A/N: Written as always with Esperanta, whose intelligence and sensibilities inform every page of this story. We own nothing but this plot and our original characters.

Solitary 5.0

Chapter Fifty-Four

A Meeting of Minds

He heard a familiar rattling. For the first time he recognized it immediately as the little wheeled blood-pressure device the nurses pushed along in front of them every shift change like a miniature vacuum cleaner. The one for his floor, or maybe just for this part of the floor, had a loose wheel or something, like an old shopping cart, and it rattled and whined just a little bit.

Today, however, at—he checked his wristwatch—at 6:22 on Sunday morning, the nineteenth of September, his fifth day of freedom, he had not mistaken it even for a second for Warden's elevator.

"Morning," he mumbled at the cheerful staffer, and presented his left arm for the Velcro cuff.

"Morning," she replied, and stuck a thermometer in his mouth.

"Hey, Aaron," a familiar voice said from behind her. He hit the switch for the reading light and saw MacKinley Pearson, in dress shirt and a blue suit with a faint pinstripe. He'd shaved, but the psychiatrist wore no tie and his hair still looked as if he'd combed it with a garden rake.

"Mumpm," he said around the thermometer. It beeped, perhaps in sympathy, and the nurse removed it, looked at it, and popped its little plastic sheath into the trash beside the bed. "What are you doing up so early?"

"Looking for worms," Pearson said. He peeked shamelessly at the readout of Hotchner's blood pressure. "Good grief, you're a reptile," he said, arching an eyebrow.

"It's always low," Aaron said. "Especially when I've been asleep."

Pearson consulted a smartphone or a PDA, it was hard to tell because the doctor's meaty hand was cupped around it. "Yeah," he said at last, "and that was even before the change in meds, so good."

When the nurse was gone, Pearson pulled a chair over beside the bed and said in a low voice, "So how are the mice?"

"Hard to tell," Hotchner replied. "Either they aren't there as much or I'm learning to ignore them, and I'm not sure which just yet."

"And the nightmares?"

"I had one early in the night, but it wasn't a cell or a hospital dream; just an everyday 'hey you fucked up again' dream."

"You know, fella, it wouldn't kill you to pursue this nightmare stuff when you get home. I know you feel that you have it all sussed out, it's just part of how you deal, but what if it's not? What if there's a better, a more coherent and less painful, way to deal with your stress?"

"I'm fine."

"Mm." Pearson sounded remarkably like David Rossi did when Aaron spoke those two words—two parts sympathy, three parts, yeah, right.

"What are you doing here this early, anyway?"

Pearson grinned. "Ordinarily I keep my personal life out of my therapeutic relationships, but that seems a little silly when you can call your people and have the answer in three minutes anyhow. Maybe it's the principle of the thing. Ah, well—there's a church down that way—" He jerked his head to the left, indicating the north end of the street that ran beneath Hotchner's window. "The pastor's on leave; illness in the family. My wife's subbing for him, and there are two Sunday services, seven-thirty and ten. We don't get that much time together, so I like to hang out with her on Sunday mornings. I just sit there and look respectable and keep my big fat agnostic mouth shut, you know what I'm saying?"

"Your wife's a priest?" He hadn't even considered that Pearson might be married, let alone what she might do for a living. He wore no ring.

"Minister." Pearson shifted in his chair. "How'd your off-campus visit go?"

Hotchner raised the headboard. "Wonderful," he sighed. "Frightening. Troubling. And I need another pass for today."

Pearson nodded. "No problem. Care to elaborate a little on some of those adjectives?"

Hotchner had his mouth open to ask which one, but he realized that Pearson would want him to pick. Would derive information from his choice as well as what he had to say.

Stop trying to second-guess him; he's here to help you.

"'Frightening,'" he said. "The second slide, the Menard Road slide—that happened just about the time we got out of the mine, and that's where he held on to me. It can't have been during the main slide—there's no way he could have held on—but it was probably only a few minutes before it. If he'd failed, if I'd slid down, I might never have made it back up before the main slide started. If we'd been just an hour later in getting out of there, we'd both be dead, because that whole section is gone."

He fixed his eyes on Pearson. "One of the reasons that not much was lost in the slides was that the authorities have been warning for years that the area above the mine was unstable. When he—when Warden came back, the elevator shaft was already gone. For all he knew, I was gone. He didn't have to go crawling through there in the dark, putting his life on the line for me, but he did. And he did it in a way—look, I've put my own life on the line a few times. You're aware, but—" His voice trailed off.

