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Tucked in the corner of his office, Grayson has his knees pulled to his chest. His eyes are glassy, staring into the middle distance. He’s still dressed in the sweats that Morgan directed him to change into at the hotel in Ohio and he looks much younger in them.
Earbuds dangle on either side, a dinged MP3 player clutched between prayerful hands. Anytime Aaron gets close, he hears Damian’s voice spilling out.
As he had nine months ago, Aaron looks at Grayson’s emergency contact form.
He’d tried West’s number before they took off and left a generic voicemail. Gordon also hadn’t picked up and Aaron isn’t about to let his agent go home alone.
The conversation in the hallway had been brief. Grayson apologized for using more force than necessary on the unsub, asked for a prognosis. He was wary, slipping into the quiet place that can quickly become unreachable. He never came within arm’s reach of the unit chief. A phone Aaron hadn’t seen before rang in his pocket. Grayson had shut it off.
He hadn’t become fully unresponsive—of course, he already had been earlier today—but he was less tetchy around Morgan than Aaron as they packed up the hotel and flew back to Virginia. Morgan offered to stick around, but Aaron sent him home. It was a long case and there's no use in having more tired agents milling about.
Aaron isn’t unaware of the various traumas that his agent tries to pass off as quirks. Although his agent tends to keep his distance from Aaron, the rest of the team has pulled him aside at least once to share their concerns.
His first month on the team, Garcia confided that Grayson downplays his injuries and refuses pain medication. Not long after, Reid began stopping by Aaron’s office anytime Grayson’s ambient hallucinations gained a visual aspect.
Then it was JJ, coming by to express her concerns to a fellow parent about Bruce Wayne and his dismissive treatment of Grayson, Damian, and Duke. With his usual air of not wanting to get involved, Dave raised the question of how Grayson is so knowledgeable about meta rights and cape news.
Morgan stopped in after Florida to speculate about Grayson’s practiced dissociation and painfully prepared friend.
Every one of them has mentioned that they’ve never once heard Grayson say no and that they fear for his hazy boundaries.
And most recently, while they were waiting for the jet to taxi to the runway, Prentiss asked if he knew that Grayson had been under cover.
Aaron hadn’t.
The last time he's been caught unaware like this, only twenty odd months ago, he’d been forced to fake Prentiss’ death to deliver her from an international psychopath.
He’s really hoping to avoid a repeat. So he stares at his unchanging screen. At the names of the people who are most likely to know Grayson’s history. His references, Jim Gordan and Amy Rohrbach, would have implied about their place in his professional experience if they knew. Nothing is so classified that a superior officer wouldn't brag—or forewarn—about it.
Unfortunately, Barbara Gordan and Wally West aren’t available this evening, despite never failing to pick up Aaron’s calls in the past.
With a heavy sigh, he dials Bruce Wayne’s number for the second time in nine months. The note warning against calling has always nagged in the back of his mind. The lack of an associated incident report and the fact that Grayson hasn’t removed the man’s name from this list. But as he instructed his agents, Wayne was still to be called if neither of the other contacts were available.
“Agent Hotchner,” the man greets after the call almost rings out.
On the couch, Grayson is outlined by the trickle of light that spills under the curtains as the sun begins to rise. Aaron forewent the overhead lights in favor of a few lamps. He’s overheard Reid and Grayson’s gripes about ‘big lights’ and their accompanying electric hum more than enough times.
“Good evening, Mr. Wayne,” he returns. “I’m calling because you’re listed as an emergency contact for my agent, Dick Grayson.” He pauses, allowing a moment for the words to process.
Wayne remains silent.
“Grayson was in an altercation with an unknown subject this evening that has left him rather- shaken.” Glassy eyes wander in his direction, confused but not interrogative. “He’s physically unharmed, but I am hesitant to send him home alone in this state.”
“Hm.” Unpanicked. Unconcerned. If profiling a parent (guardian—former—he reminds himself) wasn’t edging on profiling a teammate, Aaron would have a lot more to think about that reaction. He forces himself to stay focused. “What happened?”
He could explain the case. Or, “Has Dick ever been sent undercover?”
An affirmative grunt.
