Disclaimer: I do not own anything Criminal Minds related. Characters are merely borrowed and will be put back later. ;)

A/N: This is not a oneshot. There are five parts. I hope that it all makes sense once you reach the finish- I won't deny that this was hard, quite impossibly hard at times, to write.

Chapter One- Fight Me

(Prompt: FYI, I Hurt Too.)

***

"You know that when I hate you, it is because I love you to a point of passion that unhinges my soul."

Julie de Lespinasse

***

"Snap out of it Aaron!" she yelled. "You have to fight back at some stage! Don't leave me here like this!" she screamed, fists clenched against her sides, anger raging through her.

"I won't fight you," he replied safely. "I won't fight you." His calm tone only aggravated her further. She knew him; this was a man who was seriously passionate, seriously strong, and more than capable of fighting back when they both needed it.

"Please," she said, "Please, say something, do something, anything at all, but help me understand!" she half begged, still catatonic, rage coursing through her veins.

"I won't fight you," he repeated, and stood to leave.

She threw her head back in aggravation and hissed in annoyance. "Yeah, walk out. Fine," she said cuttingly.

So he did.

***

As soon as he was gone, the tears stumbled out of her gradually. First they were sad, and then the anger returned. He had been like this for days. Utterly unresponsive, ever since Montana. It was the worst thing she could have imagined. She preferred not to think about it, and she knew that he spent his time licking his wounds about it, trying to fight off a guilt that threatened to overwhelm him. But she couldn't understand why he wouldn't talk to her about it; why he wouldn't talk to anybody about it. She was desperate, eager to pull him back from the brink as she had before, but quietly and confoundedly disabled from doing so.

It had been a single moment of error- and not his error, either. The fact was that Aaron Hotchner had fantastic aim. Nobody ever doubted it and so he had stepped up to take the shot that would free them from yet another Unsub- an unsub who was holding a small boy close to his chest, determined to go out in style and bring his final victim with him.

And in a desperate moment of freakish disproportional stupidity, the local police chief, thinking that Hotch was aiming too low, pressed against his elbow and sent the shot just a few centimetres wide. And the bullet had hit the boy in the neck, and he had bled out on scene. Hotch instantly dropped his weapon and Morgan took the final shot that brought down the unsub.

The disciplinary committee at the BAU had found Hotch not guilty- it was not his fault, even the mother of the boy had protested his innocence. The local police chief had resigned immediately, and the matter was, for all intents and purposes, closed. But for Hotch, the nightmare went on, and on, and on. Unable to forgive himself, he simply withdrew and refused to talk to anybody about it.

And so Emily was left crying loudly to herself, angry and tormented at the fact that she couldn't help; couldn't comprehend. Furious, she grabbed a cushion from the sofa and threw it at the door he had closed behind him just moments earlier, growling loudly, a long and angry groan of frustration echoing through her apartment.

***

And on the other side of the door, waiting sadly, stood Aaron. His head was resting against the frame of the door and his eyes were closed. He wanted to march in there and fight back; tell her what she was missing and argue the toss with her until he lost, and then to hug and kiss her, tell her he loved her and that it would all be alright.

But it wouldn't. There was no way he could tell her the honest truth: that every night since the accident, he had tossed and turned, finally conceding defeat and falling to sleep, where nightmares haunted him, the face of the child most often replaced by his own son's face. He would wake, thrashing in horror, silent screams escaping from his chest, with every assurance that the next rest he tried to take would end the exact same way.

And so when she begged him to fight it out with her, to yell at her, blame her, scream back, he couldn't do it. Because it wasn't her fault and it wasn't her guilt to handle.

Sighing, he turned from the door when he heard her angry yell inside, and walked down the hallway to go home. He had not spent the night with her since Montana, and in the three weeks, they had fallen apart quite completely. He had made excuses for his behaviour for as long as he could, but eventually there were no more excuses to give and they both knew that.

He settled into his car and turned on the ignition, ignoring his phone ringing on the seat beside him; Emily, wanting him to come back, to talk to her, anything at all to make it right. And he refused staunchly to pick up the phone, knowing that it would not help him- and it would definitely not help her.

***

Grunting in dissatisfaction, Emily tossed her phone onto the couch and flopped onto the cushions, resting her head in her hands and running her fingers through her hair for what felt like the thousandth time that evening alone.

All she wanted to do was help him. And he wouldn't allow her to do that. His stupid nobility was trying to protect her from the darkness he had fallen into, and she wasn't going to get near him when he was in such a bad way; she knew that. She had spoken to Rossi, spoken to Morgan, even spoken, in a moment of desperation, with Reid. Reid's advice started with a lot of statistics and so she discounted it before he was finished.

Morgan's advice was typically Morgan-"Let him deal with it alone for a while. He'll come and find you when he needs you."

That had been less than helpful. Aaron was the man she loved; even when she hated him, like now, she loved him so much that it sometimes hurt. She also couldn't help feeling bitter when Morgan said that- was she expected to stand by and wait while he fell apart in front of her? Did he think that she felt nothing, that she wasn't hurting too?

