CHAPTER TWO
( forgive me, father )

WHEN NATALIE WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD, SHE LEARNED HOW TO CONFESS TO HER SINS.

The months after her mother's death were rough, just like the red handprints on her neck which didn't fade until long after she'd left the hospital. The pain wasn't the worst part, though. Not even close.

It was the memories.

Her father had forced her to go to church every Sunday morning after she was released, no matter how many of her Saturday nights were spent screaming for her mom, or forgetting how to breathe, or hiding under her bed, or feverishly asking when she'd get to talk to 'Agent Aaron' again.

Even then, Natalie admired Hotch more than she did anyone else. He was the only person who cared enough to save her. Well, tried to, anyway.

The memory always started the same, with James clothing her in a pretty dress for the eyes of the priest, curling her hair and pinning the front pieces back with a heart-shaped clip.

(Coincidentally, how her mother used to wear it.)

You look beautiful princess, he'd told her, calloused fingers stroking her cheek, urging her towards the front doors of the House of God. Now, go ahead. Don't be shy.

Vaguely, Natalie could recall not being scared anymore. Because fathers always loved their daughters, and he wouldn't let someone he loved get hurt, would he?

Only, that was before he took her straight to the confession booth, coercing her with a heavy hand to tell Father Michael how she'd come face to face with the devil in the few minutes she'd been dead.

The fear came back at full force after that.

"That's not what happened," Natalie had told him worriedly, her neck craned all the way to the side so she could look him in the eyes. It was required that she did; it showed respect, even if it made her uncomfortable, even if she could barely move in the restricted space. "It was just dark, then I woke up. I didn't see anybody."

The absence of the light people often spoke about hadn't bothered her, up until then. She just assumed death ended in nothingness for everyone.

James had grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, a mere fraction of a second after she spoke, citing the Bible with enough fervency that even the priest on the other side of the booth shifted in his seat.

Natalie flinched.

"The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Darkness is the devil, Natalie. Now confess."

She doesn't remember what happened next.

The memories came and went, but that was the one she tended to forget. Although she couldn't recall much, she could still feel the hand on her shoulder, and sometimes, she could still see the yellowing bruise it left behind.

There was a different hand on her shoulder, now. More delicate, less painful, but equally present in her mind. For the briefest moment, she couldn't tell the difference between the two.

"Natalie," a voice said, and it was male, and she straightened her shoulders in case it was him. "Natalie?"

With a wince, she blinked.

All of a sudden, she wasn't eight years old anymore, and she wasn't in the church, either.

The police station seemed brighter than it had earlier that day, and Hotch didn't remove his hand from her shoulder. If anything, it grew tighter when she recoiled back into reality, his stare merciless and unmoving from her own wavering gaze.

"Natalie," he repeated, harder this time now that he had her attention. Well, what was left of it. "What's wrong?"

Worry was palpable in his voice, but Natalie simply laughed it off, as if she hadn't just retreated into her thoughts so deeply that she'd lost all sense of the present. She didn't meet his eye.

"You scared me, sorry."

Hotch's expression remained as stoic as ever, but she saw a flash of concern pass over his features. "I said your name five times."

Yeah, she didn't have an excuse for that.

Natalie knew Hotch like the back of her hand, and she knew he wouldn't relent unless she gave him something. And so she sighed, making sure to run a hand through her straightened hair, playing up the I'm so exhausted aspect of it all.

"I've just... I've been thinking about my mom."

Evidently, her lie was convincing enough, because Hotch's hand left her shoulder, and carefully, he nodded in understanding.

For the briefest moment, Natalie was proud of her manipulation skills, which simultaneously made her throw up a little bit in her mouth.

There were more pieces of her father inside of her than she realized.

He looked her up and down, and Natalie noticed how his arms tightened across his chest, a subconscious tell of his unease. "Do you need anything?"

The guilt got worse when she realized that while this case was nearly impossible for her, it was almost as bad for him. He remembered far more than her, after all.

"I just wanna catch this guy."

"We will," Hotch assured her, gesturing across the station to where the others were gathered. "Come on."

After Natalie had come to the understanding of the unsub's motives, their new plan was to understand how his motives came to be. The rest of the team had already began discussing, but she'd apparently been too caught up in her own head to notice.

(Which worked out just as well, as she already had her own working theories. Call it an insider's perspective, if you will.)

