"If his body and his essence remain apart,
Burn his body, but spare this, his heart."-Kurt Vonnegut
May 2, 2004
Washington D.C.
"Babe, could you do the laundry today? I've got an open house this afternoon."
Hotch glanced up from his report to see his wife in her most flattering suit. She looked ravishing as ever, her golden hair twisted up to expose her neck.
"Of course," he said, mustering a weary smile. "Leave it to me. Oh-and there's chocolate chip dough in the fridge if you want to pull that realtor trick with the smell of baking cookies."
She beamed at him and rounded the table to kiss her husband's stubbly cheek.
"You're the best, babe."
She glanced over his shoulder at the report that had him so distracted.
"Who's Helena Blythe?" she inquired lightly, noting the name that appeared so often on the page in front of him. She noted the tension in his jaw at the mention of the woman's name.
"She's an agent who was shot on my last case."
"Oh god, honey, I'm sorry. Did you know her well?"
"Apparently not well enough to keep her safe," he muttered darkly. "I took my eye off her and she was gone."
"Aaron, sweetie, I hate seeing what this job does to you," she said, stroking his hair. "You can't save everyone. This girl knew the risks when she joined up."
"Haley, I'm fine. I don't think she's dead." Or if she is, no one told me.
"Oh! Well what are you brooding about, then?"
"I promise I'm not brooding," he assured her, forcing himself to turn and smile. "This is just my face, remember?" He produced an exaggerated scowl for her benefit, and she rewarded him with a giggle and a kiss.
"Alright, then, grump. I'm out. Thanks for the cookie dough. I'll try not to eat it all before I arrive at the house."
He heard the door shut behind her and allowed his face to lapse back into its pensive frown. There was something to be said for faking a good mood for Haley's sake, but ultimately he had begun to find it exhausting.
He could not tell his wife about the steel cage they had found in Volkoff's warehouse, filled with twenty-eight naked, emaciated, screaming women. Some starving, some already dead.
He could not tell her how he had pressed his fingers to Helena's torso, trying in vain to stem the flow of her blood from the small stomach wound as he bellowed for a medic.
He could not tell her of the ride in the ambulance, during which his only shred of hope was the vice in which Helena's hand held his. Of the silent plane ride back to D.C. while Helena was still in surgery.
He had gotten no news from Chicago since that day. Now nearly a week had elapsed, and Lucinda Potts's promised call still had not come.
What would you even do with the information if you got it? She's not your problem anymore.
Right. He took deep breaths and repeated it like a mantra: not your problem.
The tension in his shoulders began to relax.
His phone rang and he leapt for it. Right. You're the height of detached cool.
"Hotchner."
"Hey, it's Lucy Potts. You know, from Chic-"
"Yes, I remember you, Sergeant Potts. How can I help you?" he asked, restraining himself from interrogating the kind woman.
"I thought you might want to know that Lena's awake."
"Oh, yes, thanks for calling," he said, keeping his voice neutral. Despite his composure, he thought he could hear a smile in the officer's next words.
"Would you like to hear the prognosis?" she offered, a sly, knowing note in her voice.
She's onto you.
"If it's not too much trouble."
"The doctors think she'll make a full recovery if she ever stops trying to bribe the orderlies for a smoke. The biggest risk to her health right now is death by nurse."
Hotch laughed sincerely for the first time that week.
"They should really just give in. That woman is a fiend when it comes to nicotine."
"That's what I told them, but they didn't have much of a sense of humor about it. Listen, Helena said to thank you for her. She said that she'd apologize for being a 'reckless junkie bitch' in person. Did she really pick your pocket?"
"If the nurses don't kill her, I probably will."
As usual, though, looks like I'll have a lot of competition.
"Fair enough. It was a pleasure working with you, Agent Hotchner."
"Likewise, Sergeant Potts."
The next phone call that Hotch got came only five minutes after he hung up. It had an air of Providence that he had come to recognize as a sign of Gideon meddling.
He had just closed out the Cavanagh case file and started on the Volkoff report when his phone rang.
"Hotchner."
"It's Gideon. There's a perp in Chicago that I'd like to have interviewed. Could you go with Morgan?"
