#creative writing juices haven't really been there. Feel like I've been on my phone too much too. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

andreafmn · 2 years ago

Text

Running In Circles - Chapter 8

Word Count: 4.2K

Story Description: (Y/N) Rossi is following in her father’s footsteps by joining the BAU team as a profiler. The girl genius knew almost everything but she could have never predicted falling for Aaron Hotchner, her boss and her father’s friend. in their world mutual feelings are not enough to push them together. Will all the adversities and obstacles they face pull them together or push them apart forever?

*DISCLAIMER* I do not own in any way Criminal Minds, all credits of the pre-established characters, script, and storyline belong to Jeff Davis and CBS Network.

The only thing I own is (Y/N) Rossi, any upcoming characters, and her storyline, as well as her effects in the others’ story line.

Chapter: 9/?

WARNINGS: mentions of blood and death

A/N: Welp, this was long overdue. I can't believe I haven't updated since November last year. I love this story and I have a couple of chapters written but I need to get through this middle part to get to them and I've been struggling 😅 I've also found it hard to find the time to write due to personal circumstances but I'm on break for a month and hopefully the creative juices start running.

Follow 😊 -> TikTok • Instagram • Business

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged or if you have any requests! My inbox and comments are open. Remember that to be tagged you must allow tagging on your settings.

<- Previous | Next ->

Two mornings had come and gone before Friday rolled around and it was time to go back to work. I awoke to the smell of breakfast cooking. I couldn’t decipher whether I was still asleep or Hotch had woken up to cook. Considering the latter, I took my time getting dressed and ready before heading downstairs. I was already heading into work later than usual, wanting to at least have one last breakfast with the Hotchner boys.

“Morning, Hotch,” I announced my presence to the back-turned agent. “Having fun there?”

“Hey, good morning,” he laughed. “Figured I could make your morning easier today.”

“Sounds good. What’s on the menu?”

“French toast and fruits?”

“Coffee too?”

“Always,” he chuckled. Hotch placed a plate in front of my seat and one next to it for himself as I served two mugs of coffee. “Jack’s gonna be mad I didn’t wake him up to eat with us. That boy really loves you.”

“I mean, I am quite lovable.” My mind quickly registered the scene that unfolded before me. Whoever looked through my window would think we were a couple with years on our backs, a steady routine implemented into our daily lives. I knew there wasn’t a person that saw us that wouldn’t believe we weren’t a family — that between us only friendship was capable of brewing. “But it’s better if he sleeps in. Yesterday was a lot. He must be pretty tired.”

“Yeah. He was out like a light since I put him down.”

“How did you sleep?”

“Good enough,” he sighed. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat next to me, sipping on the piping hot coffee in his hand. “Still feel guilty that I’m not as sad as I should be for someone that lost his wife a year ago.”

“Hotch, there are no rules to grief. There is no way to measure how much or how little you should feel.” I put a comforting hand on his forearm, rubbing circles on it with my thumb. “Don’t punish yourself for not behaving in the way you think you should — no one is judging.”

“We do, (Y/N). We judge people who don’t grieve normally.”

“I don’t know about you, but I normally don’t keep tabs on a killer’s grieving process a year after.”

“No, I guess not,” he laughed dryly. “I guess I’m just being hard on myself.”

“The best thing you can do is be there for Jack and feel whatever you feel when it comes.” We shared a smile between us. A quiet stare into each other’s eyes. Moments like these were the ones I fooled myself into thinking there was a glimmer of love behind his eyes — that maybe, just maybe, he shared the sentiment.

But it never lasted long enough. My phone buzzed inside my pocket, bringing my attention to the fact that I was late for work. The screen flashed Derek’s name, and I knew I was in for an earful.

“Hey, Der. I know I’m late. I’m on my way to the office now. I’m…”

“I need you to meet me somewhere else,” he interrupted. “It’s Sanderson.”

“What happened?”

“He killed someone.”

“Send me the address, I’ll see you there,” I hung up. “I-I’ve gotta go.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Don Sanderson, the man Derek advocated for to be released, just killed someone. I’ve gotta go meet him there.” I rambled as I gathered my things, my head spinning from the news I had just received.

“You’re feeling guilty.” The sentence sounded like it was meant to be a question, but it came out as an observation. “You shouldn’t, and neither should Morgan. You both made an informed decision based on the facts you had at hand.”

“Would you have vouched for him?”

“(Y/N)…”

“Exactly.” I grabbed my things and headed out the door, speeding to the location Derek sent.

