Work Text:
Of Innocence and Empathy - Controlling Compassion
by Frogg
Hotch reached out unerringly and snagged his cellphone from the nightstand, flipping it open in the darkness with a practiced flick of his wrist. "Hotch here."
A strange clicking sound cut the silence, the sharp thwock of a tongue grating against the palate.
"JJ?" Caller ID had displayed her number. "Is there something wrong?"
"Hotch...I..." Her voice was tight, strangled, and Hotch knew she'd been crying.
Hotch sat up in bed, the comforter and sheets falling to his waist. Haley stirred beside him, her hand twitching against his free arm. "JJ?"
"I'm sorry, I--" She cut herself off again.
"Where are you? I'm going to come get you."
"'m...on the hood...," JJ gasped. A mumble followed.
A knot took up residence in Hotch's gut. "Just a second." He swung himself over the edge of the bed and stood, acknowledging Haley's whispered, "I'll go make some coffee," with a distracted nod as he crossed to the front window. A quick peek out beyond the edge of the curtain confirmed his suspicions.
JJ's car sat in the driveway, JJ herself curled in a fetal position on the hood, phone clenched in her fist.
"JJ, hold on, I'll be right down." Hotch waited for JJ's choked affirmative before hanging up, then pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Shoes were ignored in favor of haste.
When he got there, JJ was shaking, tufts of hair sprouting in odd clumps from between her fingers. "Come on inside." Moving slowly, he rested a hand on her shoulder, waiting as she slowly uncurled and slid off the side.
"I, I'm sorry," she whispered.
"JJ, you need me, I'm here. That's what makes us a team." Hotch watched in concern as JJ wrapped her arms across her abdomen, hunching her shoulders. "Come on, Haley's making coffee and we can talk about whatever's bothering you."
JJ laughed bitterly, the sound quickly changing to a sob. "How can you stand it, Hotch?" she asked, stumbling up the stairs.
Hotch caught her, hands gentle on her arms.
Meeting his eyes for the first time that night, JJ tilted her head back stubbornly. "Did you see? Did anyone? Did all of us miss--"
"JJ."
JJ frowned, but turned and went inside, pausing only to glance back at Hotch as she crossed over the threshold.
Moments later, they were settled on the couch, JJ with a knit throw tucked around her shoulders.
"You asked me how can I stand it. What do you mean by 'it'?"
"Knowing. Morgan was...I can't even bring myself to say it. And, and I heard what you said to Perotta. And watching Hankel - any of them - torture Reid on that damn computer screen..." JJ's voice trailed off, and she paused to accept a mug of coffee from Haley. "How can you stand knowing, and knowing you didn't know? That you didn't even see...?"
"I keep asking myself that. I have for a very long time." Hotch shrugged, accepting his own mug of coffee and a kiss on the cheek from his wife; Haley tactfully withdrew and went back upstairs to give them privacy. "I tell myself that the only ones responsible for hurting the people I care about are the UnSubs. I make sure that my team knows I'm not just their boss, I'm their friend, and I'm here if they need to talk. I protect them from whatever I can, and try and forgive myself for what I can't."
JJ laughed harshly, the look in her eyes tortured before she lowered her gaze to her lap. "I was there, in the conference room...watching everyone's skin crawl, knowing everyone was seeing Reid in those photos. I saw Reid all but jump out of his skin when he saw...I picked that case because I knew the other teams wouldn't--that it wouldn't be personal for them. That it wouldn't mean--" She choked on a sob, brushing her hair back with a trembling hand. "And then Reid tells you he's not going undercover, and I'm standing there wondering what the hell I missed. Why you and Gideon and Morgan looked like you wanted to carry Reid off and lock him in some ivory tower. And then--and then I, I remembered the last time. The last time he'd volunteered to go undercover, and realized...and you looked at me..."
"JJ?" Hotch said her name quietly in the tiny space left by a sip of coffee.
"You have to know, Hotch. You have to know, I never would have picked that case if I'd, if I'd..."
"JJ, if you'd known, you'd have avoided every serial rapist case we've taken since then, just on principle. It's how we all are about Reid, but it's not what he needs from us." Hotch paused to sip his own coffee. "He just needs us to be his friends, and not to treat him like fine china."
"After this one, I don't think I'll be able to choose another rapist case for a while."
Hotch nodded. "I don't think the team will blame you. I already talked to Merrick about it."
JJ stared down into her coffee cup, watching as the dark liquid swirled around and around. "It was Raphael, wasn't it?" she asked finally, sniffing. "I mean, he talked about Charles, and Tobias, but...he only ever mentioned Raphael making him choose. Nothing else. Nothing we, we didn't see, nothing he couldn't..."
"Yes."
"Why didn't we see? Why didn't I see? We got there too late to do anything, and I hugged him, and...He didn't flinch, or hesitate...There should have been something, some sign..." Tears glazed her eyes and she closed them, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"We dont know...everything. We don't even know who knows what, so it makes talking about it rather complicated." Hotch grimaced as JJ flashed him a twisted smile. "I'm only telling you this on the condition you don't talk to him about it."
"'s why I'm here and not...Besides, Morgan would kick my ass for asking."
"Maybe." Hotch finished his coffee and set the mug down on the table with a dull thunk. "The current working theory is that Raphael knew that Reid's gay. Raping him wasn't meant to physically injure him, only make Reid...unable to connect with another man."
JJ stiffened, staring in shock. "Hotch, I've dealt with rape victims post-attack, we all have. Maybe not this long-term...but I've never seen or even heard of anyone recovering the way Reid did, the way he has. If Raphael meant it as psychological torture, then--"
"There are...we think...reasons why he hasn't reacted the way we'd have expected him to."
