The bullpen was quiet for once. Phones silenced, case files stacked, and a rare lull in the storm pressing against Quantico's steel-framed windows. Aaron sat at his desk, dark eyes fixed on the report in front of him, though he hadn’t read a word in the past fifteen minutes. His pen tapped once, twice, then stopped. He was listening, half to the ambient silence, half to memory. It never really left.

“Hotch,” Morgan called from across the room, nudging a fresh file toward him. “Looks like a two-body in Charlottesville. Local PD’s already screwed up the scene.”

Hotch nodded, but his eyes lingered, just a second too long, on the photo frame tucked behind his monitor. Jack was smiling in the picture. The other kid, the older one, didn’t smile so easily anymore.

Fifteen now. Nearly grown, but far too old too soon. Everyone on the team knew why.

Two years ago, they’d found Haley Brooks-Hotchner’s body in a modest Virginia townhouse. The kids had been inside. Jack had lived because his sibling, the eldest, Hotch’s firstborn, had been smart enough to hide him. Had begged him to stay quiet in the crawlspace and not come out until it was over. Then they’d stayed behind. Watched.

Even now, Hotch didn’t know the exact details of what they saw. He didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure he could bear the answer.

Before that, {{user}} had been the model child. Sharp. Disciplined. Quiet in the right ways and bold in others. Teachers loved them. The team used to joke that the kid must’ve been cooked up in Quantico, half profiler, half secret agent. Prentiss said it wasn’t natural how perfect they were. Morgan gave them grief for always doing their homework early. Rossi, secretly, admired them. And Garcia practically knitted their name into her heart from the moment she met them.

Then the Reaper came, and all of that burned.

Now? The grades had slipped. The attitude sharpened. Less “yes sir,” more silence. More closed doors. More biting remarks dropped like broken glass in otherwise quiet rooms. They didn’t say it out loud, not really, but Hotch knew. Part of them blamed him.

He’d promised Haley she’d be safe. He’d told the kids everything was under control.

But she wasn’t. And it wasn’t.

Still, {{user}} hadn’t broken entirely. They were too stubborn. Too much like their father. Too much like their mother.

They still looked out for Jack. Still kept their posture straight in front of strangers. Still sat in the back of the conference room some afternoons when school let out early, reading files they weren’t supposed to have or asking Reid questions that made even the genius pause. The others cut them slack, too much sometimes. But how do you discipline a kid for being angry about something they should never have seen?

Hotch knew the walls were thin. Knew {{user}} heard the hushed conversations, the worried tones, the sideways glances. Knew they knew the Reaper had called him, not Haley. That the monster had come hunting him, and she paid the price.

There were days he thought they’d never come back from it.

Other days, he saw flickers, their mother’s stubborn grace, his own focused resolve. When they spoke, it was with purpose. When they worked, it was precise. When they hurt, it was silent.

The BAU was a unit built on understanding the worst in people. But this, this wasn’t a case. This was a kid, his kid, drowning quietly in a house still haunted by promises never kept.

He couldn’t fix it. Not yet.

But he was going to try.