"Jason, I just got back from Chicago."
"Yeah, but you went with Reid. Now you're going with Morgan."
"Is that supposed to be an incentive?"
"No, I think you already have an incentive." Hotch sighed and ran a hand through his hair. The problem was that he really did want to go, if only to berate Helena Blythe in person.
"Fine. Have the briefing sent ahead to the jet."
"Great. Wheels up in an hour."
The moment they finished reviewing the details of their case, Morgan pounced.
"So what's she like?"
"What's who like?" asked Hotch, feigning ignorance.
"Oh come on, Hotch. Helena. The tasty widow-spy."
Hotch shot him an amused look before considering his answer. What was she like? He had only seen her in such outlandishly ridiculous circumstances that it was hard to imagine her personality outside of it.
"She's one of the most resourceful people I've ever met," he volunteered finally. "She was alone with Igor Tikhonov for hours and sustained only minor injuries before stabbing him with the heel of her shoe."
"You're kidding," gasped Morgan. When Hotch shook his head, his colleague laughed aloud and shook his head. "Now that is one badass motherfucker."
"Then she managed to stall Arkady Volkoff for nearly an hour before we got there. If she hadn't kept him busy, he would have killed every single one of the girls and escaped with Blythe."
"Well damn. I see why Gideon wants her. That's a lot of grit and native profiling talent."
"What are you talking about, Morgan?"
"Gideon's thinking recruiting her to the BAU. We have a gap to fill, and he says that we need someone young and hot-blooded on the team. Not to mention that we don't have a single woman on the team."
"She wandered off while a known sadist was hunting for her. She risked her life for a pack of cigarettes."
"Oh come on, Hotch. Do you really think that's why she did it?"
"You think she wanted Arkady to find her?"
"Maybe not consciously."
"Doesn't that make it worse?"
"Gideon thinks that under a good leader, that recklessness could come in handy. Not to mention that she solved a case for us while she was sleep-deprived, recently tortured, and newly in mourning. She was spot on about Mary and Ian Cavanagh, and because of her we caught them before they managed to kill again."
"I see the argument, but do we really need another hotshot on the team? Our section chief already hates our guts."
"I think you want her on the team just as much as Gideon does. You're just a contrarian pain in the ass."
"I'll concede the latter point. I'll withhold judgment on Helena Blythe."
When he walked into the hospital the next day, he felt suddenly enormously foolish. He had even, inexplicably, stopped at a florist on the way. The maternal nurse who showed him to Helena's door smiled warmly at his demeanor.
"Careful, sweetie. That girl will eat you alive if you show weakness."
"Has she been as unmanageable as I hear?"
"Worse. I've had to threaten to strap her down four times today."
"I'm so sorry."
She shrugged.
"Agents are always the worst patients. At least this one has a pleasant family. Here we are." She stopped in front of a private room and rapped briskly. From the the other side of the door, Hotch could hear uproarious laughter.
"Avanti!" exclaimed a male voice. Hotch entered the room, his self-consciousness growing by the second.
The room had three occupants, all bright-faced and merry. Helena lay on a hospital bed, smiling at him. The bruise on her cheek had begun to subside and she looked anomalously cheerful for one who had taken a gunshot to the gut.
The second woman was older, perhaps in her sixties, with a magisterial beauty about her. She was very tall and slim, dressed all in emerald green, with sleek silver hair pulled back from her fine-featured face. She let her large dark eyes wander over Hotch with unabashed interest.
The man was similarly long and lean with a magnificent white mustache and a wonderfully tailored suit.
"Agent Hotchner!" Blythe cried out. "What a wonderful surprise."
"I was in the area," he explained abruptly.
"Well, I'm glad of it. Manon here wanted to meet my savior." She gestured to the woman, who inclined her head but continued her scrutiny.
"We owe you an enormous debt, Agent Hotchner," she remarked in a strong Russian accent.
"Oh please, it's Hotch," he said automatically. "And it really wasn't me. It took a lot of people to wrap up that case."
"Humble and heroic," said the other man, his eyes twinkling under wild white brows. "Quite the paragon, this one."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I should introduce you properly. Hotch, this is Manon, my godmother, and Simon, her… well, they're far too sophisticated to label things."
