Hi All. Welcome to chapter one of More Than A Team: The Final Member. This is the first in a series of stories that will all be under the umbrella of More Than A Team, I hope to write new stories for this series frequently. This story is complete and was going to be written as a one shot, but it immediately became too long for a one shot, so I wrote it as eight separate chapters. Updates should be weekly unless something drastic happens. This is an introduction to my OC and not a full representation of what future stories will be like.

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal minds, if I did then Aaron Hotchner certainly wouldn't have left, and neither would Derek Morgan! Pepper Rosanne Lee is my own original character, but all other recognisable characters belong to Jeff Davis, I just like to use them to do my bidding.

Series Summary: The Criminal Minds team is more than just a team, they spend so much time with each other, relying on each other, and wrapped up in each other's lives they are practically family. This is how the family makes sure they stay a family even when rules are broken.

Story Summary: This is the story of Pepper Rosanne Lee, how she went from a victim of an Unsub that Jason and David were hunting, to the eighth member of their team. AU, OC, AaronXHaley, starts Season two. Warnings inside please read, rated M for good reason.

Warning: This story involves Criminal Mind cases, if you've watched Criminal Minds, you know what I mean, I've tried not to be too graphic, but there is abuse, kidnapping, murder, and rape, if this is triggering, please be careful. This story also involves the spanking of minors and adults, don't like, don't read.

A huge, huge thank you to my wonderful and amazing beta, Jules Ann, she is quite literally my Magical Muse Mender and when I get stuck just talking to her can help me figure my way past a block. She has helped me so much with all my stories and my writing, I would be utterly lost without her.

~o~

Pepper was born to an infamous serial preferential pedophile who kidnapped, repeatedly raped and then, once his victims grew too old for his tastes, murdered them. He took twelve, thirteen, and fourteen-year-old girls and would torture and abuse them until they turned fifteen at which point, he would dispose of them… if they survived that long, not all of them did; most only lasted a few months. He would always have more though, never less than three victims at one time, sometimes as many as five. Pepper's mother had been a particular favorite of her father, the first time he was able to fulfil his perfect fantasy, when he'd shifted from merely raping and murdering, to getting away with kidnapping. She had died giving birth, but by then he already had two other victims and they had protected the infant.

Over the years Pepper had many names and many Mommies, but only ever one Daddy. She learnt quickly that Daddy would go away for three reasons, one to take Mommy to the bye-bye place, two to get her a new Mommy, three to get more food, all other times Daddy was home, and her Mommies took care of him and took care of the house. All her Mommies told her to stay away from her Daddy and she tried to, but sometimes she got in the way and Daddy would hurt her. She was smart and learnt to hide, learnt to be sneaky, learnt how to read not only the mood of her Daddy, but the mood of her Mommies. She learnt how to sneak her Mommies food and water when Daddy wasn't looking, she learnt to slip around the house, a silent ghost, to watch and observe. She learnt things no child should ever need to learn, but she had to, it was the only way to survive. There was a part of her that had nothing to do with survival however, she had a spark of curiosity in her that, despite everything, refused to die.

Flashback

Pepper knew Daddy had come home with a new Mommy and she really wanted to meet her, she generally wasn't supposed to until Daddy said so, but Daddy was away right now so she gave in to her curiosity, as she had done the previous few times. She slipped into the basement where her new Mommy would be kept, like all the others had been, she hid silently, just watching for a moment. Normally she stayed hidden and only watched for a brief moment, but that no longer satisfied her curiosity, so she slipped into view, half hiding as she didn't want to draw too much attention to herself. She was rarely allowed in the basement, only with her other Mommies when they came in to clean. Daddy frequently took one or more of her Mommies down here and she wasn't to follow.

Nicole was absolutely terrified, her kidnapper hadn't done anything to her yet, but his threats and words, as well as the dead girl, who couldn't have been much older than her, that he dragged out in front of her, had her shaking in fear. She almost didn't believe it when she saw a tiny naked red-headed child step into the basement, ineffectively hiding herself, "hey, hey, please help me," she pleaded.

