Thanks once again for all of the reviews people!
Who got shot? The agents deal with the fallout.
There are a few swear words in this chapter – sorry if it offends but I felt the situation warranted them. There is also mention of a dead child, but nothing too graphic.
Agent Hotchner enters the living room, covering Morgan as he checks behind the kitchen cabinets when a loud noise from the side catches his attention. He turns to meet the noise, gun raised and ready to fire, but before he can target the man before him, Keating fires his gun.
Hotch fires, Rossi fires, Morgan fires, and Keating falls, dead before he even hits the floor.
Morgan secures the gun from Keating's limp hand while Rossi checks for a pulse, feeling darkly satisfied when he can't find one.
As the adrenaline begins to wear off, Hotch feels a burning pain in his right shoulder; looking down he sees his own crimson blood soaking into one of his more comfortable suits.
"Dammit!" he moans loudly as he begins to feel the effects of the injury, the pain crawling its way across his shoulder.
Dave and Morgan, upon hearing their normally stoic boss spit out the rare cuss word look to where he is standing; taking in the sight of the blood and the pain in Hotch's eyes they quickly make their way over to him.
Rossi tries to lead him over towards the moth-eaten sofa in the corner, quite sure it could well invite infection further down the line, but Hotch looks fit to fall on his face and add a concussion to the mix if he doesn't sit down sooner rather than later; "Come on Aaron, sit down. Morgan, call an ambulance."
Hotch jerks himself out of Dave's arms only to regret it immediately as he feels the pain burning its way through his right shoulder. "Fuck!" he cries out as the pain becomes almost unbearable. "Morgan, get off the phone, I don't need a damn ambulance."
"Come on Hotch, you're bleeding pretty badly," Derek tries to reason with his obstinate boss, worry and frustration warring with each other.
"Ignore him Morgan, get an ambulance here, now," Rossi bites out as he watches the stain on Aaron's right shoulder grow with alarming speed. Derek nods, and moves to a far corner, aware that it might be wiser to let Dave handle their boss when he is in a particularly belligerent mood. Rossi watches him go then turns back and pins Aaron with a glare.
"Hotch, you will be going to the hospital, conscious or unconscious, but if it's all the same to you I'd rather not break my fist on your hard head," Rossi stares down at Hotch, unblinking, resolve rigid.
"I thought I was the Unit Chief." Hotch grumbles, more to himself than to anyone else; how he hates being out of control!
"You've been injured; this is when I'm supposed to step in." Rossi replies as he leads a mutinous-looking Hotch to the couch and helps to gently ease him down onto the sofa. Rather than search for anything suitable inside Keating's dirty apartment, Dave removes his own jacket and holds it over Hotch's wound. A quick nod from the other man, and Dave put pressure on the wound wincing as his friend holds in a painful cry.
"Christ," Rossi mumbles as he gets a closer look at the sofa, taking in every mark and stain. "Think of the cultures you could gather from this thing!"
"I'd rather not," Hotch replies with a wince as he tries to find a more comfortable position. "You could always drive me to the hospital, we don't need an ambulance; it's not like it's bleeding all that much." Hotch knows he has resorted to bargaining but he is desperate; he could tell, however, by Rossi's firm countenance that the older man's resolve has not been weakened.
"Aaron, you will sit here quietly. You will let the paramedics examine you without a fuss. You will go to the hospital. You will let the doctors fix you up. And so help me God, if you even think the initials AMA, I will kick your ass so hard you won't be able to find it with both hands and a mirror. Understood?"
Hotch tries to stop himself from glaring up at Dave, feeling too much like a young teenager in trouble with the headmaster, so instead he looks down at his feet and nods quietly. He has his wallet on him; he can probably find an orderly to help him out to a taxi if his team are going to insist on being so unhelpful.
Morgan hears all of this and snickers gently to himself in the corner, earning a deadly glare from his boss. 'Damn, I'm so going to pay for that later!' he thinks to himself. 'Definitely worth it though,' he unsuccessfully tries to swallow back his smile. He rarely gets to see Hotch in a state where the man is anything less than being in complete control and Morgan enjoys seeing this more human side to the well-respected agent.
Rossi isn't fooled by Aaron's seemingly submissive stance; head bowed, his shoulders hunched in pain, Dave could hear the gears turning. Even at his lowest point, Aaron Hotchner was not the type of man to throw in the towel; the man simply didn't have it in him. 'Whatever you're thinking Aaron, it won't work.'
Reid, JJ and Prentiss have been scouring the back alleys in the surrounding area, while uniforms keep an eye on the fire escapes of the nearby tenement buildings, ready to shoot Keating if he tries to flee.
A cry from Prentiss alerts JJ and Reid to a derelict building that looks as though it once housed a mechanics workshop; rusting car parts are spread all over the floor and the smell of oil is everywhere. There in the middle, amongst the litter and oil stains, is a rusty white van; the paint is flaking and the company emblem is too far gone to clearly see what it once resembled.
