Author's Note: As Chances has already gone completely AU far earlier than Girl proper did, I folded in some of my own cases, outside of the ones covered in season three. Not to say that we won't still also cover some cases that were in canon (Hotch being blown up for instance will occur in all universes) but for the most part I'm just going to jump around as I feel like it and as I think it pertains well to the underlying, 'Em's pregnant while this is happening,' theme.

So think of what we're going into here, kind of like "Great Falls" was over in Girl. A dramatic little mini-story, within the larger storyline.

TV Bonus Challenge #15 - Case Fics Extraordinaire

Show: Ally McBeal

Title Challenge: The Man With The Bag

Early March: Wednesday Morning

There Was This Girl, You See

Hotch's jaw twitched as he pushed his sunglasses a bit further up on his nose. Then he waved away a fly and tipped his head back slightly to look across the mutilated corpse in front of him, to the very alive woman standing on the other side of it.

Emily.

She looked like she was going to be sick.

"Prentiss," he spoke while making an effort to catch her eyes through their two pairs of respective shades, "I think we should get some unofficial pictures now to preserve the scene before Forensics arrives. So," he jerked his thumb off towards the SUV parked back on the road a good thirty yards behind them, "could you go get the camera, please?"

Although in that moment, Hotch was feeling anything but detached and professional, for the benefit of the sheriff and four deputies standing beside them, that was the tone Hotch used while speaking to the mother of his unborn child. It didn't matter if no one else on the team was present, appearances still had to be upheld. And as far as the local LEOs were concerned, he and Emily were simply colleagues.

Nothing more.

It did become even more difficult though to keep up his mask of professional detachment, when he saw the flash of gratitude Emily sent him over the body. Then she gave him a quick nod and a tight smile . . . and he felt an additional stab of guilt.

God, sweetheart, you are KILLING me!

Even though he didn't really think she blamed him for her circumstances . . . beyond of course the fact that it was his baby she was lugging around in there . . . it was ENTIRELY his fault that she was standing out here in the rising desert sun trying to keep down her breakfast. Here she was, almost three months pregnant, and he'd decided to drag her out to the new, (ripe), dump site with him rather than sending her off to look at the cold ones with Morgan and Dave. And why had he done that even though he knew that she'd been suffering from a horrible bout of morning sickness that day?

Because he was being overprotective.

Yeah . . . he watched her rubbing her stomach as she ducked under the just draped yellow tape . . . ironic, huh? But they were out in the desert . . . Death Valley to be specific, just outside of China Lake to be much more precise . . . and since they'd landed in this hellish region of the planet, he'd been genuinely terrified that she was going to get bitten or stung by one of the thousands of poisonous creatures that roamed this sandy terrain. And the cold sites Morgan and Dave were checking out . . . spread out all across what passed for civilization around here . . . were certainly no safer than where they were now.

They were all in the big, wide . . . snake, spider, and scorpion invested . . . open.

So Hotch's BRILLIANT solution as to how to keep his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn child safe under these (personally) nightmarish circumstances, had been to simply keep her within arm's length for as close to twenty-four hours a day as he could manage. It wasn't much of a plan really . . . it wasn't like he could "tackle" a scorpion . . . but it had been the best he could think to do for his peace of mind.

And the logic had seemed sound enough to him while he'd been doling out assignments last night in the back room of the ranger's station.

But now he could see that dragging Emily out to this freshly discovered kill site at seven am, when he knew that she'd been up vomiting since five am, had NOT been one of his soundest command decisions. His jaw twitched.

Not by half.

Really, he should have just sent her off with JJ to get a complete bio on their newest victim. That definitely would have been the best thing to do. Still though . . . with a sigh, Hotch reluctantly dragged his attention back to the mutilated female body in front of him . . . he'd meant well.

Hopefully Emily would remember that the next time he tried to put a hand on her.

"Sheriff," Hotch turned then to the solemn man to his left, "once Agent Prentiss is done with the photos, we'll do a quick walk through the area and then head back to the station."

His gaze shifted to take in the small contingent of deputies standing guard around the shiny yellow tape.

"The FBI forensics team should be here within the hour. If you could just please keep the guards posted until they're done? My people will supervise the collection of the body, and any evidence in the area, but given the remoteness of the area, we could use the additional manpower all the same."

