Chapter 5: Why We Bother
Chapter 5: Why We Bother
It's never what they want, and if we give them what they think they want, they like it less than ever ... I don't know why we bother.
-Neil Gaiman, Sandman #57, "The Kindly Ones: 1"
Hotch wandered dazedly along the busy sidewalk, occasionally bumping into people who gave him long, hard glares but kept their peace due to the strange look in his dark eyes. He was well and truly, as he’d told Garcia, down the rabbit hole. Through the looking glass. Lost in the fourth dimension. Do not adjust your television; you really are losing your damn mind. Everything he’d known and believed in was unraveling, and he was left like a lost, confused weaver holding the loose thread of his life, futilely trying to salvage the wrecked, warped pattern.
He raised shaking hands to his face. Rubbed his aching forehead in a futile attempt to achieve any sort of clarity. He couldn’t process what he’d learned from Garcia. Reid was dead, killed by Henkel. Morgan’s innocence hadn’t been proven in Chicago, and he was now doing time for a crime he hadn’t committed. Gideon had eaten his gun. The BAU was…was what it had been years ago, before profiling was a truly accepted means of crime fighting.
“Well, young Aaron, you got what you wanted. How does it feel?”
He didn’t even glance over at the man who had fallen into step beside him. “You know what? Go to hell,” he replied shortly.
Clarence burst into uproarious laughter, as though it were the funniest joke he’d ever heard. He doubled over on the sidewalk; held his stomach; rocked with mirth. “Oh, my sweet, innocent friend, you do make me chuckle,” he gasped, wiping at streaming eyes as he straightened.
Hotch glared at him from beneath thunderous brows. “I’m glad my misery amuses you, but could you please explain to me what’s going on?”
They were in front of a Starbucks, and Clarence pressed a gentle hand against the other man’s arm. “Let me buy you something to drink.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” he spat, jerking away from his touch as though it were poison.
Winged brows rose over clear, sky-blue eyes. “I’ll explain, but first let’s sit like civilized men. Please.”
Reluctantly Hotch allowed himself to be led inside the warm coffee shop. Clarence ordered for them both, and Hotch was completely unsurprised when the other man correctly guessed his drink. They found a quiet corner and sank down into the comfortable chairs, sipping their hot drinks and (in Hotch’s case, anyway) avoiding looking into the other’s eyes. “You made a wish, young Aaron,” Clarence declared without preamble.
Hotch blinked at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Earlier today you wished you’d never been born. You remember.”
He stared at the man with his mouth hanging open.
“There’s no reason to gape at me like that,” Clarence said. He looked suddenly…different. Uncanny. Other. “You got what you wanted. How does it feel?”
Hotch carefully placed the paper cup on the table and rubbed his palms against the dark wool of his tailored trousers. “You’re trying to tell me…you actually expect me to believe…”
Clarence smiled, and the expression raised the hairs on the back of Hotch’s neck. “You’re an intelligent, analytical man, completely grounded in the tangible. Now I’m asking you to consider the evidence before you. Lively Ms. Garcia was shot, an event you remember well, but she was dismissed from the FBI, something you clearly don’t recall. Young Dr. Reid was killed by poor, mad Tobias Henkel, even though you know your team rescued him. Handsome Mr. Morgan is in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, despite your perfectly lucid memories of proving his innocence.”
He paused to study Hotch a moment and to take a sip of his whipped cream-topped confection before continuing. “Wise Dr. Gideon is dead by his own hand. While you have no direct knowledge of his fate, you do know that isn’t how it happened in your memory. And then there’s your lovely, sadly doomed wife-”
“Enough!” Hotch barked. “Don’t you talk to me about Haley.”
The man’s grave expression conveyed such infinite compassion that it made Hotch’s heart ache. He couldn’t bear that look, so terrible and so beautiful. “Haley’s fate was set, my somber young thinker. Even gods can’t fight the Moirai. 'The gods were moved; but none can break the Sisters' iron decree.' That's Ovid, friend.”
“I don’t believe in fate,” he rasped.