Manon chuckled and Simon moved forward to shake Hotch's hand firmly.
"Lena, love, we ought to go," he said. "And I can't keep your mother at bay indefinitely. Do try to get out of the hospital before she finds out what happened."
"I'm working on an escape plan. These nurses are cunning bastards."
The elegant pair took turns kissing her cheeks and slipped out of the door, Manon throwing one last speculative look at Hotch.
He sat down by her bedside, laying the flowers on his lap. Her face had sobered when they left. She had been maintaining a bright facade, but now she merely looked exhausted.
"They seem nice," he remarked, refraining from bombarding her with questions. Helena smiled fondly.
"Manon is spectacular, isn't she?"
"She's the reason you speak Russian?"
"She's the reason for a lot of things about me." He sensed that she had no intention of speaking about her past, and he changed the subject accordingly.
"I hear that you're an atrocious patient."
"It turns out that nurses have no sense of humor."
"They do take a dim view of patients trying to bolt ten minutes after waking up from major surgery. How do you feel?" he asked, watching her face in concern. She chuckled darkly.
"Shot to hell and strung out on nicotine. I haven't found the right person to bribe for a damn cigarette yet-" she stopped midsentence and grinned as he pulled a pack and a lighter out of the inner pocket of his coat. "You beautiful, beautiful man."
"I figured that you deserve full-tar after what you've been through. But I'm honor-bound to remind you that you shouldn't be smoking so soon after surgery. Or at all, really-"
"Shut up and light up, Hotch. You smoke, right?"
"Not lately."
"Too bad. I have to implicate you in case we're caught. That's how it works in the mob, you know." Hotch grinned despite himself. He put two cigarettes loosely between his lips and lit them, then handed one to her. Blythe sucked on hers with obvious relish, blowing rings of smoke. When she had taken several greedy pulls with her eyes closed she stretched out languorously on the hospital bed and turned her gaze to him.
"So how about you? How's Hotch?" She pronounced his nickname with a sardonic emphasis.
"Furious, but impressed. You took a bullet to the gut and the doctors tell me you'll make a full recovery. And it looks like Arkady's going down for good." At this, she snorted.
"No, he's not." She took another deep pull and stared malevolently into the corner of the room, as though glaring at a nonexistent person. "My contact at the DA's office tells me that they're cutting a deal with him. Sending him back to Russia in exchange for a few local names." She looked back at him and smiled bitterly. "If I'd known they were going to set him loose, I'd have thought twice about letting Igor pull out one of my molars." Hotch truly wished that he was surprised, but, as he had discovered many times as both a prosecutor and a profiler, anything goes in politics. He searched around for something encouraging to say, but came up blank. A morbid silence stretched between them as he smoked to buy himself time. Finally, he settled for a simple:
"I'm sorry." She shrugged and smiled again, sadly this time. It was incredible how many different types of smiles she had, and how difficult they would make it to read her for one less versed in the nuances of human expression.
"There's nothing to be done about it now. I should have known that it would go down that way." For some reason, this new cynicism in her was unbearable to Hotchner.
"At least we got the girls out. A lot of women got their lives back because of what you did."
"Some of the girls. They found about thirty bodies when they sent a diving team into the river." She threw the butt of her cigarette moodily into the glass of water at the bedside and grinned suddenly. "The nurses are going to flip when they see this."
Hotch wondered whether he should allow their small conspiracy to pull them back into levity, but something prevented him. She was vulnerable just then. It was possible that she hadn't allowed herself a moment's dark reflection on her ordeal since she had woken up, and if he let her shut it down and assume a mask of cheerfulness, she might just let it fester.
"You know, an old colleague of mine-he wrote the book on hostage negotiation-used to talk about 'minimal loss.'" He ventured, watching her closely from his chair. "It means that every life saved counts, but we can never expect to save them all, because we won't."
"Sounds like a happy guy."
"Yeah, he took early retirement," he admitted, smiling slightly. She laughed wholeheartedly for a moment before the motion turned into a wince of pain. Reflexively he stood and moved closer, dropping the flowers. "I'm fine," she assured him. To distract them from her moment of weakness, she gestured at the fallen bouquet. "Is that for me, or do you visit all the girls?"