"So—there's 'wonderful,'" he said quickly. "Sitting outside, watching the sun go down. Riding horses with my brother and my son, with JJ, with Jess. Drinking a couple beers, and two was almost too much. If I'd drunk them any faster, I'd have been pretty loopy. Just kicking back and being a dad. When you're locked up, you think about the big things, about school plays and soccer games, about—

"—Have to tell you," he interrupted himself yet again. "Something good that came out of everything. He—Warden—"

"Call him by name."

"Norton. Norton did this thing where he talked about the seven deadly sins. I tried to turn it to my advantage, trying to find out more about him. In the process, he got me talking about my father."

Pearson, unhelpfully, said nothing at all, reminding Hotchner yet again of why he hated therapists.

"End of story," Aaron said, "was that my father had to be the best, had to be right. There was never a time when he wasn't on top. If I did something he couldn't do, he devalued the crap out of it." He punished me for it, he added to himself. "We talked about the fact that when he—meaning Warden, Norton—when he read Fox in Socks to his daughter, she'd laugh when he screwed up."

Again with that totally fucking useless therapeutic silence.

"I practiced it," Aaron said finally. "I practiced the parts I had trouble with, so I wouldn't screw up. I couldn't even let the kid be best at 'Gooey goo for chewy chewing, that's what that Goo-goose is doing.' So yesterday I played War with Jack and he won. He won," he repeated, wonderingly. "And it was terrific. He was so thrilled, so empowered. And I have to think, how long would I have gone on having to win, like my dad, if I hadn't been, well, forced into it, forced into looking at what I did in the light of what my own father did. So that's one thing Joe did, he steered my thinking that way sooner rather than later."

"Joe?"

"Um, yeah. Warden. He was born Norton Charpentier, but when he got out of prison he took a new name, a new identity. For the last few years, he's been Joseph McAfee."

Pearson's features were immobile, but he blinked rapidly several times. He sat very still for a moment or two, then drew a deep breath. "Would you like to talk about your father a little more?" he said at last, his voice calm and controlled. "I recall you saying that he scared you. What did he do for a living?"

Those blinks are a classic tell. "You know him, don't you?" Aaron whispered. "Joe McAfee. You know Warden."

Pearson nodded slightly. "Slightly, yes. We use therapy dogs in the wards and therapy horses at the kids' camp," he replied, then firmly returned to his subject. "What did your dad do?"

"He was a defense attorney," Hotchner said. "And, yeah, you could say my entire career path has been a cosmic fuck-you to my father. This is awkward, isn't it? You knowing McAfee."

"Not well," Pearson said. "I've met him, we've spoken a bit. I don't know where he lives, don't know much about him other than in his role with the animals." He shook his head slowly. "It might even be a different Joseph McAfee."

"It isn't. He teaches at Hazelhurst College and trains therapy animals."

"Ah. Well." Pearson sighed. "I suppose I should have anticipated that this could happen. One would think that, given my profession and my wife's, I'd have—"

"Given my profession, I know that very few criminals give off vibes you can pick up. It just isn't that easy." Aaron was aware that Pearson was looking unhappily at Hotch's wrists, still bare and pink as they healed. "This," he said, lifting them, "I did myself, fighting against the handcuffs."

"But you didn't put them on your own wrists."

Hotchner sensed where Pearson was going. "Not that time. But often, yes. I did whatever he told me to do." The psychiatrist looked conflicted. Welcome to my world, Mac. "How does that change how you feel about what I've been telling you?"

Pearson sat back in his chair and inhaled sharply. "I'm not sure it's helpful to reflect on that at the moment," he said at last. "We're here for you and your recovery."

"A case can be made that this is part of my recovery."

"That's bullshit, Aaron, and we have a no-bullshit commitment here. What's so scary to you right now that you'd rather focus our limited time and energy on how I feel about knowing who Warden was?"

"Past tense," Aaron said.

The shrink all but rolled his eyes. "Insignificant," he snapped. "'Warden' was a role, and he's stepped outside of it, according to you."

Hotchner looked at the psychiatrist helplessly for a few seconds, then forced himself to look within, at the things that most troubled him. He'd never shone at introspection, preferring to buy the same 'I'm fine,' 'I'm OK' line that he fed everyone else. Like most self-deceptions, it was essentially a survival strategy that had outlived its usefulness.

