CHAPTER EIGHT
( god loves you... )

☆ content warning ☆
details of past & present abuse,
blood & gore, ptsd, emetephobia,
violence, a dialogue-heavy info
dump, & unreliable narrators

ONE WORD, SEVEN LETTERS.

One breath, a million questions.

It was all she could manage to say, really. Over and over, until her vocal chords strained from the repetition. Until it didn't even sound like a word anymore, didn't sound like the name of the man who'd been bleeding all the way from the sidewalk into the operating room. 

"Spencer."

At some point, she'd sat down. Unsure of when, but that didn't matter, because she was being touched by familiar hands. Hands that would never hurt her. Hands that were helping to wipe her clean.

It was funny, Natalie thought, how similar blood and water feel when your eyes are closed.

Almost as if she'd drowned in it, she forgot how to expel the air from her lungs. It lodged in her throat, similarly to how it had when the bullet blew past her head, missing only by a few inches.

Her head, which had been buried in Spencer's chest.

Spencer.

Oh, there was so much blood.

But he'd been breathing when she left him; when he was wheeled away, and she was left alone, shaking in the lobby of the emergency room.

When he spoke to her, but she couldn't understand him with the sirens blaring and her heart pounding, so he spoke to the paramedic, instead; he'd been breathing, then.

Subconsciously, Natalie knew that was a good thing. That despite the blood—there was so much blood—Spencer hadn't lost consciousness.

Spencer.

It was a good thing, but her crimson painted fingertips only allowed her to see the bad.

The hands on her body were moving—and just as she was reminded of the blood on her own hands, they wiped that away, too—and she was supposed to be clean, now.

But even after a hospital-strength sanitary cloth, Natalie could still see traces of red. Like the blood had sunk beneath her skin, entangling in her veins and taking root. Becoming a part of her own bloodstream; separate, but equally poisonous.

Rather abruptly, her thoughts were interrupted.

Arms wrapped themselves around her shoulders, and she felt the blonde hair fall against her face when they did.

JJ didn't let her go.

As Natalie slowly came back into her right mind, she found herself confused at her own unwillingness to end the close physical contact, an anomaly which had been off limits for as long as she could remember.

(A part of her wondered if things would've turned out differently, if she'd allowed herself to be touched with gentle fingers instead of a clenched fist.)

Maybe in another life—a better life—Natalie could've been soft. But in this life, before she could even begin to consider leaning into it, she pulled away from the hug, jerking backwards as if she'd been burned.

"Spencer?"

It was all she could say, really.

Is he okay? Is he still breathing? Is he dead?

Natalie wasn't sure if she wanted an answer.

Everything had moved so quickly, since it happened. She'd spent most of the time covering the wound; her hand on Spencer's neck, squeezing, coating itself in red despite every attempt not to. The other hand had dialed 911, and she'd said something that she couldn't remember at the moment, but it got them to the scene in record time.

Looking back, Natalie wondered if her fingers had slipped, and she'd begun choking him, instead.

Half-listening, she heard JJ say something incoherent, and Emily and Derek and Penelope and Rossi all nodded in agreement—when did they get here?—and it was then that Hotch came barreling through the doors of the ER with a resounding bang.

Natalie jumped, and one by one, they looked at her.

Hotch made a movement, which she only saw from the corner of her eye, but he was stopped with a hand to his chest by JJ, who either shook her head or nodded in Natalie's direction, or both.

Everyone was there, staring.

Everyone but Spencer.

Spencer.

Suddenly, she felt a lurch in her abdomen.

The trash can was only a few steps away, which was lucky, as that was all she could manage before she emptied the contents of her stomach into it, squeezing her eyes shut to avoid the sight of the bloody towels JJ had tossed in moments before.

Natalie couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten, and so she didn't dare to look and see what came up her throat.

Bile, blood, fear, shame, stomach lining. It made no difference, in the end. She was already empty.

Someone rubbed her back—she could tell by their shoes that it was Penelope—and once again, she moved away from the touch. Natalie didn't need a hug, or comfort, or pity, she needed to know if Spencer was alive, and her own safety was the absolute last thing that any of them should be worrying about, because Spencer—

"Drink this."

Penelope practically threw the open water bottle into her face, and it was so sudden that she didn't even flinch at the action. 

"No, no, I—"

"Drink it."

Somehow, hearing Penelope's voice drop several octaves was all it took to snap Natalie out of the hazy, dreadful, half-dream-like state she was in.

Taking the water, she brought it to her lips.

Trying desperately, she swallowed without choking.

It wasn't until she'd finished nearly half of the bottle that Penelope and JJ helped guide her back into the chair, which remained perfectly in the center of the otherwise empty hospital waiting room. Her team didn't sit, instead choosing to form a half-circle around where she rest; she looked between them, sinking in her seat.

"Spencer?"

It was all she could say, still.

Derek spared a glance to their Unit Chief before answering with a quiet, "The kid'll be alright. The bullet hit a vein in his neck, but missed the big arteries."

"Is he..."

Natalie found it increasingly difficult to speak under the weight of their gazes. With every passing moment, they seemed to grow heavier, pushing her down further so she was entirely slumped against the wooden chair.

"He's getting stiched up now," JJ told her, reaching out to grab her hand but deciding against it when she saw the stained blood, "Nat, he doesn't even need surgery. Spencer is okay, okay?"

(It was nice reassurance, despite the fact that her original question wasn't will he be okay, but rather is he dead, and does he hate me, and can someone take me to church, please.)

"Can I see him?"

The mood shifted, after she asked.

The group shared meaningful glances amongst themselves, and Natalie quickly picked up on the fact that they were having a silent discussion over who had to be tasked with telling her no.

For some odd reason that she failed to decipher, she was grateful that the answer wasn't yes.

