The sun was going down.
She had wandered around for a couple hours, paying no attention to the people passing her on the street. Instead her eyes were on the curves and sharp corners of the city, the pretty and the old and the ugly and the new. Eventually her feet took her to the older neighborhoods, passing by brownstones and vine covered buildings that screamed of old colonial pride.
When the sun began to touch the horizon, she found herself at the foot of the stairs that she remembered so vividly. Remembered that phone call so vividly.
Jane made her way up slowly, sitting herself down on the very step she made that call on, all those years ago.
Six years. Yesterday, an eon ago.
She took in the hustle and bustle of people, everyone headed somewhere for some reason. She felt small again, like she did all those years ago.
The sun went down.
Then the melancholy is shattered by the sound of her phone going off.
"Dr. Hart," Jane answered automatically, not bothering to check caller ID. Only Aaron would be calling her, considering it was technically her day off.
"I've finished up with Shaunessy," Hotch spoke grimmly through the phone, the sound of him clambering into his car filtering through the speakers. "You still coming back with me?"
"Where should I meet you?" Jane asked rather than answer. Aaron grunted on the other side, thinking.
"Shaunessy was on the south side, right?" Jane supplied for him, recognizing when his mind was a thousand miles away. "I'm too far to get there easily, and I'm hungry. Meet me halfway."
"So did you come here often, when you were in Boston?" Hotch finally asks Jane halfway through their meal, each of them previously too focused on their seafood and the work-related shit going on in their heads to engage in more than just smalltalk.
"No, too high out of my price range," Jane smiled smally, spearing a shrimp on her fork. "But I did used to see this place when I left work - always wanted to go in, never could."
"Out of your price range?" He raised his eyebrow at her, sitting back slightly to scan the other diners. "You worked here as a doctor, Jane."
"I lived … frugally," Jane brushed off evasively, shrinking slightly under his gaze. "Some debts to Them I didn't want to leave unpaid."
Aaron tried to keep the sympathy off his face. And the anger. It … might've worked.
She cleared her throat noisily then, taking a swig from her water. "So, Shaunessy. Why did he want to see you? You owe him money?"
Hotch sharply jerked his chin in a negative, his mood abruptly dropping even further; he took a second to find the words.
"Shaunessy made a deal ten years ago," He confessed lowly, keeping other tables from hearing in the crowded restaurant. "To stop hunting the Reaper so long as the Reaper stopped killing. The contract expires the same time that Detective Shaunessy does."
"The Reaper …" Jane mused, sitting back to recall where she'd heard the name before. "That was your first case as lead, wasn't it? You still work on that profile, sometimes."
Hotch nodded, resuming eating.
"You know …" Jane began to muse. "I was called in as a second, maybe third, opinion on some injuries when I was last in Boston. Must've been, oh, six, seven years ago? A man who had been stabbed something like 46 times, Foyet?"
"George Foyet was the only surviving victim," Hotch nodded, eyebrows raised. "Quite a coincidence. Why were you consulting on his case?"
"The wounds, though healed, were still debilitating," Jane quirked a lip wryly. "Even though Foyet was on a host of drugs for his condition, he collapsed on the street one day and had to be taken into a clinic. Mine just happened to be the closest."
"So you got roped in once they realized that it was out of their realm," Hotch smiled, ever amused by people inevitably turning to Jane to solve their problems. "At least you're familiar with the case then?"
"The bare bones, only what Foyet told me," Jane shrugged. "But there wasn't much I could do other than recommend that he get some surgery to reduce the internal scarring. I don't know if he took up the offer, I left Boston maybe a week later."
"This was right before you joined the BAU?" Hotch asked, surprised. "That is some coincidence."
"Yeah," Jane furrowed her brow. "It is, isn't it …"
Jane barged into his office after Garcia left, leaving him with the personal ad highlighted in mocking yellow.
"You gonna talk about this like a big boy, or am I going to have to get LeFay in here to hold you down?"
"Hold me down while you do what?" Hotch raised his eyebrows, tilting his head at Jane as he carefully placed the printout in the folder on his desk. "Interrogate me?"
"How about 'tickle you until you crack'?" Jane offered dryly, snatching up the file off his desk before he could stop her. "Like an egg."
"An egg?"
"Oh shut up, Rin," The doctor rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."
"I do, I do," Hotch admitted, crossing to meet her halfway and offer his wrist. He felt grounded by the routine, as if the shitshow of the Reaper deal hadn't just turned everything upside down. Even though it very much had.
