Criminal Minds Fanfic

by spinner

Moo Shoo Voodoo

1  2  3  4 

 1

“What’s the matter with you today?” Hotch asked, sliding into the diner booth and pushing a cup of coffee at Emily Prentiss.  The brunette gave a heavy sigh and accepted the cup.

“Nothing,” she lied. 

“Nothing, my ass,” Hotch growled. 

Prentiss hung low over her cup, fiddled with the handle, glanced up and down at Hotch, and sighed again. 

“Do I need to get the thumbscrews?” Hotch asked.

“Do you have thumbscrews?” Prentiss wondered.

“I keep a vast array of torture devices in my desk at all times.  The beauty of it is, I can write them off as work-related supplies,” Hotch said.  “What’s wrong?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“Reid.”

“What about him?”

“Hotch, he makes you insanely protective.”

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing, do you?”

“I’ll be honest.  There are times when I’m afraid you two are one bitter, lukewarm latte away from an interstate killing spree.”

“I don’t believe we’re quite that bad, are we?”  

“You almost shot a woman two days ago.”

“I would not have shot Korsakova.”

“You would have if I hadn’t stopped you, and if JJ hadn’t called at the most opportune moment.  Think about that for a second.  You almost shot Korsakova in broad daylight, in a public restaurant full of people, in front of her daughter.  Don’t tell me you weren’t angry for no reason.”

“I was very angry, with good reason.  But, it’s okay now.  She’s there, and we’re here, and it’s okay now.”

“You can’t keep Reid in Dallas indefinitely.”

“No, but I can keep him busy and away from that evil, manipulative shrew until I figure out….”

His voice trailed off.

“Figure out how to get rid of Korsakova, or figure out if Ekatarina is Reid’s daughter?”

Hotch met Prentiss’s gaze and shrugged both shoulders.

“Yes.”

“I asked Garcia to do some digging,” Prentiss whispered.

“Oh no,” Hotch groaned.  “You shouldn’t have.  It’s Reid’s private business.  We should not be meddling this way.”

“Like how you didn’t meddle in the private business between him and Dr. Forni?”

“That was different.”

“It was different all right,” Prentiss agreed.  “You didn’t think I was going to leave this alone, did you?  I want to protect Reid as much as you do.  So does Morgan.  So does everyone else.”

“What did Garcia find out?” Hotch hated himself for asking. 

“Viktor Davydov is not listed as Ekatarina’s father on her birth certificate. But then neither is Spencer Reid.”

“How did you get Moscow to give you that?”

“The girl wasn’t born in Moscow.  She was born in Maine.”

Hotch sat back, blinked, stared.

“Come again?”

“Ekatarina was born in Presque Isle, Maine in March 2000.  She’s an American citizen.”

“So?”

“When were you in Oxford with Reid and Gideon?  1999.  Normal human gestation is nine months.”

“It can last as long as ten months.”

“Yes, but not as long as a year.  How old was Ekatarina when you saw her and her mother in Rotterdam?”  Prentiss asked.  Hotch gasped.  “Yes, Reid told me about that.”

“Maybe a year.”

“Okay.  Let’s start in March 1999.”

“April.”

“April 1999.  You believe that Korsakova seduced Reid in London.  Ten months forward for gestation time?  That would be January 2000.   Ekatarina was born in March 2000.  There’s too much of a time delay for that theory to work, Hotch.”

“You’re saying I’m wrong?  You saw the girl too, Prentiss.  What did you think?”

“She looks an awful lot like Reid.”

“Yes, she bloody well does.”

“But she also looks like Davydov.”

“You’re splitting hairs,” Hotch accused.    “Korsakova must have up a name to put on her daughter’s birth certificate to deflect attention from either Davydov or Reid.”

“Based on your own timeline, starting in April 1999, it is a temporal impossibility for Reid to be Ekatarina’s father, because she wasn’t born until 2000.”

“Are you sure about the date?”

“I asked Garcia to check Ekatarina’s medical records for any abnormalities.”

“If Korsakova finds out you’re snooping around her kid, she’s going to hunt us all down.  I told you, she’s exceptionally efficient with firearms,” Hotch warned.

“There is nothing out of the ordinary about the girl.”

“Good to know.”

