A/N: This is my very first fanfic! I'm a big Criminal Minds fan and an active writer, so I figured I'd try my hand. I was inspired by DeejayMil's "Bitesized" CM fic, so I used a random word generator to give me one word, which I based this fic on. Let me know what you think.
Dependents
It was 1:53am, and Aaron Hotchner was still in his office. When Morgan grabbed his coat to leave around 11, Hotch had told him he had some paperwork to finish up. The truth was he'd finished most of the paperwork for their last case on the long plane ride home from Spokane, and now he was stalling. Jack was staying with Haley's parents for the week, and though he would never admit it, lately being home alone made Hotch uneasy. It wasn't that it made him afraid, and it didn't make him feel lonely, exactly. It was something else. Maybe it was the loss of Prentiss (and the weight of the decision he had to make on her behalf) or maybe it was the fact that Haley's birthday was coming up, but for a few weeks now, whenever Aaron spent more than a few hours at home alone, he just felt restless. There were only so many ways to reorganize his DVD collection, and he couldn't take another night of pacing the hallway or staring endlessly at the first page of Emily's copy of Mother Night, never making it through the first paragraph without having to start over.
So, he was here, in the one place he felt totally sure of himself. Inside the BAU, he was confident in his execution of his job duties, in his level-headed ability to lead his team. Here, his decisions made sense – they were clear, unselfish, and ultimately unemotional. Here, he was not the uncertain, second-guessing, guilt-ridden Aaron of Apt 32G – he was SSA Aaron Hotchner, Unit Chief, fearless leader of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. That's why, despite the fact that even the custodial staff had come and gone for the night, Aaron Hotchner was still at his desk, desperately looking for something else to do.
He had caught up on expense reports, case consultations, custodial write-ups, and employee reviews for the whole quarter. Hotch sighed and tapped his fingers on the keyboard. He could go home, but the damn time difference had him still on West Coast time, and he knew if he went home he'd end up refolding all of Jack's clothes for the third time this week. So, at 2am on a Friday night, BAU Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner started doing his taxes.
I'm probably the only person in the country doing their taxes for fun on a Friday night Hotch half-mused, half-mocked himself. He hadn't gotten far into the process when he realized that his hope for simple, meditative data-entry was a bit short-sighted. The last time he'd done his taxes, he still had a wife. It was before the divorce, before Haley's…. Aaron felt his heart start to race. He pulled open his bottom drawer and pulled out the bottle of Scotch Dave had dropped by a few days ago, with a knowing look on his face. He poured a short glass and took a swig. The caramel liquid burned in a satisfactory way, all the way down.
Dependents.
A blank once easily filled.
2.
1 for Haley, 1 for Jack.
Now the word made his stomach sink. Dependents. His chest felt heavy.
Yes, Haley had been dependent on him. She had depended on him to prioritize their family, their marriage, and he had failed her, choosing the surety of Agent Hotchner over the insecurity of Aaron, husband and father. She had depended on him to catch Foyet, to keep her safe, to defeat the murderous monsters he caught in his work, not bring them home at the end of the day. Haley had depended on him, and he had let her down. No, more than that. He had let her die.
And what of Jack? Yes, he needed his Dad more than ever now. But tonight Jack was tucked in by somebody else, like he is so many nights, while SSA Aaron Hotchner tracks down another murderer, terrorist, maniac – saving someone else's wife, saving someone else's child. As Aaron typed 1 in the box, he wondered how Jack would remember these times when he's older. Will he remember that his Dad was out catching bad guys, like the one who killed his mom, or will he only remember that Dad wasn't there for tuck-in, the soccer game, the school play?
Now that his guard was down, the questions came uninterrupted. Who else dependent on him had he failed? His team? His eyes wandered to the framed photo on the right corner of his desk – the team at a Mexican restaurant for Derek's birthday: Spencer smiling his cheesiest smile with his arm draped around Dave's shoulder; Dave, kissing JJ on the cheek as she feigned surprise; Emily with her head thrown back with her beautiful, infectious laugh; Derek with whipped cream on his nose, placing his Birthday Boy sombrero on Penelope, who had managed to grab Aaron into a half-bear hug just as the picture was being taken. Normally, he wouldn't have such a silly picture on his desk (unprofessional), but Garcia had printed the picture for everyone on the team, and she'd even gotten him a "non-fabulous totally boring plain ug frame" to put it in. He stared a while at the photo, looking from face to face.
His team depended on him, not just as a vital member of the team, but as their leader. In his decision to keep the truth about Emily from his team, had he let them down, too? He thought about Derek's anger, bubbling just below the surface, which kept him in the office late at night, reading the Doyle file for the thousandth time, wondering what he could have done differently to save his friend. He thought of Spencer, who drew even further into himself when his confidante was ripped from him so unexpectedly, Spencer who Hotch knew longed everyday for the needle he knew would help take the pain away, even if only for a moment. Aaron thought about Penelope, who he caught crying at the Hero Wall on more than one occasion, and who he knew kept going to the café her and Emily went to for breakfast every Tuesday, even though she knew her friend would never show. He even thought about Rossi, who had been through worse, certainly, but who had loved the girl like she was his own, and Aaron wondered how much more it would take to push him to the point Gideon and so many others before him had eventually reached - the point when this job takes one piece too many from you, when you just have to get out lest the darkness swallow you whole. Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner had told himself the team would understand the decision he made and his reasons for doing it, but photo in his hands and tears in his eyes, Aaron couldn't be sure of anything.
At least he hadn't let Emily down, right? She had depended on him, and she was alive, out of the reach of Doyle and safe because of the decision he made. Still, even that didn't feel enough like a victory. As Aaron downed the rest of his scotch, he couldn't help but think that if he'd really been dependable, Doyle wouldn't have gotten hold of Emily in the first place.
His head was swimming. He took a deep breath and tried to gather himself. Unit Chief Hotchner reminded his weaker self that he had proved himself worthy to all the lives he had saved over the years – those people had depended on him. Callie Hoffman, David Jenkins, Sara Blythe, he started down the list he had memorized, I didn't let them down. No sooner did the thought occur than did the rebuttal images arise – bodies mutilated, destroyed, and defiled, bodies of men and women and children – all dead after the BAU was on the case, after he was the one responsible for saving them.
He clicked the cursor in the Dependents box and began typing furiously: Haley Brooks. Jack Hotchner. Derek Morgan. Spencer Reid. Penelope Garcia. David Rossi. Emily Prentiss. Kaitlyn Saunders. Amil Vernacio. Berrett Michaels. Faye Miller. The names kept coming as he thought of every grieving father, every screaming mother, every cold body under a stark white sheet, in a hundred towns across the country. His fingers flew. He couldn't even hear the dinging of his computer with every keystroke, telling him he'd exceeded the character amount again and again and again. A fugue of typing and dinging crescendoed until suddenly it stopped, and there was only the sound of Aaron Hotchner, choking on the name of every hand that had somehow slipped from his careful grip. Unit Chief Hotchner's broad shoulders had finally buckled under the immense weight of every life he aimed to save, and below him in the ruins now sat Aaron – husband, father, friend – sobbing over his taxes at 4:32am in the cold, empty office of the BAU.