"Yeah, just, uh, give me a second." Removing her cellphone from her pocket, she speed-dialed Penelope, showing him the screen as she did. "I'll be right there."

Hotch didn't comment further, only nodding once more before turning on his heel. She breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Hello, my beautiful amigo," a perky voice spoke up in her ear, and Natalie couldn't help but to smile. "My hands are literally shaking with boredom, please tell me you've got something."

"Hi," Natalie greeted, endlessly amused at the technical analyst's creative ways of answering the phone. It nearly cured her lasting anxiety from the memory, despite the fact that the ghost of the ache on her shoulder never left. "Would you mind getting a list of everyone in the area who's been medically documented as deceased, but came back to life? Like, as in revived?"

There was a pause, and she could hear Penelope stutter. Based on that alone, she could guess that the others hadn't figured it out yet.

"I—I can do that, yes. Give me a quick 'mo to make HIPPA my bitch, and—oh, that's a disturbing number of people. Anything more specific?"

"Um, male, between twenty and thirty-five, and he probably has a history of illness or injuries that could be life-threatening."

The clicking of Penelope's keyboard had practically become ingrained in Natalie's brain, at this point.

"Okay, that is still an unfortunately long list, so I'll cross-match it with the profile and hit you back, my dear."

"You're the best," Natalie thanked her, the line going dead shortly after she did.

Placing her phone back into her pocket, the smile quickly slipped from her face, and the tightness in her chest returned.

The unsub had died in the past, she was sure of it, and whatever he saw when he was gone was bad enough to push him over the edge. He resuscitated his victims to know if their afterlife aligned with his.

Natalie knew this, because there had been a time when she'd looked for the same answers. The only difference, was that she didn't kill people to it.

Darkness is the devil.

With shaking fingers, she tossed her hair behind her shoulder, and she swore she could feel his hand brush against her own.

When she silently slipped into the room with the rest of the profilers, Spencer caught her eye, and he frowned.

Natalie casually moved to rest against the back wall, as if nothing was wrong in the slightest, breaking their eye contact as she did.

JJ hung up the phone shortly after Natalie moved to stand near her, and even from behind the younger blonde could tell it was something big.

"Guys, they tested the unsub's blood found on the latest victim, and he has hematologic cancer. He's dying."

Natalie straightened her posture.

"Alright, wait a minute," Derek held up a hand, eyes focused on the file in his hands. "Witnesses said Jake Shepherd, the first victim, was out on the lake for a baptism, right?"

Emily nodded. "He was with his congregation. I've already asked Garcia for information on Jake, we'll know more then."

"You know, water burials can be seen as a form of baptism, too," Spencer added, and Natalie pointedly fixed her stare on anything but him, "Especially when dealing with an unsub who has a God complex."

Derek tilted his head. "What if there's a religious or spiritual motivation to why the unsub is doing this?"

"There is."

The words left Natalie's mouth faster than she could stop them.

They all turned to look at her, gazes openly calculating and confused; other than Hotch, who didn't seem very surprised at all.

Silently, she cursed herself for speaking so ubruptly, for not thinking it through first. That, aside from her more subtle indications, was her most obvious tell that something was up.

What Spencer said had gotten to her, admittedly.

Memories. They're persistent little fuckers.

"How do you know?"

Hotch was clearly giving her an option to say, I'm just assuming, or maybe something of a similar nature, but Natalie didn't take it. The longer she stalled, the longer the unsub had to take the life of another victim.

There was already enough blood on her hands. She didn't want to add any more.

"It's just—" Natalie paused, hating nothing more than being the center of attention in any capacity, "He's dying, right? So, it makes sense why he'd be reviving his victims. He's not getting off on the torture aspect, he's seeking validation of his view on the afterlife. He wants them to tell him what they saw, and he becomes rageful when it's something different than what he imagined or experienced."

Before anyone could even think about responding, her phone rang. Thank God for Penelope Garcia.

"Hello, lovely," the voice rang out through the speakerphone, and Natalie continued to avoid eye contact with, well, everyone. "I narrowed down the list of patients who flatlined, and unfortunately—or, well, fortunately, depending on how you see it—no one matched the profile. However, I did find something related and sorta spooky about Jake Shepherd."

Hotch glancing meaningfully at Natalie for a long moment, and she forced herself to look back. Her eyelid twitched, and he looked away.