Always the leader, she wasn't shocked when Hotch was the one to inform her, "First, we'll give you a cognitive. See if you remember any details that might help us catch this guy."

Natalie couldn't ignore it; the way Hotch avoided her eye, speaking to the air beside her rather than her.

"Okay."

A pause, and Hotch continued, "I'll do it... if that's alright."

Unsure of what prompted him to ask instead of order, she looked up at him through a heavy gaze, and nodded.

"Actually, Aaron," Rossi spoke calmly, somehow managing to simultaneously spike and ease Natalie's nerves all at once, "I think it would be best if Morgan took this one. He's a bit more... impartial."

Almost immediately, a vein in Hotch's neck grew, his jaw clenching and arms tensing in their place folded over his chest; he stared down at Rossi, his head tilting to the side and his chin pushing out just enough to be seen as a vague and incomprehensible threat.

Natalie swallowed, ignoring the pressing yet immature urge to hide behind the older man's leg like a child.

Hotch blinked once.

"Excuse me?"

Rossi was a brave man, and Natalie knew it. He was also respected, even by Hotch, who despite being decades younger was, in fact, his boss.

But Hotch was a prideful man, and the thought of his aptitude for profiling being brought into question was entirely unacceptable, and Natalie knew that perfectly well.

Derek's gaze moved between them, while Emily, JJ, and Penelope physically removed themselves from the conversation; Natalie stayed still, waiting for the Unit Chief to tell her what to do. It was a bit pathetic, that she needed his approval just to move.

Rossi seemed to realize his mistake, and didn't say another word.

"I've got it, Hotch," Derek's voice broke through the loud quietness, and Natalie watched as he held a peacemaking hand in the air between the two men. "I'll take care of her cognitive. Why don't the rest of you go talk to Reid?"

The silence was sharp, after that.

Hotch's gaze moved back to Natalie, and suddenly, the air had a sting to it, turning ice cold with no discernible source. She felt herself shiver.

He nodded once, and turned his back.

Absentmindedly, Natalie wondered if she'd been shot, too; her entire body was pained, for some reason. From her head to her toes, her muscles tensed, pins and needles invisibly pierced her skin, and she belatedly realized that the pain came as soon as Aaron left.

It hurt to watch him leave.

It hurt more to think of Spencer never coming back.

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

"You can talk to me, you know?"

Natalie did her best not to roll her eyes.

Derek sat in the chair across from her, and even though she was occupied staring out at the starless sky through the half-shut window, she could feel his gaze weighing heavy on her own.

The room was dark, only a dim overhead light illuminating their features, but the glare from streetlights in the parking lot made their way across her cheeks, shining a light on the dried tears from earlier that night. When she sobbed into Hotch's arms like a baby, effectively embarrassing herself for eternity.

But Natalie didn't cry. It was a fluke.

Blinking away from the empty sky, she made a silent vow to herself that it wouldn't happen again.

When she didn't respond, only staring blankly at her bloodstained shoes, Derek spoke once more.

"You know you're not special, right?"

The question took her a bit off guard, but after everything she'd heard before—a no one will ever love you from her father, or a dumb stupid ugly bitch from an unsub—she couldn't deny it's truthfulness. With a frown, she looked up at him, and shrugged.

"Yeah."

Derek sighed, and used one hand to drag his chair even closer to her own; their knees brushed, and she jumped back.

Natalie pointedly ignored the way that a slight, insignificant touch could make her want to crawl out of her own skin.

He looked her up and down, and she was grateful that he chose to ignore it too, for now.

"Look," he continued, clearly trying desperately to keep eye contact while her own gaze fitted around the room, which was mostly bare aside from generic artwork on the walls and a few scarce cardboard boxes on the floor. "We've all got stuff we don't want people to know. But it's important that you tell me anyway."

Natalie bristled, her arms so tight across her chest that she was nearly hugging herself. "I—I don't—"

"Twenty-five people are dead, and Reid almost joined them, so I need you to tell me anyway."

He raised his voice, and if it were anyone other than Derek Morgan, Natalie would've braced for impact.

No, she could never be afraid. Not of him.

There was something about Derek, something she recognized after working with him for only a short time. Something he hadn't told her yet, but that she saw.

Really, she didn't know him that well.

Except that she did.

Natalie knew the tremor in his voice when he yelled at an unsub who hurt children, and she knew the lengths he would go to in order to save a kid from a doomed fate. Natalie saw the way he'd tackle abusive men to the ground without a care for their comfort, digging their knees and elbows into hard gravel while he handcuffed their wrists far too tightly.

Natalie never asked what happened.

Recognizing his pain was enough.

Whatever he may have gone through, it showed in his unrelenting kindness. He would never hurt her, not in a million years, and that innate sense of safety was the only reason why she felt comfortable responding the way she did—

"You know it isn't that easy."

It wasn't until Natalie spoke that she realized how long she'd been silent, or how long she'd been profiling the man in front of her. How long he'd been profiling her.

"I do," Derek conceded, his voice at a much lower volume than before, "But I also know that keeping secrets only ever makes things worse."

"I'm not keeping secrets."

"You and I both know that isn't true."

"I'm not—"

"You want to tell me about Anna?"

Natalie moved her gaze back to the window, swallowing harshly when she felt bile build in her throat once more.

A small part of her—a naive, hopeless, bitter, angry, fearful, relentlessly optimistic, and disgustingly idiotic part—had assumed they'd let that go.

Natalie certainly had let it go. She'd let it go the moment Anna left, ten years prior with a scrawl of 10 words, messily written in pen onto wrinkled notebook paper. I don't love you. I'm moving. Please don't contact me. The letters had been burned into her skull, permanently imprinting on her like an infected tattoo.

No, she did not want to tell him about Anna.

"I thought we were supposed to do a cognitive."

