Criminal Minds 1. Chapter 1

My first Criminal Minds fic. Those reading my Twilight fic Fuil 'o mo chuislean, never fear, I am working on the next chapter after being stuck for so long. This is just a short bit of fluff with my main man Hotch while I continue with my Twilight fic and get started on a more serious, longer Criminal Minds story. I'm hoping this one will give me a feel for how well received that one may be, as although I may write a Hotch/Garcia fic at some point, I am almost solely invested in Hotch/OC. I would ~love~ some constructive criticism, so please go nuts in the review section. As my Twilight readers will tell you, I am simply horrible at updating, so try to keep the death threats to a minimum, they excite me too much. Lol. I've called this story The Lake House because the movie of that same title, with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, is my most loved and cherished romantic film, of which I like few. That and it's set in a house by a lake. I know, original huh? No Jack in this story, and probably any other story I write.

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 01**

It was official, civilisation was snowed in for at least the next week, if not longer. For SSA Aaron Hotchner, that meant being stuck in his winter cabin with plenty of food and a wood fire. Which was the plan before the snow settled twelve feet deep across four counties, only now it would just be quieter, if that were possible. The lake outside the cabin was completely frozen over and some of the snow laden trees bent towards its edges. The track to and from the cabin was nowhere to be seen and would reappear in its own sweet time.

His task for now was getting logs in from the huge woodpile to stack beside the fireplace so they could dry. Once he had half a ton stacked inside the cabin he placed two of the remaining dry logs on the blazing fire and stood, brushing the wood dust off his hands against his jeans and leaned against the mantle. The picture of his BAU family stood there, their happy faces a bittersweet reminder of the work and people to whom he dedicated his life. The face of his late ex-wife, Hayley, sat in a separate frame next to them, kept more out of guilt and duty, although lingering affection that never seemed to fully leave him swirled not unpleasantly through him at the sight of her. It had been two years now since Foyet had taken her from him, and he found that he could think about her without feeling like he was ripping in two. He had kept busy since then, but still hadn't been on a date. At first everything had been too raw. That had lasted the better part of three years. After that, it hadn't occurred to him that anyone would want to take him on at his age or with his emotional baggage.

He crossed the cabin and closed the door, propping the enormous axe beside it, before getting himself something from the kitchen to eat in the comfortable armchair near the fire. The book he was reading was propped open on the table next to his chair and he picked it up as soon as he'd finished eating, putting his feet up on a stool and stretching a little all over before settling down to read. The snow was starting up again outside and the wind, while not howling, was gusting strongly through the trees and around the cabin. It only served to increase the comfort he took in the fire and the book, comfort enough that he found his eyes drift closed repeatedly.

Some time later he awoke with a jerk, not entirely sure why. He put another log on the fire before starting some coffee brewing in the kitchen. He stopped, one hand in midair, when he heard a faint sound. He wondered if that was what had woken him just now. It came again and he couldn't help but think that it sounded a little like a voice. It seemed to come from the other side of the cabin, so he turned off the lights and crossed over to the large window overlooking the frozen lake. He heard the cry again just a little louder, then nothing for a few seconds. Suddenly, illuminated darkly by the moon, he saw a figure come stumbling out of the trees at the edge of the lake. It was running fast and stumbling a little, and ran straight out onto the frozen lake without hesitation. The figure kept looking back over their shoulder. Aaron's spine tingled with cold. Whoever it was, he was pretty sure they were being chased, or at least thought they were.

Another ten feet and one opportune angle of moonlight illuminated their face and form a little better, but only for a second. It was enough. It was a woman, a beautiful one, her mouth stretched over her teeth in fear, hair plastered to her head as she ran. She wasn't wearing as much as she should have been in this weather, and he had a horrible feeling that she might be barefoot from the way she was running. She was about a third of the way across the lake now, heading almost straight in the direction of his cabin. She fell with another sharp cry but scrambled to her feet again quickly. As his eyes followed her as she regained her feet they caught sight of what she was running from. Another figure, bigger and darker, definitely male, came stumbling out of the forest near the spot that she had exited the trees. It also headed straight out onto the ice of the lake, making a beeline for the woman who had just passed the halfway point.

"Oh hell no." He could feel anger bubbling to the surface and he pulled his boots on smoothly and quickly. He threw the cabin door open and grabbed the axe as he left the cabin. He missed out the steps completely, instead leaping over the wooden pole of the porch straight into the snow and turned to race around to the lake side of the cabin. He could hear her cries of fear as he got nearer and saw her glance over her shoulder again. Her pursuer was still following her across the ice, gaining a little but not much as he kind of lolloped like a big gangly dog. She whipped her head back round again and lowered it to add a little speed to her escape. But she looked up.

It hadn't occurred to him that she might not realise he was trying to help her and he could only watch in horror as her eyes rose to his. A desperate mewl of terror escaped her and she stumbled, falling forward onto the ice. She broke her fall with her hands but he heard the horrendous crack as the ice started to give way under her.

"Wait." He called. "I'm not going to hurt you."

He couldn't tell if she had heard him or, if she had, if she believed him. She tried to get up and move to her right but at that point the ice did give way and she fell through it into the icy water below. Seconds later she re-emerged from the water with a gasp, her hands clawing at the ice, trying to get purchase on it. She was thoroughly terrified now, turning her head, trying to see the man who had been pursuing her.

The man had slowed his pursuit and was only taking slow steps toward her. Seeing this turning out very badly if he didn't act quickly, Aaron took a few careful steps out onto the ice toward where the woman was still trying to drag herself out of the water onto the ice. He looked at the man pursuing her who had, for the first time, acknowledged his presence. He seemed to be trying to calculate whether or not he could reach the woman before Aaron did.

Aaron looked him dead in the eye and shook his head in a slow threat. The man cocked his head to one side thoughtfully. He had to see that Aaron was not only bigger built than he but also half a foot taller and carrying a four foot axe. That should have been enough to dissuade him from his course of action. Unfortunately, perhaps for him, he didn't pay this information as much heed as he should. With a small smirk he suddenly lunged toward the woman, trying to cover the thirty feet between them before he could be intercepted.

Aaron did the only thing he could think of. He slung the axe overhand with all his strength at the patch of ice the man was about to reach. It flew through the air, turning end over end until it hit the ice, the blade biting in with a singing crack. It did the trick. The ice cracked with a deep grumble and as the man's foot came down on it, even though by now he had seen what had happened and started to slow, it went through the ice and his leg disappeared down into the freezing waters. He had turned as this happened and was now sprawled face down, facing away from him and the woman, with his leg still dangling through the ice. He clawed his way forward until his soaking wet leg was free and he was able to stumble upright and start back across the ice away from Aaron and, more importantly, away from his quarry.

Aaron ignored the man and turned his attention back to the woman. She had stopped struggling, which worried him immensely, instead clinging to the side of the ice. He could see that she was breathing but her breath wasn't misting in the air which meant hypothermia. He had to get her out and he had to get her out now. Her eyes followed him warily but she seemed aware that he had dealt with the man following her and looked a little less afraid than she had. As he approached, cautiously as he knew he weighed a great deal more than she did, he could see the pool of black water around her chest. It was still apart from her shallow breathing, which meant that she wasn't shivering. He figured he had less than five minutes to get her out of there. He crouched down as he drew close to her and talked to her softly.

"Honey I need to get you out of there before you freeze. I'm not going to hurt you, I promise; I just want to get you safe and out of that water. Will you let me?" All the while he was inching closer to her, one hand held out low to the ice. She looked at him for a few long, long moments, before nodding slightly, her eyes a little hooded and sleepy looking. He reached his hand forward, palm up, the last few inches and waited for her to take it.

She seemed to struggle a little, making two failed attempts before managing to put her hand in his, but she had very little strength and couldn't grip it very well.

"OK," he said to her "it's going to be hard for you, but I'm going to pull you forward a little and I want you to try and hang onto my coat here while I get a grip on you to pull you out. Can you do that?" He pulled her arm forward enough to put her hand next to the collar of his coat. She nodded at him, her eyes looking a bit more focused. She was less afraid of him now, he was happy to see, and more of her predicament. He knew her mental functions must be starting to fade pretty fast, but she was holding onto what she could in order to help him get her out.

He felt her fingers grasp his coat and lowered himself to the ice, belly first.

"Hold tight. As tight as you can. I'm going to grab you with one hand and pull. If you can kick your feet to give extra lift that's great, but I'm guessing you don't have much feeling left." She tried to smile in agreement but she didn't seem to have much feeling left in her face either so she nodded again. He found himself seeing getting her warm enough to talk as the first goal once she was out of the water.

With a deep breath he inched forward and plunged one arm into the icy water almost up to his shoulder.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed as the cold bit into his flesh.

With iron determination he grabbed a handful of the woman's clothing and heaved. Her upper body came out of the water onto the ice, followed by her legs. He swivelled his body and pulled again, bringing her feet, bare as he'd thought, onto the ice with the rest of her. He lay there for a few seconds, breathing and trying to work the bitter cold out of his arm and hand. But he couldn't stay there. He pushed himself to his knees and then to his feet, stooping to check if she was still conscious. She was, but only just. Her body was completely still and her eyes were only open a fraction, their movement sluggish. She didn't have the strength to hold her head up.

He squatted and slid his arms under her, cradling her soaking wet form to his chest as he stood. Even soaked to the skin she didn't weigh a great deal and he carefully made his way back across the ice to the shore. They were at the cabin and up the steps in moments and he kicked the door closed against the cold as he took them inside and turned the lights back on. He pushed his chair away from the fire with one foot and laid her on it briefly before reaching into a large wooden chest and bringing out half a dozen thick blankets. He spread two of them on the floor in front of the fire and added another log to the flames before turning back to her to see to her clothes.

She seemed to be wearing stolen clothes. Outermost was a man's large winter coat. He stripped it off her as quickly as he could without hurting her, although he was fairly sure she still couldn't feel much. Underneath were a pair of men's jeans and an XXL t-shirt with some kind of beer ad on the front, faded and stained. He didn't want to frighten her so he tapped the side of her cheek gently with his open palm to try to rouse her enough to explain to her what he had to do. Her eyes opened and focused on his face slowly, as if drunk. They were a lovely shade of green, dark like moss, and he wanted to see what they looked like when they were open fully and her mind was her own. Her head wobbled with the effort.

"Can you understand me?"

"Yuh-yes." The tiniest whisper accompanied by a small nod of her head.

"You have hypothermia, honey. I need to get you warm. But I have to take off your clothes to do that." He smiled at her encouragingly but didn't ask if she was OK with it, because he was going to do it whether she protested or not. But if telling her what he was doing and why could help prevent a struggle or any further trauma to her then he would take the time to do so. Her answer surprised him.

She looked at him for a few seconds, her eyes meeting his briefly, then travelled slowly over his face to his shoulders and chest, then back up to his eyes. He thought he saw the corners of her mouth twitch upward ever so slightly.

"Handsome, tall, lovely smile…I can live with that." She whispered. He looked at her, stunned, as she lost her battle to remain conscious and relaxed back into the chair. He grinned and chuckled to himself as he scooped her up and took her to the blankets he had laid out on the floor. But his laughter was cut off short as he peeled the t-shirt off and saw what had been done to her.

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><p>Sooooo small cliffhanger but nothing to worry about; I will post the next chapter soon enough. It's already written but I'll take a week or two to see what you guys think of the story so far before I decide to post it either with or without further revision. And to produce something worthy for my Twilight readers so they don't sacrifice me to Justin Bieber. Until then, don't do anything I wouldn't do :D<p>

~Sin~


	2. Chapter 2

Or maybe I'm completely lying and will post chapter two today. Who knows :D Sorry about the run-on at the end of the first chapter from the end of the story straight into the A/N; I did put a bunch of these little dudes ~ at the end but FF just deleted them for some reason (now fixed 03.10.14).

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 02**

All over her torso, which was far too thin like the rest of her, there were large bruises and welts, particularly her ribs and sternum, mostly boot shaped, while her throat was decorated with several dark corsages of bruises so deep they must have effected her ability to speak. Aaron ground his teeth at the sight. As he lifted the t-shirt over her head and slid it up her raised arms he noticed the partly healed ligature marks around her wrists. He felt white hot anger flash through him. So, she had escaped from the man who had been chasing her. He felt helpless fury over the fact that he hadn't been able to help her earlier, when she had been captive for who knows how long having god knows what done to her. He couldn't help but notice that she had large, exquisitely perfect breasts, but was horrified at the huge bruises on and between them. They had obviously been one of her captor's preferred targets. He had to compose himself for several seconds before he could bring himself to remove the too large jeans from her small frame.

Reaching out, he undid them quickly and eased the wet, unwieldy fabric down her hips and legs, not looking at her until they were lying in the heap of wet clothes next to them. Doing his best to ignore the obvious evidence of her femininity, he saw that there were more boot marks on one hip, some random bruising on both thighs, but that the hand or fingertip shaped bruises that he had been dreading were thankfully absent. He hadn't realised he'd been holding his breath, but the relief he felt in finding no evidence of anything other than pain having been inflicted was palpable. With some thought to the security of their current predicament, after all he couldn't know for certain if the man pursuing her had been her only captor, he locked and dead bolted the cabin door before returning to her.

He opened out the remaining blankets and draped them over her, settling her as close to the fire as he dared without risking her developing frostbite. He rubbed her hands briskly between his before putting them back under the blanket and wedging them under her armpits where they would get the most out of what body heat she had. Moving to her feet, he alternated between rubbing each one between his bare hands and then with the blanket wrapped around them. He pulled a pair of thick socks over them before tucking her feet back under the blanket. He moved back up to her head and towel dried as much of her long, thickly tangled hair as he could. It had an obvious curl and he thought it might be a dark blonde once dry.

Aaron stood up, stripping his own clothes off until he wore only his boxers and socks. He lifted the blankets from her and slid down next to her, pulling the blankets back over them both. He grabbed a cushion and eased half of it under her head before taking the other half himself. There really wasn't any comfortable way for two relative strangers to lay naked in front of a fire, so he pushed that part of the predicament to the back of his mind. Instead, he turned her body on its side, facing away from him, and arranged his body around and against her so that she received the maximum amount of his body heat possible. Even so, he couldn't help but groan under his breath as he brought her hips against his, tucking their bodies together like spoons. It took several breaths to prevent his body from reacting to her proximity. He wrapped one arm over her, splaying his hand against her belly to press her to him. He tucked his chin into the crook of her shoulder and lay there slowing his breathing and trying not to think about the intimacy of their situation. Eventually he drifted into a light sleep, aware of little and strangely comfortable.

He drifted back out of sleep some time later, perhaps half an hour or so. She was still completely motionless and he felt a pang of worry. Shouldn't something be happening by now? He moved his free hand and felt her, finding that most of her flesh that wasn't in direct contact with him was still frigid. He started to rub every inch of her he could reach, trying to stimulate her circulation and rekindle her nerve endings with the friction.

"Shiver, damn you." He muttered under his breath. With the entire county snowed in, there was no-one he could call for help. It was down to him whether she lived or died and he was desperate that it should not be the latter.

It took twenty minutes of brisk rubbing before he felt the first tiny tremor run through her. Within minutes her entire body was shaking violently. The relief he felt was indescribable. If she was shivering she was warm enough to feel the cold and her body was functioning well enough to try to remedy it. She still wasn't warm all the way through, though, so he gently turned her body towards him in tiny increments, rubbing and chafing her arms and hands as he did. When she was on her other side, facing him, he brought her closer again and pressed the length of her body against his, hooking one leg over hers and tucking her head under his chin.

She was still somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness, but her body was aware enough of his warmth to slowly move one arm around his ribs and cling onto him tightly. He took this as a very good sign. He let his mind wander and drift back off to sleep again. He had no idea how long it would take for her to warm up again completely and there was nothing either of them could do until then. His last thought as he fell asleep was that it felt good to hold someone and be held after such a long time.

It was many hours before he awoke again, opening his eyes with the realisation that the body wrapped around him was now warm and breathing evenly. He sighed in relief and looked down at the woman. He'd been right about her hair, it was a dark honey blonde. But it, and the rest of her, looked like they could use a long shower. The light coming through the window told him that it was about six or seven in the morning. The sun wouldn't rise properly for another hour or two and, even then, the blizzards and cloud cover would keep most of it hidden. The floor beneath him was hard and he could feel that parts of him would take a little time to wake up.

He shifted slowly, becoming more and more aware of his stiff joints and aching limbs. He would have to get up soon, and while he probably could do that without waking his guest, he thought it might be a good idea to wake her so that he could check she was completely OK. He carefully propped himself up on one arm. This put a little distance between them and he felt something in his chest clench tightly at the little whimper that escaped her lips. She tried to snuggle closer to him again and it was incredibly difficult to put one hand on her shoulder to stop her. He shook her gently.

