Slowly into the Light
Chapter 2
Disclaimer: see chapter 1

2:16 am

The red numbers on his beside clock showed 2:16 am. SSA David Rossi was exhausted from the last several days in New York, culminating with the SUV explosion that had killed one agent and nearly cost the BAU its Unit Chief, SSA Aaron Hotchner, who was currently residing in the downstairs guest bedroom of Dave's cabin. It took the older man a moment to realize what had woken him in the middle of the night when a panicked yell shattered the silence of the cabin.

"KATE!"

Throwing the covers off, Dave opened his bedroom door, hurriedly making his way downstairs. Pulling his worried emotions together, Rossi paused outside the closed door of his guest room, knocking lightly when he heard a mumbled sound from inside, "Hotch?" He said as he opened the door, not sure what he was going to find.

Aaron was sitting on the side of the bed, his back to the door, his head held in his hands as he tried desperately to calm his breathing, "Aaron?" Dave again whispered as he moved into the darkened room, allowing the hall light to illuminate it. Making his way around the bed, Rossi knelt in front of his former protégé, reaching out to touch his arm, noticing his friend's hand was covering his right ear again. "Aaron, can you hear me?"

Dave was seriously considering calling for help when it took a few more minutes for Hotch to finally speak, "I couldn't save her." Aaron whispered out, emotion choking his voice. "I tried…"

Rossi was a little startled by the hollow sound of the younger man's voice, but it was the tear and pain- filled eye's that shocked Dave more, knowing how in control of his emotions that Hotch normally was, but the events of the last few days had been anything but normal. "It wasn't your fault." Dave tried to reassure.

"The bleeding wouldn't stop," Aaron's voice almost pleading, "I couldn't carry her and stop the bleeding…" Hotch met his friends concerned eyes then stood, walking over to the window, looking out into the half-moon lit woods. "When the ambulance came in behind me, I was just so relieved someone was there to help her that I never suspected, I should have realized that he wouldn't have been allowed in until the area was cleared." Dave clearly heard the guilt-laden sound of the younger man's whispered words.

Dave stood, watching his friend closely when he noticed Aaron rubbing the right side of his head, but it was the sharp intake of breath and Hotch's hand reaching out for perch against the window frame that had the older man in motion. "Hotch, you need to sit down." With little resistance the older Profiler led the younger one back toward the bed. "I'll be right back." Quickly leaving the room he soon returned with a bottle of water.

Turning on the bed-side light Dave couldn't help the slight smile that tried to form as he noticed the same green-haired troll that Garcia had left with Hotch when he was in the ICU, sitting on the night stand as he picked up one of the two prescription bottles, finding the pain medication. Taking out two of the small pills, Rossi handed them to Hotch, who tossed them back without even looking, fully trusting the man in the room with him, before accepting the bottle of water.

"Thanks" Aaron mumbled, the exhausted sound returning to his voice, "Sorry for waking you."

Rossi finally saw a hint of the Hotch he knew when the younger man looked up. "I told you if you needed something to let me know, that includes needing someone to talk to about what happened, but you need to remember that none of this was your fault. You did everything you could possibly do and because of that people are alive and the bad guy isn't." Dave tried to keep his voice even, considering the worry that was continuing to build concerning Aaron.

"But Kate?" Hotch looked at his hands, one holding the bottle of water, the other the small white lid that went with it, his mind flashing back to the blood that had stained them just days ago.

Pulling the sitting chair closer to the bed Rossi made sure he made eye contact with Hotch. "You did everything you could for her; you never left her, even when you could have, until she was at the hospital. You neglected your own injuries until she had help, then you did so again until we found the UNSUB. It was a terrible thing to lose Kate, but Hotch…Aaron, we almost lost you too."

Dave had hoped to see understanding in Hotch's eyes, but only continued to see the guilt that the Profiler was torturing himself with, "You need to get some sleep, we'll talk about this later." Dave stood, placing a reassuring hand on Aaron's shoulder before moving toward the door.

"Thanks Dave." Aaron said quietly.

"Just remember you're not alone in this, goodnight Hotch." Dave pulled the door closed and paused in the hallway. Closing his eye's a moment he shook his head, he'd have to talk to the team, but especially to Morgan, they were going to have to watch Hotch closely, not only for the physical pain he was experiencing from the explosion, but also the psychological and emotional ones that were starting to make themselves known.

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The next morning dawned with clear blue skies and bright sunshine coming through the half-opened blinds of the guest bedroom of Rossi's cabin. Aaron had been awake most of the night, fighting the effects of the pain medication as he continued to go over in his mind what he could have done differently to have saved Kate Joyner. In the back of his mind he knew what he was doing wasn't healthy, mentally or physically. He had watched Gideon slowly self-destruct over the course of two years after the Boston incident. Hotch had often wondered if that would happen to him, he felt it was his personal responsibility to protect those around him and over the last few years he had been tested.