They take their guns out, ever cautious, and inch towards the van. Reid checks the cabin at the front, while JJ and Emily move round to the back. The van is locked and the windows dirty, but peering through the grime enables them to glimpse the horror contained within.
Prentiss breaks a window and unlocks the back door from the inside. Pulling open the door, the agents have to rush back to draw in some much needed air; the smell of rancid oil is a godsend compared to the odour coming out of the van.
Inside lies the broken body of a child, naked from the waist down and covered in blood. The young girl's arms are tied to the cross bars of the van's supporting structure; she is lying in a pool of crusty blood, too much to have come solely from her tiny frame.
"Looks like this is where he had his fun," Prentiss chokes out, finding it hard to compartmentalise at this precise moment in time.
Reid pretends he hasn't noticed JJ's grief-stricken face or Prentiss's struggle to keep her infamous cool and attempts to cling desperately to his own mask of professionalism. "Yes, judging by the volume of blood on the floor of the van this is where he tortured and killed them, and from her state of undress where he raped them too. We need to call this in, there will be important evidence here."
"And the girl Spence, she's important too," JJ whispers, unable to look away from the grisly sight before her; "this was someone's little girl, they'll want to know that she's been found."
Reid gently places his arm around JJ's shoulder and tries to lead her away; "Don't worry about that JJ, we'll work on ID-ing her and then we'll find her parents."
The three of them head back to the alleyway and inform one of the uniforms about the van; Reid swiftly gets on his radio and is halfway through informing his fellow agents through their earpieces about the van and that the M.E and the CSI's are on their way when they hear a shot.
Drawing their guns, they race back to the main street, in through the broken door and up the reeking stairwell, followed by several officers. Pausing outside apartment 211, Prentiss calls for the rest of her team, heart beating so fast and so hard she is sure it is attempting to burst through her ribcage. "Hotch, Morgan, Rossi? You ok? We're coming in!"
The three agents burst though the already splintered door, and stop at the sight in front of them.
Morgan is standing in a corner looking at Rossi and Hotch and failing to hide his amusement; Rossi is quietly scolding their boss, and Hotch…Hotch is sitting down on a moth-eaten sofa, blood soaking though his suit, alternating between glaring at Rossi and Morgan and looking at his shoes, thoroughly fed-up.
She shares a glance with the two behind her and clearly they are thinking along the same lines as her: what on earth happened here?
The medics come and, following Rossi's orders, Hotch isn't complaining vocally or creating a fuss; in fact Aaron isn't vocalising anything at all, despite the medics probing questions.
Rossi slaps him up the back of the head and glares at him "I thought I'd made myself clear earlier!"
Aaron is still feeling mutinous and dreads going to a damn hospital; the fact that his whole team are now witness to his embarrassment only adds fuel to the already raging fire within. "You said I was to sit 'quietly' and let them examine me 'without a fuss,' that's what I'm doing." In truth, the blood loss is beginning to grab a hold of him, exhaustion is seeping it's through to his very bones, and he's struggling to keep focused or to find the energy to do much beyond simply sitting down.
Rossi's eyes narrow. "Just get in the damn ambulance. Morgan, JJ, you stay here, sort out this mess and go through the apartment, see if you can find anything on potential victims. Reid, Prentiss, you said you found the van…once the body's gone, look though it with the CSI's; we have a lot of parents wanting to know what happened to their children."
The other four want to go with their boss and make sure he is ok, but taking in Rossi's glares and Hotch's equally antagonistic expression, they wisely keep their mouths closed and get on with their set tasks.
The ride in the ambulance is quiet and tense, but eventually the events of the day begin to overwhelm Hotch, and he lies down on the gurney and closes his eyes. Seeing Hotch's quiet surrender and taking in the lines of pain creasing his forehead, Rossi reaches out and gently squeezed Aaron's left hand, unsure if the man should be falling asleep just yet.
"You ok?" he asks quietly.
Aaron doesn't open his eyes but answers with a whisper, "I will be, it's a through and through and I don't think it touched the bone."
Rossi sighs; that is not what he is really asking. "At least it was your right shoulder and not your left!" he states trying to find a bright side to it all in an effort to lighten the mood.
At this, Aaron does open his eyes and tries with a weary effort to glare at his former mentor; "I may write left-handed, but I shoot right-handed. You've worked with me how many years and you don't know that?"
"There's a lot I don't know" Rossi states quietly, looking Hotch straight in the eye with a meaningful look.
'Great,' thought Hotch wearily, 'back to this!'
Rossi sighs and once again looks his former protégé straight in the eye; "I think we need to talk, don't you?"
Please let me know what you think and if you spot any errors.
Sorry Brummie10 and Ecda, I know you wanted it to be Rossi who got shot, and I definitely agree that Hotch has been through enough, but it's not a serious injury and I needed to get Hotch weak enough to lower his defences and talk to Rossi.
The left-handed/right-handed thing is true, always thought it was odd.