"What did you find, Garcia?"

"Okay, so, it looks like Jake joined the church after a near-death experience changed his life."

"What happened to him?"

"He was in an ATV accident, he coded for four minutes, and he was life-flighted to LA where they managed to revive him, but clinically he did die."

Natalie couldn't help but to scold herself for not getting the whole picture right away, but the second she heard those words, it clicked. "Let me guess," she spoke into the phone, "When Jake died, he saw a warm, bright light, and it felt like home?"

"I—yeah, that's—that's almost exactly it."

It wasn't that it was rare for Natalie to make the breakthrough on a case, because it wasn't, but she knew as well as the rest of them that her intuition was suspicious. All she could do was control her tells well enough for them to look the other way.

Spencer was the only one who visibly seemed put off, for some reason. But despite the strange burn in her chest at the idea that he noticed, she didn't allow herself to think it was anything more than friendly concern.

"Natalie's right," he broke the short silence, and when the woman in question finally looked up at him, he was already staring right back at her. "Death and resuscitation, the afterlife. It's way too similar to our unsub's M.O. to be a coincidence."

"Okay, Garcia, dig deeper," Hotch ordered, "There's no way Jake Shepherd's death was random."

"You got it, boss man. Garcia out."

Natalie hung up the phone, and only then did she process that she hadn't looked away from Spencer once since he spoke.

The fact that her childish crush didn't dissipate for a second, even in the midst of a discussion of literal life and death, said more about her than she wanted to admit.

Hotch didn't seem to notice that in particular, but his eyes were firmly rooted to her face, searching for something that she made sure was no longer there.

Natalie really didn't need him to keep asking if she was okay, or if something was wrong, or how she knew the unsub's motives like the back of her hand, because this wasn't about her.

The four dead bodies sitting in the city's morgue were proof of that.

Silently, she shook her head at him, an inaudible request to just leave it for the time being. Reluctantly, Hotch complied, turning back to the others with his brows set into their typical frown.

"If this unsub is obsessed with death, then Jake Shepherd was the perfect person to talk to. He'd been there and back again."

Yeah, Natalie sighed, unable to keep her thoughts from turning back to the memories she'd tried to desperately to forget, he's not the only one.

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

"What's this for?"

The styrofoam cup was almost as warm as Spencer's fingers when they brushed her own, passing Natalie the beverage as if he'd been doing it all his life.

He moved to sit beside her, and she could've sworn she caught him watching her closely as she took a sip. Triple latte. The edges of her lips quirked upwards, silently admiring his observational skills as she brought the cup back up for a second round.

"You look like you need it."

Natalie paused, coffee held mid-air, and raised a sharp brow at him. "Are you saying I look tired?"

(Of course, she was totally fucking with him, but the way his face immediately morphed into one of sheer panic was too good to let slide.)

"No! I didn't mean—well, I saw you yawn three times in the last hour, and so I just—but I didn't—"

"Spence," she let out a quiet laugh, more shyly than she intended, "I'm kidding. I appreciate it, thank you."

Spencer stared at her for a minute, his mouth still open from his frantic self-defense, before he slowly nodded, his lips curling up into a tight, embarrassed smile. Natalie almost felt bad, but she truly adored when he made that expression. She would pretend to be angry a thousand times over just to see it again.

His smile quickly turned confused, and she snapped her gaze back down to the cup from it's previous position on his mouth.

In an attempt to look busy, she unlocked her phone and opened her messages, quickly coming to the understanding that she didn't have anyone to talk to outside of her team. Other than her father, not that he was an option by any means.

FROM: NATALIE [ 1:07 PM ]
i'll need several drinks after this case

FROM: PENNY G [ 1:07 PM ]
we can make it a girls night <333

FROM: NATALIE [ 1:08 PM ]
<3

"Why won't Hotch let you go into the field?"

Oh. Fuck.

With a cough of surprise, she snapped her gaze back to his own. Natalie supposed it was only a matter of time before someone noticed; she only wished it wasn't him.

Placing a hand on her knee to keep it still, she set her phone back onto the table, widening her eyes and tilting her head inconspicuously. Spencer's own gaze narrowed, and she swore she could see a hint of a smirk on his lips, as if he knew she was about to lie.

"What are you talking about?"

He just looked at her for a while, and Natalie made a conscious effort not to blush under his scrutiny.

