A/N: A quick note to say thank you for all the reviews, they're lovely. I've never been one reply to reviews individually, but I've noticed that's a thing in this fandom, so if you want to say something and have me say stuff back, there's a private message button around here somewhere.

Mild warning that next chapter will take longer, as it's the one for which I have no backlogged writing. I did this whole thing completely out of order. Seriously, I wrote a drabble for "52 Pickup" and it just spiraled. I'm very vulnerable to episode titles with numbers in them, apparently. ER's "21 Guns" set me down this rabbit hole nine years ago and five fandoms later I'm trapped. Apparently I'm also very vulnerable to shipping dark-haired, moderately tortured couples on workplace dramas in which the female counterpart has small-screen roots in the heyday of NBC programming. *shrug*

Season Five

You bear the scars
You've done your time
Listen to me
You've been lonely, too long

(The Civil Wars)

5.01

"They're safe." Her fingers ghost over his.

"You aren't."

"Aaron. He doesn't know."

"He's been one step ahead of us the entire time. He wants me to suffer." It hurts to turn his head, but he does, eyes intense, boring into her. "You know I'm right. I can't make you a target."

She does know. Continuing as they are will endanger her, and knowing that could push him to his breaking point. "We'll take it a day at a time."

"We can't - "

"Don't ask me for more than that."

His eyes fix on hers, grief reflected. "I won't."

5.02

The knock reverberates, stinging his scars.

"You shouldn't be back here."

"You shouldn't be alone."

Behind her, he bolts the door. "We said - "

"Let me help tonight. Please."

He knows what she's offering. "I can't."

"You're not using me. I need this as much as you." Needs him not to hurt.

"Emily - " He can't look at her.

"Aaron." She moves closer, brushes her thumbs over his eyelids, coaxing them open. "I love you. Let me help."

Something shatters in him, hearing the words, and he feels it. Feels her.

Foyet hasn't taken that part of him.

5.03

Rossi's advice echoes in his brain. Hotch has an inkling that it wasn't just Jack he'd been talking about. And he's not sure it was Haley, either. Dave's always seen more than he lets on.

Maybe he's overthinking the intent. Either way, he rolls it around in his mind. He has enough regrets, one failed marriage already. Rossi's got three, but it's the one he never had that he regrets.

He doesn't know how it hasn't occurred to him before, but now that it has, it's a certainty.

When all of this is over, he's going to marry Emily Prentiss.

5.04

She knows Morgan is worried. Thinks Hotch is off his game.

It's killing her that she can't defend him the way she wants, because what she knows is basically privileged information. Things she understands because when they're alone, his defenses fall a little and she can peer inside.

She knows that his senses have been sharpened to fine points since Foyet.

In the few stolen moments they've had, he's become almost obsessed with making her come. Part of it's about control, but mostly, it's the upside of his hyperawareness.

But she can't exactly lay it out for Morgan like that.

5.05

"Are you doing all right?"

She sits beside him at the bar. Their new routine. If Foyet's watching, he'll see a drunk, demoted agent being driven home by his pitying former subordinate.

He won't see the file marked "Foyet" Hotch is reading or the soda in his glass.

"I think that's my line," she murmurs.

"I'll be fine." He almost manages a smile. "I meant the case. I didn't know if…"

"If it brought up regrets?"

"I didn't say 'regrets.'"

"I know." She sips his Coke. "I did."

"Emily." His eyes fix on hers. "You'll be a wonderful mother someday."

5.06

"What?"

"What?" She nudges his foot.

"You've been looking at me funny since we left Oklahoma."

"I just…" She shrugs. "I've never seen you so much as mislabel a report. Hearing you mouth off to Morgan was kind of amusing." Her voice drops to a murmur. "And a little bit sexy."

"I didn't mouth off. I made the very valid point that he wouldn't have waited for backup."

"You don't have to defend yourself to me, Hotch. I just said I enjoyed it."

"You would."

"Damn right I would."

It's the first real smile she's seen from him in months.

5.07

"Do I want to know how you dressed in high school?"

"That depends. Do you have a secret Goth fetish?"

