Chapter 27
Hotch made his way to the bedroom slowly trying to figure out what to say and do to get Kahlan up and out of bed. If she was lying there reliving whatever had happened to her, she might get buried under the horrible memories.
He went into the bedroom and was surprised to find the bed empty. He looked and saw the bathroom door closed. His heart skipped a beat as his imagination ran away with him. He went to the bathroom quickly and lifted the latch; he thanked God it wasn't locked. "Kahlan?" he called out to announce himself.
She was in the shower, standing under one stream of water with one hand on the wall.
Her head was bent low, and Hotch didn't think she had heard him. He walked in and shut the door behind him. "Babe?"
She flinched and turned to him quickly.
His heart broke even more when he realized she was crying again.
She swallowed hard and gave him a weak smile. "I'll be done in a minute."
He took a ragged breath. "Ok," he told her and went back into the bedroom.
Why God? Why her? He shook his head roughly. I swear, Hotchner, you are the biggest son of a bitch in the world! He ran a hand down his face. The last thing I ever wanted to do is cause you pain, Babe. He took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose as he sat down roughly on the bed. No matter how hard I try, I can't keep from turning into my father! He stood up as he felt his anger rising. He paced as he ground his teeth. What are you going to do next, Hotchner, hit one of your kids? He slammed his fist into the wardrobe that housed his clothes. The old wood screamed as a massive crack formed down the center of the door. His eyes got big as soon as he realized what he had done. Oh my God!
"Aaron?" Kahlan asked as she emerged from the restroom. His head snapped to her and she could see embarrassment and anger on his face. She went to him quickly and grabbed his hand; it was red and swollen.
He pulled away from her and took a step back. "I think Wyatt wants to show you some of the stuff Coll has taught him," he told her as he made his way to the door.
"Aaron?" she asked weakly.
He froze with his hand on the latch, but he didn't turn back to her.
"Hun?"
"I am so sorry, Kahlan," he told her weakly and then went out the door.
She sighed heavily as the door shut behind him. No, Hun, I am the one who's sorry. She wiped a tear away. Oh my God, what have I done? He can't even stand to look at me!
XXX
After Kahlan got dressed, she made her way down into the castle. She found the kids with her mother and Dave, but Aaron wasn't anywhere to be seen. Joey ran up to her and hugged her legs. "It's about time you get up," Joey told her as she smiled up at her.
Kahlan reached down and picked her up. "Well, if you guys wouldn't have worn me out in the moat, I wouldn't have had to sleep so long."
Joey giggled. "I slept in, too."
Kahlan smiled as she sat down on the couch in the big family room. Her eyes met Dave's and she knew he knew. Of course Aaron told you. He gave her a small smile, and she returned it. She looked at Wyatt. "So are you going to show me some of those awesome knight skills you've been learning?"
Wyatt beamed. "Sure, but Jack has to show you what he can do out in the courtyard first."
She looked at Jack questioningly. Jack shrugged but smiled.
She sat Joey down. "Then let's go," she told them and stood up.
Joey grabbed her hand and pulled her to the door with everyone else following.
XXX
After watching Jack go through the whole courtyard doing parkore tricks, they made their way toward the stables.
Kahlan put her hand on Rossi's arm to slow him up so they were at the back of the group.
Rossi licked his lips, but he didn't look at her not knowing what she wanted.
"Where is Aaron?" she asked him quietly.
"I don't know. He came down stairs and then disappeared. What happened?" he asked her as he searched her face.
She wiped her face quickly when Joey looked back at them and smiled. Once Joey had looked away, Kahlan swallowed hard. "He hates me."
Dave stopped in his tracks and gave her a shocked look.
She shook her head quickly and kept walking.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. "We'll catch up in a minute," he called to the rest of the group.
Cindi looked back at them questioningly; she could tell something was going on. "Ok," she told Dave with a small smile, and she put her arms around the boys' shoulders and steered them farther away.
Once the kids had disappeared around the corner, he turned to Kahlan and put his hands on the sides of her face and made her look at him. "He would never think that! Why would you think he does?"
A tear escaped her as she searched his face. "Because he can't even look at me."