"There have to be, I mean, I told Morgan way back in the beginning that I thought Reid might have been back in college, but this is like, like..."
"None of us give Reid nearly enough credit for his ability to cope."
"I, I know, but..."
"JJ, he wasn't just using vocabulary games and Bible studies. This is just an opinion - mine, and Gideon's - but we don't think the actual rape was more than an...intellectual awareness. Reid knows what happens. But...Toby gave him an hallucinogenic. And Reid's memory is perfect, you know that. We count on it in the field."
"You mean he let himself imagine it was Morgan making love to him." She waited for Hotch's slow nod of affirmation before turning away, fighting tears of rage. "Does Morgan know?" Her voice was gravelly. "Does he--he knows, doesn't he? That's why you had me arrange that trip back south. I'd wondered."
"Morgan needed the freedom to get angry."
"I noticed, Hotch, he took two cases of ammunition with him. Two cases." She brushed a tear from her cheek. "How, I mean, if you don't mind my asking, how'd you find out?"
"You know how their relationship first started."
JJ nodded. "I remember."
"Reid had a nightmare about...not the actual rape, but. before. And talked in his sleep." Hotch pressed his lips together until they were a thin white line.
"Talked? Not--"
Hotch shook his head. "No, it wasn't a screaming nightmare. And to be honest? I don't think anyone else would have figured out what he was talking about. If Buford hadn't done what he had, Morgan wouldn't have either."
"So Morgan talked to you, Gideon went to take care of Reid, Morgan went back to Marshall Parish...was anyone ever going to tell the rest of us?"
"JJ, we don't know who knows what. We don't know if Reid's been talking to Garcia, but I'd bet on her knowing at least some of it. Beyond the basics. Emily didn't want to know."
"Well, she does now," JJ interrupted.
Hotch nodded, spreading his hands in acknowledgement and surrender. "It was Reid's story to tell. Unfortunately..."
"Unfortunately, hiding this kind of thing from profilers? Not going to happen." She frowned into her coffee, now grown tepid. "Why didn't I see it? Why didn't I figure it out? Morgan may have told you guys, but he didn't figure out...all that other stuff from a nightmare. He would have put an end to it as fast as he could, anyways."
"Reid may have been hurt worse, but he wasn't the only victim. You had other things to worry about--"
"Hotch, Reid is--"
"--a member of our team, and we were so focused on finding him and then taking care of him you had to take care of yourself first. It's nothing to be ashamed of. If anything, the rest of us should be ashamed we didn't give you more attention than we did."
"I shot three dogs. One of them bit me. That's all that happened." Her tone dared Hotch to contradict her.
"Perhaps." Hotch paused a few heartbeats. "Did you think I didn't notice how nervous you were afterwards, even with Clooney?"
JJ swallowed. "Were? Still am. I'm working on it, but a rational fear of dogs isn't much compared to what Reid went through." She hugged herself, the throw jutting over the edge of her mug just below her shoulder. "What he's still going through."
"JJ, Reid has support, all the support he can accept at the moment. You can't let that--"
"Hotch. Please. With all the horrors we face out there, the monsters wearing human faces, all the trauma, kidnappings, putting ourselves in harms way, baiting the UnSubs, everything we go through to lock these people up..." She licked her lips, eyes glassy with the edge of shock. "All I do is get up in front of the cameras. Talk to the families. But. The team? I never would have thought it, with everything, but. We have. A Before. And an After. And the farther back the Before is, the more I, the more we, find out what happened in the Between. And the harder it is to cope with. I never thought I'd say it, but I understand what happened with Elle. I understand what she was thinking, how she could make that choice. And if that bastard hadn't tried to go after Reid? If he hadn't been obsessed with, with..." Her knuckles were white now, fingertips digging into her arms through the thin cloth of her shirt. The words were whispered harshly, her face veiled by unkept hair, knotted by fingers running through it. "I can't sit here and tell you it would have ended any other way. I can't tell you I wouldn't have...done the same thing. That he wouldn't be just another body in the morgue, with my bullet in him."
"That's why we're not taking rapist cases, JJ. Not until all of us - all of us except for Reid - can sit here and say 'it's not personal.'"
JJ looked up, quiet desperation, despair and a banked memory of rage on her face.
"You weren't the only one who shot him. And it was justified." Hotch spoke calmly, no surprise on his face. "JJ, you're not Elle. You're not going down that road."
Giving an unladylike snort, JJ broke eye contact, leaning forward to set her mug down on the table before rising and pacing the room. The knit throw fell to the couch. "Only because he's already dead. Because they both are."
Hotch got to his feet and followed, hovering behind her as she stood in front of the window. Their reflections stared back. "No. Because you came over here and talked to me." He rested his hands on her shoulders, brushing bare skin with his thumbs.
JJ didn't pull away, just turned to face him. "You never answered me. And I don't want to know, but I think...I need to." Visibly gathering herself, she breathed raggedly through her mouth, then licked dry lips. "Was I wrong? Was Hankel the first...?"
"No," Hotch answered, too mcuh compassion in his eyes for anything but the truth. "No, you weren't wrong."
It was too much. Tears spilled down her cheeks, heaving sobs following all too quickly. She shook her head, wiping childishly at her eyes, her face a mask of twisted grief.
Running his hands slowly down her arms, Hotch pulled gently, and was gratified when JJ took a tiny step forward and leaned into him, her hands scrabbling at his chest and twisting in the thin fabric of his t-shirt. He gathered her into his arms, curling himself tight around her as if he could hold her together by sheer force of will.
~~~the end~~~