“She broke her arm when she was five, climbing trees at their house in London.  Other than that, nothing serious has ever happened to her.”

“Why do we need to know this?  What does it prove?”

“She doesn’t have any signs of schizophrenia, or Asperger’s Syndrome, or autism, or any of Reid’s other genetic curiosities.  She does well in school, but she’s not phenomenally bright like Reid is.    She likes science and botany.   She’s been enrolled in martial arts since she could walk.   She plays ice hockey.  She climbs trees.  She likes ponies.  She’s perfectly normal.”

“Which doesn’t mean she’s not his child.  It merely means that she doesn’t share some of his more eccentric personality traits.  Maybe she takes after her mother.   I’m going to go out on a limb and tell you that I don’t think growing up with Diana Reid as a mother did Spencer any favors.  No matter how much she loves her son, she was not the world’s best parent.”

“I would probably agree with you on that, but I would never tell him so.  Ekatarina travels with Korsakova when plausible.  Other times she stays with family, mostly with a cousin in California.  Korsakova never leaves her daughter home alone with husbands or ex-husbands or fathers or step-fathers.  If Viktor Davydov was the girl’s father, he was not an active part of her life.  That tells me Yulia must have had a bad relationship with her father.”

“Her father died when she was very young.”

“Then she must had a bad relationship with her step-father, and she doesn’t want to risk the cycle repeating with her own daughter.   She sends her daughter to the best schools.  She takes time to be an involved parent in spite of the fact she travels a lot for work.  She’s very protective of both her children.”

“Good to know,” Hotch repeated grimly. 

“I have to say, she seemed pretty protective of Reid too, come to that.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying….I’m saying I think in her own special way that Korsakova might actually care about Reid.  I’m saying that I don’t think Reid could be the girl’s father if he slept with Yulia in London 1999.   I don’t trust that quote- unquote linguist any further than you do, but you need to cut the wicked manipulative shrew some slack.  Stop being such a jealous boyfriend.  That’s what I’m saying.”

Hotch slurped back his coffee, wishing it was a whisky sour.

“Prentiss?  You and the horse you rode in on,” he muttered.   She shook her head and rolled her eyes at him.

“You see?  This is why we can’t have heart-to-heart conversations,” she replied. 

2

It hit Hotch some hours later how it was possible for Reid to be the father of Korsakova’s daughter.   He would never be convinced Ekatarina was not Reid’s child, not after meeting her face to face and seeing those eyes, and seeing how much she mirrored him physically.  Reid must have needed only one look at Ekatarina to know the truth as well.  But after realizing how it was possible for Ekatarina to belong to Reid, Hotch wished a thousand times that he could be proven wrong. 

They were working the case in Dallas—a string of young people who had turned up missing, then had turned up dead.   There were signs that the victims were subjected to all manner of sexual torture.   A search of the prime suspect’s apartment and storage unit turned up a series of home movies.  Hotch had given Reid and Prentiss the task of watching those discs, while he and Rossi interrogated the suspect, and Morgan and JJ catalogued all the items in the storage unit. 

From the observation room, Hotch watched Rossi putting the screws to Daryl Diablo (and he tried not to snicker to himself every time he read the suspect’s name).   The man was a cartoon in every sense of the word.  He hadn’t even tried to hide his crimes from anyone.  His interrogation was frankly so boring Hotch had a hard time paying attention.   Some people were just plain evil, and Daryl Diablo was some people. 

Aaron glanced down at the dark monitor before him, the only one of the three that was turned off.  One monitor was recording the events in the interrogation room.  The second monitor was recording the events in the large open squad room.  The third monitor, he discovered, was meant for recording the events in the room across the hall where Reid and Prentiss were watching the home movies.

Hotch clicked the switch and watched Emily and Spencer.   At least they were interesting.  Prentiss was sitting at the one chair at the table, manipulating the controls, while Reid stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder.   He looked as if he was playing queen’s counsel to her majesty. 

Prentiss put in a disc, and watched with poorly-concealed horror as the screen showed a young woman in great distress.  Even through the double barrier of watching the tv over the surveillance monitor, and through glass and wood and across the hallway, Hotch could hear the pitiful screams.  Prentiss turned down the volume.  The screams faded from the hallway but not from the recording monitor. 

