#sodone i lost a friend i lost my mind

[sodone-withlife]

i lost a friend (i lost my mind)

Criminal Minds Fic Part Three

| PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 |

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: character death, canon-typical violence, mental instability (I’m reluctant to name a specific disorder or condition)

Notes: cross-posted on Ao3, and this was my first whumpfic in this fandom so forgive me if it sucks. this is canon-compliant until after 12.01 The Crimson King

“What do I regret? I regret that we just took it as it was, that we didn’t look harder.”

Rossi thought about how he ended up in this situation, bulletproof vest on as he faced the one person he never expected to be at the other end of his gun, that he might have to take down.

He met the kid nearly twenty years ago on the Womb Raider case and immediately recognized raw potential when the kid told him about what he gathered from the dumpsite. They kept in contact even after Rossi went back to Quantico, and he spent the next year trying to get him to apply to become a profiler. The kid did eventually join them in Quantico, and he quickly proved to be a quick study with an incredible intuitive ability.

He ended up retiring a few months after the kid joined, but he kept in contact and they met for dinner a few times. While he wrote books, the kid became unit chief, all the while expanding the BAU to involve more than just a few profilers in a cramped cave that had been their office.  

When he rejoined the team, he watched as the kid—he’ll always be ‘the kid’ to him, no matter how good his glare got over the years—struggled to reconcile the failure of his marriage and his own feelings of being a failure as a father.

He watched as the kid obsessively hunted the Boston Reaper, turned to self-blame when seven people were found shot dead in a bus, as the kid realized the killer was in front of them the whole time, as he reacted to the news of Foyet’s escape.

He worried as the kid didn’t turn up when called, as they found him in the hospital after getting stabbed nine times, as his family were put into protective custody, as he walked into a confrontation unarmed and managed to save a child the day he returned from medical leave.

He watched as the kid obsessed and worked himself to the bone over the Reaper, as he stepped down and put Morgan in charge, as the team raced to find Foyet before he could get to the kid’s family.

He watched as he found the kid savagely hitting a dead body, as he found him later clinging onto the body of the woman he had loved, as the kid turned into a shell of himself while trying to be a good father for his son.

He watched as the kid tried to remain the unwavering pillar of strength for the team, as he was sent to the other side of the world away from his family for half a year, as he came back from Pakistan looking much too thin for a man his size and faced a wall of anger and betrayal.

He watched as the kid slowly found love again, as he tried to help Reid get through what he himself went through just over two years ago, as he tried to help his estranged brother get out of a mess of drugs and spikings.

He watched as the kid collapsed on the conference room floor and had to be rushed to the hospital, as George Foyet managed to kill him twice as he flatlined in the ambulance and in the operating room.

He watched as the kid tried to help solve Gideon’s murder, as he ended things with his new love.

He watched as the kid ended up on the other end of a serial killer’s obsession, as he hallucinated the whole team getting killed in front of him, as he nearly shot and killed Reid as he came in through the door.

He watched as the kid struggled to hide his terrors, as he tried to eliminate the threat against two of his teammates, as he tried to stop Morgan from doing what he had done six years ago in a frenzy that only resulted in the love of his life getting killed, as he was arrested at gunpoint in front of his son.

He watched as the kid tried not to let seeing the victim with his name carved into her forehead get to him, as he tried not to go out of his mind in worry about his son while he was stuck in a snowstorm, as he tried to keep everything inside in the months that followed, as he went through his daily life without really living.

Now, a memory of a conversation he had with Gideon rose to the forefront of his mind. Rossi hadn’t questioned it then, but now he wondered if Gideon saw this outcome, all those years ago.

He wondered if Gideon saw this when the kid came in all those years ago, absolutely smitten with his wife and yet hiding darkness deep inside him, when the kid easily slipped in and out of the minds of the worst humanity has to offer.

A year ago, just a day after Hotch was admitted into the hospital after being subjected to whatever torture Peter Lewis managed came up with, Prentiss had returned to the BAU. Hotch was going to be on leave for quite some time, given the nature of the drugs he had inhaled and what had happened when the team rescued him.

He remembered confessing his worries to her, that Hotch wouldn’t make it through to the other side with this one, that Hotch’s too-brilliant mind (brilliant not in the way that Reid was, but in the way that a prosecutor turned SWAT turned profiler’s brain was) would figure out a way to end it all, even though he was on suicide watch.

He remembered one early morning, a few weeks after Hotch had been discharged, when Prentiss was suddenly called into a meeting with the Director. He remembered seeing her sprinting back into the office, abandoning all professionalism as she stormed into the office next to his.

He remembered freezing at the doorway. It was bare of any signs of the previous owner: the heavy law books, the pictures, the awards, the small mementos from the team—they were all gone.

He missed the others’ reactions as they read the last words the—now former—unit chief left for them as he left the office and drove to Hotch’s apartment, only to find it completely bare with an envelope left on the door with Rossi’s name on it.

