A/N This took forever to write! Here's my assignment for the Cross-over challenge on CCOAC! I chose Echo/Caroline from Dollhouse and got Aaron Hotchner from CM. This was reeeaaally hard since I never write Aaron Hotchner and I had no inspiration so for the first time I send the story away to a beta because it was that terrible. So thanks to Jeune Chat for helping me out! Couldn't have done it without you!
And here's the story!
Memory
"Yousee someone running incredibly fast - The first thing you gotta ask is 'Are they running to something or are they running from something?' The answer is always both."
-Topher 'Dollhouse'
She didn't know for how long she had been running or how she had gotten there. The last thing she remembered, she had been Rebecca Flynn. Strong, tough Rebecca Flynn who wasn't afraid to get a little rough. A woman with a boyfriend who loved her, who had a taste for pain, and who didn't mind getting her hands dirty. She remembered beating a man, he'd deserved it, she remembered thinking that, her fists thumping into him over and over in rage, teaching him a lesson. Then something had flashed in her brain, like déjà vu, or a memory. Suddenly everything had come unraveled. She was suddenly not sure anymore why she was beating the guy up. The men around her had told her that they were teaching the couple a lesson, but what kind of lesson it was she didn't know. Now she was running away from that mess, her clothes bloody from the beating and she wasn't sure if anyone was following.
All these names kept flying into her brain with so many different personalities. Rebecca wasn't who she was, which name was real? Something inside of her was screaming for her to get her treatment, to make it all stop, but she didn't want to lose herself once again. She had to figure out who was the real her. Then she remembered something the woman had told her boyfriend after Rebecca had worked her over and during the brief pause while switching the attention between them. They needed to get to Hotch, that was what she'd said. The woman, Emily if she remembered correctly, said that they were from the FBI. So maybe that's where she was supposed to go. To some guy named Hotch. But for the love of God, couldn't all the voices stop in her head. Especially the Spanish one. She just wanted to get rid of them all, figure things out, but right now she needed to save the couple trapped in the warehouse. The guys she left behind, especially the one that had been feeling her up in between the rounds, Rebecca had loved that, loved the attention, but some of the other names in her head cringed from the thought, would not give them mercy now that she had ran away. No, they would most likely be pissed and take it out on the most convenient people around.
Finally she reached the big building where she would find the Hotch guy, more than one name had known where to go and she had followed their promptings, and she entered it casually. It was hard not to get noticed with all the blood staining her clothes. Everybody stared at her when she walked over to the front desk to talk to the thin woman sitting behind it. Before she could open her mouth, though, every person who spotted her had their gun trained on her and Rebecca's instinct would have told her to fight them of, but some other name told her to stay still if she wanted to get to Hotch.
"Put your hands where I can see them." A very muscular guy told her and she stood stunned. "I said show me your hands!"
"I- I just want to speak to a Hotch." She stuttered out.
"I can't let you do that ma'am. You'll have to come with me."
"But…" She started, unsure of how to get what she wanted. "Two agents are missing. Emily and… Derek I think. Please, he has to help them." She was begging now and some part of this pleading got him thinking.
"Alright! I'm going to cuff you now, okay? And I'll take you to Agent Hotchner."
Agent Hotchner, agent Hotchner, agent Hotchner… Has to be him. It was too big of a coincidence.
"Y-yes… can I please see him?" she asked, but wasn't rewarded with an answer. Instead the man placed two cold, metal rings around her wrists and led her away.
They had to go by elevator and walk a whole lot until they stepped in front of a room. The man leading her unlocked the door and left her inside, before closing and locking it again. She turned around to see a table, a chair and on one wall there was a large mirror, letting her get a view of herself. She looked awful.
The man had promised her an Agent Hotchner, but yet she found herself alone in the room. Had they really tricked her? But she needed to see him and now; before anything would happen to the couple she left behind.
She slumped defeated down on the chair and let her head rest on the table.
She must have drifted off a couple of second as she didn't notice that a man entered before a pile of files was thrown on top of the table. She jumped a bit and was met by a serious looking guy with dark hair and a nice suit.
"I'm SSA Aaron Hotchner, they told me you have some information about my missing agents?" The man said and she nodded slowly. "I will record this conversation." Once again a nod. "Okay, please state your name."
"I… I'm… I'm very confused right now to whom I am. When I met your friends I was Rebecca, but I might also be Echo or Caroline or anyone else for that matter." Those other names had surfaced more strongly and she hoped he, or anyone, might recognize them.
Agent Hotchner looked at her with confusion. She knew he wouldn't understand what was going on inside of her head. No one would, not even she did.
He sighed. "Alright. Can you at least tell me what happened?" This was the first time he directed his gaze to her bloody mess.