“What do you know about that time? When was it?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.” Not, ‘He didn't tell me.’
“I see.” He withholds a sigh. “Would you be able to pick him up? I know it’s quite a drive, but I’ll stay with-”
“He won’t want to see me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” Or, at least, he’s sure Grayson would prefer the man who raised him over the supervisor he avoids.
A negatory grunt. “I convinced him to take the position. He won’t want to see me.”
There’s a lot more history hidden under those words.
Aaron studies his agent. Two fingers pressed against his carotid artery as he listens to another loop of Damian complaining about his lack of pets. When he’s assured of his pulse, he picks up the drying rose-scented cotton ball and takes slow, meditative inhales through his nose. His eyes slip shut and his fingers shake around his MP3 player.
He’s twenty-eight, Aaron thinks to himself.
“I see,” he repeats. “What do you recommend then?”
He needs to get home to Jack before too long. He needs to sleep before they’re due back in the office in a little over twenty-four hours.
He needs to be certain his agent is safe.
The sick, sticky feeling at the memory of telling Prentiss she was legally dead fills his gut.
“Damian. He’ll remind Dick that no one thinks he’s dead anymore.” He rattles off a phone number that Aaron barely catches as his mind whirs around the words just spoken.
The call ends abruptly. When Aaron replaces his handset, Grayson looks up again.
“Would you like to talk to Damian?”
His agent blinks at him for a moment, mouthing the name to himself. Slowly, he shakes his head.
Aaron holds in a sigh, dreading another minute-hour-day of his agent remaining unreachable.
Then, “Hotch,” he starts after a beat. His voice is hoarse and eyes wet.
“Yes, Grayson?”
His agent lets out a pained breath. “I’m not doing well.”
He doesn’t make Grayson take the week off because he knows his youngest agent hates being alone more than he hates being exposed.
Still, he assigns Grayson to the rather mindless task of confirming their digitized case files are properly named and sends an informal request to Ahn Nguyen that her team take travel-necessary cases for the time being.
His agent spends most of his time sequestered away in Dave’s office. It doesn’t surprise Aaron. Grayson has never warmed up to Aaron the way he has with the rest of the team.
While he knows that there are aspects of Dave that bring Grayson discomfort (“a Vietnam vet who calls me ‘kid’”), he’s certain that Dave’s ‘don’t ask’ approach is a reassurance when the rest of the team is brimming with questions.
As it is, Aaron’s grateful that Grayson has chosen somewhere private to hunker down. It makes it easier to call the rest of the team into his office.
In his tenure as unit chief, he’s only done this a handful of times. When Reid was getting clean. During Garcia’s recovery from her gunshot wound. After the Chicago case in which Morgan was outed as a survivor. Following JJ’s return from maternity leave. Directly after Prentiss returned from her undercover mission.
He knows Dave did the same for him after Haley’s murder.
One by one, he asks each member of his team the same question: What are you going to do to ensure Grayson makes it through this?
Prentiss has already started. She picked him up from the office early yesterday morning and spent the night at his apartment. She packed a bag big enough to sustain her through the week and has every ability to extend that stay.
Her words are choked in pained, visceral understanding. The vulnerable reaction isn’t locked down as Prentiss tends to do. Instead, she holds it in the crease of her eyes and the hunch of her shoulders. The grief of her previous life, of lost friendships, of tarnished comfort. A sign to her book club member that she has been where he’s been and isn’t yet healed from it.
Sliding his phone across Aaron’s desk, Derek explains that he’s been in touch with the group chat that updates the lockbox code. It wasn’t until a few hours after Aaron left West a voicemail that Derek realized he could text back. A short request from an unknown number asking if anyone has been in touch with Grayson. Since then, Morgan has been mustering the troops.
He is resolute. He is systematic. His shoulders are back and his voice is low. Morgan knows what it means to suffer alone, to let secrets fester. He will pull every string available and invent some new ones to prise his jogging partner off the ledge.
Under the guise of discussing a budgetary concern, Dave enters his office with profound sadness. He quietly discusses the soft blanket he’s brought for Grayson to doze under on his couch and the Zavaidoc vinyl he plays to cover Grayson disturbed dreams. He’s no stranger to Grayson’s unpredictable sleeping habits. With his hand on the knob, Dave pauses. “I donated to a metahuman advocacy group in DC,” he says quietly. “Not sure if telling him will make the kid feel better or worse.”