"This is proof," Jane flicked through one-handedly, looking over the sketch of a profile he'd compiled over the years. "The contract was real."
"Yes."
Jane studied him. She took in, no doubt, the bags under his eyes and the skew of his tie and the smell of coffee on his breath; he, in turn, took in the spiked red choker that Garcia had shoved her way and the smudge of ink from her fountain pens across the side of her jaw.
"Don't do this alone," She cautioned, their eyes locking. "You have a team for a reason."
And she gave his wrist one last squeeze before walking out the door, dropping the file off on his spare chair on her way out.
"Man, I cannot be the only one who sees the obvious tension between those two," Morgan groans, eyes on the retreating figure of the Doc as she returned to her office from Hotch's.
"Obvious sexual tension," Garcia murmurs into her coffee cup, and Emily reaches over to smack her for it. "What? You can see it. I can see it. He's a divorced man, and she's hot and mysterious and they've been friends for, like, ever."
"That doesn't mean that there's … that," Reid tries to comment, clearly uncomfortable. "And Jane has never been in a relationship, she said so."
"When?" Morgan's attention is suddenly on Reid. "When did she say that?"
"Never Have I Ever," JJ confirmed. "But, technically, she said she had no memory of ever being in a relationship."
"Umm, no, sweetcheeks," Garcia laughed, eyebrows dancing. "She said that she had no memory of ever kissing a man."
"So … lesbian?" Emily offered bluntly, eyes cast around the bullpen for eavesdroppers. "Or terminally single."
"I'd say bisexual," Rossi offered from right behind Emily, making her jump. "But I think Jane's dating has been far and few between. And also not relevant. Can we get back to work now?"
Jane trailed behind Hotch as he approached O'Mara, face set grimmly as the cop finished trying to placate the reporter-sharks sniffing for blood.
"I worked the reaper case for 18 months," The harried Boston man was saying. "If there's any proof that this horrible crime is anything more than a copycat, I'll be the first one to let you know."
Hotch came to a stop, the contract carefully held between his fingers as he shook O'Mara's hand, exchanging the usual greetings - crime scene edition.
"It's not a copycat, Mike," Hotch corrected the detective lowly, keeping his voice from carrying. "I wish it were, but it isn't."
"Yeah, no offense, you don't know that - and I didn't invite you in."
"Shaunessy did," Is all Hotch said as he passed over the bagged contract.
O'Mara looked like he was trying very hard not to swear up a storm.
"Want to invite us in?" Hotch offered, as if it wasn't a forgone conclusion.
The cop could only nod, and Jane felt his eyes on her as she nodded at JJ and Reid to join them.
"You, you're that doctor, aren't you?" O'Mara finally seemed to place her. "McLarson told me about you. You helped with those alley murders and then got snapped up by the feds before we could snage you for ourselves."
"I am."
"How you got recruited?" Hotch turned to her, a flicker of surprise on his face. "How well known was this?"
"At least the whole force knew, or at least heard the story," O'Mara chuckled, a tinge of humor surfacing. "From there, anyone with too close of an ear to the pavement probably knew. Wasn't exactly pedestrian, what you did, Dr. Hart."
"And yet, I was merely a pedestrian at the time," Jane countered dryly as she dug out a pair of gloves from her satchel, switching out for the more practical when dealing with blood. "Let's see what we got."
When JJ answered her phone during the briefing on Foyet, Jane felt something sink in her gut.
"Hotch, there's a reporter outside insisting on speaking with you - and with Jane,"
JJ passed along, clearly wary. "Roy Colson. Says he knows you."
Jane exchanged a glance with Hotch, which from him basically read 'You're coming. You got drafted. Congrats.' in a tone as dry as the Sahara, yet somehow still completely silent.
Jane sighed, gathering her files and adjusting her satchel as she followed after him.
"Roy," Hotch greeted the reporter, shaking his hand. "And you know of Dr. Jane Hart."
"Call me Jane," Is all Jane can summon to be cordial as she reluctantly took the writer's hand - a stranger to her. "I don't believe we've met."
"I've heard of you, is all," Roy smiled at Jane, eyes running over her with a reporter's eye. "So if it's just a copycat, what are you two doing here?"
"Helping the police catch him," Hotch replied without inflection.
"Is that your story?" Roy shook his head, glancing between the two of them. "Come on, I wrote the book on this guy. I even sent you a signed copy - I assume you got it."
"Officially, we have no reason to think that he's anything but a copycat." Hotch repeated, feeling rather than seeing Jane shift behind him. She wasn't enjoying the monotone he adapted - ironically enough, she never did enjoy when he slipped a mask over his emotions.