After a moment, Spencer swallowed, his Adam's apple twitching nervously along with the rest of his body.

"Have I ever... Nat, has anyone told you about Tobias Hankel?"

As much as she was thankful for the subject change, she couldn't help but grow suspicious at the abruptness of it all. Squinting, Natalie tried to place the name, but to no avail.

But with the way Spencer said it, the way his voice wavered and his body caved it on itself the slightest bit, she quickly deduced it wouldn't be a happy story.

She shook her head no, but he didn't continue.

Worriedly, she reached out to touch below his shoulder, not at all reveling in the gentle contact between her skin and his coat.

"Spence?"

"He—he was an unsub, about fifteen and a half months before you joined the BAU," he spoke quickly, as if he was just reciting his typical facts. She knew it was more than that. "Long story short, he, uh, he abducted me and forced me to take a drug, and then he... there was a lot of, um... and then I fell, and I—I—I couldn't breathe."

Instinctively, her hand dropped from his arm.

Natalie never knew her heart could break for another person until that moment. It didn't help that she knew how it felt.

"You never told me that."

"I didn't know how," Spencer continued, but if anything, he seemed almost comforted to get it off his chest. "It's just—I was talking to Morgan about the light you mentioned, and he said it was just the hospital lights you see overhead when you're unconscious."

"But you don't think so?"

It wasn't exactly a question, but she was letting him go at his own pace. Natalie couldn't even begin to imagine telling someone what happened to her, and that only made her chest ache more for him.

Spencer couldn't make eye contact, and she frowned.

"Before Tobias Hankel resuscitated me, I had that exact experience. The warmth, the light. But I wasn't in an emergency room, I was in a shed."

Understanding dawned on her, why he was bringing this up now.

Natalie had a bad habit of making things about herself, whether she'd admit it or not, and the idea that someone else could also have trauma linked to their current case hadn't occured to her beforehand.

(Her father used to tell her she was selfish. She didn't want to think about the fact that maybe, he was right.)

"I take it you're not religious?"

Spencer cracked a smile, just barely, and Natalie took pride in the way that she was the one to make him.

"I'm a man of science," he confessed, "I didn't know how to deal with it. There's no quantifiable proof that God exists, and yet, in that moment, I was faced with something that I couldn't explain. I—I still can't."

His eyes sparkled, either due to unshed tears or the fluorescent lights overhead, and his jaw clenched tightly, as if he were holding back a long-winded rant of the different theories of the afterlife.

Natalie did her best not to notice how beautiful he looked while he spoke about death, she really did, but how was she supposed to ignore it?

"I'm sorry that happened to you."

Spencer shifted in his seat.

He smiled at her, then, a real smile this time, and she drank it up as if she'd been dehydrated in the desert for years.

"You never answered my question."

How naive of her, to assume the smile was anything more than it actually was.

Natalie let out a sharp breath, and it was then that she realized he could see right through her. Well, he thought he could, at least. She was a brick wall masquerading as a glass window, and Spencer didn't know anything that she didn't want him to know.

(Nobody did.)

Another shrug, and she let the tiniest bit of truth slip through, just to avoid any further suspicion. Her words were picked carefully, plucked at the exact right moment with the exact right phrasing, and she tried not to think about how similar she and her father were in that moment.

"I... I almost drowned when I was a kid," Natalie whispered to him, a truth and a lie all wrapped in one. Spencer's face contorted, but he didn't interrupt. "You could say that I had a... different experience, when my heart stopped beating."

It was more than she'd ever told anyone, and yet it came so easily, all because she was with him.

Natalie hated that fact as much as she loved it.

Spencer's brows furrowed, and slowly, his hand came to grasp her own, which had been resting alone on the table, trembling without her consent.

His slim fingers wrapped around her palm, a gentle gesture of consolation, and Natalie squeezed back, unsure if she was still breathing or not.

"Hotch knows?"

Yeah, you could say that.

Natalie nodded, not capable of looking away from their intertwined hands. If only Spencer knew what he was doing to her, maybe he would stop. "He's worried this case is too personal, so I'm stuck here until it's over."

"Honestly, I'm shocked he let you leave Quantico at all."

Shrugging, she allowed her posture to relax, greatly appreciating the subtle change of topic administered by the man beside her.

"I'm very persuasive."