"Hey." No response. He smoothed her hair away from her face and shook her again. "Hey, wake up."

He could see the slow progression of consciousness across her face, until her eyes opened slowly. This time, though, she simply looked sleepy instead of half dead. Her eyes searched a little before finding his face, which they moved over slowly before meeting his eyes, still only semi-awake. She looked a little awed and a little puzzled.

"Are you an angel?" she asked softly.

"No." he chuckled, shaking his head slightly. Her brow furrowed slightly and he felt fingers touch his cheek lightly.

"Are you sure?" she asked, as if it were entirely possible that he could be mistaken.

"I'm pretty sure." he answered soberly.

"OK." She said quietly, patting his cheek lightly and laying her head back down on the cushion.

"Do you know where you are?" he asked. She shook her head. "You're in my cabin in Montana. I saw you running across the lake. You were being chased. Do you remember?"

She did. He could see in her eyes the moment the memories came back full force. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. She started shaking and he quickly pulled her close again.

"Ssh ssh. You're OK. He's gone and you're safe now, I promise. Uh, kinda naked, but safe." He was relieved to hear a small laugh. She was still shaking, though, and he stroked her back until she calmed again.

"Can you tell me what happened?" he whispered into her hair. "Are you able to talk about it?" She pulled back and lay on her side with her eyes cast down.

"He ah I was travelling with a truck driver who found me when my car broke down. He…he seemed so nice." She said with a sob. Aaron held her hand and stroked his thumb across the back of it gently. "After I fell asleep, I woke up and I was tied up in the back of his cab. He didn't say another word to me after that. He'd just come back and kick or punch me every once in a while. A friend joined him later and did pretty much the same."

Aaron growled at that, a very deep and profound wish to hurt the man who had hurt her suffusing every part of him. He knew his next question was a difficult one, but he had to ask it.

"Did he, did they. I mean, they obviously hurt you but did they…?" his voice trailed off, unable to say the word.

"Oh." He saw understanding in her eyes. She shook her head slightly, holding his gaze. "No. They uh…they didn't touch me like that. I heard one talking later. He was…he was talking about taking me into the woods and setting me on fire." Her voice broke and huge tears spilled down both cheeks as she trembled uncontrollably.

"Motherfucker." He exclaimed under his breath, his eyes tight closed as he struggled to stay in control. He was by nature a gentle man, but he thought that he would be capable of something else if he were faced with the two men who had taken her. He felt her hand against his cheek again and it had an instant calming effect on him. He opened his eyes to find her looking at him with worry. She searched his eyes for a second before she was satisfied that he was OK.

"Thank you. For what you did. For making him leave me alone and for saving me." Her smile was tentative but beautiful.

"You're welcome. I guess that's the right response; I've never saved someone's life so directly before." He chuckled. "How OK do you feel?"

"Sore. Very sore. But warm. You have no idea how wonderful it feels to be warm again." She stifled a yawn then and Aaron could only watch, mesmerised, as she turned on her back, sank beneath the blankets a little and stretched her entire body, her back arching and something between a sigh and a squeak escaping her. It was a good thing that her action had put some more distance between them because the noise coupled with the sight of her arching body and the look of ecstasy on her face were enough to make him instantly hard. And not just hard, but aching with need. He did his best not to let what he was feeling show on his face as he shuffled up out of the blankets a little. His bedroom was behind him and if he could get out from under the blankets without her noticing his current state, he would be able to walk away from their impromptu bed undetected.

"I'm going to get dressed and see if I can find you something to wear. Then I can get some food together while you have a shower and dress." He smiled.

"That sounds great." Her wide, delighted smile made his heart skip a couple of beats. She was still laying on her back under the blankets, her hair mussed and shoulders bare. She looked for all the world as if they had just spent an entirely different kind of night in front of the fire together. He was pleasantly surprised at just how very, very much he liked the idea of that.

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><p>Well I hope my so far two avid readers enjoyed the next instalment. More soon.<p>

~Sin~


	3. Chapter 3

OK I give up with the A/N at the end. Someone let me know how to make the line that separates the A/N from the story text as FF won't let me use symbols.

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 03**

Aaron turned away from her and slipped out from under the blankets once he was facing away from her completely, standing as quickly as his aching muscles would allow him. He walked with measured steps toward his bedroom, relieved once he was able to close the door behind him. He leaned against it for a moment, exhaling slowly, before moving to his bathroom. His problem wasn't going to go away as quickly as he needed it to unless he helped it along, so he strode to his bathroom, stepping into the shower and turning it on.

The first icy shock gave way to warmth and then heat, and as the water ran down his body he curled his fist around his hot and rigid cock, pulling slowly with hard pressure. He hissed through his teeth at the sensation. He moved his hand more quickly, trying to keep his head clear, but was unable to completely. His mind played over and over the image of him sliding into her slick, pink heat and the look of ecstasy on her face, her eyes closed and her little wet tongue just visible through her barely parted lips. He came fast and hard, biting his other fisted hand so he didn't make any noise.

He stood for a minute letting the water wash over him before washing himself and his hair. He told himself it was a natural reaction after having been pressed against a beautiful, naked woman all night. He ignored the part of his brain that was not just a little intrigued with her. Angel. She had called him an angel. He wanted to find out why at some point, but that could wait. There was a great deal of trust to be earned on his part, considering the circumstances. Especially as he had yet to tell her that she was trapped here with him for what could be weeks. Why did the thought of that fill him with hope?

He dressed quickly in jeans, a t-shirt and a thick Aran sweater, pulling on thick socks but no shoes. With the fire burning constantly there was no need. He rummaged through drawers and found some long forgotten leggings and sweaters that had belonged to his sister. He knew she wouldn't mind the loan so he grabbed them and laid them on the bed. He made sure there were fresh towels in the bathroom and made his way back to the living room, taking a large, soft dressing gown with him. It was his, and would be huge on her, but it was that or she would have to wear one of the blankets to get to the bathroom. Also, he liked the idea of her wearing something that was his.

He saw that she had moved a little closer to the fire, still wrapped in the blankets. She looked up and smiled as he entered the room and for a second he forgot what he was there for. Then he remembered the dressing gown in his hands.

"Put this on. There's a bathroom adjoining the bedroom there, and I've put some clothes on the bed for you. They belong to my sister but she hasn't visited this place for years and they'll be a better fit than anything I have." He chuckled. She was almost a foot shorter than he and his clothes would have swamped her. "I'll get some breakfast cooking, take your time, it's still early."

She nodded and sat up, the blanket covering her chest. With a smile she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.

"Thank you. Again." He nodded at her, unaware of the huge grin her small kiss had elicited, and turned away to get things started in the kitchen and to give her enough privacy to put on the dressing gown.

He heard the shower start as he took out food and pans. He had no idea how long it had been since she had eaten so he prepared a big meal for the two of them. By the time he heard the shower stop he had the food almost ready and started making hot chocolate for both of them. He was pretty damn sure, after the night's events, that neither of them needed any caffeine any time soon. He turned as he heard the door open and while he knew he was staring, there wasn't a thing he could do about it. She was freshly clean and looked stunning in cream leggings and a dark grey sweater. He couldn't tear his eyes away as she walked toward him, her hips swaying unconsciously. He had to shake himself out of his stupor, whole sentences would be required shortly.

"It smells great." she said with a smile.

"Take this" he said, handing her a steaming mug of hot chocolate "and take a seat; the food's almost done."

He watched as she climbed carefully onto one of the tall stools at the breakfast bar, noticing that she would wince every now and then as some part of her that was particularly sore still was put to use. He could feel her eyes following him as he turned back to the stove to serve out the food, but although he felt a little self conscious he also felt warm inside. When he turned back to her with two plates, she continued to watch him unabashedly, only looking down when he placed the food in front of her and handed her a knife and fork. They ate silently for a few minutes, watching each other occasionally, comfortable in the silence. Suddenly something occurred to him.

"I don't know your name." Her answering giggle was like music and he couldn't help but smile at the sound.

"I'm Lily." she said, holding out her hand. He grasped it in his, which dwarfed hers but felt very, very right.

"Your accent?" he asked.

"English. Although it's getting Americanised very quickly; I'm one of those people who can't help taking on the accent wherever I am." She touched the large bruises on her throat gently. "My voice isn't quite back to normal yet, but it's nice to be able to talk again without pain."

"I'm Aaron, but I also answer to Hotch." He squeezed her hand warmly, letting her know without speaking that he understood what she meant.

"It's nice to meet you, Aaron. I guess I'll figure out which fits best as we go along." She squeezed his fingers back slightly.

"About that." He set his mug down and took her hand again, this time with his left, holding it gently. "I need to tell you, this and several other counties are snowed in. The tracks are under about twelve feet of it so we're pretty much stuck here. If the cabin weren't on a slope it would be over the windows. I was planning on staying at least three weeks anyway, but I know that obviously you weren't."

"It's OK." She squeezed his hand again. "I took a look out the window while you were in the shower. I figured it was something like that. But thank you for telling me." He could hardly find a response to that, his inner self was so busy celebrating the fact that she had been stood naked in his living room.

"I just didn't want you to worry if you suddenly realised you were trapped here with a complete stranger." He was glad she was taking it so well.

"Well I don't feel trapped." she smiled. "And we've been introduced now, so we're not strangers any more." She laughed again. He was beginning to love the sound.

"I'm glad."

"Under other circumstances I think I'd be feeling a little guilty for intruding on your quiet time. But mostly I'm just feeling pretty lucky that you happen to like the quiet. Things might have gone differently if you hadn't been here."

"I'm very happy for the company. And even happier that things went the way they did." He squeezed her hand reassuringly before letting go.

They ate the rest of the meal with idle chitchat. Lily put away the plateful of food like she hadn't eaten properly for a long time, but he didn't want to push for too many details yet. Just because she seemed to be bouncing back well, didn't mean that she would stay like that if she had to dredge up the memories. He found out that she was travelling with no particular destination in mind; she learnt of his job, and by the look on her face that seemed to raise him in her estimation no small degree.

Eventually he got up to do the dishes and she refused to stay resting while he did, instead joining him at the sink and drying the dishes as he washed them. He noticed that she had, of course, used his shower gel and deodorant. From his head to his toes, every part of him loved that she smelled like him. He followed her to the living room when they were done, taking a seat next to her on the two seater couch where she curled her legs up under her and leaned against the side of the couch, facing him.

They found out a little about each other as they sat, Aaron rising to put a fresh log on the fire or replenish their mugs. He was happy to find out that they shared a deep love of books. He ached to ask her something, and in the end couldn't resist.

"Could I…ask you to do something for me?"

"Of course." she answered seriously.

"I've been reading the Game of Thrones books. And I've never heard them in an English accent, as they seem supposed to be read. Would you…would you sit here and read just a little bit of one for me? I'd like to hear what it sounds like."

"I'd love to." She seemed genuinely delighted. He rose to fetch them more drinks, pausing to grab the book off the shelf on his way back to the sofa. He sat setting their drinks on the coffee table and handing her the book.

"Would you be disappointed in me if I told you that I haven't read any of these books yet?"

He feigned shock. "No!"

"Really. I've been remiss." She laughed wholeheartedly then, and Aaron felt like his heart had dropped through his stomach. It was the most amazing sound he had ever heard and it made him feel good all the way through just hearing it. It was the infectious kind, and he was sure that when she really went for it other people found themselves laughing just because she was. She opened the book and settled back into the sofa. She looked at him and tapped her open hand against her thigh. "Lean back, I'm gonna rest the book on you while I read. You'll be able to follow at the same time." He raised an eyebrow." She laughed again.

"OK I feel shy about being watched while I'm reading." she said, her cheeks pink. He laughed then, too.

"It's all good. But say if you get uncomfortable."

He turned around and leaned back against her, his head resting on her torso where her belly met the bottom of her chest. He worried about the bruises but figured she would let him know if the pressure hurt them. He relaxed as he felt Lily's arms slip around him and saw her prop the book on his chest. It was a comfortable distance for them both to see, and he listened as she started reading. Her voice was low pitched and clear, and the story unfolded in sharper detail in his mind than it ever had while he'd read it to also found that it was a useful position in which to turn things over in his mind without having to worry about her seeing him mentally dissecting her and her situation.

He didn't know how long they had been lain like that, well over an hour he guessed, when she shuffled herself under him a little and twisted her fingertips absently into his hair. He missed half a chapter before he could get his mind back on the words she was reading and away from the feel of her fingers in his hair and at his temple.

It only lasted to the end of that chapter, when they had to take a bathroom break. But while it did, it felt like a puzzle piece falling into place. He hadn't asked her her age, but he figured she must be about eight or ten years his junior. And yet, it seemed not just natural but necessary for them to have some kind of physical contact. He wondered if it had something to do with what had happened, if the proximity made her feel protected and him feel like he was protecting her still. A voice in the back of his thoughts hoped that there might be a little more to it than that.

They read five more chapters together before having some lunch, and got some more wood in for the fire. She hadn't wanted to venture too far from the safety of the doorway, but they managed and he kept a constant lookout. Talking some more, they prepared a dinner together. They both liked to cook, and the preparation was as enjoyable as the meal. Later they settled down to watch a couple of films. He lay on the sofa with her laying against him, her head propped on his arm, the other around her.

They only half watched the films, talking through them a lot of the time and long after they finished. When it came time to go to bed, there was a short but heated debate. Lily at first refused to sleep in the bed, saying that as he was so much taller it made more sense for him to take the bed. He had put his foot down, citing her injuries and winning with that one, at least for that night. He thought that they might repeat that discussion again the next day.

As she finished helping him make up the sofa bed and went to go to bed, he hugged her spontaneously and kissed the top of her head. She just smiled up at him.

"I think I was right about the angel." she muttered under her breath as she walked away. He turned off the lights and got under the covers with a smile, determined to find out what she meant.

* * *

><p>03.10.14 Sorry if some things seem a little different if you're rereading from the beginning. I'm going through and editing out any mistakes and also improving a little where I thought the continuity of these earlier chapters wasn't the perfect fit for the more fleshed out and serious direction I've taken the later chapters in.<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

More fluff of the fluffy variety. With just a hint of angst.

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

**The lake House**

**Chapter 04**

Lily had left the door to the bedroom open and he could hear her get into bed and, shortly after that, her breathing even out as she fell asleep. He dozed in and out for a little while before falling asleep. It was a light sleep, he thought perhaps because the men who had taken her were an unknown variable and he needed to remain at least partly alert, even when sleeping. He heard her get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but other than that it was uneventful.

When he woke in the morning, the first thing he saw was a mug of steaming coffee on the table next to the sofabed, the second was Lily's form curled up in his easy chair. This morning she was wearing dark leggings and a thick, cream coloured sweater, her long, lustrous hair pooling around her shoulders. The first thought that went through his head was how he wanted to pull her into his arms, fisting his hands in that hair. Even his subconscious mind acknowledged that this was further than just feeling protective of her. She was smiling at him, looking pleased with herself for having been able to do something for him, even something small like coffee. He picked it up and drank a little.

"Thank you. And good morning. Have you been up long?" he asked with a smile.

"Good morning. No, I haven't been awake for long. But you were sleeping so well, and I figured you earned it." she finished softly.

"I think we both did." He folded back the blankets and sat on the edge of the sofabed with his coffee. His heart did a little flipflop when he saw her eyes sweep over his bare chest appreciatively and her pupils dilate. As he raised the mug again, he saw her eyes flit to his flexing muscles. Her teeth bit down on her bottom lip and she moved her eyes away for a moment. That little gesture sent shivers through him. Now would be a good time to shower, he thought. Although, looking at her again, he wasn't sure she looked quite well. Her eyes were a little glassy, her skin just a shade too pale and her nose a shade too pink. Maybe an after effect of her dip in the lake just starting to make itself known. Her immune system would have had to have been pretty damn low for at least twenty-four hours after that. His thoughts were borne out when she sniffed a little and it turned into a cough.

"Feeling a bit under the weather?" he asked.

"Yeah, I woke up for a little while earlier coughing a bit, didn't think much of it. Just a cold I think, but I'll keep my distance as much as I can, maybe I can get away with not passing it to you." She smiled, it was a little weak but it was clear that she was still feeling mostly herself. Considering how much she had been through, he was astounded at how she had bounced back. If he had to take care of her while she had a cold, well it was a small price to pay when they could have been having to deal with frostbite, pneumonia, even… He cut his mind off with a sharp burst of anger when it tried to remind him that she had come very close to death. That was a scenario he could and would not contemplate; even if he didn't understand how much it would effect him, his unconscious mind did, and refused to entertain the thought.

