Who is the Victim Here
I would love to hear your opinions and look to working further on the story.
I do not own or have connection with the "Criminal Minds" program or its characters.
Chapter Eighteen.
Angie goes to take her man out of his crib and change his diaper and he wondered why she was also changing his clothes. She says, "You have visitors darling and I want you to look a big boy not a baby" as she takes his crawler off and puts a pair of black docker pants and a light orange button down shirt on him over a white onesie. She put a pair on thick socks on his feet and takes him to the playroom where she places him on the play rug. He looks stricken and unhappy because he doesn't want to see anybody. She tells him, "I did not invite them here and would get rid of them except they won't leave until they see you. They are very insistent on it." She bends down and looks at him in the face and says, "They love you and they want to make sure that you are okay." He realizes who is out there and shakes his head extremely to say no, no, no. "I can't keep them out right now, they are insistent. Please talk to them, let them know that you are okay. Help them with your knowledge of what happened to you."
He looks at her with stricken eyes and hangs his head in the shame that he feels right now. She touches his face in empathy and wishes she could make this man feel what he needed to feel right now. Angie does something now that she has never done before in her life, she leaned in and placed her lips on his lips. He was surprised and responded as the man came through and kissed this woman back. He put his hands on the back of her head and pushed further to make the kiss longer and more lasting than any could be. She sank against him and he supported her while they did not separate from each other. They broke apart and looked into the eyes of the other and each believed that what they felt could never be. She always believed that she didn't need this in her life and right now he couldn't have it in his life. She stands up and goes to the door to the office to let in Aaron's team.
The door opens and the team looks inside to see their boss sitting on the floor wearing pants and a shirt. His head was hung down and he did not look up to see the agents come in. They came in and cautiously walked toward the man, when they reach him, they sit down beside him and Spencer touches his shoulder, Aaron looks at the man. "Hi Hotch, I jus..jus..I needed to see you and know that you are okay. Are you okay?" Aaron gently smiles at the young man and nodded his head yes.
Morgan says, "We know why you are doing this Hotch, you don't need to. We can take care of each other and protect your loved ones, but we need you to help catch these people so that can't hurt anybody. You can give insights that we didn't think of. You are our leader, we feel like a ship without a rudder." Aaron smiles at the analogy and points to Rossi. "He's a good ship's anchor, but slips a little on the rudder." Aaron points to Morgan. "I am not a leader, I can support but I rather take my guidance from a good leader. We need you Hotch, a stabilizing hand on the rudder that can get help us get things done."
"We don't need you like this," says Prentiss, "We need your ideas and strength and that drill sergeant attitude that gets us motivated. You give us leeway, rope but you know when to use the leather gloves and when to use the cotton ones. We need our leader not a baby trying to protect us." The man looks at her and is listening to all of what his agents are telling him but there is still a niggling doubt and concern in his mind. If he stops this will he be able to protect his son and brother? He believes his agents can take care of themselves, but what about Jack and Sean.
Rossi breaks into his reverie by saying, "Jack has twenty-four protections from his mother and from a patrol of agents who are with them always. You can protect Sean by living with him and staying under his guardianship. I don't know if you know about the guardianship papers he has over you but he has full control over finances, health, living and whether you get to work or not. The papers do not declare you incompetent, they declare you unable to do certain things that are believed necessary to independent living and that means you can't live without someone handling those necessities of life, like rent, food, stuff like that. But the papers declare you disabled because of the condition but disabled people can work and your job doesn't require you to feed or clothe yourself, but you do need to talk and walk. We need you Hotch." Aaron indicates that he will think about it and his stomach rumbles loudly and every one laughs. "Are you hungry Hotch?" A vigorous nod to that question by our man.
Prentiss says, "I'll go see what is there." And she goes over to the kitchenette area, but doesn't seem to find any food and can't even see the bottle case. "I am sorry but I don't see anything to eat." She finally sees the case and opens it up but is surprised to just see baby bottles with all sorts of liquids in them. There is a piece of paper on the side that says what is given at what time of day. At this time of day, it indicates juice and she looks for a bottle with juice and finds a grape juice. She pulls it out and shows it to Hotch. "Is this what you want?" The men sitting on the floor all look at her and then look at Aaron, who nods yes hesitantly.
