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In the end, it was a neighbor, calling in concerned about squatters in a long-abandoned farmhouse, that cracked the case.
“That has to be Cole.” Prentiss jabbed a finger against the map. “That farmhouse is right in his comfort zone.”
Morgan nodded. “Has to be,” he said, already moving for the car.
They parked a half-mile down the road and moved quietly towards the house, single file and deeply aware Cole could easily spot them if he was looking.
“Jeremy Cole, FBI,” Hotch shouted before taking point, storming through the doorway gun first.
“Clear left,” Prentiss called behind him.
There was movement, sudden, to his right. Jeremy Cole stumbled into view, bloodied, wild-eyed. He raised his right arm. Hotch didn’t wait. One shot, center mass. He was down in a moment.
Morgan swept past him a second later, hands already on the terrified girl duct-taped to a chair in the corner.
“You’re safe,” he murmured. “You’re okay.”
Nobody said much. They waited for the crime scene techs, then left the farmhouse behind, footsteps crunching over broken glass.
By the next morning, back at their desks, Cole was already turning into a memory. Morgan leaned back in his chair, half-focused on filling out his after-action report.
“You see him reaching?” he asked Prentiss.
She didn’t even look up. “Didn’t see the weapon until after, but I was facing the other way.”
Morgan bounced a pen against the desk. “Didn’t see nothin’ else either.”
The crack came mid-afternoon. Garcia all but sprinted into the bullpen, tablet clutched in both hands like a live grenade.
“Uh, emergency,” she said, voice pitching higher than usual, enough to draw Hotch out of his office, pausing at the top of the stairs.
Morgan caught her wrist, steadying her. “What’s wrong?”
Garcia didn’t answer. Just walked over and shoved the tablet into Hotch’s hands.
The video was shaky, filmed from the edge of the property, grainy under heavy wind noise. It showed Cole stepping into view — empty-handed.
It showed Hotch firing.
It showed Cole falling.
The screen went black.
Nobody moved.
Morgan broke the silence first. “Angle’s shit. Doesn’t show the whole --”
“It’s online,” Garcia interrupted, her voice sharp. “It’s spreading.”
“How bad?” Prentiss asked, voice low.
Garcia swiped furiously at the tablet. “Three hundred thousand views and counting. Reddit’s got threads. Twitter’s got clips. Some kid tagged CNN.”
Morgan scrubbed a hand down his face. “Jesus.”
Reid stared at the darkened screen like it might flicker back to life.
“It looks…” JJ started, then stopped. She shook her head. “It looks bad.”
Very quietly, Hotch handed the tablet back to Garcia.
“Okay.”
Just that. Calm, steady, like he was discussing the weather. His phone rang before he could say anything else, and the way his posture stiffened told Morgan everything he needed to know. He caught him at the door, heading upstairs.
“You want backup?” he asked, low.
“No,” Hotch said. “Stay with the team.”
Morgan watched him go, feeling like someone had pulled the floor out from under them.
---
The press caught fire by nightfall. Garcia hunched over her keyboard, muttering to herself as she tracked hashtags and forum posts.
“‘FBI Hitman’. ‘Trigger-Happy Hotchner’. ‘FBI Death Squad’.” She shook her head, cheeks flushed. “They're stringing him up.”
Reid hovered behind her, hands twitching at his sides.
“People like a simple story,” he said. “It makes complicated fear easier to handle.”
“And they’re making him the villain,” Garcia said, voice small.
Reid looked at the screen, the frozen image of Hotch mid-shoot — shoulders squared.
He swallowed. “Maybe that’s easier too.”
The waiting made Morgan crazy.
“You believe this crap?” he asked Prentiss, voice low and rough.
She shrugged, fiddling with a cup she had no intention of drinking from.
“Does it matter if we do?”
Morgan frowned. “Yeah. It does.”
Prentiss didn't argue.
---
Hotch sat alone at the far end of the long table, flanked by Bureau counsel, while department heads murmured in clusters. When the Director entered, the room fell silent. She sat heavily, steepling her hands in front of her.
