Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s something off about Reyna.

Hotch isn’t entirely sure of what it is, but notices how her spine straightens when he walks past; and the way she stiffens at any mention of law enforcement - no matter the subject.

He chalks it up to those random, teenage fears. There was plenty enough to be terrified about at sixteen, having your girlfriend be the niece  of an FBI agent was a factor for one of them.

Still, something is off. Most teenagers don’t flinch when Anderson spills a cup.

He makes Garcia pull up Reyna’s file again.

There’s nothing ominous to find, except the worn crime scene photos of her house in Puerto Rico, and the foreboding smile somebody has forced her into for her drivers license.

“I don’t know what you're looking for,” Penelope admits, albeit, still brightly; fingers flying over the keyboard. Hotch stands next to her, arms crossed towards the screen. “Reyna is clean. Super squeaky clean.” Garcia pulls up her original file, the one containing all of the information she’d been able to gather.

The record reads limited, from the intel the police force of Reyna’s village managed to amass, Reyna Ramirez-Arellano and her sister Hylla, alongside their father all disappeared in the dead of the night.

Years later, it was later confirmed - not by the same police force, rather, by the education board of California that Reyna turned up to be attending a private school by Oakland Hills.

Despite the hastily signed college acceptance letter for Seattle, the paper trail to Reyna’s sister’s whereabouts ends up cold.

(Garcia manages to show him another photo of Hylla, smiling for the camera at an Amazon product convention in Seattle. It does not ease his worry.)

“Her father,” he says, scanning over the crime report in Spanish. The ghost of the word muerto catches his eye. “They assumed he was dead but not the girls?”

“Not…exactly,” Garcia swerves her chair around to face him.

He directs his attention to a new page on the screen, more reports written in Spanish that Hotch could slightly make out with his senior year Spanish classes. “Sir — the report you see here?” she points back towards her desk.

Hotch nods. Garcia continues, a grim expression fixed on her face. “For the first months, they were all legally declared dead. The head detective believed it to be a suicide done by the father. Julian Ramirez-Arellano.”

“But that didn’t happen,” he frowns. Hotch gestures to the devoid film photos. “The evidence in the crime scenes and behavior of the father both suggest that he wouldn't have laid a hand on his daughters. Mentally — maybe, but physically Julian wouldn't have done that. If anything he saw himself as an angel of death towards his children.”

She clicks on another folder, and by this time, Hotch may have to wonder how much information she’s gathered about Jason’s friends, but sets aside that thought for another day.

“Actually the case only got dropped in late 2006 when both Reyna and Hylla appeared in the Bay Area. It was really messy to try and sort out, you know, since they were both dead. Julian had no will so — oh..honey.” Hotch watches as her face turns from determined to something nauseated. 

“In one of the official investigations the Bay Area police carried out, Hylla mentioned how she and her sister both had to take drastic measures to survive.”

A sinking feeling settles in his stomach, “Did she ever clarify on what she meant?”

“No,” Garcia confirms all his worst fears and he begins to wonder if he had been correct about there being something more with Reyna’s mannerisms. “She was eighteen that time and Reyna was thirteen. The timeline gets increasingly spotty after that.”

To survive. In his line of work, he’d seen worse cases than this. But the impact of it all - always stayed the same.

The foreboding warning signs that his brain sets off, when he wonders how two kids from Puerto Rico managed to make it out of their hometown and into a completely different country, does nothing to ease his mind.

Jason asks him if Reyna can come by their house. He barely gives any information, just drops by his office during lunch and sends a heads up that she’d be flying in from California to DC. Probably an overnight stay, probably not. Jason hastily apologizes when he says he doesn’t know. Hotch has to assure him it’s not a problem.

“Long flight,” he acknowledges. He’s come to learn not to question what his niece or nephew do.

“Does she need anything in particular? I can make a run to the store before I get back home.” He’s not still too sure about demigod needs, the most he’s ever come close to understanding them was the need for coffee.

“Uh,” Jason looks sheepish. “Snacks, maybe? She likes...tea. And chocolate.” He wrings his hands together, “Hotch it’s not really a bother, I can do it myself.”

He waves his nephew off, “It’s fine. Jack adores Reyna anyways. Remember the last time she came over? He was attached to her hip.”