"Oh, yeah. Here." He stooped to pick up the arrangement of sunflowers and forget-me-nots and foisted it at her, suddenly unable to make eye contact. It's a friendly gesture. Don't get weird, Hotchner.
He forced himself to look into her eyes, only to see that they were swimming suddenly with unshed tears.
"Sunflowers and forget-me-nots," she whispered, her blue eyes wide, her lips quivering slightly. You wouldn't know they were quivering if you weren't fucking staring at them, you lecherous son of a bitch, he reminded himself.
"You got the choice of flowers from Sam's paintings?" she asked, her voice very soft now. She was looking at him with so much affection that he found it nearly impossible to hold her gaze and his composure at the same time.
"Yeah," he murmured, his tone matching hers.
"You're a very kind man, Aaron. I don't know how you keep that up in your line of work."
"I think my team would contend that I don't," he responded wryly, trying too late to defuse the intimacy between them.
"I very much doubt that. From what I've seen, the boy worships you." Her eyes were fixed on his, and Hotch noted vaguely that the distance between them appeared to be shrinking gradually. He wasn't sure which one of them was closing it. The moment stretched and intensified.
His trance was rudely broken by a painful searing at his fingertips as his abandoned cigarette burned down to a tiny stump. He swore and dropped it next to hers in the glass. Helena jumped and sat back. She averted her eyes from his and ran her fingers through her hair. There was a pregnant pause, then:
"Can you keep a secret?" she asked him with a sudden, blinding smile. He stared at her uncomprehendingly, wondering where her mind could possibly have leapt to. She took his hesitation in stride and went on. "Oh don't worry, I don't expect you to. If it were possible to keep a secret, I'd be out of a job."
"Alright, tell me your secret," he said cautiously.
"I hate my job," she said. "I mean… not in the way most people do, where they find a lot of it tedious or unpleasant and sometimes get drunk and complain about their asshole boss. I mean that I hate it fundamentally, but I enjoy it viscerally." She watched him as she spoke, searching for something in his face. He sat back down in his chair, strangely enthralled by this rare bout of uninhibited, forthcoming honesty.
"How do you mean?"
"Well…" For once, she seemed to be searching for words. "I think I'm addicted to undercover work in the same way that I'm addicted to nicotine. There's just something about not being me that I crave." She leaned back and closed her eyes, her brows drawn together in a rare frown. Absentmindedly, she toyed with the sunflowers in her lap. "But I can feel it siphoning off parts of me. It sucks the life out of me but I don't quit because it feels so damn good. I don't think I could be happy if I stopped."
She fell silent and lay there as though asleep for a full minute. Hotch had the distinct feeling that she had forgotten that he was there. He considered his answer carefully.
"Well, I'll make you a deal," he said at length. "Quit both for a year. If at the end, you find out that you really can't be happy without, you can take up one or the other again."
"I'll consider it, though I've no idea what else I would do with myself." She pondered for a moment, before looking ruefully at Hotch. "I should probably let you yell at me now, right?"
"That can wait until you can fight back without ripping your stitches open. You know how stupid you were."
"Yeah."
"It wasn't just because you were craving a smoke, was it?"
She scowled and toyed with the bouquet.
"God, I don't know. Probably not. I wasn't thinking clearly, obviously."
"Obviously."
"But I couldn't just sit there while Arkady disposed of the girls. I had to do something and yeah, if that brought me within scratching distance of the sick bastard… all the better."
"At some point, you're going to have to stop treating your life like a five dollar poker chip."
She shrugged.
"That depends. If I could trade my life to make sure that Arkady Volkoff never gets his hands on another woman… Isn't that clearly worth it?"
"Would Manon and Simon think so?"
"Manon would kill me for even entertaining the idea."
"There you go, then. You don't live in a vacuum, Blythe. Dying isn't just a personal choice."
She grinned.
"Alright. I concede. Next time I take a calculated risk, I'll have you check my math first."
"Good." He finally returned her smile. She was rash and cavalier, but she took criticism gracefully. "When do you get out of here?"
