No cadet can get through training at the academy without seeing the slim, stone face agent. He’s easy to recognize. Plenty of people wear suits, it’a impossible to go anywhere near Quantico without seeing someone in one. But there’s only one person that wears it like he does.
Like armor. Like a shield.
They see him once and decide they want to work for a man like that. The man who beat George Foyet to death with his bare hands… the other side of the card– Haley’s death– always stays in the back of their mind. Sure, his wife was killed and he was pushed to that extreme after months of psychological torture and nine permanent scars to remind him everyday of the man who took everything but… it still seems pretty bad ass.
Emily Prentiss’ death only inflates that image of him in their minds. They see the way he wears her death across his shoulder like Atlas– intent on keeping his world afloat even if it means drowning himself. Months go by and by way of whisper, they learn he faked her death.
He lied to people who have made carriers out of picking up on deception.
Hotch notices the steady rise in applicants to the BAU. He sees their smiling faces and doesn't’ acknowledge their waves.
He doesn’t accept a single cadet into the program. He’s tired of burying his friends and he just can’t take watching the hope burn out of a kid. Because that’s what they are. Kids.
Sometimes, Dave ribs him. They go out for coffee and the older man thinks it’s humorous to watch all those kids flock in. Sure, David Rossi is cool but what about Aaron Hotchner? The more studious cadets know about Karl Arnold or Frank Breitkopf– Hotch does his best to keep any reactions off his face. Never giving them anymore than they ask for. Sometimes less.
Because he doesn’t want to talk about the family annihilator case he worked the same week his son was born. He doesn’t want to talk about George Foyet and remember the way his dead wife felt in his arms.
Aaron Hotchner is a legend and a lesson.
A what not to do and it’s shattering to watch cadets learn that the hard way.
Never meet your heroes because they’re just as broken as you.
They see his silhouette. Dark, tall, and handsome. They know his team loves him. It’s an honor to see him work and a horror to see the consequences.
He comes in for coffee, arm pinned to his chest with a sling and two black eyes. It’s impossible to tell if they’re from lack of sleep or bruises. This is his reality.
The grape vine says he’s unraveling. No one can entirely disagree.
The studious, stone-faced agent walks through the Bureau as nothing more than a ghost. His smiles come rarely and only for his team and son.
New cadets still wave and smile while the old ones sit back and face the consequence of their job choices. Each class comes and goes and as that music plays and their graduation from cadet to agent becomes official they search the crowd for the Unit Chief, a solemn understanding that this job will kill him.
And they’ll all have to watch.