Daryl Diablo had heard those screams too. The sick bastard was sitting across from Rossi, and he was smiling for all he was worth.  This job really made Hotch violently ill sometimes. 

“Who is she?” Prentiss asked. 

“Diablo’s daughter, Francine.  Twenty-one,” Reid replied.  “Victim number five.”

“What is she strapped into?” Prentiss asked, tipping her head to the side and screwing up her face in puzzlement. 

“A stockade which allows the unsub to restrain the victim’s hands, arms, and elbows above their head while allowing unlimited access to any area below the waist.  By chaining the knees up and apart, and keeping the hips slightly higher than the back, he manages to create more open space for penetration by the…..erm……physical stimulation attachment.”

Reid’s voice trailed off as Prentiss took out the first disc and put in another.   Meanwhile, she gave Reid a dirty look.

“It bothers me that we know so much about devices like that.”

Reid shrugged one shoulder and said, “Occupational hazard.”

Prentiss faced forward again.   

“I have to wonder every time I walk through the power tool department at Lowe’s how many of those drilling machines make it to the work shop and not the bedroom,” Emily groaned.  “Tell me that isn’t a drill based attached to the….whatever you called it…..‘physical stimulation attachment’?”

“Yes.  That is the cordless battery pack and drill base attachment holder for the Ryobi 18 volt 5-piece set, modified to hold the physical stimulation attachment.”

“Reid, stop,” Prentiss said. 

“Sorry,” he apologized again.  “You would prefer I use less technical terms?” Reid asked. 

“In this case, I would prefer colorful euphemisms.”

“Is ‘physical stimulation attachment’ not an appropriate euphemism?”

“Maybe you could say ‘rubber chicken’?” Prentiss suggested.  Reid snorted softly.  “What?” she demanded. 

“You yourself have an amazing collection of rubber chickens.”

“Yes, but those are toys.   Toys are fun.  Toys bring happiness and joy.   Toys make you smile.  You may have noticed I am not smiling, because that, my dear, is not a toy.”

“No.  It is a torture device.”

“Okay then,” she said.  “At least we can agree on that.” 

The second tape came to life.  The victim was a young man this time, and he was strapped into the same stockade, arms above his head, knees open, hips slightly elevated, except this time, the victim was being further humiliated by means of two added attachments, one which anally penetrated him and the other which was sheathed over his genitalia.

“Victim number six, Francine’s boyfriend, Larson Goodson,” Prentiss supplied.  “What in the world is…what is that?” Prentiss asked, pointing to the screen.

Reid was staring wide-eyed and horrified at the screen, and he was not responding to her.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was an automatic milking machine,” Prentiss decided.  “You know?  Those cylinders and tubing you attach to cow udders.”

Reid fled the room, hand over his mouth.  He darted into the men’s restroom.   He did not return. 

Prentiss continued to watch the disc.  Her hypothesis had been correct.  Once the physical stimulation attachment worked the male victim to orgasm, the sheath over his cock drank the resulting biological matter down a tube and away off camera.   The victim lay breathing heavily, trying to hold back his whimpers and tears, shaking from head to toe.   Realization dawned inside Prentiss’s head.  She took a deep breath, and turned off Daryl Diablo’s grotesque home movie.

“Oh, damn,” she whispered, hanging her head in her hands.   

In the meantime, Hotch left the observation room and hurried down the hall.  He found Reid in the bathroom, head in the toilet, puking up everything but his toenails.  The young doctor was white as a ghost.  Hotch knelt down with Reid, and rubbed Spencer’s back in slow, gentle circles. 

3

With Hotch’s blessing, Reid returned to the hotel and hid in his room.  It was after six in the evening before the rest of the team broke up for the night.  They had dinner.  They went back to the hotel.   Hotch was carrying his notes back to his room, fumbling with them while unlocking the door.  He glanced down the hall and saw Prentiss tapping at Reid’s door.  There was no answer. 

“Reid?  You there?  You okay?” she called out. 

There was no answer.   She lowered her voice.

“Let me in.  I need to talk to you.”

