Title: Unanswered Prayers
Author: hopskotch_hotch
Pairing: Hotch/Prentiss, but also, kind of Hotch-centric
Rating: FRT
Summary: Hotch had prayed his entire life, even if he didn't quite believe it would achieve anything. After forty-odd years, he was just beginning to discover that some prayers might remain unanswered for a reason...
Disclaimer: I do not own the lovely cast and concepts of Criminal Minds, but they always provide inspiration!

***

He sat, sprawled on the long sofa of the comfortable apartment.

 

It was tastefully decorated in a stylish, subtle sort of way. It was classic, just like her.

 

Through the ceiling-to-floor window across the room, he could see the lights of Washington DC. Capitol Hill, surrounded by millions of tiny, flickering orbs, like hovering fireflies. A surreal milky moon lighted the sky, clouds drifting serenely past its expressionless face.

 

****

 

The tale of the man in the moon was one of Jack's favorite stories. Hotch had told him that people everywhere, in the whole world, could see the same big moon. Grandpa and Grandma, his cousins, his aunts and uncles, could see the moon too, when Jack was looking at it. It connected humanity.

 

Hey diddle diddle

The cat played the fiddle,

The cow jumped over moon.

The little dog laughed to see such sport,

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

 

It helped that the Hotchner family lived in a leafy suburb, where the city lights didn't obscure the star-strewn eventide sky.

 

One night, when they sat on Jack's bed, Jack ensconced safely in his father's lap, both beholding the moon, Hotch had told him that when he was away from his son, the moon would connect them. When Jack missed his dad, all he had to do was look out his window when darkness fell. Hotch would be watching the moon too, and thinking of his little boy.

 

He prayed that Jack would understand one day.

 

 

****

 

 

Every night, as he lay in another hotel room, waiting for a peaceful sleep that would never come, Hotch prayed.

 

He wasn't a religious man, and his prayers weren't directed to anyone in particular. They were silent, self-pleadings for things to work out. For balance to be restored, and goodness to win out.

 

 

 

He had prayed for his father to come back from wherever he had drifted off to. He couldn't be gone.

 

He stared numbly into the open casket where his father's lifeless body lay. Hands clasped unnaturally, skin taut and drained of color.

 

This was not his father. It was a shell.

 

So many things had been left unsaid, so much unfinished business. This was not how it was meant to happen. He had been angry, angrier than he had ever felt.

 

But that was how dad dealt with disappointment; he lost his temper, he lashed out.

 

An important case going down the tubes: fury.

 

A bottle of milk mistakenly left out on the kitchen counter; someone had forgotten to put it back in the refrigerator: outrage.

 

It was all the same, much of a muchness.

 

There were so many things Hotch had wanted to say:

 

"Dad, we never talk. Why have we never talked, I mean really talked?"

 

"Pop, why the short temper? What is it, what prompted this in you?"

 

"I want to be like you, but I don't want to be just like you."

 

"Tell me about life, tell me how to get through this struggle and strife."

 

"I need you to be there. Sean is too young. How can I take care of him, and myself?"

 

****

 

 

He had prayed for things to work out with Hayley.

 

When he first met her, he fell hard. He prayed that she would be his, and his prayers were answered. They were blissfully happy, and for the first time in his life, Hotch became comfortable in his own skin.

 

Someone loved him back.

 

Without warning, that love came with conditions tagged on.

 

It started slowly: dissatisfaction with the job - it was too dangerous. Then, him being away. It was too much. She missed him, couldn't cope alone.

Finally, it seeped into the home. When he was there, everything he did was wrong. The way he washed the dishes, the way he cared for Jack. He couldn't move a muscle without fear of some kind of icy reprimand.

 

Like dad.

 

Everything was conditional.

 

The divorce blindsided him, though. He never saw it coming, even when she left him alone in the big rambling house, taking their son with her.

 

When she sent the papers to his workplace, he bore the intense shame of having to take delivery of them in front of his uncomfortable colleagues.

 

He took them to his office and signed on the dotted line, the pen nib boring so hard into the sheet of paper, that it left the sore mark of his signature on the desk underneath.

 

He didn't bother to read the small print.

 

It didn't matter anyhow.

 

 

And I wonder if you know

That I never understood

That although you said you'd go,

Until you did,

I never thought you would.

 

****

 

He had prayed that Elle wouldn't leave the BAU on the note she did.

 

He wanted her to admit, to him at least, that she had killed rapist and murderer, William Lee, in cold blood. She was too emotional, too unstable. She sought Lee out and shot him down as he walked way from her. Lee wasn't attacking or threatening her - he was smarter than that.

 

Hotch knew the guy was scum. He also knew that Elle's act had put an end to the terror that was facing countless other women while Lee was a free man. No amount of time he might spend incarcerated would make amends for his actions.

 

But Hotch also knew the rules, and he thought she knew them too. They had a good working relationship, she was a damn good profiler, and it saddened him beyond words to see her abandon a promising career, and have to deal with the demons that haunted her after she was shot. She simply couldn't cope with the job.