“We're under pressure,” she said plainly. “There are already Congressmen talking about inquiries, there’s the civil rights watchdog groups, and we all know what happens with public opinion when there’s video.”
Hotch nodded, feeling his neck stretch uncomfortably.
“But,” the Director continued, eyes sharp, “let me be very clear. You are one of the finest agents this Bureau has ever produced. Your record, your integrity – all of it is known. And valued.”
The room stayed tense, but something softened around the edges.
“We will do this by the book,” she said. “An internal investigation. A formal use-of-force review. Not because we doubt your value. Because we need to prove it.”
Hotch didn’t speak.
He knew exactly what they were trying to prove.
---
That night, after he’d tucked Jack to bed, he opened his laptop on the coffee table. He watched it again. Then again. And again. Frame by frame. Cole turning. His hands visible. Nothing there. The shot. The fall.
He knew what he’d seen. He knew why he’d fired. But the gap between knowing and believing felt wider than it ever had before.
Across town, Morgan stood at his kitchen counter, staring down at his service weapon laid out in pieces for cleaning. He hadn't even meant to take it apart. It was muscle memory. Ritual. A thing you did to keep yourself sharp.Tonight, it felt more like confession.
He reassembled the gun carefully, snapping each part into place. The final click echoed too loud in the quiet apartment. Morgan set the gun down, rested both hands on the counter, and took a deep breath.
---
Four Bureau officials sat behind a long table: two from Internal Affairs, one from the Office of General Counsel, and a fourth whose badge read Psychological Operations Oversight. That one watched Hotch with the slow, blinking attention of someone cataloguing every breath. A Bureau recorder sat on the desk between them, red light blinking.
Hotch didn’t ask for representation. He didn’t ask for clarification. He sat, spine straight, hands folded on the table, and waited.
“Agent Hotchner,” the man from IA began, “we’re here today to assess the use of deadly force during your engagement with suspect Jeremy Cole on October 14th.”
Hotch nodded once.
“We'll be reviewing your use-of-force record, recent stress factors, and ongoing psychological fitness for command.”
Still, Hotch said nothing. The woman from Legal clicked a remote. The screen behind them lit up with the now-familiar footage — blurry, distant, wind-blasted.
Cole stepping into view. Right hand moving upward. Impact. Collapse.
They let it play twice. When the screen went dark again, the third man — a sharp-eyed, silver-haired agent who'd been in the Bureau longer than Hotch had been alive – cleared his throat.
“Did you feel your life was in danger, Agent Hotchner?”
“Yes,” Hotch replied.
“Why?”
“Jeremy Cole had killed five women in three months,” Hotch said. “He had a hostage behind him. He was agitated, unpredictable, and devolving. There was little time.”
The woman scribbled something down. The man nodded.
“You’ve led,” said the psych oversight rep, “or participated in hundreds of high-risk takedowns. What made this moment different?”
Hotch didn’t blink. “It wasn't.”
A beat. The words settled like dust.
“Let's discuss George Foyet,” the psychologist said.
Hotch tried to keep his hands from curling into fists. It was a losing battle.
“You were attacked. Very nearly killed. Then your wife was murdered. Your son was targeted. You returned to duty weeks later.”
“That was several years ago.”
The psychologist folded his hands. “And you don’t believe trauma has a half-life?”
Hotch's mouth twitched — not quite a smile. “I believe I live with it,” he said. “I also believe I’ve done more for this Bureau in that state than most agents do with a clean slate.”
Silence. The Board scribbled. No one looked up.
Finally, the man from Legal closed his file. “Do you believe you should still lead this unit?”
Hotch looked at each of them, one by one.
“If you’re asking if I’m still capable of protecting my team and the people we’re sworn to help — yes. If you’re asking whether keeping me in charge is the right decision for the Bureau in this particular moment…”
He paused.
“That’s a question for you, not for me.”
---
They gathered in the conference room, as if magnetized, long after the building had gone quiet.
JJ was the one who spoke first.
“They’re not just circling Hotch,” she said quietly. “They’re looking at all of us. The whole unit. They think this might be… systemic.”
Rossi snorted. “Of course they do.”
He leaned back in his chair, arms folded, the picture of disdain.
