A/N: Um, so...I like reviews. So if you read the story, would you mind? I'm all insecure and stuff so it would be nice to know what people think. Good or bad.
Season Nine
I never noticed, hadn't seen it as it grew
The void between us where the flame turns blue
(David Gray)
9.01
Every now and then, he gets a reminder that if he stays stuck on what he had with Emily, he'll never be able to move forward. Wallace is another alarm bell.
He's been dreaming about her. Nothing tawdry, and no symbolism he can work out, but she's there, and when he wakes, he always wants five more minutes.
He thinks of putting her up for section chief, even if, first, she'd kill him, and second, it would be the epitome self-sabotage.
Maybe he was right all those years ago. Maybe she really will be his undoing.
Maybe he'll let her.
9.02
She reads about them in the paper. The old-fashioned, hard copy paper of record she gets every morning.
She cuts out the article and tacks it up in her office, and later she goes and gets copies to save for Jack and Henry, because it'll mean something someday.
This is why she likes the paper. She can find a story online and print it out, but it doesn't hold the same significance. This, this is proof of who they are. How good they are.
She doesn't care if they were trending on Twitter. She can't put that on a wall.
9.03
They know things about each other that no one else does. Things they've kept hidden out of fear and shame, things that are too hard to talk about. Things that no one else could begin to understand.
Outside the circle of "need to know," she's the only one aware of why he knows so much about snipers. And that, like most people who've been in his shoes, he has a number. Still does. Despite his best efforts, he can't stop counting.
He's never told anyone but her, doesn't trust anyone else to understand.
They're broken in all the same places.
9.04
By the time they're back from Baltimore, it's too late to call. He thinks briefly and somewhat stupidly of sending flowers until his sense kicks in and he remembers how incredibly inappropriate it would be.
Plus, she absolutely hates being thanked for doing her job. Even when it is above and beyond.
The next morning at breakfast he pawns the job off on his son, because he knows she likes things she can hoard, and she can't really get mad at him this way.
She sees through the ruse, but when she calls to scold him, he knows she's smiling.
9.05
She knows instantly that something is wrong. Feels it.
(He glimpses her from the corner of his eye. When he looks, she's never there.)
Rossi's quiet. "Hotch is in surgery. They think it's a complication from - "
"Foyet."
(In the sepia film, he sees a flash of red. He always loved her in red.)
He's always been their quiet champion, so it stings when Rossi reminds her she can't just get on a plane.
(He's seen those earrings before, but not on Haley.)
"Tell him I…"
"I will."
(She tells him to choose. If only it were that easy.)
9.06
He's never been so grateful for Penelope Garcia's eccentricities as when he puts that picture of Haley on the alter, because he can just make eye contact with the plastic ball staring at him from his wine glass.
He almost pretends to have forgotten, but then Reid puts up a picture of Maeve and he hears Emily's voice from months ago, spilling that Spencer's afraid to look weak in front of him, still confuses Hotch's stoicism with superhero status.
His ofrenda is strength: a reminder of Haley's, a sacrifice for Reid, and gratitude to Emily for giving him so much.
9.07
He knows it will make her smile, and he tells himself that's why he sends her the video of Rossi and the Profilers, as Garcia names them two songs in. He tells himself it's innocent, that he's not sending it, at least in part, because it will make her miss them.
And it does. She watches it a dozen times, laughing and glad to see Reid smiling and, just as he'd known, it makes her ache for home. She keeps it to herself, for so many reasons, but she still thinks of it as home.
Because that's where he is.
9.08
It's bad enough that Gallino's stripped away their identities and their innocence, and he knows enough about brainwashing and reprogramming to know there's no guarantee they'll ever be the same.
But the last boy…he's Jack's age.
He lays awake that night and finally reaches for the phone, hesitating because he knows Beth can't understand. She's adjusting to the darkness of his job, and he shares little bits now and then, things that bother him, but this…
Emily's the only one who's seen him from both sides, as a father and an agent, who he can call when the twain meet.
