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 they make us feel all warm and giggly, like maybe updating a little sooner!

Solitary 5.0

Chapter Twelve

No Dark Sarcasm

The wind rippled in the pale green chintz curtains, the ones with a scattering of red and yellow apples that covered the window above the kitchen sink. In the distance, a dog barked. He turned in his chair and watched his mother's hands. She was using the old mixer, the enormous metal one that she kept under the kitchen counter, the one she had to assemble every time she used it. She had to be baking a cake. She only used the big old mixer when she baked a cake.

He turned again and he saw Haley wearing that oversized pink sweater, the one that she called her Flashdance sweater. She was licking chocolate batter off her forefinger almost seductively, her eyes fixed on his.

He felt profoundly relieved that she was alive. He stood up to cross the room to kiss her.

He tried to say Hi, gorgeous, but no sound emerged. He reached for her, smiling broadly, and tried again. Hi, gorgeous.

Still nothing.

As his hands closed on her upper arms, as his mouth hovered just inches above her own, he tried one last time.

"Hi—"

The sound of his own gravelly voice awakened him. Once again he was in the goddamn eight-by-eight cell, lying on his right side and staring at the locked door just a few feet away. He bit back a cry of despair, although he wasn't sure which part was more painful: that he was still a prisoner, or that Haley was still dead.

He sat upright, wrapping the bedclothes around him to ward off the chill.

All of his training, all of his years of working with victims of abductions, of hostages, of slaves—none of it prepared him for the constant dreams of freedom. He was no stranger to dreams that seemed to undo evil. He'd had plenty of them after Haley died—even a few after she left him—and he'd held Jack night after night when the boy awakened to find that his mom was still gone.

The worst dreams so far were the ones where the Team broke into the bunker and heat poured in through the door. Where Morgan, or sometimes Rossi, physically picked him up and carried him like a child out into the anteroom, where Emily was always cuffing the fucking Warden. It was always Emily in that role, and she was being none too gentle. Warden would look at him, sometimes with rage, sometimes with a silent pathetic plea on his face, and Morgan-or-Rossi would say Forget that motherfucker, Hotch.

It was, according to the clock of whiskers, somewhere between noon and midnight on Friday, May 21st. A full week had passed since Warden abducted him from his own garage in broad daylight. The last box of "resources" had included food for six days, and this concerned Aaron because only three days had gone by and yet he was finding it harder, rather than easier, to stay calm and patient, to let the Team do what they did best.

He cleaned. He did every exercise, both physical and mental, that he could recall. He read, he wrote, he analyzed. Sometimes, he prayed—badly, clumsily. Without any kind of confidence. He sang—a lot. He sang although his memory for lyrics was pretty feeble, and seemed to be unrelated to his musical preferences.

How else to explain that he'd gone blank a few lines into "Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me," but could sing every damn word of "Do That to Me One More Time"? That he stumbled through "Whip It" but never missed a beat of "Bette Davis Eyes"? That the only one of his favorite songs from his high school years that he seemed to nail perfectly was "Another Brick in the Wall"?

He drank some water, savored a few bites of a Slim Jim, and took another look at his attempt to fulfill Warden's stupid assignment to list all of his teachers. "We don't need no education," he sang softly, noting that Mrs. Bellman's husband had been his swimming coach at summer camp. "We don't need no thought control."

He tapped his pen furiously against the paper, still lost as to the name of his first chemistry teacher, the one who'd vanished so mysteriously mid-semester (not so mysteriously after all; he'd followed his estranged wife to Kentucky and tried to strangle her, although the truth took several months to filter down, in whispers, to the student body).

Now what the hell was his name?

Hotchner considered writing Severus Snape, then thought better of it. "No dark sarcasm in the classroom," he sang to himself. "Teachers, leave them kids alone."

Mr. Lutz.

Got it.

~ o ~

He had a broad, warm smile that Derek Morgan desperately wanted to slap right off his warm square face. "Listen up, kids," he said. "I know none of you wants to hear what I say, but you don't have a choice, because you're professionals."

"Don't kill him," Rossi breathed in Derek's ear. "Leave him to me."

"I'm Hector," the visitor from the Hoover Building said, still smiling. "And my specialty is the art of creative thinking. And I'm here to brainstorm with you—because you're the Bureau's best resource when it comes to Aaron Hotchner—about how and why he might have chosen to drop out of sight. There are no wrong answers, people. This is all about brainstorming."

"About—Hotch deliberately arranging for somebody to kidnap him?" JJ's voice squeaked and her blue eyes were enormous.

"Fact is," Hector said, leaning in confidentially, "we're dealing in an interesting situation here, because somebody returned Agent Hotchner's creds, his watch, his keys—but they pulled the pictures of his little boy right out of there. Now, anyone have any bright ideas about why any UNSUB would keep those pictures?"

Emily Prentiss leaned forward, a dangerously friendly expression on her face. "Are you for real?"

"It's all about freeing yourself from finding what have to be the right answers," Hector assured her. "About seeing options you're missing because they don't fit into your current mindset."

