Archive of Our Own

May 2021

“Mom, I’m bored.”

She smiles as she looks up from her desk, her eyebrow raised as her eyes meet her son’s, the 9-year-olds the same dark shade as hers.

“Did you finish all your homework?” She asks, and he avoids her eye contact, looking down at the ground, “Oscar Hotchner…”

“I did most of it,” he says, an almost desperate tone to his voice that she has to clear her throat to stop from laughing at, “But Wren and Rosie are playing and Jack said we could play on his game.”

She folds her hands on her desk in front of her and smiles at him. Before she’d been a parent she always assumed she wouldn’t be a pushover when it came to her children, but all it would take is a slightly sad look in their eyes, or a slight tilt of their sweet heads, and she was putty in their hands. Aaron always made fun of her for it, his smile pressed into her hairline when they curled up in bed at night, a playful tone to his voice as he joked about how she had stared down serial killers in a past life but was unable to say no to their children.

“You know what, sweet boy,” she says, standing up and round her desk, walking over to him and wrapping her arm around him, “Mommy is bored with marking papers, so why don’t we go find everyone else.” The way his face lights up with a smile, the one he shared with Aaron, warms her from the inside out. “Dad will be home soon anyway.”

They walk towards the living room and she laughs at the sight of the twins sitting on the couch, absolutely surrounded by every single one of their stuffed animals, and she wonders how many times they must have walked up and down the stairs to bring them down from their rooms.

“What is going on in here?” She asks, smiling when both Wren and Rose look at her. They were identical in looks, to the point where only those who were close to them could tell them apart, but their personalities couldn’t be more different. Wren was quiet, more reserved in nature especially around people she didn’t know, so much like Aaron it made Emily feel fiercely protective of her. Rose was exactly like she was. Bold and adventurous and stubborn to a degree that had Emily dreading her teenage years even though they were only a few months shy of the twins 6th birthday.

“We’re playing hospital,” Rose says, her expression serious as she points at the lined up stuffed animals, “These are all our patients.”

“Wow,” Emily replies, “Busy day at the hospital.”

Jack walks in, the spare controllers for the Nintendo Switch in his hands, “Who wants to play MarioKart?”

“Me!” Wren exclaims, abandoning what she had been doing and running over to her brother who was just about her favourite person in the world. The relationship between Jack and his siblings was something that never failed to make Emily feel emotional. She remembered how worried she’d been when she was pregnant with Oscar, so concerned how Jack would react that it had made her feel sick, but he’d never been anything other than excited at being a big brother.

She knew they’d all miss him when he moved away to college in a couple of years.

She’s just about to say that she’ll play too, her arm still around Oscar’s shoulders, when the front door opens, Aaron’s smile wide as he walks into the house.

“Daddy’s home!” Rose shouts, running over to the front door, running at his legs at full speed and wrapping her arms around him.

“Hi Rosie Posie,” he replies, leaning down to hug her as he places his briefcase by the door. He smirks as he sees how Emily rolls her eyes at the nickname she’d hated since he’d first said it.

“We were about to play MarioKart,” Emily says, smiling when he walks over to press a kiss to her cheek, “If you want to join us I can always beat you again.”

“You only win because you cheat, Mom,” Jack says, and she turns to him, narrowing her eyes at her oldest.

“I do not cheat,” she replies before she turns back to her husband, “How about it, honey?”

He nods, clearing his throat, “Yeah,” he looks at his children and smiles, “Why don’t you go set up the game, Mom and I will be right behind you.”

They all nod and head towards the den, chatting over each other, their home never quiet but full of love and a type of peace that, even just a few years ago, Emily wouldn’t have thought was possible. She smiles as she turns to face Aaron, shaking her head at their children as they all rush out of the room to play the video game, Jack leading the charge, but it fades when she sees the look on her husband's face, the sadness in his eyes.

“Honey,” she says, stepping towards him, her hand on his arm in an immediate attempt to comfort him, “What’s wrong?”

He sighs as he puts his hand over hers, linking their fingers together as he squeezes, “I heard from Dave,” he says, pressing his lips together in a tight line, “Krystall died this morning.”

“Poor Dave,” She gasps, her heart clenching in her chest, aching for their friend who had done so much for them, who had saved them. Dave had been the one to protect them when everything started to fall apart, his friendship and his protectiveness over them and their children one of the reasons they were all still together now. She blows out a steady breath and locks eyes with her husband. “Do you think…” she drifts off, the mere thought of going back, of returning to the place where their family had been tormented by a now dead psychopath, enough to make her chest seize.

“I’ve already booked the time off work,” he replies, as if he has read her mind. She nods and leans in to hug him, sighing as he hugs her back, “He’d do it for us.”

“You’re right,” she says, closing her eyes as she hears the kids laugh from the next room, reminding herself that Peter Lewis hadn’t won, that she still had everything she’d left her life, the people she’d once considered her found family, behind to protect, “We should go.”

He can feel the tension in her shoulders, the knots that almost immediately begin to form there, and he rubs his hand up and down her back. The choice not to return to their old life once it was safe to do so had been a hard one, but ultimately the right decision. Their life now was the one their children deserved, the one they deserved, and he knew that the thought of going back to where they had almost lost everything, even to support one of their oldest friends, was a difficult one.

