Great Loss (a hotchniss story)

grieve (hotch's POV)

Reid rustles around to make himself comfortable. "I never got to say goodbye. The good people in my life always leave, and never say goodbye."

He looks back down and picks at his fingers. He looks back up at me. "Let's go catch Gideon's killer."

Light has finally come out, but the fog covers it. It's fall. "Wrong day to be gloomy," Rossi mumbles.

As we walk to the front of the cabin, we're greeted by the sheriff on duty. "Sheriff Kingston, I'm Aaron Hotchner from the Behavior Analysis Unit, these are Agents Jennifer Jareau and David Rossi. And this is our technical analyst, Ms. Penelope Garcia. We have two other agents at the coroner's office." I say. "Shall we walk in?"

Sheriff Kingston pauses. "It's bad Agent. Real bad." He whispers. "Something I've never seen before."

I know Penelope wouldn't like this. "Penelope, stay in the car and pull up Gideon's last known whereabouts before he headed to the cabin." She nods. "JJ go with her, you might not want to see this either."

Sheriff leads us to the main entrance of the cabin. And as we walked in, it's a bloody wreck. Tons of blood smeared across the walls and on the floor? even on the ceiling. Broken objects everywhere. Paintings are ruined. "Is this the only room that looks like this?" I ask, Sheriff nods.

We walk to Gideon's room, as a trail of blood leads to it. "I'm guessing he was struck here and was dragged to the main room." Sheriff Kingston says, our eyes dragging on the line of blood. "He was covered in blood when he was found."

"This is overkill, whoever this unsub is, she's mad"
Rossi says, putting his gloves on.

"Dave I can do this. You can go outside and see if there are any footprints," I stare.

He stands up and looks at me. "No, Aaron. I won't do what you're asking me to do. Someone killed my friend. The person who I created the BAU with." Rossi looks at around the room. "We're gonna kill this son of a b****."

I agree with him by nodding. Footsteps walk through the door. "Morgan just called me - what the hell. Happened. Here." JJ says.

I scoff. "JJ you're not supposed to be here."

"Hotch, this is bad. This unsub is lunatic," she says.

"What did Morgan say?" I ask.

JJ looks around. "He uh...um...he said that they didn't see the body because Strauss told them not to but the coroner concluded that the cause of his death was multiple gunshots to the head. There was bruising around his body, it looks like he was kicked hard after being struck from behind. They're on their way here."

"This unsub is mad." I through the window outside and a car pulls up. It's not an SUV. "Rossi and JJ, look for anything that will help."

I walk outside, leaves crunching underneath my shoes. I get a good look of the face. "Stephen, you shouldn't be here. I mean it. I'm sorry for your loss but go home." I push him back as he tries to force his way past me.

He stops hesitating. "THAT IS MY DAD WHO GOT KILLED!" He calms down. "Aaron Hotchner right? He told me about you. About how you're a good profiler. A damn good one. Have you profiled that maybe he knew the person who did this?"

"We haven't gotten there yet. Why do you believe that?" I ask.

"We finally reconnected but a couple weeks ago, he left a message saying that he loved me." Stephen explains. "I tried calling him because that's all he said. He never answered until I got an unknown call with heavy breathing. And then it ended."