He remembered the days that followed, as Garcia and Reid desperately tried to search for the man who had completely dropped off the face of the earth, as Prentiss tried to fill Hotch’s shoes for the team.

He remembered JJ asking him about Jack and the pure, unfettered sadness that he let show on his face.

He remembered the horror saw in the others when he quietly told them that the ten-year-old had collapsed at school six months ago, soon after the DOJ fiasco, while Hotch was stuck in a blizzard in the middle of a case in Colorado, that Hotch didn’t make it to the hospital in time to see Jack awake one more time.

That Jack’s heart gave out on him while he was breaking every speed limit while driving Hotch to the hospital.

That Hotch was too late, just like he was too late with Haley seven years ago.

That Hotch spent the last six months hiding his grief and desolation, throwing himself entirely into work and doing the bare minimum in regards to his health.

That after a man, the husband of a murdered victim and father of a child who died of cancer just a few days later, committed suicide, he had forced Hotch to live at his place for two weeks so he could make sure the still-grieving father would wake up every day, alive and breathing.

He remembered hating that the straw that broke the camel’s back was of the Mr. Scratch nature.

He remembered wondering, not for the first time, how damaged affected Hotch’s psyche was.

Today, nine months to the day Hotch resigned from the bureau, he got his answer: incredibly damaged.

Rossi thought back to the profile they had given the Boston PD.

~~~

“The man we’re looking for is in his mid 30s to mid 40s and exhibits traits of both an organized and disorganized killer,” Rossi started, looking out into the Boston PD bullpen. “It is also highly likely that he fathered a son who is around 4-5 years old. He has recently suffered a personal tragedy, likely one that involved losing his son and wife in a way he feels responsible for.”

“The crime scenes itself demonstrate a high level of intelligence and control, but that control is shattered when it comes to the men,” JJ added. “We tracked their last movements, and it seems that these men all frequented BDSM clubs.” Everyone in the room got the unsaid message: the men were cheating on the wives.

“He may be using the men’s infidelity as justification for his actions,” she finished the thought.

“When we talked to the children, they said they remembered the unsub being very angry at the fathers,” Luke picked up from where Tara left off. “This, in addition to the level of overkill he exhibited and the smashed mirrors at every house, may be a manifestation of the unsub’s own self-hatred and of his desire to make others feel his pain and guilt.”

“The children also said that the unsub was incredibly nice to them and the wife and that he apologized before he knocked the kids out,” Reid interjected from where he was sitting at the side of the room. “This man has a fractured psyche: he’s able to exhibit care and consideration one moment, shoot a person in three vital regions the next, and then destroy a face post-mortem in a fit of angry self loathing. This will show in his day to day life.”

“We’d like for your officers to canvas bars and clubs in the area,” Prentiss instructed, “ and ask the workers if they know anyone who may fit the profile: again, male, 30s to 40s, may have recently suffered a tragedy, and may be acting erratically—asked for time off, mood swings, anything out of the ordinary.”

~~~

They had gotten it completely right, but, looking at the man playing with the child in front of him, Rossi still felt like they had completely missed the mark.

“Let the kid go,” Rossi ordered quietly.

“Dave, why are you calling him that?” came the quiet baritone, the dearly-missed voice inciting within Rossi a strange rush of familiarity and fear. “You know his name.”

It can’t be the kid’s actual name that he wants, look at the body language, it’s so protective. So what—Rossi briefly closed his eyes as a flash of grief overtook him.

“Hotch, please,” he finally said, placing his gun away and slowly moving around the man so that he could see the child. “Let Jack go, he doesn’t need to see this.”

That got a reaction out of the man, who looked up and shocked Rossi with the sheer depth of broken protectiveness that was in his expression. “He needs me,” Hotch insisted, his next words sending a bolt of shock through Rossi’s system. “He just lost his mother.”

Rossi kneeled down cautiously, mind racing. “Hotch, do you know what day it is?”

Hotch sent him a confused look. “It was Haley’s funeral yesterday,” he answered, breath hitching at the end as he looked away. His eyes locked onto the ballistics vest Rossi was wearing, noticing it for the first time. “Why are you wearing a ballistics vest? Is everything alright?”

Rossi’s eyes began to burn as he realized what was going on. “Hold on, I’m going to go get something, and then I’ll explain everything, alright?” he said, standing up and feeling relief at the responding nod. He quickly walked back into the living room where the others were waiting, only stopping to tell them to stay there before grabbing the case file they had brought with them.

“Come here,” he beckoned Hotch over, placing the file on the desk in front of the window in the sparsely decorated bedroom.

Hotch left the child on the ground and walked over, still confused. “A case?” he asked absently as he flipped through the reports with a focus that hadn’t been since eighteen months ago, when he was still with the bureau, before that fateful day.

Unseen, Rossi went to the child and quickly ushered him out of the bedroom, making sure that he got to one of the others before going back inside, making it back to Hotch before he looked up from the file.

“What do you make of it?” Rossi indicated the folder, tone even as he successfully hid the turmoil within. He watched with a pang as Hotch easily slipped back into old habits, verbalizing his observations and yet remaining utterly oblivious to the significance they hold to him.