“We’ve been making them look bad for years. Solving cases faster than they can write press releases. They were waiting for something like this.”
“Maybe they weren’t wrong to wait,” Prentiss said.
Rossi turned sharply.
“You think Hotch made a bad shoot?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied it.”
She held his gaze, calm. “I said it’s not outrageous to ask the question.”
Morgan stood with his hands on the back of a chair, knuckles white. “He did what he always does,” he said. 'Took the shot. Fast. Clean.”
Reid, seated beside Garcia near the window, spoke without looking up.“What if we're just used to calling it clean?”
Garcia gave a soft, helpless sound.
“It’s Hotch,” she said. “I’ve seen that man walk into fire for people. Don’t—don’t act like he’s a machine.”
“No one’s saying he is,” Prentiss said.
“But they are,” Morgan shot back. “Out there, they’re saying exactly that.”
“Public opinion isn’t the point,” Prentiss replied.
Rossi stood, the legs of his chair screeching loud against the tile.
“The hell it’s not. We’ve survived for this long because we stay unified. We don’t eat our own.”
“Maybe we need to stop thinking that’s loyalty,” Reid said, softly. “Maybe it’s just silence.”
Rossi turned on him.
“Oh, come on. You don’t even carry your gun unless someone makes you.”
Reid flinched. Morgan stepped forward. “Rossi.”
“No,” Rossi snapped. “I’ve watched this unit bleed for this country. For the people no one else gives a damn about. And now we’re what? Falling over ourselves to hand them a scalp because some grainy footage made it look bad?”
“No one’s asking for a scalp,” JJ said. “We’re asking for answers.”
“And who decides what’s an answer and what’s a betrayal?”
The room crackled. Garcia’s eyes welled up. Reid pressed a palm hard against his own forehead. Prentiss stood with her arms locked across her chest like a shield. Rossi turned to Hotch, who'd been standing quietly by the window, still in his suit, jaw clenched so tight it looked like stone.
“Well?” he demanded. “You going to let them pick you apart while the rest of us pretend this is fair?”
Hotch looked at him, finally.
“Would you rather pretend it's not real?”
He walked out before Rossi could answer.
---
Morgan didn’t go home that night. Instead, he wandered through the dim hallways like a ghost, ending up – as always – at Garcia’s door.
She was still at her desk, the only light the harsh blue glow from her monitors. Her shoes were off, her hair pinned up in a messy knot, a forgotten cup of tea cold beside her keyboard. When she saw him in the doorway, she smiled reflexively – the kind of smile she kept for the people she loved even when everything was wrong.
“Hey sugar bear,” she said. “You lost?”
Morgan didn’t answer right away. He crossed to the desk slowly and leaned his hip against it, staring at the screens without really seeing them.
“You okay?” Garcia asked, softer now.
Morgan rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, the muscle tight.
“Do you ever…” He trailed off, frowning hard, as if the words physically hurt to form. “Do you ever wonder if we stopped being the good guys a long time ago, and we're just the last ones to notice?”
Garcia's smile slipped. She set her mouse down carefully.
“You’re a good man, Derek.”
“That’s not what I asked.” His voice was low, almost rough.
Garcia swallowed. “You did what you had to do. Every time.”
Morgan laughed under his breath, humorless.
“Yeah? What about Denver?” he asked.
She blinked at him.
“Michael Connors,'” Morgan said. “Broke down a door. Saw movement. Fired. No weapon ever found.”
He stared down at his own hands, flexing and clenching like he didn’t recognize them.
“I could have sworn I saw a piece. But what if…” He shook his head. “What if all I saw was him flinching?”
Garcia rose from her chair and stepped closer, but didn't touch him. “You did your best,” she said.
Morgan looked up, finally meeting her eyes. “What if my best isn't good enough anymore?”
Garcia reached out, tentative, and laid her hand gently over his clenched fist.
---
The next morning, the mood in the bullpen was sharp and brittle. Morgan was already at his desk when Prentiss arrived, tossing her go-bag into a corner with more force than necessary. Reid came in next, looking like he hadn't slept at all.
