Work Text:
Everyone has gone inside.
Maybe he was supposed to follow. He probably wasn’t.
There is no one here of any importance to Haley that cares that he too is here. Well, they care. Only enough to know that this is all his fault and he shouldn’t be here.
And he shouldn’t. Not just here, at the funeral, but here, as in alive. Because the other guests are absolutely right, always have been – the only thing that Haley got from marrying him was a downgrade. Now, it’s cost her life.
He’s never been worth that.
The air smells faintly of lilies and exhaust. Haley always liked babies breath. He knows they don’t smell very good but where are they? She loved them, they should be everywhere. Yet, they merely fill the gaps in the large fancy bouquets from her family. Roses and lilies. Sprinkled in so sparsely their presence is equivalent to his – they are here only because she would have wanted them.
The lilies shift in the wind, brushing against his leg. The stems leave faint smudges of pollen against his trousers. He watches it absently.
A part of him wants to brush it away. Be done with life, with the cycle of creation and death. Yet, that smudgy yellow only makes him think of Haley. Of the big fat bumble bee she spent an afternoon with, walking him around on the tip of her finger and nursing it back to health.
He remembers her laugh then, light and astonished, as if she couldn’t believe something that small could trust her. She’d made him look, held her hand out so close to his face that he could see the trembling wings, the powdery blur of yellow.
She is always drawn to fragile things.
Was.
She was drawn to them.
He certainly wasn’t the first wrecked, frazzled thing she’d nursed into trusting her calm, kind hands but it’s his fault that the world has one less gentle thing. It should be a crime. But his worthless life isn’t even a proper thing to pay in retribution. He could live another forty years and never pay back an ounce of what he owes.
The wind moves again, tugging at his sleeve. A petal skims across the ground and catches against his shoe. He doesn't move to shake it off.
Haley would love the sunset. She’d find the whole thing beautiful – the sunlight soft, the air full of movement.
He can’t see it.
Everything is too overexposed, too bright around the edges. Like one big show to distract from the fact that it’s all rotting.
Someone laughs faintly from inside. It makes his stomach turn.
People keep living. Not the one that matters, but all the others. Flowers keep opening. Big fat bumble bees buzzing from bloom to bloom.
It doesn't seem right.
It isn’t.
Maybe, Hotch thinks, there is an alternative Earth. He can faintly recall the scientific way that Reid went about that possibility. Pure theoretics and math. But maybe there is. A split version of this reality. Hotch hopes there is. And, maybe, in that other world Haley is watching the sunset. She has this feeling in her chest that he does but it’s smaller. And, maybe, she leaves flowers on his grave every few months, and thinks about him sometimes, but she lives.
He thinks that they would both like this world better. The one where she’s the one who survives him. Where the house still smells like her soaps and perfume and Jack’s laughter fills the halls, and her parents don’t have to hate anyone.
Where the worst thing she has to do is set a vase of flowers on a headstone once a year.
He could rest easy there. And she would know that.
A door opens somewhere behind him, the sound dull and far away. He doesn’t turn. It’s probably over now – the eulogies, the condolences, the speeches, and the prayers. The end of it.
The air shifts again, cooler this time.
“You’re going to get an ear infection with this breeze,” a deep, familiar voice supplies.
A waft of perfume accompanies the sound and a blur steps into Hotch’s peripheral. It’s an unmistakable scent, the perfume. Takes him to college, sharing an apartment with two sisters, and a specific expensive perfume that they could never agree on which sister was originally gifted.
Something settles over his shoulders and Hotch finally pulls his eyes from the lilies. Jessica’s face is obscured by tears, those falling and the ones aiming to take flight. “I don’t need it,” he mutters, stiff and cold fingers touching the edges of her jacket on his shoulders.
The smell is too familiar – sharp and sweet, a ghost of another life. It sticks to him. Makes the years fold in on themselves until he’s twenty again, in that narrow kitchen, standing between two sisters fighting over nothing. Back when mortality hadn’t yet applied to them.
“Just take it,” Jessica mutters, voice low but unwavering.
He should shrug it off. He should remind her that he’s taking more than enough from her. Anyone can give him a coat. Warmth will come. The sun will rise again and bring the air back to a reasonable degree. But who will make her another sister?
