Chapter Ten: Beloved
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There were downsides to an eidetic memory.
There were things he'd never be able to forget, no matter how much he tried.
One of those things now was the horror on Hotch's face as Hal had dropped from sight, shifting impossibly quickly to a blank-faced shock and then pain. Absolute pain.
Reid had seen the exact moment their bond had strained. He'd seen on the other man's face a mirror image of the wide-eyed emptiness that stared back at him every time he slipped down to archives and rewatched the Hankel videos on the grainy monitor. He'd seen himself.
And he'd run from it. As Hotch had crumpled, a puppet with his strings cruelly cut, hitting the ground hard and heavy, Reid had run. Past Anton, who'd fallen too despite there being no link to snap between him and the hare that had preceded Hal into obscurity. Past Morgan and Rossi running towards the scream that still rung in Reid's ears, both with their weapons out.
Rossi had seen Reid and gone grey in the moonlight, and that colour had yet to fade from his face. He'd seen him and known instantly who had screamed. Morgan was a little slower, a little more certain of their boss's immortality.
But Reid couldn't wait for them to catch up. He had to run.
Along the ridge, down the slope, scrambling and slipping and almost plunging off the edge. Aureilo bolted past, pain and panic mingling together, hardly waiting until they were at a safe height before leaping from the path to the ground with a heavy clatter of paws and scree, and launching himself towards the area where Hal would have landed.
He'd found her.
She'd been a silent, crumpled form and her mouth hung open, tongue lolling loosely, her legs and neck held at insecure angles that the lithe wolfdog would never permit when she was awake. She was always supremely controlled, elegantly held, and now she'd been strewn across the rocky ground and left discarded.
And he'd never forget that. That, or sitting by her side with his fingers pressed behind the crook of her leg against her pulse. That or the gold that coated her fur, the ridge, his hands.
Kipling had found her oblivion.
The yellow of the brace they strapped to Hal's neck before lifting her with painful care onto a stretcher. The grey of their heavy gloves to stop their skin from touching hers. The sallow shadows the red and blue lights of the ambulance, the police, the fire trucks, left on familiar faces, turning them unaccustomed and cold. The glow of the flames on the horizon as the building burned—how? How had that happened? What had happened? —Someone told him, but their voice was muted by the sirens, radios, the chatter of a crime-scene.
All images he'd carry for the rest of his life.
And leading to this moment.
Leading to slipping away from the paramedics and the medical care they offered him just one last time, despite the draining pain and worry that tried to drag him to the ground. The keys were in the SUV. His phone was in his pocket, still switched off from the hospital.
He'd stayed by Hal until he couldn't any longer, and now he had one more duty to her and Hotch. One more thing he needed to do before he could let the adrenaline fade. Before he could step away from this case.
Aureilo was silent, still. Pulling all their aching into himself so Reid could focus on this last thing.
He paced and counted and ignored the way the ache in his lower back had spread to his abdomen and chest, ignored the shakes that began to work their way up his legs and arms, ignored the collecting pain behind his eyes.
And then it was done. He checked, rechecked. Smiled, because this was good. They needed this.
The job was done, the case almost closed, and for once he knew he could leave the loose ends to another member of his team. He didn't have anything left to give. He sat back in the car, engine off, and sent a message to Emily telling her where he was.
He didn't have the energy to turn the key or drive or think anymore. All he had left in him was to wait, Aureilo on his lap and head against the steering wheel.
The door opened. Reid blinked, feeling his eyelashes brush against the wheel, unsure of how much time had passed between him texting Emily and now. A hand brushed his cheek, cool and rough at the fingertips.
"That'll do, Tiger," Emily murmured, and he tilted his head around to look at her. "You're all done in. Idiot."
"Get him into the passenger side," said a deep voice, and the back door clicked open. Naemaria leapt in, panting, leaning her head on the shoulder of the driver's seat and tsking at him. Morgan. "I'll drive. You follow us back."
The next time Reid looked up, the forest was giving way to houses and telephone poles and dawn was turning the world hazy and clean. Morgan glanced at him, a tired smiled tugging the corner of his mouth upwards. "You with me now?" he asked, tapping the indicator on. Reid stared at the blinking light, feeling oddly disconnected from it all.
"I think?" he replied eventually. "Morgan, I checked. I counted. Hotch and Hal were nineteen and a half feet apart when you were arresting Jeremy Harper. Nineteen and a half. She only fell eighteen feet; plus, the distance her momentum took her. Twenty-one feet max. Their bond could have taken that. They might not have Severed."
Morgan thought that over. "A sudden distance is more dangerous than a gradual one," he said finally. "Just don't… don't set yourself up to be hurt, Reid. They might have taken more damage than you think."