JJ looked up from her computer. “They’re expanding the inquiry,” she said.
Morgan stiffened. “Expanding how?”
She hesitated, glancing down at her screen. “OPR's pulling case files,” she said. “All of them. Every agent-involved shooting for the past ten years.” She looked up, grim.
“We knew this was happening,” Morgan said. “They’re auditing all of us.”
JJ nodded. “They're looking at patterns. Trends. Field decisions. Psychological fitness evaluations.”
Morgan leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“They’re trying to build a case,” Reid said. “Not against Hotch. Against the unit.”
Morgan blew out a slow breath. “This isn’t about one bad shooting,” he said. “It’s about whether this unit is rotten all the way through.”
No one argued.
Hotch called them to the conference room half an hour later. He didn’t talk while they filed in, just stood in front of them, hands clenched at his sides.
“They’re going to look at everything.”
No one moved.
“They’re going to ask questions we can’t answer easily. About judgment. About fear. About force.”
He scanned their faces — Garcia, pale and tight-lipped; Prentiss, arms crossed; Morgan, fists jammed deep into his jacket pockets; JJ, face carefully blank; Reid, blinking too fast.
Hotch’s voice dropped lower. “I won’t ask you to lie for me,” he said.
Morgan straightened immediately. “You don’t have to.”
Hotch’s mouth twisted sourly, nothing like a smile. “I’m asking you not to lie for yourselves either.”
He let that sit.
“We tell them the truth,” Hotch said. “Even if it’s ugly. Even if it costs us.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to drown in.
---
The hallway outside Conference Room C felt colder than the rest of the floor. Morgan rolled his shoulders back, squared up like he was stepping into a fight.
Inside, two people waited behind a plain gray table — a man in a suit, a woman with a sharp smile, and a recorder already blinking. Morgan sat. Said his name, his rank, and waived his right to have counsel or an association rep present. They were here to carve him up, no matter what he said.
The woman opened a file with his name typed neatly across the top. “Agent Morgan,” she said. “Do you recognize that in the past ten years, you have discharged your firearm in the line of duty on more than twenty separate occasions?”
Morgan shrugged. “It’s my job to stop killers. That sometimes requires use of force.”
The man leaned in, voice smooth. “Fifteen of those incidents ended in fatalities.”
Morgan met his gaze without blinking. “And how many of those people were holding a hostage at gunpoint?”
Silence. The woman clicked her pen against her folder.
“We’re not here to argue necessity,” she said. “We’re here to identify patterns.”
Morgan laughed under his breath. “Right.”
“Tell us about Denver”' the man said.
Morgan’s stomach twisted.
“2012,” the woman prompted. “Michael Connors. No weapon recovered at the scene.”
Morgan ground his teeth. “I believed he had a weapon. I saw it.”
“And yet none was recovered,” the woman said calmly, like she was asking about weather.
Morgan's hands tightened into fists on his knees. He could feel the old adrenaline prickle under his skin, the body memory of kicking down that door, of seeing a movement and making a split-second decision.
“Have you ever wondered,” the man said lightly, “if you pulled the trigger before you had to?”
“I did what I was trained to do,” he said.
The woman didn't flinch. “All right,” she said. “Why don’t we start at the beginning. You were assigned to the Behavioral Analysis Unit in October of 1997…”
By the time Morgan stalked back into the bullpen, his jaw was so tight it hurt. He sat down hard and blew a deeply frustrated breath.
Across the room, Prentiss rose and quietly made her way toward the same conference room.
—-
They found themselves in the locker room, after the bullpen had emptied and the hallways cleared out.
Hotch sat on the bench, tie loosened, elbows braced on his knees. Morgan leaned against the lockers opposite him, arms crossed so tight across his chest it looked painful. For a long time, neither spoke. Finally, Morgan broke the silence.
“How many?” he asked, voice low.
Hotch didn’t pretend not to understand. “Nineteen,” he said. “Officially.”
Morgan nodded slowly. “Fifteen.”
He stared down at the scuffed floor, the memory of every pull of the trigger weighing heavier than the last.
Hotch rubbed his hands together, slow and methodical, like he was trying to scrape something off his skin.