There was no answer.  Prentiss continued to wait.  Hotch waited too, pretending to be having trouble with his lock.  Just when Prentiss was about to walk away, Reid’s door opened a crack.  Prentiss slipped inside and shut it behind herself. 

Hotch felt his stomach knot together.  He sat on his bed and waited for fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds until he heard Reid’s door open again.  Hotch pounced to his feet.  Prentiss would have to walk past Hotch’s room to get to her room.  He opened his door and snagged her arm and yanked her inside his room.  He closed and locked the portal, standing back against it to prevent her from escaping.

“Do you plan to shoot me?” Prentiss asked, pushing her hair out of her eyes. 

“What did he say?”

“Moo shoo voodoo.”

“What?”

“The Chinese takeout made him sick.  He needed to lie down for a while.”

“He saw that home movie, and that’s what made him sick.”

“Yes, Hotch, I know.”

“I figured out how Korsakova managed to have Reid’s child a year after London,” Hotch said evenly.

“I think I know too,” she nodded.    “You tell me your theory, and I’ll tell you mine.  In the meantime, take me to the store.  I promised Reid I’d bring him something to calm his stomach.”

Prentiss and Hotch strolled through the aisles of a nearby grocery store as Hotch babbled for fifteen minutes straight.  Prentiss led him along, listening as she filled the basket with 7-UP and chicken broth and soda crackers and a bottle of Tums.   She tossed in a couple cheap paperback novels.   Hotch knew she was slowly getting Reid addicted to them, though he could not guess why.  Maybe she thought more knowledge of popular culture wouldn’t kill him.   Or maybe she was more than a little perversely sadistic. 

When Hotch was done explaining himself, Prentiss put a hand on his arm and shushed him.  They were about to get in line to check out, and this was the last thing they should be talking about in the company of other people who might not understand. 

“In vitro fertilization.  That was what I thought too, especially when that video made him lose his lunch.  I hope we’re wrong, but we’re probably right.  Ah, the miracles of modern science,” she whispered.   Even though they spoke in low whispers, the mother in front of them moved both her children ahead of herself in line to get them away from Prentiss and Hotch.   

What went unspoken was the simple truth that there were only two ways to know for sure if they were right:  ask Reid what happened that day, or obtain a DNA sample from Ekatarina.   Hotch couldn’t decide which option seemed more intrusive and unpleasant to him.   

4

Hotch and Prentiss both spent the night in Reid’s room with him, ostensibly to make sure he was over his battle with moo shoo voodoo, but mostly to make sure he was going to be okay otherwise.   No one voiced any theories about Ekatarina’s parentage and how in all likelihood she had started out in a petri dish.  Prentiss did not bring up the video tape which had scared the heebie-jeebies out of Reid.   Spencer did a good job of pretending he was fine, that it was all about Chinese chicken gone bad.  But then again, he was a consummate liar, and he had had lots of years of practice. 

There was a fair bit of snuggling, and positively no sex going on, which was a remarkable change from the last time these three had been in a hotel room alone together.  No mention was made of what probably happened in London 1999, during the nine hours it took Korsakova to transport Reid from London to Oxford. 

As Hotch lay in bed with Reid curled up asleep on one arm, and Prentiss was sleeping spooned up against Reid’s thin body, Aaron went back in time in his mind and remembered what he could remember of that day.

When Korsakova had contacted Gideon to ask how to return Reid, as if he had been a mislaid piece of luggage or a hat she found on the Tube, Hotch had been prepared for her to request a ransom, demand concessions, seek asylum, something, anything.  She asked for nothing but safe passage.  Hindsight told Hotch that could only mean she had already gotten what she was after.

If the drive between London and Oxford was filled to capacity with traffic, as Korsakova had insisted it was, even in the most serious congestion, it would have taken three hours maximum.  That left six or more hours between the time she called Gideon and the time she delivered Reid to them in Oxford.   She had called Gideon at just past seven in the morning, but who knew what time of night she had located Reid, how long she had had him before she had called?  For simplification purposes, Hotch had counted time from when she had called to when they had arrived. 

As to what Korsakova had been up to with Reid during that time, only Reid and Korsakova knew for sure.   Gideon might know, if Reid had told him, but it wasn’t like Hotch could question Jason, was it?   Hotch suspected Reid had not told Gideon a single thing about what had transpired, because Gideon had been terribly angry with Reid for sneaking away.  Hotch suspected Gideon was more angry with himself than with Spencer.   Reid had made them both look like fools. 

