Author's Note:

I'm so sorry for how long it took me to get this chapter up. It was difficult to write. I re-wrote it several times and though I do still think it could be better, I'm pleased with how it turned out. I have to be done with it and move on to the next chapter. I think it does what it needs to do here. I'm curious to know what you think.

I don't expect these long delays will be a pattern, I've got the next few chapters somewhat planned out.

Chapter 9

"She set you up, Agent Hotchner," Watley was too smug, "Face it. She is not on your team anymore. There's no need for you to stay on hers."

Watley was looking at him as if that was justification enough for Hotch to roll over on Emily. As if. Hotch just stared back. He stared back, a few seconds longer than was comfortable. Watley's smug smile faded. "Agent Prentiss," Hotch said, when he was sure he had Watley's full attention, "did not set me up. We don't do that to each other." Hotch sincerely hoped they took his meaning. No amount of interrogation tactics were going to get him to give her up. Fortunately, Hotch thought, he didn't actually have much to give. He was hoping to pick up a little new information here.

"Oh no?" Agent Grant asked, "She didn't set you up? You're that certain?"

"Yes," Hotch answered firmly.

Grant nodded his head, sat back in his chair, and pondered Hotch. "Okay," he said, after a moment, "then what do you make of this?" Grant slid a manila folder across the table.

For a brief moment, Hotch didn't reach for the folder. He didn't want to touch it. Whatever was in that folder was going to be radioactive. He could just feel it. But Hotch couldn't not know. He looked down at the folder, set his facial expression into a hard mask and looked up again at Agent Grant. Grant didn't seem particularly antagonistic right then. Hotch reached for the file, but Grant beat him to it. What the hell was going on?

"Just a second, Agent Hotchner," Grant cautioned, pulling the file back toward himself. "One question first: Did you know?"

Hotch studied Grant a little more intensely. He needed to tread lightly here. Watley was a buffoon with some kind of an agenda. But Grant. Agent Grant was not. He seemed to be the real deal, an agent working his case, going where it led him. "Did I know what?" he asked, stalling for time.

"Did you know," Grant repeated, patiently, "that Agent Prentiss named you guardian of her son? Did you know that she made you her medical and legal proxies? Did you know about the money, the bank accounts?"

In this moment, Max Grant was exuding the patience of a saint. But Hotch knew the truth. He could sense it. He could see it. Grant was right up on the edge of it, waiting. Hotch had to be careful here. He needed to keep his mask of cold, hard, indifference in place. The truth was that no, he had no freaking clue about any of it. Showing that would lead to an outbreak of emotion, which was what you did not want to have when you were on this side of the interrogation. No, he did not know that Emily had basically resigned the end of her life (again), and he did not want to acknowledge that fact in front of outsiders. Admitting that right now would also make him look weak. It would cement for Grant and Watley that Emily had set him up. Which technically, Hotch couldn't help but think a traitorous thought, technically she did. But not with malicious intent. He needed to figure out why she did this right now, in this moment. These agents thinking Emily set him up with malice and forethought would be bad for her, and he wouldn't be able to be much of a help. Plus, these guys weren't likely to believe him if he told the truth and said no. They'd just end up with more run-around and posturing.

If he went along with whatever Emily had set in motion and said yes, that he did know what she was doing, it could also turn out very badly. For both of them. He would be lying to the Federal Government. If the lie was revealed, he could lose his job or go to prison. He certainly wouldn't be able to help her from behind bars. If he lied and said yes, they could potentially charge him with any number of crimes. From collusion to aiding and abetting all the way up to a conspiracy to commit murder charge. Not to mention kidnapping. What would happen to Jack if he went to jail? And did they really think he kidnapped Declan? Or was that just verbal bait for something else?

It really all came down to what was in that folder. The folder Grant was dangling in front of him like bait for the hook. Hotch knew the hook was there, but he couldn't see how sharp it was. And unfortunately, in order to actually lay eyes on what was in that folder, Hotch had to answer the question. He had to answer it right now. Tell the truth, not be believed, and not be in a position to help Emily. Or. Lie to the government, put himself in a position to be charged with any number of crimes, potentially jeopardize his son, and gain new information so that he could – maybe – help Emily in some small way. Neither option really looked good to him at this moment.

Hotch decided to take the gamble. And trust Emily. Trusting Emily was usually a good bet. Ah Hell, he thought, if this backfired maybe they could share a cell in federal prison. He set his mask firmly in place, looked Agent Grant in the eye, and lied. "Of course I knew."