Pepper looked behind her, half expecting Daddy to appear out of nowhere, she was nervous, she'd never been this daring before, if there was anything that would make Daddy make her go bye-bye, this could be it. The fact her new Mommy was tied up by her wrists and hanging naked didn't bother her at all. Daddy liked to tie up her Mommies lots, and new Mommies were always tied up like this until Daddy gave them a room, and she and her Mommies never wore clothes, Daddy said they weren't allowed clothes. "You're my new Mommy," she stated.

Nicole felt a pit of dread open up in her stomach and more tears ran down her cheeks, was this child the child of the man who had taken her? How many other 'Mommies' had this girl had? Trying desperately to keep it together, feeling certain this was her only chance of escape, she nodded whimpering, "y-yes, I… I am. Can you… can you do something for me-Mommy please?" She begged.

Pepper nodded, "yuh huh, okay," she agreed easily. She was used to doing things for her Mommies, she helped with some chores, or stayed in places when they told her too. Her Mommies asking her to do things whilst crying was completely normal, and they all referred to themselves as Mommy. The normality of the situation helped her relax and she came out from her hiding place fully.

Nicole forced a shaky smile on her face, "good girl, do you see that phone there?" She motioned with her foot to the phone. He had been tormenting her with it before, even when he left, laughing cruelly, taunting her that all she needed to do was free herself and she could call whoever she wanted.

Pepper recoiled from the phone, that was one of Daddy's rules, she mustn't touch the phone, ever. She shook her head rapidly, "not 'llowed to touch the phone. Daddy will be mad. Don't like it when Daddy is mad. When he mad at Mommies, he makes them go bye-byes, don't wanna go bye-byes," she confessed softly. She slowly edged out of the basement, her curiosity was satisfied for now, she'd met her new Mommy and she'd even spoken to her. She had learnt well to avoid making Daddy mad, though her curiosity sometimes caused her to make mistakes, she didn't like making mistakes, Daddy would hit her when she did. Sometimes Daddy would hit her when she didn't make mistakes, at least not mistakes she identify, he just seemed to like hitting her at times. Touching the phone, that would be about the worst thing she could do, Daddy would be furious, and she never ever wanted to make him furious again. She had, once before, and one of her Mommies protected her and Daddy made her go bye-byes right in front of her. She glanced at the door, Daddy would still be gone for some time, she could slip out and return to her room, waiting for Daddy to come back and let her other Mommies out of their rooms.

Nicole cursed mentally, and desperately tried to come up with a way to convince the little girl to take the phone. She saw her edging out of the room, "wait! Don't go please! It's okay… it is. Daddy… Daddy said I could call one person, but… but he forgot to let me down. Daddy won't be mad at you for doing what Mommy said I promise," she babbled half hysterically.

Fortunately for Nicole, Pepper was used to her other Mommies giving her instructions in such a way. She relaxed and looked at the phone and then her new Mommy again before shrugging. "Okay… I gets it for you," she agreed.

"C-can you make the call please? Do you know your numbers? Can you call 9-1-1?" Nicole asked trying to keep the desperate hope and pleading out of her voice.

Pepper nodded, "yuh huh, before Mommy taught me numbers, I can count really high! Will you lemme read to you afters? Other Mommies locked up in their rooms so can't help me when I get stuck," she pouted. She bounced over to the phone and picked it up.

"Absolutely, anything you want, we can do anything you want once you make Mommy's phone call," Nicole promised.

Pepper quickly dialed in 9-1-1, she held the phone up to her ear and waited for someone to pick up.

"Hello, 9-1-1, what is your emergency?"

Pepper frowned a little not sure why her new Mommy felt there was an emergency, "I dunno, my new Mommy told me to call you," she answered slightly confused.

The 9-1-1 operator instantly felt slightly concerned by what she heard, "hi sweetie, can I talk to your new Mommy please?"

Pepper shook her head, "no, new Mommy is tied up. All new Mommies stay tied up here in the basement. I not supposed to be here with new Mommy, Daddy doesn't let me."

