Chapter 18

Hotch walked back out into his living room. "Alright, out with it."

"Out with what?"

"What the hell did I do these last two months?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean, Dave. What did I do to make you act like you haven't seen me in two months?"

Rossi shook his head. He knew he had to tell him something; Hotch was too smart to not know something had happened. Rossi was worried, though, that saying too much could bring the memories back and destroy his friend. He sighed and sat down on the couch. "When you woke up from the coma, you were different."

Hotch sat down on his coffee table so he was in front of Rossi. "Different how?"

"You were. . . well, scary."

"Scary? What did I do?"

"You had an anger issue."

"Anger?" Hotch's look of shock made Rossi fell sorry for him. He knew Hotch had always prided himself on being able to control his anger, especially with the father he had. "Oh God! Did I do anything to Jack?" Hotch asked as a look of terror crossed his face.

"No!" Rossi said quickly and Hotch relaxed a little.

"So who did I aim it at?" Hotch asked him slowly as he studied his face. "No! Oh God! I did something to you?" Hotch got up and turned away from him. He didn't like what he was finding out.

Rossi stood up and put his hand on Hotch's shoulder. "No, you didn't do anything to me."

Hotch turned around to face him again. "I said something." Rossi nodded. Hotch could only think of a few things that he could have said to upset Rossi, and every one of them made him want to crawl under a rock. "Dave, I'm so sorry. . ."

"Don't. You don't need to apologize. It wasn't you," Rossi told him sincerely.

"Yeah, but. . ."

"But nothing, Aaron. As long as you don't revert back to acting like that again, everything will be fine."

"So I was an even bigger ass then I am now? I didn't think that was possible," Hotch told him dryly as he sat down again.

"Neither did I, until it happened," Rossi told him with a smile.

"So that's why the team was acting so weird?"

"Yeah," is all Rossi said.

"What else aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing," Rossi lied.

"Don't give me that, Dave. I know you better than that. Apparently it's pretty bad if you don't want to tell me."

Rossi knew he had to tell him something or he wouldn't leave it alone. "You didn't have any fear, and in some situations you scared the shit out of us."

Hotch looked even more shocked. "No fear? Damn that would have been nice."

"No it wasn't. That's probably what made you run out into the street without looking both ways in Phoenix."

"But if that wouldn't have happened, I'd still be an ass."

"That's true."

"There's still something else you're not telling me."

"You know, I think I'd just rather forget the whole thing like you did."

Hotch could tell Rossi didn't want to tell him anymore, so he let it drop. He had other ways of finding things out and other people to ask. He had to ask Rossi one more thing, though. "I didn't hurt anyone did I?"

Rossi used thirty years of experience to mask his face. He was sure Hotch was just asking about the team, but he couldn't let on to what he thought he knew. "No."

Hotch didn't like the way it took him a little too long to answer. "Dave? Please tell me I didn't hurt anyone care about!"

"Of course not. You might have scared the team a few times, but, no, you didn't hurt any of them." Rossi smiled as Hotch relaxed a little more. "I thought you were going to hit me once, though."

Hotch's look of horror made Rossi laugh. "You're not serious are you?"

"Yeah, I am. I think you should by me dinner to make up for it."

Hotch finally smiled. "Sure, but you probably deserved it," Hotch told him as he picked up his phone to order them dinner.

Rossi was so excited about having his Hotch back that he wanted to call the team and throw a party, but he needed to make sure it was going to last. He would have to see how Hotch was in the morning.

XXX

Rossi almost chocked on his coffee as Hotch came down the hall. He's wearing a suit! Thank you God! Rossi was never so happy to see his boss in a suit before.

Hotch went and poured himself a cup of coffee and looked at Rossi smile. "What?"

"Just glad to see you're still you."

Hotch eyed him warily. "So what kind of cases did we get?"

"You don't need to worry about them."

"And why not?"

"It wasn't you. Just focus on the here and now and the future," Rossi told him with a pat on the shoulder. Hotch gave him a strange look and went to get his stuff together. Rossi drove them to work and on the way in, a young agent stopped Dave in the hallway. Hotch walked into the bullpen and everyone turned to stare at him. He stopped in his tracks. Their looks of shock and disbelief sent his hand casually to the front of his pants to make sure his fly wasn't open. "What?" He asked them self-consciously.

"Nothing," Morgan told him with a smile.

"You look good, Hotch," JJ told him with another smile.

Hotch noticed they were all smiling. He shook his head can continued to his office. Damn. Apparently I dressed like an ass, too.

He looked at the pile of case files sitting on his desk. He had asked Garcia to get every case they had worked on since his accident in Detroit. He knew Dave didn't want him looking into them, but he also knew Dave was hiding something big from him. He drummed his fingers on the files. Might as well start with the latest case first. He got up and headed to the conference room. Garcia had told him they were working a current case about some vigilante dubbed 'The Dealer of Justice'. Before he could open the door, Rossi stepped in front of him. "What are you doing?" Rossi asked him innocently.

