What Heaven Is
Once, when she was a child and still believed in such things, she had asked the priest what heaven was like. He had painted a beautiful picture in her mind's eye, describing a wide, flowery meadow with soft green grasses that grew tall enough to tickle her waist as she skipped happily through them, a warm sun shining down upon her ebony locks and a cool, clear lake with waves that kissed at her toes as she stood at the water's edge skipping stones that kept bouncing until she couldn't see them anymore. She'd dreamed for hours about the fluffy white clouds and beautiful sunsets, imagined heaps of children that she could play with, a library with all of her favorite books, a home that smelled like cookies and felt like love.
As she grew older, her heaven changed. At eight, her favorite nanny died, and she saw her at night chasing her through that elysian field, laughter trailing behind them and leaving a path that looked like fireflies floating in midair. When she was eleven her grandfather died, and she added him to her heaven, too, his stories by the fireplace surrounding her in the safety and comfort that she had so often longed for.
When she was fifteen, her faith died.
Her heaven went with it.
And for twenty years, she had not thought of it again. Had not felt that faint tickle of wild grass, nor seen the endless skips of rocks. Until today.
Today, when they had found the six boys they had spent two weeks looking for in Michigan, hidden away in the rotting attic of a condemned house where no one could hear their cries.
After their unsub took what he wanted from them, they were no longer of any use to him and he cast them aside, leaving their broken and bleeding bodies to rot away with the decrepit building.
All six of them, dead or close enough to it that medics would be of no use to them.
And because they were afraid of the weight that the old wooden beams could hold, or rather, afraid to find out what they couldn't, she had borne the burden of these horrors alone.
As she called frantically down to the boys for them to find some way to get up here and help her because some of these children were still alive, damnit, she found herself cradling four-year-old Matty Deleo, whose mother she had held just as closely yesterday when she had promised to do everything possible to bring her boy back alive.
He'd be lucky to make it out of the attic.
And as the tears rolled down her face and splashed onto his chubby cheeks, still round with unshed baby fat, his small brown eyes opened for perhaps the last time.
If he was afraid at finding himself in the arms of a stranger, he certainly didn't show it. Perhaps the cruelty he had suffered at the hands of another had dulled any potential threat she may have posed to him. Perhaps he had been aware enough to recognize her as a police officer. Perhaps he was hallucinating her as someone else, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…
She supposed it didn't matter.
She would do what she could for him.
"Hey, sweetheart. It's alright, I've gotcha."
"My tummy hurts."
She lifted the edge of his dirty t-shirt and saw the dark bruises spread across the pale white of his skin. He was bleeding, had been for a while, apparently.
"Your tummy is bleeding a little bit, but it'll be okay."
"Am I going to go to heaven?"
"What?"
"When my dog got hit by a car, my Mommy said that his tummy was bleeding and then he went to heaven."
Her heart was breaking with every word that came out of this sweet boy's mouth.
She nodded, and another tear escaped from where she was trying to hold it back.
"Yeah, sweetheart. You're going to go to heaven, too."
He was quiet for a moment, then,
"What is heaven like?"
She froze, then looked into his dark eyes. In them she saw the wide, flowery meadow and tall green grass, the warm sun and cool, clear lake, just as the priest had described to her all those years ago, and she was instantly transported back to a time when she believed in such things. She cleared her throat.
"Heaven is a field that stretches farther than you can imagine. It's filled with green grass that tickles you as you walk, and butterflies for you to chase. The sky is always filled with fluffy white clouds, and it's bluer than the ocean. There's a huge lake filled to the brim with fish, and the water is always cool and clear. You can go swimming whenever you'd like, and you'll never sink. Your dog will be there, and you can play with him all day under the warm sun…"
She continued on, painting him a picture of heaven so vivid that she could almost touch it, not stopping when he struggled for breath, or when his eyes slipped closed, or when his heart stopped beating. When Hotch finally found a way to get up to her without cracking the rotted beams, he found her still whispering about paradise to the dead little boy cradled in her arms. He pulled the small child from her embrace, and she finally fell quiet. He moved to help her to her feet, but she rose on her own and went to where the others were beginning to move the other dead boys out of the attic.
He found her at the hotel's bar. The rest of the team had gone out together, wanting to decompress after the rest of the day was spent notifying families of the deaths of their children, but she had begged off, claiming that she was just going to go to bed.
It had been a bold-faced lie, even if she hadn't known it at the time.
He knew these cases, knew his team. He knew that none of them would be sleeping tonight. So he wasn't surprised that she had ended up down here.
He sighed and made his way over to where she was slumped in her stool. Raising his hand, he signaled for the barkeep.
"Scotch, neat. And another for her."
She didn't even raise her head, though whether that was because she hadn't heard him in her drunken state or because she just didn't care, he didn't know.
The drinks were placed in front of them a moment later, and they sat in silence as they sipped them slowly.
Well, he sipped slowly. She downed her shot in one gulp, then returned to staring unseeingly into the bottom of the glass.
He thought she might be searching for answers.
He hoped she wouldn't find them there.
She signaled for another, and he took that as his opening to speak.
"How many have you had?"
"Not enough."
He looked at her again, more closely this time. He took in her disheveled hair, tangled from running her hands through it, her defeated posture, her dull eyes. His attention turned to the row of empty glasses in front of her, seven of them perfectly in line like little soldiers fighting away the depression that was threatening to envelop her. Judging by her looks, and the eighth shot that she had just been handed, the alcohol hadn't yet won that battle.
They were silent for a few minutes, then,
"He was all alone."
Hotch flashed back to the little boy he had pulled from her arms that morning.
"You were there."
She half nodded her head but said nothing. She placed the now empty eighth glass in line with the others and started to raise her hand, but his fingers circled her wrist and pulled her arm back down to the bar top.
"That's enough."
"I wanted another."
"I know."
"He asked me what heaven was like."
Ah, he thought. That explains what she had been whispering to the little boy. And why they were here tonight.
"And what did you tell him?"
"I told him about a meadow."
She went silent again and started picking at her fingernails.
"And that bothers you?"
She shrugged.
"Why?"
"Because it's not real. None of it is real. I lied to a dying child about a heaven that doesn't exist."
There it was. He knew that she had been raised in a religious household and knew that she wasn't faithful now. He had deduced from what little she had shared of her teenage years that something had happened then that had fundamentally changed her.
And now she was here, sitting in a bar trying to drown her heartache. Because a dying little boy had asked her about heaven, and she didn't believe heaven was real.
This just wouldn't do.
"Well, I don't know about that."
She turned her sad eyes to look at him.
"I can't speak as to whether heaven, or hell for that matter, exists. None of us can. But I don't think you lied to him. He wasn't really asking about heaven. He wanted comfort, and you gave that to him, as best as you were able."
She considered his words and felt a heavy weight that she didn't know she had been carrying start to ease off of her shoulders.
He always knew just what to say.
She shot him a small, sad smile and looked back to her line of perfect soldiers.
Seeing that there was nothing more he could do for her tonight, he stood.
"Don't stay down here too much longer."
"Yes, sir."
He walked away, leaving her to her own devices.
She watched him go, then turned to order another round. The light glinted off of the waxed surface of the bar top and in its reflection, she could swear she saw a black and white puppy running through a field of tall grass.
Behind him trailed a brown-haired little boy with dark eyes and a laughing smile.