Derek stared at her for a while, just long enough for it to get the slightest bit uncomfortable. Eventually, he leaned back in his chair, straightening his posture.

"Do you honestly think you can handle it?"

Natalie's eyes flickered back to him.

"I've dealt with worse."

He nodded, and carefully, she closed her eyes.

...

Natalie stood on the sidewalk, and she cringed at the rough remnants of dried mascara caked onto her cheeks. It was cold—early fall in DC is always cold—but she couldn't feel the briskness of the air, not when Spencer was gazing at her with such warmth.

What do you hear?

(Derek's voice echoed in her mind; in front of her, behind her, all around. He wasn't there, but he was there, and she was safe.)

Her own heartbeat was loud in her ears, blood pumping through tired and overworked veins.

They were outside of her apartment building, and Natalie recognized the sound of her neighbor blasting 80's rock music through his open windows. Despite living on the 8th floor, it played loudly, so much so that she could hear it from the ground.

It was muffled, but it was there. Alongside the sound of tires screeching somewhere around the corner, and a dog barking not long after.

Was anyone else around?

Nobody else. Just Spencer.

It was only the two of them, but just in case, she looked around and—oh. Mrs. Gutierrez, another neighbor, was outside walking her Great Dane; she was halfway down the block, but Natalie recognized her from afar.

The woman's hair was beginning to turn gray at the root, but the kind smile on her face never wavered.

Mrs. Gutierrez's grin was replaced by a scowl, Natalie recalled, when her dog barked at someone sitting inside of a waiting car.

Who was in the car?

It was—

(Eyes remaining shut tightly, Natalie frowned.)

No, that can't be right.

It was pitch black outside, but dozens of streetlights illuminated the area so that it didn't feel as though it was. From several yards away, she could see the gray hairs on top of Mrs. Gutierrez's skull; by all logic, she should've been able to see who was in the car.

But she couldn't.

Why not? Are the windows tinted?

Squinting, she looked closer.

A mask.

A mask.

The mask.

Natalie had seen it, before. When Liam Marlowe held her head beneath the dull waves of the abandoned lake, beneath the waves which were harsher in the remnants of her mother's drowning.

The mask, which resembled more of a ripped potato sack than anything else; the mask, which was made of thick brown tweed, with two eye holes stabbed through the middle. The mask, frayed at the edges where it had been cut, stained dutifully with her mother's blood. Like the face of a scarecrow, made specifically to keep her away.

The man wore a mask.

The man wore a mask.

The man wore a mask; she didn't remember much, but she did remember that.

The man, Liam Marlowe.

It was the same mask; it was the same man.

Marlowe? You know he's locked up—

It was Liam.

No, Blair, we just talked to him—

Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the mask. Liam wore the m—

Natalie!

It was Liam.

It had to be Liam.

Because she recognized the man's outline; the shape of his shoulders, his hunched over posture—his familiar fists—his demeanor, his eyes glaring through the holes and straight at her, just like they did that night.

If it wasn't Liam, then it—

No, it was Liam, it had to be—

Hey, calm down!

...

With a jolt, her eyes snapped open.

Derek held her shoulders in a vice grip, his eyebrows turned so deeply downwards that he nearly looked on the verge of tears; Natalie blinked at him, and all at once, pushed herself backwards with all the force she could muster.

The chair slid across the floor, and she took a step back, her own fists clenched, just like the man's had been.

"Don't touch me."

He stood, too.

Instinctively, his hands moved outwards, his palms facing Natalie and his fingers pointed to the ceiling. Similarly to how a zookeeper would tame a wild animal, a show of nonviolent intentions.

His frown didn't disperse, and he watched her carefully. She began to wonder if she really was as dangerous an animal as he presumed her to be. A dog without a leash. A lamb running from the slaughter.

"You said it was Liam," Derek spoke calmly, too calmly, "Natalie, that's impossible, because Liam Marlowe is locked up in a prison, in Maine. You know that."

Natalie did know that.

Which was precisely why she felt so removed from her body, so desperate to cling onto whatever sense of reality she had left.

It couldn't have been him, but it was.

Natalie knew that, too.

"I can't explain it," she whispered, head shaking rapidly to fight off whatever emotions were brewing under the surface, "But I know it was him. It was him."

For a moment, Derek gazed at her as if she'd gone completely insane. As if she weren't fully aware of how crazy she sounded, of how paranoid and stupid she came across. As if her memories were fabricated by some outside force, unreliable and biased beyond belief.

"How?"

Natalie shifted on her feet. "How what?"

"How do you know?" Derek clarified, slowly lowering his hands. "You said the guy was wearing a mask, right?"

"I—I don't know. No."

It was Liam. It had to be Liam.

His eyes narrowed, and she felt uncomfortably like she was being put under a microscope. "You just said that he was."

For some reason, Natalie felt nauseous again.

It was strange, the way her throat constricted at the thought of recounting what she saw. Like an invisible hand wrapped around her neck every time she tried to speak.

The man was wearing a mask.

He was.

(Why else would her mind only allow her to see Liam's face? Why else would her body react so viscerally to the thought of it being anybody else? Why else would she feel so violently forced onto her knees and into silence, despite no one being there to guide her with a heavy hand?)

"I need to take a break."

Derek didn't come close again, and Natalie hoped that her teeth had been bared enough to keep him away for good.

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

Jennifer liked to think that she knew her best friend as well as she knew herself.

Natalie always took her coffee unsweetened, but wouldn't drink it unless it was a latte. Her roots were bleached on the 1st of every other month, and she'd get annoyed if anyone brought up the fact that her blonde hair wasn't natural. She hated the summer, but loved the farmers markets in the summer, and she went to church more often than she cared to admit.

Jennifer knew Natalie.

Or, she thought she did.