"I'm campaigning for tomorrow and I've tormented my captors enough that they might just let it happen."
"Are you cleared to fly?"
"I will be if I have anything to say about it."
"I'll assume that you will be, then. If you're ready in two days, you can hitchhike back with us. Morgan's curious to meet the woman who successfully weaponized her shoe."
Beaming, she nodded and thanked him, clasping his hand in both of hers. He left soon afterwards, feeling overwrought. Without realizing it, he had become deeply invested in Helena Blythe's wellbeing. Her paper-thin cheer and the profound damage underneath produced a compulsion in him to try to pick up some of the fragments.
There existed in his mind no further doubt that she would make a fantastic profiler, if that was what she chose to do. His misgivings came from his own failings; more and more, he doubted whether he could smother his fascination and work with her as a neutral colleague.
You can and you will, he chided himself.
He pulled out his phone and called Haley.
Everything will be fine.
The consultation concluded quickly, leaving Morgan with a few hours to visit his family while Hotch completed the paperwork and briefed Gideon.
"Oh, did you get a chance to visit Blythe?" asked his unit chief casually.
"I did."
"That's nice. Any idea of her career plans?"
"Subtle. You know, you could have told me that you wanted to recruit her."
"I could have, but you're a contrarian pain in the ass."
"Is that my informal title around the office or something?"
"It's getting to be."
"Good to know. And I do know that she's considering leaving the CIA."
"That's good news."
"And I've offered her a ride back to D.C. on the jet."
"You see? You're a natural recruiter."
"Please don't fixate on Helena Blythe, Gideon. We can run an open search and invite her to apply, but there are plenty of candidates out there."
"I'll keep an open mind if you do."
The next morning, Hotch's phone rang. He glanced down to see a number that he didn't recognize.
"Hotchner."
"You're even more laconic on the phone."
"It's standard policy, Blythe."
"Yeah, but all those bureau standards suit you so well."
"Did you call just to see how I answer my phone?"
"No, I called to see if you're sick of me yet. Specifically, whether I can still take advantage of that extravagant jet."
"Can you get to the airport?"
"Yes. Especially if you're still at the precinct."
Hotch felt a tap on his right shoulder and turned around to see Helena smiling behind him, wearing a gauzy, bright yellow dress and carrying a small black backpack slung over one shoulder. Along with one of Hotch's sunflowers tucked behind her right ear and the rest of the bouquet braided into her long copper hair, she wore her bruise like an avant-garde accessory. All traces of her doubt and depression had been wiped away from her youthful face. The sight of her, breezy, cheerful, and pretty, correlated-he refused to say "caused"-with a slight acceleration of his heartbeat.
"Ready when you are, chief," she said.
"I never said that the invitation was still open," he said severely, suppressing a smile.
"Now Hotch, is that any way to treat a woman who looks like that?" Morgan's voice came from behind Hotch. Helena looked Morgan up and down admiringly.
"Damn," she breathed appreciatively, transferring her smile to him and moving forward. "Helena Blythe," she said, shaking his hand.
"Derek Morgan. I'm the fun one," he replied, kissing the hand she had given him.
"So I see." She recovered her hand and shoved it in her pocket, turning back to Hotch. "What do you say, Straight Man? May I tag along?"
"I say that if you call me that again, I'll shove you in the overhead compartment and leave you there."
"Fair enough," she conceded lightheartedly, "I'll say goodbye to Lucy and meet you at the car."
As she bounded away to find the generous Sergeant Potts, Morgan chuckled and looked at Hotch.
"I wouldn't mind having that around the office everyday."
"Morgan," Hotch muttered in a warning tone, "behave yourself."
"Oh come on, it would fly in the face of everything I stand for to behave myself with a girl like that."
"I am not spending two hours listening to your poorly-conceived innuendoes."
"Sorry, Straight Man. Looks like that's exactly what you'll be doing."
Hotch put all his suffering into one deep, prolonged sigh and followed his colleague out to the imposing black FBI SUV, preparing for an excruciating flight with the two most flirtatious people he had ever met.
Still, that sunflower looked completely charming next to her freckled cheek.