Face it, Slick.

He wished he were upright and fully dressed in some other room, where he could get up and walk—OK, limp—around to distract himself and discharge energy. He thought better on his feet. This hospital bed deal, with Pearson's chair pulled up so chummily just inches away, was less than optimal.

"OK, fine," he said at last with a sigh. "I think that I want him to go free. I'll know for sure after I've spoken to him, but I'm ninety-something percent confident that I don't want him arrested. I don't want to testify against him, and I don't want him back in prison. I know—" He patted the laptop on the tray table with his right hand. "I've read what the Team had on Norton Charpentier. I know what happened to him in prison, I've read his medical records; I know what the other inmates did to him. He was timid and intellectual and an easy target, and the fact that his conviction was for producing kiddie porn just made it worse for him. And all of that's my fault. All of it," he insisted, glaring at Pearson's dubiously raised eyebrow.

"Sure, he was an arrogant elitist asshole and he did himself no favors in court," he conceded. "But if I'd pursued that tape, he never would have gone to trial in the first place."

Abruptly he fell silent, remembering Warden's mockery of Aaron's private school, calling him the 'Burning Hills Country Day School boy.' But Charpentier himself, in spite of his—yeah, he lied when he said he'd gone to a big public school, didn't he? Or did he just imply it and I jumped at it?—Charpentier himself was a product of St. Benedict's, more expensive, more exclusive, than Burning Hills.

"Talk to me," said Pearson.

"Just more insight that I didn't need into Nortie's personality," he replied stonily. "And, yes, I still don't want him arrested.

"But at the same time, these two acts—withholding exculpatory evidence in '93, and deciding now to mislead my own Team about the identity of a man they've been pursuing for months—how can I in good conscience represent myself as worthy to serve with the Bureau?" he said, surprising even himself with his passion, blinking back maddening, unwelcome tears. "But it's all I want—it's all I am."

Pearson regarded him with solemn eyes. "Has your service otherwise been utterly upright and ethical?"

"Yes," he said, then heard himself blurt, "No, no, of course not. We all make compromises with our morality. I've lied to the team, I've covered up—situations—to my superiors. There's still a lot I'm withholding about—"

His voice trailed off. In silence, he contemplated the many ways he'd shaded the truth, even actively misled Strauss. Lied to Gideon, to whatsisname Franklin. Lies noble (taking the hit for Gideon after the mess with the suicidal coed, covering for Reid while he got his act back together after Henkel) and ignoble (covering for Elle after she gunned down an UNSUB in cold blood).

"It's a spectrum," he said at last. "It's a continuum. I've been in a few places, but my choices have always been on the honorable end of it. And this—this is a harder choice."

"And?" Pearson produced a tie from one of his coat pockets and began sliding it under the collar of his dress shirt.

"I think I won't know for sure until I've spoken to him. I'll know by tonight," he said, more confidently. "I'm going to see him today."

"How's that going to work?"

"Jess and Jack are attending a street carnival in Altoona."

"The Fall Fun Fair?" When Hotchner nodded, Pearson said, "They'll have a great time. The weather's decent for it this year, at least."

"My brother, Sean, has gone back to New York, and I encouraged JJ to take the day off and visit her folks. Since I'm getting released tomorrow, the pressure's off. They think I'm going back out to the Hawthornes for the day. Do you know them, too? Ted and Bren Hawthorne?"

"Names don't sound familiar," Pearson said. He adjusted the knot on his tie. "I'll be here tonight, just in case you need someone to talk to after your meeting. Call my service from there, from here—from wherever. Let me know when you're back. Deal?"

"Deal."

~ o ~

He looked, she decided, like one of those tough-ass FBI agents on TV: lean, hard, muscular. Stoic. Even the slight hesitation in his gait as he made his way from the front doors of the hospital (where he'd traveled in a wheelchair, hospital regs being inflexible) to the car that was waiting a few feet away seemed more purposeful than a sign of weakness. She could all but visualize him in a Kevlar vest with FBI emblazoned across the chest, his handgun raised, grim determination in his eyes.

He would've frightened me, she decided. She could understand why Joe—why Norton—had kept him cuffed to a metal bar whenever he was in the same area with him. Well, not truly understand; Joe's behavioral choices—Norton's, dammit—were inexcusable, but she could see why, once he'd committed himself to his course of action, he'd made some of his strategic decisions. Hotchner absolutely radiated power and control.