Reid shook his head.
They were fine. He'd counted. They'd wake up and be fine.
"Reid," Morgan said abruptly, voice cracking. Nervous. Why? "Spencer."
Uh oh. Reid tensed and felt Aureilo doing the same in his lap.
"We… I need to say something. To you. About my conduct towards you."
Oh. "No you don't," Reid disagreed, irritation sparking. It wasn't real irritation. He was overtired, it was his exhaustion talking. He tamped it back before speaking again. "There's nothing to talk about, Morgan. Despite our personal differences, you've never behaved in anything other than a professional manner towards me."
The car stopped. They were at the hospital. When did that happen? Reid was losing time. He peered at Morgan through his lashes, trying to tell if the man had been talking while Reid had unfocused. By the look of his dark gaze firmly on the dashboard, he hadn't.
"That's the thing," he said finally, running his fingers over the keys. "Our personal differences. I… you apologised to me for being yourself. I made you feel like you needed to apologise for something you should never, ever apologise for – do you understand?"
Reid was pretty sure he wasn't awake enough for this conversation.
"It's fine," he tried to say, smiling crookedly. "It's nothing. You're not the first person I've—"
"Exactly!" Morgan barked, and Reid jumped at the sudden shout. Aureilo almost slammed his skull into Reid's chin as the hare did the same, both of them staring at the other man. "Jesus, man, I don't want to be like those others! Like the kids who used to pick on you or your dad or… anyone. I'm not them. I can't. I can't live with myself if I am. You don't see how cruel they are because you think you should have to apologise for the things that make you you – you think they're right. And they're not. I should have been teaching you that, and instead I was just adding to your certainty that there's something wrong with you, or with Aureilo. And I… don't… I don't know how to fix this."
"There's nothing wrong with you," Naemaria added in the stunned silence that followed Morgan's increasingly agitated speech. Reid threaded his fingers tightly through the soft fur of Aureilo's chest and tried not to let his face twist into something that looked like confusion or misery in case it worsened Morgan's aggravation. "Either of you. We know that now. This case, everything about this case… that showed us how wrong we were. How closeminded. You're not Buford. Aureilo isn't Carmody. We just needed to remember that."
At that, Reid looked properly at Morgan.
Oh.
"Buford used his daemon, didn't he?" Reid said quietly, feeling ill. "To… prey on his victims."
It wasn't unheard of. They'd faced similar cases before.
"She'd talk to us." Morgan's voice was painfully raw. He'd never quite healed. Some things left scars that never really went away. "While he… she'd keep talking to us, telling us it was fine, we were okay, that what he was doing was because they loved us. Sometimes she talked more than he did. Eventually, I hated her voice. I hated her. I loved him, because I was a kid and he was my hero, but I hated her. She was the one who haunted me when I closed my eyes. He never said a word throughout any of it, but she never shut up. I should have realized I was letting my issues with her negatively reflect on my relationship with you. Reid, I'm going to do better, okay? I'm going to do right by you this time. But you have to promise me something."
Reid didn't overly feel that Morgan needed to do better. The man had done nothing wrong. But he could also sense that this was in some way… cathartic. "Anything."
"You have to do better too. No more stupid risks. No more pushing us away. And Jesus, man. You and Aureilo? You got each other back. Stop being so scared of being separated again that you forget to be together. Being two halves of one whole doesn't make either of you any less."
There was a long moment of waiting silence until Reid realized he was waiting for Aureilo to answer for him, like he usually would. Looking down, he found the hare looking expectantly up at him.
"Okay," Reid said belatedly. Aureilo's silence was odd. Almost unsettling. But… it was weirdly thrilling to answer for himself for once. "We can do that."
"Piece of cake," Aureilo added.
It was a beginning.
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Anton Harper sat daemonless in the hospital room, handcuffed to the bed with two uniformed officers standing grim-faced at the door. Any nurses who entered were curt, brisk, and hesitated before touching him.
Everyone knew why he was there. Rossi had imposed an instant injunction on chatter about the resident in Room 415 to avoid any of the parents still resident in the hospital with their children from finding out that that man who'd done it was right there, but nurses talked and angry nurses talked a lot. She knew it was only a matter of time before the hatred and fury that ran hot through the heart of the town was turned towards that silent, empty husk sitting on the neatly made bed.
While they ran more tests on JJ, Emily waited there. Just in case. Anton was… easy to hate, she suspected. She could feel it, the possible hatred towards who he was and what he'd done, but at the same time she'd seen the gold that was all that remained of the daemon who'd never left him despite the lack of anything tying them together. She'd seen the marks on his arms and his mouth, the ragged remains of his nails.