Suddenly her words registered. He went cold. Keep her distance? Meaning…no touching. Damn. He sighed as he drained the last of his coffee and stood up to take it to the kitchen. While he didn't entirely understand the sudden misery he felt – they would have had to stop touching at some point…surely – he did like the slightly dreamy expression on her face that he caught out of the corner of his eye as she watched him walk across the room in just his pyjama bottoms. He washed his mug more slowly than usual while he tried to suppress his pleased grin. When he had it under control he turned back to her.

"I'm going to go get dressed, then we can have some breakfast." She nodded, her smile a little crooked, her gaze still appreciative, although he could tell that she was doing her best to hide it.

Once he was in the shower he washed mechanically while his mind played over many things. He was almost ready to accept that what he felt around her was not just the need to protect her. And he thought that, similarly, the way she seemed to be drawn to him was more than just the fact that he made her feel safe. But still, the age gap was a large one by his guess, he would put her at thirty-five at most, her ordeal had made her look a few years older at first. Under other circumstances, at this point he might be tempted to flirt openly, or ask her out to dinner. But these were not normal circumstances. They were stuck together for at least two weeks, and if he pursued her, even ignoring the fact that she had recently been held captive and abused, and it became clear that it was a mistake, or that her feelings didn't mirror his, it would be stressful for them both. Her apparent willingness to put distance between them now also did not bode well in his mind. That, and he just didn't like not being able to be near her. He wiped his hand across his face, bowing his head under the hot water. He was in big trouble.

When he had finished dressing he fished around in his bottom drawer until he found what he was looking for and carried it out with him, going straight to the kitchen. When he returned to her with the filled hot water bottle her smile erased a lot of his negative feelings even if it didn't erase his doubts.

"Here. One of these always makes me feel better when I have a cold." He tucked in under the blanket she had drawn around her.

She tried to thank him but ended up coughing instead. She looked at him apologetically.

"Don't worry about it. I'll make us something to eat, you stay there until I'm done." he nodded at her, only just managing to remember not to touch her in reassurance before he turned away and walked to the kitchen.

Lily had still been feeling well enough to walk around so they ate at the table, talking long after they had finished. Only this time, he refused to let her help with the dishes. Her disappointed look mirrored the disappointment he felt at not having her by his side while he carried out the small chore.

When he returned to the living area he saw that she had folded up the sofabed he had slept on and was curled up in one corner, the blanket draped over her again. He had an idea.

"How about we switch roles today and I read to you for a while?" Her delighted grin was answer enough.

"Anything in particular you'd like?"

"Surprise me." she said with a smile.

He pulled his easy chair a few feet from her and walked to the bookcase, casting his gaze over the books. He picked up Stephen King's The Green Mile, knowing that she had seen the film but not read the book. He settled in his chair, noting that she did the same, sliding down on the sofa and resting her head on the arm. He rested his feet on the coffee table and opened the book. He began reading, flicking his gaze between her and the words in front of him. She seemed to alternate between gazing into the distance and closing her eyes in pleasure as he read. He found himself enjoying himself immensely.

As the first chapter ended he felt her look over at him.

"You have the most wonderful voice." Lily said softly. He smiled in answer and held her gaze for a moment. It seemed to say more than her words had. He felt the connection between them begin to pull, and it took everything he had to turn back to the book instead of going over to her to touch her hand, her face. With an inward sigh he started to read again, feeling very much like an orbiting body caught in her gravity. After two more chapters the pull to her was becoming more and more distracting. As he excused himself to go outside to check that nothing was amiss, he noticed that she was starting to look a little stressed, too. Perhaps he wasn't doing as good a job as he hoped at hiding his turmoil and to her appeared agitated. As he sat down on the chilly porch seat and glanced over the frozen lake and silent trees he resolved to try harder to keep his raw nerves more well hidden.

When Aaron returned inside he found that Lily had set up a game of chess on the coffee table. She quirked an eyebrow in challenge. He grinned. They played five games, him winning three to her two. He was doing a fairly good job, he thought, of keeping his emotions in check, even though his entire body was aching in the effort to stay away from her. She, on the other hand, seemed increasingly distracted as well as increasingly unwell. When she moved her hand away from him as he went to reach for her mug to get her another hot drink, something inside him cracked and he turned on his heel quickly so she couldn't see his distress. He heard her coughing in earnest and had to grip the edge of the counter until his knuckles turned white to stop himself from going to her. When he returned to her with her drink, her face looked as miserable as he felt.

They talked quietly for half an hour before he thought to look at the clock. Damnit. He should have gotten her something to eat for lunch over an hour ago. He noted her quiet footsteps as she followed him to the kitchen. She sat on one of the tall stools at the breakfast bar while he cooked, doing her best to keep her side of the conversation going but he could tell she was having trouble. He kept finding her looking at him, particularly his hands, whenever she thought he wasn't looking, and the look on her face made him ache. Such excruciating longing filled her eyes that it left him breathless.

He ate without really tasting the food, more caught up in her as she ate. Even as sick as she was starting to look, he couldn't tear his eyes away from her lush mouth. As they walked back to the living area she took a step to the side to put distance between them, even though he could tell she wanted to move closer to him, and something in him snapped. He stopped in his tracks while she continued walking. When she realised, she turned to face him.

"I can't do this." he said. "This is stupid. It's just a cold and not being near you is killing me. Maybe I just need to protect you or something and maybe it's not bothering you at all but it's screwing with my head." With two long strides he was in front of her.

"It's not just you. It's hard for me, too." she said miserably. That was all it took.

He wrapped his arms around her and picked her up, holding her to him.

"I'll have whatever you've got, just don't make me stay away from you again. At least for now."

"I won't." she whispered against his skin. She had thrown her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist. "I was only thinking about not giving you my cold. I didn't think it would be a problem. And I don't really know why it is any more than you do. But not being able to touch you…it…it just felt all wrong."

He crossed to the other side of the sofa and sat them down on it, pulling the blanket over her.

"You could be right," she said "about the protection. Maybe I need to feel protected and you need to feel like you're protecting me and touching helps us both." She stretched out a little and lay her head on his chest. The tension he had been feeling inside lessened almost immediately.

"What if…" he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to say. "What if it's something else?"

"What if it is?" she held his gaze steadily. There were a lot of things going around in his head, most of which were more than a little garbled.

"I'm forty-two." he blurted out.

"I'm thirty-four." she answered without batting an eye and put her head back down on his chest, tightening her arms around him. "If it did turn out to be something else, it wouldn't matter to me if you were a hundred and two. But let's deal with it a little at a time. This is an odd situation and at least we know what not to do if we want to stay unstressed." she giggled a little.

"That we do." he kissed the top of her head. "Why don't you doze for a bit, see if you feel any better later?"

"That would be nice. But talk to me for a bit, I like the sound of your voice."

He did as she asked, talking to her for a long time, telling her about some of favourite experiences, why he'd come for a few weeks vacation in the isolated cabin. Finally he saw that she had fallen asleep, but only talked more quietly. Mostly it was innocent, but he did drop his guard at one point and lay still for a full minute trying to figure out if she'd heard him.

"I think we might have to figure out what 'else' is at some point, because I can't even think about getting to a point where I don't get to hold you like this." He had realised what he'd said almost immediately and tensed, listening for any difference in her breathing. There was none, it was even and shallow. She hadn't moved either, so he let himself relax. Later he had to move her to go get something to eat, but she couldn't eat much, her cold had gotten bad enough that all she really wanted to do was sleep, so he took her into the bedroom and tucked her into the bed before going back to the living area to eat his meal. He read for a while, and tried to watch a film, but it felt kind of odd being awake while she was asleep and his body soon told him that it wanted to do the same. He made up the sofabed and left the film playing while he fell asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Ooh now we're getting somewhere :D

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 05**

He didn't get much sleep before he awoke again. He looked at the clock and saw that it was a little past midnight, turned over to settle back to sleep and closed his eyes again. He didn't get as far as dozing off again, though, as he heard a noise from the bedroom. There was a whimper, and he heard Lily moving. He recognised a bad dream when he heard it and it was pretty normal that she would have them. He was surprised her sleep had been so undisturbed the previous night in light of everything that had happened. He listened, it sounded like it was getting worse. He waited for it to lessen and her sleep to return to normal, but now he could hear her crying in her sleep, mumbling and making wordless pleading noises. That bothered him. It spiked as he was getting off of the sofabed, turning into loud, panicked sobs, and he hurried to the doorway.

'Shit.' he thought as he saw her. She was turned on her side, facing away from him, her arms stretched out in front of her, her wrists tight together as they must have been while she was tied up. She was begging now 'please stop', 'please don't'. He figured she must have been thinking about what they had been doing to her, but whatever it was that they were doing in her nightmare, it sounded like her soul was being torn apart. Suddenly there was a new twist. She was sobbing and implored whoever was there in her mind's eye "I'll do whatever you want, just please don't please don't hurt him." He was shocked. He switched the light on and was at the side of the bed shaking her in a split second. She wouldn't wake so he grabbed her wrists and prised them apart, which lifted her into a half sitting position. Her eyes flew open and he stopped breathing for a moment; he had never seen anyone look so tortured and so broken.

Her eyes widened as she saw him standing over her.

"Aaron? Are you…what did they…are you…" Suddenly she was sitting upright, grabbing his hands and turning them over, touching him everywhere she looked, ending up with her hand cupping his face, hers still looking distraught.

"It was a nightmare. I had to wake you, it sounded like they were torturing you."

She shook her head.

"N-no. They w-were hurting you." The dam burst and she flung her arms around him, sobbing in earnest again.

"They weren't, they didn't. I'm OK. You're OK. I'm OK. Ssh ssh." He rocked her until she stopped crying, which took a while. He reached behind him to the bedside table and grabbed a handful of tissues for her. She took them with a sniff and sat back on the bed, wiping her face. He fetched her a wet cloth from the bathroom.

"I feel kinda stupid." she hiccoughed.

"You shouldn't. I thought it was incredible how well you were handling what happened. Maybe the dip in the lake delayed the reaction, but I would say that this is overdue, and you needed to get it all out."

"Maybe." she nodded. "But I still feel kinda dumb. And tired." She rested her head on her knees and took a deep, shuddery breath. "I've just been asleep; jesus, how can I feel so tired."

"Just nature's way of helping you get away from whatever upset you so bad." He smoothed her hair, realising that it helped her when she leaned into his hand and her breaths evened out. It seemed that he had the same calming effect on her that she had on him. He decided that that was not a bad thing.

"I'm sorry I woke you." She sounded embarrassed.

"Oh nuhuh. No sorries for that." he hugged her gently. "Do you want to get up for a bit or try to sleep again?"

"Sleep, I think. If I got up I would just get overtired and shaky." She wiped the back of one hand across her still damp cheeks with a look of determination.

"OK, you do that. Your body's telling you it wants rest anyway, and it usually knows best. I'll leave the door open still, and I will be right there in the living room, just thirty feet away. If you have another nightmare, I'll hear it, OK?"

"OK." she said with a steadying breath. "Thank you."

"Goodnight, again." he said with a smile. She laughed and returned the sentiment, laying back down again as he turned the light off.

He returned to the sofabed, not entirely happy that she was thirty feet away but glad at least that he had been able to drag her out of her nightmare. He thought that when he was more awake, he would take the time to ponder what he felt about the fact that she seemed more upset by the thought of them hurting him than herself.

Several hours later he awoke with a strange feeling that something was…different. He couldn't put his finger on what it was until he shifted a little and felt pressure on his arm. He flexed his fingers experimentally. There was a small warm hand holding his gently. He looked down and illuminated by the glowing light of the fire was Lily's silhouette. She was curled up on the floor under a bunch of blankets, one arm sticking out and resting on the edge of the sofa bed where she held his hand as she slept. His heart suddenly felt ten times too big for his chest. He swallowed noisily. He squeezed her hand gently, stroking her skin with his thumb. She raised her head groggily and looked at him. Her voice was soft when she spoke.

"I just felt safer…near you."

He looked into her honest, unguarded eyes for a moment before sitting up. In one motion he drew back the bedclothes, leaned over, peeled back her blankets and scooped her up in his arms. She made no sound as he placed her gently on the bed next to him and drew the covers back over them both. Before he lost his nerve, he put one arm around her and drew her close to him, settling them together snugly.

"Me too." he whispered as he closed his eyes, falling asleep to the feel and smell of her next to him.

They were both awoken around four in the morning by a loud thump outside. There were no other sounds, but it didn't sound like a log falling off the woodpile. Aaron eased himself out of bed, telling Lily with a hand on her shoulder to stay put, and walked to the cabin door in his boxers. He flicked the light switch and carefully drew back the deadbolt and turned the lock. He swung the door open slowly, not knowing what he could expect to see. What he did see made him feel sick. The axe that he had left with its blade buried in the lake ice was now buried in the thick wooden boards of the porch. There was no-one to be seen now, they must have vanished the instant they'd left the axe, but he saw no reason to make them a gift of a large weapon. He plucked it effortlessly from the wood. Not many men could have done it and he felt a little relief at that fact; it reassured him that he was the best person to protect her if needed. So the bastard was still around, maybe both of them. They had picked the wrong target, and he felt a cold, steely band of determination tighten inside him; if they tried to hurt her in any way he would help them understand the depth of their mistake.

He slammed the door shut as he went back inside the cabin, taking the axe over to the fireplace and propping it against the hearth. He took a deep breath before returning to the sofa bed. She drew the covers back without a word and waited for him to settle back down again. They automatically moved closer so that they were touching again. He stroked her hair away from her face and just enjoyed looking at her for a moment while he chose his words. Her eyes were serious, but beyond the unspoken question, there was still that underlying buzz between them that was ever present and growing stronger with every passing moment.

"Someone left the axe on the porch. The blade was stuck in the wood pretty deep, so they must have taken a pretty good chop at it." He watched her face as he spoke. They both knew there was no chance it was a random do gooder who had done this. It was meant as a warning.

She didn't cry, didn't fall apart. But he felt the tension and tremors that ran through her at whatever mental pictures his news had conjured up. He pulled her flush against him and wrapped his arms tightly around her, burying his face in her hair. When she spoke she half mumbled into his neck.

"My first thought…is that maybe we should try to find some way to get me to the nearest town so I can go to the police and…"

"No!" He clutched her tighter in panic. Even though he knew there was no way they would be able to do it, just the thought of her leaving, not being here, not being here with him, it made him feel more panic than he had ever imagined he could feel. If things got bad he could call the team on the satphone he kept in the safe, but they weren't at that point yet. And he felt strangely jealous at the thought of sharing her with others, even for her safety. If someone was going to protect her it would be him, damnit.

"I wasn't finished." He could feel her smile against his skin. "That's my first thought. But I don't think it's the smartest one. There's no guarantee that they would leave you alone once I was gone. And honestly…" She drew back to look him in the eye, her features only vague in the dim glow of the fire's embers. "Whether whatever this" she cupped his face with one hand "is, is me needing to feel protected and you needing to feel like you're protecting me or something…else…well I don't think I would do so well away from you right now. And I don't think you would either."

He nodded his assent. They may or may not need to talk about that at some point. But one thing was sure, and that was that there was no way in hell they were going to be separated while all of this was going on. Nor after it, if he had any say in the matter.

"No, we wouldn't do well apart right now." He smoothed his hand up and down her back unconsciously. He was beginning to admit to himself, in tiny increments, that he felt some level of…possession over her. But more than that, he felt the strength of her possession of him also. It was powerful, this thing between them, and he thought that it would only be satisfied with their small, innocent touches for so long.

"You need to know" he reached up to touch her face. "that they are not going to get anywhere near you. Not while you're with me. I will protect you. Whatever they do, whatever they throw at us, they will lose."

"But who's going to protect you?" she whispered. He saw the glint of tears on her cheeks and his heart expanded again.

"Is that what you're worried about? Me? Is that why you thought about getting out of here? Because you're worried about me?" She nodded furiously.

"I just…I can't…I don't want…you can't…I…" and with that she burst into tears.

He grasped her wrists and pushed her gently over on her back, some deep, male part of him needing to use his size and weight and touch to make her understand that he would keep her safe and with him, his body showing hers in the most direct way possible how powerful it was. He lay on top of her, her thighs gripping his, his hands holding her wrists gently but firmly above her shoulder level. His face was inches from hers and he spoke low and clear.

