Title: Working the Case by Lexikal
Rating: T
Summary: Hotch assumed that with Foyet's death, the horror, at least, would be over, but Foyet still has one trick left up his sleeve, and it involves Jack.
Author's Note: I recently (just recently) saw the episode where Haley is killed and this popped into my mind. It's a one-shot, not a multi-chapter. Enjoy and please review! This story is different than my others in that I, 1) I am writing it kind of buzzed on Heineken beer, and 2) It is told from Hotch's point of view.
Please excuse any typos. Sometimes I like to write while buzzed, especially when I want to write "rawer" stories.
"Daddy?"
His voice is so tentative, so soft, but I am awake immediately. I wasn't really sleeping anyway. I roll over and turn the bedside lamp on and Jack is looking at me, sucking on his lip, looking about as young and innocent and scared as I have ever seen him and I know, instantly, that something is wrong.
"What is it, buddy?"
I am a profiler, but I am first and foremost a father- at least for now. I promised Haley that I would spend the rest of my life making this up to her- this being Foyet.
Jack looks pale and when I reach for him he pulls away.
"Buddy?" I try to keep my voice low and calm and neutral. The voice of a good father. His mother was only buried two days ago. The headstone isn't even up yet and both nights since her funeral Jack has asked when she will be coming home. Which makes sense. He is a four year old child- death is a concept he doesn't understand yet, has no business understanding. All he knows is that he misses his mother; that she is not here. But he doesn't really know why she isn't here. Thank God for small favours.
"Is Mommy still helping you work the case?"
His words wake me the rest of the way up.
"Jack? What are you talking about?"
"I helped you work the case, Daddy," my little boy says earnestly, and I nod, and this time he lets me stroke his cheek, his hair.
"Yes, you did. You did a great job."
"When can Mommy come out of the box?"
The box? He must mean her coffin. I discussed death with him after the funeral. How Mommy was in a better place. How she wouldn't be coming back, not to tuck him in, not to read him stories, how she was just... gone.
"What box, Jack? You mean her coffin?" It is so hard to say these words to him. Coffin. Simple words, but to him, about his own mother... when he is still so young. I hate myself for having to be the one left alive, for having to be his hero. The hero that cost him his mother.
"I helped you work the case," he tells me directly, staring at me strangely, and something in that stare makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. But I don't know why.
"Yes, you did. That was very smart of you... hiding away from..."
"Mommy, she went and hid in that box? When can she come out?"
"Jack, Mommy died. She...when people die..." My voice cracks and I hate myself for it but Jack doesn't seem to notice.
"I didn't die in the box..."
Please, god, don't let me look angry, or mad, or distressed.
"No, you did a good job."
"Mommy, too." So simple. So simple that I want to cry. I won't cry. Not in front of my son. He needs me. He needs me to be strong.
"When can we go get her?"
"Jack," I pick him up and cuddle him to me. He still smells like he did as a toddler, that faint baby smell that parents can smell on their own children. That UnSubs must smell too.
"It was very smart of you to hide in Daddy's office, in the trunk," I tell him as bravely as I can, and I am somewhat pleased that I get the words out without breaking down.
"George said the bed was no good," Jack tells me then; and the hairs on the back of my neck are no longer on end, but on alert like tiny soldiers. My blood is ice. I want to scream at Jack to tell me everything. But my throat can barely work. My little boy looks distorted suddenly, and I know I am still in shock from the past few days, and I know, know, that what he is about to tell me is going to be something else, something new, that I don't want to deal with.
"George..." My voice won't work. I can remember that day too vividly. Talking to Haley, her telling me that Jack had gone, her telling me to tell Jack how we'd met, how important it was for Jack to know that I'd not always been serious and stern, our last words and then... the shot- that horrible, final shot- I was there in 10 minutes. 15 at the most. Jack had been hiding for 10 minutes. He'd been hiding until I got there. Foyet hadn't known about the trunk... there was no way. There... but Jack... listen to what your son is telling you, Aaron.
"What did... what about your bed?"
"George found me under my bed. He said that was a bad place to hide. He said all grown-ups knew about under the bed and to hide somewhere else."
