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The thing about knowing John Blackwolf was that you had to be prepared for him to show up at any time, very often without warning. The thing about being friends with him was knowing that he would somehow show up exactly when you needed him. It wasn’t spooky, it wasn’t magic, he was, as Aaron liked to think of it, more like a modern day Sherlock Holmes – he was simply perceptive. He paid attention. When Jason Gideon vanished, Aaron received a package at his desk with a book inside – The Catcher in the Rye. He’d stayed at work late that night and read it cover to cover, eventually falling asleep at his desk with his third cup of coffee beside his head. He rode his bike home at 3am. Haley was livid with him when he told her, and rightly so, but there had been something so cathartic about it. He’d needed that book at that time. It wasn’t even the first time he’d read it, but it was the first time he’d liked it. He couldn’t have told you why it struck him so at that time and hadn’t ever before, and Blackwolf wouldn’t ever explain why he’d sent it. Aaron kept it in his office, didn’t bother to take it home. When Haley divorced him, he got a phone call. It was the middle of the night, he’d been asleep in his brand new apartment, and there was Blackwolf’s name on his caller ID. Of course, there was a two hour time difference so Blackwolf was still awake – he’d had a few beers and was writing the outline for a lecture he would be giving on a college circuit, said he wanted Aaron’s take on a few of his statements about the American government, not because he was going to change what he said but because he was genuinely interested in how his friend saw things. They talked into the night, and though John never mentioned Haley or the divorce, he did make Aaron laugh like he hadn’t laughed in years. Mostly at himself, because that was his way. Aaron couldn’t really think of a time he’d returned any of the favors, been that good kind of a friend, but he tried in his way. He attended all of Blackwolf’s lectures within driving distance. He called or texted regularly, sent birthday cards and Christmas cards, did all the things a man like him was inclined to do, and as basic as they were, he meant them. He just wasn’t wired like John. It made him self-conscious, but John would just laugh at him and tell him to get over himself and that was that.
As Aaron lay on his couch, wrapped tight in his heated blanket, body a mess of stitches and gauze and scabs, healing baby pink skin and bright red blood, he wondered when his friend would show up. Day after day he expected a knock at his door. Or a phone call or a text, maybe some mail from his friend. It had been a little over a week since George Foyet had stabbed him, days since he’d been discharged from the hospital, at least by his calculations. He wasn’t eating or sleeping regularly so he supposed he could be a little off on that. His team had made so many meals that his freezer was jammed full, and his fridge had more food in it than it ever had before but he wasn’t eating any of it. He had no appetite. They were coming by so often that he was overwhelmed, overstimulated, just wanted to be left alone. His attitude had shifted from grateful to grouchy, resentful, secretive. He snapped at Emily, told her to stop watching him like he was a toddler. He’d wanted to snap at all of them, he just chose Emily because he knew she could take it and maybe she’d pass it on to save the rest of them the trouble. That had worked, in more ways than one. He got what he wanted, he was left alone – the team flew out for a case in South Dakota and he had time to himself. He also got a knock on his door, and through the peephole he saw John Blackwolf staring back at him.
“How many deadbolts does one man need?” John asked when Aaron’s face appeared in the doorway. “If one lock can be breached, so can all of them. May I come in?” Aaron scowled but moved out of the way slowly, letting his friend inside. John looked around the place, felt the chill, smelled the disinfectant and fresh paint. There were so few personal items that if he didn’t know better, he’d think it was a hotel room or an artificial dwelling. It did not feel like a home.
“Can I get you some coffee?” Aaron asked, wishing he’d bothered to put on his robe or a sweatshirt before answering the door. He felt exposed in his t-shirt, his heavily bandaged arms on display. They needed changing and he was on his own there now that the team was out of town - Dave had been coming by to help him every night, just after dinner.
“Yes,” John said softly, stepping carefully around a spot on the floor that looked wrong. Scrubbed too clean, the color just slightly different from the floor around it. Aaron noted it, but he wouldn’t ask what his friend saw or thought he saw. He knew why he stepped over that spot, knew why he would give it a wide berth. Aaron made his way for the kitchen and busied himself with the coffee pot, the only appliance in the kitchen that still got any use. John touched the wall, the fresh paint over the bullet hole and regarded his friend with a frown. “He missed?” A smirk crossed his features then, and Aaron shook his head. “21 feet…”
“He never intended to shoot me.”
“No?” John asked, entering the kitchen and standing beside his friend, looking him up and down. He looked thin, drawn and gray.
“I wish he had,” Aaron sighed. It was the first real, honest thing he’d said since the attack. John, without asking permission, reached out and lifted Aaron’s shirt, examining the bandages that covered the rest of him, imagining the kind of horror his friend had experienced. He peeled back some of the paper tape, pulling the gauze away and examined the stitched up wound underneath – it was jagged and deep, still crusted with fresh blood. He figured it must have been the first, when his friend still moved to try and defend himself or get away. Without digging deeper, he pressed the tape back to his friend’s skin and replaced the shirt over it. That was the oddity of their friendship, in a nutshell. He practically lived with his team and none of them would have dared do what John Blackwolf had done so boldly and effortlessly.