Grant was watching him closely, looking for tells. Hotch was certain he wasn't showing any. Grant slid the file back across the table. "Okay then, look through that and tell me what you can make out. Profile the person who made all of those choices for us."

Agent Grant was daring him, it seemed to Hotch. Again, Hotch looked down at the manila folder. A regular, old, innocuous looking manila folder. The kind used in offices all across the country. This time, when he reached for it, Grant let him pick it up. Hotch threw one last searching look at Agent Grant. His face was just as impassive as his own was. Hotch released a breath and opened the file.

Keeping his facial mask firmly in place, Hotch felt an internal sigh of relief. The first several pages were legal documents to support the legal changes Watley and Grant told him Emily had made. He was looking at copies of her Will, Living Will, Custody agreements, Life Insurance and Banking documentation. All of which had his signature on them. None of which, had he actually signed himself. Emily had forged his signature. On everything. If he told the truth about his ignorance to all of this, he would have been one of the nails in her coffin. At least this way, with his lie, he managed to play along with what she had set up. If the forgeries were discovered, however, it would be back to square one and a possible prison term. He decided to deal with that if and when it came up.

"What do you see, Agent Hotchner?" Grant prompted him. So that wasn't a rhetorical question then. They actually wanted an assessment from him.

"Remember Hotchner, you used to be a lawyer," needled Watley.

"Meaning?" Hotch asked, thinly.

"You understand what it means to lie to the government, don't you?" Watley asked, flippantly.

"What are you talking about?" Hotch understood the statement behind the question. Watley was telling Hotch that he didn't fully believe him. Or maybe the bastard was just poking at him. For fun.

"You know we served a search warrant on your home," Watley began, "but you should know that we've been operating on other warrants too." Watley was having too much fun with this; he looked at his watch. "Right about now your technical analyst, Miss Penelope Garcia, is being arrested too. She'll be here shortly. We got a FISA warrant for her. We were granted several of those over the past few days. What do you think about that, Hotchner?" That smug smirk was back, taking up residence on Richard Watley's sinister face.

Hotch groaned, internally. He had wondered about Garcia back at the BAU. How much she knew, if she were holding out on them. He really shouldn't have dismissed the thought. He hoped that she would remember to ask for a lawyer, Garcia wouldn't do well sitting where he was now. Wait a minute, his thoughts ran into a connection that shouldn't have been made. He looked from Watley to Grant. "You can't make an arrest with a FISA warrant." Surely these guys knew that, what game were they playing?

It was Grant who responded. "No, Agent Hotchner, we can't. We can however use the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act for a particular aspect of its current purpose."

"Electronic surveillance,"Hotch supplied. He sighed, that probably should have been a given.

"That's right," Grant finished.

"We put certain members of your team under electronic surveillance. Then, of course, we used what we found to get a regular old arrest warrant for your analyst," Watley crowed.

"Stay away from my team." Hotch zeroed in on Watley. "They are all Federal Agents in good standing. The FBI will have their backs. So unless you want an inter-agency war on your hands, you'd better have rock solid evidence of any wrong-doing. You won't find it. That, gentlemen, I guarantee you."

"You know what we didn't find, Agent Hotchner?" Grant ignored Hotch's threat. "We didn't find any evidence of you having been a part of what's in that folder. No email traffic about any of it. No texts. No faxes. No official messenger service. No notary identification. No documents going through the mail. Nothing. Why do you think that is?"

Hotch answered without a moment's hesitation, "I don't know Agent Grant. You know how these things work. Big bureaucracy. Items get mis-filed and mis-labeled all the time." Sometimes the best thing to do with a lie, in order to sell it, was keep it going. Doing so deeply offended Hotch's ethical compass, but he had already chosen this path. He'd stay the course.

"None of this changes your image of Ms. Prentiss though, does it Hotchner?" asked Watley, with just a hint of malice.

Hotch looked at Mr. Watley. "What is your point?"

Watley smirked at him. "You're looking at a stack of legal documentation, all bearing your signature, however it got there, which seems to suggest Prentiss was giving you everything she had. Including her son. And control over her very life itself. Maybe that alters the profile a little. Doesn't it? Make you wonder at all? About motives. And follow-through. And consequences."