Hotch paused, looking around. “Where’s Jack?” he asked Rossi, panic seeping into his voice when he realized the child was gone. He backed away from Rossi, who had stepped carefully towards him, hands up placatingly. “Dave, what’s going on? Where’s Jack?”

The situation was all too painfully familiar.

“Hotch, you know that isn’t Jack,” Rossi said carefully. “His name is Charlie Summers. Yesterday wasn’t Haley’s funeral. It’s November 2020, and you’re in Boston, not in Virginia.”

“What are you talking about?” Hotch looked at him as if he were crazy.

Rossi pressed forward. “Do you remember what happened eighteen months ago, when you were taken by Peter Lewis?” he asked as Hotch froze in his place. “He had you for a day. He had taken you to your childhood home in Manassas, do you remember that? He drugged and tortured you. We found you just in time, but you almost killed yourself.”

He watched as blood leached out of the man’s face, as he started rapidly shaking his head. “You were discharged from the hospital a week later,” Rossi pushed, hating every second that passed while he tried to pull Hotch out of the delusion. “And while you were still on medical leave, you sent in your resignation and asked that Emily Prentiss, who had come back while you were in the hospital—”

“Take my place as unit chief,” Hotch finished in a whisper, staring at the floor and shaking like a leaf. Rossi rushed forward, flashing back to the day Hotch got that devastating phone call as he caught the man and lowered him to the ground—holding and comforting him, despite the circumstances, just as he had done back in that hotel room.

A few minutes passed, filled with harsh breathing as reality set in.

“Why?” Rossi finally asked the once stoic and unmovable unit chief, now reduced to just another unsub—only he wasn’t just another unsub. He was the man who held the elite profiling team together as they went through hell and back, the man who had reignited Rossi’s dormant paternal instincts.

He wondered if it had been a good idea to ask that question when Hotch remained silent, placing his head between his knees and still shaking as reality continued to seep back in.

“His voice,” Hotch finally muttered, “He wouldn’t stop. Taunting, laughing, talking, talking about how people are ungrateful and should be taught to be thankful for what they have that the children don’t deserve—” he broke off with a whimper covering his ears with his hands.

“Hotch?” He didn’t answer, even as Rossi forcefully brought his head back up. His eyes were squeezed shut and he had bit deep into his lip, drawing blood. “Aaron,” Rossi tried, raising his voice only to get knocked onto his back when the aforementioned man reflexively shoved him away, causing him to hit the bed then fall to the ground.

Hearing the crash, the team fell back onto instincts and rushed into the bedroom with their guns out and ready, only to see Rossi staring helplessly at the once-proud man curling into himself in the corner and letting out painful, guttural cries as the last pieces of his mind finally shattered under the weight of the demons he spent his entire life fighting.

[sodone-withlife]

i lost a friend (i lost my mind)

Criminal Minds Fic Part One

| PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 |

Word Count: 2.2k

Warnings: character death, canon-typical violence, mental instability (I’m reluctant to name a specific disorder or condition)

Notes: cross-posted on Ao3, and this was my first whumpfic in this fandom so forgive me if it sucks. this is canon-compliant until after 12.01 The Crimson King

everyone has a breaking point. especially those who have been at war with the demons in their mind for their entire life.

“Hotch? There’s a lead… ” Rossi knocked on the door of the office he had taken over in the station, having come to let him know of a new lead they got on the child abduction-murder case they had been working on for the past three days in Colorado, only to pause in the doorway. Instead of seeing him wide-awake and sitting at the desk with the case file and piles of paperwork spread around him, the senior profiler was treated to the sight of the unit chief pacing around the room and twisting his hands, a nervous tic he usually hid and rarely gave into.

His concern grew as he took note of the phone that was tossed unceremoniously onto the ground and the papers that were strewn all over the floor and desk. He went to close the blinds to give them some privacy.“What happened?”

The unit chief stopped pacing but didn’t respond, only placing his hands on the edge of the desk and hunching over, trembling and breathing heavily.

“Aaron?”

He looked up, the pure terror clear in his eyes causing an icy, foreboding feeling to creep up Rossi’s spine.

“Jack collapsed at school.”

A bolt of understanding shot through Rossi. He walked into the room, taking a closer look at the panicking father (—he wasn’t the hardass unit chief right now, he was a single father who had no other biological family left apart from his son, who he almost lost to the machinations of a madman—) when he noticed the shaking arms, clearly struggling to support his weight. He made it to him just in time to prevent him from crashing to the ground as his legs gave out.

Rossi held his shaking form, allowing him to try and gather his bearings. Hotch took a shuddering breath in. “Jessica called me about ten minutes ago, the reception’s been really bad and apparently she’s been trying to reach me all day…Jack’s in the hospital right now. They think—” he swallowed, voice breaking. “They think it’s because of the pulmonary valve anomaly he was born with.”