The house was riddled with police. The haunting yellow tape separating the living from the dead. I got there at the same time the team and Morgan were exiting their van, their sights set on a handcuffed Sanderson being taken into a police car. Reid, Prentiss, and Seaver entered the crime scene as I made a beeline for Derek.

“Hey, do we know what happened?”

“They think he did this to go back to jail,” he sighed.

“He didn’t?”

“Claims it was self-defense.” Derek crossed his arms and leaned on the hood of a car. His eyebrows furrowed and his eyes trained on the car that Don was in. “I mean, he called the paramedics. Even performed CPR on the guy. He’s looking for something.”

“Alright, then. Call Strauss,” I recommended. “Let’s get this case and find out what he really wants.”

Words of encouragement wouldn’t work at this moment. The sooner we could get answers, the quicker Derek could determine is his decision had been the right one. Anyone that looked at the angered mask he wore could understand the guilt he was carrying. The ‘what if’s plaguing his mind had to grab hold of his deepest insecurities. I knew because that is how I was feeling, and I had merely lent an understanding ear and endorsed that he’d be let out.

A call of a few seconds and Don was released to our custody. I decided to stay with my father and Derek, giving the keys to my own car to Reid before leaving the scene.

“You woke up a free man and decided to kill Tom Whittman,” my father spoke. “You gotta help us out here. It doesn’t look good for you.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” Don defended. As he spoke, I studied his face. It was clear there was no deception. The man had been free for fifty-one hours and rushed to find Wittman – why? “He came at me.”

“I get it that you don’t trust anyone right now. But this man is the reason you’re free.”

Derek stopped the car abruptly, turning to face Sanderson. “Did you find your son?”

“No.”

“Did you even look?” Derek seethed as Don remained quiet. The one thing Sanderson had claimed he wanted more than anything was to reconnect with his son. If he hadn’t done it yet – instead went to find this man – the reason to see Whittman had to be with his case.

“Der,” I called his attention. “Drive.”

Driving back to the office, the air was choking. The anger and disappointment filled the car with pressure, and I was sure everyone felt it. Occasionally, Derek would glare at Don through the rearview mirror, and all the man could do was stare sadly back. The man looked truly distraught – if he was pretending, he was a damn good actor.

In the briefing room, the rest of the team had set out the details of the Sanderson case looking for a clue as to why this attack. Derek didn’t spend much time in the room before being called away Strauss. Everyone kept talking, but my brain felt scrambled, and I couldn’t focus right. I stood up suddenly and left the room, trying to escape the stuffiness from those four walls. ‘

“Are you okay, (Y/N)?” Spencer asked, placing a hand on my back.

“I can’t think straight, Spence.”

“Why? If anything, I understand why Derek would feel like this, but not you.”

“Monday night, Derek called me asking for advice on the Sanderson release. He was leaning into not releasing him, going against his gut feeling just in case. And I told him that Sanderson had done the work, proved that he had changed during his time in prison and was no longer a threat to society. The man’s blood is in our hands, Spence.”

“Future telling is not part of your resume, (Y/N),” he chuckled softly. “Given the evidence and the interview Derek made, anyone would have been fooled by him.”

“But we’re not anyone, Reid,” I exasperated. “Our job is literally – and I’m correctly using the word here – to judge people’s behavior and make the right decision so no one else gets hurt. Today someone died because we chose the wrong one. I helped Derek advocate for a killer.”

“No, you didn’t. (Y/N), you and Derek made an informed decision from the pattern of behavior Sanderson exhibited from years in prison,” Spencer comforted. “What we have to do now is determine the reason as to why this is all happening and how it’s connected to the Sanderson case.”

“I guess,” I sighed. “I’m gonna go with Derek. Make sure he doesn’t blow up during the interrogation.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay, (Y/N)?”

“I’ll be fine, Spence.”

I followed the trail Derek had taken and slowly entered the interrogation room. From behind the glass, I could sense the irritability and despair that filled the small space. Sanderson was spilling every bit of his story – Wittman’s possible connection to his case, what he recalled from that night.

“So Tom Wittman was the only link you had to figure out who was in your house that night?”

“And now I’m back to nothing,” Don affirmed.

“Not necessarily.” Derek stood, excusing himself as he exited the door. “(Y/N), hey.”

“You want to take him back to his house, right? See if he can recall any more memories from that night.”

“When did you add mind reader to your list of talents?” Derek chuckled. “He needs to figure out who else was there that night.”