“They’re going to count them like trophies,” he said. “Like proof.”
Morgan huffed out a humorless breath. “Never felt like trophies.”
“No,” Hotch agreed. “But…” He paused, grasping for words. “I’m realizing that it's never really occurred to me to even consider that we could be outliers.”
Morgan pushed off the lockers and paced a slow, tight circle.
“You think we’re guilty?” he asked without looking up.
Hotch was quiet for a long time.
“I think we got good at doing what no one else wanted to,” he said finally. “And I think sometimes... that blurred the line between doing what’s necessary and doing what's easy.”
Morgan turned then, sharp, angry.
“We didn’t do this for commendations. We did it because someone had to.”
Hotch nodded. “I know.”
Finally, Morgan stopped pacing. He stood in front of Hotch, hands on his hips, head bowed like he was bracing for a blow.
“I’m not walking away from this,” he said.
Hotch looked up, meeting his eyes.
“We’re in this together,” Morgan said. “Start to finish.”
Hotch’s throat tightened. He didn't say ‘thank you’.
---
The article dropped just after noon.
‘FBI’s ‘Serial Killer Hunters’ Under Review for Lethal Force Patterns’
“‘According to an internal audit, Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, popularly known as the Bureau’s ‘serial killer unit’, has the highest known kill count of any active federal agent in modern Bureau history’,” Garcia read off her phone screen. “‘Several sources close to the inquiry suggest leadership failures at the BAU have created a culture where deadly force is not a last resort, but a reflex’.”
They all pulled the article up, a hush falling over the bullpen.
Morgan’s phone buzzed with texts he didn't read. Prentiss read the full article in stone-faced silence. Reid looked like someone had hit him.
“Someone in the Bureau leaked this,” JJ said, finally, not taking her eyes off the screen. “This language...”
Morgan stood abruptly. “Where’s Hotch?”
---
He'd been summoned to the Deputy Director’s office without ceremony — no advance notice, no briefing. Just ‘get the fuck up here’.
Deputy Director Harding didn't mince words. He simply dropped the article on the table in front of Hotch, who sat stiffly in the chair across from him and felt an urge to point out that the drama of three printed sheets of paper fell slightly flat compared to a physical copy of The Post.
“This thing is going to get worse before it gets better.”
Hotch clasped his hands in his lap. “Is there an official response?”
Harding shook his head.
“Public Affairs is drafting language, but… we're already getting pressure.”
Hotch didn’t need to ask from whom, but Harding listed them anyway:
“Senate Oversight. Civil Rights commissions. Internal watchdogs. People with cameras and microphones who don’t give a damn about your clearance rate and how many lives we think we’ve saved.”
Hotch didn’t move. His voice stayed even.
“Do you think I shot a man who didn't need to be shot?”
“I think this Bureau needs to believe you didn’t,” Harding said. “But I also think we can’t afford to make that argument unless we’re sure you’re salvageable.”
“Salvageable,” Hotch repeated.
The Deputy Director softened — just a little.
“You are deeply valued in this bureau, Aaron, you know that, the Director herself said just that a few days ago. But this isn’t about just you anymore. It's the whole BAU. Your unit leads the Bureau in agent-involved fatalities. That’s public now. The numbers are turning into weapons.”
Hotch said nothing. Harding leaned forward, voice lower.
“The truth? If this were someone else – someone without your history, your reputation – we’d cut bait.”
“But because it’s me,” Hotch said quietly, “you have to try.”
Harding didn’t reply. He didn’t have to.
---
No one called a meeting. But they all showed up. Late evening. The conference room again. Same chairs. Same walls. Different atmosphere. This wasn't fear anymore. This was something slower, more volatile. Something like shame.
Hotch sat at the end of the table, the way he always had. But his presence wasn't an anchor now. It was a weight. Morgan leaned against the window, arms folded. Prentiss sat with her leg bouncing. Reid twisted a rubber band around his fingers. JJ, silent, stared at the tabletop. Rossi hadn't bothered to sit at all.
Garcia was the one to break the silence. “So what,” she said, “we just... confess? Hand them ammunition and wait to get blown away?”