Hotch looked up at Rossi, eyes glassy as he rambled on. “The doctors said he’d probably never have to worry about it much, especially with how well he dealt with the stress of—” his breath hitched and he looked down, unable to force the words out of his mouth. The older agent knew what he was talking about immediately and held him tighter, trying to give him some measure of comfort.

“You should head back,” Rossi said firmly. “Jack needs you more than we do.” He was surprised to feel him shaking his head.

“Oh, believe me, I’d be on my way to the airstrip right now if I could,” he let out a bitter laugh, “but the unit is already facing more budget cuts, I can’t—I won’t—take the jet. Besides,” he cut off his protest, “no sane pilot would fly in this weather, not even for a father whose child might be dying for all he knew—” he choked out, squeezing his eyes shut as a few tears slipped out.

Rossi internally raged at all the deities he could think of for putting his former protégé—practically his surrogate son—through the works. First, he had lost his marriage, then lost Haley to a psychopath obsessed with making his life hell. Not even a year had gone by after that when he had to fake a teammate’s death and accepted a laborious assignment on the other side of the globe in order to cope with the secrets. Then came Foyet’s return from the grave via his torn internal adhesions, Mr. Scratch, the DOJ fiasco, and now this—

Hotch suddenly stood up, having regained tight control over the storm inside. “You said we had a lead?” he asked, his affect completely transforming as he moved to tidy the room.

Had Rossi not known Hotch for as long as he had, he wouldn’t have been able to pick the stress out of his standard clipped tone or the tension that was coiled in his upper body. He stood up and gave him a look behind his back, sighing when he remained unwaveringly silent as he waited for an answer.

Rossi knew there was no point in trying to force Hotch to stay, well aware of his history with being rendered helpless and unable to do anything while a loved one was in danger. “Yeah, one of the parents got an angry phone call from an unknown caller, and you know Garcia set up the trap-and-trace a few hours ago…”

~~~

The team immediately noticed something was off when Hotch and Rossi walked into the conference room half an hour later than they’d expected. The concern grew even more as they noticed their unit chief being more short-tempered and single-mindedly focused than usual—which really was saying something, as he had always pushed himself and the team harder when children were involved.

When they turned to look at Rossi in the rare moment that Hotch wasn’t there for a few moments, however, they only got a serious shake of his head. This and the unit chief’s transformation into Mr. Hyde prevented them from expressing any verbal concern in front of him.

The profiling team spent the next hour trying to maintain a stable connection with Garcia through repeated power shutdowns. The two hours after that was spent outside in the darkness and snowstorm, working with local law enforcement raiding the house Garcia had tracked the call to.

They got there just in time to save the child from dying of hypothermia after being buried in the snow as the other two victims had been just prior to their death. Hotch went after the fleeing unsub with Reid while the others stayed behind to comfort the child and accompanied them on the (thankfully) short drive to the local hospital.

By the time the whole team came back together, the storm had died down and the sun was rising. All too eager to leave the horrific case and weather behind them, it took no longer than twenty minutes for them to be packed and on the way to the airstrip.

The profilers were reminded of Hotch’s strange behavior, however, when they noticed his hands were clenched on the steering wheel and his stoic expression starting to give way to stress as he sped towards the airstrip—that Rossi was busy shooting worried looks at him also added to their suspicions.

On the plane, they watched as Hotch got up to take a call, only to return looking paler than he had been before. He clutched his phone tightly between his hands, rubbing at his knuckles in some measure of self-comfort while trying to control the storm of emotions he was struggling to hold back.

After a few minutes, Rossi went to sit opposite Hotch in the corner. He didn’t say anything, just observed Hotch as he resolutely avoided looking at the other profiler in favor of looking outside the window.

“I’ve called ahead,” Rossi began in an undertone, knowing the man could hear him. “There’s going to be a car right where we land, and I will be driving you straight to the hospital.”

Hotch flicked a scathing look at him. “I can drive myself,” he snapped.

“You are in no condition to drive,” Rossi retorted, raising his voice over his protests, “without harming yourself or others. Jack needs you alive, not wrapped around a pole somewhere along the way to the hospital!”

The silence that was in the jet was deafening as Rossi belatedly realized that the others had heard him and were trying to act as if they weren’t eavesdropping. Hotch looked away from the older profiler, who was looking at him apologetically; there was a moment of silence.

“I don’t know what I’d do if he—” he trailed off, not wanting to think about the worst. Pain and fear broke through his weakened barriers and showed plainly in his expression. “I can’t lose him.”

He had felt the team’s eyes on him from the moment he stepped out of that office at the promise of a new lead, and he could feel them on him now. While normally he would have shot them a look to get them to stop, right now, he couldn’t find it in himself to care as the statistics remained the forefront thought in his mind.

Hotch was all too ready to leave the plane when they landed after two hours of tense silence and worried looks. True to what Rossi said, there was indeed a car waiting for them next to the plane. Hotch didn’t bother grabbing his go-bag, only taking his smaller work bag before practically sprinting out of the plane, Rossi following close behind. The team was left watching the car speed away, worry about their unit chief and the boy who had grown up around the BAU weighing heavily on their minds.