Spencer scoots up behind Aaron, intent on feeding the boss man his bottle like Angie and Rossi did in the car. Emily brings over the bottle and hands it to Spencer, who gently prods Aaron into lying in his arms and places the bottle in his mouth. Without hesitation our leader closes his eyes and begins to drink the bottle. Our agents all look at each other at this action by their leader and wonder to each other; is he really able to lead us to finding these people and others like him? Spencer strokes his hair and caresses the man as he mildly rocks him.
Angie has been watching the interplay between Aaron and the agents and has been praying that they can help realize what he needs to be doing and can convince him that this is not what is best for him or his family. When she saw Emily get the bottle, she wondered at how they would react to his bottle feeding, but it seems to be going okay. Spencer is being very gentle and loving to the man. She enters and goes to the agents. "Why don't you check out the dungeon while Spencer is feeding Aaron?" The others get up and follow her to the dungeon where they see that it appears to be identical to the one on the DVD that they watched Hotch being tortured except for the cage and the pink blanket on the wall.
While Rossi, Prentiss and Morgan check out the dungeon, Aaron finishes his bottle and Spencer takes it out of the man's mouth and the two look at each other as Aaron sits up. Spencer asks, "So boss man tell me what toys you like to play with?" He nods his head over to the toy area, Aaron smiles and indicates to him to follow as he crawled over to the village set up with cars, trucks, trains and a lot of shop buildings.
When the others come back up from the dungeon they are surprised at what they see. Two grown men playing in the village of toys, crashing cars and breaking down buildings while laughing and yelling at each other when the other gets in the way. The agents go over to the men playing and each crouch down to look at them, the two playing look at the others like two little boys caught doing something they shouldn't be doing by their parents. Aaron picks up a car and offers it to Morgan, who takes it and looks at it and smiles while saying, "I'll bite, what are we playing?" The two boys playing smile and Spencer explain what they were doing and we now have three little boys playing. Rossi stands up and goes to look elsewhere around the nursery and all of its nooks and crannies. He still wants to know how Susan got in there, if all the doors were locked. Emily looks down at the men playing and thought about joining them but like Rossi she decides to explore the nursery.
It was at that moment when a harsh voice came from outside and yelling Homeland Security proceeds to attempt to crash the door, which they didn't have to do since Angie immediately opened the door by remote when she heard the voices. A group of the local agents from the Homeland Security office come rushing in.
"Hello, can I help you." says Angie to the lead agent.
"Just stay where you are ma'am."
"Where is your warrant and what are you looking for?" The man gives her a warrant and she proceeds to read that they are searching for drug contraband. "Well, this is interesting, but you welcome to look wherever but do not destroy anything, you do not want to lose your job."
At this point Rossi comes in and is told to put his hands up. "I am Special Agent David Rossi of the FBI and you are?"
"Agent Tom Jenkins of Homeland Security, we received an anonymous tip that there was contraband drugs here."
"Well, you can look, but you won't find anything like that here. Do you mind if I check out the anonymous tipster? How did it come in?"
"We received a phone call to our headquarters."
"Do you mind if I call our technical analyst to search for tipster?"
"Do you think she can do that?"
"She's very good at what she does." He proceeds to call Garcia from the office and lets her know about what's happening.
The boys in the nursery hear the commotion and Morgan and Reid get up, while telling Hotch to stay where he is. They head to the door and hear muffled sounds, they can't seem to get a clear sound as to what is happening until suddenly a speaker comes on and all is heard. They hear Rossi talk with agent Jenkins and his subsequent call to Garcia. They stay at the door and make sure it stays locked.