Then she saw the flicker of fear, of uncertainty, in his dark eyes as he caught sight of her, as he nodded in greeting. She recalled the confused and terrified man on the night of the storm and remembered him shivering in her arms. We are all complex creatures, ever greater than the sum of our parts.

"Hey," she said.

He dimpled a smile in return. "Hey."

Another flicker of unease. "Would you want to sit in the back with me?"

He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Sure." His smile broadened. "I'd like that."

"Do you mind, Teddy?" she asked.

Her husband gave a good-natured "Nope," and flipped the locks up for the back seat. "I'll be your cabbie."

She held the door for him, then circled around the back of the sedan and climbed in behind her husband. Agent Hotchner adjusted his seat belt and settled in, facing stolidly forward.

"Does he know you're coming?" she asked.

"No," he replied. His voice was low and deliberate. "You didn't tell him?"

"We didn't think it was our place. You hadn't asked us to prepare him, so—I can still call him. Do you want me to—"

"It's fine," he said. "Really." His face was now fully composed, but his hands gave him away, gripping his trousers—no jeans today; he would meet Joe in khakis and a black knit shirt—his fingers twisted into the tan fabric just above the knees.

~ o ~

The former Norton Charpentier sat up in bed listening to Tchaikovsky's Fifth through ear buds so he wouldn't bother his new roomie, the guy who'd come out of the surgical recovery suite the previous afternoon following a motorcycle accident, a younger guy who mostly just lay there and groaned and cursed. The ear buds also kept New Guy's groans and curses and perpetual demands for someone to 'stop the pain and give me more fuckin' morphine, what's my fuckin' insurance paying you for? Your looks?' from bothering Nortie. Norton was playing a dispirited game of Free Cell, and the game was freaking killing him, too.

"Mr. McAfee?" an aide said. She was standing in his doorway alongside a transportation aide whose hands rested on the handles of a wheelchair. He removed one ear bud and regarded her quizzically. He'd already been to physical therapy—yes, they even had it on Sundays. "Can we relocate you for a bit?" she asked.

"Relocate?"

"If you don't mind," she said. She looked significantly toward Charpentier's roommate. "You have company, and we thought you'd prefer privacy."

He understood her meaning immediately. "Of course," he said, all courtesy and cooperation, even as his heart sank—Genie hasn't come back with the meds yet, oh shit, oh shit—and closed his laptop so he could move his legs to the side.

Like a man in a dream, barely aware of sight and sound, of anything but the sure knowledge that this, his second life, was ending the same way the first had, in a federal penitentiary, he braced his hands on the side of the mattress and heaved himself to his right foot. He pivoted and clutched the armrests of the chair. He lowered himself to a sitting position, wondering if he should ask to use the bathroom first; his insides roiled with dread.

In his left ear, Tchaikovsky horns rumbled dutifully into the second movement.

Too bad it wasn't the Pathétique. Could use a little sympathy right now. Or maybe all those martial jack-booted thugs from Shostakovitch's Seventh that Hotchner hated so much.

He winced as they arranged his left leg along the extended support. He wondered whether they'd deny him pain meds altogether in jail. They had a right to do that, of course. If they were angry—as surely they must be at what he'd done to a man in law enforcement—they could take out some of their aggression in passive ways.

He fought off a wave of self-pity by reminding himself of the days Aaron Hotchner had spent in the cold and the dark, naked and battered. You did that, he reminded himself firmly. Don't forget it for an instant.

The aide arranged a light linen blanket over his legs, attached his IV line to the side of the chair, and said, "There you go! All set! Is there anything you'd like to take along?"

Take along?

Of course: my confession.

"My laptop," he said. "You can just yank the power cord. I won't have it on that long."

"Oh, it's no problem," she said sweetly. "Don't want you to lose power when you're doing something important. We can plug it in for you down the hall."

"Fine." He knew his voice sounded feeble, dispirited, but he couldn't scare up anything more energetic than the barest, the most ingrained courtesies.

Once his laptop and power cord were under his arm, they pushed him down the hall and rolled him into the same small room where he'd had his confession with Father Chedjou the day before. This time, they set him up so he faced the door. The aide connected his laptop for him and arranged a nearby tray table so he could access it easily, along with the ubiquitous little tissue box and plastic water pitcher and disposable cups and a plastic emesis basin—like they expect me to barf when they arrest me?—and three drinking straws wrapped in paper.