"I'm going to look at the 'Dealer' case."

"You don't need to do that. The police have put it on the back burner because there hasn't been another killing in about a week. They suspect the guy had either finally killed his intended target or something happened to him. It's no longer our case."

"That doesn't mean I can't give it a once over."

"Don't worry, if you're bored, there are some consults I can give you."

"Why don't you want me to see the cases I've missed?"

"Cause you weren't you. No sense in you seeing all that."

Hotch studied him for a moment. He knew he must have done something horrible. "What did I do that you don't want me finding out?"

"I don't know what you mean. I just don't think you need to stress yourself over something you can't remember. There's a reason you can't remember, and maybe I'm worried about you turning back into mean Hotch."

"Mean Hotch? Is that what you called me?"

"Not to your face."

Hotch huffed. "I bet." Hotch told him with a look of shame. "Alright," he told him and headed back to his office to read the files before Rossi found out he had them.

He sat down and looked at the first case he attended after the accident. He read through it and didn't notice anything strange in it. He did read that he was the one to obtain the confession, but that wasn't a bad thing; he'd obtained several confessions over the years. He took out the next one and it seemed fine, too. It wasn't until he read about the case in Texas that Hotch did a double take. Their unsub was found dead with his latest victim in a cabin that none of them had thought about checking out before then. Hotch put the file down and drummed his fingers on it. Something didn't seem right about it. He knew the local police took them off the case, and that they had presumed that one of the victim's family had gotten to the unsub, but it just seemed a little too neat. He knew if he called the police station that there wouldn't be any news on the killer because he was sure they didn't even look. The monster was dead and that's all they cared about, but it still bothered Hotch that he hadn't pushed to stay on the case and bring the killer to justice.

After he had went through several more cases and not finding anything unusual, he finally came to the one with carjackings in DC. When he read about the part where he entered a hotel room where a man had a grenade, he almost choked on his coffee. Jesus Christ! Dave wasn't kidding about not having any fear! How could I've been such a dumbass? He shook his head. Several more cases and nothing shocking or serious led Hotch to the case with the Marshalls. As he read through it he got scared when he read about how he and Rossi had been kidnapped. Once he read the final report, the one where it listed him as killing the man they were protecting the witness from, he swallowed hard. According to the file, Hotch attacked the man to protect Rossi and ended up killing him, wounding another man, and helping Rossi so they could escape. He put the file down and put his head in his hands. He knew the man had beat him and was about to beat Rossi, but it still bothered him that he had taken another's life. Maybe that's what Dave didn't want me to see.

After a few more case files, Hotch finally read about the case in Phoenix. Hotch shook his head, so many cases in such a short amount of time. None of it sparked any recollection in him, though, and he was a little discouraged. He wasn't sure about the Marshall case being what Rossi didn't want him to see either, but if it wasn't case related then he had no idea how he was going to find out what it was. Maybe it's not worth worrying about.

After a long boring day of case files and consults, Hotch was glad to be going home. He stopped in Rossi's office to tell him goodnight. Rossi was rearranging his go bag, and Hotch noticed an unopened envelope on Rossi's desk. It was from a lab in Virginia. Hotch picked it up to get a closer look at it. "What's this?" he asked Rossi.

Rossi turned around quickly. He hadn't even realized Hotch had come in his office. When he saw what was in Hotch's hand he almost had a coronary trying to get it away from Hotch. "It's nothing!" Rossi half yelled as he grabbed it out of Hotch's hand.

"If it's nothing, then way are you so worried about it?"

"I'm not. I thought you had something else," Rossi lied as he stepped behind his desk.

Hotch's look told him he didn't believe him. "Sure."

"Look, see," Rossi started and moved to his paper shredder. "It's nothing!" he told him with a smile and fed it into the top.

"You never even opened it."

"I didn't need to. It's trash. It contents mean nothing to me now." Rossi grabbed his bag. "You coming?"

Hotch nodded and followed Rossi across the bullpen. Hotch shook his head. Things will get back to normal soon. I hope!

"You want to have dinner with me and Jack?"

Rossi smiled. "Sure."

They decided to ride together and Hotch was nervous about picking up Jack. They had called Jessica and Jack to tell them about Hotch's new accident, but Rossi had not told them about the old Hotch being back. He wanted to see their reactions. Hotch knocked on Jessica's door, and Jack opened it. "Hey, Buddy!" Hotch told him with a smile.

Jack's eyes got wide. "Daddy?" Jack asked excitedly and then looked at Rossi. Rossi nodded quickly and Jack threw himself into Hotch arms. "I missed you soooooo much!" Jack told him as he hugged Hotch neck as tightly as he could.

Hotch looked at Rossi, but Rossi just smiled. God it's good to have you back, Aaron!

The End