As Aaron intones that the kindness will be a bright spot in Grayson’s otherwise dreary days, Dave shifts his weight. The careful balancing of his center of gravity gives way to an open promise. To listen, to not judge, to not be threatened by all that Grayson holds back. His eyes crinkle with bittersweet hope that his hotel mate will ease without cracking.
There were two voicemails left of Aaron’s work phone by the time he’d tucked Jack in that night. One from Wally West, one from Barbara Gordon. Both carry profuse apologies for missing the call, shaking gratitude for being there for their friend, and firm reprimands for involving Wayne. It’s JJ though, who fields the brunt of it. As she perches on the edge of her seat—ready to act—she explains that Duke has had her number since he visited. And that it spread through Grayson’s siblings like wildfire after no one was able to get ahold of their big brother. With patience and grace, she holds space for each of their concerns while maintaining the careful boundaries that Grayson hasn’t yet laid forth.
Her eyes are kind and her breaths are even. She will reassure his family again and again, take on the burden he clutches so tightly again and again, if it gives her babysitter even a moment of reprieve from playing the put-together eldest sibling.
With a statistical representation of Grayson’s habits spilling over his tongue, Reid explains his arrangements to handle Grayson’s food and med intake. Grocery plans generated from every lunch he has observed. Prescription refills calculated from the last time he mentioned a medication ran out.
There is a wild ferocity with which Reid shares his plans. Despite the language used, there is nothing methodical about how the man aims to protect his friend from the horrible habits that Reid himself has encountered and avoided. He will carry his fellow science buff through this via an obsessive, intently hypothesized route only he sees forward.
Frazzled intensity carries Garcia into his office. She starts babbling the moment his door shuts, endless thoughts streaming out about Grayson’s well-being. Because she doesn’t join them on cases, her perspective carries a distance that no one else can claim. Coupled with her insistent extraversion, she’s more than ready to welcome Grayson back into the fold.
Her fingers flutter as she clicks through apps for managing depression and anxiety and pain, programs hosted by veterans services and RAINN, resources connecting survivors to community and support groups and social workers. It’s expansive. It extends beyond what has made it back to Aaron around the root of Grayson’s struggles. It’s color coded and sortable. It hasn’t been sent to him yet, hard won restraint holding back eager intervention. When he’s ready, she will spill over with support for her dating confidant.
Only when all this is settled, plans slowly unfolding two days later, does Aaron make good on his own commitment.
Every interaction Aaron’s had with Grayson has shown him that a previous supervisor has ignored, mistreated, doubted, and abused his agent. He’d been content to let it lie, let Grayson warm up in his own time. He never has and never will need the details.
But he does need Grayson’s trust. Not because that’s how it’s supposed to be, but because he’s earned it.
Starting today, he will earn it.
“I just started the eighties,” Grayson reports as he settles stiffly in the chair across from Aaron.
The unit chief had asked him to close the door, but ensured that the blinds were open before he called his probationary agent over.
Aaron gives an impressed hum. “That’s fast.” Seven years of cases reviewed in two days.
He shrugs, subdued. He isn’t smiling simply because no one would believe him, not after he brutalized an unsub and almost shot a nurse. “Just matching file names to the report title on the scans. Not that hard.”
“Still, it’s impressive. I can’t imagine it’s a particularly riveting task.” As usual, a brief flash of surprise colors Grayson’s face at the compliment. “I appreciate you working on it.” He waits a beat. “However, that’s not what I was hoping to speak with you this afternoon.”
There are about forty-five minutes before the usual time the team leaves on office days. He anticipates their conversation taking about that long.
“Case?” Grayson asks obligatorily. His eyes slide over Aaron’s cleared desk, assessing the likelihood of an affirmative response.
“Prentiss shared with me that you had a flashback during our last case. That it related to a time during which you were undercover.”
Grayson hums in acknowledgement and doesn’t shut down further.
Aaron keeps his hands visible on top of his desk. “You’ve been with us for nine months now. You’ve been an exemplary agent.”