Hotch’s first theory had been that Korsakova had collected Reid in London, interrogated him, profiled him, earned his trust, and dragged the emotionally-fragile, sexually-inexperienced boy between the sheets.   In retrospect he now knew that would have been virtually impossible, knowing that Reid had such serious issues trusting people. 

Prentiss was right that the first timeline did not allow for that kind of scenario, so Hotch had to erase it from his mind.  Korsakova had not in fact seduced Reid the old-fashioned way, although she had had a remarkable influence on his attraction to mother figures as sex partners. 

Hotch’s newly-developed theory was that Korsakova had collected Reid in London, drugged him unconscious, and delivered him to a medical facility where she would have been able to obtain biological samples from him.  Then at a later date, she had had in vitro fertilization performed on herself using those samples. 

Had it been a legitimate medical facility?  Hotch was going to have to say no, not given the way Reid had reacted when seeing Larson Goodson bolted down, spread open, and drilled half to death in Daryl Diablo’s home-made stockade.   Had Reid spent several hours strapped into a similar-such device, being repeatedly brought to orgasm, while Korsakova, or whoever was helping her, milked him over and over again? 

‘Six hours?!’  Hotch thought frantically.   Reid had a tendency to be good for one orgasm, two maybe, before sleep was an absolute necessity.  Hotch could not imagine six long hours of a repeat cycle like that.  His own man parts hurt at the idea of it. 

If so, if true, if even possible, then why in the hell was Reid so ready to defend Korsakova and her motives?   If he saw her and recognized her, shouldn’t he have run screaming in the other direction away from her?  Unless he didn’t remember?  No, he remembered.  He had reacted to Daryl Diablo’s home movie today, so he did remember whatever had happened.

Hotch wondered if he was going about this puzzle in reverse.  He decided to think about how Korsakova reacted to Reid rather than the other way around.   Like it or not, he actually could see further into Korsakova’s soul than he could into Reid’s.  In Hotch’s house a couple weeks ago, Reid had avoided eye contact with Korsakova at first.  She had petted his hand.  She had petted his cheek.  She had been so very careful with him.  Comforting.  She had been comforting. 

‘She is not the monster that you imagine’ – Reid had said. 

Hotch knew better of course.  There were many kinds of monsters. 

At the restaurant, before her daughter had come running in, Korsakova had greeted Reid with a kiss to both cheeks, and one in the middle, right on his mouth.  While the first two had not bothered him, Reid had been shocked by that final kiss.   Korsakova’s reaction to seeing him startled?  She had started petting him again—his hair, his arm, his waist, his backside.  Korsakova put her hands on Reid, but not much else.  She honestly seemed most interested in comforting him, mothering him.   

Mother.

The word went through Hotch’s mind, and he caught his breath.   Was that it?  He closed his eyes and let his mind wander, seeing Reid strapped down, seeing Korsakova standing by.   She would have had to have waited until her medical accomplices were done with Reid before she could return him to Gideon.   What else was there to do?   Is that what she had done?  In her role as a surrogate mother, had she stood by Reid’s bedside or surgical table, and held his hand, or petted his hair, or talked soothingly to him while the ‘procedure’ was taking place? 

Remembering the screams from today from the Diablo home movies, Hotch tried not to think about what kinds of sounds Reid had been making.  Korsakova was a mother.  She had a soft spot for Reid.  She could not have stood by and done nothing if he was making panic-stricken, distressed noises.  Wasn’t that what nature was all about?  Humans who were frightened or in pain made noises to attract the attention and the aid of those around them.   Mothers were programmed by nature to respond to the sound of youngsters in distress. 

While Gideon and Hotch had been racing around Oxford and London, pissing themselves with fear about where Reid had gone and what might have been done to him, Korsakova had delivered Reid to unimaginable evil (at least for a tormented genius who was worried about passing his mother’s illness to his children through his genes).    And yet for all her complicity in this act of violence and violation, Korsakova had remained by his side, kissing away the pain, drying his tears.  