~~~

Hotch was back in his office the next morning as if nothing had happened—only something had definitely happened, as he was even more closed off, colder than he had ever been before. Any attempts to get him to open up about what had happened were rebuffed, even with Reid and Rossi’s individual cajoling attempts. The attempts lessened by the next week with a sudden influx in requests for consultation, and they completely died down when new leads on the escaped serial killers came to light.

They all noticed, however, how their unit chief remained closed off, how he was more single-mindedly focused on the job than he’d ever been before—which was really saying something.

Things almost came to a head two months after the child murder case when they had a married victim who was leaving behind a husband and a stage 4 cancer-ridden child. Hotch had taken the lead in talking to the husband and came out advising that he be surveilled, glaring at the weakly protesting officer until the officer finally conceded and agreed to put him on watch.

The unit chief then completely threw himself into finding the unsub, barely stopping for coffee and bathroom breaks as he analyzed the crimes over and over again, creating and tossing theory after theory. It took Rossi and Luke’s manhandling and JJ’s mothering to get him back to the hotel as the clock ticked towards midnight on Night 1.

Sleep was clearly the last thing on his mind that night, however, as he came back into the station the next morning looking as haggard as ever with what must have been his tenth cup of coffee in the past twenty-four hours held tightly in his hand.

They all breathed an internal sigh of relief when a lucky break in the case led them right to the unsub later that day; they managed to take him into custody and the team was in the air by sunset, all settling in for a quiet flight.

About an hour in, Hotch moved from his seat in the front corner to the back of the plane to take a call. The rest of the team, preoccupied with their relatively quiet poker game, didn’t try to eavesdrop.

The team was pulled out of their focus a few minutes later when out of nowhere, a muffled thump came from the plane bathroom, followed by Hotch brushing past them and sitting heavily in his seat. The profilers exchanged unsure, worried glances—Hotch rarely, if ever, lost his cool—and stared back at the man, who had broken the blank facade he had maintained over the past few months and was hunched over the table, head in his hands.

Feeling the eyes on him, Hotch sighed. “That was Garcia,” he said, rubbing his face before leaning back.

“The kid succumbed to the cancer today, and his father was found in the house,” he swallowed, looking up at the ceiling. “There was a gun in his hand and a bullet entry wound on the roof of his mouth.”

The plane’s machinery became the only noise filling the air. No one moved as each profiler turned inward and digested the information. Their thoughts turned to a sinking realization when they remembered Hotch telling the locals to watch the father—the unit chief must have seen this possibility when he was talking with him.

The rest of the plane ride was spent in subdued silence as they slowly drifted away from the poker group they had formed in the center, turning to their personal methods of self-comfort.

Hotch immediately sent the profilers home for some time off after they landed, ordering them to not think about the BAU for that time. They complied without protest, going home to process and take comfort in what they had.

They wouldn’t learn until much later about how Hotch had stayed behind, trying to do as much in regards to what’s required in the aftermath of a field case for the team as possible. How Rossi had stayed in the office with him, knowing that there was no way that he was going home before he got work done.

How he stayed at Rossi’s place for the next two weeks—even after the team returned to work—because he wasn’t sure if his surrogate son would be making it out of his apartment alive.

[sodone-withlife]

i lost a friend (i lost my mind)

Criminal Minds Fic Part Two 

| PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 |

Word Count: 3.4k

Warnings: character death, canon-typical violence, mental instability (I’m reluctant to name a specific disorder or condition)

Notes: cross-posted on Ao3, and this was my first whumpfic in this fandom so forgive me if it sucks. this is canon-compliant until after 12.01 The Crimson King

For Rossi, who had seen the case file and personally witnessed the aftermath, it was a horrifyingly familiar scene. The door was left unlocked, keys were tossed on the side table, a work bag on the couch, shattered glass on the ground with amber liquid spilled all over the tile, and a phone next to the dark red bloodstain on the carpet. The only thing missing from the perfectly staged scene was the gun that had been left on the table seven year ago

The lingering scent of sage told Rossi everything he needed to know, however: he had probably gotten to the apartment only minutes after Peter Lewis left and had taken Hotch with him. When Rossi had called to check in on him, he was probably already preoccupied with the escaped criminal. With the drugs, though, he thought gravely, the struggle would not have lasted long.

As he called the crime scene techs, some distant part of Rossi’s mind wondered if this was how Emily had felt seven years ago when she had come over to check on Hotch. It took thirty minutes for the techs to arrive at the apartment complex, and while waiting Rossi jotted down all that he could see in an effort to avoid going out of his mind with worry.

He stayed in the apartment while the techs were there, hoping to be able to preserve what he could after they turned the place upside down as they processed the scene. While he waited, he made a series of calls: first to Cruz to inform him of the situation, then to each of the team to tell them to head back to the office.

When Rossi finally arrived back at the BAU, he was accosted by the team, voices overlapping as they demanded information. He raised his voice.