"You will. You will protect me, I will protect you, we will protect…us…"

She nodded slightly, catching the slight questioning tone of his last word. He moved his hands so that their fingers were entwined but remained above her, keeping her gaze. Her breathing was steady but he could feel her heart beating out of control, just like his was. He took the opportunity to ask the question that had been going around in his head for the last three days.

"Why did you think I was an angel?" he asked quietly, noting that even in the semidarkness, he could see her cheeks flush. But still, her eyes held his unwaveringly.

"Because you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." She said so softly he almost didn't hear her.

He let her go slowly and moved to her side again, falling over onto his back. He knew his face was a mess and he was close to tears but there was nothing he could do about it and he couldn't find it in him to care. He couldn't speak so he turned enough to lay his hand over her heart and let his head fall to the pillow. If he couldn't tell her how he was feeling, he could show her. Only seconds passed before he felt her hand take up a similar position on his chest.

As they lay there, Aaron felt his heartbeat slow down, her touch having the same calming effect now as it had earlier. After minutes without speaking he noticed that the heartbeat under his hand was matching his own beat for beat.

"Do you feel that?" he whispered.

"Yes. Why does it do that?" She shuffled a little closer.

He opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. What was he going to say? That it was comfort? Simple biology? That it was a coincidence and held no real meaning? He couldn't. The part of him that the puzzle pieces of her had been fitting into so perfectly knew that it wanted more. More of her, more of this, more time, maybe even all time with her. He opened his mouth, he wondered if to damn himself.

"Because we're falling in love."

She didn't answer but he could see, barely, her lips tilt upwards in a smile.

"Turn over." she said quietly. "Face the other way."

He was puzzled but did as she asked, turning so he was facing away from her. He understood why seconds later when he felt her press herself close against him, curling her knees behind his and reaching her arm around to hold him tight against her. He felt her sigh against his skin before pressing a kiss against the nape of his neck and leaning her forehead against him.

"I want to be the one holding you for a change." He closed his eyes and leaned into her embrace as the last puzzle piece fell into place.


	6. Chapter 6

That last chapter was as much as I already had written, so the following chapters will be slower as I'll be writing them as I go. I can't think of a last name for Lily at the moment, btw, so feel free to leave suggestions if you review.

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 06**

Aaron woke to find an empty chill along his back, knowing immediately that she was no longer in the bed with him. The front door was still locked from the inside so he wasn't too worried, and rose unhurriedly to look for her.

"Lily?" he called.

"Down here." Came her muffled reply from below him. Looking toward the kitchen he saw the trapdoor to the small basement open and made his way down the creaking steps. He found her sat on the floor looking through a bunch of old sheet music, dust smudges on her clothes, a decent sized cobweb on one ear, and a large grin on her face. His heart clenched at the way she looked at him.

"The generator was about to give out so I came down here to see if I could refill it. Can you check I closed the intake tight enough?"

"Sure. Thanks for refilling it." He gestured to the sheet music as he walked to the generator. "Do you play an instrument?"

"I can play most instruments. But I prefer stringed ones, especially violin and cello." Her look of concentration as she pored over the music was adorable. Her lower lip was caught tightly between her teeth and her hair was falling over her eyes. He wondered if he should tell her about the cobweb.

"Most? Most people have enough trouble just learning one. Are you some kind of prodigy?" The generator intake was fine, so he settled himself on the floor behind her, his legs either side of hers, wrapping his arms around her and dropping a sweet kiss on the bare side of her neck before sweeping a finger past her ear. He held up the dusty cobweb, which elicited a small laugh.

"Hey, I was saving that for later." She protested, leaning firmly into his embrace all the same. "I don't know about prodigy. I'm an artist of sorts by trade, but I have something called synaesthesia, which makes music very easy." She took one hand off the sheets of music and twined her fingers through his, holding their hands curled against her sternum just below her breasts. He could feel her heartbeat both in his hand and against his chest, slow and even.

"Synaesthesia, the condition of sensory information being processed by one sensory pathway is involuntarily processed by a second or more additional sensory pathways?" he asked, feeling her nod in reply.

"My form is chromesthesia, as well as hearing sound normally I also see it. In colour." She sounded a little nervous.

"You don't always get a good reaction from people when you tell them that, do you?" He asked softly, tightening his arms around her a little, wanting her to know that that wasn't the case with him.

"Not really, no. Some people just find it interesting. Others act like it means I'm mentally damaged or autistic. I don't get much of that in my professional life; I'm good at what I do and they know it. But new friends are few and far between."

"I'm sorry. That can't be easy." The thought of her feeling alone due to ignorance made him irrationally angry.

"If that's the worst life throws at me I consider myself lucky." She turned to look at him, the heat of her gaze more than enough to banish his irritable thoughts and draw his attention back to other things. The implied weight of her breasts as their soft undersides half brushed half rested against his wrist being the greatest of those things at present.

"I can see how that could be useful in learning music and musical instruments. How extreme is it? Is it all sounds or just some?" He was fascinated and was trying to imagine what it was like, or what she might see when he spoke.

"All, including sounds that most people don't even know that they hear. You could play me sounds that I couldn't consciously hear, but I would still see colours and know that the sound was there." She tensed a little. "There's a downside, though, and the one that causes the most problems socially, although professionally it's a godsend."

"Which is?" He prodded gently.

"Lies have their own colour. There's not a person on the planet who can lie to me and I not know it." She was almost cringing, waiting for what she assumed his response would be. He hated that she'd learnt that response from what must have been hundreds, even thousands of reactions from people over the course of her life.

"Lily, look at me." He touched a fingertip under her chin but applied no pressure, waiting patiently for her to raise her heart shaped face to look at him with worried eyes, stormy and darkened.

"That doesn't frighten me. I can't promise I will never lie to you, but I do promise that I will never lie to you for no good reason." She swallowed hard and her voice trembled a little.

"Somehow I think I already knew that." She rested her forehead again his cheek. "I would never expect anyone not to lie. It's an integral and deeply necessary part of being human, whether it's for someone else's good, survival or just privacy. But I'm glad it doesn't bother you. I'm lucky it's so useful for work, otherwise you'd be the only one it doesn't bother, I think."

"How is it useful? I thought you were an artist?" She chuckled.

"I am. But what started out as filling in occasionally for the police as a sketch artist turned into pretty steady work. Not all victims or witnesses can remember things correctly or express them clearly. I can tell when what they're saying doesn't tally up with what's in their mind's eye. And when they're deliberately misdirecting, of course. It seems to work around the usual problems with eyewitnesses and repressed memories, too."

Aaron was stunned. The scope of possibility for this kind of talent was almost unlimited. Beyond the obvious and shallow - casinos would not be kind to her if they found out what she could do - the possible applications for this within the BAU's line of work were astounding.

"I wish we had someone like you on my team. I don't think I can even wrap my head around the possibilities of something like that." He said, shaking his head minutely.

"I don't think there's much I'd ever refuse you, Aaron. If you ever want my help, just ask. We probably would need to get back to civilisation before I could do that, though." She chuckled.

"When we can get out of here, where will you go?" His chest felt tight and he had to choke the words out. She raised a reproachful eyebrow at him.

"Do you really think I'd be going somewhere other than wherever you are?" There was laughter and trust in her voice. "I told you I was travelling with no destination in mind."

"I didn't want to assume that that would change just over the course of four days. Maybe you'd want to continue on that way." He nuzzled her shoulder and sighed against her skin, feeling the tension quickly dissipate despite his offer of freedom. If she didn't take it now, he didn't think he could offer the same thing again later.

"I think you are my destination. I just didn't know where you were before or I'd have known exactly where I was going." She smiled softly and placed a tiny kiss on the corner of his mouth. "However fast this has grown, I at least want to be close enough to see where it goes, although I'm pretty certain we both have a good idea already."

"Yes. And yes." He chuckled. "I'd like that. Maybe you'd like to stay with one of my team for a while? Of course the invitation to stay with me is there as well but I would really like to take you on a proper date when we get out of here, and I kind of like the idea of driving to pick you up."

"I see your chivalry knows no bounds." She laughed. "I'd really like that. I'd miss this time with you, but I like the idea of butterflies in my stomach almost as much. We shouldn't miss out on the good stuff."

"It would be nice to take it slow and savour what we can." He nodded his agreement. "While we still can." His gaze burned her through and through and she forgot to breathe for a moment.

"This means I don't get to see you naked again any time soon doesn't it?" she asked with an unexpected smirk.

Aaron's whole body shook as he laughed. Other parts were paying more attention to one of the words she'd used, the one that starts with n and ends with aked. He groaned and let his head fall against the back of hers.

"I'm going to regret that, aren't ?" he joked.

"Maybe a little. But it'll be so worth it." She poked his ribs with one finger.

"Not to change the subject, but there are some instruments in here if you wanted to play any of them." He stooped to help her up as he pushed himself to a standing position.

"Oh what do you have?" Her eyes lit up in interest.

"Nothing too fancy but I know there's piano under those boxes at the back. And there's a violin somewhere. More a country fiddle, but it always had a sweet sound." He pushed some crates to one side to uncover a plain, worn looking violin case. The cracked, brown leather looked uninteresting, to him at least. But the way she bounced on the balls of her feet in excitement told him that to her it was anything but. He motioned for her to take it.

Lily picked the case up reverently, stroking the dust from its sides and blowing away the rest. She walked past him and tugged his hand to make him follow her back upstairs. Aaron shut and locked the trapdoor again.

"Will it take long to clean in order to play it?" he asked, curious. He'd never paid much attention when his sister had played it.

"Cleaning won't take long; all I'd need is a soft cloth. It's probably damp though, so I should set it on the opposite side of the room from the fire and let it dry out slowly. So I could play it in maybe two days' time at the earliest." She snapped the clips and prised the lid open. "It's in great condition. I think I could play some lovely music on this."

"I'll get you a cloth. Do you want some breakfast?" He passed her a soft chamois leather to clean the violin and took the bread out of the cupboard.

"Yes but not much. My insides are still unconvinced about the virtues of food even if the sniffles have stopped."

He watched as she plucked the violin from its case and laid it gently across her knees, stroking down the long neck with the soft cloth. His body had quite an intense and graphic response to watching her slim fingers gripping the long wooden shaft. Unlike before, he didn't feel quite such a desperate need to hide it from her.

"Best not get that too near to the frying pan." Her lips twitched and she giggled at the small, strangled sound he made before turning on his heel and focusing his attention on fixing them some breakfast.

Once his back was to her, he had to ask the question.

"What does my voice look like to you?" He heard her stop rubbing the instrument and almost felt her eyes on his back. There was quiet movement, then warm arms wrapped around his waist and he let himself lean back into her.

"Like the sea after a storm. Greens and greys that don't exist, as far as I can tell, in the realm of human sight. There's light, which I perceive as the gentleness of your soul, and darkness, which I think is all that you've forced yourself to see through your job. And when those two things clash…when you tell me you'll protect me no matter what, it's like the eye of a hurricane."

For the first time since his ex wife died, Aaron Hotchner allowed himself to cry. He felt Lily's hands splay across his chest as it vibrated with joy and grief.

"If I could see what you see, if I could see your voice" his voice was thick with emotion as he clasped his hands over hers, "I think I would see only light."


	7. Chapter 7

Less fluff, more fun, and maybe some danger. :D

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 07**

Lily returned from the bathroom to find Aaron gone. With the space inside the cabin being severely limited and entirely visible from any one point, the front door was her only option. She cracked it open just a fraction and saw nothing. Opening it a little further, just enough to poke her head around, even glancing along the long, wooden porch showed no sign of him. She took a thick coat off the back of the door, slipped her feet into large boots and stepped out onto the front porch. As she turned from closing the door a huge snowball caught her square in the chest. She stood there, shocked, with small pieces of snow trickling down inside her top. She looked up to see Aaron's laughing face.

"Gotcha," he exclaimed. He pointed to his left. "That's your pile." There was a huge pile of snowballs ready made.

She grinned and skipped down the stairs as nimbly as she could in the oversized boots. As she reached the bottom step, she flung her arm along the railing, throwing an armful of snow at him with a huge whoosh. He stood there with his mouth open, full of snow, as it dripped off his head, down his neck and onto his chest.

"Oh it is on." He cried.

"No no no I'm not ready." She laughed, diving for her pile of snowballs and gathering as many in her arms as possible. She ran several steps away from him, catching a big one in the back of the neck before finding her footing and turning to him with a smirk and firing three off in quick succession, getting him on the back, chest, then legs. Only just in time, because he was throwing his two at a time and she ended up on her ass in the snow as she tried to back away from them.

She scrambled away from him to hide against the side of the cabin while she made some more instead of having to pass him to get back to the pile he'd made for her. Landing a few on his head as it moved away from her she heard him curse and fall over. A few minutes stretched by and she thought he might be up to something sneaky as he was being way too quiet. As she sat listening she heard a tiny movement from above and looked up just in time to catch two hard snowballs right in the face and neck. They were thrown hard enough to sting; she'd have to tell him to ease up. It took a moment to wipe enough snow out of her face to see and she moved quickly to the front of the cabin only to see his head poking out from behind a large snowfall, snowball in hand.

"Hey don't throw so hard; those ones stung." She wiped her hand over her face. "How'd you get down off the roof so fast anyway?"

Aaron looked at her in growing horror. He made it to her in three long strides, swiping his hand across her neck and coming away with a handful of crimson snow, still dripping with blood.

"What the…" she gasped. "Aaron is that blood?"

"I wasn't on the roof, Lily." He said through clenched teeth, helping her wipe the rest off her neck and chest while she swiped at it with frantic hands, a high keening noise coming from her throat.

"Come, get inside quickly." He grabbed her by the arm and practically dragged her back into the cabin. He pushed her in first, backing in after her with his eyes sweeping thoroughly over the white landscape before closing the door tightly and slamming the deadbolt home. Instead of getting a towel he pushed the axe into her hands and made her stand facing out of one corner of the room while he took his service weapon and started to search every inch of the cabin.

Lily panted desperately as she watched him disappear down the trapdoor into the basement. She relaxed a little at his shout of "All clear" but stayed where she was, shaking, as he did the same with the bedroom, bathroom and ceiling crawlspace. Finding nothing and no-one he went back to her.

"Blood, Aaron, so much blood. What if it's human? Oh god I need to get it off." She was gingerly peeling the coat away from her skin. He helped, throwing the coat into the kitchen sink when it was finally off.

"It's not human. Lily listen it's not human, I promise. My cousin's family owns a slaughterhouse in Texas, I know the smell; it's beef blood. Cow blood, honey, not people." He pulled the boots off her feet and followed her into the bathroom where she stepped into the bath fully clothed and turned the shower on hot and hard. She was whimpering under her breath as she peeled off layer after layer. Even her underwear was soaked with blood and she stripped off those last, crimson articles of clothing, leaving her naked. She was still shivering in horror, her teeth chattering and making it difficult to speak. He shucked off his sweater, boots and socks and stepped under the water with a washcloth. He started gently washing her down, using extra shower gel to get rid of the smell, which could linger.

She was quieting a little and he continued stroking over her skin tenderly. It was the most intimate act he had ever shared with anyone in his whole life and he felt humbled by it, by her, by the explicit trust in her eyes as she watched him. He shampooed her hair gently, rinsing thoroughly until the water ran clear instead of pink. Just as he was about to turn off the water she stopped breathing, her unfocused gaze telling him she had just realised something important.

"Panties." She whispered. As non sequiturs went that was a winner. As he watched, her entire body broke out in goosebumps despite the hot water.

"What about them, honey?" he brushed a strand of silky, wet hair off her cheek and cupped her face to direct her eyes upward to look at him. It took a moment but they did focus on him eventually. "Do you want me to find you some?" She shook her head violently, strands of hair flicking across her skin and his.

"I remembered something. Where they had me, the building after, not the truck. They had me chained to a big old Victorian radiator, the thick cast iron kind. There were panties on it. Drying." Her eyes widened in realisation. "Aaron, they weren't mine." Her fingers gripped his arms tightly. "Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod. They weren't mine! What if they have someone else? What if they have another woman there; what if she's been there this whole time? I've spent almost a week with the man of my dreams and she could have been being raped and tortured and oh god the whole time I was too busy having fun to remember." She turned away from him with a cry of despair and promptly threw up over the drain, tears streaming down her face.

He rubbed her back gently until she could stand again, then gathered her into his arms and held her tightly against him. They couldn't stay there indefinitely so he coaxed her to step out of the bath. He stripped off his own sodden clothes and wrapped them both in huge, fluffy towels. He patted her hair gently with a smaller towel while he collected his thoughts.

"This changes things." He said quietly. "If there's a chance they've taken someone else, and given their nasty surprise for you earlier, I need to call in my team."

"Can they get to us? With all the snow I mean." She looked troubled still.