“In this case,” John said softly, “I don’t blame you.”
The coffee was scalding hot and rich, it smelled like chocolate if you gave it an acid bath and then dunked an orchid inside. It had been a gift from the Director of the CIA, left with a gaudy bouquet of flowers that he’d forced Penelope to take back and put in the bullpen with instructions to make sure it was on full display and fawned over anytime someone from the CIA breezed through. “Are you here for long?” Aaron asked, handing his friend a mug.
“I have an open-ended engagement,” John said with no elaboration. Aaron hummed, breathing in the steam from above his mug. “You need to leave this place. Let’s take a hike.”
“Do I look like a man who can hike?” Aaron asked incredulously. John just smiled in that infuriating way he had and Aaron knew he should go put on his tennis shoes and give up arguing.
“You look like a man who needs to remember what the sun feels like on his skin. Leave your deadbolts and come with me.”
He was right. (Of course he was.) The sun felt incredible. They’d managed to find their way to a park on the outskirts of town ripe with primitive hiking trails, nothing paved, not a single car in the parking lot. The way the light filtered through the trees as they set out on the trail cast the entire place in a foggy green glow with spikes of gold. Aaron moved slow, and John kept pace with him, their outing wasn’t about a destination. He would have been happy to sit in the parking lot, the important part was not being in that apartment. He was keenly aware of every step Aaron made, when they faltered, when he hesitated or twisted wrong and winced.
“Can we stop a moment?” Aaron asked in a breathy voice about a quarter of a mile into a thicket, trees hanging low over their heads, moss drooping and swirling over and around the trees. Blackwolf nodded and watched as Aaron paused with body language that read pain.
“Tell me,” Blackwolf said, approaching his friend. Aaron crouched, hugging his arms against his midsection and sucked in a deep breath.
“Tell you what?” he asked, his voice frail yet wild.
“What happened.”
“You know what happened.”
“No, I know what I read in the newspaper. I know he is a serial killer, I know he broke into your home, and I know that he stabbed you many times. But you’re still alive, Hotchner. If I broke into someone’s home and stabbed them, I’m not sure why I would leave them alive. Tell me what happened.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Aaron said, his voice shaky. He sat down in the dirt, played with the bandages on his arm with trembling fingers. “You know as much as anyone else.”
“Yes,” Blackwolf said, sitting on a small stump beside his friend. “I want to know more. Has no one else asked for more? Or do they all just take you at face value? You lie, Aaron Hotchner. You hide behind your FBI mask and your suit and tie. Your friends do you a disservice by pretending it’s real. Or you have them so fooled that they aren’t pretending at all. Which is it?”
“I can’t remember,” Aaron offered, looking up at his friend. Blackwolf shook his head. Something splashed into a stream behind them. A squirrel chattered on a branch above their heads.
“You remember every detail. You remember the way he smelled, the order of the wounds, what he said. I can see it on your face, I can see it in the way you move. I’m not fooled by your mask.”
Aaron was silent for a moment, his eyes closed. He could feel throbbing beneath his bandages, and he wasn’t sure if it was pain or just his heart pumping nervously. The tremor in his hands got worse as he allowed his mind to open that door, to see and smell and hear that day. He wasn’t sure what made him open up to John Blackwolf, over and over again – there was no good reason to talk to him and shut everyone else out, but he would tell John things that he wouldn’t even share with Dave.
“He was there when I got home. I poured a drink. We’d just returned from a really bad case. Bad even by our standards. The kind of evil that only washes away with whiskey. I felt him before I saw him.”
Blackwolf nodded. “Good. I knew it. You aren’t so imperceptive anymore.” Aaron shivered, hugging his arms over his chest, tucking his fingers into the folds of his t-shirt. It was warm outside, but he wished he’d grabbed a jacket anyway.
“I can’t explain it. When he shot, I knew he wasn’t shooting at me. I could tell. But it hurt my ears, made me dizzy. It hurt my head so bad I couldn’t think, so I just…stood there staring at him, daring him.”
“That answers my first question,” Blackwolf said softly, like he was ticking off a mental checklist. Aaron looked up at him confused. “I wondered how he got the best of you. I watched you take down strong young men in that school without a problem. He got the best of you because he exploited a weakness he didn’t even realize you had. Or perhaps he knew about it and counted on it. What do you think?”
Aaron regarded him curiously, and for the first time, he was considering that as a possibility. He’d assumed it was to scare him, shock value, because so many of them just liked to see fear but now he wondered if it wasn’t about fear. It gave him pause. He listened to birds chirping above his head, feathers ruffling against tree bark. “I don’t know,” Aaron said finally, his eyes downcast now. There was an ant hill beside him, big juicy carpenter ants made their way in and out without paying any mind to the giants seated above them. “Maybe he did know. Maybe he didn’t. He got the best of me quickly, got me on my back…I hate this, you know.”
“I know,” Blackwolf said, grinning wide. He looked up, felt the sun on his face, kept smiling.