“It will be ok, sweetheart,” he assures her, stamping a kiss against her lips, “We’ll do it together, just like everything else.”

She smiles and nods, kissing him once more before she pulls away, smiling at the sound of the kids yelling for them, Rose’s voice drowning out the rest of them.

“Yeah,” she says, squeezing his hand as they walk towards the den, “Together.”
___

April 2015

It feels like an echo of a previous life. The panic, how it twists deep in her gut as she parks her car outside the hospital, greeting her like an old friend.

The last time she’d done this he’d simply been her boss, although she knew in hindsight that she’d been in love with him even then. He hadn’t been hers, her confusing feelings for him stuffed deep down under all the other secrets she carried at the time, unable to surface under the weight of her time with Ian Doyle.

The worry is sharper this time, only made worse by how Dave had sounded on the phone. Their usually cool and unaffected friend sounded strained, his concern for Aaron clear, unable to hide it from her despite his best efforts.

She bursts into the hospital entrance, her car keys tightly grasped in her first as she approaches the nurse's station.

“Excuse me,” she says, her voice strained even to her own ears. A nurse looks her up and down, “I-”

“Ma’am, are you okay? Is something wrong with your baby?”

Emily’s hand drifts to her stomach, more pronounced at this stage in her pregnancy than it had been during her last one with Oscar, because this time she has two babies in her belly. Twins they’d recently found out were both girls, constantly moving as if they were already fighting with each other.

“No, I’m fine,” she says, sounding harsher than she means to be, “My husband was brought in, Aaron Hotchner. Our friend called me and-”

“Emily.”

She turns to see Dave standing a few feet away and she abandons the nurse's station, walking over to him as quickly as she can, “Dave, what the hell happened?”

He pulls her into a hug, his embrace tight, almost desperate, and it does nothing to calm her fraying nerves.

“He got into his head,” he says, his hands still on her shoulders as he pulls back.

She frowns, her stomach churning for a different reason than she was used to, “Peter Lewis?” She asks, swallowing thickly when Dave nods, “What do you mean he got into his head?”

Dave sighs and guides her over to a nearby chair and she sits, her hand on her stomach again as she tries to calm herself down, well aware her blood pressure was already something her doctor was concerned about.

“He drugged him. Made him hallucinate all kinds of things, including some of the team dying,” he says, and she blows out a breath, “Lewis tried to then make him kill us when we came in to rescue him, but he saw through it. I think there's more but he won’t talk about it.”

She nods, placing her hand on her bump, the movement of her daughters keeping her somewhat grounded, “And Lewis?”

“He gave himself up immediately,” Dave says, clenching his jaw, anger aimed at the man who had tried to rob his friend of everything that made him who he was, “He got what he wanted.”

Emily nods, “He got inside Aaron’s head,” she wraps her fingers around her wedding rings, twisting them back and forth, “Can I see him?”

Dave nods and stands up offering her a hand to help her up too but she declines, forcing herself up herself. “He’s pretty out of it,” Dave says, walking her towards Aaron’s room, “But he kept asking about you and the boys, he wanted to make sure you were safe.”

She chuckles humourlessly and shakes her head, “That sounds about right,” she smiles tightly at him, “He’s the one who got drugged and tortured by a psychopath but he was worried about us whilst we were sat at home.”

He smiles and nods at her, “He’s in there,” he says, pointing towards the room next to them. Emily turns to go in, desperate to see her husband, but Dave stops her, his hand on her arm, “Bella, non l'ho mai visto così.”

She feels her heart seize in her chest, her lungs so stuffed full of worry she can’t draw in a breath, so all she does is nod in response, smiling tightly at her friend once more before she walks into Aaron’s room. She immediately sees what Dave means, how delicate Aaron looks, frail in a way she’d never associated with him. He’d always been huge. Tall and wide-shouldered in a way that made her feel small, even though in reality she wasn’t too much shorter than him. In recent years he’d put on a little weight, something that she loved, but hadn’t lost any of his strength. He was her safe space, her haven, and she knew he was the same for their children too.

But right now he looked small, folding in on himself as he jumps as the door opens. She immediately feels guilty, chastising herself internally for spooking him when he’d already been through so much, but she smiles at him in a way she hopes is encouraging.

“Honey, it’s just me,” she says, stepping towards him, her hands in front of her, one of them on her bump, so he can see them, “It’s Emily.”

“Sweetheart?” He asks, sounding slightly panicked as he sits up, “Where are Jack and Oscar, are they-”

“Baby,” she says, sitting on the edge of his bed as she cuts him off, squeezing one of his hands between both of hers, her touch immediately stopping him in his tracks, “The boys are fine. Jess is with them. By now they are probably both fast asleep in their beds.”

He nods, a vacant look in his eyes that was tearing her apart, “And you’re okay?”

She smiles softly at him, “I’m okay,” she says, placing his hand on her belly, watching a flicker of him pass over his face as one of the babies kicks against his hand, “All three of your girls are,” she adds, and he nods again, remaining silent as they sit there, the silence cloying, overwhelming in a way that makes her choke, “Aaron-”

“Don’t ask me what he made me see,” he says, his voice devoid of emotion, his eyes seeing right through her, as if he was seeing whatever it was all over again, “I can’t…”

She isn’t sure she’s ever hated someone as much as she hates Peter Lewis. She just wants a few minutes alone with him, to see how powerful he was without his drugs and his tools, to give him a taste of his own medicine. She breathes out slowly, well aware that Aaron didn’t need her to be angry now. There would be plenty of time for that later. Right now, he needed her love, a reminder of their lives together.

