Emily wasn't an Ideal, the way Hayley had been. She wasn't an angel, or a beacon. She was a woman, a teammate, a friend.
He didn't put her on a pedestal, and she returned the favour.
Because, from experience, he knew that eventually he'd fall off.
The first time they'd met, he had been so firmly ensconced in Hayley that he hadn't really noticed a fair skinned, dark haired girl with intelligent eyes and a throaty laugh. They had spoken briefly, politely, his own stern, bourgeoisie upbringing having taught him how to survive inane small talk at the too-big "gatherings" he was expected to attend.
The next time he saw her was in his office, a nervous smile affixed to her face, and he hadn't been struck by anything then, either, except perhaps annoyance and disbelief at being blatantly run over by some politicking bureaucrat.
In fact, if you asked Aaron Hotchner about the precise moment when he "noticed" Emily Prentiss, he'd draw a blank. Because theirs was no lightning struck, love at first sight, storybook romance.
It went far, far deeper than that.
They were astoundingly alike.
Both products of an outwardly bright and shining childhood, both the children who "had everything".
Only, they didn't. Not at all. Neither of them. The Hotchner household had been one of closed doors and glued on smiles. Just like hers. Emily had learned in shatteringly painful ways that being a Prentiss was not a right or a privilege. It was an immense, crippling burden on the ones who hadn't ever wanted it in the first place.
Aaron had learned that you kept your mouth shut, chin up, and you buried it all inside.
She'd said that she compartmentalized better than most people.
He wasn't most people.
Politics had destroyed both of them, and they had been alone to pick up the pieces. He'd been eleven, she, only nine.
They both refused to play the game. Aaron had chosen to go into Behavioral Analysis instead of becoming a Senator as was expected. Being a prosecutor could be overlooked, as long as he had "higher aspirations". But he didn't. He'd passed over many pay increases and cushy desk jobs in favour of screaming muscles, crippling stress, and remaining "Hotch" to the ones who proved that sometimes blood didn't mean anything at all. He wouldn't abandon his family.
Emily could have made a good marriage and a nice life with a nice man and nice children always in their perfect place.
Instead, she'd gone into the FBI.
Where she still refused to play the game.
They possessed a beauty that was darker, harder, more stoic than could be described by "pretty", as it dropped from painted lips like a reverent prayer. Pretty was for the light; flaxen hair and soft skin, white smiles and shining eyes. They were midnight eyes and tight, serious mouths. She was much closer to Athena than to Aphrodite, and he often felt much closer to Ares than to Apollo. Perhaps it was fitting.
Maybe opposites attract. But the similarities inherent in their natures made their relationship unbreakable.
Neither of them could bear to fail.
For him, failure was losing, messing up, making mistakes.
She defined failure as giving up.
Two black sheep had somehow found themselves in the same, dangerous, taxing, traumatically disturbing paddock…
And, somehow, there was no place they'd rather be.