"They should be able to, even if they have to take a helicopter, although something more subtle and quiet might be better so as not to scare off these characters." He handed her the towel so she could finish drying her hair. "I'm going to go call them and let them know. You go get dressed and make us some coffee, OK?" She nodded mutely, wrapping the towel around her head and her arms around his waist for a tight hug before letting him go.

He strode to the living room and pushed aside the painting above the fireplace to uncover the door to the safe. The satphone inside was still fully charged, thankfully, and his call went straight through to JJ.

"Hey, Hotch. We had a pool going as to how long it would take before you got bored." He heard the amusement in her voice and smiled; he'd missed his team.

"JJ, I wish it were that. But I think there's a case here, and that myself and my companion are in some danger. I need you to get the team out to my cabin in Montana ASAP. The last leg will be difficult. You could charter a helicopter but I'd prefer you come by stealthier means." He scrubbed his hand over his face in frustration.

"Damnit. OK, Hotch, we can be wheels up in about ninety minutes; will you stay reachable on the satphone?" He could hear her shuffling papers and her chair scrape on the floor as she hurried off to round up the team.

"Yes, I'll keep it on. I'll keep you in the loop. But I'm probably not going to wait for you to get here, there may be at least one other victim and there's a minimum of two unsubs."

"Are you going to try and contact them, Hotch?" JJ asked warily.

"No, JJ, I'm going to hunt them." He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"We." Lily's eyes were on his as she spoke.

"Lily, it's not safe for you to go with me." He shook his head, not liking the idea of her putting herself in harm's way.

"Bullshit. The safest place possible is by your side. And I'm not helpless. They made me take self defence and weapons training before they let me work with the police back home. The only reason I didn't get a chance to put up a fight was because the bastard tied me up while I was asleep." She twined her fingers through his.

"But still…" It was difficult to argue with her logic.

"Aaron, when I said I go where you go I meant it. And it starts now, not later when we're safe. Remember our deal, I protect you, you protect me, we protect us." He could hear JJ's puzzled noise on the other end of the phone and knew she had heard that. The team knew he wasn't seeing anyone, so he could look forward to many questions later.

"OK, JJ, correction: we are going to hunt them. I'll explain when you guys get here. We'll give you as much information as we can before you leave. Make sure Garcia is standing by for my uplink." He squeezed Lily's hand, accepting her support and determination.

"OK, Hotch. I have the team in the war room now. We'll be wheels up ASAP and Garcia is waiting on your uplink. I'll speak to you from the air."

"Thanks, JJ. Speak to you later." He ended the call and wrapped his arms around Lily's waist, allowing himself a few minutes peace where all he had to know was that he was warm and held.

But he had to move eventually, so he stood up and gathered his thoughts before speaking.

"There's no rush. But we're going to need a lot of energy. You worked as a sketch artist back home; can you draw pictures of the two men as best as you can remember?" She nodded. "Check the desk by the fire; there are pencils and paper inside. I'm going to cook us something substantial so we have plenty energy later when we need it."

"OK. What do you want me to do with the pictures once I have them finished?" She was already looking through the desk and gathering pencils and different types of paper.

"Just scan them in the printer and call the number on the satphone marked Garcia. She'll tell you how to send them. All you need to tell her is 'two male unsubs' then give her a verbal account of what happened to you in as much detail as possible. But I'll sit with you for that part and we'll do it on speakerphone. I don't want you to have to trawl through those memories by yourself." She nodded her assent and sat down at the desk, turning on the reading lamp as she chose a thick paper for her sketches. He could see her take a deep breath to steady herself before she let the pencil touch the paper. When he was happy that she wasn't finding the activity overly traumatic he moved to the kitchen to start on their meal, bringing her a small bowl of oatmeal to get her metabolism going while he was cooking the rest.

Lily's hand flew masterfully over the paper, bringing to life in sharp detail first one and then both faces she'd hoped never to see again. She left the eyes until the very last; it was the only way she could bring herself to do it at all. Having them staring at her the whole time, as she normally would have started with the eyes and worked outward, would have been more than she could stomach, even for just the quarter hour it took to complete both pictures. As it was, it took a lot for her to draw their eyes looking into the camera, as it were, and not to one side. She sighed in relief when she was able to turn them face down to scan them in the printer.

"O, Captain, my Captain?" came the female voice on the other end of the line. Lily looked at the satphone for a moment before replying.

"Ah…our fearful trip is done?" Was this some kind of code or password she was supposed to navigate?

"You're not Hotch." Came the voice. A little flat, a little hostile.

"Um. No. Aaron's in the kitchen. Cooking. He said to tell you 'two male unsubs' and send you the sketches I drew of them. He said you'd tell me how. I'm on his laptop in his cabin in Montana." She twiddled the pencil between her fingers as she waited for an answer.

"How do I know you haven't kidnapped him?" Garcia sounded suspicious.

"Aaron." Lily called. "Garcia says how can she be sure I haven't kidnapped you?"

"Tell her I said not to call me 'honey'." His amused voice floated back to her.

"Aaron says not to call him 'honey'." She heard Garcia sigh in relief.

"Aaron huh? Well, my lady fair, it seems that you are in luck. Penelope Garcia, Goddess of all things Technical, Oracle of the Information Superhighway at your service."

"Hi Penelope, I'm Lily. Can you tell me how to send you these pictures?"

"That I can. There should be a short lead in the back of the laptop. Slot that into the back of the phone and press the 'sync' button on the keypad. That's it." Lily did as she was told and chuckled at the progress bar on the screen, which Garcia had obviously programmed to show a little Aaron nodding dog style doll dancing Gangnam style across to the other folder.

"He loves it really." Garcia guessed what she was laughing at. "Having me tested for drugs afterwards was just a sign of affection." They both laughed. "OK, Lily, I have both pictures here. And damn you're good; they're almost like photos. I'll send them to the team while my facial recognition software does its magic. Did Hotch tell you to give me any details about these guys?"

"Ah. He said to tell you what happened in as much detail as possible. But he wanted me to wait until he could sit with me for that. It's…going to be hard." She heard Garcia's soft breath of realisation.

"You didn't just see these guys did you? You got away from them?" Lily hummed the affirmative. "OK I'll wait on that. Call me back when he's back with you. And, Lily?"

"Yes?"

"There's nowhere on Earth safer for you right now than with my boss. I hope you know that?"

"Yes. Yes I think I do." Lily felt some of her nerves settle at Garcia's words. "I'll talk to you in a bit, Penelope. Thank you for your help."

"Any time, my lady. And tell Hotch I called him 'honey'."

"Will do." Lily laughed as she ended the call.

She wandered into the kitchen to find Aaron washing some dishes, a delicious smell coming from the oven. She hugged him from behind.

"Penelope said to tell you she called you 'honey'." She felt his stomach jiggle as he laughed softly.

"That's our Garcia. Best technical analyst in any government agency. And a more wayward, independent soul you'll never find. I'll be done with these in about ten minutes, then we can call her back and give her your story. Do you think you'll be up to it?"

"Yes." He hadn't expected such a forthright answer, but such was her way. He knew she felt deeply guilty about the fact that there could have been another victim, one who could have suffered far worse than she did, and that this was her underlying determination. She would put herself through whatever she had to and he would share as much of it as she would allow.


	8. Chapter 8

Guest reviewer Ayaa: thank you for your review :) I'm so glad you're enjoying the story.

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 08**

**Quantico, VA**

When JJ appeared in the bullpen with Garcia in tow and a casefile in hand, beckoning the rest of the team to join her in the war room, none of them had thought for a second that it might involve Hotch. They sat silently while Garcia spoke with the woman on the other end of the line, wondering who she was and how she came to be there, at least until Garcia realised that she must have escaped from the unsubs whose pictures came up on the large display board at the beginning of the conversation, appearing on their tablets at the same time.

"Any time, my lady. And tell Hotch I called him 'honey'." Garcia ended the call and turned to face the rest of the team. "Well, as expected, our fearless leader couldn't stay out of trouble for long. Although whether this points to him being being a danger magnet or a babe magnet for now is anyone's guess. Who knows, maybe both."

Morgan rolled his eyes and Reid simply gave her a quizzical look. She guessed someone had to, seeing as Hotch wasn't here at the moment to silently urge her to continue with the presentation with less fluff and more facts. She cleared her throat.

"Anyway, so the situation is, Hotch and a woman called Lily are at Hotch's Montana cabin and apparently there are two male unsubs, whom she has already escaped. We're just waiting on Hotch as apparently it's going to be difficult for Lily to talk about what they did to her.." She sent some maps to the team's tablets of Hotch's cabin and the surrounding area.

"Once we've heard the details from the victim, Hotch wants us to fly out to him." JJ said. "Reid, he said he wanted the last, non flyable leg of the journey to the cabin to be made as inconspicuously as possible. Can you look into finding us a mode of transport that would be stealthier than a helicopter? We need to make as little noise as possible as the unsubs seem to be quite close by and, possibly, watching the cabin and surrounding area."

Reid nodded and worked quickly on his tablet. He heard Garcia's phone ring again, and was able to keep track of that conversation as well as his efforts to finalise travel plans. He smiled to himself when he sent the confirmation off; the team would never in a million years guess how they were going to be arriving at Hotch's cabin. He was also looking forward to seeing Hotch's face when he saw them.

"Hi Hotch, how're you guys doing?" Garcia had everyone's attention as she answered the call. "OK, I'll put you on speaker." The speaker for conference calls crackled to life.

"Is everyone here?" They all greeted him in the affirmative, noting the tension in his voice, which was unusual for their unit chief. He was the most unflappable of all; if he was disturbed by the situation, it was bad. The microphone crackled a little and a woman's voice came over the speaker.

"Hello. My name is Lily Beauchamp." She sounded nervous but determined, her accent placing her origin in the British Isles.

"Hi, Lily. I'm SSA Jennifer Jareau but you can call me JJ. Are you OK to talk to us about this?" JJ planted herself in a chair next to Morgan and opposite Prentiss. Prentiss looked unnerved for some reason but she ignored it for now.

"Yes, thank you, JJ, I'll manage. Do you guys want to ask me questions or should I just narrate from a certain point?" Nerves aside, Lily seemed sensible and intelligent.

"Lily, this is SSA Derek Morgan. Why not narrate from a point shortly before everything went wrong and we'll ask questions if we need to?" Morgan reclined in his chair, trying to project his relaxed body language in his voice to make her more comfortable.

"Yes, I can do that." They heard her swallow and set down a glass. "I'm not good with cars, so it wasn't the biggest surprise when I couldn't figure out why the one I'd hired had broken down. I'm not the type to hitch hike with random truck drivers, believe me. But the guy who stopped was nothing but decent to me while he spent four hours trying everything he could to get my car started again. Even after what happened, I still believe that when he stopped, even when he offered me a ride he had no intention of hurting me."

"Sorry to interrupt. SSA Emily Prentiss here. What makes you so sure of that?" Something about this woman was bothering Prentiss and she couldn't put her finger on it. Maybe she just didn't like any woman who got to spend alone time with Hotch, even though it was in the aftermath of a trauma and, more than likely, completely innocent. He hadn't dated anyone since he and Hayley split, and she was still waiting for the right time to try and make him notice her.

"Because the whole time we were talking, for four hours, he didn't tell so much as one lie. It was like spending time with a favourite uncle. There was no danger. I don't think that changed until after I mentioned working with the police back home. And at that point I was drifting off to sleep. So while he didn't want to or mean to hurt me before then, there was something in his life that made him take me. I also think that's why he didn't speak a single word to me after I woke up with my hands tied to a pipe; he couldn't afford to think of me as a person after that. I was just an animal to him then, something to be kicked and silenced." They heard her draw a shuddering breath.

"Lily, I'm Dr Spencer Reid. What can you tell us about the inside of the truck, the part in which you woke up." Reid was making notes on a legal pad, underlining some things, crossing out others.

"I think it was supposed to be his sleeping quarters. There was a platform for a bed. But he couldn't have used it, the whole space was full."

"What was it full of?" JJ interjected.

"Ah…they looked like coolers, like beer coolers. But they were red and white, with some kind of blue logo on the side. And it was too cold in there to sleep. I was half frozen to the floor when I woke up."

Reid wrote quickly on his legal pad before holding it up so the others could see. In bold letters he'd written 'HUMAN ORGANS ?'. They all nodded; it was the most likely explanation, and with that many coolers, a very good reason to take drastic action to protect them.

"He wouldn't look at me." Lily continued. "Not in the eyes. If I moved he kicked me. If I spoke he punched me. I'm a quick learner; I didn't do either for long."

"Lily, drink some water." They heard the concern in Hotch's voice.

"Did he keep you there for long after you'd woken up?" Prentiss asked, uncomfortable with the silence.

"No. I don't think it was even an hour before I heard a car pull up to where we were stopped. It got worse when the other guy arrived. The first guy wouldn't look at me; the new guy wouldn't stop. I could deal with that, but he wouldn't shut up. When he untied me, when he dragged me out the truck and into the car, when he put the chains around my ankles. Oh god I just wanted him to stop talking." She made a distressed humming sound and they could hear her trying to clear the lump in her throat so she could continue.

They could hear Hotch murmuring wordless sounds of comfort to her until she calmed. Morgan looked at Rossi, who had been silent so far, and raised an eyebrow. The Italian's face remained impassive and he simply shrugged and leaned forward.

"This is SSA David Rossi. I know this is difficult, and probably something you don't want to remember, but what was he saying to you while he moved you between vehicles?" Rossi flinched at the humourless laugh that echoed briefly over the speaker.

"He talked about baseball mostly. And his garden. And what kind of ice cream he liked. He talked about every innocent thing under the sun, the whole time looking at me like I was his favourite kind of ice cream." She sounded sick to her stomach and they looked at each other in sympathy.

They knew from thousands of victim interviews that it wasn't what was said that was important, but what was meant. And a person afraid for their life is astutely adept at picking up on nuance.

"It wasn't what he said that bothered me, it was the colours in which he said it. Like mould. Like death." They heard her gag.

"Colours?" asked Rossi, confused.

"Reid, please enlighten the team on a condition known as synaesthesia, chromesthesia in particular. We need a short break." Hotch kept his voice as calm as possible, then muted the connection.

"Ah." Said Reid, realisation dawning on his face.

"Reid? Care to share with the rest of the class?" said Morgan after a few seconds silence.

"Most simply put, she can see sounds. She hears them like anyone, of course, but everything she hears also has a colour that she sees. Chromesthetics are incalculably talented at reading between the lines, because they can actually see what you mean. Everything we feel reflects in our tone of voice. I strongly suggest none of us try to hide anything from her. If you wanted to lie to her, you'd need to write on a piece of paper while standing far enough away that she couldn't even hear your breathing or heartbeat." Reid sounded fascinated.

"That man could have read out his sweet old grandmother's recipe for chocolate chip cookies and she'd have known he meant to kill her." Garcia grasped the concept quickly and ran with it.

"And that's why she thought she was safe with the truck driver, safe enough to take a ride when he offered, because she could see it. That could work in our favour, though, right?" said Morgan. "She may have picked up on other things while they had her, even if they weren't discussing them."

"Guys, we're turning this break into a meal; why don't you get to the jet and we'll pick up this call again once you're in the air. Say thirty minutes? Oh and Garcia? Lily says to tell you the picture of the man wearing wire rimmed glasses is the second man. I've also marked on the map you sent over the location where Lily's car broke down, where she thinks they stopped to put her into the car, and the point in the woods from which she emerged after she escaped." Hotch's voice cut out as the connection was closed and they all stood, ready to leave, with no further discussion.

"OK the cars are downstairs. Garcia, send us anything you get so we can relay it to Hotch." Morgan gave her a tight hug before walking out the door. "And let us know of anything in particular you need us to ask her." He waved one hand in the air as he followed the others to the elevator.

"Be safe, guys. Please be safe." Garcia was already on her way to her office, muttering under her breath. Once she was there, she brought up the face recognition search and tagged the two pictures A and B while it continued processing, and then ran a cataloguing script on the other search, which had been compiling man-made features both above and below ground for the four hundred square miles surrounding Hotch's cabin.

As the BAU team reached the jet, their tablets were already receiving a steady stream of information about the area and the results of the search Garcia had run against the two sketches. As they took their seats and waited for takeoff, Prentiss was the first to check her tablet. The first thing she saw was the result of the facial recognition search. Her heart dropped into her stomach when she saw the name underneath the picture of the second man.

"Oh…shit." With wide eyes she flipped it to show the others. Underneath Lily's likeness of the man were three words that froze all of them in their seats.