"No." He rests a hand on her bare back. It's the first time they've had together since their one night after Foyet. As ludicrous as it was to arrange, it's worth it, he thinks. "Do you?"

"Yes, Hotch. I want you in eyeliner and a fishnet G-man suit."

He can't help but grin, and she has to follow. She's missed seeing him happy.

"What's your favorite track?"

"Hmm?"

"White Album."

"Oh." It's muffled by his mouth on her neck. "Blackbird."

5.08

She's never felt so helpless. Even inside the compound, even in that basement with blood trickling down her face, she had the control. Everything that happened was a calculated risk, her own decision. For all the danger she's been in, the only thing that's come close to tying her hands was politics.

He'd set her free, more than once, from those bindings. Now, she's watching Foyet torture him, and she's paralyzed.

She thinks of Jack, who she's only met twice and already loves. Of Haley, who Hotch will always love.

Of him, walking into an ambush he might not survive.

5.09

He watches them. Jack sits in her lap, grasping a crayon, entranced by the graceful way Emily colors.

He hasn't told Jack his mother is dead. He'll do it when Emily leaves.

She won't yet. Even when he asks. She knows he's too raw right now to be a father. Too busy being a widower. Fingers brush over his hair, barely touching him. No pressure. "I'll go when you're ready," she tells him.

He knows she'll be the one to decide when that is, and he stops fighting it.

He doesn't want to be the one to make decisions anymore.

5.10

She tries not to feel hurt when she hears of Strauss' offer secondhand. She doesn't have any claim to this decision, to how he handles Haley's death and single parenthood.

But she can't bite back the growing unease, the longer she goes without hearing his voice.

She's known she loved him for awhile, but it's only now that she's realizing she wants a future with him. Wants to be a part of Jack's life, be with both of them through this, and then, maybe, something else. Something that involves all of them and permanence.

But Foyet might've taken that, too.

5.11

"How's your head?"

Even over the phone, she can tell he's exhausted. "Same as it was the other times you asked. I'm fine, Hotch." All she hears is his breathing. "Aaron?"

"I hate this."

"I know." And she does. She was there beside him after Foyet. Both times. "Listen to me. I'm okay. Jack is okay."

"I know." His sigh crackles over the line. "I just - "

"You're afraid you're going to wake up and find yourself alone."

Sometimes their similarities, how far they extend, scare him.

"You're not alone, Aaron."

He's not. But today he came too close.

5.12

He used to have a photo in his office of Jack at one, perched atop a carousel horse, Haley holding him steady and smiling.

Jessica had been the one to take it. He'd been working. It's hard to look at the photo these days.

The Saturday after they return from Atlantic City, Emily picks them up early and drives them to the National Mall. When Jack sees the carousel, his eyes light up. Outside the gate, she snaps photos.

When Hotch asks a stranger to take one of the three of them, it's all she can do not to cry.

5.13

They're still feeling their way through everything, trying to find the new normal.

She's short with him in Wyoming. Professional as ever, always on point, but it's a throwback to her first months at the BAU. He's afraid to push when everything's unsteady.

The puzzle seems to materialize in her bag on Thursday night, a Post-It attached.

It will drive you crazy.

She's packing up a day later when she sees the insert and reads the story.

She's exhausted, so it takes awhile. It's not until she's recounting it to Reid that it crystalizes.

He wasn't talking about the puzzle.

5.14

He's quiet on the flight back, and she lets him be, only catching him as they're leaving the airstrip.

"Let me know if you want some company after you pick up Jack."

Neither of them expects him to take her up on it.

He comes home to Jack's latest drawings, neatly titled by Jessica. There's Daddy fighting bad guys; Jack and Daddy; Jack with Daddy, Mommy, Aunt Jessica, and (he'd apparently specified this) Jack's new puppy.

And there's one of Jack with Daddy and Emily.

Hotch suddenly understands why something feels like it's missing from their home, because she is.

5.15

The call comes while he's in the shower, buzzing on both phones. She's taken to double-checking before answering, after a post-coital near miss she'd rather not repeat. "Prentiss."

She listens to JJ on the other end and sighs. "We knew it was a matter of time."

Henry's crying in the background, and they hang up quickly. She slips off the t-shirt she'd borrowed and into the shower with him, arms coming around him from behind, chin on his scapula.