“Hotch has been taken.”

He was met with shocked silence and gave them a moment before plunging forward. “I called multiple times to check in on him, but it went straight to voicemail each time. I got to his apartment, and it was staged just as it was seven years ago. The only thing missing was the gun on the table, and there was a lingering scent of sage.”

“Peter Lewis?” “Mr. Scratch?” Tara and JJ asked simultaneously.

“I considered the possibility of a copycat, but it’s too perfectly staged. That case was highly classified, and it hasn’t been hacked since the Replicator, and we know how smart that guy was. That victim in Arizona, and now this?” He trailed off, sending a grave look at Reid and JJ, the only others apart from Garcia and Hotch who had been there for both cases he referred to.

Reid finished the thought. “It’s definitely him.”

~~~

Hours passed as Cruz managed to wrangle leeway for the team, turning their cases over to other teams so they could direct their focus on finding their unit chief. With every lead Garcia found and they tracked that ended with another hint to yet another location, they became more and more certain that Scratch was toying with the profilers.

JJ had the presence of mind to ask after Jack, to which Rossi assured her he was safe and taken care of. It wasn’t a lie, he told himself, trying not to think about the team’s reaction when they would inevitably find out. I just mean it in a different way.

“We are getting nowhere with chasing whatever the hell Peter goddamn Lewis is leaving for us,” Garcia burst out in frustration, nineteen hours twenty-three minutes and seven seconds after Rossi discovered Hotch was missing. JJ placed a calming hand on her shoulder, even as she agreed with the analyst’s frustration.

“We need to take a step back, we’ve been pursuing this track since the beginning,” she shook her head and stood up, gesturing for the near-tears analyst to join her. “Bring a laptop, we’re going to get the others and try to look at this from another perspective.”

The team quickly gathered in the conference room, tension thick in the air as they looked to JJ.

“I think we need to look at this differently,” she told them. “We’ve been chasing what Scratch has been deliberately leaving us from the beginning, and that has gotten us nowhere.” She looked around the table at her colleagues. “Hotch is his target—the attacks directed at him have been designed to be the most psychologically damaging—so let’s look at the case from that direction.”

“Profile and dig into Hotch, you mean?” Reid clarified, feeling a strange mix of excitement and terror at the prospect, especially given the situation.

Rossi nodded slowly in agreement, speaking up after having spent the last few hours in angry silence as he chased down leads. “And figure out what Scratch might use, like what we did seven years ago—with Foyet”

“Okay, I’m sorry for interrupting, but can someone explain who this Foyet guy is?” Luke interrupted, a confused look on his face as those who had been present for that case went silent.

“George Foyet, also known as the Boston Reaper,” Rossi finally said after a few moments, vivid memories of that year pushing to the front of his mind. “Almost eight years ago, he broke into Hotch’s apartment and stabbed him nine times before dropping him off at the hospital. When Hotch broke through the anesthesia, we figured out that the Reaper was planning to go after his family, and so his wife and child entered protective custody.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “What we didn’t know was that the Reaper had been watching the marshal and Hotch’s family from the moment they entered the program, and almost a year later, he made his move.”

He sighed, shaking his head. “Hotch had to listen as the woman he’d loved since high school got killed over the phone. When he finally got to the Reaper, he ended up killing him with his bare hands before he could hurt Jack.”

He looked at the horrified expressions on the newer profilers’ faces. “Everything was very different after that—understandably, of course. It was pure hell for him, and we made it a point to not talk about it unless he brought it up first.”

There were a few moments of heavy silence before Luke spoke up, an idea coming to him. “You said the staging in Hotch’s apartment was practically identical to the scene after Foyet attacked him?”

At Rossi’s nod, he sat up straight and quickly laid out his idea. “Scratch gets off on psychological torture, and that was proven by his attacks on Hotch. Knowing this, is it possible for him to have found another place of similar significance to Hotch that he might take him to?”

The profilers thought back on their interactions with the unit chief but shook their heads as they came up empty. They looked to Rossi, who stared at the center of the table, looking conflicted.

“Rossi?” JJ asked carefully. The man blinked, making a decision as he sat up straight.

“Manassas,” he said simply. At their confused looks, he clarified, “his hometown. He inherited his childhood home after his mother died, but he never went back, not once since he left for college.” He didn’t offer additional information, letting the others draw their own conclusions from the loaded explanation.

“Um, guys?” Garcia interjected, hand moving rapidly over her keyboard. “I’ve been keeping an eye out for any weird activity on the servers, and I just picked up an intruder in the system… it looks like they’ve implanted a link into Hotch’s file.” The team’s focus snapped to the analyst, who froze in horror.

“Garcia?” JJ asked concernedly. The aforementioned analyst stiffly grabbed the remote, turning on the larger screen, which showed what was on her laptop screen. The team turned to look, only for Rossi to leap up as their expressions morphed into one of horrified realization when they recognized who was thrashing on the bed, fighting against his restraints.

“Can you trace its origin?” Tara asked quietly, transfixed.

Garcia nodded quickly. “Yeah, I’m doing that right now, but it’s only being viewed by us right now.”

Reid fidgeted, unable to tear his eyes away from the sheer terror in his boss’s eyes. “Everything Scratch does is deliberate. This hack isn’t even discreet, so he clearly wants us to know about it and find the stream,” he thought aloud.

“It’s coming from Manassas.” Garcia looked up at Rossi, who looked both upset and relieved that his hypothesis was correct. “But it was only routed through a few proxy servers. It’s like he wants it to be this easy.”

An oppressive silence fell over the team.

“What the hell is his endgame?” Luke finally asked.

No one knew how to answer.