It was never odd to her, that her friend refused to talk about her parents. Once, Jennifer had asked if she was doing anything for Mother's Day, and was met with only a shrug.

(She hadn't even known that Natalie's mom was dead until she saw a photo of her corpse on the screen in the briefing room.)

It was becoming increasingly apparent that she, nor the rest of the team, really knew their friend at all.

"How'd it go?"

The words left her mouth the moment she saw Derek round the corner, and her question was answered by the hardened look on the man's face. Beside her, Hotch, Rossi, and Emily seemed to notice it too; Penelope was still in the room with Spencer, who'd fallen asleep almost immediately after he'd been stitched up.

Derek looked right at Hotch when he said simply, "We can't trust a word that girl says."

Jennifer knew it was true.

She wished that she didn't.

Rossi and Emily seemed to communicate silently behind Hotch's back, as the man was the only one to be even a little surprised by the bluntness of Derek's statement.

"Why's that?"

It wasn't hard to detect the forced restraint in the older man's tone, like any word against Natalie was a word against him.

Looking between the others, she raised her brows, a wordless inclination that whoever answered the question was undoubtedly in for a signature Hotch lecture. He was too involved, and they all knew it, but he was their boss, so they didn't say it.

Derek seemed to be the only one of them with the balls to actually do so, and she didn't envy him in the slightest.

"She's lying. I don't why, or about what, but she is not giving us the full truth."

When Hotch's frown deepened to the point that brows nearly met the top of his eyelids, Jennifer didn't hesitate to take a stride backwards.

"Let me talk to her."

"All due respect, Hotch, but I don't think that's such a good idea."

"And why's that?"

Derek didn't flinch. "'Cause you're personally involved, and you're too soft on her, and she knows something. Whatever it is, it's got her so scared that she threw a chair across the room."

(Rossi seemed content to stroll away from the conversation, clearly not feeling particularly interested in being a part of the conflict. He left without a word, and Jennifer saw him walk towards the vending machine across the hall.)

Predictably, Hotch's resolve wavered. "I need to talk to her."

Derek sighed, and it was then that Jennifer realized how Hotch had proved his point without even trying.

"Like I said, that's not a good idea."

There was something about the tone of Derek's voice that made her question why he felt so inclined to treat Natalie as a criminal rather than a victim; of course, she trusted his judgement completely, but if he felt that something was off about her behavior... she dreaded the possibility that he was right.

"I'm not soft on her," Hotch crossed his arms over his chest, which seemed like a defense mechanism more than anything else. "I know what she's been through, Morgan."

"Well..."

Emily stretched out the word, and Hotch then moved his accusatory gaze towards her, instead.

Jennifer shook her head, "Em, I wouldn't—"

(But Emily Prentiss had never been a stickler for the rules, so of course, she did.)

"You do go easy on her," she continued, much to Jennifer's dismay. "I've gotten written warnings for things that you never even mentioned to her. Which is fine, normally, except for when she's potentially a person of interest in a murder investigation."

Person of interest?

It was the first thing to really take her off guard since Spencer had gotten shot; and that was easy to recover from, since he was okay.

But Natalie turning into a suspect, just because Derek felt a bad vibe? That, she didn't recover from so quickly.

"Since when is Nat a person of interest?" Jennifer couldn't stop herself from asking, putting a halt in whatever impulsive speech Hotch was internally preparing. "You don't... you don't think she's capable of..."

She paused when Emily did.

There must have been a mixture of confusion and anger written all over her face, because when the other woman saw it, she backtracked immediately.

"No, I—I misspoke," Emily corrected herself, speaking softly. "I'm not saying she did this—of course not—but, it's pretty clear that Blair isn't telling us everything we need to know, isn't it? I mean, do any of us actually know what's going on?"

The group went silent, then.

Well, there was the answer.

They'd spent so long on the unsub's wild goose chase, they hadn't taken a moment to look at the big picture.

To look at Natalie.

A crunch from behind them stole their attention.

Rossi held a bag of some off-brand potato chips, standing nonchalantly a few feet away. Even Hotch seemed perturbed by his stoicism.

"Rossi."

Derek said his name like a question.

"I think... we're all too involved."

Hotch tilted his chin upwards as Rossi loudly ate another chip. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," the older man stepped forward, handing the bag of chips to an unassuming Emily, "Natalie is our family. She's one of us, and when one of us is in danger, none of us act rationally. We don't sleep, or eat, and we don't do our job to the best of our ability. We're all involved."

Jennifer blinked at him.

The man had a flair for the dramatic, but he wasn't wrong. Everything seemed so... messy, lately. Nothing added up, stories kept changing, Spencer got shot.

"So what should we do?"

Hotch asked, and when Hotch sounds as desperate as he did just then, that was when they knew it was bad.

Rossi nodded softly at him, sensing the urgency.

"Well, we should start by working as a team. Laying all the facts out there, and then start focusing on the behavior of the unsub, and then move on to victimology. We're not getting anywhere by arguing like children."

A pause, and silently, they agreed to do so.

They were a team.

They were the Behavioral Analysis Unit, the best in the FBI, the best in the country—or even the world—and they were a team. They worked most effectively when dealing with facts, and even more so, when they put their heads together, hunkered down, and just figured it out.

"Okay," Hotch agreed, always the leader. "Reid thinks Marlowe is innocent, so we'll start from the beginning. What do we know about the unsub?"

Derek tilted his head. "Alright. Twenty years ago, he abducts five women, holds them for a few hours while he rapes them and mutilates their bodies, drowns them to death, and hangs their bodies on a cross like a crucifix."

Five women, including Natalie's mom.

"But the new unsub is different," Emily added. "Or, assuming it's the same guy, he's evolved. Same M.O., for the most part, except none of the new victims have been raped. Which is extremely odd, for a sexual sadist. They don't typically deviate like that."