Hotch thought about Haley taking Jack for his yearly immunization shots, and how much Jack had cried, and how Haley had stroked his hair, and kissed his cheek, and talked him through the series of shots.  Jack had kept his eyes trained on his mother and had done his best to ignore the shots.  Aaron could easily imagine exactly such a scenario with Reid and Korsakova. 

Hotch shook his head to make the thought of Reid in pain go away.  Reid hadn’t seemed at all injured when he was returned to Gideon and Hotch.   But this wasn’t likely something he would have spoken about freely to either of them—something so personal and private as that.   If he had been subjected to any amount of pain, especially for a long duration of time, shouldn’t there have been outward signs of physical abuse?  They hadn’t examined him, and he hadn’t volunteered any information.  Perhaps the medical accomplices had taken great care not to injure him, especially with Korsakova lurking about, ready to shoot them if they did.  Maybe the very idea of what had been done to him was enough to scare him (and then again, wouldn’t it have been enough to scare almost anyone?)

In the hotel room in Oxford, once Korsakova had left, once she had been escorted back to her car and allowed to drive away, Reid had been quiet and timid.  Hotch had taken that to be his default mood, because Reid had been timid and quiet for much of the trip.   Knowing now how talkative Reid actually could be, Hotch realized that Reid’s silence was a sign of distress, as it had been after his encounter with the dark side of Mariner. 

Reid had sat down in front of Gideon on the floor, rested his head on one of Jason’s knees, and stayed there, unmoving and soundless.  Gideon had rested a hand on Reid’s shoulder.  He bent over Spencer, and at first Hotch thought Jason might dot a reassuring kiss on Reid’s ear or his hair.  That seemed to him what Spencer was waiting for, some form of reassurance.   Instead, Gideon asked Reid a simple question.

“Did she hurt you?”    

Reid had to think about the question before he could answer.  He finally shook his head no.   His reaction time had been very slow.  He had, in fact, seemed groggy, sleepy, and drugged. 

“Get up off the floor,” Gideon had said, sharply but not unkindly.  Reid had moved stiffly as Hotch recalled.  Reid sat on the opposite side of the divan from Gideon, and Jason had looked at him very sternly.  “Spencer, I’m relieved you are back, and I am so glad you are safe.  But if you ever do anything so stupid again, I will not hesitate to punish you.   Do you understand me?”

Reid had hiccupped in surprise at being so harshly rebuked.  “Yes.”  He had quivered out one syllable and no more, eyes on his hands in his lap, fingers twisted tight together.   

“I want you to go to bed and stay there.  I don’t want to hear a sound out of you until tomorrow morning.  Do I make myself clear?” Gideon continued to scold.   

The floodgates opened.  Reid nodded shakily through a stream of tears. Reid crawled under his covers and whimpered himself to sleep.  Gideon left the room, overwrought with guilt and feeling horrible about Reid’s tearful reaction.   Hotch was certain it was the first time Gideon had ever raised his voice at Reid.   Reid’s emotional reaction had made Gideon upset with himself for scolding him in the first place.   Theirs was clearly a complicated relationship. 

Hotch had stayed behind – he was on guard duty, after all.  It was his job to stay with Reid.  Once Spencer was asleep, he hardly moved for six hours.  Hotch sat by the window and watched traffic, watched commuters, watched students, watched the old buildings.  He remembered watching the light moving over Reid in his bed, and thinking how vulnerable and young Spencer had been.  

When Reid did wake up, he rolled over and sat up with a start, looked worriedly around the pitch black room, breathing hard, whimpering softly.    Hotch came to the side of his bed and reassured him with a few quiet words.   He may have even pushed Reid’s hair out of his eyes and put a hand on his shoulder.  Those big brown doe eyes – Hotch remembered looking down into them and trying to be reassuring.   Reid laid back down, watched Hotch watch over him.  Hotch definitely had pushed Reid’s hair out of his eyes.  He might have even stroked his hair for a while, only until Reid drifted back to sleep.   

Spencer slept another four hours, not opening his eyes until Gideon arrived with breakfast for him.   Reid apologized profusely for sneaking away, and Gideon accepted his apology.  No further mention was ever made of it.

Hotch could not let go of the feeling that Korsakova had hurt the boy, and that she should pay for what she had done, thus he had spent two years plotting how he would get back at her for it. 

