Chapter Fourteen: What makes us weak
Thanks to my amazing beta, Tafferling!
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The first few nights hadn't been so bad. It had been thrilling almost, to be travelling to an unknown location with the slight hint of danger on the horizon.
Thrilling, until he looks away from the scenery flashing by the window, and over to the sleeping child in the car seat; blonde hair tumbling messily around delicate eyelids and so vulnerable it hurts.
He curls up on the backseat as the stairs through the window move slowly across his view, but he can't sleep. In the front seat, Haley dozes with her lynx daemon overflowing across her lap. The marshal accompanying them has his daemon on the other side of Jack, a coyote named Cas, that reminds him of Harback. Occasionally the coyote leans her head on the shoulder rest of the driver's seat and nudges her human affectionately, before returning to her guarding stance.
Aureilo's alone.
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He had wondered what Haley would think of having her ex's new partner's daemon floating around in her new life, but she seemed to take it in stride.
Aureilo hadn't expected to make friends, but he did.
"You alright?" Kaelion asks one day, sauntering over to the hare on wide, silent paws. Aureilo had been skulking around the window, peering blearily out and feeling ill.
"Fine," the hare snaps moodily, his own bad temper exacerbated by the faint echo of Spencer's.
A nose touches his ear, cold and gentle. He twitches uncomfortably away, turning to glare at the narrow muzzled coyote. "You're allowed to not be okay, you know," she tells him with mock sternness, sitting with her paws tucked daintily against her chest. "I can't even go ten metres from Sam without feeling sick. What you're doing is commendable."
She's not really much like Harback at all.
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He begins by sleeping in the living room by himself, but eventually finds himself snoozing under Jack's crib.
On the nights he sleeps anyway and isn't kept awake by faint traces of misery and worry.
It's one thing to decide to do this grand gesture and keep Aaron's son safe; it's completely another when every day drags by like they're walking through honey, and the mindless monotony has him grinding his teeth.
Then one morning, Jack wakes up and peers over the edge of the crib at him, wide grin on bright display. "Reelo," he cheers upon seeing the hare, and reaches a chubby hand down.
Aureilo is touched enough by the gesture that he lets the bobcat kitten formed Arelys play with his ears to keep Jack quiet over breakfast.
It's good to have a reminder of what they're doing this for.
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It takes a month to break down Cas' determination to stay completely professional, but Aureilo gets there eventually.
Aureilo's pressed against Jack's side in the middle of the backyard, peering about. Arelys's new favourite lynx form shivers in between Jack's bowed legs, excited to play. "Cover your eyes Jack," Aureilo warns him, laying his ears back.
Jack giggles, peeking out from between his fingers. Arelys sees her first, slinking behind a tree.
"Fox!" she squeaks, shifting to a bird and fluttering around over-excitedly.
"Run from the fox!" Aureilo urges them as Cas bounds out with her teeth bared in a mock snarl, the two young ones scattering about to hide. Cas chases Arelys as Aureilo and Jack make a wobbly escape into the garden.
"Like this, Jack," Aureilo urges, flattening himself against the earth. "Stay close to the ground."
Jack giggles again and presses himself into the dust. "Hide fox," he whispers into the dirt, his chin encrusted with brown. "No fox."
"That's right," Aureilo agrees solemnly. "No fox."
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Spencer has Aaron, and Aaron has Hal, and Aureilo never feels as alone as he does on the days when he knows they're together. It begins to take its toll on him, and eventually even Haley manages to move past her ingrained discomfort with speaking with other people's daemons.
"If I asked to go home, would they let me?" she asks him, sitting down firmly next to him one day with Kaelion prowling at her back. "Would they let us?"
He lifts his head slightly to look at her, the thudding remains of a migraine fading from his skull and leaving him listless. "That would put Jack in danger."
She bites her lip and glances away, and Kaelion rumbles anxiously.
That night he falls asleep alone on the floor beneath Jack, and wakes up bracketed by warm bodies. Kaelion is deeply asleep, thick fur radiating heat on his left.
Cas is awake and watching the door warily, always on alert. "Figured you could use a hand keeping an eye on the kiddo," she murmurs softly, tail twitching.
If Aureilo closes his eyes and leans against her side, the doggy musk of her could almost be Hal. "Thank you," he replies, thinking of his beloved wolfdog.
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Jack turns two and they spend it alone because Haley refuses to let Aureilo hide away for the duration of their guests' visit. After all, a human-less daemon will certainly invite attention, which is something they're desperately avoiding.
