"I'm worried about him, Dave. I can't tell what's going through his head. Well, I have a pretty good idea. You know Hotch. He's not going to take any of this lightly. He's blaming himself." It may have been a while since they had spoken, but she could tell he hadn't changed much.

"I know, Jayje, but what are we going to do about it? He has to come to terms with the new situation on his own. You know that. If we intervene, it can only make things worse. I'll come to you when I think it's time to step in." He wants to help, but he can't figure out how.

"You're right. I know. But sometimes I just think…" She trails off and gets lost in her own head.

"Think what, J.J.?"

"Maybe we should've told him. He reached out to you. Hell, he reached out to me. We knew the risks of keeping quiet about Lia and Em. Maybe this wouldn't have happened if he'd been a part of her life. I don't know, it's irrational, but I'll always wonder." She had been struggling with these thoughts since the team had discussed how to proceed when Hotch got out of protective custody.

"We can't tell him. It isn't our place. I do think we should tell him he's being an idiot for not wanting to talk to Prentiss." Morgan had been angry at Hotch since he had called all of them except Emily a week after they had caught Foyet. Emily's the one that hunted down the bastard for years. She's the one that took time away from her daughter to go find this guy. She's the one that spent years thinking of nothing but Hotch. She shot down Foyet. She hit him twice in case the first time didn't stick. And now, he just didn't want to speak to her. He said something about Haley and wouldn't discuss Emily from that point forward.

No one else really knew what to say. No one knew what the right decision was. They couldn't bear to tell Prentiss that Hotch had reached out to them and not to her. That is, until she sees Hotch's name flash on Reid's phone one day not long after the incladestine team meeting.

"Spencer? You've talked to Hotch? Is he okay?" Emily immediately panicked, thinking something was desperately wrong. It had to be why he hadn't contacted her yet. He had a good reason, she knew it.

"Uh, Em he's fine. I promise." He looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn't know what. Emily understood perfectly. "Oh." He didn't think he had ever seen her that broken, but she quickly gathered herself and handed Spencer his phone. "That's fine. Tell him I said 'Hi,' okay?" And with that, Emily left the room in a hurry. From that moment forward, Spencer ignored Hotch's calls. He resented the man more with every passing day. He later told J.J. about it. She was just as upset about the situation as he was, so they grew closer.

"J.J.. Hey, where'd you go?"

"Oh, sorry. You were saying?" She couldn't stop thinking about the what-ifs.

"You know we couldn't tell him about Lia. If we had, it would've started something Emily couldn't deal with. It would've created an obligation that would make her think he didn't really want to be there. She doesn't trust easily, and we would've lost her trust. I can't promise we made the right decision, but I think it was a good decision based on the information we had at the time. He tried again with Haley, J.J.. We didn't need to uproot their lives."

Sighing, she nodded, plastered on a smile, and left the room. Hotch was going to get some coffee to clear his head when he spotted Lia in a position not unlike his own the day prior. He could tell something was wrong but he didn't want to pry. So, he awkwardly cleared his throat to make his presence known.

"Hey, uh, are you okay?" He didn't know how to start the conversation, but he knew she needed to lean on someone for a moment.

"Oh! Hi. Sorry, I can get out of your way." She got up to leave when Hotch interrupted.

"No! I mean, no, it's okay. Come sit. Clear your head. Vent if you need to. Coffee?"

Sighing, she sits back down across from him. "Yes, please." Trusting she'll talk when she's ready, Hotch sits down across from her and gives her a cup of coffee.

"I just, I have to be okay. I have to stay strong. My whole life, I've been surrounded by these people. Some are newer, like Tara, but these people are the strongest people I know. And some of them are slipping. I mean, just look at my mom. She got kidnapped. She let her guard down. She was the glue that held us together. Without her, I don't know how to do this, Mr. Hotchner. I have to be like her. I have to turn into the glue, even if it's temporary. And I know that. The problem is, I haven't had time to sit here and think about the fact that my mother is out there. She's in pain. She's trying to get home to me, and I know she'll be sorry when she gets home. See! It's things like that! She's being tortured, and I swear she's going to apologize! She's the most selfless person I know. Now, I have to be strong."

"Lia, I get it. Okay? I under—"

"No. You don't. You don't understand me, or my mom, or our life. You weren't there Hotchner! You didn't come back! So don't you dare sit here and try to console me about any of this because if you had come back, I wouldn't be in so much damn pain, okay? I would have someone to share the grief of my mother disappearing! Someone would stand by me that I could lean on to share the load of my mother's absence. She's a strong woman, and I have to deal with this alone because you chose your other family over us!" She knew she needed to say those things, but she also knew they weren't entirely fair. She also started to regret the venomous words as they left her mouth.

"Lia. That was not my choice." His shock that she knew about his rekindled relationship with Haley still wasn't gone, but he knew he had to get out of there. He stood, poured the rest of his coffee down the drain, and reentered the bullpen.

In the bullpen, the look on Reid's face let Hotch know that they had all heard the whole exchange. He kept his head down and entered his old office. He immediately noted all of the changes Emily had made. There weren't many, which was probably a symbol that she had always hoped he would march in and reclaim his office, but the pictures on the desk were new. There was one of Lia and Emily in the hospital when Lia was born, another of them when Lia was around five, and a recent one of them. One had been turned face down, and when he picked it up, he knew why. It was a picture from when he was still in the Bureau. He and Emily were front and center, and he was looking at her with nothing other than pure adoration. She was looking back with the same amount of that four letter word he couldn't bring himself to think about in her eyes. He loved that picture. The rest of the team was standing around them being happier than he had seen long before his unceremonious exit from the BAU. The picture made him tear up. The fact that Emily kept it on her desk for almost twenty years made the tears start to spill over. Before he knew it, he was sitting in Emily's desk chair, crying about the life he threw away for Haley, and about the love that he may have lost forever.

"Haley, I can't." Haley had been trying to get him to agree to reconcile for over a month. They had been in protective custody for four months now, playing the part of a happy family in a small town in Vermont.

"Why not, Aaron? Are you still thinking about them? It's over. There's nothing in the way of us being together now. You aren't running away to solve a case every other day, and I'm not raising Jack alone. Everything is almost perfect." Conceding, kissed her back. Later, he remembers thinking 'that wasn't all bad.' He was still holding on to the hope that he'd get to come home. When he realized they had already been in protective custody for six months, he began to lose hope. That was the day he promised himself he'd really give it a shot with Haley. Maybe they could make it work this time. It was safe, and it was convenient.

After recalling the pathetic memory, Aaron stood up from the desk, left the picture standing up, and walked out of the room while angrily wiping his tears. Just before he exited the room, something caught his eye. On a shelf, there was a book that looked out of place with the rest of Emily's collection. It had a cheesy teen romance cover. That didn't seem to be her speed, and if it was, she was the type of person to keep it hidden. This was different. The first page was entitled "Finding Out." As he flipped through, he realized it was a collection of memories and events from her pregnancy until Lia turned one. From the way the journal ended, Aaron speculated there were more. If he could find them, maybe they'd reveal something about the man who kidnapped her. He began to pull out every book on the shelves. He planned to go to her house and look after that. He didn't want Lia to know yet. She couldn't get her hopes up. The fact that he got his own hopes up was bad enough.