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 Twenty-Three.
Sean goes over to his brother and asks him, "How are doing?"
Aaron looks at him wearily and says, "I am fine. I want to get my agents safe before we do anything with me." Sean is not happy with that statement but is going to give Aaron a little leeway in this situation. He wants to trust that the man will not be foolish enough to try to go to the dungeon.
"Aaron, stay in the office, you don't need to go to the dungeon, let your team and fellow agents do that job. You delegate the authority and don't join in."
"Sean, I need to get my friend out of there, he was there for me and I have to be there for him."
"Aaron, do not go into that dungeon. Spencer, please keep an eye on him and do not take him anywhere. I am going to go fix some lunch." Sean heads to the kitchen to do what he loves and cook. He is trusting his brother will not leave the office.
The local agents and bomb squad arrive and all head to the dungeon door. Aaron watches them and stands up to join them at the door of the dungeon. He uses all the energy he can to walk to the door and does so because of the strength of his will. He walks down the stairs to the locked door which the others are trying to unlock. He goes to the door and punches in a four digit number which unlocks the door. The head local agent takes lead and bangs the door open and with the guns pointed at Susan enters the room. After all of the other seven people enter the room, Aaron walks in. He looks around and a terrifying feeling of déjà vu comes over him. He looks at Rossi on the bed, he sees the whips and weapons on the wall, he looks over and in his mind sees the cage that is not really there. The man whimpers and starts to hyperventilate. The local agent do not notice what the man is doing, but Morgan sees him and Rossi looks up and sees him, tries to move his mouth to tell Morgan to get him out of there. Morgan is ahead of him and moves behind the agents to Aaron's side. "Hotch, why are you down here? Go back upstairs now."
He answers, "No I have to…I have to…" The memories become overwhelming as the man closes his eyes to hide away from the scene. Morgan does not listen to the man, but instead puts his gun away and lifts the man to take him upstairs. Aaron protests, "No, I have to stay and help." Morgan smacks him on his backside and says, "Stop squirming, I don't want to drop you." At the top of the stairs he walks through the doors into the playroom and into the bedroom and put Aaron in the crib. "You stay there." He leaves the room and closes the door behind him while Aaron lets out a stream of angry words as he pounds against the rails of the crib until wearily he falls back into the corner and into his own tortured mind of memories.
Morgan hurries back to the door and heads back down. The agents have carefully continued to enter the room; Susan continues to watch and keeps her hand on the detonator of the bomb. She doesn't really want to kill anyone except David but the agents keep coming, the bomb squad begins to look at the bomb under the bed. When Prentiss finally goes to Rossi and unlocks the chains, "No." says Susan as Morgan goes and takes the man off the bed. Susan screams and moves toward the men. The agents shoot towards her and bring her down. Morgan gets Rossi upstairs and places him on the floor where JJ had placed a blanket to cover him up. An ambulance has arrived and the EMT's check out the man and begin to prepare to take him to the hospital for a thorough check up. They place an IV into him and Prentiss and JJ join him to go to the hospital.
The bomb squad continued to try to take time to learn about and disarm the bomb, but it is unusual and completely enclosed in the bed frame. The other agents check Susan and discover that one of the shots was a kill shot. Susan is dead. The coroner is called.
In the office upstairs, Garcia is still going through the computer with Spencer reading some of the many files that Angie has in her office. Sean comes in from the kitchen. He looks around and asks. "Where's Aaron? I left him in here, where is he?" Neither of our agents there remembers what happened to him. They know they did not take him anywhere and they did not remember seeing anybody else there but they also did not expect that he would have walked out on his own.
Sean says, "Spencer, I asked you to keep an eye on him. Spencer we need to clean you up before lunch. Lunch is in the dining room. "
Spencer says, "I don't need to be changed but if you could help me go to the bathroom and then put some more lotion on when I am finished."
Sean smiles and says, "You are right, let's treat you like you are in training pants instead of a diaper. Come on." The men leave the room to go to the changing room bath room. They walk through the play room and see Morgan. Sean asks him, "Have you seen Hotch?"
"Not since I put him in the crib and believe me he wasn't happy about it but he should not have been where he was. I don't know who was supposed to be watching him ten minutes ago, but he got away from them."
"Explain what you are talking about Morgan? Where did you find him?"
"He was downstairs in the dungeon."
"What?!?"
"He came in the with the other agents and then he started to freak, so I carried him back up and put him in the crib. What were you doing?"
"I left him in the office with Garcia and Reid and went to fix some lunch for the people in the house."
Reid says, "But neither Garcia nor I took him anywhere or saw him leave with anyone."
Morgan says, "All I know is that he was there."
Sean listened to Morgan tell him this and began to get angry at his brother, who he thought knew better than to go someplace he wasn't supposed to go and wouldn't put himself in that kind of situation. He thought he could trust his brother.