9.09
Rossi is subdued when they return. Hotch pours and they sit silently, until a story emerges, aided by alcohol and an empty stomach.
He couches it in vagueness, but he has a feeling it's pointless. He talks about impulsive youthfulness and the blurry line between innocence and immorality, about trying to forget only to realize that nothing truly stays buried.
That night, he lays awake wondering if dancing a fraction of an inch too close to someone else had closed a part of him down to Haley, and whether he'd change things if he could.
He's not sure he would.
9.10
He doesn't so much study his team as it's habit by now to gauge their microexpressions, the way they move in the field, who avoids certain crime scenes.
Even though he hasn't known her as long, he's able to read Blake. Part of what makes her fit with the team is the qualities she shares with Emily, intellectually and emotionally. And it's why he can see that something about the Tafferts' grief is too familiar to her.
Later, when she confides in him about her son's death, the same age as Jack, he wishes he couldn't read her so well.
9.11
At some point, they've all had their personal lives dragged into a case. Sometimes more literally than others, when friends and family have gotten tangled in the mess.
For him, irrevocably so.
When the initial grief over Haley's death had worn off, he'd been assaulted by guilt, knowing how far the team had gone for him - how far she had gone for him - while he'd stuck to the book when she'd come to him about Matthew.
He's never been able to shake the feeling that if he'd done things differently then, she might've come to him about Doyle.
9.12
Garcia calls her, breathlessly recounting her brief encore as the Black Queen. Emily's heard the origin story, as Penelope likes to call it, before, as well as Hotch's tale of their first encounter. She's appropriately silent when Garcia tells her parts she shouldn't already know.
And then come the details of the sexual harassment seminar and whatever the hell "flarpy blunderguff" is, which she implores Garcia to keep to herself.
She wonders how the perpetually unamused HR rep would feel if she knew how often Emily used to call her boss by his full title when she was undressing him.
9.13
He tries not to play the "what if" game, but sometimes he can't help it. In Cleveland, Walsh makes him wonder, not for the first time, where he'd be if he'd lost Jack as well as Haley.
It was Jack that kept him going in those first few weeks. He'd slept, eaten, and breathed only for his son. And still, it had been a razor-thin line he'd walked some days, just barely holding it together.
If he'd lost Jack, he's not sure there would have been anything keeping him from going down the same path as Walsh.
Not even Emily.
9.14
"Six hours?" The bar's nearly empty, their friends long gone.
"Three now."
"Nothing's changed, Emily."
"I know." She smiles sadly. "But…nothing's changed."
He nods, brushes a hand over hers. He knows what he's doing isn't good for either of them, but she's so close. "Come home with me."
"Hotch - "
"To see Jack. You can fly back tomorrow."
Emotion and adrenaline spark in the heat between them, and she knows what will happen if she goes with him.
"Can we just sit here awhile?"
He nods. He knows as well as she does - that's all they get anymore.
9.15
When Jack finds out he missed Emily, Hotch learns that his son has inherited his glare. There's no tantrum or yelling, and it scares him, because it's a controlled rage beyond Jack's years.
He's spared the eternal wrath of an eight-year-old when Beth suggests a Valentine's Day Skype date.
He sets Jack up online while he has his own rendezvous in cyberspace, and is floored to find them still engaged an hour later. When Jack glowers at the interruption, he hears a fit of hysterics from Emily's side.
Turns out, Jack takes after his father in more ways than one.
9.16
More kids without a home, without someone to love them, and yet, there's a woman who would. He knows she tried to downplay it, brush it off as a passing urge, but he recognized that look in her eyes when she thought he couldn't see. The way she'd smile a little sadly when she'd hold Henry, the way she'd glow when they'd go out with Jack and strangers would comment on what a beautiful family they were.