Easy to hate, hard to pity. So Emily chose to pity him rather than hate him, because it was their job to do so. If they allowed themselves to hate, they'd be consumed by it before long.
And it was easier to stand here and be a barrier between him and that hatred rather than standing outside the room where Hotch lay unconscious and possibly destroyed from the inside. That was… she couldn't do it again. Not again. Not with Hotch.
She'd never realized how much she relied on Hotch to be steady and immovable until suddenly he wasn't either of those things, and she'd give anything to have him back again.
Reid was fine, she told herself, and ignored her brain chanting, not for a long time.
It wasn't such a hard fall, she tried instead, and her own mind turned against her again and shouted, yes it was. Further than you could go. Further than Sergio could.
He'll be okay, was her final attempt. Her mind was silent on that.
Will he?
"Prentiss," Rossi said, stepping up behind her. He looked old. Old and unhappy and scared, and that made her mind quieten and shrink away into a small, frightened ball. It was uncomfortable to see Rossi so… disconcerted. "Any fuss?"
"None," she replied, and looked away from his sadness. "Hotch?"
"No change. They won't know more until he wakes up. They think Hal's leg is broken, possibly dislocated at the hip, but they don't want to move them apart to x-ray her until they know if…" He trailed off and she felt Sergio shudder against her neck and dig his claws possessively into her shoulder. She understood his message. Mine, those claws declared, and she was glad for it. Eris made a soft churr deep in her throat, and turned her head to nip at Rossi's ear. They were all clinging.
"The house?" she asked, because she'd rode with Hotch to the hospital when the fireman were still battling the fire and then left shortly after arriving to find their once-again wayward Reid. "What the hell caused the blaze?"
Rossi turned to her with an expression so woefully innocent she immediately began concocting alibis for him in her mind. "No idea," he grunted. "Last I heard it was in the process of being gutted. The shell will stand, not likely much else. Oddly, no one was overly keen to save the place. Can't imagine why."
Emily studied him, then smiled.
"No, I can't imagine," she said, and brushed her fingers gently against his elbow. "Some things are better left forgotten."
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There were tests, endless tests. Countless, innumerable, no doubt Spence could come up with another dozen synonyms for the amount of poking and prodding they subjected her to, when all she could bear was the thought of her home, her bed, her son's arms around her neck.
She called Henry as soon as they let her. He cried on the phone because she'd lost control of her voice, couldn't find the words to express how much she loved and needed the continued beat of his heart, and finally Will had taken the phone.
"Jennifer?" he said, his voice confused and scared, and she realized she was crying and that was another thing she couldn't control.
She wasn't okay. She wasn't okay, and she wasn't hiding it.
They made her stay the night. 'Observation' they said, for her concussion, but the room they put her in was barely a shout from the nurse's station and they kept the door ajar. She knew that in the DICU, Hotch and Reid were both in a similar room.
Emily left her side only once. When she returned, she clung to JJ's hand with a tenacity that would have put Morgan's to shame. JJ let her, sensing that she wasn't the only one who'd been hurt by the last twenty hours. Kailo rested between Sergio's shoulder-blades, a bright yellow splash of colour on the black swirl of the cat's silky fur. Both daemons watched their humans, watched the tests and the tears, and neither said anything. After what felt like a forever of helpless sobbing, Emily took the phone from her and moved away.
JJ let her. Will deserved to know what had happened, and she couldn't do it in a way that wouldn't terrify him.
They'd be having the conversation when she got home, she knew. The one they had every time one of them had a close call.
She didn't know how this one would end. She wasn't okay.
Maybe it was time to reconsider what it would take to be okay again.
No one was talking about Hotch, so she worried about him. She worried about him and she worried about Emily who kept checking her silent phone on her waist, and she worried about Rossi who walked in once without saying a word, his face grey and old. Older than she'd ever seen him. Eris drooped, her eyes half-lidded and feathers dull. She worried about Spence as well, because she still hadn't seen him and all the quieting affirmations in the world couldn't convince her that he was okay when the last time she'd seen his daemon, the hare was lying in a cage bloodied and screaming.
Morgan hugged her when he found her sitting on the bed she'd been given dressed in the plaid blue pyjamas they'd issued her. The material was soft and clean, such a far cry from the filthy clothes she'd peeled from her body before scrubbing her skin raw, and she hated it. Hated that she had it, when so many of the children she'd needed to protect were instead naked on cold steel beds waiting for a coroner's knife.
Maybe it was time to not be okay. Maybe this was it.
"We're here for you," was all Morgan said, and Naemaria echoed the sentiment.
And then visiting hours were over, and they left her alone.
She couldn't be alone.
