A/N 1: Cowritten with my bashful but brilliant beta, Esperanta, she who keeps my prose typo-free and boasts an imagination more twisted than my own. The only things we created were this creepy little world and a few OCs.

A/N 2: Trying to strike meaningful balance between team screen time and main story. Always grateful for reader input! Your comments are like dark chocolate and the smell of lilacs on a soft spring evening! And kittens! And bunnies! And motivation to post more chapters faster!

Solitary 5.0

Chapter Ten

Default Position

He thought that probably it was the evening of Tuesday, the eighteenth of May. He hoped he had figured that right. If he hadn't, he would be running out of sandwiches soon. They were disgustingly gooey things, peanut butter and honey on whole wheat—who in hell puts honey in peanut butter, anyway?—but hunger can make anything palatable.

He was currently in his bed wearing his scrubs, socks, and sweater, curled up under the covers with a pen and the legal pad, adding to his list of potential questions for the next time his captor showed up. His fifth bottle of water sat on the seat of the chair—he had removed the cushion and was using the chair as a bedside table—with his last carrot and two folded pages of notes he had made on Warden's photo collages.

Never before in his entire life had he spent more than a few hours away from the sight and sound of life, of other human beings, and now—he rubbed his jawline again experimentally—it had been at least three days.

Reading that prisoners go mad in solitary confinement is nothing to actually experiencing the excruciating reality of constant silence, with nothing but your own heartbeat and breathing for comfort. You awaken, you clear your throat, the sound bounces off the walls like thunder, because the acoustics of an all-metal room are like those of an eight-by-eight foot shower stall, and you jump. You panic at the sound of your own body. After hours of this, you begin to talk to yourself. To recite anything you can think of, from Shakespeare to nursery rhymes.

To read aloud from the American Bar Association's snore-inducing Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

To read aloud from the Model Rules in the voice and mannerisms of, say, Richard Burton. Or Jason Gideon. Or George W. Bush. Or Spencer Reid.

As foolish and demeaning as he'd first considered Warden's idiotic insistence on constant cleanliness, within a few hours he'd eagerly embraced it for no other reason than it gave him something to do. Shaving had been the first action that had demonstrated its usefulness. After thirty-some years of daily shaving a coarse and insistent beard, he could recognize his jaw after twelve hours and after twenty-four. Since Warden insisted it be clean-shaven, he had right there on his face a means for counting the days of his confinement.

Six times, his jaw had felt like half a day's growth. Six times he had shaved, and each time, he had made a tiny tick along the first page of Numbers in the trade-paperback-sized bible Warden had left him. He was pretty sure that it had been Saturday night when Warden left him. Even if he had calculated that incorrectly, it was something to build on.

So…Tuesday night.

Three days out of four—maybe eight—days until Warden returned.

His assignment was complete. It had taken longer than he had thought it might. He'd had to start two separate pages over, once because he'd left out a word, and the other because he'd become sloppy and his careful printing had devolved into his usual scribble. Neat and legible, error-free, Warden had wanted. Well, that was what he'd get. Aaron had always been fussy about having his homework done. Whatever the teachers asked for, that was what he gave them. Pleasing his teachers had always been far less complicated than trying to please his father.

Something else he'd done to keep his mind engaged and focused: He was memorizing the books of the Bible in order, something his childhood friends had accomplished about the time they hit puberty. He set aside his legal pad and began to name them aloud.

"Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, One and Two Samuel, One and Two Kings, One and Two Chronicles—crap, those four—and then Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah." And what the hell were those four he kept forgetting? Job was one, Esther another, Nehemiah and somebody else, but who, and in what order?

Never mind. Don't get hung up on them. Move forward.

He took another sip of water, carefully replacing the cap on the bottle. "Jeremiah," he began again. "Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea." He'd worked out the mnemonic Jerry laments Zeke's dandy hose for that grouping of five.

Whine. Rattle.

His heart thundered.

Warden planned four days and it's only been three. He held his breath, praying that what he heard next would be not Warden's loafers, but the boots of an entire SWAT team.

Unfortunately, what he heard was the high-pitched squeal of Warden's hand truck.

Default position, he reminded himself. He'd designed a matrix of interpersonal choices he could display when his captor visited. Default position, or pretend-Warden-is-well-wrapped position, was one of respect, compliance, and credulity. Against it, all other behaviors could be observed and measured.