After the sheriff had given him a slow nod of assent, and a "fine by me, Agent Hotchner," Hotch let out the breath he'd been holding.

At least he wasn't going to have a fight with this man who was so clearly out of his depth of expertise. Not that lack of knowledge, or personal intelligence, had ever stopped anyone from claiming a body in the past. People could be downright insane when it came to relinquishing professional authority. And Death Valley in particular was a nightmare for jurisdiction . . . Hotch ducked under the yellow tape and started walking further into the desert . . . it was a national park straddling two sovereign U.S. states, a naval weapons station, an Air Force range, and an Army base.

And now they had a serial killer.

One who was choosing his victims . . . ten to date that they knew of . . . from all over the aforementioned regions of authority. The body dumps were actually SO scattered, that it had taken nearly a year for anyone to put together that they actually had a serial killer working in this area. Initially the missing . . . and then the dead . . . had been presumed to either be victims of animal attacks, or random accidents.

Or both.

They didn't call it Death Valley for nothing.

But then finally somebody . . . thinking back, Hotch remembered that it was JJ . . . had the bright idea to put a batch of Academy freshman on a special class assignment. She'd suggested that they do a scavenger hunt through the southwest states, to track missing bodies found, against the causes and manners of death officially listed.

Not that JJ had necessarily had any inkling there was something odd going on down there, but, be it driving hundreds of miles down an Interstate, riding a multi-state train line, or working federal land clusters, serial killers tended to have a sixth sense when it came to taking advantage of jurisdictional loopholes. So lo and behold, there really hadn't been all that much surprise when the students had come back with a graph showing a spike of missing persons against Unknown COD and MOD, in the Death Valley region.

That was three weeks ago.

Hotch had immediately put in calls to the local base commanders and county coroners to get as much additional information as he could on the nature, and determined manner, of those deaths.

Those had been much harder questions to get answers to than he would have expected.

In most instances, the bodies had been dumped in locations sure to be quickly located by the locals . . . in that they were close enough to fairly well traveled byways for people to see the vultures circling . . . but because it was a desert, those bodies were even MORE quickly located by the extremely carnivorous members of the local animal population.

Basically every body found . . . including the one today . . . had been half torn to shreds.

Still though, when Hotch got what was left of those bodies he could gather back to Quantico, their pathologist had found one common wound over and over again . . . a small bullet hole in the back of what was left of the skulls.

And that was one wound that nobody could blame on a coyote.

And it was a consistent wound for seven of the eight bodies they had onsite . . . the ninth head had never been found . . . so that was more than enough for Hotch to officially call it a serial. And given the federal land issue, they didn't need to wait for an official invitation from anyone before they began investigating.

Still though, at the time they put all of the pieces together, the case was a bit cool. No new bodies for a solid two months. But then yesterday it came up the wire that an enlisted sailor had gone missing from China Lake.

Petty Officer First Class Lori Doolittle.

Initially Doolittle had been listed as simply AWOL, even though that was uncharacteristic behavior for her. But then after a cursory search had turned up no signs of credit card use or contact with known friends or family . . . her husband and baby included . . . her base commander had determined that most likely something had happened to her. That's when he'd decided to list her as officially "missing," a status he had shared with the civilian authorities as well.

That was thirty-six hours after she'd disappeared on the way back from a weekend leave with her family up in Reno.

Twenty-four hours later, her Toyota had been found on the side of a back road four miles from where they were now. All four tires had been blown, the driver's side window was shattered, and there were blood specks on the seat and inside the car door. Basic scene reconstruction . . . not to mention a depressing number of years experience doing this job . . . told Hotch that the UNSUB had first thrown down spike strips to blow her tires, and then when she'd either refused to get out of the car . . . or perhaps had run back inside for safety when she'd realized what was happening . . . the window had been smashed in. That was before she was forcibly removed from the vehicle, and dragged off into the night.

It was not a pleasant scene to contemplate.

Of course . . . Hotch squinted at flash of color he saw half hidden behind a cactus fifteen feet away . . . none of his cases had ever posed a "pleasant" abduction scenario.

There was no such thing.