“Okay,” she says, shifting closer to him and pulling him into an embrace. He rests his head against her chest and she feels him breathe in deeply, filling his lungs with the smell of home as if it would erase everything he’d been through, “Okay. I’m right here. I love you.”

“Love you too,” he murmurs, his palms wide and strong on her back, holding her closer, her bump pressed between them as he desperately holds her in place.

“They got him,” she says, kissing the top of his head, “He won’t hurt us again.”

For a reason she can’t explain, she’s not even sure she believes herself.
___

She’s nervous in a way she can’t explain when they arrive.

They’d booked a suite at a downtown hotel despite Dave’s insistence that they could stay with him. Neither of them wanted to place that burden on him, to have their family of 6 taking up space in his home where she knew his grief should be.

She’d idly wondered if he’d mentioned to the others that they were coming, but it’s a question that is answered when they show up at the funeral and everyone looks shocked to see them. Whispers passed back and forth between JJ, Penelope, Tara and Spencer as well as people that Emily doesn’t recognise.

At first, their contact only being limited to Dave had been practical, especially when they were still in witness protection. But once everything was safe, once they could have returned, it was something that had continued. The people they had once spent every day with, people who had been in their wedding and held their children when they were newborns, no longer a part of their lives. It made Emily feel guilty, especially when she sees the shock on their faces, the second time in her life she’d been a ghost to them, but she reminds herself that it goes both ways, that there had been almost no attempts at contact from their side either.

They don’t speak to anyone else until the wake, all of their focus during the funeral is to pay their respects to Krystall and making sure the kids are entertained and they don’t cause a scene if they get bored. Her, Aaron and Jack had taken one of the smaller children each, Wren all but glued to her mother’s side as she looked around a room full of people she didn’t know. The wake is held at Dave’s house, echoes of his wife in every corner, and all Emily needs to do is close her eyes and she’s taken back to her and Aaron’s wedding. Having it here had felt right. She’d never wanted a big wedding and as soon as Aaron proposed she knew she wanted it here. In the place where they’d all come back together in the fallout of Ian and how he’d torn through their lives.

“Emily.”

She looks up, her breath catching in her chest as she sees JJ and Penelope walk over to her. There’s a moment of awkward silence as all three of them just look at each other, and then Penelope pulls her into a hug, every bit as fierce and loving as she had remembered.

“Hi Pen,” she says, holding her back just as tightly. She smiles as she pulls away and then hugs JJ too before she puts some space between them, “It’s…been a long time.”

“We weren’t expecting to see you,” JJ says, crossing her arms over her chest, “I didn’t know you guys were still in touch with Dave.”

She nods, her lips pressed together in a firm line, “It’s not very often,” she says, “But he called Aaron to tell him about Krystall, and it wouldn’t have felt right to not come.” She feels a pulling at the material of her dress and she looks down to see Wren standing close to her, a nervous look in her eyes as she looks back and forth between her mother and the women she was speaking to. Emily runs her fingers through the girl's hair and crouches down to her level, “You probably don’t remember Mommy and Daddy’s friends, huh?” She says, and she smiles as Wren shakes her head, stepping closer to her as she does so, seeking out her mother’s comfort, “That’s okay, you were very small the last time we were here.”

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” JJ asks, and it makes something in Emily’s chest pang, because if they’d stayed, if they’d never had to leave, she knows the woman she would have once called her best friend would have been one of the people who could tell the twins apart. She looks at Wren who stays silent, her hand tight around the black material of Emily’s dress.

“This is Wren,” she says, smiling at her friend as she picks her daughter up, settling her on her hip as she straightens up. Wren rests her head against her shoulder and tangles one of her hands in Emily’s hair, “Wren, these are Mommy’s friends. Jennifer-”

“Like my middle name,” Wren says, smiling as she finally finds her voice, and Emily and JJ exchange a sad smile.

“Yeah, sweet girl, like your middle name,” she replies, before tilting her towards Penelope, her eyes wide and shining, “And this is Penelope, just like Rosie’s middle name.”

Penelope clears her throat, pushing down the emotions that had climbed up it, and smiles at the little girl, “You’re very pretty, Wren Jennifer.”

Wren smiles at the compliment, “I look like Mommy!”

“Yeah,” Penelope replies, looking back at Emily, “You really do.”

Emily spots Jack and she puts Wren down, “Go with Jack, ok sweetie? Mommy will come find you in a bit.”

Wren nods and runs away, calling out Jack’s name in a way that is a little loud for a wake, but no one around seems to care. Strangers all smiling as the little girl is picked up by her brother and carried away. Emily turns back to look at JJ and Penelope and feels the awkwardness return, a mix of regret for the last few years mixing with defiance in her chest. She loved her life, and she’d done what she had to do.

“Sorry,” she says, her fingers immediately wrapping around her wedding rings, twisting them back and forth, “She’s nervous around strang…people she doesn’t know,” she says, correcting herself, the thought that someone she’d named her daughter after being a stranger to her too much to bear.