He wonders if, subconsciously, she and Jack decided to fill a vacancy in one another's lives, something just adjacent to mother and son.
9.17
Reid's voice carries to his office, and he hears something about the boy's mother and her on a mule being as unbelievable as Hotch on a beach. He has to smile at that, because he knows the image they all have of him, that he'd wear a suit and tie if he ever did venture onto sand.
Primarily because Emily had once confessed that she and JJ and Garcia had joked about that exact scenario.
A month after that revelation, he'd eked out a few days and taken her and Jack to Virginia Beach.
He hadn't brought a single tie.
9.18
There's a safe in his office, just big enough for his firearms and a pile of folders, each one marked with the name of an agent. All of them, going back to Gideon, because even though he's offered them back, not one has accepted.
In each folder is a will and an advanced directive. They know the risks they run every day.
Hearing the recording of Cunningham's brother, realizing what his parents had done, makes it hard to look at that safe for days, because inside is a piece of paper bestowing upon him an impossible responsibility: ending Emily's life.
9.19
He doesn't have time to process what Morgan tells him about his latest interview with Daria, because he kicks into prosecutor mode, trying to salvage their case. He realizes too late that sitting in on the trial is a mistake. Joe's been well-prepped by his lawyer and Hotch curses quietly to himself when they shift blame to Daria.
The plea deal is inevitable, and so are the nightmares.
He knows there's some lines she'd have had to cross and others she never would. But that's the catch - he knows Emily. Trusts her with his life.
Lauren was not Emily.
9.20
Blake's eyes are closed, but she speaks the moment he sits down. "I appreciate the concern, Hotch, but you don't have to brave the pond stink to check on me."
"I thought I'd reassure you that you wouldn't be the first agent to wash your hair in the jet's lavatory."
Her eyes open and she grins. "Bless you, Aaron Hotchner. I hadn't even thought of that."
As she hustles away, he remembers the flight from Milwaukee, Emily's hair caked with blood before JJ led her to the sink.
When she'd emerged with wet hair, it had taken his breath away.
9.21
He's never actually been drunk-dialed before. Drunk texted, yes, but as far as he's concerned, he's spared the annoyance because no one in their right mind would want to talk to him in that state.
Granted, he's found Emily tends to abandon her right mind when she's drinking.
He gathers something about a bad blind date but doesn't press, just listens to her ramble in Franglish and tells her about their latest case when she asks.
He wishes their complicated history wasn't a secret, because the team deserves the pleasure of hearing her try to pronounce "Mecklinburg" over and over.
9.22
Hotch tactfully avoids eye contact with Jack's teacher as she scuttles the class out to the waiting bus, one student lighter. With Dave's urging and assurances from the team that they'll happily pick up the slack, he's cleared his afternoon.
He leaves Jack engaged in a desk chair race with Morgan and Reid while he collects his things. When he comes back down five minutes later, he's surprised to find his son crouched by Blake's desk, the latter kneeling beside him.
Admiring the sticker Jack knows is there, because it used to be Emily's desk.
She's ever-present in their lives.
9.23
It's not until they're gathered at the hospital, waiting for word on Reid, that he realizes the parallel.
Five and a half years ago, Emily had put life on the line to spare Reid, and now he's done the same for Blake.
There's a litany of ways in which the two women are alike, but for Reid, it's one very common link: they've both acted instinctively as mothers, as protectors, to him. He's felt at times, discussing Reid with Emily, like they were talking about their child, rather than a peer.
He smiles, because their genius is all grown up.
9.24
He calls with the intention of filling her in so she doesn't have to hear bits and pieces elsewhere.
Instead, hearing her voice when she answers sets loose all of what's happened in the last few days and he lays it all bare: almost losing Reid, Blake's resignation, Garcia with a gun, all of it, and that he'd been certain in the middle of it he'd never see Jack again.
He hears himself, voice rough, asking her to come back, because he needs her.
He's too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to realize she's crying when she tells him she can't.