"Well, how about unofficially?" The writer came back again. "If this was a copycat, would you have left your people behind to start at the crime scene, all except for her?" He nodded at Jane. "She's established that she can look at a crime scene with one glance and know whether or not it's a copycat - so why did she barely look at the scene until you and O'Mara stopped having your chat?"
"What's more important to you, Roy?" Hotch countered levelly as he felt his stomach drop. "Getting the story or getting the killer?"
"I spent time with the families," The other man gathered himself. "I told the victims' stories. Now, you would know that if you read my book."
"It was a good book, Mr. Colson," Jane spoke up as he began to walk away, stopping him in his tracks. "Hotch keeps it on a shelf in his office, in the section that isn't just for show."
"You treated the victims with respect and you treated us fairly," Hotch affirmed, a little miffed that Jane was tattling on him like that.
"Every dime I made went to the families"
"I know," Hotch nodded, just once. "That's why I came down. The minute I have something to say, I'll call you."
They shook hands, and Colson nodded at Jane in farewell.
"If it's him, it won't be long," He called out to them as they stepped into the building.
Once they were out of earshot, Jane shifted closer to Hotch, their arms brushing as they walked.
"Why did he even want to see me?" Jane asked, tone dry. "He didn't even want to talk to me."
"He wanted to see you, and use you to make a point," Hotch explained, a bad feeling building in his gut. "Jane, I don't like how much the people in this city seem to know about you."
"Nor do I," Jane murmurs, turning back to look at the doors. "Nor do I."
"Garcia can't find George Foyet," Morgan reported to Hotch grimmly, and he was taken aback.
"I've got nothing, sir," Garcia affirmed apologetically.
"What do you mean?"
"He's gone. I mean, he's completely off the grid," Their technical analyst expanded, distressed. "And he's gone."
"How is that possible?" Hotch asked, crossing his arms.
"Nine months after he got out of the hospital, he, uh, quit his job, sold his car, closed his bank accounts," Garcia rattled off Foyet's disappearance. "Canceled his credit cards, cell phone, apartment, everything. He has no paper, thus he has no trail - and I can't find him cuz he's gone."
"You think it's intentional?" Hotch asked.
"It's more than that," Garcia replied.
"But, wait," Hotch suddenly remembered. "Jane treated Foyet, before she joined the team - maybe a week or two before she left Boston. Is there any record of that?"
"Oh -" Garcia suddenly exclaimed. "Oh that's clever. Janey treated a Jorge Foyet - with a 'j' - nine days before she left Boston. But no address or phone number attached."
The sound of more clicks on the other end of the line.
"Deleting yourself like this, it's impressive," Garcia acquiesced. "And that he left even part of his real name at all is … sloppy."
Hotch glanced out the open door behind him, where Jane was talking to O'Mara.
"Yeah, it is …"
"How did Colson find this guy?" Rossi asked, eyes on the relatively quiet street ahead of them.
"He interviewed Foyet extensively for his book," Hotch explained. "They kept in touch."
"So you used the writer to track down Foyet," Jane clarified. "Can't tell if that's a very good friend or a very bad one."
"They're friends?" Rossi asked, vaguely surprised.
"Sort of," Hotch shrugged a shoulder. "But Foyet wouldn't give him his phone number. He gave him one of his aliases, though."
"That's him," Jane leaned up from the backseat, pointing over Hotch's shoulder. "Same ugly coat I last saw him in."
They clambered out of the car.
Hotch and Rossi were both headed for the door, ready to leave after Foyet refused their protection, but Jane wasn't quite ready yet.
The sound of Foyet's coughing sounded … forced, which put her on edge. But it was probably due to stress, and there was still a layer of true pain under it that Jane couldn't ignore. Not as a doctor.
"You two go ahead," She called out lowly through the foyer of the impersonal house. "I'll call myself a cab."
"Jane …" Hotch frowned at her, not liking the thought of her alone when there was a killer on the loose.
"We'll send you a car?" Rossi cut over whatever protest Aaron was going to offer up.
"Nah, this is my old turf," Jane gave a brief smile. "I'll make it back on my own."
And with one last, long glance at her they walked out the door.
"Why did you stay?" Foyet spoke from behind her, and Jane had to force herself to turn around slowly. Something about Foyet … felt like Liberty Ranch, and Benjamin Cyrus, all over again.
He's just another patient.
"I'll leave if you'd like me," Jane assured him quietly. "But I saw that you didn't leave a trail through hospital records, which means that you either didn't go to seek medical help, or you used aliases repeatedly - either way, no medical professional focused solely on your treatment, who had your entire history, has been able to help you."