“So, where do you guys live?” JJ asks, trying to make the conversation feel a little more normal.

“New Haven,” she replies, smiling as she thinks of home, “We both teach at Yale. We both do classes in criminology and I do a few in linguistics.”

“You live in Connecticut?” Penelope asks, furrowing her brow, “You’ve been on the same coast all this time?”

“Well, not all this time,” Emily replies, “We were in witness protection in Ohio but moved up there afterwards.”

It had been something they’d gone back and forth on when they were deciding where to settle. Their home in Ohio had only ever felt temporary, the place they’d had to hide out from a man who had become so obsessed with Aaron he was stalking their son. Once they’d established they weren’t going to come back to DC they’d considered lots of places, but had settled on Connecticut, their life there different to how it had been before, and all the more precious for it.

“You never called,” Penelope says, and Emily presses her lips together before she blows out a breath.

“Neither did you,” she replies, no accusation in her voice, her smile sad, “I kind of always assumed you’d look us up.”

Penelope smiles wryly, “Dave had me under strict instructions to leave you to it. He said he’d never seen either of you so happy,” she says, looking at JJ before she looks back at Emily, “Who were we to mess with that after everything you’ve both been through.”

Emily nods, “How about we all agree to be better at staying in touch going forward?” She says, hoping it wasn’t a false promise, “You could come and visit, we have plenty of room.”

Penelope smiles, her expression widely inappropriate for where they were, “Oh my god you live in some kind of mansion don’t you?”

She presses her lips together to stop herself from smiling as she thinks of their home, how Aaron’s eyes had almost bugged out of his head when they first saw it. It hadn’t cost much more than their home in DC, but it was almost twice the size. Large and airy but comforting, everything she’d always hoped for.

“Something like that.”
___

May 2016

She’s chewed her nails almost to the quick. She knows he’ll pick up on it, that he’ll comment on the damage that she’s done, the spots of blood that always seemed fresh along her nail line, but she thinks she should get a pass.

Her husband had been arrested for something he hadn’t done after all.

It had only been a handful of days, three at most, but they’d blurred into one. Concern and fear that something would happen to him whilst he was in there, all of her previous jokes that all you had to do was look at him and you knew he was a cop haunting her as she failed to sleep. The team wouldn’t let her get involved, and neither would her direct superior on the Counterterrorism team, the job she’d returned to have she had the twins. Everyone sent her home, told her to be with her children, as if that would take her mind off of things.

Derek had been the one to call her to say they’d done it, that they’d proven Aaron’s innocence, and she doesn’t think she’d ever gotten out of the house faster. Jessica had been staying over with her since Aaron had been arrested, helping her with the kids and being emotional support. It was strange to Emily to think sometimes that one of her closest friends was the sister of her husband’s dead ex-wife, but life had always had a way of surprising her. Jessica offered to stay with the children whilst Emily went to the prison to meet Aaron, her desperation to see him clear.

She paces the sidewalk outside of the prison, what remains of her thumbnail in her teeth as seconds feel like hours as they pass by. She checks the time on her phone, her wallpaper, a photo of their family, of her and Aaron holding one of the girls each, Wren in her arms and Rose in Aaron’s, with Jack and Oscar on either side of them, making her ache. When the front door opens, the metal clang of it ringing out around her, she turns so quickly she pulls her neck, but she barely feels it. A shuddering sigh escapes her in relief as her eyes meet his. He was wearing the suit he’d worn when he last left home, rumbled and dirty now, and his beard had grown out a little. It was the first time ever that the sight of it made her feel nauseous, instead of the usual lust that would take over her. Dave is with him but hangs back, a few paces behind her husband so he can give them some time together.

They move at the same time, closing the gap between them as they meet in an embrace that winds them both, knocking the air out of each other's lungs as they hug tightly. His arms band around her back, holding her with such ferocity her feet leave the ground, her toes just about scraping the cement. She pulls back just enough to kiss him, her lips fierce against his as he kisses her back, his fists tight in her shirt. She looks at him, her hand on his cheek as she checks for injuries.

“Are you okay?” She asks, the question sounding ridiculous as she asks it, her voice croaking in a way she hates.

“I’m as okay as I can be,” he replies, pressing his forehead against hers, “How about you, and the kids?”

“Same,” she replies, “They are excited to see you.”

He nods, the thought of seeing his wife and kids, of holding them all like she was currently holding her, had been the only thing that had got him through the last few days. “I’m excited to see them too, as soon as this case-”

“No,” she says, squeezing him harder as he tries to turn away, to look at Dave over his shoulder, “Let’s just go home,” she all but begs, the thought of him going to work, of leaving her sight, too much to bear, “Please, the team can handle it without you.”

It’s a turning point in their relationship. She’d never asked him to step away from work before. She understood him, she was the same. They both valued their work and its importance, but this was different. This case, anything to do with Peter Lewis, was always trying to pull them apart, and she couldn’t take it anymore.

And from the look on his face, she doesn’t think he can either.

He crumbles, any resolve he may have had to not go straight home with her already weak as it was. He turns to look at Dave and he doesn’t even have to say anything, a sad yet knowing smile on the other man's face.

“My advice, as a man who has been divorced three times?” He says, stepping towards them and pressing his hand on Aaron’s shoulder. He smiles at Emily as he carries on, “Listen to your wife. We’ve got it, Aaron. Go home and hug your children.”