_Alexander LaGrange-Foyet_.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me!" Morgan rubbed his hand over his face. "What the hell has Hotch stumbled into?"


	9. Chapter 9

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

Back to Hotch POV. And dear god I spend too much time on the internet. I almost wrote 'lol' into a line of dialogue. *facepalm*

Had this song on repeat while writing this chapter; it just seems to speak volumes of Hotch and Lily's connection.

_'Cause I'm already there, I'm already there_

_Wherever there is you, I will be there too_

Of Monsters & Men - Silhouettes

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 09**

"We probably should have eaten before dredging up all those memories. I'm sorry, I didn't think." Aaron watched Lily eating slowly. She shook her head slightly and smiled.

"I'm eating slowly because you cooked me a beautiful meal and I'm enjoying it, not because talking about what happened made me feel sick. Plus, the longer I take, the longer I have an excuse to just sit and look at you." She winked and he blushed slightly. It was just chicken casserole and potatoes, but he was enormously pleased, and relieved. The fact that she wanted to just look at him did things to his body he couldn't even get his head around.

"You don't need to find excuses to look; I don't." He smirked, loving the light flush that crept slowly up her throat and cheeks. She didn't lower her gaze though, just smiled and carried on eating.

"What else do we need to do before we head out? I don't really know what we'll be doing." She looked curious and a little nervous, but he knew she had no intention of backing out. And he found that he was glad; his mind had gone over too many scenarios where he went looking for the unsubs, leaving her alone, ending in disaster for her and grief for him. As powerful as his desire for her was, it was taking more and more of backseat to his profound need to keep her safe.

"Other than giving the team the rest of your story, not much. Although we should decide on a course of action in case we get separated." She frowned. "It could happen. I know we'll do everything we can to make sure it doesn't, but it's better to have a plan and not need it than need one and not have it." She nodded at that.

He finished eating and, when she was also done, he led her by the hand to the window at the back of the cabin, facing the opposite direction from the one that overlooked the lake. He pointed at a Forest Rangers wooden tower about a mile away.

"I checked that yesterday before the snowball fight. They haven't been near it. If we get separated by accident, or force, or on purpose but the other takes too long coming back, you head there and you lock yourself in. There's a spare shotgun, ammo, food and water in there. Don't open the door for anyone except me, and then only if I give the safe word."

"What's the safe word?" He saw her swallow, the gravity of the situation finally dawning on her.

"Violin." He smiled. "Because I have every intention of hearing you play it when this is over."

"You should have put it in the Ranger tower, too; it'd be a nice loud call for help." She chuckled, leaning close to him as they cleared away and washed the dishes from the table.

"I could have." He laughed. "But you'd probably end up using it to bludgeon someone, so it stays put. She quirked an eyebrow and he knew he was right.

"Just for the record, I vote no to the separating on purpose; that never, ever goes well in the movies. So if at any point it occurs to you to say something like 'I'll look down here, you go look over there and we'll meet back here blah blah'…just go ahead and skip that part and assume I've hit you with something and said 'hell no'."

"I believe you would, at that." Aaron laughed. "You did well earlier. Are you going to be OK to continue? The team need to know as much as you can remember." Suddenly serious, he put away the last dish and turned to face her. He brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek so gently she almost didn't feel it.

Lily stepped toward him and lifted her arms up, resting her forearms on his shoulders and wrapping her fingers lightly around the back of his neck. She drew him against her until his body was pressing her back against the counter. Aaron put his arms around her, resting his palms against her back, his thumbs smoothing slowly over her skin.

"I'm worried, but not for me. The next parts…Aaron they're bad. What they did, what they said, well, mostly the second guy…how I felt." She moved her hands so that her thumbs brushed over the sensitive spots between his ears and the nape of his neck. He closed his eyes at the touch. "If you feel even a fraction for me of what I feel for you, this is going to be a lot harder on you than it is on me."

He opened his eyes slowly, shaking his head.

"A fraction?" He chuffed in disbelief. "Lily there are no words." He hugged her tightly to him, his lips pressing firmly against her temple and cheek, afraid to kiss any other part of her because his control near her when they were touching was becoming tenuous at best.

"But they didn't break you, and they won't break me. You want to protect me? Protect me from myself so I don't lose it in there, and I'll do the same for you. The two of us together are stronger than the sum of our parts and we're going to come out the other side of this even stronger. If they come out of this at all it will be in pieces, either mentally or physically."

"Just make sure it is only them that happens to. I happen to like all your pieces." She mirrored his earlier action, stroking his cheek with the back of her fingers, the corners of her mouth curling just a little. Her eyes were hungry and they spoke to him more eloquently than any words ever could, of a future, of her heart.

"Have I mentioned that I love that little crooked smile of yours?" Aaron chuckled affectionately.

"Well it's not my best feature." Lily grinned and took his hand. "Come on; let's not keep your team waiting. They must be in the air by now."

They sat back down at the desk and used the satphone link to connect to the BAU jet. Moments later Derek Morgan's voice came over the speakers.

"Hotch, you guys OK?" He sounded nervous beneath his usual smooth professionalism.

"We're good, Morgan. Everyone get boarded OK?" Hotch shifted around until he could pull Lily down onto his lap, the physical proximity calming him, allowing him his usual stoic demeanour.

Lily observed the shift from Aaron to Agent Hotchner, the tightening of his mouth, how his brows closed in, his jaw tightened and his eyes burned with singular purpose. It lit something deep within her and she shivered in pleasure. She liked that he was so strong, so confident in his ability to do his job.

More than anything she felt safer than she'd thought possible, but she mourned what he must have been through in order to, at a moment's notice, be able to filter his heart and soul out of his work and leave only his mind.

"Everyone's here, Hotch. We have some new information on the identity of one of the men, but we'd like to hear the rest of the story from Lily before we get to that."

Lily saw in Morgan's voice what he managed to hide from his chief; they were afraid of Hotch's reaction to the identity of the man. She wasn't sure whether that was good or bad news but let it slide as Hotch seemed to have no objection.

"Lily, we want to conduct something called a cognitive interview to help get as much of what you remember as possible. Is that something you've come across before?" Rossi spoke calmly.

"Yes, I've conducted my fair share, also; I understand the benefits." Hotch felt her fingers tighten imperceptibly on his shoulder. He looked up at her.

"Do you understand the downside, too? You'll be back in that place inside your own mind, much more so than a standard interview." His jaw was tight; he was torn between getting the information necessary and hurting her to do it.

"It's worth it; my feelings are secondary here. I have no idea if these guys have another woman, but this is a small price to find out." Her small, flat smile said it all. And he couldn't disagree with her. He squeezed her hand in thanks, admiring the strength it must be taking to do this.

"Rossi, would you do the honours?" Being her guide through it was more than he could ask of himself, and if Rossi was surprised to be asked his voice gave away nothing.

"If you're ready, Lily, I'd like you to pick up the story from when the car stops. What happens then, do they leave you in it, or take you with them immediately?" Rossi's voice was almost comforting as Lily closed her eyes to see the scene play out behind in the theatre of her mind.

"Immediately, even as the engine is stopping the second man is dragging me out of the back seat. He's not in a hurry to take me somewhere, but…almost giddy to touch me again. He knows how much I don't like it."

"What can you tell me about the place where they stopped the car? Don't worry about him for now. Tell me what the closest sounds to you are, then the next closest and the next closest."

"Something's squeaking; there's a door swinging open and closed in the wind. When it's open, I can hear the hum of a generator behind it. It sounds lower than us though, I think the door leads to a basement and the generator is down there. The landscape is so still and quiet, the only other sound other than the surrounding forest is traffic on the road, but it's very far away. They've brought me somewhere very isolated." Her voice reflects the loss of hope she had felt in that moment.

"Can you smell anything?" Rossi kept her in the moment, trying to get her to engage as many senses as possible.

"The smell from the car is pretty thick around me, stale takeaway food. I can smell the leaf mould from the fallen leaves that are everywhere; the trees are almost bare. But the building smells…mouldy. It doesn't look too bad, but it has this weird smell halfway between clean and rotting." Lily's voice spiked. "Then I can smell him. He's put a hand over my mouth to stop me crying. He smells like the forest, like earth. Like a grave."

"What kind of building is it? Big, small, old, new?" Rossi's voice stays flat and calm.

"It's huge. There's so many windows. It looks old, at least a hundred years, maybe more. Lots of stonework. I thought maybe it was an old school, but there were bars on all the windows. Why would there be bars on the windows of a school?" Lily sounded puzzled.

"Did they take you inside straight away?"

"Yes. Well he did, the first one just followed. He didn't seem happy but he was afraid of the second guy. His voice was higher than normal the few times he answered him. They took me in a side door, not the front door. He had a key. There was a long corridor with lots of doors either side. They looked like classroom doors, a window in a wooden door, but the window was higher than I thought was normal." Aaron watched as her eyes moved beneath her closed lids as she walked down the hallway in her mind, one hand clutched tight in his.

"Could it have been a hospital, or a psychiatric institute? Those sound like viewing panes." Rossi asked gently.

"Yes. Yes it could; that makes sense. He put me in one of them eventually. But not until he'd led me through about six corridors just like that, we went up and down stairs to different levels. I don't know why. Every few hundred yards he'd chain me to a radiator or a water fountain and just stand watching me."

"He wanted you confused, not knowing what part of the building you were in. And he wanted you intimidated." Rossi sounded angry.

"It worked." She whispered softly. "I tried to look at as much as I could, though. I turned my head so my hair hid my face from him, and looked as far as I could without turning my head more. I couldn't see much though, mostly the floor. There was one door, though, that had a normal sized window in it. I think it used to have lettering on it, but all I could see was a small r, then a space, then capital H and small o and f." Her face was screwed up in concentration as she tried to remember.

Something was niggling in the back of Hotch's mind. Something she'd said, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Everything about this was messed up, but she'd said…what had she said? Something about the leaves…

"Lily, you mentioned fallen leaves." Rossi's voice echoed his own thoughts. "Was there snow?"

"N-no. But…but there's snow now. I…I was there a long time wasn't I?" She was trembling. "I didn't keep track."

"When did they take you?" Hotch's voice was hoarse as he tried to stay in control.

"Ah…I flew into Ohio at the end of September and stayed a few days before I hired a car. I guess it was maybe the third or fourth of October when my car broke down." There was a hushed collective gasp from the members of the BAU team.

"Lily, it's February. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day." It was JJ who spoke.

"I…I…" Lily couldn't find any words to describe the hundred and one things spinning out of control in her head. She heard Aaron groan and felt his head fall forward onto her stomach. She could feel his whole body shuddering but it took a moment to make out what he was mumbling against her skin.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." His hands gripped her sides almost too hard.

"It's…it's OK, Aaron. There's nothing you could have done." She winced as his grip tightened.

"Yes there was." He looked up at her, his eyes guilty and pained. "This is the third time I've been here in the last four months."


	10. Chapter 10

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

Poor Hotch. He just can't catch a break.

Huge thank you to unnamed Guest reviewer. I'm so happy you're enjoying the story. Thanks for taking the time to review; it was getting thoroughly depressing that over 130 people are reading the story but only two had bothered to say anything.

Warning: Graphic non-sexual violence and abuse throughout this chapter. If you feel like you need a hug by the end of it (I frikken did), go to youtube and look up "wheels up the hotch song".

Just a thought…unsub means unknown subject. So once they know an unsub's name is he just a sub? In which case can you get him as a twelve inch rye with sweet onion relish? :D lol

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 10**

The team felt for Hotch. They heard the guilt in his voice and knew he was thinking of what the victim had been going through while he was relaxing what could have been only miles away. Although they were all beginning to wonder if this woman was only the victim of a crime to their boss. They heard her trying to distract him from what they'd just learnt.

"Look at me. Aaron, look at me. This wasn't your fault, nor mine either. And knowing or not knowing how long I was there doesn't change that. How you feel and how I feel is unimportant right now; _only_ the other woman or women he may have matter. When this is over, we can deal with the guilt, but not until then, OK?" Her voice had a core of steel the team hadn't expected to hear.

"Yes, I know, but…" Hotch didn't get to finish his sentence.

"No buts. You know that if you can't put it aside then you'll have to recuse yourself and let Agent Rossi take over. Do you want that?" Prentiss looked at Morgan, who seemed impressed by her handling of their unit chief.

"No." Hotch all but growled. JJ raised an eyebrow at Prentiss, who shook her head, although JJ thought she was looking increasingly uncomfortable and wondered what ideas were going round in her head.

"OK then, cowboy the fuck up and let's get on with this. Agent Rossi, would you help me continue, please?" They heard Hotch chuckle at this and exchanged amused glances. If there was more going on with them than just agent/victim, then they were looking like a good match if she could get away with telling him to man up as well as stabilising his mood so quickly.

"Of course." said Rossi smoothly. "Let's not focus on time right now. Tell me what happened when they put you in one the rooms. Did it have any furniture?"

"No, nothing. And he didn't bother chaining me to anything; we both knew I couldn't get out. I was on the first or second floor. I couldn't see the ground out the window; it was too high in the wall. But looking straight out, the tops of the trees were closer to eye level than they should have been." She cleared her throat. "Is…is any of this helping?"

"I'm sorry, Lily, we need more. Garcia's been searching about four hundred square miles around Hotch's cabin but there are too many buildings that it could be. There has to be something in the detail that can help us narrow it down. We just don't know what it is yet." Reid said gently.

"It's OK. I'd have to tell you guys about it sooner or later. Might as well be sooner." She blew out a long breath. "After that…days were similar enough that if I didn't have the strength to lift my head to look at the window, I couldn't tell if a new day had come or not. I-I wasn't allowed any clothes. There was a dog bed. I spent most of my time, when he wasn't there, underneath the mattress part to keep warm. There were hairs ingrained in it, long, wavy blonde hairs, like from a retriever. But the smell was almost gone. I almost went mad thinking about that dog, if he'd done to it what he was doing to me."

"And when he was there?" Prentiss pressed.

"I didn't see the first guy again, I don't think he actually knew the second guy very well. It was only the second guy who came. I think he had some sort of pattern in his head that he had to work to. Even when I…disobeyed…and made him angry, he wouldn't deviate from it. He'd hurt me in some weird kind of order." She laughed bitterly through obvious tears.

"First he'd punch me between the legs, then kick me in the belly, low down and then higher up, then punch me in the sternum, that spot that makes you lose your breath. Then he'd punch me in the throat, I couldn't speak for days at a time."

"Do you think that's what he wanted? To make you unable to speak? At least unable to make words, like a human being." Rossi asked.

"I don't know, maybe. He was calmer while I could only answer him with grunts or coughs. But I refused to do it when my voice was my own, even though I knew it would have made things, not easier, but less hard. I couldn't let him turn me into a thing. I stopped caring about being punched in the throat when he started kicking me in the head. There was a rhythm to it all, once he started, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven. One-TWO-THREE-four-five-SIX-SEVEN." Her voice was shaking so badly they could hardly make out the words. "He kept a strict schedule I think. Food in the mornings, punishment in the evenings."

"Lily, take a second. Slow your breathing down so your body knows it's not going through that right now. Give it a chance to separate memory from the present." JJ spoke calmly, evenly, and she could hear Hotch doing his best to calm her.

"Guys, that many head injuries…Hotch I think Lily needs to go to a hospital as soon as we can get her to one. The constant blows to her head would account for why she found it so difficult to keep track of time. There could be damage. There could be a lot of damage." Prentiss heard Hotch's murmured acknowledgement and called Garcia to let her know to have medevac teams ready to go when they had finished with the unsub/s.

"Chakras." Reid's voice suddenly broke the almost silence. "I think he was following chakras."

"What do you mean?" asked Morgan, confused.

"The order in which he hurt her." He searched quickly on his tablet then spun it to show the others. There was an outline of the human body, with different coloured circles in the seven places Lily had described him kicking and punching her in sequence. "He followed the line of chakras from bottom to top every single time. I think he was trying to destroy her soul."

"Maybe he did." Lily's voice sounded flat, which worried JJ.

"No." Hotch's voice whispered over the speaker. "No, honey. He didn't. You're still a person, actual and whole. He never took that from you."

"That's it!" Morgan felt the rush of the revelation. "That was exactly what he was trying to do. In the Catholic religion, a human has a soul but an animal doesn't. He was trying to turn her from a person into an animal by taking away the one thing he thought made her human. Her soul."

The others nodded, it made perfect sense, in the mind of the unsub anyway. They heard Lily's breathing change to panting as she crooned in distress.

"He did he did want that. That's why, I see it I see it, that's he why he ohgodohgodohgod." She was chanting under her breath.