Hotch felt an even stronger revulsion for the man building up inside him. "No. It does not. It concerns me, Mr. Watley, that you think there's a sinister way to look at this file." He shifted his attention to Agent Grant, whom he viewed as the more reasonable of the two. "You asked for a profile. This folder paints a picture of a woman coming back after a trauma. A woman who'd just had a taste of mortality and needed to make sure her child was taken care of. By someone she trusted not to let them down. This folder profiles a woman looking at her own death coming potentially sooner than she'd planned it and wanting to make sure her affairs were in order. For her son. That's what I see." He looked hard at Watley. "It's the responsible thing to do," he couldn't help but add.

"That's what you see?" asked Watley.

"Yes," Hotch stated simply.

"A woman putting her affairs in order ahead of her death?" Watley clarified.

"Yes," Hotch said again.

"That's what we see too," Grant spoke up.

"In a slightly different context," Watley tagged on. "We see a woman, who has spent a large amount of time in the Middle east, who has recently suffered a trauma, in Turkey, putting her affairs in order because she knows she'll likely be dead soon. What does that sound like to you, Agent?"

Hotch's mask broke briefly and his face betrayed his disbelief. They couldn't possibly think that, could they? "You don't think…" he trailed off, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to finish the thought out loud.

Watley happily picked up his thread. "She filed an updated Will, gave away custody of her son, made you the executor of her estate, added you to bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands I bet you didn't even know she had—"

"So that I'd be able to take care of Declan!" Hotch interrupted.

"Maybe. She did all these things, plus make you her medical and legal proxy should she survive but remain unable to make her own decisions. She's practically textbook. The only thing she didn't leave was a videotape! Sounds like your average, run-of-the-mill, extremist martyr to me!" Watley announced in triumph.

Hotch was livid. He was trying desperately to hold himself still and in check. "Wow, your grasp on nuance is astounding. It's a good thing you don't run this country's foreign policy. That is a sweeping generalization and a very large, and erroneous, jump to conclusions." He looked to Grant for a more reasonable mindset. "Emily Prentiss is not a martyr, religious or political. She is not now, nor will ever be, a suicide bomber. She is not now, nor will ever be, a terrorist. Anyone thinking otherwise is looking under the wrong damn rock!"

"Really? Well, two of the men responsible for torturing her are dead! What do you call that?" Watley spat out.

"Not enough!" Hotch snarled, just as quickly, without thinking.

Watley and Grant were both staring at him. Watley, in triumph; Grant, in sympathy. Hotch stared right back at them. It took a full minute of this stand off for Hotch to realize what he'd just said. His mask of indifference was long gone; he knew his face was an open book right now. Hotch tried to backpedal, but he knew it was probably in vain. "I didn't mean to imply…" he started to correct himself but couldn't finish the thought. "I didn't mean that," he said simply, quietly.

"No?" Grant asked?

"No," Hotch knew he needed to regroup, but at the moment he didn't feel capable.

"It would be perfectly understandable if you did. Someone you care about was hurt. And you don't know where she is. Which means you can't protect her. It makes perfect sense to want a little payback," Grant reassured.

It was a human thing to say, but Hotch didn't trust it. He needed to get his guard back up before they led him down another path he didn't see coming.

"That's a pattern for you, though, isn't it?" Watley asked. "Not being able to protect the women in your life."

Hotch closed his eyes. He did not want to hear this. He didn't need to hear this in someone else's voice. He heard it enough in his own thoughts.

Watley continued, "One of your agents was attacked in her own home. On your watch. Elle Greenaway. She later went rogue and took her vengeance by killing a suspect in cold blood. Also on your watch. Because you couldn't protect her in the first place. And you couldn't help her after the fact."

That's not exactly how that happened, Hotch thought.

"Your analyst. She was also attacked. At her home. You couldn't protect her either. And when it came down to it. Someone else took the fatal shot." Watley added.

JJ. JJ had taken the shot that killed Jason Clark Battle, Hotch reminded himself. The man who had come after Penelope Garcia. The man no one saw coming because Garcia kept things from them. From him. He should have been watching more closely.

"Your ex-wife," Watley went on, "was stalked and murdered by a psychopath who was coming after you. She was bait, collateral damage. Your son lost his mother because you couldn't protect her. You couldn't catch him. You weren't there."

Foyet was a sociopath, Hotch corrected mentally. What happened to Haley wasn't my fault, he thought automatically. This was something Hotch told himself nearly every day. The problem was, he rarely believed it. I did catch him, Hotch reminded himself. I killed that son of a bitch with my bare hands. Hotch was sure they knew that.