Aaron nods, not needing any further encouragement, and he looks down at his wife, “Let’s go home.”

Emily almost sags with relief against him, hugging him one more time before she pulls away, linking her hand through his, not wanting to lose the connection. She looks at Dave, her relief palpable as she speaks.

“Grazie.”

“Sempre,” he replies, winking at her before he walks away back to his car, ready to join the team to finish what they’d started.

Emily looks back at Aaron and squeezes his hand, “Come on, I’ll drive.”

He follows her gladly to their car, and it’s only when she lets go of his hand to dig the car keys out of her pocket that he sees her nails, now they’ve been torn to pieces. He grabs her hand again and looks closer, his eyebrows furrowing at the sight of them.

“Em…”

She smiles sadly at him and shrugs, “Give a girl a break, my husband was in prison for something he didn’t do and I didn’t know if something was going to happen to him.”

He hugs her again, the weight of her against him soothing his weary soul as she leans into him, “I’m so sorry sweetheart.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says, cupping his cheek, the rasp of his beard against her skin a good reminder that he was here, that she had him back, “It’s all Peter Lewis,” she says, clenching her teeth, “And he’ll eventually get what's coming to him,” she leans forward and stamps a kiss against his lips, pressing her forehead into his, “Now, lets get you home and showered. You stink.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and she kisses him once more before she pulls back. Their car journey home is silent, his hand on her thigh as she drives, and she can’t shake the sinking feeling that this isn’t over yet.
___

Emily yawns as she runs her fingers through Oscar’s hair, the boy fast asleep with his head in her lap. They were back at their hotel, and even though he’d insisted he wasn’t tired, that he wanted to sit and watch TV with her whilst Aaron gave the twins a bath and got them ready for bed, he’d fallen asleep almost immediately. She’d considered getting him into the room he was sharing with Jack whilst they were here, but she so rarely got time with her youngest son like this anymore so she was relishing in it.

She looks up as she hears a door open and smiles softly at Jack as he walks into the room. He was still wearing his suit from the funeral but he’d taken off his tie. He was taller than her now, and looked so incredibly grown up it made her ache. It was strange to think he’d been younger than Oscar when she’d first started dating Aaron. Her boyfriend's son who had also become hers, her love for him no different than for the three she’d carried herself.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” She asks, still running her fingers through Oscar’s hair as Jack joins them on the couch, his sigh heavy as he sits down.

He hums and looks around, “Where’s Dad?”

“Right now I’d say he’s trying to stop the twins from flooding the bathroom,” she replies, watching him carefully, giving him a moment before she prompts him, “It must have been strange for you to be back here.”

Krystall had been buried in the same cemetery as Haley, so they’d made sure to take some flowers to rest there, placing them alongside the ones she knew Jessica made sure were always fresh. She’d spotted Jack standing there after the service, his eyes fixed on his mother’s headstone and his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“Not any stranger than it is for you guys I guess,” he says, smiling tightly at her, “Do you miss living here?”

She sighs as she thinks about it. The answer, as with most things in her life, wasn’t simple. She missed how it used to be, how this place used to make her feel safe until that sense of peace was destroyed for her. She’d worked hard to claw it back after Ian, with no small amount of help from Jack and Aaron, the two of them slowly helping her find her place here again. She knew that without them she wouldn’t have made it, that she would left much earlier than she ended up doing, but she would have been alone, not with the family that she had built around her.

“Yes and no,” she replies eventually, always determined never to lie to him, “I miss the team, how things used to be with them, but I love our home and where we live,” she says, smiling when he does, “Do you miss living here?”

He shrugs, “Yes and no,” he replies, his smile briefly wide as she rolls her eyes at his repetition of her answer. His smile fades and he looks down at his hands, sighing as he avoids her eye contact, “I’m sorry, Mom.”

She frowns, her eyebrows creasing together as she looks at him, “What for honey?”

“I know we had to leave because of me,” he says, still looking at his hands, “You wouldn’t have lost contact with everyone if you didn’t have to keep me safe from that Scratch guy.”

She swears she can hear her heart crack, the sound reverberating around her head, and not for the first time, and certainly not the last, she internally curses a man who was long since dead. She gently shifts from underneath Oscar, placing a pillow under his head, and she moves closer to Jack, she cups his chin and makes him look at her.

“Jack, nothing about what happened is your fault,” she says, smiling encouragingly at him as she wipes a tear she knows he’ll deny existed later from his cheek, “You have nothing to apologise for. The only person to blame is long gone, and he can’t hurt any of us anymore. Your Dad and I…we did what we had to do. And I’d do it all again to know you grew up safe and away from it all, okay?”

He sniffs and nods, “Okay.”

“Good,” she says, pulling him into a hug that he gladly returns, his arms fierce and tight around her. For a moment she misses when he was small, when he could fit in her lap and her embrace would envelop him, not the other way around.

“Love you, Mom.”

She smiles and kisses the side of his head, “Love you too, honey.”
___

November 2016

Emily paces back and forth in their bedroom with a cranky and sick Rose in her arms. The 15-month-old was the latest to come down with the cold that Jack had brought home from school, and she refused to be put down, crying anytime she wasn’t in the comfort of one of her parents embrace. Emily doesn’t mind, happy to stay up the whole night if her little girl needed her, well aware that the baby’s clinginess was something the was a comfort to them both right now, the weight of her daughter against her chest one of the only things keeping her grounded.