The nurses were watching her carefully, but she worked with the most observant people in the world and she'd gotten far more past them. It was the work of an instant to sidle out when someone called the nurses away up the hall. It was almost ridiculously easy to pad quietly along the halls until she found the door that swung open under her hand and revealed brightly painted walls made garish by the dim night lighting.
And it was the work of a second to find them. She knew these halls now. After the past day, she'd never forget these halls. There were twelve rooms in the DICU, only twelve, and she knew which ones contained children, which contained fading daemons, and which contained her family.
She slid into the room and shut the door behind her, closing herself in with the softly murmuring machines narrating his body's refusal to bow down to what had happened and the ever-present knowledge that it was happening again.
She'd seen him like this before, once before. After Foyet. She'd seen him still and sad and damaged in a hospital bed as he and Hal healed from everything the world used to try and destroy them. This was different. Then, despite the knife wounds that had littered Hal's body, she'd still lain on her own bed. They'd still allowed them that separation, that illusion of their distinctness.
This time they'd laid her alongside him; a long, black line of barely moving fur and muscle that contrasted wildly with the pastiness of his skin against her.
They'd done that with Reid too. Sedated him into unconsciousness to stop the screaming and then lain his daemon across his heart, fur to skin. Anything to keep them close. It hadn't worked with him.
The other bed was just as silent but more concealed; Reid a barely discernible bulk of huddled blankets from where he'd buried himself into the linen. JJ held her breath. Reid slept lightly, he always had. Anytime she shared a room with him, he was liable to jolt awake at the barest hint of the sheets rustling under her body, peering up and over his own blankets like a startled owl with a soft You okay?
But he didn't even twitch, out cold, and the small bed next to him that the nurses had supplied for Aureilo stood empty.
"Oh, Hal," Kailo whispered, fluttering over and landing on the grotesque bulk of the cast that immobilised her hind leg and hip. She'd landed heavily, rolled on it. The damage was impossible to discern while they still desperately needed to know whether her bond with her human remained intact.
They wouldn't know that until he woke.
The leg of the chair she dragged carefully over to the side of Hotch's bed caught on the linoleum and squeaked, staying her hand and her breath as she waited for detection. But no one came. Reid didn't move, his breathing just as even and deep. She'd never known him to sleep so deeply, glancing worriedly over as she eased into the chair and released her breath with a shaken sigh, her head throbbing with the beep of the machine. Half of her wanted to sneak over there too and check, just… make sure… that he was okay, but the other half reminded her of the last pulse she'd tested and failed to find.
"I'm sorry, Aaron," she said, her voice a whisper, and then she lowered her head onto the soft sheets of his bed. Her forehead brushed his arm, painfully cool to her flushed skin. "I'm so fucking sorry."
The silence stretched, strained, kept on. Impossibly long. The beeps counted it and she counted them until her mind swam and she missed her family. All her family. She thought of Morgan, or Emily and Rossi, all alone in their hotel rooms. She thought of Garcia, alone in her home. She wanted to look up and over at Reid, but she worried too much and she couldn't.
She thought of Will and ached. She thought of Henry who she'd be going home to soon, and Jack, who didn't know what had happened and wouldn't until they knew more.
She thought of all of them and knew she could never leave them. Her eyes burned again, choking on the horror of everything she'd seen, the gold and the firework and the knife, and Anton Harper's mad-hurt eyes, and Kayla Chant's trusting ones. She thought of two hares, one gone to Dust and one that still breathed and loved like the other never had.
Who would he have been without his mother's knife? Or his brother's cruelty?
A cough that wasn't hers, dry and pained. She froze. Reid?
A hand touched her cheek, cutting a gentle line through the sticky trace of tears that traced the line of it.
"JJ." Hotch more breathed the words rather than said them, and when she looked up—fully aware she was in a painfully unprofessional position right at this moment—both he and Hal were looking down on her with eyes that were knowing. "How are you?"
The man woke up from almost having his daemon torn from him, and the first thing he asked was if she was okay.
"Me?" she murmured, well aware that she'd be in a world of trouble if caught. "Hotch, Hal fell off a cliff. How are you?"
Hotch blinked, his dark eyes catching the light, and then he looked at his wolf. "Numb," she complained suddenly, trying to twist upright to peer down at her hip and leg. Hotch exhaled with a hastily bitten back moan, his hand jerking towards his own thigh reflectively.
"Ow," he breathed. "That hurts. I feel that. Hal, I feel that." He smiled through the pain that still showed.
Not Severed.
Not Severed.
They'd be okay. They would heal from this.
Maybe she could too.
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When they got to the hospital in the morning, it was to the most fucking welcome sight any of them had had in two days.