Even when the abduction was clean and bloodless, the team could always reconstruct, could always see that exact moment of horror. The one where the victim suddenly realized that this terrible thing that only happened to other people . . . was now happening to them. And contemplating those moments for so many hundreds of lost souls, had contributed to too many of Hotch's sleepless nights. It was that surge of terror and panic that they knew followed time again. The knowledge that nobody was going to come for them. Nobody was going to help them get away.

They were going to die screaming.

Young boys, teenage girls, prostitutes of both genders, they were their most common victim pools. The ones they tracked over and over again, like a record from hell that they just couldn't stop playing. But still, for all their commonalties, as Hotch walked up to that lone cactus on that cool desert morning, he believed that every one of those cases was still heartbreaking in its own, unique, way.

And he could see now that the murder of Petty Officer Doolittle would be no different.

Because as he stooped down to investigate the patch of color in the pale earth, Hotch's eyes began to sting. Laid open before him, was a brightly patterned cloth wallet. One corner was half buried in the sand, but that corner and the one diagonal, had been both pinned down with small rocks so the wallet wouldn't blow away in the wind storms the night before.

This was meant to be found.

Hotch's gloved hand came down to rest next to the picture of Petty Officer Doolittle sitting up in bed holding her baby daughter. A man . . . most likely her husband stationed out in California . . . had his arm wrapped around her shoulders.

They were both grinning from ear to ear.

The picture was clearly taken in the hospital, most likely hours after the birth. And now this baby . . . who Hotch knew from the file was not yet even old enough to crawl, let alone speak . . . would never know her mother. And now Hotch was going to have to go back and tell this family that they would need to have a closed casket. He felt a surge of rage and impotence rise up.

God this job fucking SUCKED!

"Aaron?"

Though part of his brain processed the voice as belonging to Emily, still Hotch jumped at the sound, and his hand (instinctively) dropped to his sidearm as he leapt up.

"Hey," he said breathlessly as his fingers immediately fell back down to hang by his side, "uh, are you uh, feeling any better?"

Good paying attention asshole! You almost pulled a gun on Emily!

Emily stood frozen for a moment as she watched Hotch's hand dangling down next to the gun he'd almost yanked out. Then her gaze raked back up over his body, seeing how his chest was pounding and the hard tension in his jaw.

Obviously she'd startled him, but it wasn't like Hotch to not be paying attention like that. And as her eyes locked on his sunglasses, she wished more than anything that she could see his eyes. She wanted to know what he was thinking.

But she was afraid to ask.

So instead she nodded slowly in response to his question.

"A bit," her nose wrinkled slightly as her free hand fell to her stomach, "getting away from the smell for a few minutes helped." Then she started to take a step around him, "so what did you find here?"

Given how intently he'd been staring at the ground . . . to the point that he hadn't even registered her presence . . . Emily figured that it was probably something important. But as she went to look, Hotch immediately mirrored her movements, blocking her view.

"Just the victim's wallet," he said a little too quickly as he put his hand out for the camera in her hand, "it's getting buried in the sand, so I'll get a couple photos and then bag it."

For a moment Emily held the camera back as she looked warily over at Hotch . . . she'd just been standing over this woman's gooey, shredded, fly covered corpse, so why the hell was he so worried about her looking at her wallet?

"What is it?" Emily asked softly, as she stood up slightly on her tiptoes to try and look over his shoulder, "what did he do to it? What don't you want me to see?"

Immediately moving again, Hotch slipped the Nikon from Emily's grasp.

"Nothing," he turned away from her, his voice fading slightly as his eyes again fell to the happy family in the hospital room, "there's nothing special to see."

"Now," his head snapped around as he refocused on Emily with a hard look, "you be careful where you walk and what you touch," he pointed off to their left, "and pay particular care in that area. There's a snake trail running in the sand between those big rocks."

"Snake trail," Emily croaked as the mystery with the wallet was momentarily forgotten. "I don't like snakes," she added nervously while taking a step closer to Hotch.

For as long as she could remember, Emily had HATED snakes! And ever since her first visit to Africa at the age of eleven, she had hated deserts too. They were Creepy, Crawler Central! And next to a jungle, pretty much the worst place somebody with a snake phobia . . . someone like HER for instance(!) . . . could imagine spending the day. But today she had both snakes, and mutilated corpses.

What a treat!

