All characters are property of CBS, Jeff Davis, Edward Allen Bernero and sadly not mine.
This piece I wrote for my dear friend and beta Sarah as a birthday present and she agreed for me to post it here. So again special thanks to her for all the help and encouragement and the great beta. Any mistakes that are still in there are mine.

Spoilers: Natural Born Killer (Hotch-centric)


“You wanna finish this?” Hotch got asked by Gideon.

He was leaning against a desk at the bullpen area with Elle next to him, Jason sitting on a chair to her right and Morgan next to Reid on the desk opposite to them. They had finally figured out the UnSub’s weakness.

“Yeah,” he answered shortly and got up.

Walking past his colleagues on his way to the interrogation room where Vincent Perotta was held, he heard Gideon saying to the rest of the team, “Keep working.” They still had to find the missing ATF undercover agent.

While he went down the short hallway, Aaron centered himself before he opened the door to the room and entered. Perotta was sitting chained to one of the two chairs that were facing each other in the middle of the otherwise empty room.

Vincent looked up. “Hey, look who’s here. My old friend. Feeling better?” he asked boastfully.

Recognizing this for what it was, a simple showing-off, the profiler remained silent. He closed the door before he walked over to the empty chair, putting his right hand on its back.

“Where’s Jason?” the UnSub asked.

Still not answering Hotch sat down, his hands folded and his arms resting on his thighs, and leaned forward slightly. He looked the other man in the eye and after waiting a beat he said with a steady and calm voice, “You grew up in a house that looked normal and happy, didn’t you, Vincent?”

“Did I?” No emotion could be detected in Perotta’s reply.

So Hotch continued, “But your father beat you every chance he got.”

Now Vincent broke eye contact briefly and then admitted, “He smacked me around some. Didn’t everybody’s old man?”

Aaron shook his head almost imperceptible and answered in a low voice, “No.” Deep down though he had to agree as he thought back to his childhood when his father had abused him. His stoic face and his detached demeanor, sometimes mistaken for indifference, were nothing more than a protective wall that had been build in that time.

He could actually relate to the other man, but he knew he couldn’t allow himself to think like this. He couldn’t afford any emotions with their UnSub if he wanted to be successful, even though what Perotta now replied hit home. “Or maybe if yours had you would have learned to fight.”

What Vincent didn’t know was that the agent had learned to fight; he had fought not to become a man like his father had been, he had fought the evil. And knowing the statistics he had been afraid for some time that he would continue the circle with his son.

After a brief moment of silence he stated, “Paranoid personalities develop in childhood.”

“You know you’re saving me thousands of dollars in therapy bills?” Perotta asked, seemingly wanting to change the sensitive subject.

Hotch’s answer was a small one-sided and humorless smile and he said in a softer voice, “And you learned to take the beatings, the abuse. You learned to smile.”

At this Vincent was breaking eye contact again while the profiler continued, “But in the back of your mind you probably thought, ‘One day… one day when I’m big enough’.” After a moment he added, “So you were bullied and abused and you became an abuser and a bully. It’s a logic progression.”

Meeting the other man’s glance Vincent showed no interest, which was backed up by his expressionless face. “Really?” he asked in a neural tone, before he shifted his gaze away again.

“Yeah,” Hotch answered, and then paused before taking it one step further. “Your father beat your mother, too, didn’t he?”

That changed the UnSub’s behavior abruptly when he looked up sharply at the other man, and he wasn’t that calm anymore when he replied, “My mother’s got nothing to do with this.”

Aaron kept silent briefly and Perotta averted his eyes again, so that the agent wouldn’t be able to read in them.

Having the man now exactly where he wanted to, out of his calm and emotionless state, the profiler’s voice was harder again when he said, “You’re mother knew. She knew he beat you every day and she did nothing to help you… And you still loved her… Even though she let you get hurt, you loved her. And I wondered why, why didn’t you hate her? Then of course I realized that he beat her as much as he beat you.”

“Don’t talk about my mother,” Vincent warned with a slightly shaky voice, his gaze on the other man.

“You killed all these people,” Hotch continued, referring to the photos that were put up on the board to the UnSub’s right side, “Hundreds of them and only one woman.”

Perotta had broken eye contact again and his lower lip was quivering slightly.

“That’s what made you get sloppy, isn’t it?” Aaron asked, though he didn’t expect to get an answer. “Killing Mrs. DiMarco was hard.” While Vincent closed his eyes presumably at the memories of that, the agent went on, “That’s why you did it first and you made it quick.” The UnSub opened his eyes but stayed silent and avoided Hotch’s glance as the other man said, “I thought it was to establish dominance but it wasn’t.”

“He was a bastard, all right?” Perotta replied.

The profiler asked, “Your father?”

“I call him Frank. He was a mean son of a *****. Is that what you wanna know?”

Hotch studied him for a moment until Vincent looked away. And for the first time the agent lowered his gaze as well, glancing at his folded hands. Despite knowing that everyone had a choice, or maybe because of it, he felt sympathy for the other man. “You were just responding to what you learned, Vincent. When you grow up in an environment like that, an extremely abusive, violent household… it’s not surprising that some people grow up to become killers.”

The door behind the other man opened and Hotch got up to walk around the chair he had been sitting on. Three men clad in black came in, went over to Perotta and began to open the handcuffs. With his back to the UnSub, the profiler didn’t see that Vincent’s gaze was following him.

“Some people?” the man repeated inquiringly.

The agent turned around. “What’s that?”

“You said, ‘some people grow up to become killers’.”

They locked eyes for a moment before Hotch looked away briefly, then back and nodded slightly. He knew that the UnSub had caught on to what he now added, “And some people grow up to catch them.”

After another moment of silent eye contact Aaron turned around and left through the door he had come in, before walking down the hallway a few feet to gather himself and he took a deep breath.

Stopping he turned around partially and watched as the officers were leading Vincent out of the interrogation room. He and Perotta were walking in opposite directions again, like the two of them had done in life from the same start.

After a moment the UnSub turned his head around to Aaron briefly and for the first time there were emotions visible on his face, surprise being the most dominant one.

Then the men rounded a corner and were out of sight.

Hotch kept standing in the hallway a moment longer, wondering like so many times before what it would have taken for him to become a man like Vincent Perotta, before he walked away as well, drawing comfort from the fact that he had made the right decision.

Thanks for reading! Please leave a review to let me know what you think of it. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.

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