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Hotch was plagued with nightmares for weeks after Mr Scratch. Well, in all honesty he was plagued with nightmares most of the time anyway- heart wrenching, cold-sweat-inducing compilations of all his lifetimes greatest hits- but after Scratch it went from ‘most of the time’ to ‘all of the time’.
The things he had been forced to see, to hear, what he had almost actually done , played on torturous loops behind his eyelids every single night.
It filled him with guilt and self-loathing on the evenings when his midnight screams would wake up Jack, who would rush into his bedroom to ‘help’, worried about what it was that was scaring daddy. Of course, Hotch never told him. Or at least, not the whole truth. Just some silly bad dreams, he would say, nothing for you to worry about, buddy. Thank you for coming to my rescue but it’s okay, daddy’s okay. They would then have freshly made hot chocolates together at the kitchen bench as a distraction, until Jack’s eyes wouldn’t stay open and Hotch carried him to bed, unable to help himself stroking the boy’s hair as he settled under the covers— he really didn’t deserve this godsend of a child.
But no matter how many midnight hot chocolates he had, how many times he reminded himself that he was okay, that Scratch was put away and that all those things he had seen weren’t real, he still woke up feeling like he was going to collapse in terror every single night. Because the truth was, despite what he- and those around him- tried to convince him of, he really wasn’t sure what was and wasn’t real from that night. No one else had been there apart from he and Scratch. No one knew what happened. He had tried to explain it to Dave in the back of the paramedics van afterwards, had said the words; ‘ This is what happened’. But then all the other words that followed were garbled, mixed up, he wasn’t sure he even remembered what he had really said.
“ It- it was empty. The house. Except it wasn’t. She was there, in the study, right there and then she was telling me that he wanted me to see— except he was right there the whole time, he was in the house so why did he— And he gassed me, or- or at least I think he did but- no, no he definitely did because I felt the mist on my face and on my skin and I tried to hold my breath but he caught me by surprise. And we were sitting, or I was sitting, or someone was sitting, and he was talking and telling me things, giving me instructions. He told me that I was- that he was- that you were- he told me that you were coming. No, I told him that you were coming. And then he told me that you weren’t. But then you did, you did come and you- you were all there… except he was ready for you and- and oh god, Reid and then you Dave, and then- then Morgan right in front of me and everyone- everyone was gone because he was ready for you and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. But- but then you came back and you- he was gone, except he wasn’t and—”
It was only shortly after that that Dave had stopped him, had properly realised that this incoherent storytelling was probably doing more harm than good.
Flashes of memory attacked him at the strangest of times.
Or, maybe they weren’t memories, at least not real ones, but rather those warped and implanted by Scratch.
He would be sitting at his desk, during an early morning, nothing all too interesting happening that day, no urgent case that required their immediate attention across the other side of the country- simply filling out paperwork.
Then all of a sudden he would see, in the most vivid of images, Reid’s blood being splattered against the glass door door, a bullet hole in his forehead leaving a trail of red as his body slumped to the ground, JJ’s pained cries echoing through the insides of his mind.
The pen he was holding would start to shake in his fingers, so much so that he had written ‘Agent Heccherr’ on the line where he was supposed to fill out his name, and his ears would begin to buzz. A panic would grip at his chest as he thought for a gut-wrenchingly long moment: what if it was real? He didn’t truly know what was and what wasn’t. What if that had actually happened and he simply hadn’t realised?
So he would drop the pen from his trembling grip, stand from his chair, his limbs moving jerkily, unsteady, and walk over to his office window, peering through the slats in the blinds.
And as he looked out he would spot a mop of unruly, mousy brown hair seated in a cubicle, chewing on the end of his pencil while staring at what looked like a complicated math equation, wearing a dark blue sweater vest that was most definitely not stained in blood, his head still completely intact with the brains very much safe inside an unpunctured skull. Reid was fine. That wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.
His whole body would sag a little in relief, retreating from the window before anyone noticed he had even stood there, because the only thing worse than having such a terrifyingly muddled brain was having his teammates know he had such a terrifyingly muddled brain. He would sit back down at his desk, pick his pen back up trying hard to ignore the fact that the tremor in his fingertips hadn’t quite fully gone away, and cross out ‘Heccherr’ with a solid few lines, writing ‘Hotchner’ next to it.
Or there was the time that child was abducted in Syracuse, where they had to get onto the jet asap and be briefed on the way over. Everyone was there, waiting for Morgan who had been the last one to arrive. Hotch was sitting with his back to the jet’s boarding door, his eyes scanning rapidly over the briefing document, trying to know as much as possible as fast as possible- there was no time to waste in a child abduction case. Then there was the sound of footsteps approaching, and the door to the jet closing.
“Sorry, I had to make sure I had everything,” came Morgan’s voice, “We good to go, Hotch?”