“He talked a lot. He talks too much. My ears were ringing, I could only make out bits and pieces, and after the first…after the knife went in the first time, everything was…” he raked his hands down his face, clearly distressed. “I just kept hoping he’d kill me. I knew he didn’t intend to, but I was hoping for it anyway. If his hand had slipped just a little, it would have been enough. Every day since, I’ve wished he would have just finished it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’ve lost my family,” Aaron said, a little indignantly. “I’m in constant pain. There’s permanent damage. You should see my medicine cabinet.”
“Your family is not lost, they are being protected. The pain will become easier to live with, and you will manage any permanent damage the way you always do – by pretending it isn’t real and convincing your friends of the same. You are leaving something out though – what happened?”
Aaron felt a chill run down his spine, his flesh erupt in goosebumps. He gulped hard and played with the bandages on his arm again, feeling them tear at the scabs, loosing the blood in their wake. He told Blackwolf about what Foyet had said about impotence, changing the way they profiled, and his voice was quiet, dripping with a ghostly sadness. He didn’t like to linger on that last part. His friend nodded, pressed his hand to Aaron’s shoulder and patted lightly.
“Let’s walk further in.” He stood, arching his back in a quick stretch, and extended his hand to Aaron. He had no intention of stopping the inquisition, but he needed more time to consider what he’d heard. They walked in silence, John listening to the sounds of Aaron’s breath, breaking out of the thicket sometime later into a clearing with a stream running through. The sound of the water rushing was beautiful, calming, serene. They found a few rocks on the bank of the stream and sat down, still not a word having been spoken since they’d left the trees.
“He cannot take anything from you that you choose keep for yourself,” John said, breaking the silence. Aaron felt his lungs seize in his chest.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“If you give him your dignity, your pride, your hope, he takes it. He is greedy. He wants to possess you and your life, but you don’t have to let him. Take it back. You are whole, Aaron. This pain will be temporary. Do not let something temporary define you.”
Aaron kicked his shoes and socks off, stood and walked into the stream. The rocks were slick, some were sharp, the water like ice. He wiggled his toes and watched the dark in between areas for crawdads. “How do I do that?” he asked, without any hint of sarcasm or bitterness. John shrugged.
“Stand there. Feel the water on your skin. Turn your face to the sky, listen to the mosquitoes and the birds. Remember who you are, not what happened to you. They are not the same.”
Aaron hummed and crouched, dipping his hands into the water, splashing it on his face. When he opened his eyes, John was crouching beside him in the water, following his lead. They pushed handfuls of water back into their hair simultaneously and then tipped backward until they were seated just on the rocky shore. Water soaked through their pants, neither man spoke. The woods around them spoke instead. They sat in silence for a long time, Aaron lost in thought, processing things he’d been avoiding for some time now.
“My son’s birthday is coming up,” Aaron said, softly, breaking the silence. “I’ve missed every single one of them.”
“You cannot lead two lives,” John said, trailing his hand in the current. “Have you never watched a super hero movie or read a comic book? The hero is always at odds with the disguise. Clark Kent suffers so that Superman can save the world. You made your choice, Captain America.”
“Would you have made the same choice?”
“No,” John said coolly without judgment. “I would rather be Clark Kent, if given the choice. He saves people too, but in a different way.” Aaron nodded and shrugged. He stretched his legs out, feeling the water rush over his calves, up to his knees.
“I guess.”
“Come to my lecture tomorrow at George Mason. Unless you’ve got something better to do.”
“Sorry, can’t. I have plans with my couch and my heated blanket,” Aaron said, cracking a small smile. “That sounds a lot more fun than listening to you talk.”
He did go, though. He let John pick him up and kept to himself at the back of the auditorium, folded in on himself in the shadows. There was something so engaging about John up on that stage, everyone was enthralled. He commanded an audience in a way that Aaron envied. On multiple occasions John cracked jokes about the FBI, lobbed a few missiles right at his friend in the back and the audience ate it up.
They had lunch on the school’s dime in the cafeteria, though Aaron had suggested somewhere better, because John said it would be rude to turn down the hospitality offered. He regretted the decision in the end, because the food was nothing short of terrible. The soup was too salty, the bread was dry and the salad was wilted. The first real food Aaron had eaten in well over a week and it was unappealing slop. It figured.
“As fun as this has been, your company isn’t good enough to brave the dessert line,” Aaron muttered, crumpling his napkin and placing it inside of his half-eaten bowl of soup. His stomach churned, he felt nauseous. It wasn’t really the food’s fault, he knew, it was just that his stomach hadn’t been prepared for the attack. He’d been living on coffee and saltines for a week. The cafeteria smelled like reconstituted tomatoes and mushy overcooked noodles.
“Yours wasn’t good enough for the main course, yet here I sit.” John always had something better to say. Something wittier. Aaron scowled at him and sipped his cola, wrinkling his nose at the bubbles.
“I sat through your long-winded lecture, lunch was the least you could do for me. Absolute bare minimum retribution for my pain and suffering.”
“Oh, well in that case, I’ll get you back home now, wouldn’t want you to miss Murder She Wrote,” John said in his deadpan way, and Aaron rolled his eyes. “I’m sure your couch misses you.”
“Much obliged.”