They never deviate like that, which means the original profile may have been off.

Still, Jennifer nodded, continuing the train of thought. "And based on the results from the lab, none of the 18 bodies from the mass grave were sexually abused either. Only the original 5 women. And we know they weren't crucified, they were buried."

Hotch's jaw clenched. "Buried, in a different state."

"But, they were all from Maine, which means the unsub intentionally traveled with the bodies to dump them here," Derek squinted, shifting on his feet. "So, this guy's got a flexible job, or none at all."

"Eighteen bodies were found, and based on the coroners report, the unsub killed one person a year, roughly on the same date. And, Natalie knew one of the victims personally," Emily said, her tone implying the thing they all knew yet decided not to discuss. "Anna Parker was the only one who didn't fit the victimology. That's not a coincidence."

And that wasn't all, because with a start, Jennifer realized that—

"Guys, if Marlowe didn't do this... that means he was framed by somebody who has the intelligence, patience, and the means to outsmart the FBI for twenty years."

Another silence filled the air.

Emily caught her eye, and subtly gestured towards the man standing between them.

Jennifer didn't process how her words had sounded until they'd already left her mouth, riddled by the undertone of one harsh and regrettable truth:

The unsub outsmarted Hotch.

It wasn't the first time it had happened, which only made it hurt more. It wasn't the first time the blame of death and destruction could be placed onto him, which only made it more complicated.

Jennifer wasn't placing blame.

She could tell that Hotch felt as though she was.

(She watched him closely, eerily reminded of how he behaved the days before Haley was murdered by Foyet. Self-loathing, desperate, angry.)

He sighed, and no one spoke until he did.

"Prentiss," he said softly, "Get Garcia, and go back to Quantico. Have her pull up the files from the original case. You and Rossi go through them, look for any abnormalities, and contact Officer Wilson from the Bethel P.D. to see if she's noticed anything strange in town recently."

"Uh—" Emily stuttered, because none of them were sure what they were expecting, but it wasn't that, "Yeah, alright."

"JJ, stay with Reid," Hotch continued, his voice hardening when he finished his orders with a tense, "When he wakes up, give him a cognitive. Morgan, go back to Natalie, but I am coming with you."

This time, Derek didn't argue.

The group began to disperse, following their orders as given, and alone, Jennifer started the short trek towards Spencer's hospital room.

Suddenly, it was cold.

She felt a the hairs stand up on the back of her neck; she turned to face the empty, desolate hallway, but only saw the backside of a man walking in the opposite direction. Frowning, she pulled her sleeves down to cover her wrists.

The anxiety seemed to be getting to all of them, it seemed.

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

"Dad?"

The cellphone was cold between Natalie's fingers, even colder than the wild bristling through her hair and through the open hospital doors.

"Princess."

He said her name as if he were expecting her call.

Natalie didn't know why she called him, exactly. Her fingers seemed to move of their own accord, dialing the familiar number the moment she'd stepped out into the fall air. As if the outdoor chill reminded her of him.

"Sorry, um, if I woke you—"

"You didn't."

She wished she had.

Natalie knew, the moment she remembered seeing Liam sitting in that car, that she could no longer rely on her recollection of things at all.

It was fragmented, her memory.

It always had been.

Thinking about Liam only ever made it worse, she knew, which was why she preferred not to. Preferred to tuck it away; out of sight, out of mind. Preferred to pray that she would forget, instead of praying that she'd remember. Preferred to tie a plastic bag over it's face and hold it under pulsing waves until it finally stopped struggling.

"Can I ask you something?"

Natalie didn't know what she wanted to ask.

On occasion, it suprised her that she was an FBI agent—a profiler—who couldn't so much as piece together the obvious conclusions.

The simple facts, like, her father would disappear for a few days once a year, or, her nightmares of tossing a blonde-haired girl into the water were a little bit too realistic; they evaded her, somehow. Flailed beneath the current. Drowned in her subconscious.

(Natalie didn't know the question, but if she were honest with herself, she already knew the answer.)

"Are you alright? You sound... scared."

James didn't sound concerned.

"Can I—"

"You can ask me anything, princess."

Like he'd pulled a trigger, Natalie froze.

It wasn't nighttime, anymore, and she wasn't 28 years old, either. It only took a moment for her to float away.

Her father looked at her through the side mirror, his dirtied hands grasping the steering wheel while Natalie was buckled in securely in the back seat after he'd picked her up from school. She'd been ordered to go home early, after her nose bled onto her classmate's math test. She was rather reviled, at school, and so she didn't complain when she was sent away.

Natalie stared at her father's hands, unable to look away from the mud caked up to his wrists and splattered all the way towards his elbows. They didn't own a garden, and James hadn't done yard work in years, and for some reason, she couldn't look away.

Her father caught her eye in the review mirror the moment that she tore her eyes from the dirt. She quickly looked away.

"You can ask me anything, princess," he'd told her casually, but his fingers gripped the wheel tighter when he did. "Remember what we say?"

Younger Natalie met his eye once more.

"The Lord is our father, and father is the Lord."

"Good girl. Now, ask your question."

"Where were you?"

It was the first time Natalie had seen James in days. He told her that he wouldn't be home, but that he would see her off on her walk to school the next day, yet he never did. He did pick her up when the school called 2 days later, though.

He never said what was keeping him.

At first, she was too nervous to ask.

James never liked girls who stuck their noses where they shouldn't belong. He didn't like the normal type, the goody-two-shoes, the type that asked questions and never shut up; he liked Natalie because she did.

That's what he told her, anyway.

Vaguely, she remembered James smiling at her. She couldn't see his lips, but his eyes crinkled in the mirror, and she looked away again.

"With God," he'd said simply.

Young Natalie didn't ask any more questions.

Current Natalie only had one.

"Where are you?"