Jason chuckles and nods, “He loved her. If Thalia didn't explain about US states he might have wanted her to stay forever.”

Hotch picks up a pen and writes in neat letters on an empty folder: Tea, Chocolate. “Any favorite flavor in particular?”

“Chamomile,” Jason answers immediately - and at this point, it shouldn’t have surprised Hotch.

“Really—it’s no big deal,” Jason backtracks again. “I need to go by the hardware to pick up a new hammer for Leo, corner store’s just around.” He grimaces when he says that, and now, Hotch feels like he should ask.

“Why does Leo need a new hammer?” he questions. He dreads the answer only momentarily.

The last time he had come over, Hotch had to bring out the FBI’s standard protocol on fire management, and learn how to google what a smoking carpet meant.

Jason darts his eyes around Hotch’s office, “He…broke it?”

“And the Hephaestus cabin couldn’t fix it?”

“…They banned him from the forge?”

“His belt couldn’t produce it?”

“Athena kids took it as a spoil of war from the last Capture The Flag game,” Jason admits, and shrugs when Hotch gives him a pointed look.

Hotch can feel an oncoming headache approach, he sighs and massages his temples. “I’ll pick up the hammer and the snacks.”

To himself, Jason snickers and gives Hotch a thumbs up. The notion that he may have to install additional fire extinguishers throughout his home is becoming exasperatingly true. “Please don’t let Leo burn the house down.”

Jason ducks his head on the way out, and grins. “Can’t promise anything!”

“Reyna’s coming?” Thalia almost whisper-yells to Jason from across the hall. “And you didn’t say anything?”

Jason holds his hands up in defense, “She IM’d me,” he protests.

Hotch is watching this from the dinner table, Jack none the wiser; topples cities with Hot Wheels on the rug. “Didn’t she IM you?” he points out.

Thalia glares at him, eyes intense. “No,” she grits out and Hotch has to stifle a chuckle - barely disguised as a cough. He watches as Jason beams back at her.

“Sucks to suck.”

(The Academy did not teach him how to dispute nieces from almost choking nephews. Hotch learns this the hard way. Jack, in what he assumed was playing, cheers on his cousins, and Hotch has to sit his son down for why he shouldn’t always imitate what Thalia does.)

Thalia immediately tackles Reyna in a hug when her flight touches down, Jason complains to her about how Thalia wouldn’t shut up the whole ride to the airport, and Hotch is forced to let Jack sit on Reyna’s luggage, much to his chagrin. 

“I’m just saying—I know you have a girlfriend. She’s my best friend,” Jason makes a face.

Thalia counters back, “You cut off all contact with her for a year.”

“I literally had no choice!”

“You always have one.”

Jack munches happily on a KitKat, he looks up at Hotch. “They’re fighting,” he points out.

He has to nod and sigh, “Yes they are, buddy.”

Reyna hums thoughtfully, the first he’s heard her speak throughout the ordeal. “I thought you were dead for a year,” she says. Jason groans in exasperation. She snickers and fist bumps with Thalia.

“But I wasn’t.”

Thalia cocks her head, “Did she know that?”

He holds up his coffee cup in retaliation, “Do you want coffee over your head?”

They bicker in the background, and while Hotch aimlessly pushes Jack with the suitcase handle, he watches Reyna.

It’s entirely a natural reflex that he’d earned from years spent over profiling cases - but still, he can’t shake away the animosity that sloughed off her back. There was something unnerving about her that he couldn’t quite place.  

He recalls her file that he’d made Garcia do a deep read of months ago. Her sister’s words echo in the back of his mind, and when she notices his gaze on her, she stiffens immediately. Her back straightens, and Hotch can’t help but wonder where that sort of rigidity could’ve been formed from.

He sees it in abuse survivors perpetually, it’s a common trait between them; shared within the truth that vigilance was something to live by if you wanted to survive. There is a small part of him that hopes he was wrong.

She looks around nervously, settling her gaze on anywhere but him, and Hotch has the novelty to wonder why.

“Washington is a lovely place,” she offers, when nothing else seems to be working, and Thalia and Jason have resorted to hushed debating

He nods in agreement. She doesn’t make any other effort to speak to him.