Rossi was a step in front of Morgan as they walked into Hotch and Reid's hospital room, and the immediate wide grin on his face instantly drained a clawing tension from Morgan's spine and shoulders that he hadn't even been aware of carrying. Unconsciously, he sped up to race Prentiss through the door, grinning as she shoved back at him and rolled her eyes at the bustle to get through first.
"Children, please," said a soft, welcome voice, and Morgan stopped bickering with Prentiss and found himself looking at the tired smile of JJ, curled up catlike in the orange armchair next to Hotch's bed. Someone had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and another over her knees. The forced efficiency of the fold of the blankets had Morgan suspecting a nurse had done so, giving quiet permission to her being here.
Reid was sitting upright in his bed, one leg dangling over the edge, fighting with Aureilo over possession of a blue jello cup. A fight he appeared to be losing as the hare stuck his paw into the top of the cup and almost overset it into Reid's lap, earning them a sharp behave from Hotch.
Hotch.
"Goddamnit, Aaron, if you wanted to have a flying daemon, you could have borrowed Eris," Rossi roared, startling both Reid and Aureilo into ceasing the jello war and snapping their heads around to look. "You didn't have to go throwing Hal off of a cliff to try and outdo me."
Hotch's mouth thinned into a disapproving line at Rossi's joviality, but the corners of his eyes still smiled. "I'm considering," he said slowly, and all noise in the room ceased for a moment as they waited for whatever bombshell he was about to drop. "Requesting that all daemons be tied to their humans. Perhaps some kind of retractable leash. I feel this would solve many of our problems."
Silence as they processed this, then JJ laughed. It was a startled, involuntary noise, and no one looked more surprised by it than she did. "Eris would look lovely in pink," she said finally, covering her mouth with her hand and looking uncertain, like maybe laughing wasn't okay to do just yet.
Morgan smiled tightly, nodded when her worried blue gaze met his, and checked his phone. The time.
It was time.
"Back in a sec," he muttered to Emily as the woman moved past him to kneel next to JJ, their heads bowing together as they talked softly, and then he and Naemaria backed out of the room.
Took a deep breath and followed the corridor in a loose circle to the gated section the children were in. A nurse checked his ID, smiled sadly, and let him in.
Three heads turned to look at him as he walked towards them. The social worker's hound daemon didn't even react, examining a gambolling lamb painted on the wall carefully. The social worker on the other hand looked worn and pleased to see him, holding her free hand out to shake. "Agent Morgan," she greeted. "Ally has been talking about you."
Looking down, he met Ally's serious gaze as she smiled and patted Naemaria carefully on the head. "Heya, Ally," he said softly, crouching to meet her eye-line. "You ready to go see your brother?" Flakamor was a boxer, almost as tall as Naemaria but half as wide, his dark eyes cold and worried. "You know that he's going to be a little different, don't you?"
"Mellissa said he's not well," Ally said, running her—mercifully clean—thumb against her lip thoughtfully as though considering sucking on it. A leftover comfort from when she'd last been allowed to be a child, all that time ago. "That he's not gonna be well again, but that he's still Jack. And that he misses me."
"He does miss you," Morgan agreed, standing and flinching as his knees crackled loudly. Ally smirked. "Do you know if Asling was in the daemons recovered?" he asked the social worker in a lowered tone, feeling Ally watching them carefully and considering all they said.
"From what we understand, Asling was one of the daemons that was…" Her throat worked hard to swallow around the horror of what she'd almost said. "I'm afraid not. It doesn't seem likely she will be."
Damn.
A small hand crept into his, slim fingers wrapping around two of his own. Her hand was too little to hold any more. His heart ached. "I want to see Jack now," she said firmly, tugging him towards the door. "Please."
He held her hand close as they entered the room. Jack was in the same position as the last time Morgan had seen him, turning his head disinterestedly to stare at them. Then, something. A spark.
He looked at Ally, looked away, and then looked back.
And smiled. Thin and shaky and barely there, but it was a smile.
"Ally," he whispered, voice harsh. "Hi."
Morgan watched as the girl tore her hand from his with a sob and hurtled to the chair, flinging herself into the thin circle of her brother's arms and burying her head against his chest. Flakamor barked, bouncing into the air and shifting midway into a parrot that flew around them before finally alighting as a cat on the edge of the seat and wrapping himself around the two, purring frantically.
There was a sniff, barely audible under Ally's excited rambling and Jack's muted replies. Morgan looked to the social worker, and found her head turned away from the children so they couldn't see her tears. "He's going to be okay," she explained, seeing his glance. "Despite everything, look at him. He's not giving up. Stubborn as sin and all for his sister."