“Sir-”
“You are an asset to this team and we want you to continue your work here. I also want to be clear: You are more than just an agent. This team is more than co-workers. We care about each other, we support each other. When one of us struggles, we all struggle.”
He studies Grayson’s blank face as his agent tries to decipher his words.
“What happened in Cincinnati is concerning. I don’t want it to happen again. I’m not going to send you to a Bureau psychologist beyond what is required after such an incident or insist on outside therapy because I know that if you thought they'd be beneficial, you’d have already sought it out. I’ve never had an agent benefit from being forced into that and I don’t anticipate you being an exception.”
Grayson presses his lips together. “You… What do you want then?” He doesn’t promise that it’s a one time thing. Unnecessary confirmation that this isn’t even the first time it’s happened on a case. Just the first time that they’d noticed.
“I want you to tell me about your time undercover.”
Grayson’s eyes shutter, an impersonal mask yanked up to forestall any insistence Aaron has.
“Not today. Not tomorrow,” he assures. “But before you join us again in the field. I’m not putting you on leave or pulling you from active duty. This isn’t a punishment. You’ll still travel with us and assist from the local stations. There is no pressure to talk to me before you’re ready.”
“But I have to talk to you.” Grayson’s jaw works. “A lot of it is- classified.”
Aaron nods. “I expected as much. I don’t care about the mission. I care about you.”
Prentiss and Grayson continue to carpool to and from work. Reid goes over his proposed grocery list during their lunch break. Drawing on her Mom Voice, JJ encourages Grayson to respond to his siblings after a morning briefing. Upon recommendation from their probationary agent’s many friends, Morgan leaves a few new puzzle boxes on Grayson’s desk to be added to his lockbox. Garcia takes him on a field trip to an animal shelter after a long day to pet the rescued dogs. Recognizing a sleepless night, Dave abandons his office to allow Grayson to rest there, working instead from the conference room.
Grayson returns to the bullpen on Friday, consulting with St. Louis police about a trio of arsons.
They travel to Utah the following Monday and are back a week later. He spends the entire case in the conference room of the Salt Lake precinct. He doesn’t complain, the team doesn't tease him. The police chief asks and Aaron simply states it’s for medical reasons.
He recrafts his friendly mask while taping missing persons photos to a whiteboard but he lets it drop on the drive to the hotel.
That Wednesday, there’s a knock on his office door after the rest of the team has left for the day. He invites Grayson in.
“I’m ready,” he says quietly.
Aaron slips the physical files in his desk drawer and shuts off his computer. “Okay,” he agrees. He keeps his breath steady and face open. “What happened when you were undercover?”
Grayson closes his eyes, white-knuckling a wooden box with intricate etchings of elephants along the sides. “It was- It started before that.”
Slowly, he forces his body to relax. He doesn’t look at Aaron, attention instead on his hands as he twists the little trunks and designs on the box. “I-” He frowns. “I got- Remember when all the screens got taken over with the ‘this world is ours’ text? And how everyone thought the Justice League was dead because that anti-Justice League from another dimension had taken over a few cities?”
Not allowing his intense confusion to show on his face, Aaron nods.
“Right. It was- I was in Gotham at the time and a bunch of rogues sided with the anti-JL and they abducted me. It was-” He frowns hard, sliding a thin baby elephant piece along the wooden edge. “I’d been- It was bad. They- hooked me up to this bomb that was set on a count down. If I- If I died, then the bomb wouldn’t go off.”
Aaron feels sick. This was three years ago. The details of that time are hazy, but he remembers picking up a terrified Jack from school and using radios to communicate with the rest of the team who were stuck at the Academy.
“There was- I- They stopped my heart. To keep the bomb from going off. I don’t- think that resuscitating me was the original plan.” His fingers slip over his wrist. Checking his pulse. “Then- everyone thought I was dead. And- I guess because I’d kinda done the same thing in Blüd—infiltrating the police to clean up corruption—my- this- other organization asked me to stay- stay dead. And to go undercover.”
