deepest, always have.

(Notice how i’ve belabored & repeated some points throughout, that’s a methodology of propaganda, bombard you with the same narrative so that the narrative sticks, I did that on purpose just so you get a sample of how this machine is operated. Repeat exposure is form of conditioning, hence fetishism, repeat exposure. Repeat the same message. Repeat the same message.)

And because it’s working, Americans are likely past the point of recovery, social media is a powerful tool as well as an effective distraction.

If it took this long to decline, imagine how long it will take to repair the damage, and Americas will never be allowed to fix anything, not before another tragedy conveniently strikes or another reason to fight each other conveniently arises, more distraction.

The problem starts where the solution does, in the home, in your culture. In your mind.

America needs more people, but the world is rotting, the times are going in a direction not suitable for children, or even if having/affording children is smart. You have a newborn that needs formula, you can’t afford insurance but your taxes are feeding an illegal’s kids.

Who in their right mind would reward a society with another mind to corrupt, another slave to bleed dry and it won’t even help you raise the child before trying to feed other people kids- who trespassed to begin with and our own homeless are being exiled from cities like the trash you walk on?! *ERROR404*

But we have 50MIL+ for trespassers.

It’s lose- lose for the modern Americano.

And don’t think Trump is the answer- while it is convenient that his trial happened just at the right time for this election to pop off (ideal distraction from something else going on in the world) these people will fight & debate on TV then have orgies on islands while you’re arguing with people you don’t know online because you think your political tribe is the answer to the world’s problems. When it’s all just manufactured chaos.

Make promises about things you can see, like “build the wall”, but bringing the country together? Bringing men and women together? Better healthcare WITHOUT subtext loopholes to fund backdoor deals in other countries?

These antagonist corporations causing this disconnect in advertisements & movies, will they be falling in line to help your people?

Do the bloodlines that OWN these corporate giants give a crap?

If that isn’t the argument in the Presidential debate, you’re voting for an agent. (And I keep saying “Agent”, because I repeat: WATCH THE MATRIX again. Hiding in plain sight baby, in plain sight.)

They do not care, they’re reading scripts, on orders. They promise you policy, when what will save you is unity in the culture. Literally just people getting along.

Help the culture maturing, growing up (pun intended, headass) , it will never happen.

Why would Americans want that, why would Americans ever want the only real progress that will save their country? Unity. Cooperation. Coexistence.

Apparently everything’s going great in America, why would people want actual progress that would fix everything, why would you ever want an actual solution when you can keep being promised one by people who don’t live in your community and own Islands to hand down to their great great-grands and yours live off of tips.

But you have 50 million+ big ones to spare for illegals? Hm, you cats got yourselves a paradise eh? Ready to fight everyone’s wars & fix everyone’s problems but your own.

Let them all in to keep families together, and drive your own people apart through movies, ads, games, articles, etc..

Your Gov. (and the powers above them) are giving Palpatine a run for his money when it comes to this Chess game play, my lord.

Ya’ll have been getting played, and played hard.

That’s the only “Domination” happening here, the powers playing on the uninitiated, broken, lonely & longing and above all: distracted.

Subliminally training so many to submit, hunt for likes from the collective, obey TOS or be erased (prototype martial law), and ironically want subjugation ie. train people to want what’s coming anyway.

All “they” (the token “they”) prevailing party- had to do was slap a woman on it. Genius. And the resulting atmosphere is hurting men and women, genius.

Life was not meant or designed to be like this. This is why there are problems.

Reverend Mother from DUNE PART TWO said it best:

“-there are no sides.“

#youtube #illegal immigration #wake up #government #corrupt #women #men #society failed you #women are not the enemy #men are not the problem #rant #lessermook #nature vs nurture

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