Hotch didn't flinch.
“We tell the truth,” he said. “Because if we don't, we're giving them exactly what they want. A narrative we can’t control.”
“You think owning up to it makes it better?” Prentiss asked. “You think if we flagellate ourselves publicly, they’ll let us keep doing this job?”
“No,” Reid said quietly. “But it might mean we deserve to.”
Rossi made a noise from the back of the room. “You all think you're going to fix this with honesty and soul-searching? This isn’t therapy. This is a grinder. You either survive it or you don’t.”
Morgan turned sharply. “So what? We do nothing? Pretend this team doesn’t know what’s in our own rearview?”
“Don’t act like you’ve got clean hands,” Rossi shot back.
“I don’t,” Morgan snapped. “That's the point.”
Hotch’s voice cut through before the room could boil.
“No one in this room has clean hands.”
They all went still.
Hotch’s eyes were steady. “And maybe that’s why it has to start with us.”
Garcia sank into her chair. “So what’s your plan, fearless leader? We write up some kind of damage report? Hang our sins on the fridge like bad grades?”
“No,” Hotch said. “We examine ourselves. The right way.”
That earned him silence. Real silence.
Prentiss leaned forward. “What does that even mean?”
“We take every use-of-force incident in this unit,” Hotch said, “and we confront them. One by one.”
Reid stopped twisting the rubber band.
Morgan blinked. “You want us to relive every time we pulled the trigger?”
Hotch nodded. “We can’t ask the Bureau to trust us if we won't even interrogate ourselves.”
Rossi exhaled slowly, like someone being asked to swallow something bitter.
“And what, exactly, do you think you’ll find?” he asked.
Hotch looked at him.
“I think we’ll find the truth. And I think it’s probably going to hurt.”
No one disagreed. But no one left.
---
Garcia stayed behind after the others left. She packed up her things in slow, stiff movements, like every part of her body hurt.
Hotch stood near the whiteboard, rereading the plan they'd built.
“You think this will fix it?” she asked, quietly.
“No,” he said.
Garcia looked at him, waiting.
“But maybe,” Hotch added, “it can stop us pretending it wasn’t broken.”
---
They chose one of the unused rooms near the back of the floor. No windows. No cameras. Just a table, two chairs, and a folder labeled in Reid's thin handwriting:
‘Derek Morgan – Use of Force Incidents.’
Morgan stared at it like it might bite him.
Reid sat across from him with a legal pad and a pen that clicked nervously between his fingers.
«Reid clicked the pen once more, then set it down.
“We’re just going to talk,” he said. “No judgments. Just the truth.”
Morgan nodded slowly.
“Start wherever you want,” Reid added.
Morgan ran a hand over his scalp, stared at the ceiling for a moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than Reid had ever heard it.
“Denver,” he said. “2012. Michael Connors.”
Reid underlined the word ‘Denver’ twice.
Morgan let out a breath like he'd been holding it for years.
---
Hotch walked into the bullpen the next morning and said, plainly: “I’ll go next.”
No ceremony. No explanation. The bullpen froze.
Morgan stood slowly.
“You sure?” he asked.
Hotch nodded. “I am.”
He was already carrying a file, labeled in his handwriting: 'Aaron Hotchner – Lethal Force Incidents.'
“I've compiled summaries,” he said.
JJ closed her laptop. “Do you want me to do the interview?”
“I’d like Morgan to do it.”
Morgan looked up, startled. “Why me?”
Hotch didn’t answer, just looked at him.
Morgan nodded slowly. “Okay.”
---
They didn't talk about it right away. Garcia went back to typing, but slower. Her screen sat untouched.
JJ wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee she wouldn't drink. Prentiss leaned over towards Reid. He was staring at his files, unmoving.
“You okay?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Me either.”
---
Derek rubbed his temples. They’d been through almost a dozen cases, and his head was killing him. He was about to ask Hotch if they could take a break, when Hotch took a deep breath.