"So you're saying you will?" Foyet smiled, gesturing to his couch. "I … thank you."
"I'm guessing the excuse of being late for work was more to get us out the door, huh?" Jane sat, pulling out her file on him. He shrugged sheepishly. "That's fine, I won't judge. Now I can give you a full physical, or we can merely talk this over, or something in between. What would you be most comfortable with?"
"Umm," Foyet ran a hand over the back of his neck. "The full physical?"
"Okay then, Mr. Foyet," Jane did her best to smile genuinely, pushing back her unease - silently reciting her Oath. "Let's see what I can do for you."
"This isn't healthy and you know it.'
Aaron tore his gaze away from the pictures scattered across his bed, looking up at his returned coworker. Jane was lurking in his doorway, a frown fixed on her face.
"You always told me to either do something or shove it in a storage closet somewhere," He sighed, scrubbing his hands across his face. "I should've listened."
"Oh come on, Rin," She scoffed, stepping into his hotel room. "You never listen to me."
"How was Foyet?" He changed topics. "Any different than from six years ago?"
"He didn't get the surgery, like I suggested," Jane sighed, flopping down on his bed. "But he never went to any doctor after that, so that's most likely it. I updated his prescriptions, advised him on how to treat some of his nastier scar tissue, and left when he began to get antsy."
Hotch was about to reply when the room's phone went off.
"What did he take?" Jane heard Rossi ask, and was about to point out the woman's empty ears when Hotch cut her off.
"Does it matter?"
Jane watched as first Aaron got off the bus, then Rossi followed him.
That damn phone call. Hotch was right, not to take the deal that the Reaper offered … but it must've felt a little like how Jane did tied to that chair in Hankel's shed. Shitty and guilty, as if even with their hands tied they could've stopped this.
Jane follows slowly, and waits until Rossi calms Hotch down before adding her two cents.
"If you had taken that deal," She piped up, hands jammed into her pockets, fingers freezing in her maroon gloves. "Then you would've only fed his fantasy. His narcissism. And even so, getting you the second time round - even if it was a jump from cop to fed - wouldn't've satisfied him for long. It was only a matter of time."
Hotch nodded, and they began to exit the alley.
"And if you'd taken the deal, I would've killed you dead," Jane checked his shoulder, burying a smile at Rossi's laugh.
Jane made a beeline straight for Morgan when she arrived on-scene.
"Let me take over," She ordered the EMT, already pulling out her gloves.
"Who -" The man rounded on her, before taking her in fully. "You Dr. Hart?"
"Yes, I'm Hart," Jane snapped at him, and Morgan couldn't help but raise his eyebrows at her crabbiness. "And that's my charge, so either step away -"
"Hey, hey," Morgan cut in, wary she was about to shove a scalpel into someone's neck. "It's cool, man. Let her take over."
The EMT stepped back, allowing Jane to seamlessly take over removing bits of window from his shoulder, and Derek watched the EMT watch Jane with something close to amazement. Or starstruck.
But the relief was there, that Jane was with him - taking care of him. Jane knew all of Morgan's health issues in and out, and as she began to shift glass out from under skin it was night and day to the stranger's touch.
"I should've been there," He heard Jane mutter as she dropped another piece of glass into a pan. "Should've had your back."
"You weren't there because you're not ready yet," Morgan shook his head, before stopping at the twinge it sent down his shoulder. "And you would've ended up just like O'Mara."
"Or maybe the both of you would've been fine if I had just been there," She growled. "All this training you've been putting me through, and I still get told to stay back while the rest of you storm the place."
"Jane -"
"JJ went," She pressed, dropping yet another piece of glass. "And she's a Media Liaison!"
"JJ went through the Academy," Morgan placated her, hissing at the pinch of the numbing needle at his shoulder. "You got recruited. That doesn't make you any less capable, only less experienced. You'll get there."
"Not fast enough," Jane shook her head, voice tight. "Next time: I'm coming."
Morgan knew it would do no good to argue.
"Why is he so focused on Foyet?" Hotch asked the team. "What's so special about him?"
"He was his only surviving victim, the only one he couldn't defeat," JJ offered.
"But he took the body," Jane couldn't get over it. "He's never done that before. He leaves things, he doesn't take them."
"What are you saying?" Rossi asked, shifting to face her.
"Well, I saw Foyet, earlier today," Jane started to articulate, gathering her thoughts. "The whole time when I was there, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd met someone like him before." She glanced at Emily and Reid. "Foyet felt just like Benjamin Cyrus."