"O'Brien stabbed his father in prison."

That night, he tells her about his own father, and a little weight is lifted.

5.16

When Charlie Hillridge's mother asks her why they do it, this job, when they see so much darkness, she doesn't have an answer, so she borrows from Hotch himself.

Because of days like this.

It had been her asking, then, because she couldn't fathom why he hadn't told her mother to shove it when she'd roped him into running security for the party. By drunk date or fate, they'd ended up alone, and he'd looked at her, trapped at twenty-one between adult and wild child and resplendent in red, and the admission had slipped out, the significance lost until now.

5.17

She can't stop thinking about it. She's considered it before - the girl in Denver planted the idea - but she realizes she's running out of time. Now, holding that little girl in her arms, being needed, sends an ache through her that won't subside.

The thing is, she knows she should want to adopt. She sees how badly these kids need people to love them. On top of it, she's all but aged out of the possibility. But then she looks at Hotch and she can't stop the flood of want.

She can't help wanting to carry his child.

5.18

"Rawson's a real piece of work."

"Cooper trusts him."

"Good for Cooper. If Morgan had asked LaSalle what she was wearing, you'd have fired him on the spot."

His eyes flash. "He asked you what you were wearing?"

"Relax, Hotch." She kisses his cheek. "I'm extremely adept at dealing with skeeveballs."

"Remind me to have Garcia send him a virus."

"Why Agent Hotchner, are you…jealous?"

"Absolutely." He cups her jaw in one hand, sweeps her hair back with the other. "He had your back. I didn't."

She smiles. "I guess you'll have to make due with the rest of me."

5.19

He shows up on her doorstep with waterproof earplugs, gauze, and a concerned-looking Jack. When she lets them in, Jack offers her a box of dinosaur bandages, stage-whispering that they're his favorites.

"He insisted," Hotch tells her, grinning, before his son shoots him a glare that she swears is a carbon copy and shushes his father.

It's too cute to bother explaining that he doesn't have to whisper.

They end up watching Cars at a ridiculously low volume, per Jack's insistence. An hour in, Hotch turns to find Jack curled in Emily's lap, both of them asleep.

It terrifies him.

5.20

Morgan might not know what a "Sin to Win" weekend is, but Hotch does. She'd laid it out for him very explicitly.

It's code for her "Aaron Hotchner is an Asshole" weekend. Something about college friends and a pact and him needing to grow up.

Seeing her and Jack bonding - bonded - had scared him, and he hadn't handled it well. His reaction had been panicked and visceral and what little he'd tried to vocalize had come out all wrong.

She comes to him and promises not to push, but they both know this isn't the end of it.

5.21

"JJ thinks I should call Rawson."

"Call him what?"

She laughs. "Hot. Although I had some different suggestions."

"Maybe you should tell her you're in a relationship."

Neither his tone nor his expression suggest he's kidding. "With who, exactly?"

"Me."

It's the fist time they've broached it, and she's mute for a minute, utterly blindsided.

"There's no official rule against it."

"And there's no guarantee one of us won't be reassigned."

"Morgan's proven he can handle the job."

The revelation that he'd sacrifice his position takes her breath away, and she kisses him, hard.

They never do finish the conversation.

5.22

She loves his sense of humor. It's so deadpan and rare and often incongruous with his image - of everyone, he's the last she'd expect to make a boy band reference - and she gets a kick out of how he's willing to expose it when they're alone.

They're at dinner in the District (dense population excuses them from discussing any aforementioned announcements) when he hauls her into a used bookstore and pulls an NSYNC CD from a bin.

She promises to take the fall if Reid gets suspicious, because she's selfish about keeping this side of him to herself.

5.23

The parallels are too obvious for her to ignore. She knows that as much as far as he's come these past months, he's not healed, and when he sees Ellie Spicer's face, he'll only see Jack.

She reaches across the clutch to rest a hand on his leg. "When we get back, let's take a couple days. Take Jack and go someplace quiet."

"And what? Act like we're a happy family?"

It's not completely unexpected, but she's not anticipating how much it hurts.

She gives him a week to decide what he wants, because she can't keep going like this.