The glass felt cold in his hand. It was ice chilled and the amber liquid glowed with a calming resonance of the day that had gone. It was everything he needed and everything he shouldn't have at the same time. He raised the glass to his lips, taking a small slow sip of the smooth sepia spirit. The day had started bad enough, Jack wasn't sleeping well, he was having nightmares of his mothers murder, then Jack had decided that he didn't want to go to school, didn't want breakfast he spent the morning trying to wind him up, to back down.
So when he got to work he wasn't in the mood. He wasn't in the mood for the friendly conversations with the team, for Reid's Rocket's or Emily's disastrous date stories not even for JJ's stories about little Henry. That was how he knew the day was going to be a bad one, and Strauss, didn't help. She was still breathing down the neck, watching every step the team made and waited for a slip up.
The case they were working was a local one, and they were getting close to zeroing in on the unsub,but that was when it kicked off. They were about to make an arrest they'd corned the guy, Jason Matthews. He'd sent Emily, Rossi and Reid round the back, Morgan, JJ and him took the front.
A two sided breach and it was the back door team that were in trouble as the gun men started to fire. Rossi took a shot to the vest, while Reid went down to a shot the leg. It was not a successful raid and that came across most when Hotch came back to the office to find Strauss waiting.
Everything that had happened that day, everything with Jack, with the team, with Haley had led him to that moment.
"You could be the best in the academy, you can sign up for every class, attend every lecture, every seminar, but in the real world that means nothing. This job. It's not just about leading the team and making tough decisions under pressure. This job is so much more than the job description, you have to be prepared for the guilt, not the guilt you feel for the decisions you've made but the guilt from the team, the guilt they feel when they can't save a victim, or an unsub who gets away.
This job is a hell of a lot more than what it says on the transfer form. You have to be prepared for them, because they don't need, a bureaucrat in a suit, they don't need someone to stay objective. They need a friend, they need support. Those people out there, they need a leader who cares about them, and not just because of the paper work that would have to be filled in, or statistics, or how it looks. You need to be prepared doing this job that sometimes you have to be creative, sometimes you can't do everything to 100% certainty because if you do people die, your team die.
There's a reason why this the best unit in the F.B.I and it's because of those people out there, who are prepared 100% to do what they can to save people's lives. They put everything on hold for the victims that need saving and if your not 100% committed to the victims, to the job, to those people outside, then this job, is not right for you." Hotch put his gun and badge down on the table and walked out waiting till home to pour himself a glass of scotch and contemplate what's next.