“George Foyet. November 25, 2009. Fairfax, Virginia. I arrived solo on scene and had cause to believe Foyet was in the house alone with my son, having shot my ex-wife Haley. I cleared downstairs, then moved upstairs. I saw him concealing himself behind a curtain, and.” He paused. “I emptied my gun into estimated center mass. He turned out to be wearing a vest, and we engaged hand to hand. I eventually gained the upper hand. I did, at that time, have the option to take him into custody. I didn’t. I did not stop beating him. According to the ME report he died from a severe head trauma.”
Morgan opened his mouth – but Hotch cut him off.
“No. Don’t say it was justified. I wasn’t protecting Jack. I wasn’t protecting anyone. I wanted him dead.”
His hands were shaking now.
“I've been thinking,” Hotch said, his voice slipping out of the professional, clipped tones he’d stayed in so far. “Maybe the Bureau was wrong to protect me. Maybe they should have pushed harder to have me retire then. Maybe --”
“Hotch,” Morgan said, sharp. “Stop.”
Hotch looked up, startled.
“You don’t get to rewrite your own history to punish yourself harder.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“No,” Morgan said. “You’re telling the version where you’re the monster because it’s easier than admitting you’re human and you broke.”
Hotch stared at him. Jaw tight. Breathing shallow.
“You did what you had to do. Sometimes you did more. So have I. We live with that. But you do not get to sit here and use the truth like it’s a knife.”
Hotch swallowed.
“You’re not the only one bleeding,” Morgan added, softer now. “Don’t try to bleed enough for all of us.”
The silence felt different, now. Not empty. Not cold. Just still.
Finally, Hotch looked down. Flipped the folder closed. Rested both hands on top of it like a man laying something to rest. Morgan breathed out.
“Let’s pick the rest of this up again tomorrow, okay?”
Hotch nodded.
---
Rossi waited for Hotch in his office. The others had filtered out, leaving silence in their wake. The only sound now was the low hum of ventilation and the faint echo of doors closing behind them.
He didn’t bother with small talk, didn’t wait for Hotch to sit down.
“You think you’re building something noble,” he said, low and hard. “This whole confession-circle penance you’re engineering.”
Hotch didn’t react. Rossi took a step closer.
“But what you’re really doing is putting targets on all your backs. You, Morgan, Reid... hell, even Garcia’s going to get caught in the crossfire.”
Hotch looked at him, really looked at him.
“We already had targets,” he said. “Now we’ll have the truth too.”
Rossi scoffed. “The truth isn’t a shield. It’s a noose. And you know it.”
Hotch didn’t deny it. He let Rossi’s words linger in the air like smoke that wouldn’t clear.
“You’ve always believed in the mission, Dave,” Hotch said quietly. “But this part, the part where we look at ourselves, you’ve never had much appetite for it.”
Rossi’s jaw flexed. “You think that’s cowardice?”
“No,” Hotch said. “I think it’s survival.”
That stopped Rossi for a beat. He glanced away, down the empty hall, then back.
“You keep pushing this, Aaron... Someone’s going to fall.”
Hotch nodded once. “Maybe. But if we do it right, it won’t be for the wrong reasons.”
---
JJ wasn’t used to press briefings anymore, had never been used to a spectacle like this particular one.
She stood at the podium alone, the seal of the FBI projected behind her, flanked by the Bureau’s PR handler — a man who smiled too tightly and said nothing at all.
JJ flipped open a folder with a calm she didn't feel. She gripped the edges of the podium and began.
“The Behavioral Analysis Unit has always operated under extraordinary circumstances,” she said. “We face the worst humanity has to offer, and we do it to protect the innocent.”
She let that hang for a moment, steady and direct.
“But extraordinary circumstances are not an excuse for extraordinary force. We know the responsibility we carry. And when necessary, we will hold ourselves accountable – even when others won’t.”
A low murmur went through the reporters.
“Recent internal reviews have raised questions about use-of-force incidents within the BAU. We are cooperating fully with all inquiries, but we are also conducting a review within our own unit. It is a responsibility we owe to the people we serve, and to ourselves.”
She paused, measuring the next words carefully.
“The work we do is never clean. It never will be. But we believe that facing our failures is the only way to continue serving with integrity.”
She closed the folder softly.
“I’ll take your questions now.”