Before he could turn around in his chair to call out an affirmation, he heard a loud thud— and without warning he wasn’t in the jet anymore but sitting, paralysed on the floor in the dark at the Scratch house- he was seeing Morgan come running in to get him, asking him where Scratch had gone but before anything coherent could come out of his mouth there was the loud sound of a gun firing and a red patch appeared right in the middle of Morgan’s shirt as he collapsed to the ground, Scratch standing just behind him with the weapon in hand, grinning maniacally.
“Morgan!” he yelled out, tears welling in his eyes as he just couldn’t get himself to move, why the hell couldn’t he save his team, that was his job and he failed them, they had all died and he hadn’t been able to save them, it was all his fault—
“—woah, I’m sorry that I'm a few minutes late man, but I’m here now,” said Morgan, very much not gasping and very much not bleeding and instead staring at him with a mix of shock and indignance, and a little bit of concern, standing at the other end of the jet.
And it was then, as he turned in his chair, that Hotch noticed the heavy go-bag dumped on the floor of the jet and he realised that the noise hadn’t been a gunshot, it wasn’t the sound of Morgan’s dying body hitting the ground, it was just a go-bag.
So he took a deep breath in, blinking a little faster than usual to clear the aggressive memory from his mind, forcing himself to be grounded in the current moment.
“No, you’re right,” he said, hoping the breathlessness didn’t come through in his voice, “I shouldn’t have—that was unnecessary. Sorry. Time-sensitive case, I just want to find the girl.”
And it seemed that that was the answer being sought for, that it made sense, that to the rest of the jet it looked like their boss had simply had a bit of an unreasonable reaction to Morgan being late. Better they thought he was just a bit too harsh, that he was mean and strict, than know what it really is. They can’t know what it really is.
Then there was the week that Dave decided he wanted to wear turtlenecks. Someone had apparently told him that they compliment his neck, whatever the hell that means, and so they were the only thing he wore for a while.
It was a late night in Jersey, they had almost packed it in for the night but Garcia had found them a lead and they decided to check it out sooner rather than later. The place they were supposed to be looking at had its entrance down an alleyway, and Hotch had to pull out his torch to be able to see.
Dave knocked his fist on the door. “Mr Oliver? This is Agent Rossi with the FBI; do you have a chance to talk about your son?”
They waited in tense silence for a few moments, before the door was flung open and Mr Oliver came sprinting out, running into Dave as he fled and knocking him over. Dave stumbled at the force of the impact, landing on the ground as Hotch moved his flashlight in the direction that Oliver had ran. He couldn’t see any sign of him, and looked down quickly at Dave to make sure he was alright— through the limited beam of his flashlight all he could see was a burgundy colour around his friend's neck and-
Dave was bleeding, he had been shot, Scratch had shot him in that kitchen, right through the side of the neck and he had stumbled and fell and his voice was raspy with death when he told Morgan to ‘ Go’ and it was all Hotch’s fault because he should have been there to save him, should have been there to save all of them but instead he was just there unable to fucking move, watching his friends die because as it turns out he can’t handle himself, and all he does is put other people in danger—
"—otch! Hotch! Aaron!”
The yell- not raspy and not dying, not the sound of a man who had been shot through the neck- cut through his thoughts like a knife. He blinked hard, looking down and realising he was on his knees, he didn’t remember falling to his knees, and he was just beside Dave, who was very much not shot and now that he could see properly the colour of the turtleneck barely even looked like blood it was too purple and—
Dave was staring at him with wide eyes.
“...What?” he asked sharply, and he noticed his chest was heaving, “What, what is it?” And then he felt the flashlight in his hand that he was gripping for dear life and noticed the hard gravel of the ground and god fucking damnit he had done it again, he had let the guy go. “...Shit. Oliver,” he breathed.
“Don’t worry about Oliver,” said Dave, his eyes searching Hotch’s face. “What just happened?”
He squeezed his eyes shut tightly for a second, then blinked them open. “N-nothing,” he said, “Nothing happened, I just— I got distracted... are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” the man said, evidently unconvinced, “But you’re not.”
Hotch shook his head. “Yes, I am. I’m not- everything's fine. We should get back to the precinct quickly so they can start the search for Oliver, he’s obviously hiding something.” He stood from the ground, brushing imaginary dirt from his pants and holding out a hand to help Dave up.
Only when Dave took it, and he felt the warmth of a living palm against his skin did he really believe that his friend was okay, not dying. Although, Hotch couldn’t stop the way his eyes kept flicking to his neck for the rest of the case, every single time afraid that he’d spot blood.
He was sure that his team had noticed something was very wrong. It would be hard not to when suddenly out of nowhere he had become like a helicopter parent, his eyes flitting over them all individually every few minutes to make sure they were there, they were intact, they were alive. He had no doubt that they could all feel his complete and utter terror every time they had to split up on a case for more than a few minutes at a time – even he could see himself becoming practically jittery , a word that had never before been used to describe him.
But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help it because every single time he closed his eyes, all he saw was each and every one of them being murdered, their blood leaving stains on the backs of his eyelids.
He used to believe in his own capabilities, used to think that if all else failed he knew he would do everything in his power to save those around him.
Now, Scratch had shown him that this failproof resolve was anything but. And it left him fucking terrified.