~~~

In the end, it didn’t matter what his endgame was. When Garcia managed to find surveillance confirming Scratch’s presence in Manassas, they went to Cruz. It was decided—reluctantly, on the team’s part—that the FBI tactical unit would move in while the profilers would be on standby on the chance that he would decide to play games.

(There was also a tacit agreement between the brass and the agents that, no matter what, Peter Lewis would never see the light of day again.)

They got to Manassas in under an hour and spent just as much time talking to the local PD and giving them a rundown on the situation. It was nearly sundown when they finally got into position around the run-down house after sweeping it extensively—they were under no illusions that he didn’t hide traps around the property.

“Anyone have a visual?” Rossi took the lead, asking into the radio.

“Affirmative on Peter Lewis, second floor southeast window.”

“Do not take the shot,” he instructed back over the radio as Garcia pulled up that live feed on the screens the profilers were huddled around inside the command vehicle. Much to their cautious surprise, Peter Lewis was standing in full view with his back to the window, looking down and seemingly watching something.

“What’s he doing?” JJ asked the question on all of their minds. No one answered her, all trying to decipher what they could see of his body language while knowing full well he was probably doing this on purpose.

The camera zoomed in. They watched as he deliberately turned to face the agents outside and smiled, eerily serene as he looked at the agents surrounding the house.

A movement in the background darkness caught Reid’s attention. “Is that…?” he started, pointing at the monitor. The others leaned in closer, only to jerk back when the sound of two gunshots came from the house.

“Oh my god,” Garcia breathed as JJ, Reid, and Tara looked back at the screen, Rossi and Luke having run outside to accompany the tactical team. The four stared as Peter Lewis slowly slid out the window he was hanging limply from, smearing dark red blood on the ledge and dropped bonelessly to the balcony under him, dead with two shots: one to the heart and one to the head.

~~~

Hotch (—not Aaron, never Aaron again, never, never, nevernevernever—) whirled around when he heard heavy footsteps heading towards his direction. He struggled to push past the blurry distortion of his vision while the part of his psyche which fractured back when he was a child tried to bring him back into his head (it’s not safe, it never was safe why are you trying so hard—).

(—nonono why are you aiming the gun what if it’s the team you’ll never forgive yourself for this—)

(—but what if it isn’t? What if Scratch planted that idea into your head, what if you didn’t actually shoot him, what if it was just the drugs, what if—)

“Aaron?”

(—no, no, no, NOT AARON) He flinched, limbs feeling both like lead and air as he stumbled over his feet trying to back away.

“Hotch?”

The room stopped spinning for just a brief moment, but long enough for Hotch’s eyes to clear and take in three things:

There were three members of the FBI tactical team in front of him with their semi automatics pointed at him

Rossi and Luke were standing just behind them at the doorway, Rossi in front and gun holstered with their hands in the air

He was pointing a gun at them, and his finger was resting over the trigger

(—what the hell is happening why am I preparing to shoot why do they have their weapons out why is Rossi looking like that is that even Rossi—)

Regarding what he was seeing with distrust, he kept his gun out and aimed at them as he whirled around to check what was behind him.

His gaze zeroed in on the blood smears, vaguely lowering the gun as he walked closer, tilting his head, transfixed. He looked over the window ledge to where the smears stopped and promptly stopped breathing. (—no, no, no I was right it was the drugs I didn’t actually kill him it was the drugs the drugsthedrugsthe drugs—)

Peter Lewis looked back at him, and eyes wide open.

In a split second, he leaped over the ledge and made his way to where Peter Lewis was, barely feeling the pain as his bare feet landed on the rocky and weathered stone floor of the balcony.

“Now I know what scares you,” his words (—the same ones from the first time no no no—) floated over to him, his mouth stretched open in a Glasgow smile.

Hotch blinked once, trembling as the sight before him shifted: Scratch had a dark red hole in his forehead and a dark red stain on his chest, blood pooling under him and looking well and truly dead.

He blinked again. There was that terrible smile again, his taunting voice talking to him again.

His shaking became more and more pronounced as Peter Lewis shifted from being dead to being alive, over and over and over—

He dropped to his knees, forcefully closing his eyes and putting his left hand over his ear as felt blindly for a pulse on Scratch’s neck as he tried to block out the distorted, taunting laugh.

(—I can’t feel one, but is he really dead? Am I just missing the pulse point? Wait, is that a pulse? No, no, no, he has to be dead hehastobedeadpleasehehasto—)

The laugh grew in volume as Hotch wrenched his arm away from his head and grabbed the gun he had dropped on the ground with his right hand.

(—why is it so loud why won’t he leave please get out please get OUT—)

A sharp, burning pain ripped through his side, but all he felt was relief as everything—including that terrible laugh and taunting—finally started to fade away into white noise, as his vision darkened and took the insane eyes away from his sight.

A sudden warmth engulfed him, and he knew no more.