He glanced around the room—he'd been cleaning as he went, something else that filled the hours and helped to discharge some of his rage—and he felt his captor would be reasonably satisfied with his housekeeping efforts. He'd made some small modifications to his living area, what little there was of it. It would be interesting and instructive to see how Warden reacted to them.

"Are you awake?" the precise voice called.

He stood up, squared his shoulders. Found his game face.

"I am."

Aaron turned to face the square window with the rod as it slid open. His captor wore a blue and tan plaid cotton shirt, jeans, and a denim jacket. The hand truck, which this time held only two boxes, stood at some distance from the door. The expression on the little dickwad's face seemed more one of curiosity than anything else. As before, he stood at least five or six feet beyond the window when he addressed Aaron.

"What's your name?"

Here we go again….

He managed to get through both the name thing and reciting those appalling paragraphs without incident. If the Team didn't find him soon, he'd eventually have to put up some kind of protest against them, but for now, he'd stay firmly in Default position.

"Your hands."

Hotchner presented his arms, accepted the handcuffs, and fastened them onto his wrists. He noticed that his so-called Warden watched his every move closely. He was an observant little guy, thoughtful and analytical.

Oh, right. He profiled himself for me.

The keypads were tapped and the door opened. Warden entered and closed the door behind himself.

"Interesting move with the towel," he said, his voice neutral. Hotchner had fished the cords Warden had used on him originally out of the trash, and had strung them from a few of the hooks that protruded from the wall. One of the two shabby beach towels he had been given to dry his floor with, a bright yellow thing that featured a shark in sunglasses enjoying one of those foofy umbrella'd tropical drinks, now hung between the commode and the wall that had the door and window.

If Warden showed up while he was on the can, he would still have some privacy.

OK, not completely Default position, but his rebellions were all tiny and defensible.

Warden all but buzzed around the cell, shaking out the blankets, running his hand along the shelf and along the floor under the cot, peeking into the medicine cabinet. He glanced over the folded sheets of paper with a frown, then said, "Where is your assignment?"

"In the pages of Faultlines: Innocence Projects and Their Fallout," he replied. "The one on the shelf with the white cover, by—"

"I see it, Prisoner."

He heard his captor move to the shelf, heard the rustle of papers, and heard the creak of the leather lattice as Warden sat down on his bunk.

Aaron refused to allow himself to peek over his shoulder to see how Warden reacted to his assignment. He'd numbered each iteration that he had printed—his cursive writing was even hard for him to decipher on occasion—and he had checked it over at least half a dozen times.

Part of him feared that his captor would expect him to recite the Act of Contrition as another indication that Warden was the aggrieved party and that he, Aaron, was confessing his sins and pleading for forgiveness. If he did make such a request, Hotch had already decided that he would have to give up on Default position. Warden might have the cell, the shackles, the Enforcer, but he was not and could not be a god, all-good and deserving of all my love, as the prayer put it.

Instead, Warden said, "How are the hygiene supplies working out for you?"

"Just fine, thank you," Aaron answered.

"What did you think of the shaving soap?"

He decided on honesty. "It's outstanding," he said. "I prefer it to the bath soap." And it was, it was great stuff. If it didn't smell like food, it would be perfect.

"Would you prefer to use it instead of the Dial, then?"

"Yes."

"Are you exercising regularly?"

Oh, sure. I run fucking laps in here….

"Situps, pushups, crunches," he replied. Sometimes they're the only thing keeping me sane.

"And your bowels. Are they regular?"

For the space of a heartbeat, Hotchner's professional armor slipped and he was just a lonely and frightened man, robbed of his name, his loved ones, and his dignity, chained facing a wall while his tormenter interrogated him. His bowels were none of Warden's fucking business was what they were, and he didn't even want to think about what kind of bright ideas the dickwad might have for regulating them.

Mentally, he scrambled for his professional distance again and found it. "No complaints," he replied, his voice even.

There's something out there, beyond the shadows. Are those bars? Is that a cage? He moved his head slightly, the better to take advantage of the angle of a shadow. He wasn't sure. He wasn't even sure he wasn't imagining it.

Might as well find out right away whether dickwad plays it straight, or he plays little dickwad games.

"May I speak?"

"Briefly."

Always with that limitation.

Control freak.

"Warden, when you give me permission to ask questions, do you—" Phrase it right. "Do you differentiate between major questions and minor questions?"

