Disclaimer: Criminal Minds and its affiliated characters do not belong to me. I mean no copyright infringement.

Summary: This is a collection of one-shots for season 7 that are written as tags to individual episodes. They aren't in any specific order and they don't relate to each other.

Author's Notes: This is a tag for 7x12 – The Unknown Subject (Emily & Hotch friendship) At one point in this short story, it may seem to get off track, but it makes sense in the end.


My favorite part of the Hotch and Emily chat:

Hotch: "Sergio?"

Prentiss: "He's the perfect man. He doesn't hog the covers and he poops in a box."


You do anything for Family

With tears forming in her eyes, Emily was able to hold them in while she admitted to Hotch that she was having a bad day. Neither had expected it to be so soon.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't say you're sorry. They're going to happen."

"But it seems like just a few hours ago I said I was fine. And I was."

"Do you know what that says to me?" He hesitated as he watched for any signs of understanding. "There was a trigger. Something unexpected but obvious triggered emotions you didn't start the day with. Is that what happened?"

Emily swallowed with difficulty and blinked a few times willing herself not to cry. "It was Regina."

"Regina? The one you saved from going to jail on murder charges?"

"Yeah. She requested that I be the one that took her statement. It surprised me because she knew I lied to her. She wanted to know why I stopped her from shooting the Piano Man."

"And she wasn't happy that you were protecting her from the consequences if she had?"

"Not exactly." A tear slipped down her cheek and she really felt like taking a break. Maybe she should have waited a day until she wasn't as emotional and they had more time. The others were boarding the plane soon. Instead, she grabbed a tissue from her purse.

"Even though he will be behind bars for the rest of his life, she thinks she'll never be rid of him. He victimized her twice. She was angry telling me I could never understand what that felt like. She saw something in my expression." Trying to lighten the moment, she added, "Maybe we should suggest training for her as a profiler." She laughed just a bit and Hotch smirked a bit before the look of concern returned.

"She wanted to know if I chose to kill him. I wasn't the one who pulled the trigger. It will always be different for her. I have to live with the nightmares, but she has to live with the nightmares and the fear. Did I do the right thing, Hotch?"

"In the eyes of the law, yes, you did. But in the conscious mind, I don't know, Emily. There's no way of knowing how harsh a judge's ruling would be on her if she pulled that trigger. We don't know if she would have gotten her life back. We got our lives back. But we can't feel guilty about that. We can't let "what ifs" affect our job. But we can be in control of our own lives by the actions and decisions we make every day. After killing Foyet, my life eventually returned to normal, or as normal as it could get. You've got your life back and eventually it will return to normal as it can get."

"But I'm not there yet."

"No," he whispered. "And there's no way of knowing when. I can tell you this. There are bad days when the triggers are obvious like today. And then there are days when you have to sit back and try and figure out what triggered your change in mood and the return of all those feelings. For me, those were the most important times. I learned more about myself and could usually avoid those triggers in the future."

"Thank you, Hotch. Really. This can't be easy reliving things just to help me."

"You do anything for family," he said in a low husky voice before losing eye contact to hide emotions he didn't want to be seen.

They could hear the team outside ready to get on the plane.

"Can I ask just one more thing?"

"Sure."

"How long did it take for you?"

"I don't know. I'm sure Reid could tell you, though." They both genuinely smiled and laughed.

"Hey, what's going on in here?" called Morgan. "Why weren't we invited to the party?"

"You don't need an invite," said Reid. "You never have trouble finding or creating one."

Morgan slapped him on the back of his head.

"And there's always some sweet honey with him, too," chimed in Prentiss.

"He calls his women, sweet honey?" asked J.J. with the roll of her eyes.

"To be accurate, the only thing that can be good about Halloween according to Morgan is snuggling up to a scary movie with a Halloween honey," Reid informed them.

"Oh yeah!" agreed Morgan. "So much better than dressing up in a costume."

"I think that depends on the person and the costume." The team looked at Hotch in utter surprise.

"What did Jack dress up as last Halloween, Aaron?" asked Dave.

The smile on Hotch's face had the team's full attention.

"Well, last year, he dressed up as a soccer coach and he insisted he was Uncle Dave."

Hotch and Rossi laughed. "But the year before that…" prompted Rossi.

"That year, he dressed up as me. He said I was the real super hero."

The girls let out audible "awes," Rossi patted the back of his shoulder in support of what he always told him, "You're a wonderful father, Aaron," Morgan admitted that maybe Halloween wasn't so bad for innocent little children, and Reid started giving statistics on the ages of children and the changes in the types of costumes over the years."

Rossi sat next to Hotch and Emily sat across from him. "Okay, so I've changed my mind. You've one upped me. You're the one with the perfect man." Hotch smirked and Rossi furrowed his brows in confusion.