I feel like vomiting. I feel like screaming. My son hadn't hidden in the trunk first. He hadn't remembered the trunk and gone there, like I assumed. He... he had hidden under his bed. Like a scared 4-year-old. I want to laugh insanely then, out of horror and fear, and the fact that hiding under the bed is such a cliché and yet I'd never warned Jack about it and...
"George told you to hide somewhere else?" I ask dully. It takes all my self control not to lose it. This is my son. This is my son... my little boy.
"He said you'd be disappointed 'cause under the bed was a dumb place and you were smart, to chose a better place..."
"And then what, Jack? Then what happened?" This has to be a nightmare. I am still asleep and Jack is still sleeping beside me, warm and confused, but not reliving this, not telling me this horror.
"He said to play hide and seek. Counted to 100." Jack looks at me and licks his lips and sighs and squirms. He blinks. Is he traumatized? Is he frightened right now, or... no, just keep him talking. Keep him talking right now. Profile your own child later, when he cracks.
"George found you under your bed... is that where you hid first Jack? Under your bed?"
He nods sadly.
A million thoughts run through my head. Foyet had found Jack after Haley's death. He'd had the chance to kill him then. He probably had even seen where Jack had hidden next... my trunk. My office. If I hadn't killed him Jack would be dead. Not maybe. Not possibly. No ifs. For sure.
"And George... what did he say when he found you?"
But he just told me. He just told me, but my mind won't process this.
"He said to pick another place; under the bed was no good." Jack says simply. I nod dumbly. I feel dumb. When I found Jack, and during the funeral, and all this time... nothing about his behaviour, his demeanour... I never knew. Never knew how close he'd come to...
"So is that when you went into my office?"
He nods seriously. No smile, eyes wide and bright, doe-eyed. He looks like I imagine his mother must've looked right before her death, both brave and determined, except Haley was aware. Jack is a child. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't understand death, or how in danger he was, or what all of this really means. I refuse to accept that.
"Is that because you remembered working a case with me before?" I ask him, and I try to smile. I really do, but I am not sure it comes off as a smile. Jack shrugs. I don't think he knows, and maybe he will never know.
"Mommy was in a box, until George was gone, and now George is gone. So when can she come out of her box?"
I know for certain he is speaking about the coffin now. The big coffin that was lowered into the ground. He placed a flower on it for his mother, I did his tie that morning, said the eulogy. No tears. He didn't shed a tear and I had assumed, as we all had, that he was simply too young. That he didn't understand. That it was beyond his comprehension and the hardest part of this entire ordeal would be adjusting to the loss of his mother over the following weeks and months and... years (don't think about the years, Aaron).
"You came and got me Daddy. Can we go get Mommy now?" He huffs this out impatiently.
"Jack...you didn't die. George didn't kill you." My voice sounds cold, even to myself. I feel cold, inside and out. I love my son. I want to hug him and shield him from everything dreadful in the world but he is rigid in my arms.
"Mommy... George killed Mommy. When a person dies, Jack... that means they stay in the box. Mommy wasn't hiding. Mommy was killed."
Oh God. I want to stop talking. He is just looking at me, but that confusion, somehow, is worse than the understanding I see starting to dawn on his features. Because he honestly believed that she was working the case with me, like he had been. Until he realizes...god, Aaron, slow down. Slow down. He is four.
"What does dead mean, Daddy?"
I really wish Reid were here. As lousy as Reid thinks he is with children, I know he'd be better at answering that than I could I ever be. What does dead mean? How do I answer that question when I don't really know the answer myself, when I don't even know what I believe myself? Is he referring to his mother's body, the purely physical part of her that he knew? Can a four year old even comprehend or imagine another part of a person? Can they grasp the concept of a soul? Of a mind separate from a body? Christ, help me.
I am silent a long time. I don't know how to respond.
"Daddy?"
"Jack, do you remember your birthday? When you turned four, and you and Mommy blew out your candles?"
He nods importantly. Of course he remembers. He was four. It was a big day.
"Do you... do you remember what Mommy said to you?" I don't even know what Haley said to him, just the short little tape they made for me.
He scrunches up his face as he recalls that birthday.
"She said she loved me, that she missed you; that you were with me even though I couldn't see you."
I sigh wearily. I blink away tears and Jack notices.
"Daddy- you're crying!" He sounds alarmed. I don't think he's ever seen me tear up before, not even at the funeral.
"I'm okay, buddy," I hug him hard then, rocking him slightly, more for me, I am certain, than for him.