“She hated funerals,” Jessica whispers, head tilting just a bit to glance at him, and returning again to the lilies. “I think she was right,” Jessica adds, looking at the moon.
“A celebration of life,” Hotch mutters, voice deadened and flat. That’s what Haley thought funerals were meant to be.
Jessica huffs, a quiet breath that could almost be a laugh, “she would’ve hated this.”
Hotch manages a small hum. He touches the soft, waxy petal of a lily, half expecting it to fall to pieces like everything else he’s touched. “No babies breath,” he whispers.
Jessica looks at him now. Actually looks.
She hasn’t spoken to him since her mother called her to tell her what had happened. The two of them really haven’t spoken since the divorce. Not outside of Hotch showing up at her porch like a beatdog, come to bat those sad eyes and ask to see Jack for just a moment, even if that means kneeling by his bed.
“Nobody here cares what she would have wanted,” Jessica mutters, bitter and pulled to movement by the ire in her chest.
Hotch feels his body involuntarily react. Chest clinching tight, Hotch pulls his fingers away from the lily like it’s burned him. “No,” he offers softly, eyes sheepish and ashamed as he looks at Jessica. “They care about what I took.”
Jessica’s breath catches. For a second, she looks like she might say something – might let everything she’s never said finally spill – but she just folds her arms tight across her chest. “Don’t,” her voice is soft but sharp. “You don’t get to say that,” she whispers.
Hotch dips his head, looks back to the flowers.
The silence stretches thin between them. The wind lifts the edge of her hair and the hem of his borrowed coat.
“I keep thinking,” Jessica says finally, voice tight, “that I should’ve – Why didn’t I call her? I had a number and – I didn’t call her. She always picks up for me.” Her voice catches on the last word. “It’s my job to look out for her…”
Hotch doesn't look up. “It was mine,” he murmurs.
Jessica laughs once, bitter and sharp. “Yeah. And what a great job you did.”
Hotch flinches, but doesn’t defend himself. Just stands there, pale and wavering in the dying light. “You’re right,” he whispers.
Jessica shakes her head, a tear sliding free before she can stop it. It’s roughly pushed away from her cheek. “No. No, because I didn’t either. I was so busy being mad at her – for thinking about taking you back, for still believing in–” She presses the heel of her hand to her forehead. “God, I don’t even know the last time I talked to her.”
He swallows, the motion visible down the side of his throat. “She knew you loved her,” he says finally, voice barely there. “That’s what mattered to her.”
Jessica lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Don’t. Don’t do that. You don’t get to do that. Don’t make me feel better.”
Hotch nods once, accepting. “Okay, I’m sorry,” he says.
Jessica roughly dries her eyes again. Leaving them red and fierce. “She was supposed to be safe with you.”
Hotch’s eyes close, “I know.”
Jessica stands there, shaking, her breath catching on every inhale. “No, you don’t,” she says, and the words crack. “You don’t, because if you did, you wouldn’t still be standing here like this – like you’re the one who got left behind.” She grits her teeth, “she was mine.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. There’s nothing to say.
Jessica’s hands tremble at her sides. “I hate you,” she finally says, voice breathing under the weight. “God, I hate you. I hate that she loved you. I hate that you’re still here.” Her breath audibly jerks, “that it wasn’t you.”
Hotch flinches again, but doesn’t move.
He lifts his head when she steps closer, recoiling for a blow that never comes. Just her hand raised between them but never moving.
Her voice drops, softer, rawer. “And I hate that I don’t actually mean it.” The next breath tears out of her, uneven. “I hate you’re the only who – who knows what it feels like.”
Her fist hits his chest once, weakly. Then again. Until she’s clutching at the coat instead, pulling herself into him, shaking.
Hotch just stands there. Unmoving.
“Hug me,” she grits out, angry through the tears. Her arms tighten around him.
“Sorry,” he whispers, finally moving – each arm slow, mechanical, and separate. “I’m sorry.”
Her forehead finds his shoulder. He bends, yields just enough, around her. Choking and sobbing on the perfume
The cool air struggles to move around them, while warmth remains trapped between them.
Hotch doesn’t know if he’s vulnerable enough or foolish enough to think this might be forgiveness.
“Let’s go home,” Jessica rasps.
“Okay.”