The 9-1-1 operator knew something was definitely up now. "Where is your Daddy now?" She asked wanting to first make sure the young child on the line was safe. She waved over her superiors and notice was quickly spread to the local police station.

"Daddy's out making sleeping Mommy go bye-byes, he won't be back until it's dark I thinks," Pepper admitted.

"Tell them my name is Nicole Grant," Nicole begged.

"My new Mommy says to tell you her name is Nicole Grant," Pepper told the lady on the phone with a shrug.

David Rossi and Jason Gideon were working on the case and had already connected the recent disappearance of Nicole Grant with the disappearances of a rather large pool of potential other victims. When the officer alerted them to a 9-1-1 call taking place and directed them to the location the landline was registered at, they headed straight there.

The operator managed to keep Pepper on the line, asking her seemingly light questions, but ones that gathered the necessary information.

David and Jason entered the isolated farmhouse and David carried Pepper out after wrapping her in his jacket.

Events after that became somewhat of a blur to Pepper, the girls who'd been her Mommies had no longer wanted anything to do with her, so she'd clung to David and Jason rather tightly, not wanting them to leave her alone too. She didn't realize it at the time, but they questioned her together, expertly getting more information from her. She was able to identify a lot of the missing girls as her old Mommies, showing that she had an eidetic memory. She couldn't identify all of the victims; some she only had the strangest vaguest memories of others she'd been too young to have any memories of at all. One of the missing girls was easy to identify as she looked so much like her, even though she had never seen this girl she knew it was her mother. That was how she picked her name, wanting to call herself after her mother and the two men that rescued her, Pepper Rosanne. Without a DNA test to confirm, there was no way to be sure, but due to their striking physical resemblance, Pepper was allowed to use the girl assumed to be her mother's surname of Lee too.

Flashback over

Pepper shook her head as she arrived at the carpark for the FBI headquarters, smiling to herself as she looked down at her badge. After what she'd been through, she didn't really think her life could have gone any other way… well other than becoming the type of criminal she was about to help hunt down. Before she'd been rescued, she'd only known that life, it was normal to her, although even she was starting to question things. As soon as she was exposed to the real world, the horror of what she'd been through started becoming apparent. She'd had some therapy, but no one understood just how advanced she was and once she was placed in a foster home the therapy stopped. There were some attempts to shield her from the media coverage, in the beginning, but for her own safety her history was kept secret and her foster parents had no idea she even needed protecting.

The nightmares and guilt started shortly after she saw a tv interview one of her 'Mommies' did.

Flashback

Things were still very new to Pepper; she was amazed by the simplest of things having never seen them before. Her main fascination was the TV, and she'd quickly learnt that if she slipped down into the den in the basement, she could watch whatever she wanted on the smaller TV down there, especially if one of the other children was causing trouble. She never caused trouble, she was quiet, observing, taking in all the new things around her, learning all she could. The TV was a great source of information for her, and she loved learning what it had to teach her. She flicked onto a new channel, wondering what this particular channel had to teach her, feeling a stirring of happiness seeing one of her Mommies on there, smiling at the screen.

"So, Fiona, you don't mind if I call you Fiona, do you?" The man on the TV asked her Mommy, whose real name was apparently Fiona.

Fiona shook her head and gave a small smile, "no, you can call me Fiona."

"Thank you, Fiona, please call me Harvey," Harvey invited.

Fiona gave a slight nod.

Harvey, the interviewer shifted forward in his seat, "can you take us back to eight months ago, when you were first taken? What happened?"

Fiona took a deep breath, "I… it was just a normal day. I was walking home from school with my friends, the same route we always walked. There's a short cut, we weren't supposed to go down it, no one was, but we always did, loads of us did. That was fine, and then we went our separate ways, I cut across a parking lot, and that's where he grabbed me. He grabbed me from behind and put his arm around my neck, choking me, I don't really remember much after that. I woke up sometime later, I couldn't see, I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, I had a hood over my head, and I was gagged with duct tape, other than that I was completely naked, tied up, shoved in a hold-all. I was terrified and didn't know what to do, where I was, where I was being taken, and I just started crying." As she spoke tears started running down her cheeks.

Harvey handed over a handkerchief, "I don't doubt you were terrified. Do you know why he picked you?"

Fiona took the handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes before she shook her head, "no, he didn't seem to stalk me, or anyone he took really. When he'd leave to get someone new, we never knew how long he'd be gone, but it was only a few days, a week at most, so I don't think he had time to stalk anyone. It all just seemed to be wrong place, wrong time. I think… I think he would hang out in places, like the parking lot, where girls my age would be likely to be."

"Did any of the other girls tell you how he got them?" Harvey asked curiously.

Fiona shook her head again, "no, we didn't really… you have to understand, we all… we didn't really…" She trailed off. She shook her head again, taking a deep breath, "we didn't become friends, we didn't talk to one another much. It was horrific enough without becoming friends with the other girls, knowing he would kill them eventually, that any bonding would be used against us. It was easier to keep your head down and focus on getting through each day in as little pain as possible. We would only speak to the little girl, it was the only thing we talked about really, and even then, it wasn't really talking, just passing on a message. She was to be protected, be good and kind to her and she'd make life easier for us. She would sneak us food and water when he wouldn't feed us, she'd talk to us, and it was a moment of distraction from the horror. With the other girls, it was better her than me," she confessed weakly.

Harvey patted her hand sympathetically nodding along with her, "I doubt we could even begin to imagine how we'd cope in that kind of situation. Did you ever try and fight him? Try to escape?"

Fiona gave a shudder of horror, "me personally? No. I didn't. I don't know how long we travelled for, but once he got me to the farm, he pulled me out from the boot of the car and carried me in the hold-all into the house and down to the… down to the…" she couldn't make herself say it. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, "he took me down to the basement," she forced out. She took a sip of the bottle of water on the table, her hands shaking terribly. "I was in so much pain, I'd been tied up for… I don't even know how long, my arms and legs were in agony, I hadn't eaten, or had anything to drink, I was so weak. He dumped me out onto the floor, removing the bonds, then quickly attached cuffs to my wrists and the cuffs to a large chain attached to a pulley. I was pulled up, my feet barely touching the floor, before the hood was removed and the duct tape that I'd been gagged with ripped off my face. I was trying to get my bearings, trying to get my brain to catch up with what was going on, then laughing he pulled out the body of a d-dead girl," she sobbed.

Harvey gasped and looked horrified.

"I could just about recognize her. I'd seen her, on the news, she'd gone missing three months before, shortly before Christmas, but she'd disappeared three states away from where I lived. Even though it had only been three months, she was so much skinnier, but that wasn't why I could only just recognize her. She was battered and bruised, all over, there was no part of her that hadn't been beaten to a bloody pulp. H-he said she was too much trouble, wouldn't stop fighting him, tried to run. He kept me in the basement for, I don't know how long, but for the girls that he took after me it was normally about two weeks, and we were all pretty broken after that. One girl he took after me, she was a fighter, he didn't have a dead body to show off to her when he took her. He tortured her to death in front of us, when she'd managed to land a punch on him, dragged us all down t-to the b-basement. It took hours, she stopped fighting long before she stopped screaming, and even then, the torture continued until she was dead. D-did you know it is possible to die from pain? I think that… I think that was the cause of her death. After that, when he brought the next new girl in, we told her not to fight, that fighting only made things worse," Fiona recalled.

"I dare say that… that's probably what saved you, what allowed you to survive long enough to be rescued," Harvey suggested only slightly awkwardly.

Fiona took a moment to try and compose herself and shake off the horrific memories of her six months in that house. "Maybe, but it wasn't about survival, you quickly accept that one day you won't survive, one day he'll kill you. You just try and get through each day without getting hurt as much as possible. I… I was a favorite of h-his. H-he liked that I didn't fight, after a while I barely even cried, I didn't make him angry, so he didn't beat me as much," she shrugged. "When you're in that situation, you don't really want to survive, not when survival means more abuse, more pain, more suffering. There was no real hope of rescue, the little girl, she was four when I was taken, her mother, she was the first girl he took, he'd been getting away with it for over five years, he liked to gloat about that, how he was too clever to get caught. One of the girls that had been there when I was taken, she just died in her room, she gave up, and we all kind of wanted that, but the will to survive is hard to overcome. Another girl was actually able to take her own life, I was never brave enough to do that," she shook her head.

"Yes, the little girl, she's the one who called 9-1-1, under the direction of Nicole Grant?" Harvey inquired.

Fiona nodded and even managed a small, slightly fond, smile, "she was the one piece of light in that hell. She was so sweet and innocent, despite all the horror around her. When she'd sit and read to you, for a moment you could almost pretend it wasn't happening, even though she was just reading take out menus. She didn't understand what was going on around her, but you could see she was beginning to question things. She was smart, really smart, and I'm beyond grateful to her for how she saved us, saved me. I know she must have been terrified, he beat her too, though we tried to protect her, she was starting to understand that things weren't right, she was beginning to challenge him. I don't know how she found the strength to do what she did, but she was fearless, she was really special."

Harvey smiled, "it sounds like you became very fond of her?"

Fiona sighed, "it was hard not too, like I said, she'd steal food for us, she'd sneak water to us, she risked his fury multiple times. At first, I protected her because that was the only rule that we had for each other. The only rule the other girls told me about. Then it was because they were right, things did get easier if you were nice to her. One girl wasn't, she refused to let her call her Mommy and would push her away. When he locked us up and we had to rely on the little girl to get us water, she didn't get any for her, she died of dehydration when he didn't get back soon enough. Eventually though, yes, I did become fond of her," she admitted.

Harvey nodded in understanding, "as everyone knows, Percy W Hurst, the man responsible for all this, was killed in a high-speed chase trying to evade capture, so there will be no trial, but if there was, is there anything you'd have liked to say to him? To the little girl who was pivotal in rescuing you? To the girls who are no longer with us? To the other girls who were rescued with you? Basically, is there anything more you want to say?"

Fiona paused and considered the question, "to h-him… no. I don't… I don't have anything to say. To the little girl, I just hope she's doing okay and though he was her father, she's nothing like him, and I wish her the best. To-to the g-girls who weren't… who aren't… who died, I… I don't know, I hope one day they'll find your bodies, but he's gone now, he can't hurt anyone else. For the girls rescued with me, I hope you're doing okay, that you're getting therapy, I don't know yet if there is a light at the end of this tunnel, but we're survivors and that has to mean something, we can't let him win."

Harvey took Fiona's hand and gave it a squeeze, "I think that was perfect. Thank you so much Fiona, for your outstanding bravery and for your candor in speaking out honestly about your horrific experience. I hope you can eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel, you're an incredibly strong and brave young girl being able to come here and tell your story. That's all we have time for folks, I hope you'll give a round of applause for our incredible guest."

Pepper was no longer smiling, instead she had tears streaming down her cheeks and she felt sick. The horror of what she'd experienced hitting her like a freight train. She scrambled to her feet but tripped over the rug and ended up vomiting all over the floor as she sobbed, and then passed out.

Her foster mother found Pepper curled up in the fetal position, laying in her vomit and sobbing. She sighed in frustration and dragged the child up to the bathroom, giving the child a shake when she wouldn't stop crying. Forcing some children's Tylenol on her when she couldn't get out of her what was hurting, or why she was sick and just putting her to bed.

Flashback over

After weeks of being tormented by nightmares and waking the whole house screaming, Pepper's foster father lost his temper and screamed at her, terrifying the life out of her. That night was the first time she ran away, ran to the BAU and to the only two people she felt she could trust, David Rossi and Jason Gideon.

~o~

There you go, that was chapter one, that was the most graphic of the chapters, and I hope you're still with me and that I'll see you next week for the next chapter. Drop a review and let me know your thoughts, reviews really make my day and motivate me to write more.