The man - if man he truly was, which even skeptical Aaron Hotchner was beginning to doubt - sighed like the wind through pine boughs and said, “I’ll let you in on a secret: it matters very little what you believe or disbelieve. What is, is what is.”
“If that’s true, then there’s no point. Haley was doomed to be killed by Foyet, so what was the point of me even trying to save her? What was the point of any of it?”
Clarence pressed his palms together, seemingly considering Hotch’s question, but he could see from the man’s strange, glowing eyes that he already had the answer in mind. “The point, my cynical friend? The point, quite simply, is love.”
It was unexpected, and Hotch found himself gaping again. “Are you telling me the meaning of life can be found in a Beatles’ song?”
He laughed like a flock of birds taking wing, all unfettered delight and childlike joy. “Exactly! John Lennon was a wise man. I know it sounds simplistic to one such as yourself, but it’s true. You brought love to Haley’s life: a marriage, a beautiful child. Your presence allowed the people around you to love one another. Dr. Gideon loved Dr. Reid as a son. Ms. Garcia and Mr. Morgan had a deep, soul-stirring friendship. You, my sticky friend, were the mortar holding it all together.”
Hotch rubbed his strangely healed hands together. “You’re saying I didn’t bring Foyet into Haley’s life; he would have found her anyway.”
“Yes. The Sisters' patterns are not for us to comprehend. Surely you know that.”
He looked away. It was almost something he could believe, Clarence’s seemingly uncomplicated theory about life and love and all that sprang from the two. But he felt he had failed too many people too often to accept that his life, his existence, his influence could have such a profound effect on the universe. “She left me, you know,” he said at last.
“People drift. Love is like matter: it can’t be destroyed, not completely.”
He raised a brow. “The Law says matter can’t be created, either.”
“Well, there you go. Neither can love, not really; it’s always there, lurking in the corner like chocolate cake.”
“Um.” Hotch eyed Clarence; shook his head, briefly. “Chocolate cake?”
“Sweet and delicious. Ignore the flawed simile, if you please.”
He let it go. “Garcia didn’t tell me anything about J.J. or Prentiss,” he said after a moment.
“Indeed? Hhhmm.” Clarence sipped his hot chocolate contemplatively. “I suppose it’s a good thing we chose this particular coffee shop, then.” He nodded across the room, and Hotch followed the gesture with his eyes. “Pretty Ms. Jareau, at your service. Go say hello.”
Hotch frowned. “She won’t recognize me.”
“No, of course not, but you’re a decent enough looking fellow. She probably won’t mace you as long as you stay calm and don’t act a fool.”
He sighed; ran a hand over his face. “Just tell me. J.J. and Will-?”
“Never met.”
“So Henry?”
“Never born. Ms. Jareau never joined Bureau, since pontificating Mr. Rossi never left to write his many books; besides, the BSU has no need for a communications liaison. She does PR for dirty politicians.”
Hotch winced at the thought even as another part of his mind chuckled at Clarence’s description of Rossi. “Is she better off, do you think?” he asked hesitantly, though he felt he knew the answer.
“You tell me, profiler. Ms. Jareau cleans up sordid messes perpetrated by sleazy men who talk to her breasts and try to grope her rear. She runs away from any decent man she meets because she doesn’t believe he can be real. Do you understand what you were to her, Aaron? You helped her to realize that good men do exist; without you, her heart is closed, guarded, and she doesn’t know any other way to be. While, certainly, a woman’s worth isn’t determined by the men in her life, I do consider it very sad indeed that sweet Ms. Jareau has shut herself off from love so completely.”
“You have a rather ridiculous obsession with love,” Hotch remarked dryly.
Clarence shrugged airily. “A hazard of the job, I suppose.”
He absolutely did not want to know what job the strange man was referring to, and he was frankly sick of this insane, riddling conversation. “I’m leaving now,” he stated abruptly, gaining his feet like a tired old man.
“As you will,” Clarence replied mildly. “We’ll meet again, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I have no doubt. You’re like a bad penny.”
The man smiled enigmatically. “More like a lucky one.”