Much to his surprise, Reyna is extremely orderly for a demigod. He refuses to pick favorites within the ones he had met, but between blearily stepping on a quiver in the middle of the night and offering to wash the dishes, there wasn’t much of a competition to choose from.

She’s mostly just…quiet. Few words were exchanged between them, and fewer appearances were made by her around his house. If not with Jason, she was with Thalia, and if both weren’t there, she made herself tea and played with Jack. 

Jason assures him that she likes it fine, but that Jack was becoming increasingly adamant about a prolonged stay; Thalia replies that she goes through tea bags like coffee. He doesn’t know what to be worried about first.

Hotch finds himself pulling up a hard copy of Reyna’s file on his laptop after work hours. Garcia had compiled everything into a neat folder and emailed it to him when he’d asked.

The police interview conducted in 2006 had offered little to no information about what had transpired between Reyna and her sister’s disappearance. When informed their father was dead, Hylla had asked who had done it. 

The Puerto Rican police ruled it as a suicide, the Bay Area precinct did too. Nobody questioned the two girls who ended up in a different country after three years. After that, Hylla bought an apartment, promptly moved out, and got a job at Amazon. Reyna barely had anything else to her name.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary - or at least, what Hotch assumed to be conventional in his life, for him to ever have to worry about Reyna. She’s a good kid. He’s glad that at least she puts her sneakers on the rack by the door, and that she somewhat refuses to contribute to the antics that Jason and Thalia get up to.

(Within the week, he has to sit Jack down for yet another talk on how he probably should start finding more role models other than Jason. He doesn’t want his son to grow up thinking that crashing into several potted plants in a fit of rage after losing in Mario Kart was reasonable.)

Yet still, her silent fear of all law enforcement doesn’t go unnoticed by him. He doesn’t mean to; but he can’t help but keep a small profile on her in the back of his mind.

Sometimes Jason would drag her to the office, and she would stay by his side, gripping onto him for dear life. At times Reyna even seemed annoyed at the presence of any agents.

He sighs and closes his laptop. His stomach couldn’t bear to go over those crime scene photos again. If he stared at them too long, his mind wandered off to the image of a younger Reyna who had no idea of what her father was planning.

“Jail —” Hotch overhears the last word by accident, and immediately stops in his tracks to register that that was Thalia’s voice, and that she had somehow snuck her way back into HQ, without him ever giving her another visitor’s pass.

“It’s not a what if scenario, it’s entirely plausible.” It’s Reyna’s voice. It becomes completely clear to him, now, that his niece had brought along her girlfriend to his work area, without any notice. By this point, he shouldn’t have been fazed.

Thalia sighs, and lowers her voice when another agent walks by. “My uncle won’t send you to jail, Rey.”

“There is no way for you to know that.” Reyna stubbornly says. In the corner of his eye, he sees her cross both arms over her chest.

“He’s my uncle, and you’re my girlfriend.” Thalia places a hand on Reyna’s shoulder, and grins. “At best it’s juvie.”

" Oh my Gods!"

He dismisses the conversation almost entirely, but a nagging feeling in him won’t stop suggesting that there was something more than an innocent joke. He decides to stock more chocolate in the fridge. Safety measures.

Reyna, for all that it is worth, was extremely skittish around him - and Hotch can’t come up with a single, innocent reason as to why. She ducks her head out of doorways when he approaches, and makes it a job to get out of his hair before he even comes close. The same stiffness from the airport follows her around the air, even if he barely made an appearance in a room.

It sets off multiple warning signs in his brain, the feeling of her behavior not being unerring was becoming progressively clear to him. He knows that most demigods have had unspoken trauma shared between them, but usually, they don’t always include him.

Hotch sighs and sets his book down. His gaze travels down to his nightstand where the clock reads 1:19 in bright, glaring red letters.

He decides to get another cup of coffee. He needed to be up in four hours, either way.

Downstairs, he finds a strange sight.

It’s Reyna, hunched over a cup of tea in the middle of the kitchen island. She’s placed the drink on a plate, she sits there in silence, with only the light fixture offering brightness.

She notices Hotch immediately, and her eyes twitch the slightest bit, but she makes no apparent effort to stir.