"The Cult leader?" Morgan clarified, receiving a handful of nods back. "Why?"
"He had … so many layers to him," Jane confessed, eyes on the pictures in front of them. "There's just something - something not clicking."
"What about the girlfriend, Amanda Bertrand?" JJ asked, shifting gears. "What do we know about her?"
"19, a Freshman, she came here from Michigan to go to school," Emily supplied. "Foyet was a teacher's assistant in one of Amanda's courses."
"Hebephile," Jane immediately chimed in, rapidfire connecting the dots. "Michigan was where Shaunessy was to post the personal ad."
"He's a 28-year-old teacher's assistant in freshman classes," Hotch clenched his jaw as he dialed to call Garcia.
"That gives him plenty of access to young girls," Rossi reiterated grimmly.
Jane cursed herself, she should've seen it.
"You want the fame that's gonna come from the media," Hotch told the Foyet - The Boston Reaper - as Jane and the rest of the team entered the room and leveled their aim at him. "It's gonna be like Bundy."
"I'm gonna be bigger than Bundy," Foyet insisted - gun still aimed at Roy's head.
"Well, you can't enjoy it if you're dead," Hotch stated, aim still true as Jane sidled up beside him.
"If you know me so well, how come somebody had to die to bring you here?" Foyet taunted, arrogance in his tone.
"That's your choice, not mine," Hotch bared down on him. "You're the serial killer."
"And she's the doctor who treated the serial killer," Foyet grinned - sneered - at Jane. "Do you regret helping me, Dr. Hart?"
"It wasn't a coincidence, was it?" Jane realized, gun aimed right at his heart. "You walking into my clinic. Who told you I was joining the BAU, Roy?"
"Couldn't resist," He bared his teeth at her, not answering. "Knowing the people who would be hunting me down, that their doctor would have treated me."
"No," Jane bared her teeth right back. "I don't regret treating you."
And with that The Boston Reaper put his hands up, and Morgan practically tackled him to the ground.
"They didn't find your credentials at any of the residences," Jane overheard Hotch telling Morgan on the plane. They continued to speak lowly, going over the details of the blood and how Foyet was planning to fake his death. All Jane could pay attention to was the way that Morgan kept staring at that damn bullet.
"Morgan, you're gonna have to find a way to let it go," Hotch said, voicing her concerns from across the jet. She got up.
"Could you?"
"I'd have to."
Jane sat next to Morgan, shoving him towards the wall of the plane. She reached over and plucked the bullet from his unresisting grip.
"This bullet," Jane studied it. The blue tip, the heft. "I didn't have to dig it out of you. I didn't have to bury you with it still lodged in your rib cage. I didn't even have to scold you for getting it fired in your general direction."
Morgan just kept staring at the bullet.
"He didn't kill you," Jane emphasized, closing her fist around the bullet. "Didn't injure you, not anything you couldn't handle. And now, because he was an arrogant ass, you get to save a lot of lives."
She reached over, fingers curled over Derek's hand until it opened and she dropped it into his palm.
"That bullet means that you could've died, but you didn't. And it also means that now you get to make sure that a bullet just like that doesn't end up in someone else. Take the win."
Derek's fingers curled around the ammo, and with a clenched jaw he nodded.
"Do you regret it?" Reid asked from across the plane, and Jane turned to see that he was talking to her.
"Regret what?" Jane asked, having a good idea already.
"Treating Foyet," Rossi supplied for the genius, and the whole jet was listening. "When he was a killer."
"I only regret that I couldn't treat him better," Jane answered honestly, after a moment.
"Even though he could've killed me?" Morgan growled, angry.
"Especially," Jane leveled her gaze at Derek, meeting his anger head on. "I took an Oath, Derek. To value life above all else, even his."
The jet went silent, and Jane stood to move - but Derek grabbed her hand and pulled her back down, gripping her hand in mutual support.
"Jane, are you missing anything?"
Hotch stood in her office doorway, and Jane had to blink sleep out of her eyes at the question.
"Missing …" Her brain caught up. "No? Not that I know of."
"Can you check to see if your satchel has everything?" Aaron pressed on, and Jane reached for her bag before she processed why Hotch would be asking.
"My …" She double checked. "My stethoscope is gone. How did I not notice that?"
"It was found with the maps of the facility that Foyet escaped from," Hotch passed her a photo of her instrument weighing down a pile of papers. "He's mocking us."
"Yeah," Jane sighed, scrubbing at her face. "And he's mocking me."