Dave took a deep breath. "If he can't look you in the eyes, it is because of the guilt that is overflowing in him, Kiddo," he told her tenderly as he wiped her tear away with a thumb.
She pulled out of his grasp. "He's mad at me."
"No he's not!
"He basically smashed the wardrobe in the room. You should have seen his hand."
"If he's mad at anyone, he's mad at himself." Dave could imagine how his hand looked because he had already hit the wall in the stable. "Did you all talk?"
"No. He won't even look at me, how am I supposed to talk to him?"
Dave sighed deeply. "Will you talk to him?"
Kahlan choked back a sob. "God, Dave. I didn't mean for that to happen. I didn't. . ."
He pulled her into a hug. "I know, Kiddo, I know," he told her as he rubbed circles on her back. "He hates himself right now because he believes he is the reason you are hurting."
She pulled back enough to look him in the face. "I told him it wasn't his fault. He didn't know."
"I know that and you know that, but you know him; you know he is blaming himself."
Another tear escaped her eye as she shook her head. "I never wanted to hurt him."
He pulled her back to him. "Of course you didn't, and he never wanted to hurt you."
She pulled away from him completely and wiped her face. "I should go find him."
He shook his head. "No. Let him have some time to process this, and then I will find him."
She finally smiled and pulled him into a hug. "Thanks, Dave. I don't know what we'd do without you."
He smiled as he squeezed her. "Someone has to keep you two in line."
She chuckled and then they went in search of the kids.
XXX
After not seeing Hotch all day, Dave had found him sitting on a fallen tree in a clearing in the woods outside the castle walls and tried to talk some sense into him. "She doesn't blame you, Aaron."
He huffed. "Maybe she needs to."
Dave shook his head. "You two really are made for each other! You're so damn alike in so many ways it's pathetic!"
Hotch startled at Rossi's anger, but he didn't look at him. "Every time I turn around, I'm becoming more and more like him," Hotch's words were weak and fragile, but they pissed Dave off even more.
He walked up to Hotch and grabbed his chin roughly to make him look at him, but Hotch's eyes were closed. "Look at me, Aaron!"
Hotch swallowed hard and opened his eyes slowly.
Dave shook his head. "If you don't stop comparing yourself to that bastard, I'm going to show you real anger! You made a mistake and now you are feeling guilty! Do you think your father ever felt guilty?!"
Hotch eyes darted around as he considered it.
"No! He wasn't capable of feeling guilt any more than he was capable of actually feeling love!" Rossi took a deep breath to calm himself down and then put both hands on Hotch's face lovingly. "You are nothing like him, Aaron."
A tear escaped Hotch's eye. "Then why do I keep hurting the people I love?"
Rossi pulled him up and into a tight hug. "You didn't mean to." He squeezed him tighter trying to make Hotch feel some of the love he had for him. When he finally released him, he looked him in the eyes again. "If you had done it on purpose, then you could have compared yourself to your father. Since you did it on accident, the only thing you can chalk that up to is being a man, and men make mistakes."
Hotch nodded weakly.
"How you handle that mistake, what you learn from it, and how you try to correct it; that will show you what kind of a man you really are."
Hotch took a shaky breath. "I'd do anything to make her feel better!"
Rossi gave him a small smile. "And that makes you a thousand times better man than your father ever was," he told him seriously.
The side of Hotch's mouth quirked into a little smile as the truth of Rossi's statement sunk in. He nodded more strongly, stood up straighter, and squared his shoulders. "I need to go talk to her."
Rossi smiled. That's my boy! "They were in eating dinner when I left."
Hotch took a step towards the castle and then turned back to Rossi. "Dave. . ."
Hotch's look told him far more than words ever could, and Rossi nodded. "Go!"
Hotch smiled and left.
XXX
When Hotch got into the dining room, Kahlan wasn't there and he looked at the kids questioningly.
"She went to bed early," Jack told him knowing he was wondering about their mother.
"I don't think Mommy feels good," Joey told him.
"Yeah. She seemed a little off all day," Wyatt agreed.
Hotch swallowed hard. "I'll go see if there is anything I can do," he told them with a forced smile.