"Why he what, Lily? What did he do?" asked Rossi, trying to get her to verbalise what had just struck her. But moments of silence followed. When she spoke, it was quiet and there was tenuous control in her words.

"Aaron. Let me up, I need to stand up. I can't….turn the other way. Please. I don't want you to see me right now. Please please please." Morgan felt a lump in his throat, knowing now that, this whole time, Hotch had been holding her while she relived her own personal hell. He must have done as she requested, because she spoke again in that flat monotone.

"Bitch, he called me. Over and over. Bitchbitchbitch, bitch-in-heat, bitch-bitch, baby-bitch, stupid-bitch. The dog bed, don't you see?" Prentiss put her face in her hands as she understood what Lily was saying.

"And…and the…feeding me….nono Aaron don't look at me please don't please don't see me…" They heard the complete and utter humiliation in her voice. "He-he-he fed me d-dog food. He fed me dog food and bones and I was I was so _hungry_ it tasted good. Ohgodohgodohgodnononono." They heard Hotch moan in abject misery as she fell apart.

The others weren't listening for it but Morgan was, and he heard the soft impact as Hotch reclaimed her in his arms. He looked over at Rossi, who returned his knowing glance. Something did occur to him, though, and he picked up his phone and asked Garcia to check if there were any large deliveries of dog food to any of the five possible buildings her search had pinpointed. She promised to get back to him quickly.

"Lily?" Morgan asked quietly.

"I..yes, Agent Morgan." She drew a shuddering breath as she tried to regain control. He knew the last thing she wanted right now was an audience, but he didn't know if the lead he'd given Garcia would pan out and they needed to finish this.

"I know this is hard, I can hear how hard this is for you. But we need to finish. Can you keep going?" He ignored Hotch's warning growl; he could punch him later if he still felt like it.

"There…I guess there isn't much more. The routine didn't change much. Sometimes I think he would leave a day or two in between beating me, although I couldn't be sure. Sometimes my fingers needed to heal."

"What do you mean?" Prentiss interjected.

"He…when he would kick me in the head I couldn't get away from him. All I could do was put my hands over my head to try and take the worst of it. He broke my fingers so many times. I had to…I had to rebreak them sometimes because they were healing wrong." They heard her breath begin to sob. "I didn't have anything to use except the bones he brought me to gnaw on." JJ looked a little sick. All of them felt it.

"My whole life I never felt so alone as when I had to do that. And he knew it." She lost control then and they only had time to hear the beginning of her cries before Hotch muted the mic at his end.

Everyone let out breaths they didn't know they'd been holding. Morgan's tablet chose that moment to chime as it received new information. He turned it silently so the rest of the team could see Garcia's success. Regular deliveries of dog food had been sent to an abandoned asylum, St Margaret's, not for the last four and a half months but for the last two years.

"I think this is a lot bigger than just Lily." Morgan's face was deathly serious. "Hearing all of that, how is Hotch going to react when we tell him the unsub's name?"

"Rossi, I think you need to take over." Reid spoke quietly. "I don't think Lily is just a victim to Hotch. In fact I think she might be a good deal more to him than Hayley ever was. He can't be objective here."

"No he can't." Rossi's face was grim. Prentiss was unreadable, but Reid saw JJ's arm snake across the seats to hold her friend's hand in her own, pity in her eyes. He knew then that, just as Lily was more than just a victim to Hotch, Hotch was more than just their boss to Prentiss. He felt sorry for his friend. He knew she would do her job to the best of her abilities, but the aftermath was going to be hard on her.

The speaker crackled back to life.

"Are you guys OK?" JJ asked.

"We're getting there." Hotch's voice was tight but calm enough.

"Aaron, I'm taking over the case." Rossi said calmly. "You and I both know you are too close to this."

"I know. Do what you think is best." Hotch spoke after a momentary silence, his voice sounded reluctant, but grateful.

"The plan we already have is still the best. We just need to know one more thing from Lily, then we can let you go until we get there." He hoped to hear no argument from their chief about his plan for he and Lily to go on ahead of them. He was thankful when none came. "Lily, what changed in the end? How did you escape?"

"I made a mistake." She spoke so quietly they couldn't hardly hear her. "I wasn't supposed to speak. But I thought I was giving myself a chance. So stupid. So, so stupid."

"Hope is never stupid, Lily." Reid said. "There are five people here who think that you are strong beyond all imagining for going through what you did and coming out the other side. Whatever you felt, it ultimately helped you survive."

"Thank you. At the time, though, it felt like I'd just kicked a tiger in the balls. That feeling…I wanted to make myself so small. He was…hurting me…as usual. But he was talking more. He was frustrated and excited. He was screaming at me about why wasn't I bleeding, why wasn't I? I didn't understand, I'd done nothing but bleed and hurt since I got there. Then he started shouting that I couldn't be a good breeder if I didn't bleed. And I screamed back at him that I couldn't have children." The team held their breath. They knew what was coming.

"He went quiet. So quiet. He didn't move. I actually found the strength to look at him. I wished I hadn't. I thought it would save me, telling him that, but I was wrong. I thought about trying to take it back. But he could see the truth of it in my eyes, and I could see my death in his. He left then without a word and I heard him use the phone outside the door. I heard the words 'set her on fire and feed her to the pack' and my mind just kind of went dim." They heard her sigh. She sounded tired, so very tired. Her tongue was leaden and she continued as if in a dream.

"I think I was alone for three days with no food or water after that. I didn't even hear him walk past the door. The night of the third day, the door opened at the end of the corridor and I knew." Morgan looked across the table to see that JJ had her hand over her mouth and silent tears streaming down her face. This was someone Hotch cared about, maybe even loved, so by default they did, too.

"I hid in the dog bed, under the mattress, with the biggest of the bones I'd been given, the one I'd used to rebreak my fingers. When he came into the room I didn't move. I didn't pretend to be asleep, he'd have known better, I was just still. I knew I'd only have one chance. When he bent and stripped the mattress off me I took it. I swung the bone at his head and he went down. I couldn't believe how hard he went down. I just stood there. And he just lay there. So I ran. It took me a long time just to get out of the building. I took some clothes I found on a chair, his I think, and started moving. Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning. He caught up to me as I reached Aaron's cabin."

They heard her voice quiet and knew they wouldn't hear any more of her story. They didn't need to. They had the address of St Margaret's and knew that the unsub was injured, but not enough to stop him chasing her.

"We have to go now." Hotch's voice was devoid of emotion.

"Hotch, wait. We need to tell you what we found out about the unsub's identity." JJ said before he could disconnect. Hotch was silent for a moment.

"I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"No. No you're not." Morgan had drawn the short straw, it would seem. "The unsub is a native of Massachusetts. After his parents died in a firefight with the local LEOs, he grew up being shipped between various family members before settling with his grandfather. The unsub's name is Alexander LaGrange-Foyet. He's George Foyet's cousin."

The silence stretched out for interminable moments.

"No." Came Hotch's voice over the speaker, deep and certain.

"Hotch, we need to…"

"No. That bastard's cousin took Hayley. He's not getting Lily, too."

The line went dead.

"Shit! Shit shit!" Morgan slammed his fist on the table. "He's going after him."

"Morgan, all we can do is get to them as quickly as possible. Maybe we can get to them before they engage LaGrange." JJ couldn't bring herself to use the second half of the unsub's name.

"JJ, they're not going to 'engage' him." Morgan looked JJ in the eye. "Hotch isn't looking for justice any more. He's looking for vengeance and he's going to take it."

"Morgan's right." Rossi chimed in. "He's just had to sit there and listen to every evil thing this man did to this woman who, to all intents and purposes, seems to be more important to him than even his wife was. He's going to tear him apart."

"Uh…guys." Prentiss was looking at her tablet in horror. "Garcia kept the search running on his name. Look at this list. All properties owned by members of the LaGrange-Foyet family. And it's a big family." She showed them her screen.

"And?" Reid's brow furrowed as his mind took in the information. His expression changed to horrified understanding as his mind reached its conclusion at the same moment Prentiss spoke again.

"Look at the properties on the map view. Look at the _dates_ they were purchased." The map showed red dots. In the centre was a blue dot and a green dot, Hotch's cabin and St Margaret's, only eight miles apart. The red dots were spread around the two like the numbers on a clock. "All the properties were purchased about six months after Hayley's death. This isn't one unsub. This is a family business and they've had Hotch surrounded for _eighteen months_."

"They're walking straight into an ambush." Morgan looked at the others.

Rossi spoke up.

"That's not an ambush. That's Custer's Last goddamn Stand. We need to get our friends out of there."


	11. Chapter 11

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

I can honestly say that that last chapter was the most emotionally draining piece of writing I've ever done, and one of the most satisfying. It felt amazing to get it finished, and I'm really happy with it, but I wasn't surprised when I ended up having nightmares. I hope it's well received and carries on the story in a way that you all enjoyed, and that you liked the twist at the end :D The length of Lily's captivity may have caused a tiny break in continuity but I think that is easily fixed by just adding to the first or second chapter that she seems too thin. I did originally start this as just a piece of fluff where Hotch gets snowed in with her and they fall in love and it's all sweet and lovely yada yada yada. But I totally fell in love with the darker side of it, partly because there's more room for drama and partly because it brings out Hotch's protective side even more, which I also love.

Many thanks to guest reviewer Tara; I hope you continue to enjoy the story :)

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 11**

The team wasted no time when they arrived at the deserted airport, heading down the stairs the moment the hatch was open. A black SUV waited for them on the tarmac, a silent, tight lipped driver inside ready to take them to their destination. The team turned to Reid once they were all inside and the vehicle was moving.

"So how are we getting to Hotch's cabin, Reid?" asked Prentiss. Like the others she felt subdued.

"With the help of a friend. Although I'd like to wait until we get there for you all to see what I've arranged. Alistair will be waiting for us." Reid rechecked his cell to make sure the travel arrangements were still solid.

"How long until we get there?" asked Rossi.

"About fifteen minutes. You know, this might actually be a blessing in disguise. I didn't realise when I called him, but we may need some extra bodies at our disposal."

"Extra bodies? Who?" asked Morgan, who was fairly certain he was liking the surprise element of this less and less.

"They're ex British SAS and ex US Navy SEALS, running an operation in conjunction with both search and rescue and law enforcement for a certain kind of infiltration and extraction. Namely, very quiet. Are any of you allergic to animals? I didn't think to ask when I came up with contingencies for everyone." Reid rambled.

"Reid." Morgan's voice held an only half serious warning. "What kind of contingencies for everyone?"

"I had some free time, so I decided to draw up a list of contingencies for accessing all of our personal residences in times of emergency, accounting for difficult weather conditions in particular." Reid looked up from his tablet and saw the wheels turning in Morgan's mind.

"Rossi's is a hot air balloon isn't it?" he said with a smirk.

"It almost was. That big drive of his would be perfect for landing, but the power lines around it aren't." Morgan nodded his head in agreement. "Anyway, this is the first time I've been able to put one into effect. I have confidence that Alistair will come through for us. He's very, very good at what he does. Just…try not to feel too emasculated when you meet him." He finished with feigned indifference.

"Me? Really?" Morgan managed the ghost of a laugh.

"Really." Reid's small smile shut Morgan up just as Rossi was about to step in. Instead he shook his head at the two younger agents and turned back to his conversation with JJ and Prentiss, who were going over the members of the LaGrange-Foyet family, looking for links, ages, occupations, personal histories.

"Anything of particular interest we should know about?" He asked.

"Quite a lot. The family numbers twenty-seven adult individuals, two of who have military backgrounds. The head of the family seems to be this man." Prentiss handed Rossi her tablet, which showed a photograph of a man of about seventy. "Emmett Luther Foyet. It was his wife, born Anna Marie LaGrange in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1946, who gave the family the double barrelled name. She had a total of eight children, that we know of, but no-one has seen her since 1984. There is no death certificate for her on record, however."

"Is there any way to tell how much the family knows about George and Alexander's activities?" asked JJ.

"I don't think it's that simple." answered Prentiss. "Garcia really came through on this one. If we collate all the information on each member of the family, we get a wide range of profiles. So far we have one angel of death, four rapists who use combinations of torture and mutilation, at least three non-sexual sadists, a pair of fraternal twins who seem to perform as synchronised serial arsonists. Neither of them have ever been married, or lived with anyone other than each other, yet the female has a set of twins of her own, two years old. They may well be living in an incestuous relationship."

"What about the grandfather?" asked Rossi, disturbed by what he had heard.

"All indicators point to him being a highly organised, narcissistic sociopath. The crimes attributable to this family go back over fifty-five years to when he was a teenager and are too numerous to imagine." Prentiss didn't know whether to be horrified or frustrated. "He's not compelled to do any of the things he's done, he's chosen to do them."

"There must be something genetic, though, to account for the profiles on the younger family members, though." said Rossi.

"I don't think so. Looking at the family, especially the two ex military men who seem to have acquired training in weapons with the sole purpose of becoming LDSKs, I think the grandfather is the sole determining factor." Prentiss looked sick with the knowledge.

"But that means…" JJ's mind was catching up with where Prentiss was going with this.

"That he has, over the course of the last fifty years, raised an entire clan of career serial killers. Deliberately." Prentiss rested the back of her head against the car seat.

"How in hell did anyone miss this?" asked Morgan from the backseat.

"No-one was looking for it." Said Reid. "This is absolutely unprecedented. Not even the Manson family comes close. To have this level of organisation, he knew exactly what he was doing. And I think we can assume that the next generation of children are being initiated and educated in exactly the same way. Everyone is encouraged to find their own, unique slant on killing, dependent on their personality type. But they are all expected and encouraged to follow this path. If we don't stop it here and now, there will be too many of them to deal with once the children have children."

"Does anyone else think it's weird that, with the exception of some of the youngest children, and the one set of twins, there are no females in this family?" asked Prentiss, thinking that she didn't really want to know the answer.

"Oh god." JJ's face went pale. "What was it Lily said she heard LaGrange say on his cell? 'Set her on fire and feed her to the pack'? I assumed he meant a pack of dogs. But he kept calling her a bitch, and he was basically trying to turn her into an animal, a dog in particular. If all women are bitches to him, how many bitches make up a pack?"

"You're saying they have multiple female victims and they were going to feed Lily to them?" Morgan followed the obvious logic.

"He, not they. I think they're all free to follow their own career in killing. But I think he might be responsible for providing the family with new members. He keeps a group of women in that place, and the family raises the pick of the…litter." JJ closed her eyes against the images her brain conjured up.

"So if he's threatened, the rest of the family will be behind him?" asked Rossi.

"It's not just that. Remember the proximity of their properties to Hotch's and the old asylum. I think he is their end game. And he's about to make it a lot easier." said Morgan with a frown.

"We're almost there." Said Reid. "What do we know about how they'll act as a group?"

"There'll be two aspects to it." Morgan looked thoughtful. "Hotch is their target, yes, and Lily probably because she got away, but she'd mostly only be important to LaGrange. Protecting the old man will be paramount, even while on the offence."

"If we take him out, they lose cohesion." Prentiss put her tablet and phone away as she spoke. "Maybe not completely, but they look to him for direction. Without it, their various personalities would have difficulty following each other."

"OK guys, this is it. Look sharp." Reid and Morgan got out of the SUV, followed by JJ, Rossi and Prentiss. The driver moved the SUV silently across what looked like the yard of a group of aircraft hangars.

"Reid if we're hang gliding there the rest of your life will be short and involve a swift decrease in altitude." Morgan ground through his teeth.

"Why does it feel like we're being watched?" asked Rossi, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.

"Because ye're no alone." A deep voice rumbled in the darkness. This is what a mountain would sound like if it could talk.

Their eyes searched the gloom and settled on a large shadow, but not the man that cast it. Before any of them could speak, the shadow moved forward and became the sharp outline of a man, his face shrouded in darkness.

"Um…Reid…did you order a giant?" asked Morgan.

"Alistair." Reid said in relief.

"Aye, laddie. Who do we have here?" He stepped forward again and the team saw long, dark brown hair, a handsome face marred by a large scar on one cheek. He wore no finery, but a plain Scots plaid and shirt, seemingly oblivious to the lethal winter cold. Prentiss found a thread of appreciation running through her at the sight of him. He towered to almost seven feet tall in perfect proportion, a long limbed, powerfully muscled leviathan with no natural predators.

"Alistair Mackenzie, meet the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Unit, or BAU. Supervisory Special Agents David Rossi, Derek Morgan, Jennifer Jareau and Emily Prentiss." Reid introduced the team to his friend. "Guys, this is Alistair Mackenzie. He's a Scottish national, ex SAS with the British armed forces."

"Agents." The giant nodded briefly in their direction, his hard stare lingering just a little longer on Prentiss than on the others.

