Author's Note: Hotch, specifically goes through the five stages of grief (according to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying) after his attack...spoilers for Season 5. This first chapter, Hotch's Denial, is the same as in my 5 Stages story so, if you've read that, feel free to skip this chapter, haha! The rest of the chapters, though, will be totally new!

"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear" ~ Herbert Agar.

***

Whenever asked Hotch would say he was fine. Even when he'd jumped, spilling his coffee over the counter, the time Reid approached him from behind while attempting to reach his mug in the mini-kitchen. Even when caught by JJ passed out on his desk as she came in the morning after everyone was to go home. Hotch even claimed he was fine when he'd actually lost his place in the midst of giving a profile, thinking he'd seen Foyet just outside the police station window.

Prentiss had asked him once or twice what happened, but he could only answer with the blank response, "He got the upper hand, he stabbed me, then I blacked out." After all nothing else about that event really seemed real to Hotch, nothing else about it left the undeniable scars now scattered about his body. Rossi never asked, a fact Hotch first found odd but then grew to understand…Rossi didn't have to ask, he'd been around victims long enough to read them like a book. Hotch supposed he should just be grateful Rossi hadn't called him out on anything yet.

For the third week since being released from the hospital Hotch was planning to sleep in the office. He'd already made preparations to put his apartment up for sale but, in the current real estate market, he wasn't ready to make it official until he had a new place, far from the old, set to move into. The lights in other offices were off, as were most in the bullpen, and Hotch found, as he prepared to leave his office and cross it to get to the mini-kitchen for his late night cup of coffee, he was nervous. Scared even. There were too many shadows, too many good places for a man with Foyet's slender body to hide. Then he watched in shock as lights about the bullpen began to flicker back on, leaving a path of safe travel to the kitchen. "Hello?" He voice came out stern…except for that underlying shakiness of his nerves betraying him.

"Just me," Morgan called out, raising his hand up so Hotch could pinpoint him in the vast field of desks and chairs, "I thought you could use the light."

"I'm fine," Hotch knee-jerked before looking down a little in slight embarrassment that those two words were the first he could even think of these days and recall a more suitable response. When he had one he looked back over to his fellow agent, "Thank you."

Morgan smiled some and began to head closer to the stairs leading up to where Hotch stood, gripping the railings of the balcony, "Hey, uh, you need any help? You know with paperwork or something? I'm guessing you're pretty backed up on that." The days in the hospital, the days recovering at home, the days of distraction.

Hotch shook his head some, "No, that's alright," He knew the offer to help was a cover…Morgan didn't even like doing his own paperwork! He wondered if Rossi put him to it somehow? Or did Morgan now think that little of him, so little of his boss that he suspected the man scared of his own shadow. Then again, he was, wasn't he? "I can handle this," he added, then froze, "it…the paperwork, I mean. It's nothing I can't handle on my own."

"I always felt that way too," Morgan replied as he began to almost cautiously head up the stairs. He was taking a big risk doing this, bringing up those things that never should be brought up. "I was wrong though and it took my getting arrested for a series of crimes I never could've even committed for me to see that."

Hands slipped from the railing fast, as if the metal burned suddenly, and Hotch straightened up as his colleague climbed the steps towards him. "It's not the same thing," Hotch replied in an almost panic.

Morgan stopped at the top of the stairs, giving his boss more than enough room, "Look, I don't know what happened with you and…" he paused as his boss and friend grew so tense he thought the guy might start shaking, "him and I'm not gonna pretend that I do. But the more you stuff that memory down the worse it's gonna be when we have to dig it up to add to the guy's profile."

"The…the profile's wrong," Hotch stated with a resigned sadness, "My profile of him was wrong and that…" that's why this happened to him, to his family, all this pain came because he'd been wrong.

Morgan shook his head, "No, Hotch, the profile changed, that's all. It's happened before and it'll happen again. So we do what we always do, reexamine the crimes and adjust the profile." He then slowly moved closer until he was caught in the light from Hotch's office and his eyes showed him a man holding in way too much pain for anyone's own good. "The only thing that gives him power now is you holding onto his little secret."

"His?" Hotch questioned, legitimately confused.

"Right," Morgan said firmly, "Because he's the only one that should ever be ashamed by what happened."

The agent, the team leader, the man who was always in charge of everything blinked a few times, then backed away into the shadow some. For a moment Morgan worried he'd pushed too hard and Hotch was going to slip away into his office, but he didn't. Instead the senior agent hit the wall by the doorframe and slid down, tiny particles of his clothing rubbing the scars as if to remind Hotch what he could never forget. "I'm sure that's easy for you to say, but –"

"No, it's not," Morgan cut the other man off as he went to settle against the railing on the other side of the lit office. Though facing each other both men's faces, their body's, stayed in the shadows and hidden from sight. While he hadn't been in a church all those years from his childhood until Garcia was shot Morgan could feel a confessional atmosphere form between them. "From the moment Carl Buford came into my life, from the moment he, uh…he started…" even now, years later and in the darkness where his emotions on his face could be hidden, the man found it hard to speak of out loud, "I felt so…ashamed and…weak and…and…"

"Dirty," Hotch finished the thought in nothing more than a breath before taking in so much air his lungs hurt, "Violated." He let the air out and, even though he couldn't make out Morgan's face, he looked down some, focusing on his knees as they curled up towards his chest as if to protect him farther, "I can…remember every inch of that knife…and the…the weight of…him…on me. The, uh, the first two thrusts were fast, furious, brutal. The one's that came after though…" the agent had to stop to remind himself to breath and leaned his head back against the wall to keep tears from escaping now watery eyes, "they were slow, purposeful…he spoke the whole time…"

Morgan sat silently, without judgment, as the light in Hotch's office caught the water now spilling from the man's eyes while words spilled from his mouth.