Spencer smiled again, and Natalie swore the entire room lit up when he did. "You know, some people would actually classify that as stubbornness."

Once more, she squeezed his hand, before letting go entirely. If she hadn't, she couldn't be sure that she'd ever let go.

"Sure, but isn't it just so great that none of those people are in the room with us?"

He laughed, and Natalie desperately felt the urge to punch herself in the face before her innocent workplace crush spiraled into something much, much worse.

Spencer grinned, his hand slowly inching back towards his own body, "We wouldn't want that."

Natalie watched his hand fall beneath the table, and she wished for nothing more than to have it pressed against her own again.

"Definitely not."

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

With due respect to his ridiculously high IQ, Spencer was fully aware that he was, on occasion, an idiot.

This idiocy typically stemmed from a lack of romantic understanding of the female gender, but then again, it took him ten years to realize his childhood best friend was practically in love with him. By the time he did, that ship had sailed long before he even attempted to get on board.

(In his defense, Ethan was a great liar.)

As clueless as Spencer could be, he was also a genius, an FBI agent, a profiler. He liked to think his deduction skills had improved over the years.

But as much as he hated to admit it, Natalie Blair had a talent for bringing his idiocy back up to the surface.

At first, he thought he made her uncomfortable. She would avoid his eye, speak in short sentences; when they were alone, she would only last an average of five and a half seconds before she made up an excuse to leave the room.

Not that he was counting, or anything.

It wasn't until Natalie had been at the BAU for a month that he finally grew the courage to ask JJ if she'd noticed anything. Everyone could see how well the two blondes got along, right from the younger's first day on the job. All he was told, was that it took Natalie a bit longer than usual to warm up to certain people.

Spencer quickly understood that when JJ said certain people, she was referring to men, himself included.

(He could have used his profiling skills to figure out why, he's sure of it, but there was a thin line between introspection and an invasion of privacy. It was a line he refused to cross, and still does, no matter how desperate he is to find out what's on the other side.)

It was another five months before Natalie called him Spence for the first time. She let him tell her all about Great Expectations by Charles Dickens the same day.

They'd only become closer since then.

Recently, something had changed, though. It was driving him absolutely mad that he didn't know what.

The way she'd gripped his hand as if it were a lifeline, just then, was an example of how they had. Spencer tried not to read into it too much, which was becoming increasingly difficult as time went on.

(Reading into things was what he did best.)

"Hey, pretty boy. What was that all about?"

Evidently, he wasn't the only one.

"What was what all about?" Spencer shrugged, and he desperately wished he had Natalie's skills of falsifying emotions. Derek didn't repeat himself, but his brow arched, and there was no point in playing dumb. "It was nothing."

"Last time I checked, you don't hold a woman's hand if it's nothing. You don't even shake hands if you can help it. C'mon, what is it? You finally confess your looove?"

Derek tended to push things until he got the answer he wanted, which was great for his skills as an agent, and very annoying to Spencer when he was struggling to keep things to himself.

That specifically—the love thing—was something that Spencer was not, under any circumstances, supposed to let slip; and yet, one too many beers a couple years ago led to the inevitable.

One too many beers, as in, two beers.

(His idiocy would be the death of him, one day.)

Derek hadn't stopped grinning since he'd arrived.

Spencer didn't make eye contact, a last ditch effort to preserve whatever dignity he had left. "I—I was telling her about Tobias Hankel, actually."

The other man's grin dropped so quickly, Spencer almost felt bad for the abruptness of it all. Almost.

"Oh, man, I—"

"No, no, it's okay," he rubbed the side of his face, slim fingers just barely missing his eye. "It was actually kind of... nice? Nat is very good at... she's easy to talk to, so... I don't know, it was nice."

It should have been embarrassing, and maybe it was a bit, but despite his flaws, Derek was his best friend. Spencer knew he'd refrain from the teasing if he needed him to.

Derek huffed a laugh, a quiet one, before patting Spencer on the back.

"That's good, Reid," he smiled, before averting his eyes across the station and quickly adding, "I wouldn't say that around Hotch, though. He'll threaten you with a shotgun."

"Ha, yeah," Spencer laughed along, before pausing, as he quickly realized he didn't quite understand. "Wait, why?"

But Derek had already begun walking away, leaving the younger of the two to jog in an effort to catch up. His knee popped the second he tried, and briefly, he wondered how he'd pass his next fitness exam.