Her voice came out with a quiet rasp, her mouth jammed against the cellphone speaker box. She wasn't sure how long she'd been floating, how long she'd stood there like a statue and remembered. Either way, it was long enough for James to prepare his response.

In an assured, frustratingly calm tone, he answered, and Natalie felt blood trickle down to her upper lip the moment he smiled through black teeth and said—

"With God."

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

Jennifer entered Spencer's hospital room to see that he was already awake.

Aside from the thick bandage wrapped around his neck, it wasn't apparent that he'd been injured at all. He was sat up in bed, his eyes quickly scanning over a stack of files that Penelope definitely wasn't supposed to give him.

He didn't look up when she shut the door behind her, and Jennifer got the distinct feeling that he couldn't hear her over the voices in his head.

"Earth to Spencer?"

"Mm."

Spencer hummed, his finger scanning down the page faster than Jennifer could even begin to comprehend, and she rolled her eyes.

Reaching out, she snatched the file from his hands, tossing it onto an empty tray table beside his bed.

"Want to talk about it?"

Spencer glared up at her, the unmistakable redness in his eyes indicating that he hadn't slept in days. He pushed his feet off the side of the bed, rubbing a hand across his face with a wince; moving must've pulled on his stitches, but he pretended as if he were completely fine.

"Not particularly, no."

Jennifer regarded his state for a moment, before moving to sit beside him on the bed. She resisted rubbing his back as a show of comfort. "You got shot—"

"Oh, really? I didn't notice."

If it were Henry sitting beside her, she would've gave him a hardened stare until he apologized; despite the similarities between Spencer and her son—they both get mean when they're scared—she let him off easy. She figured that getting shot was a good reason to be a little sassy, so she changed the subject with ease.

"Hotch told me to give you a cognitive."

Spencer shook his head almost immediately, defeated, and hissed when he pulled on his stitches again. "I didn't see anything, JJ. The shot came from behind me, and I—even if I could've seen something, I didn't."

"I know," she conceded, leaning forwards a bit with her hands on her knees so that she could see his face properly. "We'll have to rely on Nat's version of things, so—"

"Is she alright?"

Jennifer didn't know how to answer.

Spencer regarded her for a moment, and understood.

It wasn't alright. Any of it.

Natalie had gone from a regular FBI agent to a victim of a generational serial killer in a matter of hours, and it wasn't alright. Whatever image they'd concocted of her in their minds was diminished, and all that was left was the truth. Well, whatever part of the truth Natalie was willing to share with them.

For some reason, Jennifer began thinking of James.

It was a short conversation, they'd had in the police precinct earlier that day. Began with the weather, ended with Spencer intruding and starting what looked like some sort of big-dick-contest.

You know my daughter well, then? James had asked her before Spencer arrived, and Jennifer had responded with a half-certain, Better than anyone.

It wasn't until now, that she recognized the expression which graced James' face after she spoke. It wasn't until now, that she recalled seeing the same expression on Natalie's face the day before.

Dissimulation.

They wore the same mask; they hid different truths.

"Morgan thinks she's lying."

It went unsaid that the rest of them did, too.

Spencer seemed to be in battle with himself. A slight quirk of his lip suggested that he was appalled at the mere idea that Natalie may be hiding something; the furrow of his brows suggested that logically, he knew better than to take her words at face value.

"About what?"

Jennifer sighed. "That's what we're trying to figure out. I don't think—I mean, if she knew something, she'd tell us, right?"

Whether it was the exhaustion creeping up on him or the frustration brewing in his chest, Spencer no longer seemed interested in mincing his words.

"Victims of abuse and neglect are known to have significantly poorer memory recollection in adulthood. In some cases, the abuser is able to manipulate them into believing anything... even if it's not what they really experienced..."

His thoughts trailed off, and he got the look.

(She should've known better than to think that being shot in the neck could stop Boy Genius from solving the case before the rest of them.)

"Wait—you don't think her father—"

"His alibi checked out," Spencer reminded her, or more so reminded himself, "His alibi checked out, but... JJ, do you still have the security tape of James in his shop?"

"Uh, Bethel P.D. made a copy, I think, but—"

"Tell Garcia to have them send it over," he said quickly, making his way out of the hospital bed and throwing on the clothes which were left on a nearby chair, "I need to get back to Quantico. Can you drive?"

"I—Hotch wants me here—"

"Okay, so drop me off. And bring Hotch."

By the time Jennifer even began to process whatever idea that Spencer already had fully formed in his head, he was already halfway out the door.

"Spencer."

At the sound of his full name, he stopped dead in his tracks, but the flicker of impatience on his features didn't go unnoticed.

"What."

"You don't think..."

Jennifer had already asked once, but she needed to again. The thought of Natalie's father being involved was terrifying enough; but she knew that the implications of that fact, if it were true, would be more than enough to send Natalie off the deep end. 

Spencer didn't respond.

He didn't need to. The look in his eyes said enough.

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

The blood dripped onto her shirt.

The cellphone in her hand began to overheat with the ferocity she gripped it with, the warmth from the device being the only thing which grounded her.

James Is With God.

He'd hung up after he spoke, but really, there was nothing more to be said. Tires screeched in the background of the call, the same tires she'd heard rolling around the corner as Spencer's blood splattered across her face; James may be with God, but Natalie had never felt further away.

Footsteps sounded behind her, and she knew it was Hotch before he could speak.

"I'm not lying, Aaron."

Another lie, among everything else.

"I know."

The fact that he sounded sincere made her want to stab herself in the stomach with a hunting knife.

Turning to face him, her bloodied nose eerily resembling the aftermath of a violent punch to the face, she let out a shaky breath. Hotch swallowed.

Natalie knew she made him feel sick.