Seeing the tension on Emily's face as she moved closer into his space, Hotch's protective instincts immediately came peeking out from under the professional shell he'd been trying to keep hardened around him.

Every day that shell was getting more and more cracks in it.

"I know, sweetheart," he murmured softly as his hand dropped to her shoulder, "I know. But like I said, just watch where you step, and stay away from the rocks. When the forensics team gets here, they can use the equipment to do a closer check on the shady spots. Right now," he squeezed her shoulder, "we're just documenting the scene before the wind disturbs anything else. If it looks like it could blow away, we'll take a picture and bag it. If it's not going anywhere, we leave it for official collection later, okay?"

Again, dragging his pregnant girlfriend with the SNAKE PHOBIA out to Death Valley, yeah . . . Hotch's gaze shifted over her head to look over the bleak landscape around them . . . worst command decision EVER!

Emily took a breath and then lifted her head to give Hotch a little . . . albeit slightly tight . . . smile.

"Okay."

Yes, she despised snakes . . . but that wasn't Hotch's fault. And she knew from his tone that he was feeling guilty about her being out here. And that was on top of the guilt that she knew he'd been feeling when he'd realized that she was about to upchuck on that poor woman's corpse. So if she didn't do something to reassure him . . . and more importantly remind him . . . that she wasn't just his pregnant girlfriend, but also still a perfectly healthy, well trained . . . well armed . . . FBI agent.

Hopefully, once that thought was back in his head, then he would stop being distracted worrying about her, and start focusing exclusively on the case again. After all that's what she was doing right now.

Shaking off the personal stuff.

Yes, Hotchkin had been giving her a rough morning . . . she'd thrown up twice since the alarm went off . . . and yes, she'd much prefer to be back in Virginia right now having Hotch wait on her hand and foot as he always did when the baby woke her with a running trip to the bathroom.

But those were not viable options today.

Today they were on duty pretty much 24/7. So today she (they) were both . . . she patted Hotch's chest once before turning away . . . going to have to suck it up. And tonight . . . she slipped her pistol from the holster as she spotted another trail of sandy slithering . . . whenever the hell they got off work, she was dragging Hotch into her room and getting in a good cuddle before she sent him off to his own bed. Sex on the road was, of course, not an option, but cuddling . . . her jaw twitched as she spotted the slitherer in question winding his way fifteen feet ahead of her . . . well, that would be nirvana.

Emily's trigger finger itched as she watched the rattlesnake moving further away from them and over towards the dunes. Of course she knew that he posed no threat to her at the moment, but still . . . she scowled when she lost him in the sun . . . he existed. And as far as reasons to fire went . . . that was good enough for her any day of the week.

More so today with the baby on board.

Still though . . . she reluctantly turned back to the job at hand, evaluating the scene . . . she knew that randomly using a "non-threatening" diamondback for target practice wasn't going to be particularly confidence inspiring for the locals. She'd look like a nut.

Or worse . . . a chick.

So for the sake of her reputation, Emily slipped the safety back on her gun and began walking the grid.

Hotch's tension level slowly fell as he watched Emily's gun fall back to her side.

Given how there clearly wasn't an UNSUB anywhere in the vicinity, he was assuming that it was a snake that she'd just spotted. But seeing her refocused now on the grid search, he had to figure that whatever danger she'd perceived had passed.

So with a weary sigh he slipped an evidence bag from his pocket and stooped down to pick up the wallet in the sand.

After he'd scooped it up and zipped the bag shut tight, Hotch placed a small yellow flag down in the white granules. He still wanted the area vacuumed for additional trace. Then he tucked the wallet into his windbreaker pocket and headed off in the opposite direction of Emily.

They walked the grid for ten more minutes, with Hotch making sure that his girl was never farther away than yelling distance.

He'd given up on the scorpion tackle.

And just as he was about to call it . . . nothing else seemed to be scattered but the bones . . . they'd let the Forensics team finish up when they arrived, Emily suddenly yelled a string of words that made Hotch's blood run cold.

"Oh Jesus, something just bit me!"

A/N 2: Reading this over for repost, I'd forgotten how much I loved this little sub plot. I've always really enjoyed taking them out 'into the world' and describing new places of landscapes. Basically this would have made a nice off shoot story all by itself :)