“Mama,” Rose grumbles, pressing her face into her mother’s neck, as if she’d find the relief to her sore head and blocked nose there. Emily shushes her as she kisses the side of her daughter’s head.

“Mama’s got you Rosie girl, you’re okay,” she says, still walking back and forth, hoping she could finally get the baby off to sleep, “You’re okay.” She looks up as the door opens, her eyes meeting her husband’s as he steps into the room looking every bit as weary as she feels. He walks over and kisses her cheek before he does the same with Rose, his hand on the back of the little girl's head. “Is everything…”

He smiles tightly at her as she drifts off, the words dying in her throat, the now familiar fear that had been haunting them for months back in full force. Peter Lewis was stalking Jack. Following him everywhere, his own past imprinted on the 11-year-old through his obsession with Aaron.

“I’ve double-checked all the locks and the alarm, and we have some local cops stationed outside until we know what we’re doing.”

She chuckles humourlessly and looks down, relieved that Rose was now sleeping, “Yeah,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed, keeping her daughter secure in her arms, “Because he’s never managed to sneak past cops before.”

Aaron sighs, overwhelmed by guilt as he pushes his fingers through his hair, “Em…”

“I know,” she says, clearing her throat as she shakes her head at herself, “I know, I’m sorry,” she says, unhooking one of her arms from around the baby sleeping against her and offering it out to him. He joins her on the bed, sitting so close their thighs are pressed together, and she wraps her hand around his, “I’m just scared, Aaron,” she says, her lower lip trembling with the force of everything she was feeling, “He’s never going to stop.”

He wraps his arm around her, tugging her and Rose into his embrace, his arms banding around them. He wished it was always this simple, that he could protect them all by just holding them, his embrace as safe a place as Emily had always said it was. He knows he can’t do that though, that he’d failed again and again to protect his family from a man who seemed intent on destroying them. He heaves in a deep breath as he prepares to say what's been on his mind all day, something he knows won’t go down well.

“I think you and the kids should go away for a while,” he says, and he feels her tense in his arms, her body immediately tight as she pulls back to look at him, her irritation at his suggestion immediately clear, “It’s the only way I can keep you safe.”

“No.”

He sighs at her tone, the complete lack of room for argument, and he feels his heart sink in his chest, “Em-”

“No,” she repeats, harsher this time, anger for the situation and everything they’d been put through since Peter Lewis first set his sights on Aaron finally breaking free, “We’re not going anywhere without you. I refuse. I’m not leaving you here as bait for a man that wants you dead,” a tear falls past her lashline and he wipes it away, his calloused thumb soft against her cheek, “I’m not doing it, Aaron.”

“He made me watch you die,” he says, his tone just as harsh as hers. He swallows thickly, his jaw tense as she frowns at him, her eyebrows knitting together. He’d never told her everything that Peter Lewis had done to him when he’d captured him, never quite able to bring himself to explain all the terrible things he’d seen, “He…you and the kids were dead. He tried to convince me it was real and it felt it.”

Her heart aches, the thought of it enough to stop her from breathing, and she holds Rose even tighter, taking a moment to kiss her cheek, “Honey, thats all the more reason for me not to leave you here. If he did that last time, god knows what he’d do this time and I…”

She doesn’t know how to explain it to him, how to put into words how this whole situation had shaken her faith in the system she’d always been a part of. The system she’d died for. How watching him get arrested and put in prison for something he hadn’t done, how he’d been treated by people he’d protected again and again, had made her start to question what the hell they’d both risked their lives for over the years.

She knew he was right on some level, that they couldn’t carry on as they had been, especially now the target had switched to their children, but she wasn’t going anywhere without him. She knew if she did, if Aaron was left alone, that she’d likely never see him again. That the man who had been taunting them for well over a year would likely get his wish and kill him. She didn’t want to raise their kids alone, didn’t want to have to remind her 4-year-old son and baby daughters how much their dad loved them, fill their lives with memories of a man they didn’t remember because he wasn’t there to do it himself. She didn’t want to take Jack away from his father for the second time in his life, to force him to once again live away from him.

She didn’t want to live without the love of her life.

“Either we all go, or none of us do,” she says, breaking the tense silence they had fallen into. She watches as he frowns, his eyebrows knitting together as her words wash over him. She places her hand on his cheek, “I am so done with what that rat faced fucker is doing to us, what he is doing to our children’s lives. Honey, they deserve to have us both, safe and with them.”

He nods, leaning forward to press his forehead into hers, his eyes screwed shut as he heaves in a deep breath, “It will mean walking away from everything. Our friends. Our careers. Our home.”

She nods, pressing her lips together to stop the shake of them, “I know, but we’ll be together. The kids will be safe,” she pulls back to look at him, her chin trembling as she tries to stop herself from crying, “And my home is wherever you are.”

He smiles softly at her, reaching out to tuck some of her hair behind her ear, “My home is wherever you are too.”

“This job has taken so much from both of us,” she says, shrugging slightly, looking down at the baby in her arms, smiling at the innocence her daughter had. The way her cheek was squished against her chest, her face relaxed as she slept, wholly unaware of the danger around them. She looks back at Aaron, “I won’t let it take you.”