Their looks wished him luck and he slowly made his way to their room praying to God the whole time and asking for help in fixing his mess. He shut the door behind him and found her on the couch in front of the fireplace wrapped up in a throw blanket. His heart hurt when he saw her quickly wipe her face. He walked up to her and sat down on the far end of the couch and looked at her. "Babe?"
She gave him a small smile. "I'm sorry."
"What?!" he asked flabbergasted. "What do you have to be sorry for?"
"For ruining our vacation," she told him weakly as another tear escaped her eye.
He sighed heavily. "If anyone has ruined anything, it's me. I am so sorry. . ."
"Stop apologizing, Aaron!" she told him roughly. "It is not your fault!"
He slid closer to her. "Yes it is! I should have listened to you. You said you didn't want to do it, but I pushed it. If I had listened. . ."
"If I had told you, you wouldn't have done it. I know you would never hurt me on purpose, Hun," she told him as she took his hand in hers. She looked down at them and relaxed a little when she realized his hand was just a little bruised around his knuckles. She swallowed hard and then looked at him again.
He studied her face as a tear fell down his cheek. "You can tell me about it now."
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "It's not because I didn't want to tell you, Aaron." She looked at him. "I just haven't thought about it in so long. . ."
His chest tightened. "And what I did made you remember."
She shrugged. "I thought I had locked it up tight and buried it so far down that it would never bother me again." A tear trickled down her cheek. "But it hit me like a ton of bricks and. . . And I was. . ."
"You were there," he offered quietly.
She nodded. "I wasn't expecting it. I thought I could handle it. I thought I could let you have your fun and. . ."
He shook his head and turned away from her. "I'm sorry I didn't realize it. I should have known long before that."
She pulled his face back towards her and she studied him. "What?"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry that I didn't catch it, but that doesn't matter. What matters is what I need to do to help you through this."
She let him go as she tried to figure what had given it away. "You want me to tell you about it?"
He bit his lip as he looked her in the eyes. "Maybe if you let me share in the load, it won't be such a heavy burden."
She swallowed hard and shook her head. "You don't want to hear that."
"No. No, I don't want to hear it, but you need to tell it; and I'll listen," he told her seriously.
She took a deep breath as she fidgeted with the fringe on the blanket.
He slid closer and grabbed her hand. "It's on the surface now, Kahlan. You need to talk about it. If you won't talk to me, then you should at least talk to whoever helped you through it before."
She huffed as another tear escaped.
"Oh, Babe," he started and closed the last couple inches that were separating them. "You never told anyone?"
She shook her head. "I couldn't," she told him weakly.
"No wonder it finally came back so strong." He reached up and gently took her chin and made her look at him. "It will never get easier if you don't talk about it."
She chewed on her bottom lip as she studied his eyes. She finally nodded and he let her go. "It was a long time ago."
"In a galaxy far, far away?" he joked to try to ease some of her tension.
She laughed as more tears fell down her cheeks. "God, I love you," she told him tenderly.
"I love you, too, Babe, and I want to help you with this," he told her seriously.
She took a deep breath and wiped her face. "We were in Columbia. We were supposed to watch a suspected drug lord and all we had to do was get some evidence that he truly was what they thought he was and then we were supposed to neutralize him," she said and cringed because she knew that would bother him, but he was silent and let her go on. "So we watched him, and the crops, and the factories, but we couldn't connect him to them right off the bat." She took another deep breath. "One of his workers finally came to us and said that the reason none of the other locals would speak out against him was because he had their children. He had kidnapped at least one child from every family and that was how he got them to work and keep their mouths shut. Her son had escaped him, and when he made it back home, she knew he had been both physically and sexually abused. That's why she came to us."
Hotch could hear the anger seeping into her voice and he could imagine what the news had done to her.
"So I decided to go and see if I could find the children. That in itself would have been enough evidence to prove his guilt."
"And you did," Hotch offered as he studied her.
She nodded. "And I tried to rescue them, but. . ."
"You were caught."
Her face scrunched up with the memory and his heart ached. "He had a knife to teenaged girl's throat. . ."
"And you gave up to save her."