“It’s the only way we can corroborate his story,” I finished. “Let’s get him cleaned up first.”

We didn’t spend much time in the house. Don Sanderson remembered the night vividly as soon as his foot passed the threshold. He recanted the cold and rainy night, the screams from his wife and daughter, the helplessness as he lay on the floor after he was bashed on the head. And he remembered the woman – she wanted to keep his son. Although he couldn’t describe her face, we were sure if we found out who she was Don would be able to recognize her.

“That’s her,” Don answered as we presented him the possible suspect Garcia, Prentiss, and Seaver were able to draw out back at the office. She was the key to unlocking this puzzle of a case, and hopefully the thing that subsided my guilt.

“Go,” my father instructed Morgan and me. He could tell there was desperation behind our eyes – the need to maintain our reputation as agents. And if the guilt I was feeling was gut-wrenching, I could only imagine how Derek was feeling.

A quick and quiet car ride and we were at the address for Mary Rutka.’

But we weren’t the only ones looking for her. Rutka’s front door was open, and the apartment had been ransacked. With our guns in hand, Morgan and I scanned the room, our eyes quickly falling to Mary’s body on the floor.

As I checked that she was alive and startling her, stumbling resounded from behind the fire escape behind us.

“Derek, go,” I spoke as he sprung to action, running for whoever had beat us to Mary’s home and wanted her to keep quiet. “I need an ambulance and backup at 751 Hindry Street, Northeast, Apartment 402.”

I stayed behind and kept the woman company as her panic-filled eyes looked up at me. I put pressure on her wound, trying to stop the bleeding that was coming from her throat.

But it was too much. Her eyes had begun to flutter closed. And no matter how much insisting I did to get her to keep her eyes open, she succumbed to the wound, dying before the paramedics had a chance to do anything.

Soon thereafter, the apartment was swarmed with police and forensic staff, doing everything they could to preserve the scene and any evidence Mary had on her person. I quickly shook away the nerves that coursed through my veins after holding the woman’s hand and throat as she died. There were certain things that I had yet grown used to – one thing was looking at a dead body, it was a completely different thing to be with a person as they passed away.

In the floodgate of people coming in and out of the apartment, Detective Bill Codwin joined my side. Noticing my bloodied hands, he handed me a white handkerchief to use whilst he painted the picture of what had gone down in apartment 402.

As I spoke with the detective, Derek walked back in, and I was sure that he noted the anxious chills in my hands – his eyes fell directly on the over-wiped digits. Thankfully, he didn’t mention anything while we were still inside the place and we were able to go through it, finding an integral piece of the puzzle. A dusty videotape hidden on top of the kitchen cabinets. There was no doubt that was the reason Mary Rutka was killed, what she was using to blackmail whoever it was she had done that horrible crime with over twenty years back.

“Hey, Rossi, you okay?” Derek broke the silence in the van as we rode back to the office.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re still rubbing your hands, (Y/N),” Morgan pointed out. “There’s only so much hand sanitizer in that little bottle. Talk to me, kid.”

“I know what she did,” I started. “But she was still a person, you know? And I watched her eyes full of panic as she succumbed to her injuries.”

“You know there was nothing else you could do, right? The guy came to get a job done, and he did.”

“It’s just such a devastating feeling of uselessness,” I sighed. “I’m so used to dead bodies that when I witness someone actively dying in front of me, I just get this weird feeling that I can’t shake off.”

“I can’t tell you that you will get used to it, but you learn to manage it. But you’ll get through it, baby girl. You’ve got us.”

“What about you, Der?”

“What about me?”

“Don’t play coy,” I chuckled slightly. “We’re gonna catch this guy. You made the right decision, Morgan. And now we’re gonna catch the guy that’s been able to elude the law all these years and took so much time from an innocent man. You’re doing that.”

“This day sure didn’t start with me believing that,” he sighed. “I just want to get this over with. This guy can’t continue getting away with this bull.”

“We’ll get him, Derek.” I gave his free hand a comforting squeeze, providing as genuine a smile as I could. “We’ll get him.”

Before we knew it, we were in Penelope’s office dishing out a VCR player to see what was on there that cost a woman her life.

The first image that appeared was Carrie, Abbie, and little Tom Sanderson in bed during Mother’s Day, a breakfast tray across the mom’s lap. It was a beautiful home video that was suddenly cut off by an over-taped recording of the night of the crime. As the image distorted, Penny turned covering her ears and closing her eyes. If there was anyone that deserved to keep her sanity, it was her.