Unbelievably, Watley was still talking; still listing the women Hotch had failed. "Another of your agents, Jennifer Jareau, was kidnapped and tortured just last year. Again, you weren't there. You couldn't stop it. You couldn't save her. You had to call in reinforcements."

Emily, Hotch thought, he had called Emily. Emily had saved JJ.

Watley pressed on, "That's why this one must sit so wrong with you. Emily Prentiss is the one woman in your life you are not supposed to have to protect, right? Emily Prentiss does the protecting. Emily Prentiss is strong. She's a fighter, a survivor."

Emily is a fighter. She is strong. She will survive this. Hotch knew that in his bones. Just like he knew he would help her this time.

"There's nothing left for you to defend here. You've already failed her Hotchner. You do know that, don't you?" Watley asked him.

It sounded to Hotch like Watley had dropped the smugness and the seemingly constant smirk. He seemed to be asking a legitimate question. Hotch looked up at Watley, trying to ferret out his intent.

"The only thing left for you to do, Agent Hotchner," Grant added, "is to stop the situation from getting any worse."

"Because really," Watley returned, "Ms. Prentiss is making it worse all on her own. And this time, no allowances, no generalizations are going to be made. Not any part of this will be smoothed over or ignored. Prentiss will not get the soft exit that Greenaway got. Too many governments are in play. She will be made to account for what she's done. You need to decide if you're ready to go down with her."

Hotch shook his head. "No. Prentiss doesn't react out of vengeance. She doesn't have a need for retribution. She's not like that. That's where you're wrong; where all your theories go off the rails."

"You really think that?" Grant asked.

"Adamantly," Hotch came back.

"Okay." Grant turned on the tablet in front of him and set it up in front of Hotch. "We're gonna leave you alone now. When you're ready, press play," Grant pointed to the tablet. "There are two video files. The second one will play right after the fist."

"Then you tell us," Watley added, "whether or not your girl's above a little revenge."

Hotch watched Watley and Grant leave the room without a word. Once the door closed securely behind them, he released the breath he had been holding; only then did he turn his attention to the tablet in front of him. He looked at the tablet. It was an everyday object, as non-threatening as anything could be. Yet Hotch was looking at the tablet as if it were the enemy. Because in this moment, it was. The play button was blinking at him. Mocking him. Daring him to start the video. Hotch reminded himself that what he was about to see had already happened. That it was not happening to Emily right now. It had already stopped. It was in the past. He took one more deep breath. And pressed play.

Emily appeared before his eyes. Not like he preferred to picture her. He liked to imagine her happy, laughing and enjoying herself; or with a gun in hand, suited up and ready to do some damage to the unsubs of the world. Not like this. Hotch's lips tightened into a line and his hands into fists. She was bruised and bloody – and hanging from a pipe. She had clearly been beaten. She was dirty. Wherever they were keeping her wasn't clean. Which meant it probably wasn't warm or comfortable either. Emily was not enjoying herself here. She was not the one doing the damage. What was clear though, was that someone had definitely enjoyed themselves while hurting Emily.

Hotch's fists tightened as he watched the man scrape his knife down her neck. The blood trail pissed him off; it was unnecessary. His fists tightened even further as he watched the man cut the clothes off her body. His fingernails cut into the flesh of his palms, drawing his own blood, as he saw how bruised and bloody her body was, under the torn clothing, now falling from her limp body. He shook his head, a weak attempt to make the man in the video stop touching her. Couldn't he see it was hurting her? Her beautiful face, usually an image of strength and grace was swollen and bruised, struggling not to cry out, to betray what she was feeling. Hotch watched something move across her face as the man began speaking in English. He barely registered the words.

The man was moving now. Moving around behind Emily. Emily was defenseless in that moment; not a word he usually used to describe her. Hotch watched in horror as the man plunged his knife into her side. Hearing Emily scream lit something on fire deep inside Hotch. He stood up like a shot, knocking his chair over in the process, almost as if he were recoiling from the sudden appearance of something dangerous. Later, when he replayed this in his mind, that's how he would think of it. Emily's screams were dangerous. They meant something deeply, deeply wrong was happening. He closed his eyes for half a second, because he just could not see any more of this. But only for half a second, because he had to see all of it. To bear witness to her trauma. When he opened them again, he saw the man cutting open her bra. The second the screen in front of him went black, he turned the video off: a rattlesnake striking its prey. He knew that tablet was dangerous.