~~~

Rossi’s heart stopped when he followed three of the tactical team into the room Scratch had been in. There was Hotch, blood dripping from multiple cuts on his face and still dressed in what he had gone to work in—only his shirt was hanging open and stained by the blood from the wounds that Scratch reopened after years of healing and scar treatments.

It took a second for him to realize why the tactical agents still had their weapons out: Hotch had a Glock aimed at them. He shoved down the instinct to keep his gun out as he realized the unit chief’s eyes were glazed, darting all over as he pressed his left hand to the side of his head and periodically closed his eyes and leaned into it as if he were in pain.

Instead, Rossi put his gun back in his holster and lifted his hands up. He ignored the sharp intakes of breath he could hear from Luke behind him when he found the standoff as Rossi tried for some familiarity.

It hurt to see him flinch and stumble backward when he tried using his first name. “Hotch?” he tried again, relieved to see his eyes clear. Rossi saw the moment Hotch become more cognizant of his surroundings—when he whipped his head around to check behind him.

Rossi watched as some of the tension drained out when Hotch slowly lowered his gun and turned his whole body away from them. “Hotch?” Rossi tried again, slowly moving forward and internally panicking when he didn’t respond.

He froze halfway across the room when Hotch looked over the window ledge, then he realized what had caught his attention when he climbed over and just stood, looking down.

Rossi looked out towards the front, noting Reid, JJ, Garcia, Tara, and other agents outside carefully watching the scene unfold, and then back inside, gesturing for the tactical agents and the two other profilers to stay back.

“Hotch?” he tried for the third time. When he saw him clamp his left arm over his ear and squeeze his eyes shut as if he was reacting to physical pain, he abandoned all caution and ran to the ledge, getting there in time to see him reaching forward blindly as he dropped to his knees.

The sunset cast a warm glow over the chilling scene as he suddenly realized with a pang that Hotch couldn’t trust his eyes or ears, that he was looking for a pulse to make sure the monster was dead.

His worry increased exponentially when Hotch started shaking, muttering “no” over and over again. It started out quiet, but it got louder and louder until it became a yell when he suddenly wrenched his hand away from his ear and stood up, a strange calm settling over his face, the complete opposite of the panic he had just exhibited.

Rossi lunged forward in horror when he realized Hotch had picked up the gun he’d dropped and was lifting it to the side of his own head, vaguely hearing Luke rushing for Hotch as he managed to pull his arm down.

There was a gunshot.

~~~

The moment they saw Hotch raise the gun to his head, JJ broke into a flat out sprint into the house as Reid, Tara, and Garcia froze in their place in shock. When a gun went off, an icy feeling settled at the bottom of their stomachs as they shook out of their stupor and started running behind JJ.

The four had the presence of mind to move out of the way at the shouts of the emergency personnel that had been on standby. By the time they made it to the balcony, Hotch was already unconscious and on a stretcher on his way down to the ambulance with Rossi sticking close behind, focused only on the man he considered his son.

“What happened?” Garcia asked shakily, looking to Luke who shook his head helplessly, staring at the dead psychopath.

Reid shook his head, a strange amalgamation of fear and loathing on his face as he turned and walked away, nothing more to do in the house. Garcia sent a pleading look towards the remaining three, a tear slowly falling down her face.

JJ sent a look towards Luke, who nodded. “I can stay and take care of clean up.”

“I can, too,” Tara added. JJ sent them a grateful look as she turned to guide Garcia out of the house and into the SUV Reid was in. The drive to the local hospital was charged with fear, the silence only interrupted by the profiler’s attempts to remain composed.

“What happened?” Reid repeated the question Garcia had asked on the balcony, voice breaking.

JJ swallowed, not taking her eyes off the road, and shook her head before answering after a few minutes of silence. “Peter Lewis had just under twenty-four hours with Hotch. Whatever happened, it was enough to make Hotch think that the best solution was to…” she cut herself off, unable to say the words aloud.

Silence once again reigned until the analyst broke it with a quiet, tearful question. “Is he going to be okay?”

No one answered the question for no one truly knew the answer.

The SUV remained silent for the rest of the drive. When they arrived, they sprinted as one through the entrance and crashed into Rossi as he made his way to the waiting room, staring at his bloody hands with a container of disinfectant wipes under his arm.

He didn’t look up, not even as JJ approached to help him clean Hotch’s blood off his hands, not even as Tara and Luke joined them. And that was how they remained: the team strewn about the waiting room until they were allowed to see the unit chief.