His hands shake. “It- B was the only person who knew I made it. And he- We got in a fight. He wanted me to go, thought it was a good opportunity and that- that I’d make a difference. I wanted- I didn’t want to go, Hotch. I really- I wanted to see my siblings and go to work and hang out with my friends.” His voice is tight as the first few tears spill over, splashing on the puzzle box in his lap.
“But B is- Once he decides something, he makes it happen. And normally it’s good. Normally it’s cleaning up pollution in Gotham Harbor or opening a prosthetics division at WE.” Grayson wipes at his cheeks. “And I really admire him for that.” A painful admission. “I do. I don’t- He didn’t let me decide though. He- So I went- I went undercover. And it wasn’t that bad. I missed everyone and I knew they’d be so- so angry when I came back. But I did it. I was good at it.”
Aaron doesn’t doubt this.
“I hated being there.” The lid of the box pops open. A miniature big top inside, wood stained red and white. Puzzle complete. “And- I only had one contact that I reported to. He didn’t always pick up at our agreed times. And then- I finished the mission. I got the information they wanted. And he never- For months, he didn’t pick up.”
Grayson glances up, not yet able to look Aaron in the eye. “I had to extract myself. Which was- I did it. And- and then they made me go back. They didn’t care that I was a double agent, they made me- I had to go back. I had to- dismantle the whole organization. It took- I just wanted to go home.”
He clicks the box shut, slowly slotting the pieces back into their original positions. “I went back to work in Blüd. Amy let me pick up where I left off, but.” He frowns. “I wasn’t- My friends, my siblings, they… thought I was going to die if I kept going at it like I was.”
“So you joined the FBI,” Aaron continues when Grayson goes quiet.
His agent nods. “Maybe not the- calmest transition. But that. That’s what happened.” He sets the wooden box on the desk. “It- I was doing a lot better until I started getting comfortable.”
“A currently stressed body doesn’t take the time to process past traumas,” Aaron notes.
“Yeah.” He rubs the fabric of his pants between his fingers. “Are you- mad?”
“At you? No,” Aaron promises. He keeps his voice level. “At everyone who failed you along the way? I’m furious.”
Grayson’s mouth works. “Oh,” he settles on finally. Then, “Everyone was mad at me when I got back.”
Aaron thinks back to the hospital room. Prentiss still delirious with blood loss and pain medication. How carefully he explained his plan. How many times he asked for her consent to lie to the team. How many times he promised to pull her out no matter where he was, no matter what he was doing.
And Emily still came home with too many scars. Too many broken relationships.
He can’t imagine the hell Grayson came back to. The grief of his siblings turning to outrage as they believed him complicit in the lie. The failure of both Grayson’s guardian and contact at pushing him into such a dangerous position and leaving him there to claw his way out. The yawning fear that it wasn’t over, that he'd be pulled back again. Every lost day, every lost life.
To take Grayson from his people is to take worship from divinity. It’s to send him over the event horizon.
And that his agent would bear it, would complete the mission, would go above and beyond expectation to get himself out alive only to be rejected by the very people for whom he carried on? The state he must have been in, solving murder cases in Blüdhaven. A city away from his siblings but unable to reach them because of a trust broken by the father that brought them together.
To put it lightly, this makes Aaron seethe with rage. Instead, he asks, “What are you going to do to ensure that you make it through this?”
For perhaps the first time, Grayson looks at him. Studies Aaron apart from the father who ignored him and the contact who abandoned him. Apart from the supervisor missing from his resume who abused him.
He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. Cleansing and fortifying. “I… tried ignoring it,” he answers slowly. “My friends made me change environments. My siblings made me an emergency kit.” The thing about Grayson’s people is, they love him right back. “Everything’s kind of been coming to the surface. And it’s a lot. Pushing it down is making more stuff come up. Stuff I forgot about, stuff I thought I was over.” He pauses, working his jaw, eyes not leaving Aaron. “I’m tired of running from it.”
“We’ll be here for you when you’re ready to face it,” Aaron assures him.
“It’s a lot.”
“So you said.”
“I might not get better. I might get worse.”
Aaron turns over the worry for a moment. “Can you do something for me, Grayson?”
His agent nods. “Of course.”
“You see the best in every person you meet. Try turning that on yourself. I think you’ll find a lot of good, a lot of hope, and a lot of light in there.”