Morgan did look. Jack had his mouth pressed against his sister's head, his own eyes wide with emotion, whispering intently to her.
He'd survive. He might even live again. He had a job to do—looking after his sister—and he wouldn't give up until it was done.
"Yeah," he agreed, smiling and stooping slightly to rest his hand against Naemaria's rough-smooth coat. "Don't worry. I know the type. He'll stay for her."
Different, but still okay.
.
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It appeared as though the nurses were evenly split between furious at Reid for the increased damage Aureilo had caused to their bodies by their instance upon being involved in the remainder of the investigation, or being completely smitten with his sheepish smiles and soft apologies for being a bother.
Hotch watched them alternate between frowning at Reid or melting over him, and hid his amusement behind a stern face that had Reid flushing nervously every time he looked over. Hal lay beside him, his arm looped over her shoulder, and her breathing a steady, comforting rhythm against him.
Hairline fracture in her hind leg and muscle damage in her flank and hindquarters. She'd limp. But it would heal.
They'd be okay.
Will arrived with Henry in his arms and Garcia bursting in moments behind them. Emily disappeared soon after, to procure more jello cups to try and stave off the bitter battle that had sprung up between Morgan, Reid and Aureilo. Hotch grudgingly let Garcia fuss over Hal's cast for a short time before she bustled off to smother Reid. JJ took Will's hand and the three vanished from the room, to reconnect. Hotch envied them that. He missed Jack with a fierceness that hurt. They'd spoken on the phone, but Jack had a game playing on the console in the background and was distracted, fidgety. Jessica promised not to tell him that Hotch was in hospital.
There was no point scaring him.
They had one more visitor.
"Agent Hotchner, Agent Rossi," said a cool voice, and Hotch looked up to find the Director of the FBI standing in the doorway with his coat over his arm and a grim expression. "Doctor Reid. How are you all?"
"Well, thank you," Reid said politely, and Rossi took Garcia's arm, nodded pertly, and tugged her from the room. The man strode in, clicking the door shut firmly and turning to face them. By his side, his cougar daemon stood proud and predatory. Hal stiffened. Hotch slid his arm from her, not wishing to appear invalid or insecure for the conversation he felt was coming.
"Doctor Reid, it is my understanding that your daemon was held captive by Jeremy and Anton Harper for an extended period of time within the building where the Intercision occurred?" Director Morrow said, looking past Hotch to address the agent directly.
"Correct," Reid answered, without offering more information. He was picking up on the uncertain undercurrent in the room as well. The Director of the FBI didn't come visiting just because his agents were hurt in the field.
"We would ask your cooperation in ascertaining the events that occurred during that time period," Morrow continued, smiling sharply. Hotch immediately straightened. "Especially regarding the event of Intercision he may have witnessed."
"I didn't see anything," Aureilo snapped, sitting upright. Hotch watched Morrow's eyebrows twitch upwards in shock. "I was in a cage the whole time. Then I was in the van. I saw nothing of interest to you."
Silence. Reid's gaze was locked on Morrow's, not wavering in the slightest, and there was a suspicion on the Director's own face that had Hal's hackles lifting minutely. "Very well," he said finally, in a tone that suggested this was not the last of this topic. "Agent Hotchner, I would request a moment of your time. Alone. Perhaps once you have returned home."
"I can go," Reid said, slipping out the bed and almost scurrying to the door with Aureilo in his arms, pyjama legs flapping. Hotch winced, imagining the nurses' faces if they saw him up and about, but he was already gone.
"How are you feeling, Agent Hotchner?" Morrow asked, smiling again. A wolf smile, like Hal when she was hunting. "Your doctor seems adamant that you suffered little in the way of long-lasting damage from your daemon's fall."
"With all due respect, sir," Hotch said. He didn't like that he was laying down. He didn't like that the man was standing over him. And he didn't like at all the way the man's eyes had lingered on Aureilo. "You're not here to ask about my health, or the health of my team."
Morrow laughed, and that wasn't wolf-like at all. Hal had never laughed so coldly. "I appreciate your desire to have this done with. This was a terrible case, simply terrible. The Bureau is very interested in ensuring that nothing of the sort ever occurs again. The fear it creates is… simply untenable."
"I believe that any documentation owned by the Harpers on Intercision was stored within the building that burned down." Hotch watched Morrow as he nodded slowly. "It's unlikely we'll ever know for sure what happened in there, and how their detailed information on the act was gained. We can only theorise that during the course of her studies Marissa Harper discovered what she shouldn't have. It does look as though she completed the Intercision on her son, Anton, before withdrawing from society. Hospital records after her death indicate that there were some aspects of mental illness that contributed to that withdrawal, likely triggered by her guilt. From Jeremy's confession, we can gather that he derives… some kind of pleasure from the pliability of the Intercised children. We can't establish much more than that without extensive interviewing. Any information that isn't contained within those two men, burned with the house."