"I don't know how I got there exactly, but I was beating a brunette woman up. It was in a warehouse and this guy told me that we were teaching them a lesson so I beat her first. I thought- Rebecca thought it was fun. Broke her nose, cracked her ribs, split her lips and she's gonna have one hell of a time to recover. I don't even know where those techniques came from, but they did have effect." She paused, looking at the man across the desk and was annoyed by his lack of emotions. "Then I stopped and we took a little break. I think I was his girlfriend or something; by the way he kissed me and touched me. But then he asked me to beat the other one up, said that the woman had had enough. I think I did even worse on the black guy. I remember…" she closed her eyes to gather the memory. "I think I was jealous, you know?" When Agent Hotchner shook his head she continued. "When I started beating the black man I took it easy, but then I saw Rick, that was our boss' name, who only minutes before held me in his arms, starting to feel the other woman up. I got so mad that he was kissing her that I… I took it all out on the helpless man before me." She paused again. "Then all the emotions stirred up and all these memories flashed through my head. Suddenly I wasn't Rebecca Flynn anymore."
The Agent Hotchner lifted his phone and asked someone named Garcia to look after a Rebecca Flynn. The cheery voice told him that there were three Rebecca Flynns that were still living to date. Within minutes of that Agent Hotchner held three photos of people with her name, but none of them was her. He was puzzled over that, but he didn't show if he thought she made it up or told the truth. The man once again lifted the phone and asked the woman, Garcia to check the security cameras and run the blood-covered woman's face.
"Can you tell me something more about the man responsible?" he asked.
"He was chubby and pretty weak, which probably is why I got to beat them. But he showed that he had the power all the time by deciding when I was done and all."
Aaron Hotchner eyed the woman in front of him carefully to see if there were any signs indicating that she was lying. He couldn't see any, though, despite the confusion over her identities. He knew that the blood on her clothes probably belonged to his colleagues and that they didn't have much time left. The one thing he didn't know, though, was how she got involved in this. It must have been her boss who'd done something to her so that she lost her memory and gave her a new identity or maybe she was diagnosed with something. The woman looked so lost, and yet seemed so certain about this one thing, that he did believe in everything she said and he knew she could lead them to Morgan and Emily.
Soon his phone rang again and he answered, knowing that it was Garcia.
"What have you got for me?"
"I hope that you'll explain everything to me later because my nerves can't handle this stressful situation." Garcia said really fast and then let out her breath before starting on what Hotch wanted to know. "The woman is Caroline Farrell. She disappeared from the face of earth two years ago. She was in college by the time she went missing and I've gotten her name up on a few articles. The creepy thing, though, was that when I just downloaded the articles to my hard drive, every single one vanished. They're all gone!"
"That is odd. Thank you Garcia. We'll meet in the conference room in 15 and I'll explain what's going on." Hotch said and hung up. He looked at the woman, whose real name was Caroline. "What memories do you have from Caroline?"
"So that's who I am then?" she asked and Hotch nodded. "I remember running through a corridor. I think some people were chasing me and… and there was this guy I remember. I felt love for him, but I think he died among those corridors." She closed her eyes. "I was a happy girl with a lot of troubles. I was too nosy." She paused, trying to find more, but not apparently succeeding. "That's all I get from Caroline." She sighed.
"I will bring you to our conference room and we'll see if we can find the Rick guy who did this to you." He said and rose from his chair.
"Wait!" she said before they could leave the room. "Rick he… I don't think he's the one… I mean he obviously has your friend, but… They did this to me! Not him!"
This caught Hotch's attention and he sat down slowly again. "Who are they?"
"I- I don't know exactly. I remember…" She closed her eyes again. "This is not Caroline… I remember Echo. It's… I don't know…" she sighed, defeated.
"Please concentrate. Close your eyes and try to remember." Hotch tried, urgently.
"There are lots of us. Everyone's so quiet, but I always talk with Victor and Sierra. They're my friends, but… Then we have to get our treatment…" She cringed when she mentioned it, but she still continued. "It hurts at first, but then you forget about the pain and it's like…" She opened her eyes and looked at Hotch. "You're a different person and every time with a different personality."
They weren't dealing with just this Rick that has his agents, but now they also had a second case on their hands. A case that was much worse, not that his agents safety wasn't big enough, but the second one was with some kind of trafficking ring. Ordinary people who is being kidnapped and robbed of their identities and provided another one, without any memories of who they were. He knew there were three of them, but how many more were there? There could be hundreds of them, some of which he could've easily been in the same room as.
All too slowly he gathered his thoughts, but when he was done he was more determent than ever. "We'll find them… all of them."
"As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit."
-Emmanuel Teney
A/N Thank you for reading! Probably wasn't my best^^
Please drop a line or two to tell me what you think!:)