There wasn't a world in which she imagined him looking at her and not wanting to vomit. Everything he knew, everything he'd seen, was more frightening than the prospect of her father murdering 25 people. Natalie didn't want to be seen, and certainly not by him.

Hotch didn't deserve what came with it.

"I'm not lying, I just—"

"I know."

But he didn't.

Hotch thought this: Natalie witnessed her mother dying. Natalie's father likes to throw punches. Natalie has chronic nosebleeds. Natalie is broken. Natalie is soft. Natalie loves God. God doesn't love Natalie.

But Natalie knew this: Her mother died because of her. Her father punches because of her. Her nose bleeds because of God. She hates God. God hates her.

Something about Hotch made her want to cry.

His relentless empathy made her want to die.

"Stop... pretending you know me."

Natalie wasn't sure where it came from, the anger. She supposed it had been bubbling beneath the surface since that first body was discovered in Maine; or even longer, maybe. Since she watched her mother die. Since she was born. Since James had committed sins long before her conception.

Hotch hadn't been expecting it, clearly.

He sort of—reared back, like the cold wind had been too much for him and he allowed his body to simply follow the gust of air. Allowed it to carry him away.

"I know you—"

"You don't know anything."

It was all too much. Her father on the phone, Spencer getting shot, Hotch standing in front of her. Like her leash had been collared too tightly, Natalie felt as though she was barking her words, a dog chained to a rotting tree.

"I know enough," Hotch replied evenly, though the vein on his forehead popped out, like he was restraining himself. "I know that you're traumatized, and—"

"I'm not—"

Hotch cut her off before she could disagree.

"You're traumatized, and you've had a hard life, and you like to pretend that it doesn't affect you, but it does." Taking a step forward, he kept his voice low, but a sharp bite in his tone. "You hate birthday parties, because they remind you that you never had any after your mother died. You flinch whenever someone gets angry, because you think you'll get hurt, even if you didn't do anything wrong. You rarely do anything wrong, and you beat yourself up when you do, because your chronic fear of being a disappointment outweighs your pride."

Natalie supposed he wasn't restraining himself anymore. Despite herself, she laughed in his face.

"Wow, a profiler can profile. Nice work."

Hotch narrowed his eyes.

(Subconsciously, she braced for an impact that never came, and when she realized what she'd done, she crossed her arms over her chest.)

"You deflect when Elaine is brought up."

He raised his chin, the vein on his forehead growing more prominient by the second, and it occured to Natalie that she forgot what they were talking about, originally. She felt the invisible collar grow tighter, and felt the urge to attack grow, and she was trapped, and she couldn't break free from the leash, and—

"That's what happens when you watch your mother get murdered. Why don't you ask Jack?"

Regret, the moment it left her mouth.

Natalie knew how to hurt people. She knew how to tell their faults, their insecurities, their guilt, their weaknesses. She knew exactly which thread to pull to make them come undone.

She never thought she'd hurt Hotch.

There had been times, in the past, when she came close. When she felt like a caged animal and bit the first hand that tried to pet her. His hand.

He didn't react, at first.

Hotch stood there, staring at her like he had been since she turned around; staring at her like she was destined to break. Maybe she already had.

A deep breath in, and a deep breath out, and she watched with caution as he closed his eyes for a moment, centering himself. It was ironic, she knew, that the movements mimicked those that James would do, on occasion. Not to calm himself down, but to prepare himself for scraped knuckles and cracked bones.

Natalie often found herself thinking she deserved it from others, but never had she been so sure as now.

Hotch opened his eyes, and clenched his jaw.

"Do not speak to me like that."

"Why not?" Natalie's mouth moved of it's own volition, the loud, abrasive, sarcastic tone sounding foreign coming from between her lips, "What, are you gonna hit me?" 

Time stood still for a while, after that.

Hotch didn't move an inch.

Natalie didn't either.

It was hard to believe that she was speaking to the man who, not twelve hours ago, told her he'd never lay a hand on her. The man who showed her his palms, the softness of them, the cleanliness. No blood, no bruises, no swelling. It was even harder to believe that he wasn't lying, when he said those things.

(Why wouldn't he just fucking hit her already?)

Natalie hated him for it.

(How could he just stand there and let her talk to him like that? How could he just let it slide?)

She needed him to hate her for it.

(C'mon, hit me. Punch me. Make me bleed. I don't know what to do with myself if you don't.)

Hotch wasn't angry enough.

No, he wasn't angry at all. Gazing down at her as if she were the saddest thing he'd ever seen, his eyes glinting under the street lamps with unshed tears; like she was a lamb up for slaughter, a dog about to be put down by the shelter.

He looked at her how she looked at herself.

"I'm not your father," Hotch told her, an emptiness in his tone that she'd never heard before; an emptiness that she never wanted to hear again.

"I know that," Natalie snapped. "Do you?"

Hotch didn't say anything else.

He just kept looking at her, and it only occurred to her after she spoke that maybe, he wasn't looking at her as if she were wounded; maybe, he was looking at his reflection in her irises, the mirror Natalie forgot existed.

Natalie wondered if Hell was hot enough.

"...Hotch, did you hear me?"

All at once, the connection between their eyelines broke, along with any other connection they may have had at one point.

JJ stood a few feet away—

No, Spencer stood a few feet away.

Whatever JJ ended up saying to Hotch as she guided him away, Natalie didn't hear it. Spencer was alive, and standing, and okay, and that was all she cared about anymore.

He walked towards her, also ignoring the way the other two agents left the vicinity and spoke in even more hushed tones. Ignoring the rage on the older man's face, and ignoring the lingering yet wildly persistent fear on Natalie's.

"Hi."

When he said the word, his voice came out hoarse, and he coughed. Natalie allowed herself to be amused, only for a single second.

"Hi."

"I'm, uh, glad you're—"

"I'm so sorry."

