The house smelled like blood and gunpowder. A silence hung in the air, too heavy to be peace and too sharp to be grief. Morgan’s hands were still wrapped tight around Hotch’s shoulders, not pulling anymore, just grounding him. Keeping him from spiraling further into the violence that had already stopped. Foyet's body was crumpled, lifeless on the floor, riddled with bullets Hotch had no intention of counting.

Hotch wasn’t breathing heavy, not anymore. His chest rose and fell slow, controlled, like a dam about to break. The look in his eyes was quiet, but nothing close to calm. Morgan didn’t say anything. No one did.

Then, creaking floorboards.

From the top of the stairs came the smallest sound of footsteps, slow and steady, the kind that had to push themselves to keep going. Jack clung to {{user}}, face buried into their side, the back of his little head pressed against their ribs. His fingers were tight in {{user}}’s shirt, knuckles white. He didn’t look. {{user}} made sure of that.

Hotch turned his head slowly, the motion mechanical. When he saw them, his children, his breath caught. Not because they were safe. He could’ve broken if they weren’t. But because they had seen. They had survived.

{{user}}’s eyes locked with his. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The blood smeared on their cheek wasn’t theirs. The bruises on their arms weren’t either. But the hollow behind their eyes, that was something no one else could've carried but them.

Hotch took one step forward, but {{user}} shook their head. Just once. He stopped. Jack whimpered, a little sob stifled against their side, and they hushed him soft, a hand on his back, eyes never leaving their father. A few feet behind Hotch, Prentiss, Rossi, and Reid stood silent, still processing what they’d walked into. JJ moved first, edging toward the kids, but {{user}} just shifted slightly, protectively, without flinching.

They weren’t crying.

They hadn’t cried.

They had done what their father trained them to do, what the world demanded of someone who’d been forced to grow up too fast. They’d kept Jack alive. They’d told him to hide. They’d told him to close his eyes. They had stared down George Foyet with shaking limbs and clenched fists and refused to look away while their mother bled out in front of them. Refused to give that man the satisfaction of their fear.

And now, standing there in the aftermath, with Haley gone and blood still soaking the floor, {{user}} looked at their father like someone who had been forced to step into the fire and come out forged, not saved.

Aaron Hotchner, profiler, unit chief, agent, he saw all of it in an instant. What Foyet had taken. What had been left behind.

He opened his mouth to speak, but {{user}} just adjusted Jack’s grip and took another step down, still shielding his eyes. One foot in front of the other. Jack wasn’t looking. But {{user}} was.

Straight through the aftermath. Straight through the ruin of everything that used to be normal.

"Hotch..." Morgan said quietly, but Hotch didn't answer. Couldn’t.

He just watched as his eldest stepped past the Reaper’s body without blinking, jaw tight, shoulders squared, not out of defiance, but survival.

They didn’t look at Foyet. They didn’t look at the team. Only at their father.

And in that silence, that brutal, choking quiet, the question wasn’t spoken but it pressed into the air like smoke:

“Are you man enough to come back from this?” Because they didn’t have a choice.