Haley and Sam spend the day trying to pretend everything is normal, and Arelys spends it flickering from canine form to feline form, each looking grumpier than the next. Aureilo eventually gets sick of constant kitten claws on his tail and scurries out the back to hide under a bush.
He hears Aaron on the phone with Jack and almost races inside to see if Spencer is on the line as well, but he manages to stop himself.
That night Jack screams himself sick while a harassed Haley tries to calm him down.
Aureilo hops up on the chair next to the crib and desperately recites 'The Church Cat' from memory. Jack quietens from the first mention of 'In a busy little town'.
"Thank you," Haley tells him gratefully after tucking Jack in and turning off the light. "What would we do without you?"
He lies in the dark and wonders what Spencer is doing without him.
The next day, the migraine returns and he stays limp on the couch, empty and broken.
Haley cries.
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Haley takes Jack to the park and Aureilo doesn't go.
After all, the same problem. A daemon without his human will draw attention.
He never stops regretting this choice.
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He's lying on the couch trying to sleep off a migraine, when George Foyet saunters in the front door and shoots Sam in the chest.
Aureilo leaps up as Foyet turns the gun on him and quietly thinks that at least Spencer won't see their death coming.
At least in death they'll be together again.
"Get in, Coney," Foyet says with a sneering grin, dropping a wire cage onto the ground with a clatter. "Or the next bullet goes through the coyote's head."
Aureilo weighs his choices but in the end, it's no choice at all.
He gets in the cage without complaint, flinching as the lock engages behind his tail, and watches blankly as the Reaper plays his games.
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Reid is hobbling after them on his cane down the hall of the bureau, face taut with worry and a distance to his eyes that means his mind is split between them and the resonances of his hare's emotions.
"Foyet's been watching him this whole time?" he questions, brow furrowed as his attention wanders again.
Hotch turns on his heel, frustration slamming through him as Reid stops and rubs as his eyes frantically. "Reid, you need to get your head in the game," he snaps, but Reid's not listening anymore.
Instead he drops like he's been shot, hands flying up to clutch at the side of his head as he makes a long, whining noise of barely contained agony. Hotch steps back, blinking in surprise, as the cane clatters away to come to a stop under Hal's paws.
When he starts screaming time comes to a stop, and Hotch will never forget the sound.
"He's got them," Hotch cries, staggering back from the ghastly sight as JJ tries to pull Spencer out of the desperate ball he's bowed into, still screaming, agents and daemons gathering around with horrified expressions. "Foyet has Aureilo. Foyet has Jack!"
And he's running, hearing Rossi and Morgan shouting instructions as they race after him, but he can't stop.
He can't stop until the screaming stops, and part of him knows that it never will.
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"I'm going to find her, with or without your help, and me and Miss Brooks are going to have a wonderful time together… really… engaging…"
With every grunted word, Foyet slides the knife along the skin of the coyote daemon, Cas nothing but a bloodied mass of fur and gaping wounds. Aureilo is empty, unable to feel anything but for the thundering shock that paralyses him as the stink of blood and piss fills the room.
Sam moans weakly, hand twitching on the ground, fingers gone. "You'll never find her."
Foyet drops the knife with a hysterical laugh, picking up Sam's phone instead. "Oh, I already have. Now, be a dear and don't die. I need you to be alive to tell Agent Hotchner that it's his fault his family is dead."
He turns to Aureilo now, interest in the dying marshal waning now that the man has served his purpose. "Now, how about we leave him a souvenir to remember his boyfriend by?"
Aureilo kicks and claws but when the hand grips him tightly and the knife cuts deep into his flesh, there's nothing he can do to stop it.
Instead, he just screams.
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Rossi's voice is the only thing holding Aaron to his sanity as he crouches over Sam Kassmeyer's dying body and tries not to look at the wreck of what Foyet has left of his coyote daemon.
"Hang on, just hang on," he murmurs desperately to the gasping man, knowing that it's hopeless as his breaths begins to rattle ominously. Death is a tangible presence in the room and their time is running out.
His son's time is running out.
"I'm sorry," gasps Kassmeyer, lips and teeth stained with red. "I tried."
His eyes slip shut and Hotch swears, feeling some sort of rolling horror wash against him from Hal. "Aaron," she calls softly, her voice a choked gasp.
The paramedics are there, working busily over Kassmeyer and the still coyote daemon, trying not to show revulsion at the thing that has been done in this house, and Hotch stands and walks to his daemon on legs that move on autopilot.