"The house," Morrow said, straightening. "That burned remarkably conveniently when everyone had been removed from it. Forensics believe the blaze began in a room containing extensive paperwork and documentation. It does seem awfully… serendipitous, does it not? Suspicious almost."
"Perhaps. I was elsewhere at the time the blaze occurred, as was my team with me. We can offer little in the way of explanation – the forensics team will be better placed to answer your questions."
The silence lengthened. "And Doctor Reid?" Morrow said finally, and it was exactly what Hotch had been waiting for. "I understand he is able to achieve great distances from his daemon at will. That's a lost art… very much like Intercision."
"Never entered the building. The team will confirm this. He has no knowledge of Intercision, or of the act of it. His abilities with Aureilo draw from a partial Severing he underwent several years ago, while working the Tobias Hankel case. Everything you wish to know about that is in the Bureau archives."
Any information they wanted, for good or for bad, would not be found here. Intercision would die with the Harpers.
The door clicked open and a hangdog-looking Reid slunk back in, shepherded by a nurse and a grinning Rossi. Morrow stepped back, the air of interrogation broken, and took his leave.
"Director," Reid called, and fixed the man with a look that Hotch had only ever seen on his own face, a steely kind of determination that spoke to the man he'd become. "The blade that was used to Intercise the children. Every account of blades capable of the act has them as an iron alloy of variable metallurgical origins – but none that would be destroyed by a house fire. What happened to Anton's blade?"
Morrow didn't look back. "It has been dealt with, Doctor Reid. Your concern is duly noted. Good day. I wish you all a speedy recovery – and look forward to seeing you back in the field."
And he was gone.
"Trouble, Aaron?" Dave asked sweetly. Hotch glared at him, feeling Hal growl in the back of her throat.
"We're going to talk," he promised his friend, trying to sound firm. "You and I."
"Oh goody. I look forward to it." Eris hooted in agreement.
Sometimes he wondered about this team.
.
.
It took them four days to reluctantly release Hotch from the hospital, Reid with him. Rossi suspected that Reid had likely sweet talked his way out of the hospital, judging by the weary look the nurse had given him as he'd signed his release papers.
There was one last thing Rossi wanted to do before the jet left, and it had been a damn challenge to organize it without the rest of the team getting wind and accusing him of getting soft in his old age. Bah. He was entitled to a bit of softness. They all were, especially after a case like this.
The air was cold, the sky clear and blue. Mist fogged in front of his mouth as he worked his hands together, the bitter morning biting at any exposed skin. Just him and the man working the crank that lowered the sad unadorned boxes into their final resting place.
They deserved to be buried. They deserved this, this final resting place on a shaded hill with a view of the frosted morning and the leafless trees. Not cremation and a box somewhere dusty and forgotten to never be claimed because they died without names.
His hand hadn't faltered as he'd signed the cheques for the headstones that would stand above them. Above these, and above those yet to be buried. The bodies that were still being processed, cut and studied by those curious and grieved by the practices that had been wrought upon them. He'd ensured a plot for them all, a neat little row of lost children like a fairy tale of old.
And upon each of them a date. A blank gold disk to symbolize a daemon lost. And a simple line.
Somebody's Beloved Rests Here
A cough behind him, dry and familiar. He could almost hear the anxious neediness in it. He smiled through the burning behind his eyes, and didn't hide the tears. Fuck it. Fuck being composed or dignified or whatever. They were his team, and these were the bodies of murdered children being mourned by no one but the men and women who hunted monsters. They deserved some goddamn tears, for the families who didn't know to cry for them.
And his team.
His goddamn team. Of course they'd found him. Despite his care, despite him slipping out before the dawn had even broken. Despite it all, like hounds, they snuffed him out and came to sorrow with him. Never alone.
Eris stayed silent on his shoulder, but he could feel her sad pleasure as they stepped up beside him in a ragged line of sleepy eyes and ruffled clothes. One of them, probably Reid—the only one who slept so lightly a sneezing mouse could wake him—had heard him leave, or woken and noted his empty room. Maybe Aaron, the only one who'd shake himself awake before the dawn broke to do a quiet pace of the hotel to ensure all was well and would have noted his missing car. Whoever it was, he imagined them rousing the others, snapping them all to wakefulness, the gathering in a dazed huddle, plotting, planning, fucking following him.