Standing at the window he thought back to the many times he wished he had noticed what was happening with Jason, that maybe Hotch could have stopped what had happened with the older man, how someone as strong as Jason Gideon could get to a point where he could just walk away from those closest to him. Then there was Elle Greenaway, when she had been shot in her own home, Hotch felt it was his fault, he had sent her home in the middle of an investigation which had the UNSUB knowing almost everything about the team, including their home addresses. Aaron had not made it clear to Agent Anderson that he was to stay with Elle because of this, which led her to being alone when she was shot, calling 911 on her own before passing out from the massive blood-loss. She had barely survived only to return four-months later and slowly start her downward spiral that ended with her killing a rape suspect, virtually, in cold-blood, though she had been cleared in the shooting, she soon left the Unit.

Then there had been Morgan, who on a visit home to Chicago had been arrested for a series of child murders that had taken place over the course of several years, beginning when Derek, himself, was only a teenager. The horrific past that the younger Agent had been so desperately trying to keep hidden for nearly twenty years came to light, causing Morgan to withdrawal for a time for fear his team would think different of him. Hotch and Gideon had been the only two to know what really happened to Derek as a boy, but somehow Aaron felt he should have been able to figure out who the suspect was without Morgan having to relive his childhood nightmare.

When Penelope had been shot, shock was the first thing Aaron felt, she was seemingly the safest of their team, only rarely coming into the field with them. Then when she was suspended because of an encrypted file, Aaron felt he had let her down by not protecting her from very Bureau that she had so selflessly been working for over the last several years. It turned out the file she had encrypted had been the very information on the team that the suspect that had shot Elle a few years earlier had been able to hack. She had tried to protect her team in such a way it could have cost her not only her job, but her freedom if the Bureau had felt she was intentionally trying to gain information for illegal reasons.

Finally there was Spencer, the young genius who had become the little brother of the team. In the last three years the young man had been through so much, Hotch had lost count the number of times a suspect had held a gun on Reid. Like the time when they had the LDSK case, the suspect turned out to be a registered nurse in the very hospital where they were interviewing a surgeon. Reid and Hotch had figured it out while standing in the emergency room that the suspect worked there, but before Reid could make it back to Gideon with the news he was confronted and knock to the floor by the suspect. During the hostage situation, Hotch had gotten the suspect to open up some, by playing into the delusion that Hotch was treated just as bad as the suspect felt he was always treated. In doing so he had used Spencer's recent failure to requalifying in his firearms qualification and played on the young man's inability to be able to shot a gun as a source of contention between the coworkers. When the moment came and Hotch knew he had to act, he had no choice but to physically 'attack' Reid to allow the younger man access to the one gun the suspect didn't know about, Hotch's back-up piece on his ankle. That incident ended with Reid making a shot that would have made any marksman proud, Spencer had been able to take out the suspect before the man had killed Hotch and who knows how many of the hostages, but left Aaron with an enormous amount of guilt in having to attack the younger man and then use Reid's own insecurities against him.

But the incident that stands out to Aaron as his biggest failure in protecting his team was when Spencer had been kidnapped and tortured for two days by a suspect that turned out to have a multiple personality disorder, allowing three separate personalities to take control over the course of the kidnapping. Two of the three felt it necessary to continually beat and torture the younger Agent, several times video taping the whole thing, streaming the video to the computers that he knew the rest of the team was watching. During one of the beating episodes the suspect had nearly killed Reid. It had only been because the most timid of the personalities, Tobias Henkel, had gained control for a few moments and revived Spencer that they hadn't lost the young genius. Then the team had to watch, once Reid was revived, as the beaten Profiler had to stare down the barrel of a gun that contained only one bullet, in a twisted game of 'Russian roulette' as he was told to name a team member who would die. After four denials to name someone Reid finally named Aaron, once the shock of the revelation wore off, Hotch had listened to what Reid was saying, realizing he was being sent a message by the younger man, in the only way he knew how, to the only person who would understand it. It was that message that had led the team to Spencer just in time, but not before they would nearly lose him to something none of them realized at the time had happened, Tobias Henkel had gotten Spencer addicted to a very powerful narcotic.

While the smell of coffee started to filter through the cabin Hotch continued to wonder, how many more times could he watch those around him, those he was responsible for be hurt because of his inability to stop it. Again, as he turned to head out of the room, a part of his mind told him to not dwell on what he couldn't control, but the irrational part told him he was Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner and it was his job to control everything. Unconsciously grabbing the prescription bottles from the bedside table Hotch headed out of the room, cursing his own weakness as he felt the pain start to build in his head, his hearing again becoming slightly muffled, he wondered how long he could hold out before he, too, slowly started to fall apart.