"We go chasing after the idea that Hotch faked his own abduction, and that's exactly where we'll end up," she retorted. "Free from the right answers."

"Agent Hobbes-Gutierrez," Erin Strauss said from her observer's seat in the far corner, "I can understand their reluctance to participate in this exercise. They've lived with the video of Aaron's abduction for a week. It's hard to believe that a man would willingly set himself up for that kind of abuse. Perhaps you can—"

"Please call me Hector, Erin," the agent said with a toothy grin. "We have no hard evidence that Agent Hotchner was genuinely shocked. He's seen enough people Tasered to know how to fake it. Not that he necessarily did, mind you—but it's a possibility that we have to address at some point, and better sooner than later, I always say. And I appreciate all of you dragging yourselves out of bed to join me on a Saturday morning—"

"No," David Rossi rumbled. "That's only you Hoover Building types who work a nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday week. We don't have that luxury. And if you weren't here, we'd be here anyway, working the evidence, following leads."

"Wait," said Spencer Reid, unexpected authority in his voice. "I see where you're leading us, Agent Hobbes-Gutierrez."

"Hector."

Reid's face showed nothing. "Agent," he repeated serenely. "If it's gonna satisfy some official administrative requirement for us to pretend that today's April Fool's Day, well, fine. I'm here to play, Agent."

Drawing a deep breath, Spencer said, "Let's consider that Agent Hotchner's love for his son is neither as deep nor as automatic as we've always observed. Let's presume, since we're spending our Saturday morning in the Twilight Zone, that having Jack was Haley's idea, that the whole pregnancy thing was a ruse to tighten her grip on Hotch, who'd have preferred to remain childless. Let's presume that, once he was free of having to fake the good-father thing for Haley, he felt free to give up the good-daddy pose and get rid of his undesirable family responsibilities."

Waves of negativity, of hostility, rose in the room but Reid seemed impervious to them. "Let's assume that he faked his abduction so that he could get out from under parenthood and the weight of his Bureau responsibilities. He has a girlfriend we know nothing about." He turned and smiled at each of his teammates in turn. "She lives in Michigan and he's gone to join her there."

"Michigan," Hector echoed encouragingly. "Interesting choice of locales. You see what kind of information we can derive from a simple relaxation of the rules of gotta-be-right? Whatever triggered your choice of Michigan for his destination, ah, Spencer? Or is it Spence?"

Reid returned neither his smile nor his enthusiasm. "Doctor," he said, his voice stony.

"Beg your pardon?"

"It's Doctor, Agent. And it's the point furthest west in the plot of our UNSUB's movements."

"Her name is Lenore," Rossi contributed, fiddling idly with his phone as he spoke. "She's tall, with long black hair. She has something to do with lions."

"A zookeeper," Reid suggested.

"Or a lion tamer," said Rossi. "Aaron was irresistibly drawn to her whip and chair."

Hector frowned. "Now you're not being serious," he said.

"But if there are no right or wrong answers, every suggestion is serious," Prentiss protested. "I'm down with Lenore the lion tamer. He met her at an ice skating rink in Seattle, before he came back to head the BAU unit. He kept a separate, prepaid phone to maintain contact with her, knowing that Garcia wouldn't be able to track their communications."

The visiting agent turned toward Rossi. "What suggested lions to you?" he asked.

Rossi shrugged, "Michigan. Detroit. Detroit Lions."

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm sure you are," Rossi said, his smile as broad as the creative-thinking specialist's. "It's a football team. The Detroit Lions."

"Ah." Hector frowned. "Too obvious," he said, shaking his head. "Too logical."

Logic is suddenly something to avoid?

"Fine, OK, I can play," Morgan said at last. "Long as we're wasting our time and, ah, yours, Agent Hobbes-Gutierrez."

"Hector, please."

"See, you can't get locked into heterosexuality, either, Agent," Morgan continued. "If Hotch is hiding shit from us, then there's no telling how much of what we think we know about him is wrong. I say this is no Lenore. This is some ripped pretty-boy from his secret days with the CIA, the ones he doesn't talk about."

"Interpol," Emily corrected. "Definitely Interpol."

Morgan raised an eyebrow at her. "And why?"

"Fewer rules. Greater latitude for—interesting motivations."

"And he's not ripped," JJ contributed grimly. "He's a short little thing, a professional Charles Manson impersonator in Vegas. They met when they were playing in the same Aerosmith tribute band."

Agent Hobbes-Gutierrez's lip twitched with what might have been dismay.

It was the first thing Morgan had enjoyed all morning.

~ o ~

Since it was a lovely Sun-in-Gemini evening, he decided to sling the canvas bag of Prisoner's foodstuffs over his shoulder and hike the mile-and-a-half of switchbacking paths that led from the stables to the cavern where the entrance to the bunker was concealed.

One thing that frustrated him was the fact that Prisoner seemed genuinely unable to place him. He knew that he'd changed, both physically and personally, in the seventeen years since they'd first taken each other's measure in Baltimore. OK, so he'd dropped a few pounds and picked up some people skills—but you'd think that the whole conspiracy-to-convict-an-innocent-man thing would raise some alarms.