“Hi,” she starts. Her eyes never meet his, and she brings the cup up to her mouth. Hotch gives her a small wave back, and makes his way to the coffee machine.

He finds himself replying to her: “DC treating you well?”

Reyna shrugs, and takes another sip of tea. Hotch comes to the small realization that Thalia had been right, she goes through tea bags like coffee. At least she preferred the healthier option, even if the small supply of tea bags he’d gotten were depleting as the week progressed.

“It’s quiet,” she  finally says. “Back home, camp — school, is loud. Lots of kids.”

Hotch takes the cup out of the machine and sets it down on a countertop. He doesn’t mention the slip up of Camp Jupiter that she almost let out. It’s not in his business to intervene. “Was your sister ever one of them?” he asks.

She sets the tea cup back down, and stares at the island’s concrete in silence. He’s hit a nerve – he knows, but despite all of this, she meets his eyes and an impassive look passes through. “No,” she shakes her head. “Hylla wanted me to have an education after…our father. I don’t think it was ever in her sights to give herself one.”

“And she left after that?” He asks.

Her forehead creases, annoyance flitting over her face. “Hylla did what she could to survive.”

“You were thirteen,” Hotch says. It’s not an offer, it’s the truth. And there, and then again–is the haunting phrase of survival . “Legally she was your guardian.”

Reyna exhales through her nose, her eyes narrowing at him. “You read the files.” she doesn't ask him to clarify.

Then, she frowns. “You can speak Spanish?”

“Prentiss is better than me,” he admits. The ghost of a smile flickers over Reyna’s rigid face. It passes momentarily, too. “I had Garcia translate most of the police reports for me.”

Her mouth twitches to the side. “How much do you know?”

Hotch drums his fingers along the counter, and takes his first sip of coffee. “They ruled your father’s death as a suicide. Legally, all of you were declared dead as soon as the precinct found your house deserted with blood.”

“Then we ended up in San Francisco and disappeared again,” Reyna finishes for him. Her voice sounds tired like she’d repeated this story for somebody else. “I went to school, she got a job.”

“In Amazon.”

“In Amazon,” she nods.

A beat later, Reyna speaks up again, the tea cup rattling back down onto the tiny saucer plate. “They never found out who did it.”

He recalls back to the numerous police reports he’d sifted through–the gratification that the detective had penned when he ruled it as a suicide instead of a murder. No weapon had been found, but the furniture and carpet were stained with Julian’s blood. Traces of Hylla’s DNA were scattered around too. Reyna’s was nowhere to be found.

She didn’t think it was a suicide, either.

“They didn’t,” Hotch agrees. There was not much he could offer to a closed case. Instead he says, “It’s not your fault. He’d been on the brink of mental stability, and would have been a danger to both you and your sister regardless of any outcome.”

Her breath hitches as soon as he says that, “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he nods, taking a seat next to her. She instinctively moves a few inches away from him, keeping her hands cupped around her drink. “You were a child, nothing you could’ve done would have prevented it. Believe me, I know.”

“No—” she shakes her head. “You don’t.”

She wrings her hands together, and sets her hands down on her lap. Hotch frowns, and watches as she opens and closes her eyes, the feeling of apprehension settling back down into his stomach.

“I killed him,” she finally says. “He—my—growing up he had…weapons around the house. He was a soldier and wanted to keep us safe, but mostly it was for pride. The night he—” her voice stops entirely. “Sometimes he locked us in our rooms, but Hylla always managed to sneak us out. He caught us one night and — and threw a chair at her. It her hard.”

“And then—” she continues. “I thought she was dead — I was ten. He didn’t, uh, I didn’t know what to do so I picked up one of the weapons he left around and…” Reyna shrugs and trails off, her eyes darting anywhere but him.

“So it wasn’t a suicide?” he has the good grace to ask.

She laughs, hollow but it took out most of the grief from her tone. “No,” she echoes. “It wasn’t a suicide.”

“Okay then,” he says. Reyna stares at him in bewilderment, and he takes another sip of coffee. He’s not entirely sure of what she was expecting for him to do.

“I committed a crime,” she says slowly. “I murdered somebody.” Reyna wrinkles her nose. “You’re an FBI agent.” she points out, too.

Hotch shrugs, “We’ve all been there.”

Her reaction is ultimately priceless.