Morgan tells Reid to stay by the door he is going to get Hotch out of the playroom. Reid asks why and Morgan answers that he doesn't want them to find Hotch the way that he is. He goes over to the man and tells him that he needs to pick him up and get him out of this room. Hotch looks up questioning Morgan. As Morgan says that he doesn't have to explain, they need to go now and to trust him. Hotch lifts his arms and helps Morgan to lift and carry him into the next room with the crib and changing table. Another door leads out to the bathing chamber. Aaron indicates to Derek that he should open one of the cabinets under the changing table and Derek sees that it is a large open area that currently holds bags of disposable diapers, but if you remove them a person can be hidden in there. Morgan removes the bags and places Aaron in there telling to stay quiet and that he would be back to get him. He places thin bags in front of the man to hide him behind them. He rushes back to the playroom and sees that Reid is still at point at the door. He goes and gets a bottle and takes it back to Aaron to help the man stay busy and quiet. He closes all the doors behind him and goes to stand beside Reid.
But Morgan made the mistake that Angie made, believing that the bedroom was safe. The door to the cabinet opens and a man looks into it at the man drinking his bottle. He says, "Hello puppy."
Aaron whimpers and shrinks back as much as he can into the cabinet.
"My sister showed me how to jimmy open the window in the bath room. That is how she got in and that is how I got in. I'm just letting you know that I am still watching you and you better keep yourself the way you are. You are my baby puppy and had better keep it that way. I can get to anybody in your life and I will kill them if you do not behave yourself puppy." He pulls the bottle out of Aaron's mouth and put it on top of the cabinet and says, "Angel." He closes the cabinet doors and leaves.
After about thirty minutes, the problem with Homeland Security got cleared up and the agents for that department left. Morgan came into the bedroom to get Aaron and sees the bottle on the top of the cabinet only half empty. He opened the cabinet doors and takes out the packages of diapers to reveal an Aaron that looked like death warmed over with his head hanging low. "Hey, hey Hotch, what's wrong, what happened? Why was your bottle on the top of the cabinet?" Aaron looked up and his face was full of tracks of tears, Morgan reached in and pulled to get the man out of the cabinet. He picked him up and placed him on top. "What happened Hotch? Talk to me." The man just lay there crying.
"Hotch, I am going to go get Angie, you stay right where you are. Don't move." Morgan runs through the playroom to the office, Reid yells out, "Hey Morgan, what…" But the man just ignores him so Reid goes into the bed area and sees Aaron about to roll off the changing table and rushes to him to prevent that. "Hey boss man, where do you think you are going? " Aaron shakes his head and just lies back again with Reid holding him down and looking very worried about this man he loves and respects.
In the office, Morgan looks around to find Angie and doesn't see her right away because she has gone to find out if the other agents destroyed or ruined anything while they were looking for bogus drugs. He yells out, "ANGIE!" She comes running in after about thirty seconds, Rossi and Prentiss shortly after her.
"What is it Morgan? Why are screaming like a banshee?"
"I'm sorry to scream like that but when the homeland security was here I wanted to protect Aaron from them seeing him and so he showed that he could be hidden in the diaper cabinet. I left him in there with a bottle, after the others left I went to get him out. The bottle was on top of the cabinet and he was crying inside. I pulled him out and put him on the changing table but he wouldn't tell me what happened. I came to get you."
"You left him on the changing table, did you belt him down?"
"I just told him to stay still." She rolled her eyes at that and ran from the room to the bed area. She is relieved to see Spencer there holding him down. Spencer looks at her with stricken eyes because he doesn't know what to do. She comforts him by giving him a hug and telling him to go back to the playroom and keep everyone else there. She smiles wanly at him as he leaves and she checks out her man on the table.
"Will you tell me what happened?" He just looks at her and sits up and grabs her tightly. He whispers to her, "He was here." She pulls back slightly and looks at his scared face. She rocks him for comfort and she whispers back, "What did he say to you?" He whispered, "He came in by way of jimmying the lock on the bathroom window, his sister showed him how. He told me that he was still watching and wanted to hurt everybody I loved. If I don't stay a baby he will. I don't want to be a baby but how can I keep my loved ones safe from that person?" He cries on her shoulder. She holds and rocks him gently.