He nods, leaning forward to kiss her forehead, lingering longer than normal, breathing her in before he pulls back.

“Okay.”

She feels like she’s been hit by a wave of relief, sure it would have knocked her over if she’d been standing, “Okay?”

He nods again and hugs her, “We’ll all go,” he says, the feeling of her sagging into his side the only evidence he needed that he’d made the right call.

“I love you,” she says, turning her head to kiss his throat, her lips soft against his skin.

“I love you too.”

For the first time in a long time, it felt like that would be enough to get them through.
___

“Ok, boys,” Aaron says as they walk through the front door, “Straight to bed.”

Jack and Oscar's exhaustion from the long car journey home is clear when neither of them argues with him, both nodding as they exchange goodnights with their parents before they head upstairs. He adjusts his hold on Wren, the 5-year-old fast asleep in his arms and turns to look at Emily, who had Rose in hers, her face pressed into her mother’s neck.

“We’ll take them up and then meet in our room?” He says and Emily nods, leaning in to press a kiss to Wren’s head.

“Night sweet girl,” she whispers, not wanting to wake either of the sleeping girls up, “Mommy loves you.”

They walk up the stairs and head into each of the girl's rooms, careful not to make too much noise as they go. Emily pulls back the covers on Rose’s bed and lays her down, grateful that she’d insisted the girls travel back home in their pjyamas, well aware that this would be what they’d end up doing. She tucks Rose in and makes sure her favourite stuffed animal is in reach and she leans down to press a kiss to her forehead. Rose stirs slightly, pulling the covers in tighter around herself.

“Love you, Mama,” she murmurs, not even fully awake, but aware of her mother’s presence.

“Love you too, Ro-Ro,” she says, using the nickname that Rose only let her use, “Go back to sleep, sweetie.”

She smiles as she hears her daughter’s breathing even out, and she kisses her forehead again before she stands up and heads to the master bedroom down the hall. She sighs as she sits on the edge of the bed and takes off her shoes, groaning in delight as she slips the heels off and lets them drop to the floor.

“It’s always concerning when you make that noise at anything other than me.”

She chuckles as she looks up at her husband, “Oh honey, you know you’re the only reason I ever mean it,” she says, winking at him. She raises her arm to offer him her hand, and he walks over, linking their fingers before he joins her on the bed. She rests her head on his shoulder and yawns, “I’m so tired.”

He chuckles as he kisses her forehead, “And you’re not the one who drove for almost 7 hours today.”

“I’m a passenger princess and you know it,” she says, wrapping both of her arms around his, hugging it to her chest, “And don’t act like you don’t love it.”

He can’t deny it so he simply kisses her forehead again and breathes her in, the smell of her shampoo as comforting as it always had been. He doesn’t miss the desperation in the way she’s hugging his arm to her chest, the way she’s pressing her face into his shoulder, as if at any second he’d be torn away from her. He know that going back had been hard on her, on all of them. That seeing their friends again, all of them making promises as they left that he hopes they all keep, had been draining. Emotionally taxing in an already charged situation.

“You ok, sweetheart?”

She hums, squeezing his arm a little tighter, “I just keep thinking about Dave,” she says, tilting her head to look up at him, “He loved her so much and now she’s gone. What do you do with all that love when you lose someone? Where does it go?” She asks, sighing sadly as their eyes meet, “I’m not expecting you to answer that by the way I just…I just keep thinking about how I’d feel if I lost you, and it’s unbearable.”

He pulls his arm out of hers so he can wrap it around her, holding her close and fiercely, surrounding her with his love to remind her she still had it.

“I’m not going anywhere, Em,” he says, cupping her cheek and making her look at him, “I’m right here - you haven’t lost me.”

“I know, but I almost have so many times and being back there was a reminder of that,” she says, her eyes searching his, “I’m so glad we’re home.”

He knows there is very little he can say to comfort her, that it will take days for her to feel like she’s on an even footing again, so he simply nods. He stamps a kiss on her forehead and then on her lips.

“Me too, sweetheart,” he says, kissing her again, “Me too.”
___
October 2017

She’s only just got both the twins down for their nap when the doorbell rings. She curses under her breath and hopes Aaron can make it to the front door before the doorbell rings again, the chances of getting both Wren and Rose back to sleep if they wake up slim to none.

She hears the front door open and sighs in relief, looking back at her daughters once more before she leaves the nursery. She hears the door close again as she walks down the stairs, baby monitor in hand, and she’s already talking by the time she makes it to the foyer.

“Who was that, honey? Was it the neighbour…” she drifts off as she looks up, her words dying in her throat as her eyes land on someone standing next to her husband who she hadn’t realised knew where they lived, “Dave?”

He smiles at her, “Hi Bella.”

She walks over and hugs him tightly, her eyebrows creasing at the sight of his black eye and the healing cuts on his face, “You look like shit.”

He chuckles and shakes his head, “Nice to see you too.”

Any further conversation is cut off as Jack walks in, Oscar just a few paces behind him as always, and he freezes, “Uncle Dave?”

“Jack,” the older man says, looking past him, “And Oscar, you’re both getting so big.”