A lot of how he conducted himself in the future would depend on how Warden answered. The worst possible response, of course, would be to count even that question as one of his two questions, but Warden seemed genuinely to believe himself to be a fair and humane man. He knew that he possessed the lion's share of power, and he didn't seem inclined to play power games to prove his point.

So far.

"If by major and minor, you mean simple queries about the necessities of life as opposed to the larger questions of why you are here, then certainly there's a difference. If you need to ask me for more toilet paper, I certainly won't count it as one of your questions."

Hotchner didn't even realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out. "Thank you."

"Any other—minor questions?"

"Not at the moment."

"I would appreciate a little respect, Prisoner."

God. It was like dealing with his father, or a self-aggrandizing judge. "Not at the moment, sir," he corrected himself.

"I have a question for you," Warden said, his voice cheerful and enthusiastic. "Consider your answer carefully. What's the first thing you remember wanting to be when you grew up?"

What the hell kind of question is that?

After rapidly examining the question from all sides, he decided that, like his time and place of birth, it wasn't something worth confabulating about. "My mother tells me that I wanted to be a policeman," he said.

"Your mother? But what do you remember?"

"I guess I wanted to be a policeman. The first thing I can remember wanting to be was a race car driver."

"What was it about driving a race car that was so attractive?"

Hotch frowned, grateful that he was facing away from his interrogator. He knew the answer, but it sounded really dopey. "I-I don't recall, exactly."

"You're lying, Prisoner. You're lying, and it doesn't become you. Lying wins you no resources."

Christ. "The gear shift," he admitted with a sigh. "The gloves and the helmet and…the way the engine tone changed when they shifted gears."

"A little respect?"

"The gear shift, sir." He shifted his shoulders. "And now I do have a minor question, Warden, sir." (OK, maybe you can back off a little on the sarcasm, Champ?)

"And that would be?"

"What's your first memory of what you wanted to be?"

There was a gratifying silence, then Warden said, "Ah, but that's a major question, Prisoner. Do you really want to squander one of your two capital-Q questions on that?"

"Yes, sir."

There was another silence, and then Warden said, "I'm sure I thought about a lot of things, but the first I remember was this. Our parents took us to a circus, and there was a man in a silver suit and silver top hat who rode an elephant. I recall thinking that had to be a really cool life, going from city to city in a shiny silver suit and riding an elephant." Warden gave a little chuckle, then said, "I hope you feel that you spent your question wisely."

"Yes, sir," Hotch said, infusing the words with as much meekness as he could manage. "Yes, sir, I do."

Game on, dickwad.

You weren't an only child. You grew up with two parents, and you perceived yourself as living in a city, not a town or a place.

"And now I have some things to accomplish here," Warden said. "While I'm engaged in that, you are to list all fifty states and their capitals, neatly and without errors. You can trade that for some extra resources."

"I'm chained to the wall."

"Don't be juvenile, Prisoner. Your cuffs will be removed."

~ o ~

The nice little man, the tidy little man in a suit and a bow tie, the little man from the Craigslist ads, beamed at her as he stood on the front steps of her townhouse. Eagerly, he presented her with an old-fashioned deep-fat fryer, round and fat and avocado green, like the one her mother-in-law had used.

She handed him some folded bills and he relinquished the deep-fat fryer into her arms. She carried it into the kitchen, set it down on the counter and opened the lid – to expose Aaron Hotchner's head, utterly hairless; even his eyelashes and eyebrows were missing.

She woke herself up screaming, and all her husband's sleepily murmured Now, Erin, honeys could do nothing to banish the horror. It took three tumblers of peppermint schnapps, warm, never mind the damn ice, before she could even return to the bedroom.

~ o ~

He wasn't sure which annoyed him more: the stupidity of the busy-work task, or the fact that he was having trouble carrying it out. He gave up trying to list the states in alphabetical order soon after he started. Instead, he started in the northwest corner, Washington, and mentally listed states as they appeared on the map as he envisioned it, and even then on his first try he came up missing two states (Utah and Minnesota).

And what the hell is the capital of Vermont?

He traveled all over the country regularly. He spoke to agents in field offices in state capitals all over the country on an almost daily basis. Why was this turning out to be so hard?

The purpose of this exercise, he recognized, was to demean him and to instill in him a sense of childlike powerlessness, inadequacy, and fear. Despite Warden's snarky Don't be juvenile comment, that was exactly the condition he was trying to trigger in Hotchner.