He opened the computer, signed back in, and disconnected the ear buds, After a moment, he realized that he'd bumped something. The music emanating from his internal speakers was the second movement of Brahms' First. Elegant, melodic, but far too sentimental, it was a lousy choice for Music to Get Arrested To. He moved his hand to turn it off, and there was a light tap at the door.

"Yeah," he said heavily. He licked his lips and took a long, deep breath. "Come on in."

His heart stopped. His breath stopped. His vision clouded.

The tall, gaunt man in a black knit shirt and khakis limped into the room unaccompanied. He was gripping a metal cane tightly and favoring his left leg. He made his slow and deliberate way to the other chair, and looked the former Norton Charpentier over slowly, head to toe, his expression impenetrable. Nortie wondered whether the visitor knew that it was all he could do to breathe, that his chest felt hopelessly constricted, that the one eye he could open fully was clouding over, stinging furiously.

Hotchner sat down in the chair opposite him, his face a mask. Maybe-Norton, Maybe-Joe was reminded of the times that they'd faced each other through the bars of the exercise cage, he in his old green recliner, and his former prisoner in the blue armchair he'd provided. He was reminded of civil, even warm conversations about family, about religion and law enforcement. Games of cribbage and checkers, strange and surreal singalongs to artists from Aerosmith to the Beatles to LL Cool J, Warden and Prisoner, tenor and bass.

The lawyer continued studying him, his features still revealing nothing. Finally he returned his gaze to Norton's face and shook his head. "Jesus Christ, Joe, you look like fuckin' hell," Aaron Hotchner said. "You get the number of that truck?"

For a moment, Norton couldn't quite believe his ears. He called me Joe?

Maybe because he'd put himself on common-courtesies autopilot already, before he even realized he was speaking, the words tumbled from Charpentier's lips. "You don't look so hot yourself, man."

At first there was no reaction. Aw, shit, what was I thinking? This is the man who's going to arrest me and put me away for the rest of my life. Then Hotchner suddenly broke into a grin, utterly disarming, and with a warmth that nearly took Norton's breath away.

How could I have ever sensed evil in this man? He's looking at me like a long-lost friend, a friend, for God's sake. And after all I did to him….

Suddenly tears streamed down his face. He wanted to speak, but the ability eluded him. He could barely breathe. He managed to choke out "I—I—I," but he could form nothing else. "I—I—I," he started again, then stopped because he was starting to sound like a singer with a mariachi band.

Hotchner said something but Charpentier's breath was so ragged and his heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that he couldn't make it out the first time. "What?" he finally managed to squeak.

"I forgive you," the man opposite him said solemnly.

Aw, Jesus Christ….

Those three terrifying words enabled him to break free of his inability to articulate.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry, Aaron," he managed to moan. "So sorry. I know that words are useless, worthless, that they can never give you back what I took from you—and I'm not trying to dodge responsibility—but they're all I've got."

The agent leaned forward slightly his voice a deep, authoritative rumble. "Look, Joe," he said quietly, "you're still alive and I'm still alive. At this stage of the game, nothing else matters. Let's just take it one step at a time, shall we? No grand plans, no big strategies. One—" He glanced first at Norton's leg, then at his own cane. "One careful step at a time."

"I—it's a great idea," Norton-or-Joe began slowly, still struggling to speak through his misery, "but you're not the one sitting here trying to figure out when the hammer's gonna drop, when your people are—"

"'My people,'" Hotchner said, "as you put it, are in Wisconsin, doing what they do best. The, uh, the guy who did this to me, he's dead, you see. I saw him fall, saw him lying there dead." He shook his head slowly. "I was ambivalent about it. I still am. I'm conflicted, because he died trying to get me to some place where he could set me free."

Norton—am I truly Joe now?—fumbled for one of those itty bitty tissues the hospital gave out, tried to blow his nose, grabbed more tissues. "He was a jerk, an asshole," he managed to choke out. "A vengeful asshole."

Hotchner gave a slow, sage nod. "He was indeed. Of course, the arrogant asshole who put him in prison had his moments, too, you know. He wasn't always—" He gestured broadly. "—such a prince of a fellow."