 

He had seen this before - people snapping under the intense emotional burden that came from dealing by the book with the most inhumane human beings on earth.

People who didn't have a screed of empathy or shame betraying itself in their inanimate eyes.

 

Elle sparred bitterly with him. She left her gun and badge on his desk and disappeared.

 

He didn't know what she was doing now.

 

He tried calling her a couple of times, having given her a few weeks to cool off.

 

An unfamiliar voice on the other end of the phone informed him that the previous occupant of the house had packed up and left a month ago.

 

All mail was marked 'return to sender'.

 

****

 

 

He had prayed that Jason would find what he was looking for.

 

Jason was never settled. Even when he seemed content, he was jittery. It was as though there was something burrowed deep beneath his skin.

 

An itch that nothing soothed.

 

Jason, like Elle, grappled with his own ghosts, but his were more deep-rooted.

 

Maybe he made a decision to seek out his son Stephen, and make up for lost time - all 25 years of it.

 

Perhaps enough was just enough.

He packed up the dozens of photographs that had lined the shelves of his office, and brought them with him to more serene surroundings.

 

The BAU reminded him of death, destruction, and the presence of pure evil lurking in the midst of the very ordinary.

 

He did not say goodbye, aside from a long and anguished letter to Reid.

 

Reid, Spence, the son he never had.

 

He left his badge and gun in the hands of the youngest team member; symbolic somehow, like the passing on of a torch.

 

Hotch kept Jason's badge in his desk drawer. It lay hidden under crumbling files from unsolved cases, now cold.

 

 

Hotch didn't know if this prayer had been, or would ever be, answered.

 

Do any of us ever find what we are looking for?

 

Do we know what we are looking for, anyway?

 

If we knew, and we found it, what would life be? Where would the meaning come from?

 

 

****

 

 

He prayed for forgiveness for doubting Prentiss.

 

For viewing her, not as a potentially excellent profiler, but as an administrative headache.

 

She was yet another problem piled atop the already unsteady mound of difficulties he was facing at the time.

 

She was a political time bomb, and he already knew her mother, her high-flying connections. He couldn't help but think there was a tinge of nepotism involved, a convenient job for the ambassador's bright little girl.

 

He thought she could be a liability, and he, reduced to being nothing more a glorified babysitter.

 

He couldn't have been more wrong.

 

Prentiss distanced herself from office politics as best she could. She worked quietly and diligently, and tried valiantly to get along with the already close-knit team.

 

She often brought a sense of calmness to situations where tensions could be running high.

 

More than once he had seen her, as he was leaving his office late in the evening, poring over clippings and notes from a recent case, completely lost in concentration at her desk.

 

He knew she did not have much of a life outside of work; she had made many sacrifices, just like the rest.

 

He had grown to respect her enormously.

 

And he knew, with guilt, that she did not seek to bestow forgiveness upon him, for she was oblivious to the thoughts and fears he had about her. If she was aware, she was discreet and never let on.

 

Hotch had learned the meaning of humility.

 

He would, by the end of her second year with the BAU, pray that she would not accept the transfer to the Domestic Terrorism Section that she had recently applied for.

 

 

****

 

 

She had poured him a scotch when they reached the apartment. He distractedly nursed the glass of amber liquid, without taking a single sip.

 

It was Dutch courage, designed to numb feelings of shock and make the truth more palatable.

 

All at once, he felt a tumult of confusing emotions: dread; anxiousness; intense curiosity.

 

Hope.

 

He was woefully unprepared.

 

He could slip out the door now, while she was gone. Leave her an apologetic note, feigning some emergency.

 

Call her later.

 

No, that would be barbaric and completely irresponsible.

 

He loved her.

 

When he heard her moving downstairs into the living room, he changed his mind and quickly downed the scotch, the harsh liquid scalding his parched throat.

 

She had changed into a comfortable pair of pajamas and a bathrobe, and looked weary in a way that made Hotch regretful.

 

He tried to read her face for a sign, a yes, a no - anything.

 

He often forgot that she had an incredible poker expression. It always worked a treat in difficult interrogations.

 

He pushed back a cluster of cushions to make room for her to sit beside him, and she gratefully settled down, holding the stick gingerly between thumb and forefinger.

 

She held it out in front of her, and he moved closer to inspect it.

 

"It's ok", she laughed "you don't have to touch something I just peed on!"

 

He exchanged a 'very funny' smirk with her, knowing full well that she was making light of his sterling standards of hygiene and neatness.

 

He swallowed uneasily.

 

"What does it mean?"

 

"This," she answered gently, pointing to the little window with the distinct blue line within it, "means that you are going to be a daddy again."

 

The world stilled.

 

****

 

Hotch lay awake for a short time, watching Emily's quiet, steady breathing as she slept.

 

He placed a hand lightly on her lower stomach and abdomen, over their growing baby.

 

He did not pray for anything; for once, he simply mouthed a silent 'thank you' into the night.

 

That evening, Hotch fell into a deep, fitful slumber. The slumber of one who had purged a lifetime of doubt.

***