"Why the ex?" asked Prentiss, feeling brave. She felt a little less so when his eyes zeroed back in on her with interest.

"They said I was too big tae be sneaky. Black ops, ye ken." He winked at her, his stern mouth crinkling at the edges. "They were wrong. I can be verra sneaky when I need tae be." Prentiss smothered a smile; they were working and this was a serious situation. But still…Alistair the sneaky giant. It had a certain ring to it. She shook her head in amusement instead, realising the others were following Reid across the tarmac, and hurried to catch up with them.

"How bad is this?" he asked her softly, keeping perfect time with her footsteps.

"We have two friends walking into an ambush of two dozen career serial killers who happen to all be related, who are holding an unknown number of women captive." Prentiss laid it out for him bluntly, yet was unprepared for his reaction.

"Sounds like we'll have a grand time." He grinned widely and hurried ahead to the group of men in combat gear toward whom Reid and the rest were headed. Prentiss stood open-mouthed until Reid prodded her.

"Your friend. Is he, uh, sane?" she asked him.

"Yes. He's just kind of…indestructible." Prentiss just stared at him without speaking. "Come on, we can get going soon. Let's meet the others."

"Gentlemen, may I introduce the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Unit, Rossi, Jareau, Morgan, Reid you know, and Prentiss. Agents, this is Duncan, Angel, Marco and Nils."

"Boss is this still just a transport mission?" asked the one called Nils.

"No, I think we'll be going in live, aye?" Alistair cocked a brow at Rossi.

"Did Agent Prentiss update you on the situation?" Alistair nodded. "We'd certainly appreciate help, and I know that you and your men have the authority to work officially or unofficially with any government agency, but this is an incredibly dangerous situation. We have no idea how the dynamics of such a large and diverse group of serial killers would or could play out."

"Well it wouldnae be any fun if we kent what was going tae happen now would it?" Alistair's face remained stern, letting Rossi know that he was not making fun of the situation but accepting responsibility for their involvement. Rossi felt a small touch of relief. He'd been starting to feel a little outgunned simply by the number of unsubs they might be facing.

"Get the gear, lads. I'll introduce the agents tae the teams." Alistair beckoned them inside one of the aircraft hangars via a side door while his men went to another at a fast trot. Inside, instead of airplanes, they found large planning and tactical areas that resembled their own, fronting a long line of empty kennels. He led them past that to the back of the hangar. More than one jaw dropped open.

Sitting patiently were five teams of sled dogs, already harnessed to large, black sleds, carbon fibre and titanium by the looks of them. The dogs looked slightly bigger than normal sled dogs, as were the sleds, which were sleeker and semi roofed, more like large motorbike sidecars.

"We've been breeding these for five years now, part husky, part Belgian Malamute. We'd found a niche that needed filling; none of the government agencies had anything like a good contingency for extreme winter conditions other than search and rescue helicopters and climbers, nothing tactical at all. Their job is sometimes search and rescue, but more often infiltration and/or extraction. Today seems like it's tae be a bit of both, aye?"

Morgan nodded thoughtfully. He could see the benefit of being able to move swiftly across the snow without the noise of an engine. Alistair followed his train of thought.

"They're completely silent, no barking. We've trained them for stealth as well as speed. Plus, they're all trained attack dogs, the Malamute part is particularly useful for that. You all need to greet every single one of them in my presence. They need to know who is friend from foe in the event of a conflict." He motioned them to go to the dogs.

One by one they greeted every animal as Alistair kept up a constant murmur under his breath. It meant something to the dogs, because they constantly flicked their ears to him and then to the agents making their acquaintance. When they were done, Alistair nodded, satisfied.

"They'll be uncoupled as soon as we reach our destination. Where is that, by the way? You said your friends had taken off after the bad guys. Do we go to the cabin Reid gave me coordinates for, or do we head straight tae where your friends have gone?" He looked between the agents.

"The latter, I think." JJ answered. He made a good point. "Hotch and Lily will be long gone before we get to the cabin. If we can't beat them there, we need to at least bring up the rear with as small a margin as possible."

"Agreed. Reid, give the new coordinates tae Nils when he gets back. For now, just get stay with the hounds. I have tae fetch something." He stalked away, out of the hangar.

It was only minutes before his men filed in, carrying a variety of weapons to stow in the compartments of the five sleds. Morgan and Prentiss both took the extra magazines offered, and JJ gratefully accepted the offer of a hunting knife in a leg harness to slip under her pants where it couldn't be seen.

Reid passed Nils the new coordinates and he programmed it into the displays inside the windshields of the sleds. They all looked up as Alistair re-entered the building. They saw immediately what he'd gone to fetch; an enormous sword was grasped in one hand. Not a sleek, modern blade, but a huge and ancient Claymore.

"Are you goddamn kidding me?" exclaimed Morgan, remembering Reid's earlier jibe.

"Dinna fash, laddie. An officer who goes into battle without his sword is improperly dressed." Alistair grinned and stowed the blade in what they assumed would be his sled. "Everyone pick a sled and get in." He motioned to Prentiss. "Ye're with me, bonny lass."

The other agents kept their expressions even and for once Prentiss didn't argue, and climbed into the sled, watching as Alistair's huge frame climbed into the seat in front of her, his hands picking up the reins that fed through holes under the windshield. A remote control blacked out the lights of the hangar and closed the doors after them, the sleds picking up speed as they slid over the winter landscape under the bright moon.

* * *

><p>Please excuse any errors. I usually try to edit and correct pretty meticulously before I post, but I've been fighting just to keep my eyes open the last five hours it's taken me to write this chapter since I got home from work. If any of my Fuil 'o mo chuislean readers have chanced a look at this story, I hope you enjoy Alistair's guest appearance. ;)<p>

~Sin~


	12. Chapter 12

Copyright© D. A. Bathory 2014

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

So Alistair has a guest slot in this story. He is kind of an OTT character but I will try not to make the story become too unbelievable with him in it; he is just a larger than life guy (pun totally intended). Strangely enough he is inspired by a real person, Mad Jack Churchill, a British officer from WWII who carried a longbow and a Scottish Broadsword into battle, once capturing an entire German battalion with only his sword. He and his men are mostly there to even the playing field a bit against the LaGrange-Foyet family, because without some serious firepower/manpower, it would become too unbelievable that the BAU didn't wait for proper reinforcements. The BAU are FBI agents first and foremost, and they wouldn't be so dumb as to try some kind of suicidal charge against overwhelming odds with just the five of them. Getting closer to the confrontation now, so more than one POV possible per chapter from here on in.

**The Lake House**

**Chapter 12**

**Hotch POV**

After ending the call with his team Aaron ran his hand through his hair and leaned back against the side of the sofa. During the hardest parts of Lily's account they had both ended up sat on the floor, taking comfort in each other. Now her back lay against his chest with their arms linked together in front of her and her emotions were cycling out of control. He could feel the tension in every part of her that touched him. She was a powder keg and he needed to ignite her or lose her to her inward spiral of loathing.

"Don't do that again." He ground out angrily.

"Don't do what?" he felt her tense further.

"Ask me to turn away from you." He sighed as she exploded out of his arms and turned on him with furious eyes, arms ramrod straight by her sides and fists clenched until her knuckles turned white.

"Are you kidding me? Does it not occur to you that there are some parts of what happened that I didn't ever want another living soul to know?" He rose swiftly to face her anger head on. "That I might have needed some space to…"

"No." He interrupted her fiercely, crossing the distance between them with one stride and grasping her upper arms in an iron grip. "There is no space between you and I, not now, not yet, maybe not ever." His gaze was locked with hers and he could feel her breath coming in quick puffs against his chin as he leant toward her upturned face.

"I…I want…let me go." she sputtered, struggling to escape his grasp, which only made him hold her tighter.

"I know you're raw, and I know a tiny part of you hates me right now for seeing you at your lowest, seeing how close to an animal he managed to reduce you." His heart pinched as he saw the acknowledgement in her eyes. "But it was necessary in order to find the man that held you and it was necessary for you to be able to survive inside your head. So you go ahead and hate me, because I can live with that now if it helps you live with yourself later." He eyed her speculatively, not loosening his grip.

"Why? Why does it matter if I can live with myself later? Maybe I'm not meant to be able to. Maybe he took me away from me and I'm not supposed to…" She shook her body in frustration. "I don't want to fight with you but I…" she ground her teeth, the tension still singing through her "Yes I do. I do want to fight with you. God help me but I want to punish you for seeing me while I was feeling that. Why do I have to be able to live with that later?"

"Because I have to." He barked at her. "I can't say it right or probably even touch you in a way that would show you I mean it right now but you're one half of me and you need to be able to live with yourself because I won't be without you." He let her go then, noting even through his own rising ire that she didn't step back but leaned forward, pink spots of high temper on her cheeks.

"You can be as angry with me as you want but when this is all long since over and we get to the part where we say 'for better or worse'," her eyes widened, shocked, but he carried on "and we will, we'll have already been through the second part."

She rocked her chin absently in agreement, her fingers twitching impotently and her gaze flitting around the room as she gathered her thoughts. Some of the energy was already leaving her body but her fight or flight response was still in overdrive.

"That was 'worse', Lily, and I'll go through it with you a hundred times if that's what you need but I won't let you close yourself off from me again. Understood?" He waited for her to deal with what he demanded of her. "Damnit tell me you understand!" Eventually she nodded tightly.

"I don't like it or anything else right now, but I get it. But that doesn't mean I won't fight you if you ask too much." She lifted her chin in defiance, her eyes flashing dangerously.

"I look forward to it." He ran a hand up her arm and she fisted her hands in his sweater, still at war with herself, still half wanting to fight him. The other, darker half hidden behind her dilated pupils wanted him to make her submit to him and in turn to wring his own submission from his lips with her body. Her breathing changed and he felt the air between them crackle.

"I still want to punish you." She murmured as she leaned into him, her lips perilously close to his. He allowed himself the lightest brush across them as he turned her head roughly with one hand in her hair to press his mouth against her throat. He felt the vibration as she hummed in amusement, knowing they wouldn't stop anything they started now.

"Get through this and I'll let you." He held her hips with a bruising grip, pulling her to him hard enough to knock a surprised breath out of her, the evidence of his promise pressing urgently against her thigh. She drew in a sharp breath, pushing her fingers through his hair and twining them in the thick strands. He rocked against her once, roughly, sweetly, then pushed her hips away from his.

"Aaron." He shook his head. He didn't want to hear her beg him. Yet. He trained his gaze on the purple and yellow bruises that still decorated her throat and collarbones to refocus his train of thought. He needed a head clear of desire for what they were about to do and reminding himself of how she had ended up there with him helped.

"We have to go." He saw her nod. "This needs to be over, and if he has someone else, it needs to be over for her, too. I know you want that."

"Yes. I can take us back, I think. And when we get there…" He heard the unspoken question in her voice.

"I need to get changed. I'm not a vigilante and I'll do this as an FBI agent. I want to kill him, but if I didn't believe that the way I've been trained to deal with men like him is the right way, my life so far would have been a waste. And I know in my heart that it hasn't."

"Go change, Agent Hotchner. And find me some shoes that will fit me." She smirked, shaking most of the remaining anger out of her head and starting to pull on extra layers, jeans over leggings, two more sweaters and a dark blue winter coat. Now she looked as mismatched on the outside as she felt on the inside, excitement warring with nauseating anxiety.

When he returned she saw what the rest of the world saw every day, the man that colleagues and subordinates respected before they even met him. A stern FBI agent, a leader, with lips tightly serious and black brows drawn in a frown, the weight of the world on the shoulders of an expensive suit.

He stood in front of her for moments until he saw that no part of her rejected this side of him, this all of him. He wordlessly knelt at her feet to help her into and tie the laces of first one shoe, then the other. His expression didn't change as he looked up at her long enough for her to understand that it was the kneeling that was important to him, not the shoes.

She pulled him to his feet and helped him into his bulletproof vest and a thick, wool coat. Arming themselves, Hotch with dual shoulder holsters and a gun at his ankle, Lily with shotgun and a hunting knife, they stepped out the door hand in hand.

**Prentiss POV**

The quiet swish of the snow beneath the sled made for one of the most relaxing uncomfortable silences Prentiss had ever experienced. But, try as she might, the urge to say something got the better of her.

"Why did you pick me to ride with you?" She swore she could tell that he smiled at that, even though her view was only of the back of his head.

"Does a man need an excuse tae request the company of an intriguing woman?" He was definitely smiling.

"Yes." She wasn't letting him off that easy.

"Ha!" was his only reply. She groaned and leant her head back in her seat. She was fairly certain that if she managed to escape being harmed by the unsubs, Alistair would probably manage to annoy her to death.

"So how do you know Reid?" Without raising her head, she felt the levity drop from the man sitting in front of her.

"Because of him my sister is still alive. There's nothing I wouldnae do for him, aye?" Prentiss wondered why Reid had never mentioned having such a useful friend. Alistair seemed to read her mind. "He was a guest lecturer while she was at university. She and another student were kidnapped, but the entire operation was classified because of who the other student was."

"Was?" She had a horrible feeling she knew the answer already.

"They didnae make it. But after they brought Reid in on the case they made progress faster than before. When we found my sister she was half dead. I'll spend the rest of my life grateful tae Reid for that other half. Don't fault your friend for keeping it tae himself; that's exactly what was required of him." She heard the fondness in Alistair's voice.

"No, that's just like Reid. Someone else would have found enough of a loophole to let them brag about it. He works on something important, does something heroic, makes an interesting friend and I bet it never even crossed his mind to tell anyone about it after they asked him not to." Her already great respect for her friend rose several notches. From her work with Interpol she knew her how difficult some secrets can be to keep. Sometimes it was a bitter pill to go unnoticed.

"So ye admit ye find me interesting?" He chuckled.

"Oh my god, do you ever stop?" she was glad he couldn't see the warmth that flushed her cheeks.

"No." Alistair admitted honestly.

"What about the sword. Is that for real?" She had no intention of visiting any part of what was fast appearing to be his favourite subject while they had work to think about.

"Yes. But I might no have brought it along tonight if Reid hadn't mentioned a certain ongoing feud with Agent Morgan." His laugh rumbled pleasantly.

"Oh no." Her head snapped up. "The prank war. Morgan's going to kill him. He is actually going to kill him."

"Hmmph." The disbelieving noise Alistair made left no doubt as to what he thought of Morgan's chances.

"Don't get all protective; the more put out Morgan is, the more pleased Reid will be. It's not an unequal friendship; they both idolise each other in their own way."

"Then I'm glad I remembered tae bring the blade." He paused in thought. "Why is yer team under Agent Rossi and no yer boss?"

"Agent Hotchner is unable to be impartial in this instance. He seems to have formed a connection with the victim, and his priority right now is protecting her. The line between protecting someone and avenging them can be thin at times like this." Alistair cocked his head at her words, as if listening to something that wasn't there. "He OKed it in our conference call. He understands that the chain of command has to be objective."

"But _you_ do not." The head turned away from her again but his careful enunciation made it clear he thought he had hit upon something of significance.

"Of course I do. It's standard procedure. The best for everyone's safety." Prentiss was becoming uncomfortable with this line of commentary.

"That's no what I meant. This is difficult for ye." She almost wished she heard derision in his voice, not understanding.

"Of course not. We're a great team whoever takes the reins on a case." Prentiss looked down at her hands, away from eyes that couldn't possibly be looking at her, though she felt his scrutiny just the same.

"This is difficult for ye." It wasn't a question and had a note of finality. He would be gentle with her feelings, but he wouldn't let her lie to him or to herself.

"It is what it is. I'm part of something important. It's enough." She hoped that it was.

"We work with all areas of your government's military, and some others." His deep voice was calming, although his tendency to go off at a tangent was making her head spin.

"Reid explained that in part on the plane. For some reason I assumed that you'd find it hard keeping busy."

"No. These kinds of conditions make for a verra attractive hideaway for those who dinnae wish tae be caught. It takes a great deal of organisation, but we rarely see a month without an assignment." He considered his next words in silence for a few seconds before speaking carefully. "I've seen yer file. I know what ye are, or were. When this is over, if things are…harder for ye than ye can bear, if yer team is no longer enough, there is a spot here for ye with us…Emily."

Prentiss said nothing. She knew her indrawn breath was acknowledgement enough that she'd heard as he turned his attention back to the reins in his hands and said no more.

* * *

><p>Hope you enjoyed that. I don't like the idea of Prentiss and Hotch but I don't want her to be miserable. Putting her in the path of a good guy with a lovely accent is the least I can do.<p>

Until next time.

~Sin~


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