Emily looks at her husband, their eyes meeting in a silent conversation and she nods towards the boys.

There was only one reason Dave would be here, that he would risk the protection they’d been forced into almost a year ago.

“Jack,” Aaron says, making eye contact with his oldest, “You can catch up with Uncle Dave later, for now you and Oscar can go play.”

The way he says it leaves no room for argument and Jack knows it, grabbing his younger brother’s hand before he leads him away and further into the house, “Come on Ozzie, the grown-ups need to speak to each other.”

As soon as they are alone Aaron suggests they go to the living room, and Emily watches as Dave looks at the pictures hung on almost every surface of their house, a soft smile on his face as he takes it all in. They all sit down in the living room, Aaron’s hand tight around his wife’s, both of them desperately needing the comfort, familiar panic climbing up both of their throats.

“What’s going on?” Emily asks, “If you’re here that means…”

“Peter Lewis is dead,” he says, finishing the thought she hadn’t dared to verbalise, worried it was almost too good to be true.

The relief is palpable, overwhelming in a way that forces her breath to catch in her chest. It was over. The man who had tried to break them apart was gone.

“You’re sure?” Aaron asks, running his thumb back and forth over his wife’s pulse point, and Dave nods.

“Saw the bastard die myself.”

Emily can tell there is more to the story, a look in her friend’s eyes that he couldn’t hide from them, “What happened?”

They listen as he explains it all to them. How a new member of the team, Stephen, had died in the pursuit of Peter Lewis. How Dave himself had been captured, tortured with the same methods that had been used on Aaron years ago in an attempt to find out where they were. How Spencer and the rest of them had rescued him, and the final showdown that had led to the death of Lewis.

Neither she nor Aaron know what to say, the story heavy as it sits in the air around them, creating a tension that rarely existed in their lives these days. There’s a cry from upstairs, one of the twins awake before she should be, and Emily immediately moves to go see her, but Aaron stops her, his hand on her thigh.

“I’ll go,” he says, the tight smile on his face enough to let her know that he needed a moment, needed a few minutes with one of their children to remind himself that everything was okay. She nods and he stands up, walking over to Dave, who also stands, and pulling the other man into a hug, “Thank you, Dave. I…thank you.”

It didn’t seem like enough, and Aaron wasn’t sure anything ever would, but Dave simply nods, a soft smile on his face.

“Anytime,” he says, his smile turning into a smirk, “Although I think I’m too old to go through it all again so you two better stay out of trouble.”

Aaron chuckles and nods, patting his friend on the back before he leaves the room, his footsteps loud on the stairs as he goes up them. Emily looks at her friend and leans back on the couch, blowing out a steady breath as she shakes her head.

“What’s wrong, Bella?” He asks, and she raises her eyebrow at him, causing him to shrug, “That’s your tell.”

She rolls her eyes and mutters under her breath, “That’s what Aaron always says too,” she flashes him a smile, “I don’t know what to do next,” she says, overwhelmed with it all, with the fact they were free, “It’s been so long since we haven’t had to look over our shoulders for him. Fuck, I was still pregnant with the girls when this all started,” she runs her hands over her face, “I don’t know what to do next,” she repeats, not looking for an answer but unable to keep the thought to herself.

“Do you want advice from an old man?”

She smiles as she sits up a little straighter, “That’s the second time you’ve called yourself old since you got here, if you’re fishing for compliments you’re looking in the wrong place,” she jokes, smiling when he shakes his head at her, “Yes, I’d like some advice.”

“Don’t come back.” He says simply. Whatever she had been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that, and she frowns, tilting her head at him in confusion. He chuckles, “Not that I don’t miss having you and your delightful personality around all the time, but the two of you seem happy. Happier than you’ve ever been.” he says, looking around the living room, gesturing at all the signs of their normal, happy life. Half-drawn pictures on paper strewn on the coffee table, photos of all of the stages of the kid's lives, brightly coloured plastic toys in amongst all of the modern furniture, “You have a life away from it all and as someone who has never quite been able to pull himself away, I think you’d be crazy to come back to it.”

She nods, her lips pressed together as she thinks about it. She’s not sure she wants to go back, the mere thought of it, of reintroducing that kind of danger to her day-to-day life, and therefore the lives of her children, almost too much to bear.

“I think you’re right.”

He smirks at her, “Things really have changed, I don’t think you’ve ever said that before.”

She shakes her head and chokes out a laugh, “Stronzo.”

He places his hand on her shoulder and squeezes, his expression serious again, “I mean it, Emily. You both deserve this. I’m not saying you should stay right here, but now he’s gone you can go wherever you want.”

It’s a type of freedom she’d missed. Her life hidden away for the last year or so as she waited for the other shoe to drop, sure every time that she heard a noise in the middle of the night that Lewis had found them.

“It’s strange,” she says, smiling softly at him, “I’ve started from scratch so many times in my life, I never thought I’d do it again.”

Aaron walks into the room, a sleepy but awake Wren on his hip, her tiny fist rubbing at her eye, “That’s a terrible pun, sweetheart.”

She looks back and forth between Dave and Aaron, feeling like she’s missing out on something as they both laugh, and she sighs when the penny drops.

“I didn’t mean that,” she says, unable to stop herself from joining in on the laughter, the sound light and free as it fills the room, “You jerks.”