"As soon as I did, everything went black." She took a raged breath. "When I woke up, I was. . ." she shook her head. "I was. . ."
"You were tied up," he offered quietly and started hating himself even more.
She nodded as she closed her eyes and turned away from him. "He beat me, and ripped my clothes off of me, and raped me repeatedly and. . ." she started and then sobbed at the memories.
He put his arm around her and held her to try and keep the visions at bay. He knew then that it wasn't just tying her up that had brought back the horrible memories, it was the combinations of that and him ripping her clothes off her that made her remember the bastard. God, I am so sorry, Babe!
She pulled away from him. "I don't know how long he had me. I lost track after three days."
Jesus Christ! Hotch took a shaky breath. "And you were rescued?'
She sobbed. "No."
"Then how?"
"When he got tired of me, he cut me loose and left me."
"Chuck and Cam didn't find you?"
She shook her head. "It was before Cam joined the squad, but the squad didn't know where I was. I hadn't told them what I was going to do. I was cocky. I thought I could do it all on my own."
"He just let you go?"
She snorted. "He didn't know who or what I was. I'm not sure what he thought I was, but he told me to tell everyone that the same would happen to the next person who tried to do anything against him."
Hotch closed his eyes and tried to shut out the images. "You got out of there."
She nodded as she wiped her face. "When I could walk again, I found some clothes and made it back to them. They could tell I had been beaten, but I never told them everything. I was so embarrassed. . ."
His head snapped up. "That's nothing to be embarrassed about!"
"I blamed myself. If I hadn't had gone off on my own, if I hadn't had tried to rescue those kids, if I had tried to fight back a little harder. . ."
"That was not your fault, Kahlan! You didn't ask for that to happen!"
"I know that now, but at the time. . ."
"What happened?"
"I took a couple days to heal, and then I hunted the son of a bitch down," she told him quietly.
Hotch didn't need to ask, it was obvious that she had taken her revenge, and he didn't blame her. Everything in him wanted to find the asshole and resurrected him just so he could get his revenge, too. He took a deep breath to try to quell his anger. "How did you get past it?"
She shrugged. "I learned from my mistakes and I buried it. It took a couple months for me to not have nightmares anymore, but eventually I stopped thinking about it. Keeping busy hunting down bad guys helped, I guess." She took another deep breath and locked eyes with him. "I never wanted something like this to come between us."
He grabbed her hands and squeezed them affectionately. "This hasn't come between us, Kahlan. It's another thing we have shared. While it's horrible compared to the other stuff I have learned about you, it is still your past." He locked eyes with her. "Thank you for trusting me enough with it."
Her eyes filled up with tears again. "It doesn't change the way you feel about me?"
"Babe!" he pulled her into a tight hug. "I've told you before; nothing could ever make me love you less." He pulled away from her and looked her in the face. "In fact, I love you more and more every day! The good and the bad, I love it all," he told her seriously.
She sobbed and pulled him to her. "I don't deserve a man like you, but I am so glad you are mine!"
He smiled as a tear fell down his cheek. "I'm the lucky one."
After a few moments, she pulled away and looked him in the eyes. "That was the only time I was ever assaulted like that, Aaron. Don't let your imagination run away with you about my past."
"Ok"
"I mean it. I swear to you, that was the only time, and I don't want your pity."
"Babe. . ."
"And I don't want to walk around on eggshells around me or be afraid to touch me."
"Kahlan. . ."
"I mean it, Aaron. It will make getting over it ten times worse."
"You want to act like it never happened?"
She shrugged.
He smiled. "So, I guess that's a 'no' to tying you up again?" he joked. The look on her face made him laugh.
She shook her head at him as she smiled. "If anyone would ever be able to get me to do that, it would be you."
He balked. "I was joking, Babe. I will never, ever, try to get you to do something that say no to."
"You didn't do anything wrong, Aaron. If that wouldn't have happened in my past, everything would have been fine."
He stood up and put a hand out to her. "I don't know about you, but I'm. . ." He almost said 'beat', and he cringed mentally and corrected himself. "Really tired. You ready for bed?"
She accepted his hand with a smile. "Are you going to let me snuggle up to you?"
He smiled. "Even tighter than normal if you want."