Spencer blinked, his lips pursing, and he rubbed his eye. Natalie watched him, her throat dry and her eyelashes uncharacteristically wet; but she wasn't crying, surely.

"It's... not your fault."

He didn't sound like he believed that.

Natalie couldn't help but to stare at the bandage wrapped around his neck, the white cloth that looked far too much like a noose the longer she focused on it.

"Spencer, I..." Natalie's voice wavered, the events of the day finally catching up to her in the worst way. Starting fires she couldn't put out, pushing away the very few people who actually cared. "...I know that there's, um, a lot of things I need to... say, and, um..."

So many things she wanted to tell him; so many things that she just couldn't.

For the first time since she'd known him, Spencer looked at Natalie without the softness that was always present. "You can tell me the truth, you know?"

Natalie paused, scrapping the speech she'd been planning in her head since she found out he was alright.

"What?"

Spencer let out a sharp breath, and she belatedly realized that he was angry. With the words she spoke to Hotch still ringing in her mind, she swallowed, and braced herself.

(The collar around her neck was still there, looser than before, but threatening to tighten at any given moment. To choke her out, to suffocate her in a pool of her own self-loathing.)

Spencer licked his lips, and she was scared of what may come out of them next.

"You and I both know that James isn't entirely removed from all of this," he said, and in an instant Natalie felt the collar pull to it's tightest setting and cut off the airflow to her brain, "If it weren't for the alibi that he provided, he'd be the main suspect, and you know this. Every sign points to him. From the relationship with the original victims, to the narcissism, to the fact that the only child he ever tried to kill was—"

"You—" all the rage which had dissipated when he showed up now coming back in full force, "—have no fucking clue what you're talking about."

"Then tell me," Spencer pressed, and Natalie's chest heaved when he did, "Tell me what I'm missing. Tell me what's going on, so I can help you."

"What makes you think I need your help?"

The answer was obvious; everything.

Since the moment she met him 4 years earlier, she needed it. Whether it be on some subconscious level, or while chasing down an unsub and narrowly missing death after he saved her life, she needed his help. Needed him.

Spencer shook his head, and winced, and Natalie's eyes were drawn back to the bandage covering his wound; maybe she needed him, but God, he needed to get rid of her.

He wouldn't do it himself, but Natalie was plenty equipped at doing things alone.

"Please don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about," Spencer said eventually, bringing up the one thing she feared he would, "I thought... I thought we were something, you know? I... I thought we cared about each other, and told each other things. I thought we helped each other."

I thought we were something.

That was his first mistake. There wasn't a We in Natalie, but there was an I.

They weren't anything.

"Have you ever considered that whatever perception you have of us is flawed? That maybe, you made it all up in your head, and it has nothing to do with me?"

For the second time, regret.

Both times, it was for the better.

(Anna's skull, covered in dirt and cobwebs and moss and water damage, clouded her vision; the thought of it being Spencer's was enough for her to never speak to him again.)

Spencer bit the inside of his cheek, staring down at her with some sort of pain that she'd never seen before. Not just pain; loss. A sick, depraved part of her was glad that it hurt, because at least then, she could die knowing that he did care, at some point.

He looked away, like it stung to look at her.

"The only reason you were able to manage my perceptions is because I trusted you."

Natalie scoffed. "You don't even know me."

Spencer didn't raise his voice, not like she did, and for some reason, that made it hurt more. How he got small, instead of proud, and whispered, instead of yelled, "I want to."

At that, she laughed.

Desperately, she wanted to tell him that he was wrong. That he didn't want to know her, and she was saving him by not letting him. That if he knew her, really knew her, the bullet wouldn't have grazed his neck, but gone straight through his skull.

Her father was always an excellent shot.

Because it was her father, wasn't it?

Natalie didn't need another cognitive to tell her that. James had told her himself, with just two words sliding off the tip of his tongue.

Everyone who died, had been murdered by him. Everyone she loved, everyone she ever cared for, gone.

James said he was with God.

Natalie knew he was God.

When she snapped out of her reverie, she was alone.

Down the street, she watched as Hotch, JJ, and Spencer drove past in their black SUV. Derek stood by the entrance to the hospital, not too far away, patiently waiting to finish the cognitive interview she didn't need; the interview she wouldn't be honest in, even if she did.

Turning back to face the road, Natalie watched as the vehicle skid around the corner, tires turning violently against the gravel.

Her mouth went dry once more.

━━━━━⭒━━━━━

Jennifer saw the headlights before she felt the impact.

It wasn't the first time she'd been in a car crash, but it was the first she'd been dragged out of one by unfamiliar arms, not belonging to cop, or a firefighter, or an EMT.

Hotch and Spencer—no, it wasn't them holding her arms and dragging her half-conscious body into the back of a van—had their eyes closed, when she opened hers, but—

No, they were unconscious—

(What happened, again?)

Blinking. Jennifer faintly saw a vibrant orange and red light up the street—fire—before her body went slack, and she forgot where she was again.

When she opened her eyes, it couldn't have been long, because she was still being dragged, and she fought to get some footing on the ground only to realize that her legs wouldn't move, and her head hurt—

(Were her ankles tied together?)

Craning her neck upwards, Jennifer blinked again.

Natalie looked down at her.

Oh.

No, not Natalie.

Before she could call for help, or scream, or something, strong hands wrapped around her throat, and squeezed, and a blackened smile was all she saw before she faded away once more.

author's note ━━━━━━━━━━━━
natalie having a fight with both hotch and
spencer in the same scene... damn, double
homicide

also i am so sorry jennifer jareau i love you
i hope you don't get murdered by your best
friend's dad <3

the next chapter is the last chapter of ACT
ONE so, ya know, remember to breathe now
because you might be drowning later! and
thank you for waiting four months while
i just thought about this chapter for... four
months! and then wrote it in one week! lol