But the video didn’t narrow our search down. The man was wearing a cap and a hoodie, his face completely hidden from the camera. Only the people there would know who it was. All we could do was continue to theorize as a group to restrict the massive list we had.

“Start with men who grew up in the district, came from nothing,” Emily suggested to Penelope.

“His ambition will define him,” Spencer added.

“Whoever did this enjoys taking power away,” Derek pointed out. “He’s been way too smart to keep on killing. So what would satisfy a guy like this?”

“Well, he’s manipulative but trustworthy,” I commented. “Two other people witnessed that murder and they never turned on him.”

“Guys, so we have to think of this city as the unsub’s comfort zone. He didn’t leave for a reason.”

“A target-rich environment,” my father stated. “ The damage he’s done and continues to do is right here in D.C.

“Politics?”

“I think it’s more intimate than that, (Y/N),” Morgan retorted. “He needs victims who suffer directly from what he’s doing.”

“Ok, I’ll cross the politicians off my list,” Penny commented.

“Look into asset-based lenders,” Emily listed. “Uh, big money-making ventures where people would be left in his wake.”

“Corporate takeovers.”

“Businessman as psychopath?” Seaver questioned.

“They have the same characteristics,” Emily explained to the younger agent. “They just use their skills differently.”

“They both have narcissistic traits such as a grandiose sense of self-importance, deceptiveness, lack of remorse.”

“Hard-core businessmen,” Penny spoke. “36 and counting.”

“That’s way too many,” Derek complained.

“We can each take six and look for connections.”

“No, no. Wait a minute.” I could tell Morgan was putting his brain to work on overtime. The more time we spent in the office, the farther our unsub would slip away. “If we had this case 25 years ago, what would we have seen? How would we fight the physical evidence.”

“We’d look at what the unsub did the moment he arrived at the house,” Ashley perked.

“They broke into the basement.”

Spencer quickly added, “Through a window with rusted-out bars.”

“Garcia, who lived at the house before the Sandersons?” I questioned, instantly knowing the others would follow in my line of thought.

Penny then cross-referenced the few owners to the 36-person long list, hitting a dead-end. Until she looked at the longer list. And bingo. The family of James Stanworth had lived in the house just before the Sandersons before they lost it and had to move to the outskirts of town. The story made sense. In the video, he sounded jealous. He knew the house inside and out, and he knew the family that had moved in. The icing on the cake, a native Washingtonian running for congress.

Now, all we had to do was convince Erin Strauss to allow the arrest of a possible future congressman for Washington D.C.

We were talking about taking into custody someone that was part of the government body to someone that worked closely with people from the government. And I hoped that after we made the compelling case, we’d get the approval.

We didn’t.

But that wasn’t at all surprising.

What struck me odd was the energy exchanged between my father and Strauss. As he and Derek presented their case, my dad pushed the boundaries. Granted, he’d always been this way, but her physical reactions were different. There was a glint in their eyes that had not been there before. Maybe I was reading too much into this because it was my father, but if nothing had happened, something probably would.

“So, there’s nothing we can do?” Penny asked. “This guy’s gonna get away with it?”

“Absolutely not!” I exclaimed, my gaze falling onto Derek’s pacing form. One thing I was sure of was that Morgan would rather lose his job than let someone like Stanworth continue to walk free.

“Garcia, find me James Stanworth right now,” he commanded. “Another hour passes, he’s that much closer to hiding his true self.”

“Mary Rutka is his third murder,” I added. “He’s now officially a serial killer. What do you wanna do?”

“I wanna expose that son of a bitch,” Morgan gritted. “If he did kill Mary Rutka, he’s gonna have cuts on him somewhere. We match that DNA, we’ve got him.”

“Guys, he’s having a fund-raiser at his house in McLean,” Penelope interjected.

“When?”

“It started an hour ago.”

Derek quickly turned and headed to the van knowing that at the very least I would follow him.

“What is we’re wrong?” Emily stopped me.

I could see doubt clouding everyone’s faces. We had motive, we had a fitting profile, and we had enough circumstantial evidence that this was our unsub. “We can’t be.”

After hearing my dad ask Emily to accompany us, I took off on a small run to catch up to Derek who was almost at the elevators. As I reached him, he gave me an appreciative smile. Derek knew that we were both putting our jobs on the line by going after this man, but we needed to take him down.