Hands shot up.
“Agent Jareau! If the internal review finds misconduct, will the agents responsible face consequences?”
JJ didn't blink.
“If there are mistakes, they will be acknowledged. If there are failures, they will be addressed.”
“And if there are crimes?” another reporter shouted.
JJ's jaw tightened.
“The Bureau will act accordingly.”
“As documented by The Washington Post, your unit chief, Aaron Hotchner, has a shocking record of use of force, as has several agents under his command. Will Hotchner be resigning?”
The room buzzed louder, cameras flashing.
“SSA Hotchner is cooperating fully with the inquiry. No final decisions have been made regarding leadership.”
“Do you believe he's still fit to lead?” someone else called.
JJ swallowed. “I do.”
They all waited for her in the bullpen.
Hotch looked at JJ, voice low. “You didn’t have to say that.”
“I did,” she said. “We all did.”
Morgan bumped Hotch lightly on the shoulder as they passed.
“We’re still here,” he said. “That’s something.”
Hotch nodded once.
It wasn't absolution.
It wasn't victory.
But it was survival.
---
The Deputy Director’s office was dim, the blinds half-closed against late afternoon sun. Hotch stood by the window, hands folded behind his back. He hadn’t been invited to sit. Harding poured himself a finger of scotch from a decanter that was never on the shelf during daylight hours. He didn’t offer any to Hotch.
“You’ve got the press off our necks for now,” he said. “Congratulations.”
Hotch didn't respond. Harding sipped his drink and watched him for a long moment.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
Hotch turned slightly. “You didn’t ask me to.”
Harding smiled without humor. “No. I didn’t. But I assumed you’d know the difference between surviving the fire and throwing yourself back into it.”
Hotch’s jaw tensed. “Survival isn't the goal.”
“Spoken like a man who doesn’t understand what the Bureau actually is.”
That landed harder than it should have. Harding saw it.
“Let me ask you something, Aaron,” he said. “You think the Bureau protected you all these years because your ethics are something special? Because they believed in your moral compass?”
“I think they protected me because they needed what I could do.”
“Exactly.” He set the glass down. “And right now you're not useful, you’re a crusader.”
Hotch stepped closer, steady. “So cut me loose.”
Harding blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You want to protect the Bureau, fine. Cut me loose. Let me take the heat. Let the rest of them survive it.”
Harding sighed. He dropped heavily into his chair, and looked at Hotch with something sharper now.
“Do your cleanup,” he said. “Finish your little audit. But do not drag the Bureau through the mud trying to save your soul.”
Hotch left without waiting for permission.
---
They sat around the meeting table again, trying to figure out what to do next. Rossi showed up late. No one saw him come in until he cleared his throat.
“Writing a manifesto?” he asked drily.
Morgan rolled his eyes. “Nice of you to join us.”
“I’ve been listening longer than you think.”
Rossi stepped closer, expression unreadable.
“Look,” he said. “I still think some of this is reckless. Not because you’re wrong — but because you’re angry. And anger is a terrible architect.”
Hotch met his eyes. “We’re not angry anymore. We’re accountable.”
“Maybe,” Rossi said. “But accountable people still bleed. And I’d like to avoid watching all of you slit your throats on principle.”
Rossi sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
“You want to tell the truth? Fine. Tell it. But don’t martyr yourselves. Don’t turn this into some purity test where the only way to pass is to fall on your sword.”
Morgan looked down. Rossi kept going.
“There’s a difference between reckoning and self-destruction. And if you don’t find that line, the Bureau won’t have to dismantle you – you’ll do it for them.”
“So... what do we do?” Reid asked tentatively.
Rossi shrugged. “You do what we’ve always done. You ask better questions. You look each other in the eye. And you figure out where the line really is – not where it’s always been drawn.”
He nodded toward the whiteboard where Prentiss had scribbled a rough mission statement.
“You want something honest? Try this: ‘We didn’t always get it right. We don't know if we’re getting it right now. But we’re going to look – even when it hurts’.”
Silence. Then JJ, quietly: “That’s enough.”
“Sometimes,” Rossi said, turning to go, “it has to be.”