Flash forward to Rotterdam.  What an idiot Hotch had been!   He had watched Korsakova push that stroller all around the old port city, popping into this store, that store, the post office, the bakery.   Never once did it occur to him where the child had come from, that there was anything unusual about the child whatsoever.  He knew Korsakova already had a son.  It did not disturb him at all that she had had another child.  Her file had said she was often married and divorced and had turbulent relationships with the men in her life.  He did not put two and two together.  He did not connect the second child with Reid at all then. 

Finally, after following Korsakova and her daughter all around as Yulia performed her errands,  Hotch was close enough, finally, finally.  The child was throwing a serious tantrum, screaming, crying, kicking her little feet.  Korsakova was growing impatient, and grew careless.  Hotch prowled around the corner into the alley where Korsakova had gone to quiet the child.  He drew his gun.  He raised it.

Korsakova had heard his footsteps on the bricks.  She spun around with the child in her arms, and she recognized Hotch immediately.  Given the choice between dropping her child to go for her gun, and taking a bullet, Korsakova didn’t even flinch.

“Shoot me then, damn you.  What are you waiting for?” she had demanded testily.   

The baby had been howling through her tantrum.  That sound was sure to attract attention.  It was now or never.   But he couldn’t do it.  No matter how angry he was at Korsakova for what she had or hadn’t done to Reid, Hotch couldn’t kill Korsakova.  He lowered his gun and fired at the ground. 

The errant bullet had danced up from the bricks and struck Yulia in the knee.   She didn’t scream out, but she gave Hotch the most sour, baleful look as she went down, and rightfully so.   Korsakova had let go of the child after all, and Ekatarina had tumbled roughly to the bricks. 

Hotch rushed forward, picked up the fallen child, and put her back in her stroller.  She was screaming even more loudly and forcefully than before, but she was unharmed except for a scuff on the palm of her right hand.  Hotch reached into Korsakova’s jacket and took away her gun.  While he was walking away, he pulled out his phone and dialed for help.  

Thus had been the beginning and ending of Hotch’s failed career as an international spy killer. 

Aaron shook his head clear of the images and knew not what to consider next which would put his mind to bed for the night.  So he went over it all again in his mind.   Hotch thought about London, and thought about Rotterdam, and thought about Reid, bundled up asleep next to him.  He thought about Prentiss too, and how amusing it was that she always tormented Hotch about his protectiveness of Reid, but here she was, nestled against Spencer, keeping him warm, bringing him chicken broth and soda crackers, acting just as motherly and protective as Hotch or Korsakova ever had.   Pot meet kettle, he mused.  

What was it about Reid that brought out the protect-and-nurture response in certain people?  Was it physically impossible to avoid having this reaction to him?   Aaron remembered reading about a sociological experiment that had been performed with small, helpless robots left to wander the streets of a large metropolis, carrying small cameras and placards which spelled out their missions (cross the street, cross the park, etc. etc.)  People who encountered the robots would go out of their way to protect the little automatons from harm, and guard them from danger as they rolled along, correct their paths, unstick them if they were stuck, and send them on their way with a pat on the head or a cautious word.   Some humans were programmed to care for those in need, those who seemed helpless, those who were meek.  Hotch refused to believe that that need to do good, that ability to be kind, was a weakness in the species.   It might have been one of our only saving graces.  

Aaron smiled sadly to himself and dotted a kiss on the bumpy little nose of the young man he loved so much.   Ekatarina had her father’s nose, Hotch remembered, and because she was part of Reid, Hotch’s heart wanted to extend the love he felt for Reid to his child as well.   Wasn’t that what Reid was doing with Jack in his own awkward, uncoordinated way?  Hotch decided he might have to declare a truce with Korsakova if it meant that Reid would be able to have Ekatarina in his life, if that was what Reid wanted.  Hotch could not imagine Reid not wanting to be part of his child’s life, especially considering his own feelings about his father not being more a part of his own life. 

Rossi was right after all.  Love and comfort and pain had been cemented together in Reid’s brain, at least partially because of whatever had transpired with Korsakova in London 1999.  Hotch finally had the answer to the riddle, and he could never tell another living soul.

more to come

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