She's upstairs, outside the room that would have housed his son. Rossi tries to push him back. That doesn't stop him from seeing what Foyet has left impaled to the bedroom door using his knife.
"I'm going with Sam," he states, staring at the ghastly memento with murder in his heart.
"Aaron," Rossi begins, his skin a pallid green and his tone a warning.
"I'm going with Sam."
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"Hello, Haley? Marshal Kassmeyer has been killed and your location has been compromised. Ma'am I need you to focus right now. This is about saving your son, we're going to bring you both in safe, but you need to listen to me. And I'm afraid there's more. Your son's father has been killed as well."
Aureilo tries to call out to her, but he's lost somewhere in his pain-addled brain, drifting in and out of consciousness, and Foyet's voice is floating from miles away, from under the sea, from somewhere he's not.
He's not dead, Aaron's not dead, don't listen to him, he screams, but the words are soundless. He can't speak, he can't hear, he can't.
"Shall we go see to our guests, witch-daemon?" Foyet asks him suddenly, leaning close to the cage and smiling, his eyes soulless and empty. "She's coming to us… and she's bringing the wee sweet babe."
He blinks away those soulless eyes and slips into oblivion, feeling Spencer falling with him.
"What's wrong with you?" snarls a ghost from their past.
"There's nothing wrong with us," Aureilo says, but his voice is Spencer's and it's far away and getting further with every passing moment.
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Hotch holds the phone with steady hands and this is the calmest he's ever been.
He's dancing on the knife's edge and on either side of this thin blade of sanity is the loss of everything he's ever gained. He speaks before Foyet has a chance to begin his sick games, voice clipped and controlled. "If you touch any of them…"
More than he already has, and Hotch's stomach rebels at the thought.
"Agent Hotchner!" Foyet sounds as though he's greeting an old friend, joyously. "What took you so long? I thought the hare's little present to you would have had you running. Did you like it? We picked it together, just for you."
"Why did you hurt Aureilo?"
"Aureilo? Oh, are we using names now for inconsequential things? How feeble daemons make us… how obviously they highlight our flaws and our weaknesses for the whole world to gaze upon. Take for instance your Aureilo." The venom in his voice is almost palatable, leaving a slick oily taste in Hotch's mouth. "European hare, Lepus europaeus. Asocial creatures, they rely on speed to escape from danger. Pathetic, inept in a fight, they'll turn tail and run when faced with a predator. Tell me Aaron, what do we make from the heart of a man with the soul of a hare; that chooses to court a wolf?"
"You hate daemons." Hotch tries to stall him, knuckles white on the steering wheel. "Your daemon settled as something you saw as weak, and you hated that didn't you? She wasn't strong enough and you decided all daemons were a weakness."
A dark chuckle. "Those are your words, not mine."
"Is that why you cut the daemons first? You disable the humans, but you cut the daemons. Where's your daemon, Foyet? Was she your first victim? Did you lock her away from the world so no one could see how you failed even as a child?"
Long, cold silence. "You know what I've been thinking? Once I'm finished with Haley, I'm going to show that bastard son of yours his mother's body. And then I'm going to break the hare's neck in front of him so the last thing your boy knows is it screaming as it dies."
Hotch makes a noise that's a cross between fury and agony, but Foyet is already talking over him, and he's triumphant.
"Aaron, I really must go. They're here."
This is what it is to be pushed off the edge, and Hotch goes into madness gladly.
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Aureilo opens his eyes expecting death, and instead Haley is looking down at him as though her heart is breaking.
"He's Foyet," the hare gasps, trying to stagger up in the tight crush of the cage, and listing sideways unevenly. His fur rips from his skin as it sticks to the dried blood on the bottom of the cage, sticky and matted down his body. "He's Foyet. I'm so sorry Haley."
"I know," she murmurs, turning her head slightly to peer at the pacing form of the Reaper. She reaches out and releases the catch on the cage, flinching as it clicks loudly. "He's going to kill me, Aureilo. When he's busy with me, you need to get to Jack and run. Please. Save my son."
The phone rings and Haley twitches towards it, eyes huge.
"That's for you, Haley darling," Foyet calls, behind Jack as the boy nervously watches his mom with Arelys in his arms. Kaelion crouches between them, tail lashing, watchful.
"Don't stop running," she whispers, before answering the phone.
He won't. If it's the last thing he ever gives Aaron, his son will not die here.