Norton gave a weak smile, tried to chuckle, but dissolved into a coughing fit. When he finally got it under control, he said, "Maybe not a prince, but not deserving of being the Man in the Iron Mask, either."

"Well, at least things never got quite to that point," Aaron said quietly.

How can he sit there so calm, so composed? Because he's twice the man you are, or will ever be, and you know it. He looked down, his fists clenching the blanket, twisting it as he himself felt twisted between relief and misery. I'm glad I'm not going to be arrested, but I don't know if I can take this...this new situation, either.

At last he looked up, smiled sadly at Hotchner, and said softly, "You know, I...I've been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of self-examination, and I don't like what I see. I've talked to a priest, and that helped a little, but I'm just not sure how I could possibly live with myself after this."

Hotchner made a wry face. "Welcome to my world. I'm not sure how I can live with what I did to you. I'm not sure how I can live with lying to my Team." He drew a deep breath of his own. "But I know that I can't identify you to them. I know that I can't testify against you—"

"You don't have to!" Norton-or-Joe said quickly. "I have my whole confession here, everything from the very beginning right up until I left last Sunday night." God in Heaven, was it really only a week ago? "I've been completely straightforward, I've made no excuses. I'm prepared to plead guilty and take—"

"No," the agent said sharply. "Look at me, Norton."

Charpentier obeyed wordlessly.

"You grew up Catholic. I saw the file on you; if you hadn't faked your death so perfectly you would have been at the top of their suspect list. I know from personal experience with you how important taking responsibility is with you. I know you believe in penitence, but you also believe in absolution."

Charpentier gave a mute nod.

"You have a life, Joe. Norton. Eventually I have to make up my mind which name I'm going to use," Hotchner said with a faint grin. Charpentier noticed that he didn't include the name of Warden. "Joe probably works best, because you're Joe now. You're doing a lot of good things with your life, teaching college, training therapy animals. You have friends and people who care about you, people who need you. You can still make a difference in people's lives."

With a shock, something Norton—no, Joe—had seen on the wall of Prisoner's—Aaron's—cell after he'd fought his way through the rising flood waters to reach him, release him, came suddenly into his mind: I WANTED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE….

"You make a difference," Joe whispered. "You have to turn me in."

"Why?"

"Because you already said you couldn't live with lying to your Team. I've done enough harm; I can't live with destroying your ability to, to practice your profession, too."

Hotchner stared at him for a long moment, then seemed to come to some kind of internal conclusion. "Make you a deal," he said, leaning forward with a scary intensity.

Joseph McAfee didn't hesitate for a second. "Name it."

"I absolve you and as your penance—" He nodded firmly, underscoring the significance of the word, "you go and live your life as Joe McAfee, never mentioning what happened between us, and never forgetting for a moment that you have within you the capacity to be a monster. And we all have it, Joe. I do, you do, we all have that capacity."

"But Bren and Ted know—"

"They brought me here and we've already discussed—" Aaron interrupted himself, staring wide-eyed suddenly at McAfee's laptop. "What is that?" he whispered hoarsely. "That music, what is that?"

"Um, Brahms' First Symphony, the, ah, the fourth movement." And as he spoke he distinctly remembered a rainy Friday night, a bound and blindfolded man huddled soaking wet in the passenger seat of his Kia, and Brahms' First on the CD player. And he knew by looking into the man's eyes that Hotchner recalled that night, too. It was not too long after he'd shocked the poor guy with the Enforcer accidentally turned all the way up.

"At the time," Hotchner said, his voice breaking, "I thought that melody, that theme—it was either the saddest or the most beautiful melody I'd ever heard. I mean, I know I was—a little on the emotionally vulnerable side at the time—" He swiped at one eye. "Did you plan it this way? For that to be playing?"

"No way. I was listening to Tchaikovsky and the cursor must have moved when they were wheeling me down here. I thought—" He swallowed hard. "I thought they'd taken me from my room to arrest me."

"Nah," Aaron assured him airily, "they'd just handcuff you to your bed."

The part of Joe McAfee that would always be Norton Charpentier suddenly found that funny, and he bit back a bark of a laugh. "Thanks for clearing that up."

Aaron Hotchner extended his hand. "Can you live with that deal? Because if you can, I'll be able to live with going back to the Bureau."

Joe clasped the hand, still overwhelmed with stunned disbelief. "Deal," he whispered.