Hotch would never actually threaten him, so he assumed Derek was telling a joke about the man's protectiveness over Natalie, maybe.

An unfunny one, but a joke nonetheless.

Speaking of the man in question, once Spencer finally caught up to Derek and joined the others, he could see the wrinkle between Hotch's eyes that screamed something was wrong.

"A mother and son were just abducted," Natalie's voice spoke out of seemingly nowhere. He found himself drawn towards the sound, like a puppet pulled on a string, and turned towards the left to meet her eyes.

Oh, those eyes—no, nope, not the time.

"Samantha and Evan Brown," JJ interrupted his wandering thoughts, "Her car was found abandoned on a hiking trail. We think it's our guy."

Hotch's eyebrows remained furrowed, and Spencer wondered if that ever gave him a migraine after a while.

In unison, the team got to their feet if they weren't standing already, Spencer included. Seven pairs of shoes against the ground, making their way towards the SUV's parked outside, until two of them stopped abruptly in the middle of the station.

Spencer paused by the doorframe.

He tried not to make his eavesdropping obvious.

"No."

Based on Hotch's tone, it wasn't a suggestion.

Natalie, who was essentially cornered between Hotch and some police officer's desk, only crossed her arms over her chest, stubbornness in full effect. It rivaled Hotch's resolve, from what he could tell, but not enough to win the inevitable battle.

"Don't be dramatic, Aaron. I'll be fine."

Aaron?

Odd, but Spencer supposed using Hotch's first name made the issue personal rather than strictly work related. Still, it was strange hearing her say it. Hotch was the only one Natalie wasn't outwardly on a first-name basis with.

And if he wasn't intrigued already...

"We had a deal, and based on your behavior today, I don't exactly feel inclined to change it," Hotch deadpanned, but he shifted on his feet, so Spencer knew he was itching to get out the door.

"A mom and her kid are probably drowning to death as we speak," Natalie emphasized, something quiet and knowing in her tone that Hotch picked up on, even if Spencer didn't. "You really think I can just sit here?"

Hotch didn't answer right away.

Spencer had the unwelcome yet commonly occurring feeling that he was very out of the loop.

But he didn't even care, because Natalie's eyes widened, and her gaze softened, and he didn't know how anyone could ever say no to that face.

Clearly, Hotch didn't either.

"You're staying with me. I mean it, Natalie."

Spencer slipped through the door, then, out of sight before they could see him listening in.

(Okay, so, sometimes he crossed the line, but he always did his best not to. Really, he did.)

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

Natalie was, barring any sexual innuendo, wet.

It all happened so fast.

They found Samantha and Evan at the coldest part of Ridge Canyon Lake, alive, against all odds.

Chase Whitaker. That was the unsub's name.

He'd killed his father at that lake years before, after the abusive older man watched him drown and attempted to bury him alive, as opposed to calling an ambulance. Chase was diagnosed with lymphoma shortly thereafter, and the cancer had finally progressed to it's final stage.

Natalie wasn't one to excuse murder, but she understood where the kid was coming from.

Really, truly, she understood.

And so, when she, Spencer, and Hotch found Chase in the shallow end of the lake with a knife to the youngest victim's throat, she couldn't help but to talk him down.

Well, try to, anyway.

It all happened so fast.

One minute, Evan was set free, and the next, Chase had given up his fight, his unclothed back hitting the water with a deafening splash. His head followed quickly after, and Natalie had seen one too many people drown in her lifetime to let something like that go.

(Hotch had called her name before she'd even moved. He knew exactly what she was going to do.)

Chase was still alive, because of her.

Natalie wasn't sure she could say the same for herself.

Her clothes molded themselves in ripples against her skin, now, tacky cotton stinging against reddened goosebumps, and she couldn't feel anything but that.

Darkness is the devil, Natalie.

God, it was dark.

If it weren't for the rocky sand slipping into her shoes, the beaming of the sun against the top of her scalp, she could have mistaken it for the afterlife she'd been trying so desperately to forget. The water was just as cold, though, and so it took Hotch dragging her out by her wet sleeve for her to remember that it wasn't. 

Natalie heard him mumble something under his breath along the lines of 'stupid' and 'decision'.

And sure, maybe it was.

But it was her choice to go into the water, which was far more than she could say for the first time she'd felt suffocated by the waves.