Thinking about that just made her angry, so she thought about what Rossi had said. If there was anyone who knew Aaron better than Emily herself, it was Rossi. And what he had had to say wasn't entirely comforting. "Something like that, it can tear a guy apart. It's why I came back here Emily- guilt was eating me up inside. He needs to reconcile that, and he doesn't realise yet that he needs you to be able to fix him when things get bad. He's used to dealing with things like this on his own, but it's a fight you have to have with him. Make him talk; force him into it if you have to. It will help."

Her response had been rather blunt, she realised almost immediately after she answered him. "At what cost?"

Rossi had merely nodded, entirely aware that it was the sort of healing that could burn bridges. He had been forced to acknowledge that with each of his ex wives; he knew exactly what she was talking about. It was the sort of thing that could tear a relationship to pieces, from the inside out, leaving them with nothing to deal with but words spoken in bitterness; words that would hurt and heal in equal measures.

And so she sat on the couch for a long time, until the anger subsided. She thought about calling him again, and then she decided against it. She needed a plan, but there was nothing in her head at that moment other that confusion, so she headed to the bathroom to take a bath and mull things over for herself.

***

"Can I see him?" Aaron choked out, voice quivering and quiet as he stood in the doorway.

"It's late Aaron," Haley started, and then she sighed and nodded. "Okay. Come in."

"Thanks," he murmured. He hadn't been willing to fight her either, and she seemed to sense the defeatist attitude he was fronting. "Are you sure you're okay?" she enquired. She had loved him for many long years; she would never totally stop caring for him.

"I'm fine," he assured her, "I just want to see him."

She walked with him up the stairs to Jack's room, where the boy was asleep in his bed, teddy bears nearby and nightlights casting a pleasant glow across the room. His thumb was in his mouth, hair tousled and blankets mildly tossed. Aaron sat on the side of the bed.

He laid his hand on Jack's head and before he could stop himself, he gasped slightly and covered his mouth with his other hand, trying his utter best not to lose what little control he had.

"Aaron..."Haley muttered, concern taking over from the original annoyance she had felt at being woken so late. "What's wrong?"

"It's- it's just a case. Worse than usual..."

"I've never seen you this bad," she said worriedly, stepping closer to him. "Aaron, honestly, take time off if you need it. You can come here, spend time with Jack, take him out, I don't mind."

"Yeah," he muttered, aware that he would be doing no such thing. Even seeing Jack was having a devastating effect on him, reminding him of his abject failure to fix things when the opportunity arose. His son was now a reminder of the saddest say of his life. The day he killed a child.

When he felt Haley's hand on his arm, he didn't respond to her immediately. But then the whirlwind of emotions in his head sounding like a hurricane made him turn to face her.

He looked at her for a long time and knew that she was getting closer to him, knew when her hand slipped around his neck that she was reaching out to help him as she saw fit. She leaned over; he didn't stop her. He allowed her to get close- closer than anyone had been recently- and when her lips tenderly pressed against his, he closed his eyes and slid his arms around her waist.

And then he pushed away, shrugging her off and shaking his head.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't do that to her."

"To who?" Haley asked, irritation growing on her face.

"To Emily," he murmured distractedly, images of the woman he honestly adored filling his head.

"Emily?"

Aaron looked at her. Crap. He hadn't told her yet about his relationship with Emily. They had decided to wait a while, let Aaron get closer to Jack so as not to distort his image of his family, before introducing Emily. Aaron had simply not mentioned it to Haley that he was seeing someone else; his argument had been that it wasn't necessary, but truly, he felt that it would likely hurt her.

And he was right. Abashed, she moved away from him and left the room.

When he followed her down the stairs about twenty minutes later, she was sitting alone in the kitchen, crying softly, though she tried to hide it when he came to bid her goodnight.

"Haley, I- I'm sorry. I didn't realise-"

"It's okay," she assured him, "It's just something else to get used to. It was bound to happen eventually."

He could tell that what she really wanted to do was catch him in a stranglehold and hurt him, beat him, hit him and then hug him close. But he couldn't let her do that; he was just a little too fragile to provide comfort for his ex wife. He nodded and fidgeted for a few seconds before making his excuses and leaving the house. Clambering back into his car, he finally headed for home. It would take a half hour to get there and in that time, he would be able to think through the past few weeks.

But he deliberately blocked all of that out and turned on the radio, listening to the news blaring, blowing all other thoughts out of his head.

***

Emily shrugged her way into bed, missing the other presence that had slept next to her for about five months now. She missed him, the way his arms fitted so perfectly around her; the tiny romantic things he did; the happiness she felt around him; the butterflies in her stomach.

She couldn't help but wonder if somewhere nearby, he was feeling the same way.

***

He was. But his way of dealing with it was not to go to sleep. He wandered across the kitchen and pulled the scotch from the cabinet, haphazardly pouring a copious amount into a glass. He threw it back and landed the glass on the table, turning it in his fingers as he thought. Determined to block out the nightmares tonight, he poured another glass, and downed it just as quickly.

And there was another.

And another.

And another.

***