"What's dead?" he repeats, insistently.
"Well, Mommy is with you... she'll always be with you. But her body... you know what a person's body is, right Jack?"
He screws up his eyes and then stretches out his hands and fingers and wrinkles them, waggles his tongue. I smile through my tears and nod.
"Yeah, that's their body. When a person dies, their body goes away. It never comes back."
"It goes in the box?" He asks solemnly, and I nod.
"And it never comes out of the box?" He asks, and his voice is slightly higher now. He's never seen me cry, but thinking of it, with the exception of the times he bawled as an infant, I have never seen him cry, either. Not really. Haley always said he took after me.
"No. When a person dies, their body never comes out of the coffin."
"Why?"
"Because..." No. No, you will not tell him about that. No.
"Because their body is no longer alive. It can't move or eat or blink." His lower lip is trembling now, and I wonder if maybe children really are capable of understanding death, if we simply assume they can't understand the finality of it all because we can't bear to look into those wide eyes and chubby cheeks and tell them the truth.
"But the rest of Mommy, she is with me?"
I turn away and wipe my eyes, hard, hoping he doesn't see. Rest of Mommy? I turn back. I have never talked to Jack about souls, and I didn't think Haley had, either.
"What do you mean?"
"The part of her that's not her body?" He says slowly, as if I am the child. I nod slowly, and smile through the tears. Jack exhales loudly.
"Jack... what do you mean, when you say the part of her that's not her body?" I am asking only because I am a concerned father, for no other reason.
It is his turn to be silent now, and he sits for a long moment, almost pouting. Finally shrugs.
"'Member when I was little, Daddy?"
I stare at him and finally blink, not quite connecting the dots. He is four years old. Little? I guess to a four year old...
"'Member when I was a baby, Daddy?" He croaks out patiently, and I nod. He points across the bedroom Haley and I used to share to a photograph of himself as toddler hanging on the wall.
"That was my body then, but not anymore. But I am still here." Another chill runs through me, a deep, profound chill, and I nod at him.
"That's right. You no longer look like that. Your body is different."
"My baby body is dead now, but I am still with you, Daddy. But Mommy's body... all at once... it never got to get any older." He says this simply, as if it is obvious, and I wonder why he is the one explaining death to me like this, and not the other way around.
"Jack?" I have to be dreaming.
"Mommy's body was not Mommy. Just Mommy... then. Not now." He shrugs and squirms again, as if upset. This is too much. A four year old should not have this wisdom.
"Jack, are you okay?"
"Daddy, I have to pee," and he scrambles off and out of my bed and charges toward the bathroom. I watch him leave. I sit up and breathe and finally he comes back, and he is smiling. He tumbles back into bed with me and his arms clasp around my neck.
"Jack?" There are so many thoughts running through my mind, it's hard to sort them out. I feel dazed, slightly unreal.
"Yes, Daddy?"
"You know...you understand that a person is more than just their body?" It comes out as a question.
"Mommy said she loved me. She hugged me too tight. Then I worked the case. I went upstairs and there was the bang."
My stomach shrivels. Of course he heard the gunshot. How could he not have?
"It's okay, Daddy," And my four year old is suddenly curled around me like a plush toy, something for me to hug. He snuggles into my neck. Don't cry. Don't cry now. Cry later.
"Jack?"
"Yeah?" His voice is slurry, already edging back towards sleep.
"Mommy would have been very proud of you."
"You too, Daddy. Mommy was proud of you." It is a baby's voice, on the verge of sleep, and somehow that makes it all the more sincere, all the more honest, and my throat tightens to a pinhole.
I hold him for a long time. I listen to him breathe. I smell his hair. My foot moves and kicks against something hard and cold and plastic and something tumbles and knocks out of the bed. One of Jack's toy trucks. I hold him in my arms and watch him sleep, watch his eyelids flicker as he dreams, watch his face to make sure there are no other horrors lying in wait. But he is still in my arms and silent, arms clasped around my neck, mouth open just a little, reddish blond hair slightly sweaty and dishevelled.
And I know, then, that I can never leave the BAU. That I am my son's hero.
That ultimately, for better or for worse, I am who I am.
Aaron Hotchner.
Ahhh, just a one shot, not that great, but review if you liked. Thanks.