The four of us piled into a van and sped off to Stanworth’s mansion. We called Detective Codwin to meet us at the house to crash the party and have our killer arrested.

We entered right as Stanworth was finishing his speech, the room full of influential and wealthy people erupting in applause.

“Ladies and gentlemen, congressman, Mr. James Stanworth,” Derek led us through the crowd, calling the attention of the room by slow clapping and using his booming voice. “You sure have a way with words. It’s mighty impressive.”

“Thank you. May I help you?”

“My name’s Derek Morgan. I’m with the FBI.” He walked closer to the man, continuing to close the gap between them. “Do your friends here know that you’re a closet psychopath?”

“Excuse me?” James questioned offended as murmurs resounded through the room.

“Don Sanderson knows,” he jabbed. “Do you remember him? I’m sure you do. You murdered his entire family and got him put away for twenty-five years.”

“Well, agent, if you’ve got anything on me…” James walked forward, holding his hands out to be cuffed.

The man was cocky, indicative of his personality. James knew there was little to no evidence against him. He was an important man and nailing him almost seemed like an impossible task.

“No,” Derek didn’t back down. “James, it’s not on you. It’s inside you.”

“Killing Mary Rutka really got you going, didn’t it?” I spoke up.

“I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.”

“Jim, what’s going on?” Mrs. Stanworth asked her husband, just as confused as the rest of the partygoers. But was shut down by her husband. “But I don’t understand…”

“Don’t worry,” he exasperated.

“He’s good at that. Anger,” Derek kept poking. “He’s dismissive by nature. Can’t show affection, though, can he?”

“You walk on eggshells, you and the children,” my father chimed in.

“Jim…” the woman continued meekly.

“Shut up!” James’s mask was breaking, all in front of his constituents. That perfectly crafted façade was shattering quickly.

“Here it comes,” Morgan taunted.

I joined in his game saying, “Where was your husband today at 3 o’clock?”

“These are ridiculous fabrications.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I continued. “We know where he was. I held the hand of the woman he murdered.”

“James, whoever did kill Mary left some DNA behind, under her fingernails.” Another crack to the mask. “What’s that?”

Derek held James’s right hand up, revealing red slashes on the top of his hand. “Well,” James answered. “That would be a cut. I cut myself on broken glass.”

“No. Mary Rutka did that to you trying to defend herself,” Morgan corrected. “You knew Don Sanderson was out after twenty-five years. He got to Tom Wittman, and you were afraid that if he got to Mary, he might find you and bring you down for what you did to his family all those years ago.”

“You’re delusional, agent,” he stammered.

But Derek continued. “You panicked and you killed Mary.”

“I don’t panic,” he stated.

“You did panic. You’re a killer. It’s what you do. You destroy people’s lives.”

“I destroyed no one.”

The back and forth went on for a couple of more seconds with Derek stating the facts of the case and pressing the open wound of panic in James’s head with the man continuingly denying it. Until an outburst made it evident that he’d been caught.

“They’ve got nothing,” he presented as a last resort of salvation.

“We found the tape,” I mentioned.

That sentence had the man’s face completely fall. Codwin took him under arrest, and we were back to the office, to finally give a tortured man his first day of peace.

I didn’t stay long at the office afterward deciding to finally head home and wash away the pains of the day – probably drink them down too. It had been a stressful day and at the very end, I was sure we would have had a killer walking free due to governmental bureaucracy. It was a part of this job that made me feel completely useless.

The house was empty when I got there. No sign of the Hotchner boys in sight. I could tell Hotch had cleaned up, the smell of sweet lavender danced into my nostrils as soon as I walked through the doors. In the kitchen, a glass container rested on the island with a note that read,

Hope you don’t mind I took the liberty of cleaning up a bit. Also made you some dinner since I’m sure you’ll forget to eat. Heat it up at 350 for around twenty minutes and enjoy. Let me know how the case went. And, again, thank you for everything you’ve done for me and Jack.

-Aaron

I was sure that Hotch only cared for me as nothing more than a friend, but it was moments such as these that my heart could not determine where the line between care and love was. And I wondered if Hotchner had those doubts too.

Next ->

Tag list: @wanniiieeee @obsssedwithjustaboutanything @ssamorganhotchner @catgirlpwr @sapnapsbandana @sunsetcurvej @Valejewel @bluetreecloud20 @sirenheadenby @cevans-winchester @DyslexicCatterpillar @zheezs14 @winter-soldier-101 @infinitedrawing

51 notes · View notes