He says, "I am going to clean Spencer up, lunch is in the dining room if you will spread the word. I will take care of my brother when I finish with Spencer." The men separate and in the bed room, Sean puts Spencer on the changing table and removes his pants and diaper and sends him to the bath room to use the toilet. Spencer comes back when he is finished and Sean spreads lotion on his rash and puts a clean diaper on him. After redressing him, Spencer goes to the dining room and gets some lunch.
All of a sudden there is a heavy explosion and the building rocks to its core. It is 11:59am and the bomb automatically explodes and destroys the dungeon. However, because of the construction and engineering improvements that Angie had made in the house. It seems the dungeon was actually just a plain room that was not attached to the foundation of the house and destroying it only causes things to falloff shelves. The reinforced steel and titanium that constitute the foundation hold up just fine.
Sean had been fixing up the diapering area and turns around to see his formidable strong big brother looking anything but. He was sitting in the corner of the crib and had his head down and his arms covering him. He had placed the crib's blanket over himself. Sean walked over and lifted the edge of the blanket to see his brother looking terrified and crying. Sean pulls the blanket off, lowers the crib rail and reaches out to his brother, who grabs onto the man like a life line. Sean picks him up and takes him to the double rocking chair and begins to rock his brother to comfort the man.
Penelope was curious as to what happened to our men and came into the playroom and sees the chair rocking, she goes over and sees Sean holding Aaron and he is sucking on Sean's index finger. She remembers that when Henry did that to JJ's finger, it was because he was hungry and she didn't have anything at the time to feed him. She goes to the bottle cabinet and takes one out for Aaron and brings it back to Sean. He looks up at her and says, "Thanks." He takes his finger out of Aaron's mouth and the man opens his eyes and sees the bottle that Sean holds up. He smiles and opens his mouth. Sean places the bottle in his brother's mouth and continues to rock. Garcia places her hand on the bosses' head and asks Sean, "Can I get you anything?"
"No Penelope but thanks for asking."
"Morgan, Spencer and I are going to the hospital to check on Rossi and relieve Prentiss and JJ so they can come back and have some lunch."
"Okay, Aaron is going down for a nap and then we are going to talk about this morning." Aaron opens his eyes and looks at Sean and notices the suppressed anger in his eyes. He knows in his heart that Sean would never hurt him but a hand of fear strikes his head and he whimpers. Sean looks down at him. "It is okay, just sleep now Aaron. Penelope, tell Spencer that I do want to check him in about three hours. So have him back here by then. Tell Rossi, that Aaron and I will see him tomorrow.
A few hours later, Sean is still in the rocker as he had closed his eyes and fell asleep in the chair after putting Aaron in the crib. Behind him in the play room and then the office are agents going through the destroyed dungeon looking for evidence against the siblings and Morgan and Prentiss decided to go check out one of the brother's contacts that Penelope had found. Penelope has stayed with Rossi and JJ came back with Spencer, who complained that he was okay and did not to be babied. JJ just patted his bottom when he said that and he went beet red.
JJ says, "Spencer, go find Sean to change your diaper and ask him if he knew of a place where you could take a nap."
He responds, "I don't need a nap, I am just fine. What makes you think I need a nap?" as he yawns again for third time in five minutes.
"Because you almost fell asleep in the car on the way back from the hospital and you have been squirming while trying to keep your eyes open. Go find Sean now or I will take care of you." Spencer runs into the playroom to see if he could find Sean and finally finds him in the chair but doesn't want to wake him up. Too late, Sean was already waking because he sleeps very lightly now and seems to know when he is needed by Aaron and by extension now, Spencer. He looks up and sees Spencer looking down on him looking hesitantly at him.
Sean looked up at him and said, "Is there something I can do for you?"
"You told me to come and get cleaned up."
Sean smiles and says, "I take it you need to be cleaned up."
Hanging his head low, Spencer answers, "Yes." Sean gets up and takes Spencer's hand and they head to the changing table.
Later that night at the hotel, Sean had Spencer stay with him and Aaron instead of getting another hotel room. They had to stop and get some clothes for the man since he did not have a go bag and he didn't want to continue to wear the childish clothes that Angie had at her place. The two queen size beds in the room would fit the men fine. Sean and Aaron slept in one while Spencer took the other. What surprised Spencer was waking up in the middle of the night by Aaron's whimpering and crying in the other bed.
Sleepily he asks, "Sean what is happening? What is it?"
Sean answers, "Go back to sleep Spencer." He has wrapped Aaron in his arms and was rocking him and whispering soothing words to the man. Spencer watches this interaction and wonders if this was usual. "Spencer, go back to sleep! This does not concern you and I don't want you to lose sleep over it. This is normal. Aaron hasn't slept a full night since he got out of the hospital. In his sleep, he is back there with that man. Go back to sleep Spencer." Spencer gets out of bed instead and walks to the other side of the bed and gets in on the other side of Aaron and along side of Sean start to rock with them and whisper soothing words to his boss. The three men fall asleep in this position.