He was glad of it. Someone took his hand. A small, delicate hand, one that was ill-suited to handle a gun and did it anyway. JJ. Her other hand held Henry's, and the boy was rugged up into a fluffy ball of coats and jackets, two of which looked frumpy enough that Rossi suspected they were Reid's. Will slung an arm around JJ's hip, his son tucked between them, and rested his chin on her shoulder with his gentle eyes on the row of graves. His Alsatian daemon sat to his side, Kailo on her head and a fluttering moth dancing around her throat, delighting in the clean lift of the fresh morning air.
Morgan and Garcia pressed together. Garcia's nose was red with the cold, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes gleamed behind brightly coloured glasses. Morgan didn't cry, he wasn't the type, but when the sun broke above the trees and brought the promise of warmth, he closed his eyes and lifted his face to it as though praying.
Hotch stood slightly apart, an unmarked hospital-issue cane in his hand to help stay the limp that he was doggedly determined to ignore. Hal had hobbled to reach there, but now they were still she stood with all the grace and self-contained dignity they both carried. They alone looked alert.
Reid stood to his other side, his head tilted like his hare's and eyes scanning and counting, mind ticking, constantly thinking. And grieving. He could see it lining every inch of the man's young face, forming shadows that would later become deep marks around his mouth and eyes to mark time on him. Aureilo stood on his other side, upright and formal, a mirror image of Hotch and his wolf on the far side of their group. A mirror image until Prentiss stepped up beside them both, slid her arm through Reid's, pressing her winter-red cheek to his shoulder, her cat butting the hare onto four legs and playfully twining around him.
They stayed like this, his team, until all the boxes were lowered and earth began to fill the neat holes left behind. Their faces were dry by this point, the sun risen and weakly warm, and Henry fidgety and bored with proceedings.
They left together, without a word, but each nodded to Rossi as they walked away and every face was open with a kind of fierce pride that would have made him flush if he was any less self-assured.
Reid gravitated to Morgan's side as they walked towards their car, and their laughter carried back towards him. Hotch limped, stopped and shook his head in frustration, and Emily distracted him with a sharp retort and a sly smile that had him almost grinning. Almost. But he did lean slightly less on the cane as they walked away. Garcia babbled to Henry, who looked to his father, who looked both exhausted and amused, and Rossi didn't blame him.
JJ walked beside him. Eris hooted softly to her, reverently. Rossi remembered a promise he'd made in a nightmare.
"I'm proud of you," he said, catching her arm and pulling her back. She blinked and looked at him, thrown. Shadows lingered in her eyes. She'd be doubting her place on the team, in her job. It was only natural. She needed to know they'd stand by her no matter what she chose. "For what you did in there. You held it together and you got everyone out. Those that couldn't walk, you carried. You did a damn hero's job, Jennifer. Those children that survived, they'll never forget what you did for them – and neither will I."
"I didn't save all of them." Her voice was sad, shuttered. Dragging all the guilt of the world close and hoarding it. "Which of them is the boy? The one I left?"
"Third to the right." He'd made sure. He'd known she'd ask. Next to that boy lay the girl he'd carried from the sewers. One of the girls found with Jack was next to her. The other had gone to her shell-shocked grandmother, home. Finally home. No one had found Amber Wyant. The girl had gone to the wind, run away, maybe finally to a better place. He doubted they would find her. She'd been hurt too badly the last time she'd stopped running, hurt badly enough that he wouldn't blame her if she never stopped again.
JJ turned and looked at the grave he'd named. "I left him," she said again, and closed her eyes for a moment. "I left him and when I came back, he was dead."
"He was dead when the knife fell between him and his daemon," Rossi corrected. "All you did was carry him that final distance. You got yourself out. You kept yourself alive. You came home to us – to your family. And so much more. We revel in our victories and we learn from our failures, but we let neither consume us or this job will destroy us. There were no failures here. Not on your behalf."
She nodded once, uncertain. Then once more, steadier. "Okay," she said finally, and breathed again. "Okay. What you did here today… it was good, Dave. Is good. These children deserve this. They deserve to be remembered. Thanks to you, they will be."
Rossi smiled and glanced over at the team, lingering on Reid. "Oh, I don't think there's any fear of them being forgotten."
They didn't leave that town as they'd arrived. They carried new scars, new wounds, new aches that would linger and twinge on cold nights. New weights that would take a long time to heal.
But looking at Reid and the easy way he and his daemon moved together once more, the careful banter between him and Morgan that had been missing, the hint of spine and anger in JJ's gaze that reminded her of why she did was she did in this job…
Maybe they were stronger.
In fact, he was sure they were.
.
"But your daemons en't just nothing now; they're part of everything. All the atoms that were them, they've gone into the air and the wind and the trees and the earth and all the living things. They'll never vanish. They're just part of everything."
Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials