Summary
A ghost from the BAU past reappears and drags up unfinished business for Aaron Hotchner. The ripples are enough to call back missing team members and spread well beyond the circle of his influence.
Tags
James “Bucky” Barnes/Emily Prentiss
Timeline What Timeline, MCU fusion, Criminal Minds fusion, Implied Past Non-Con, liberties were taken with the legal system, Case Fic, International Fanworks Day 2023, No One Is Okay, canon typical trauma, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Excerpt
The hand of the watch stuttered as it ticked forward. Of course it did. The cheap, quartz-driven mechanism wasn’t up to the degree of atomic precision the Mission deserved. The watches had been bought in bulk from overseas two corporate shell-games ago. Untraceable, carrying no zombie-link to snitch on them and expose their location. There would be time for that later. Much later. He wondered if he would be there to witness it. A selfish wish.
“Head down, shoulders up. Don’t fidget. Don’t draw attention. You’re no-one. You are everyone. You’re the City. You belong where they don’t.”
The gun in his hand is heavy. As carefully coated in anonymity as the rest of him, it was small, disposable. Heavy. As the seconds tick the implications piled up, a leaded drape of doubts. Weakness. Too late now.
The stroke of noon echoed in tandem with the crack of his gun. One bullet. One dead.
Make them feel it.
We’re here.
**
“Yes. Are you sure?”
Hotch hears the thin electronic voice through the government-approved landline. But he’s really listening to his own voice, saying these same words across a gulf of years. The desk under his fingers feels like bone instead of polished wood. Vertebrae doused with arterial bleed, desperation and the screaming din of smoke in air.
“We’re on our way.”
Compartmentalizing. Part of himself takes notes, grabs his go bag from its transient home beneath his desk. The mountain of paperwork will await another night, to be brought home while Jack sleeps. While Jack talks about his day at school and of all the bright things out in his world, where sometimes his Dad can follow but never, quite, Hotch.
Phone trees ring into the night, calling back the team, to rip them from the shreds of their lives. again. Hotch walks down to the file storage. There was one more thing he needed before the flight.
The other parts of Aaron Hotchner walk along the sour-coffee and ink ghost of Jason Gideon, and the raw burnt edges of Elle’s memory, along with all those he’d lost to this unit before. All those who got away.
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