Surely, he couldn't have screwed over that many defendants, could he? He'd have been caught, right? The Bar Association would have disciplined him, said, oh, dear, you've been a naughty, naughty boy, rapped his knuckles, sent him to bed without dessert, or some similar maddeningly meaningless punishment. Censure or something. You'd think, though—wouldn't you?—that if he'd made it a habit, the FBI would have wanted no part of him, right?

By the time he got down that wretched, wobbly elevator, he was in no mood to be civil.

He shoved the gate open and called, "Are you awake?"

"Does it matter?" the dark baritone called back.

Okie-dokie. Somebody else isn't in the mood to be civil, either.

Norton dropped the canvas bag in the storage area and moved over in front of the cell, which sat along the far wall of a much larger room. The survivalists and supremacists who had first taken advantage of this location had obviously had much grander plans than two steel cells and that long cage-thing, whatever they'd meant it to be, along the far left edge of the room. Some day, he hoped to find more documentation than the little he had discovered already.

He slipped the latch on the square window, to the right of the door on his side, the left of the door on Prisoner's side, the window with the red steel rod running down its middle.

Whereas previously he had risen to greet his captor, this evening Prisoner sat on his cot, one knee up, with a water bottle in his fingers. His cot was made up. He wore his sweater and had an extra blanket folded loosely beside him. He was using the cushion for the chair as an extra pillow, and the chair as some sort of table. He looked through the window at Norton with a combination of caution and curiosity.

"What's your name?" Norton asked him.

He barely blinked. "Prisoner, sir."

"And mine?"

He shook his head. "I have no idea," he replied, his tone calm, thoughtful. "I know I'm to call you Warden, and I also know I should recognize you. But I don't."

"That wasn't the answer I wanted."

Prisoner nodded. "Then my answer is, 'Warden, sir.'"

"Your statements."

The man sighed and shifted positions slightly, then read the paragraphs printed on his walls in a low monotone. He seemed no closer to identifying with the text than he had been when Norton had first dragged him in.

This will be a longer haul than I'd anticipated.

"What was the first federal prosecution you participated in?" Norton asked him.

Prisoner gave him a what's-the-catch look, but replied, "Jurek, Wilhousky, et al."

"Your second?"

"Wassermann, Sinclair, et al."

"Your third?"

Prisoner unscrewed the cap of his water bottle. "Ianotti, Bianchi, et al."

"Your fourth?"

A long sip of water. "Kelly, Sterman, et al."

"How many prosecutions did you participate in before you joined the FBI?"

Prisoner blinked. "Fifteen."

"And on how many were you lead counsel?"

"The last nine. Jaffee, Benson, et al., was my first lead." His face appeared relaxed, but it was clear to Norton that his captive was studying him closely.

Warden produced the handcuffs from his pocket. "Arms out."

Prisoner stood up and approached the window warily. "Which way?" he asked.

"The usual way," Norton said. "Forward." He held the handcuffs where the lawyer could reach them and watched as the man fastened them onto his wrists. He noticed that Prisoner made sure that he could see that they had clicked into place securely.

Prisoner frowned at the cuffs for a moment, then said, "Permission to speak?"

"Briefly." What is your game, lawyer?

"Sir, if it's all the same to you, I think I would prefer to face the other way." His gaze drifted up from his wrists to Norton's eyes, but he said nothing further.

Obviously, the lawyer believed that whatever intelligence he derived from studying Norton's features would be well worth the additional awkwardness and heightened sense of vulnerability of that position.

Do you think I didn't learn all about keeping my expression blank during those five years in prison?

He took the key from the pocket of his khakis and unfastened the cuffs. "Turn around."

~ o ~

Jesus Christ, it was almost midnight!

In the privacy of his office, Rossi kept looking at the same words, over and over. The same matrices, as printed out from the threat assessment software used by the Bureau, as drawn in Morgan's rapid Sharpie strokes on a legal pad, and as sketched with Reid's pencil on the back of a restaurant place mat.

Purpose taken: to kill, as a hostage, to interrogate, to punish BAU/Bureau

Outcome: Dead.

Dead attempting to escape, dead under torture, dead because he wouldn't cooperate.

Given eight days gone, no demands and no boasting from the UNSUB, the only reasonable interpretations were that Hotch was dead or (distantly) that he was being interrogated.

And what would anyone interrogate him about? That was the critical question, then. The BAU maintained no state secrets.

Yeah, there was that outlier possibility, what Rossi now called the "Hector Factor," that Aaron had arranged the whole thing so he could get free of a cloying family, a child he was unable or unwilling to care for. Aaron skipping out from under his responsibilities, maybe to set up housekeeping with a foxy blackjack dealer, a femme fatale from the Mossad. A pretty boy from law school.

A lion tamer.

The "Hector Factor" had to be there—the outcomes matrix demanded that all possibilities be accounted for—but if Aaron had done anything like that, then he wasn't Aaron anymore. Not the Aaron they knew and loved, or at least respected, anyway. Aliens had stolen his brain.

Case closed.

Dead.

He poured himself another drink and stared morosely into the shadows.