Montpelier, goddammit.

He still had two state capitals left blank when the symphonic music stopped and he heard the rattle of a CD case, then Warden's voice caroled, "Time's up, Prisoner." The little window with the bar opened again. "Hands."

As neatly as he could, given his time constraints, he printed Fargo, then flipped to another page and wrote Concord. Then he set the papers aside and came to the window.

As he began to reach around the center rod, Warden said, "The other way this time, Prisoner. Face inward."

Hotchner turned around and tried to put his hands through the window. The position wouldn't be quite as comfortable as its reverse, because the window was located rather high on the wall, but he would be able to observe Warden's face. That would probably make the sacrifice in comfort worthwhile. Warden could also observe his face, but he had spent his professional life learning to school his features.

I can do this.

This time, Warden pushed back the sleeves of Hotchner's sweater and fastened the cuffs himself, and he clipped them a little tighter than Aaron would have. Not painfully so, but the difference was noticeable.

The locks snicked, and Warden entered the cell, this time pushing his little hand truck in front of him. He parked it, set the brake (like it's going to roll away?) and shifted the upper box of two onto the cot. "That's for last time's completed assignment," he said, and he sat down on the bunk. "This is your current assignment? Good."

Holding the three sheets of paper some distance from his face (far-sighted, Aaron noted) he glanced down over the writing, then took a ballpoint from the breast pocket of his shirt and drew two small circles.

He doesn't wear a wedding ring.

"Fargo may be the largest city in the state," he said, "but the capital is Bismarck. And how did you manage, with all your education, to misspell Connecticut?"

There was no sense in protesting that he had spelled it correctly, that Warden had just read it wrong. He was supposed to have written neatly. And there was no freaking excuse for getting Bismarck wrong. He kept his face a mask.

Show nothing. Feel nothing. Miss nothing.

"Pity about the other resources," Warden said, his gaze drifting to the other box on the cart, his expression as blank as Aaron's. "Maybe you can win them next time."

"Maybe I can," Hotch echoed quietly. "Sir."

Warden leaned a negligent elbow on the box of resources. "I want to talk to you briefly about your assignment for next time. I'm asking you to list all of your teachers, K through 12, and everything that you can remember about each of them. That's the teachers, not what happened in the classes. Extra details will earn extra points." He got that smug little grin on his face. "And before you decide to invent details, think of what will happen if I quiz you on those details four years from now."

"Permission to speak?" Hotch blurted.

"Briefly."

Picking his words with infinite care, he said, "Warden, sir, I know that you've given a lot of thought to—to some aspects of, of this. I appreciate your planning, sir. But—have you given any thought to current research on the effects of solitary confinement?"

A sharp bark of laughter. "That sounds like a capital-Q question to me, Prisoner."

"No, I misspoke; I don't mean it as a question, Warden. I mean it as a statement." He looked directly into Warden's pale, and suddenly ice-cold, eyes. "Sir, I can survive four days, maybe four weeks, but even four months of solitary confinement will—"

"Enough," Warden said. "You have no idea what you can or cannot endure."

Oh, yes, I do, Warden. Four years of solitary confinement would turn me—would turn anyone—into a vegetable. A gibbering wreck.

"Permission to—"

"Silence!" Warden rose to his feet and reached into the back pocket of his jeans for the Enforcer. "It's time for me to go."

"Please, sir," Hotchner said, keeping his voice low but steady, determined. "What about my second question?"

Warden's thumb hesitated on the power switch. "It'll cost you."

Aaron sighed. "What will it cost me?"

Warden gave that some thought. "Two hundred more repetitions of the Act of Contrition."

Aaron nodded. "Fair enough. I can do that." Sensing Warden's ambivalence, he added, "Sir. I can do that, sir."

The Enforcer was returned to Warden's pocket. "What's your question?"

"This place," Hotch said. "Who built it?"

Warden barely blinked. "White supremacists in the early nineteen-eighties," he replied. "And you've exhausted your good will with me today." He nodded at the box on the bed. "You have food and water and more toilet tissue. I'm leaving."

He opened the door, steered the hand truck out of the cell, and shut it behind him. When he came up to the window, he took one of Aaron's wrists in his fingers and said, "What's the capital of North Dakota?"

Dickwad.

"Bismarck, sir," Aaron sighed.

The key turned in his cuffs. "Better."