Her clothes were dry, now. Hotch had tossed the others into a plastic bag meant to hold evidence to keep them safe, but Natalie had the distinct feeling they'd go in the trash sooner than later.

"You have aquaphobia, and yet you decided to jump into a lake. Explain that to me, please."

The jet's engine hummed in her ears, as did the snores of the rest of the profilers spread out across the jet. Only Spencer and Hotch were awake, which was convenient, as they were the only ones who knew anything was wrong.

Spencer was on the opposite side of the plane, though, and Natalie really wished he was there to interrupt with facts about California's water temperatures, or something.

Hotch's gaze didn't falter. Natalie swallowed.

"Spence is a shitty swimmer, and obviously, you couldn't get those five-hundred dollar shoes wet, so."

(And he didn't, for the record. He had time to slip them off, all because of her, thank you very much.)

Hotch blinked once.

Oh, he was not amused.

He leaned in, rough elbows on the tray table, and she knew she was in for it. Natalie took in a sharp breath.

"I care about you, Natalie," he told her, which was not what she expected in the slightest, "I care about you, but I'm also your boss, and you made an irrational, impulsive decision, which had the potential to endanger both yourself and others. So, I'm asking you why, before I decide take it up to Strauss."

Natalie's jaw ticked.

He knew exactly why.

"It was a mom and her kid," she said simply, ignoring the pang in her chest at the thought of him being disappointed in her. "I didn't have a choice."

"You could have waited for one of us."

Hotch faltered almost immediately after he spoke, almost as if he knew exactly what she was going to say next.

"Did you wait?"

It wasn't meant to be malicious, or even to bring up the past at all, but really, he was wide open there.

He shook his head, almost determinedly. "No, and you know as well as I do, Elaine would still be alive if I had."

Elaine.

It was rather strange for Natalie to refer to her as anything other than mom, but it had admittedly gotten easier over the years.

Guilt shone in Hotch's eyes, and Natalie felt her heart sink. No, no, that wasn't what she meant.

She didn't talk much, and this was why. Too blunt, too sarcastic, too mean, too unaware, too selfish. Her father used to stick a bar of soap in her mouth if she did it too often. She hated it as a child, but looking back, he was right, wasn't he?

(The world was better without her there to make it all worse.)

"That's not true," Natalie refused, despite the fact that she was the one to bring it up. "I didn't mean to—you did everything you could, please don't think I—"

"Sometimes, what we think is everything, isn't even close," Hotch interrupted with finality, fully aware she was close to talking herself in circles. "I've made my peace with that. For your own sake, as an FBI agent, I hope you do, too."

Oh.

Okay.

Natalie blinked harshly, set her cheek against the palm of her hand, and turned to look out the window.

The clouds reminded her of waves.

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

Natalie peered through the stain glass windows.

It was late, and she was alone, but she still had her gun just in case. It hid beneath the bottom hem of her hoodie, masqueraded under the thick sheet of fabric which nearly covered her knees in length.

The priest welcomed her as she walked in.

Her eyes fitted towards the booth, and he paused, before tilting his head in understanding and making his way into his seat. Once he was out of view, Natalie allowed herself to look around.

She hadn't been inside of a church since her eighteenth birthday. That was also the last time she forced herself to believe in a God who was more haunting than full of love.

It wasn't a conscious choice to end up there tonight.

Moments passed, standing there in the entryway, eyes wandering across the pews and statues of Jesus, before she joined the priest in the confessional.

He didn't even know her name.

(That fact was more comforting than she wanted to admit.)

"May God, who has enlightened every heart, help you to know your sins and trust in his mercy," he spoke softly, as if he could feel her anxiety through the wooden panels.

Natalie didn't say a thing in return.

Confessional booths always reminded her of coffins. Perhaps, in a way, that was intentional. She only ever confessed while on the brink of death.

"I—"

Cutting herself off with a wince, she felt the blood begin to trickle from her nose, as if God himself had pressed a button to make it do so.

"Whenever you're ready, my child."

Natalie felt herself choke on air.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

AUTHOR'S NOTE ! ━━━━━━━━━━━
this chapter is just natalie blair pissing off
aaron hotchner for 6361 words

also if you're like ?? um what's happening ??
that is indeed intentional !! the context clues
are there but the past will be revealed soon,
stick around to find out xx

(also can we pls get a round of applause
for the bleid hand holding bc i died)