Hotch took a few steps away from the table. He needed a minute before the next video started. A minute or two to gather himself and calm down. He paced. He thought. He tried to tamp down his rage. The man in the video was wearing a mask. Probably because someone could identify him. When he spoke, his voice was familiar; but Hotch couldn't place him. He had a western accent. It was pronounced when the man spoke in English, but it was also there while he spoke in Turkish (Hotch was pretty sure that first language had been Turkish). This must have been the video sent to the various organizations that Prentiss had worked for. (He needed to think of her as Prentiss right now. He needed that distance. Thinking of her as Emily was too personal; it was too close.) This video was about show. It was about shock. It was a tool of persuasion. If this were true, then Hotch was in no hurry to see what was on the second video. He eyed the tablet with apprehension. He paced a few more steps, and turned back to the tablet. Now or never. He pressed play one more time.

Hotch stood, with his hands on his hips, glaring at the tablet. Waiting for images of her to fill the screen once more. Except. It didn't happen that way this time. This time, he heard her before he saw her. This video was clearly a snippet of something larger. It was not edited, but rather began already in progress. Hotch heard her scream. It reminded him of that time he heard her being beaten by Benjamin Cyrus at the cult compound in Colorado six years ago. All he could do then was listen. This time, he had to watch too. He heard her scream as an image of a dirty room lit with low lights came into focus. The camera was focused on a wall and then slowly swung around to her. It was clear, someone was holding the camera, doing the filming. She was tied to a chair and a man was standing over her with what looked like a cattle prod. Hotch felt sick. He crossed his arms over his chest as a barrier between himself and the video.

The man was shaking the prod at her and yelling in what sounded like Russian. She managed to yell back, though Hotch could tell it was a struggle. Whatever she said (also in Russian), the man didn't seem to like. He stilled momentarily and then he swung his arm back and struck her with the prod, in the face. It looked hard. She was crying. Hotch could feel the hot pinpricks of tears in the corners of his own eyes. The man said something else to her; she shook her head. The man yelled again and lunged at her with the cattle prod, jabbing it into her abdomen. Electrocuting her. She screamed again as her whole body went rigid and her scream cut off. The man pulled the prod away and kept yelling at her. Hotch could see her struggling to breathe properly. The man hit her again and again, using the cattle prod like a baseball bat. Her cries were getting quieter and smaller. That was not a good sign. Hotch could still hear her, she was in so much pain. He could feel the bile rising up through his body. The man hit her again and the chair she was tied to toppled over and broke. She was able to shimmy free somewhat but before she could get away, the man put his foot on her neck. "Son of a bitch!" Hotch exclaimed, out loud. He couldn't contain it any longer, his eyes were wet and his rage was hot. In front of him, on the screen, she had stopped moving.

The man called over his shoulder. Apparently to the cameraman, because Hotch watched the image move on screen. It looked like the camera had been set on the ground and a set of legs came into view, running toward the other man. The man with his foot still on her neck. Hotch paced a couple of steps as he watched the cameraman hold her down by her shoulders and the first man get on top of her, sitting down on her shaking legs. He was still threatening her with that damn cattle prod. He pressed it into her stomach one more time. The screen cut to black but Hotch could still see her lying prone, at the mercy of two men who didn't seem capable of understanding the word. He could still hear her cries as he stared at the dark screen.

Hotch let the rage fill him up. That screen was still mocking him, having been witness to what happened to her. All of his reminders that this was in the past, that it was no longer happening were useless. He hadn't been prepared for what he would see. He focused all his fury on that tablet. He let out a scream of his own and flung that tablet into the wall. It broke with a less than satisfying crack that only served to fuel his anger and his revulsion. He needed to do something, but he couldn't because he was stuck in this room. Letting out a scream of his own, Hotch flipped the table over. That, at least, was a more satisfying crash. That felt good for a few seconds, then had a sickening thought. This must be how they felt when they were torturing her. Satisfied. The connection was too much for him in that moment and the bile in his system forced its way out. Hotch doubled over and choked up the bile, throwing up on the floor of his interrogation room.

That's fitting, he thought, moments later as he sat on the floor against the wall, trying desperately to regain control of his breathing and his emotional state. Now he felt connected to her, instead of them.

TBC

Author's Note, again:

Now that that's done, I don't imagine we'll have to go through that again. At least, not so much. Please tell me what you think. Thanks for reading it.